He waved a hand vaguely. ‘We’ve been away, and only got back last night. In the last ten days, if that helps.’
I thanked him. We went out, and walked back to the cars. I shouldn’t have done it, but I asked Brason what he made of it. Fatal, with Brason.
‘Well....’ he said, tapping his teeth with the ignition key.
‘It’s an over/under model, this Remington. If it’d been pinched with the idea of a hold-up, they’d want to saw it off, and an ordinary side-by-side would be a better bet for ‘em. Look more dangerous, sir, you see. And a youngster...he’d surely go for one of the rifles. There’s more challenge in a twenty-two rifle. One bullet instead of hundreds of pellets. But I’ll sniff around, sir.’
I didn’t like the idea of a shotgun on the loose. ‘You do that,’ I said encouragingly. ‘But it could’ve been gone a week, and nothing’s leaked back to you yet. Anyway, keep in touch, and I’ll send a man to look at your car. It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Brason.’
He stiffened. There was a faint tint to his cheeks. He couldn’t know that I was silently cursing him.
I drove away. His lively brain had irritated me. There I was, wondering which way to turn, when Brason knew exactly where he stood and why.
I was three days from retirement. Two months before...even one month...there hadn’t been a doubt in my mind regarding my attitude to it. My career hadn’t been notable, and somehow I hadn’t always been in line with official policy, so that I’d equally not been in line for promotion. I could look back to years of abrasive endeavour, always with my head down and forcing on against some sort of opposition. Oh yes, the thought of retirement and the freedom from pressure had been heartening. On the calendar on my office wall I’d started crossing off the remaining days.
But with each day deleted, I was simply one day closer to something I couldn’t see clearly, and what had been brash confidence gradually slipped into a vague uneasiness. Even with a twinge of fear.
A fortnight before, I’d stopped crossing out the days. They mocked me. And yet I’d savoured the prospect of freedom from the routine and discipline for so long! I had, I had! There’d been a trumpet call to renewed action. Up and at ‘em, Richard! I’d told myself there were hobbies and interests to be investigated, and that tour of Europe I’d always promised myself. All the world to play with...but suddenly a complete lack of interest for the game.
I suppose I’d pushed myself too hard. There’d been a time, three years before, when I’d needed to throw myself into the job, working myself to exhaustion. It gets to be a habit. The routine and concentration became part of my life, and I realised that by losing it I’d be faced by nothing but emptiness and uncertainty.
But...if I was going to lose the blasted routine anyway, there was still the method of abandoning it to be considered. Out with a triumphant bang, working flat out to the last moment, or ease out gently, gradually sliding away from under to ease the impact? I’d opted for the second alternative. The thought of walking away with an important and absorbing case pounding in my brain, and never to be resolved, was appalling. So I’d begun a paltry dabbling into minor matters, which I should have handed to a DC, not letting myself care too much, and not offering any imagination in case the unusual or the bizarre offered back.
Such as a strangely burnt-out car, a stolen shotgun — and that damned Brason mocking me by extracting interest from them and sticking it under my nose.
I was driving dangerously. Driving away from it. Damn it, I was afraid of interest now, when I’d equally been afraid of boredom. You’re going paranoic, Richard, I told myself. You’re on the way out.
Then I found myself crowding a tricky S-bend, and flicked the car through it, double declutching and catching the slide just right, and thought: what the hell! Suddenly I’d got my head back, laughing — God knows what at — and at least I was in control of the car.
There was no desire to drive home to the empty house. I thought round for a diversion, nothing too interesting, nothing too boring, and the obvious thing was to call in at Clive Kendall’s place, to see whether there was any sign of the bastard. I was back into routine. I felt relaxed.
The information was that Kendall had been released from Long Lartin Prison three weeks before, so we’d been keeping a general eye open for him, just in case he came back to his home town. If he’d dare, that is. But he’d never shown any remorse or evidence of human feelings, and his bungalow had not been sold. The suggestion was that he might risk it, in which event there’d be trouble. So the bungalow was an obvious place to visit, because trouble just at that time I could do without.
