The children did not even look up from their game. Only the dog watched him go.
CHAPTER VI
THERE WAS no message from Templewood, and when another call to his hotel produced the same result as before, Goldsmith packed, paid his bill and left.
He usually found that train journeys provided lots of space for thought and none for action, the ideal circumstances for studying problems from crossword puzzles to metaphysics. But today the carriage was full, his companions were loquacious and the movement of the train was interrupted by frequent halts. It was Sunday, explained a philosophical soldier. The day for repairs.
Goldsmith examined his feelings but found it a futile exercise. It was not what he felt now, his nerve edges still dulled by shock and this fitful journey north giving the illusion of separation from its source, but what he would feel later that mattered; when remembrance of Housman’s body passing silently through the curtains brought him out of sleep to sit upright in bed at dead of night.
Suppose it had definitely been Hebbel. How much difference would that make? In theory, if all he and Templewood had said down the years was to be taken seriously, his only regret should then be that the killing had been accidental.
So, Housman or Hebbel, in either case I’m sorry it was an accidental death, he thought. The macabre paradox made him smile a little. It was well not to become too maudlin in his guilt. Not that there was much chance of that, he thought. A few hours after killing the man, I was itching to screw his tart.
But it did not matter whether guilt was going to climb into bed with him every night or merely tip its cap distantly from time to time. It was still important to know whether the dead man could really have been Nikolaus Hebbel.
The simplest course would be to give an anonymous tip to the authorities. Let the experts investigate. Maxwell’s friends would dig through their records, perhaps produce fingerprints. And if there were a positive identification news would eventually reach him through the Colonel.
But such a course would be inviting trouble. Some bright policeman had only to spot that two of the potential main prosecution witnesses against Hebbel belonged to a regiment celebrating its annual reunion on the night of the death, and that would be that. He must have left his fingerprints all over Housman’s room. The woman, Sandra Phillips, could identify him. And he had been stupid enough to give her Maxwell’s name instead of saying he was Smith or Robinson.
So the situation remained as before. If he wished to know the truth, he would have to find it out for himself.
The tedious journey finally ended and he strode with relief from Leeds Station to the car-park where he had left his Land-Rover. The dusty, mud-caked vehicle suited him better than the glossy saloons among which he worked. As he approached it he noticed a piece of paper stuck behind one of the wipers and wondered if he had committed some subtle parking offence. He pulled it out and unfolded it.
Spotted this junk heap while out shopping, he read. Why not try washing it? If you’re back at a decent hour, call as you pass. Liz.
He screwed the paper up and stuck it in his pocket. Elizabeth Sewell was another of his problems.
As an energetic, articulate and forthright woman, she made an excellent ward secretary and general organizer. But she was more than that and that was where the problems began.
For a start, she was his tenant. The old terraced house in which Goldsmith had been born and which his father had just finished paying for the year before he died, had come to feel unbearably constricting. Ten years earlier he had decided to move out. His career in local politics was just starting and his friends were dismayed when he told them he was moving right out of the main conurbation. They had persuaded him not to sell his old house, but to let it, so that his ownership would continue to qualify him for membership of the council. Liz had jumped at the chance of moving in, and she shared the house with her mother, a smart fifty-seven-year-old whose interest in seeing her daughter married to Goldsmith was matched only by Liz’s enthusiasm for the idea.
His route home took him past the house. He was uncertain whether or not to stop, but the sight of a blue-and-white Cortina parked in the road outside made up his mind. It belonged to Jeff Malleson, the local Party Secretary. If Jeff were out and about that night, he would almost certainly end up at Goldsmith’s cottage and not care much about the time either.
Mrs Sewell let him in, greeting him with a warm hug. He disengaged himself with a smile which concealed the uneasiness he sometimes felt at being alone with her. The first time he had spent the night with Liz under her own roof, he had been worried about Mrs Sewell’s reaction. Liz had just laughed and put the question direct to her mother, who had said that if he was worried about climbing into Liz’s bed, he was very welcome to try hers first. He had never been certain how much of a joke this was.
