Despite the Evidence Page 7

  ‘Maybe it is making money,’ agreed Fusil, ‘but it won’t be the kind of money he’ll be after. A really big job today can be worth what? . . . A hundred thousand: two hundred thousand. He won’t make that much out of the club in years.’

  ‘What job round here is worth a hundred thousand?’

  Fusil didn’t bother to answer.

  Kywood stamped across the room to the window and looked out at the unprepossessing view. ‘Where was this car crash?’

  ‘I don’t know what the lane’s called, but it’s just past the village of Redlington.’

  Kywood crossed to the large-scale wall map of Fortrow and the surrounding countryside and used his forefinger to locate the village. ‘Then this crash was pretty close to the boundary?’

  Fusil tried to conceal the fact that at no time since the report of Kerr’s injuries and the car crash had come in had he bothered to check whether the accident had taken place on the borough or the county side of the boundary. Moving casually, he got up and crossed to the map where he made a show of locating the exact spot. The lane was the boundary line.

  ‘Have you reported the matter to county?’ demanded Kywood.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well . . . There’s no real certainty of anything yet, is there?’ he answered, all too aware that only a very short time before he’d been arguing strongly in favour of there being such a certainty.

  ‘You know the rules. If there’s any doubt, county must be informed. I’m surprised you haven’t already been on to them. You are to do so right away.’

  What would happen, wondered Fusil with unusual irrelevance, if the boundary line went right through the spot where Kerr had been stretched out? Would the borough force have investigated what had happened to his top half and the county force investigate what had happened to his lower half?

  ‘Tell them, though, it probably all adds up to nothing,’ added Kywood, determined to cover himself from all directions.

  *

  One of the civilian scientists at county forensic laboratory telephoned Fusil. The hairs from the branch were similar in all respects to the comparison hairs, but as always it could not be stated beyond any doubt that the control and comparison hairs had come from the same head.

  After replacing the telephone receiver, Fusil tapped his fingers on the desk. Ignoring the inevitable qualifications — made merely to defend the department — it was clear that it had been Kerr’s hairs caught in the bark of the branch. So was the obvious the truth, after all?

  Chapter Eight

  Helen’s parents had gone out to the cinema and would not be back until after ten-thirty. When Kerr arrived from work in the evening and shut the front door behind him, so that they must be unobserved, Helen kissed him with an open love and passion. His response was immediate and within a few minutes they were on the settee in the sitting-room and their clothes were in considerable disarray.

  She looked up at his face, roughened by the forces that were sweeping through his body, forces she knew were at least as strong as the ones that ran through hers, and she murmured: ‘Do you want to?’

  He’d never wanted to do anything so much. Her body was beautiful and she was offering it to him and his mouth was dry and the pulse in his throat was thumping hard. He’d known physical desire before, but it had never been as fierce as this because he’d never been so deeply in love. His mouth shaped to kiss her, silently to answer ‘Yes’ and lose the world, but suddenly he drew back. ‘No,’ he mumbled, his voice thick.

  She shook her head, almost as if in disbelief. Then she wriggled free of him, sat upright, smoothed down her dress from her thighs, imprisoned her breasts in the brassière and buttoned up her dress. ‘I love you so much it hurts,’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  She giggled. ‘If anyone sees you like you are now, they won’t call you beautiful.’

  Still slightly bemused, he tidied up his clothes and became respectable once more.

  She leaned against him and held his hand and he felt her trembling slightly. ‘D’you know something, my love? I shan’t be able to sleep tonight.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, his mind still too filled with the immediate past to realise the significance of what she’d said.

  ‘Because . . . because we didn’t,’ she answered, suddenly shy. ‘I really wanted to.’

  He kissed her, holding her tight. It was amazing to remember that not all that long ago he’d wondered if she’d enough passion in her ever to make a really loving wife.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked, as she fondled his cheek.

  ‘Because I want it to be something very special for after we’re married.’

  ‘How very old-fashioned you really are, despite all your talk,’ she teased.

  ‘Well, if you don’t like me that way . . .’ He turned and tried to kiss her, but she kept her mouth away from his. ‘Scared?’

  ‘You just take that look off your face, John Kerr.’

  ‘What kind of look?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly describe it, but if you ever looked like that in the streets, you’d be picked up for indecency on the spot.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’m filled with indecent thoughts.’