The light was going early. The clouds were low and threatening, and I could hear the sound from the tyres taking on a new crispness. By the time I reached the outskirts of town the steering was becoming light. Here, the new motorway spur was slicing a scar through the stretches of waste land and the deserted shells of the old heavy industry complexes. I took a short cut through the new industrial estates that the council had thrown up. The aspect was depressing. So far it had not been a success, attracting very little in the way of new businesses. Orange streetlights were flashing on with an early dusk, but there was very little traffic, and no pedestrians. Then I was into the parallel streams of terraced dwellings that the ironworkers used to live in, mostly boarded up now, but with a few tatty curtains here and there and the odd blanket nailed up behind the glass. Beyond were the newer estates. Here, at least, the houses did not quite lean against each other.
There was a crumbling Victorian house at the junction of the by-pass and a minor road. The council had converted it into an old people’s home, and sold off part of the land for residential development. Maybe they’d planned a whole squat group of bungalows, but only one had been built, and that in the most distant, private corner. The entrance to it was from the minor road, along a narrow lane flanked on one side by the wall surrounding the home, and on the other by a tall, sagging fence. I left the Stag parked out on the road, and walked up the lane.
The snow had partly melted, but was now freezing again. I took the torch from my car and fanned it over the surface. No foot or tyre prints. All right so far. I relaxed a little.
The sky was orange with reflected light, the fence at my elbow just visible. At the end it just gave up, leaving a gap. Kendall’s bungalow sat facing me, low and threatening. No light showed. The traffic was a distant hum, emphasising the silence.
I moved in closer. Snow was hanging raggedly on tired shrubs and tufted grass. The garden, if it’d ever had any attention, was now far gone in rank growth. A few trees stood lank and bare to the right, against the wall, and two cypresses were towering on each side of the bungalow’s front entrance, pleased at the unexpected freedom and throwing themselves at the sky.
I approached from the side. The slabs had lifted unevenly. The first thing I noticed was that the curtains were clean. That there were curtains at all was surprising, because Clive Kendall had been away for eight years. I went on round, fanning the torch through the windows, and in every room it seemed that the furniture was clean, even polished. I didn’t like the look of it. In the living-room grate there was what looked like grey ashes and cinders. I’d have expected soot and mortar dust, after eight years. There was a recess for the side door, and in it I discovered a reinforced brown paper bag, nearly full of Coalite.
I was beginning to feel unhappy about it, and moved round faster. The double bed in the main bedroom was made, the covers drawn up neatly. In the empty second bedroom there was an untidy pile of what looked like sheets, and had probably been dustcovers.
He’d been back! Mind you, the suggestion was of a woman’s touch, but I couldn’t imagine that Rona, his wife, would have returned. She had hardly been the type to face out the situation, and hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. The word was that she’d got herself a judicial separation with all the speed that the law, very sympathetic, had allowed.
It hadn’t been my day. If he’d bee
n there I could’ve backed him against a wall and told him all the dire things that could happen to him unless he disappeared smartly. Then I’d have put a guard round the place until he did, and set a watch on the Clayton brothers. If he was on the loose, then the possibilities were horrifying.
As I turned away from the kitchen window, a variation in the reflection on the glass caught my eye, and I edged round until I got it clearly. Written in the dust with a stubby finger, backwards for reading from inside, but with the esses the wrong way, was printed:
THIƧ FOR YOU — BAƧTARD →
I turned quickly, stabbing the torch in the direction of the arrow.
One of the naked trees had a branch that sprang from the trunk horizontally. A child’s doll, around two feet tall, had been strung from it by its neck with two feet of cord. I approached slowly. The doll was swinging gently, though I could feel no breeze. The noose was carefully made, just as a hangman would have fashioned it. There was a small tuft of black hair stuck to the doll’s chin, and its neck was broken. The tuft had the appearance of having originally been the bristles of a half-inch paintbrush.
I fetched out a penknife and slashed it down. My hand was unsteady. I carried it by the string back to the car, and tossed it onto the rear seat.
When arrested, Clive Kendall had been wearing a small goatee beard, as black as his hair. He’d worn it through the months of preparation and trial, only shaving it off when he went into Long Lartin Prison. It’d begun to look strange, I guess, because his hair had gone completely white.
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Final Toll Page 17