In the living-room, Liz was sprawled in characteristic fashion across a jumble of cushions on the floor. Just as characteristically, Malleson was sitting at a card table whose green baize was almost obliterated by half-a-dozen neat piles of printed paper.
‘The Hero returns,’ said Liz, smiling up at him welcomingly. ‘How was the war? Did we win again?’
He ran his fingers through her dark brown hair whose defiant untidiness sometimes amused, sometimes irritated him.
‘Hello, Bill,’ said Malleson. ‘Just in time. I was going to call on you later to talk over next Thursday’s meeting.’
‘Can it wait?’ asked Goldsmith, sinking wearily into a chair. ‘I’m a bit knackered.’
‘It’s these war games,’ mocked Liz, getting up. ‘I’ll get Mam to do some coffee. Have you eaten?’
Goldsmith nodded. It was a lie, but he didn’t feel hungry. He closed his eyes as Liz shouted instructions to her mother.
Take no notice of Liz,’ said Malleson. ‘She’s marched to Aldermaston too many times. Edmunds was asking where you were last night. He looked very approving when I told him.’
Edmunds was the chairman of the candidate Selection Board, a loud, opinionated man whom Goldsmith found it hard to like.
‘Did he?’ he said. That’s nice.’
‘Now you can do yourself a bit of good at Thursday’s meeting. All the committee’ll be there of course, and you can dazzle them with your grasp of national issues and get old Barraclough on your side too.’
Barraclough was the current Member of Parliament whose decision not to stand again had created the need for a new candidate. Malleson, a strong supporter of Goldsmith, was very proud that he had juggled things to get the two men on the same platform. Goldsmith himself doubted the wisdom of the move. Edmunds was not a man who liked to feel manœuvred.
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea, Jeff?’ he asked again, adding on an impulse, ‘Are you sure the whole thing’s a good idea? It’d take precious little to make me withdraw, I tell you.’
‘No!’ protested Liz, who had returned unnoticed. ‘You mustn’t! You withdraw and chances are that little LSE shit would worm his way in, him and his creepy wife both!’
‘At least they can’t hold a creepy wife against me,’ said Goldsmith. It wasn’t a diplomatic thing to say, but he was too tired for diplomacy. The tensions and the travel of the past few days seemed to have sapped his last reserves of energy.
‘I must be off on my travels,’ said Malleson rather too abruptly. ‘Ring you in the morning, Bill.’
He gathered his papers together, placed them tidily in his briefcase and left, en route passing Mrs Sewell plus coffee-tray.
‘Good night,’ he called. They heard the front door open and shut.
‘Chased him off, have you?’ asked Mrs Sewell. ‘It’s a wonder he didn’t want to stay and watch. I’ve got my doubts about that one.’
‘Mam!’ said Liz.
‘I know what I know,’ said the other woman with a broad wink at Goldsmith. ‘I’m going to watch a bit of tele now. Behave yourselves!’
‘She gets worse,’ said Liz after her mother had left.
‘Yes,’ said Goldsmith.
‘Did something happen in London?’ asked Liz, observing him closely. He kept his eyes tight closed and forced himself not to react.
‘Nothing unusual. Why do you ask?’
‘You seem a bit, I don’t know, unsettled. And you did go off unexpectedly early.’
Who needs a police investigation if things stand out as clear as this? thought Goldsmith.
‘No, I’m fine,’ he said, opening his eyes and smiling with an effort. ‘I’ve had a lousy migraine, that’s all. Probably enjoyed myself too much last night.’
She came and sat on the floor between his legs, full of solicitude.
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No, thanks. A good night’s sleep will see me right.’
‘You’re probably overdoing things. You ought to have a word with your doctor.’
‘Doctors! The best they can do is put a name to what you’re dying of.’