  ‘That wasn’t news five minutes after I first met you.’

  ‘Why did you fall in love with me so quickly?’

  ‘You swollen-headed . . . It took me a long, long time to decide there might be something worthwhile about you. I’ll never forget how when you came across and asked me for a dance, you looked me up and down as if you were mentally stripping me.’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve realised you’re such a fast hussy.’

  ‘Me?’ She spoke indignantly.

  ‘You got up and danced with me, didn’t you? If you thought I’d been mentally stripping you, you ought to have sent me packing.’

  She smiled, warmly and lovingly. ‘Just occasionally, a girl rather likes to have her clothes taken off.’ She grabbed hold of his hand as he reached for the top button of her dress. ‘But that doesn’t apply to now.’

  He really ought to put in for a halo, he decided. But he couldn’t deny that he felt both proud and happy that they’d stopped when they had and that it had been his decision to do so. Until very recently to him sex had been something that any sensible man grabbed when the going was good: but now he understood it could be so special that to deny it to oneself was greatly to enhance its value.

  She stood up. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving,’ he assured her.

  She giggled again. ‘I’m talking about food.’

  ‘That!’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘There’s no hurry to eat.’

  ‘Then there is something you prefer to food?’

  *

  Tarbard drove at eighty along the main Fortrow/Barstone road, even though he recognised the speed as being too great for conditions. He came up to a lorry and trailer and pulled out into the centre lane to face the oncoming headlights of a car that was obviously overtaking a string of vehicles. Both common sense and good roadcraft dictated he should pull back in to his side. He accelerated. The driver of the other car panicked and tried to force his way into the near lane and many cars had to brake violently.

  He took a bend at seventy and the back wheels became light, but he immediately put on small correcting lock to hold the incipient skid. He became part of a car, driving it by the seat of his pants, exactly able to judge the forces at work: had he gone in for car racing, he was certain he would have reached the very top. Soon, when he was worth a fortune, he’d buy an exotic piece of machinery, something with a V12 engine and a suspension that would let him reach the upper limits of his skill. Also — when it was safe — he’d buy half a dozen suits from Vettors, who’d been tailors to the Tarbard family for generations. On the few occasions he’d bought a suit there in the past years old man Vettor himself had fussed over the measurings and fittings. Vettor had made it clear h
e didn’t approve of Gervaise Tarbard, but had done so with all due deference — and this even though he knew he’d be lucky if the account was ever paid. People were such fools, thought Tarbard contemptuously, because nothing would ever stop them respecting things of no inherent importance. He was often extremely rude to people who came to the White Angel, especially if they tended to be pompous: because his suit was so obviously more expensive than the men wore, because his manner had the arrogance that the provincial snob still accepted as the true mark of breeding, because the average person was hungry for authority, they accepted his rudeness as perfectly reasonable, even desirable.

  He turned off the main road, just short of the Barstone by-pass, and continued along the B road that soon narrowed into little more than a lane. The headlights picked out hedges, trees, and sometimes swept across the fields. In an unusual moment of self-honesty he suddenly accepted that these were the things he really loved. It was because of them he hated his elder brother, who, traditionally, had inherited the estate on the death of their father. Jocelyn could walk three hundred yards from the house and climb to the top of a rise and turn slowly round and say to himself that every single square yard of peaceful, harmonious, beautiful land that he could see was his. He’d always hated Jocelyn. Jocelyn had married a plump, not very attractive, horsy woman who, in bed, undoubtedly did her duty whenever called upon, but equally certainly closed her eyes and prayed for it to be over quickly. But with her had come a thousand acres of land in Suffolk. Who’d care how frigid she was when she’d that to offer by way of compensation?

  A road sign warned him of a coming sharp corner and the headlights picked out the curve of the thorn hedge. He slammed the gear into third and accelerated hard, deliberately courting trouble. The M.G. teetered on the edge of disaster and he had to apply full opposite lock and back off the accelerator. Only the inherent good design of the suspension finally took the car safely round. As he lined up for the following short stretch of straight road, he again accelerated hard, careless of how close he had been to spinning off.