‘So? It’s nice to know what kills us,’ she said lightly. ‘Anyway, stop being morbid! One bad headache doesn’t mean you’re marked for Paradise!’
‘Don’t intimations of mortality ever bother you?’ he asked, trying to joke.
‘I suppose. But not much. When it comes, it comes.’
‘It’s not just when, it’s what,’ he answered, almost talking to himself. ‘When men go to their death, what happens? Should we envy them or pity them? Are they losing or gaining?’
‘It must depend on the man, surely?’ she answered, turning and kneeling so that she could look into his face. ‘Bill, I don’t think you should go home tonight. I don’t fancy being by myself either. Will you stay?’
‘I doubt if I’d be much good for you,’ he answered.
‘Curiously, that wasn’t what I had in mind. Just stay.’
He had not planned to. Coming up on the train, solitude had seemed the only desirable, the only possible state. But now the thought of the uncurtained windows of the cottage staring blankly out into the darkness of the wooded garden, looking for his return, filled him with fear.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’
He rose early the following morning, wanting to go home for a change of clothing before making his way to work. Liz, who had trouble with mornings, registered his going by grunting porcinely and rolling over. He admired the finely moulded planes of dorsal muscle and bone for a moment before quietly leaving the room.
Mrs Sewell was sitting downstairs with a cup of tea and a cigarette.
‘OK?’ she said, enigmatically.
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘Liz OK?’
‘Yes. Shouldn’t she be?’
‘She should be,’ said the woman, dropping her stub into the tea-cup. ‘She would be if you married her.’
‘That’s for us to decide,’ said Goldsmith, pretending an anger he didn’t feel. She ignored him.
‘Failing that, you could get out of the way and let someone else have a chance at her. But marriage would be best,’ she acknowledged thoughtfully. ‘An MP needs a wife. Like a cup of tea?’
Goldsmith left without answering. His pretended anger moderated into an annoyance real enough to put the events of the weekend to the back of his mind until he arrived at his cottage simultaneously with the newspaper boy.
Housman’s death was not brutal enough or dramatic enough to merit a headline, but an almost naked man falling out of a West End hotel window had sufficient curiosity value to fill an interesting paragraph on the front page.
He made himself a coffee and took it with him into the shower. As he was drying himself, the telephone rang. It was Templewood.
‘Billy, have you seen the papers?’ He sounded agitated.
‘Yes.’
‘For Christ’s sake, what happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Goldsmith cautiously.
‘I don’t know what I mean. Look, after what we were talking about, I mean, could this be coincidence? That’s what I wondered straightaway. I got your message yesterday, but when I rang, you’d checked out. Look, Billy, I’ll come straight out, has this got anything to do with you? With what we were talking about?’
Despite his agitation, he’s being very circumspect, thought Goldsmith. Not much here for eavesdroppers. He felt a perverse impulse not to co-operate.
‘You mean, did I kill Housman?’
‘Jesus wept! Listen, Billy, I can’t talk now. We’ve got to meet. I can’t get up to you before tomorrow lunch-time. Is there somewhere quiet we can meet?’
‘If you like. There’s a pub. The White Rose, Serlby Street. I can be there at one.’
That’s fine. One o’clock. The White Rose. Are you all right, Billy?’
‘Yes, fine. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘That’s good. See you tomorrow.’
The phone went dead. Goldsmith replaced the receiver gently. Templewood’s agitation had had a curious soothing effect on him, as though a responsibility had been shifted, temporarily at least.
He got dressed and went out into the back garden. It wasn’t very big, a patch of neglected lawn with three or four apple trees rising from the rough cut grass. But the countryside ran away behind it to a long ridge which hinted at the imminent swell of the Dales. The view was uninterrupted yet, though the relentless city was in close pursuit elsewhere in the village. Soon it would be village no longer but just another expensive suburb. Goldsmith had bought his cottage ten years earlier at what had seemed then an absurd price for such a tumbledown building. But it was what he wanted and if he sold now, it would fetch six or seven times what he had paid. Only if the tentacles of brick and plate glass started coiling round behind him would he sell. He needed that space there.
He looked at his watch and whistled at the time. As he hurried to the Land-Rover he thought how nice it would be to have a single exclusive role in life, instead of this jumble of walk-on parts, dominated by the least important. There was much dramatic research to be done in the areas of William Goldsmith, uncertain politician; of Billy Goldsmith, hesitant lover; of ex-Private Goldsmith, W., DCM, killer. But it was Mr Goldsmith, Chief Mechanic of Harewood Hire-Cars Ltd, who set them all breaking the speed limit through the morning traffic in order not to be late for work.
CHAPTER VII
‘ARE YOU SURE this isn’t the gents?’ said Templewood, looking round with distaste.
‘You wanted somewhere we could talk,’ said Goldsmith equably.
The White Rose had few attractions as a lunch-time pub. It sold no food, it was big and draughty, everything about it was cold except the beer, and the use of mottled green and white tiles on the internal walls gave the bar the aspect of an unkempt aquarium.
The positive side of all these features was that you could get a table isolated from all possibility of eavesdropping.
Goldsmith pushed a pint towards the newly arrived Templewood and followed it with the offer of a paper bag containing two Cornish pasties.
‘I brought an extra one in case you were hungry,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
Templewood looked furtively round the room then leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice.
‘What happened, Billy?’
‘Are you sure you want to know?’ asked Goldsmith.
‘Don’t be stupid! I’ve got to know.’
‘All right.’
Briefly Goldsmith described the events of Saturday night. When he had finished they sat in silence for a while, drinking their acetic beer.
‘Now you know, Tempy,’ said Goldsmith. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘It’s a mess. What can I say?’
“You can advise me. What do I do now? I could go to the police, I suppose.’
Templewood looked alarmed.
‘Why, for God’s sake? That won’t help.’
‘It’s all right, Tempy. I wouldn’t mention you,’ said Goldsmith with a wry grin.
‘That’s not the point. Look, it would finish you. Probably get you put awa
y for five or six years at least. Put that right out of your mind, squire!’
‘What do you suggest then? Do nothing?’
‘Listen, Billy,’ said Templewood earnestly. ‘What else can you do? For the time being at least. Look at it this way, at worst it was an unfortunate accident, nothing more. And if by any chance, the fellow was Hebbel, then this was what we planned all along, wasn’t it?’
‘Maybe so. But we don’t know, do we? You weren’t in that room, were you? You were on the nest somewhere, nice and safe. But you started it, remember that!’
Goldsmith found he was speaking angrily, but he knew the anger was mostly directed at himself. He lowered his voice once more.
‘We both need to know, Tempy. You must see that.’
‘OK. I concede that. But it’s not worth getting yourself locked up for.’
Briefly he outlined the same objections that Goldsmith had already worked out to any kind of anonymous tip-off. And he added a further one.
‘Remember this too, Billy. If he did turn out to be Hebbel, that’s a very good motive for murder, isn’t it? Once a jury knew for certain, they’d begin to wonder if you weren’t absolutely certain as well. You might get a lot of sympathy, but you’d still get sent down for a bigger slice of your life than you can afford to give at your age.’
‘So how do we find out?’ asked Goldsmith.
‘God knows. But just sit tight for the time being, Billy boy. I’ll see if I can find out anything more about Housman through my business contacts. You never know. But you just keep your head down, concentrate on becoming Prime Minister. Anything crops up, ring me. OK?’
He handed over a business card. In the twenty years they had been more or less in touch, Goldsmith had never had a private address at which to contact Templewood. He sometimes wondered if perhaps the great lover had a nagging wife and clutch of squalling kids tucked away in some suburban villa.
A Very Good Hater Page 5