  He arrived at Ecton Cross twenty minutes later. It was a growing town that was typical of so many places which surrounded London and were within easy commuting distance. Many years ago a small, pleasant village with a green and one of the few surviving, if slightly time-worn, quintains in the country, the developers had succeeded in engulfing in modern bricks and concrete all that had been good and charming so that now there was only a small and tired looking green a quarter of the original size, no pond, a renovated and whitewashed quintain that no longer looked genuine, and an ugly jumble of impersonal, budget-conscious houses.

  He drew into the car-park of the Golden Stag which was where the wealthier of the inhabitants — those who in the main lived a little outside the place — came and drank and boasted.

  He met Figs — the nickname referred to a strange addiction to syrup of figs — Aspinall in the private bar. Aspinall was middle-aged, small, bird-like in manner, and a first-class peterman who preferred to work on his own and not with a mob. He asked for a vodka and bitter lemon and, when Tarbard passed him the glass, drank with small, twittering sips.

  Tarbard lit a cigarette and noticed how Aspinall’s gaze quickly took in the gold lighter and case and then hastily slid away. ‘Is it all fixed?’ he asked.

  Aspinall pursed his cherry-red lips. ‘Are you sure about the peter?’ He had a voice so low it was almost a murmur and it was often difficult to catch exactly what he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Seems like it’s too easy a mark?’

  ‘The strong-room was installed in nineteen-ten and no one’s ever thought about it since.’

  Aspinall carefully did not look at Tarbard as he said: ‘People with a lot of gear mostly stow it away safer.’

  ‘I’ve given it straight.’

  ‘I don’t like this other part, what’s more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s kind of . . .’ He struggled to find the words he wanted, and failed.

  ‘There’s at least fifty grand there and your cut’s a full half for a job so simple you could do it with one hand and an exploding ulcer.’ Tarbard waited. He remembered the last time he’d been in Seeton House. He and Jocelyn had been invited to stay in order to play with the son of the house, who was weedy and suffered from chronic ill-health. On the second night of their stay, the Paynes had been going out to a charity ball and in true traditional style Mrs. Payne had worn some of her beautiful and valuable jewellery to attend this ball which had been organised to raise money for some desperately needy portion of the community. He’d watched her open up the strong-room, which lay behind one of the three doors — all completely similar — in the main drawing-room. Even in those days he’d wondered what the diamond necklace was worth that she clipped round her neck.

  Aspinal suddenly spoke. ‘All right.’ He finished his drink with two quick gulps so different from his previous sips.

  ‘Have another drink?’ said Tarbard.

  Aspinall nodded.

  Tarbard went over to the bar where the barman hurried to serve him: barmen and waiters always gave him good service, even though he rarely tipped them heavily.

  *

  Aspinall, wearing new blue overalls, new shoes with carefully scuffed soles and heels, surgical gloves, and a nylon stocking over his head with small eye-holes cut out, painted one of the glass panels of the French windows at Seeton House with adhesive and then pressed a square of soft canvas down on to it. He clenched his fist and hammered the canvas to smash the glass. There was the thump of the blow, but no other sound: the adhesive held all the glass.

  After removing the canvas, and several slithers of glass that had remained behind, he reached inside and gently felt round the catch, but could discover no wires. He used a torch and mirror to look inside for wires leading from the top or bottom of the windows or for a trembler alarm, but again saw nothing. He slipped the catch, opened the window, and stepped inside whereupon he again checked for alarms — since it seemed to him incredible there should be none. He wedged open the window to give himself a means of escape and screwed up the two doors that led out of the room so that he should not be surprised.

  There was a rush-seated ladderback chair in front of the door which concealed the strong-room and when he picked it up to move it a nail jabbed through the glove into the palm of his left hand. He swore and in his surprise almost let the chair drop. When he did put it down, by the side of the grand piano that was obviously never played because of the clutter on its top, he shone the torch on his hand. A small drop of blood had oozed out of the puncture and some of this had been trapped between flesh and glove and some had come through the small hole to smear the outside. He stripped off the glove and tucked it into his right-hand pocket and carefully examined the puncture, then took a fresh glove from his left-hand pocket and put that on. He was a man who always prepared for all conceivable emergencies.

  Just before attacking the locks of the strong-room door, he checked the chair and found that the front strip of wooden batten, which protected the rush, had broken and in the middle of the missing half was a nail, without a head, which had gone rusty. He began to worry that the rusty nail might give him tetanus: he was always very concerned with his health.

  Chapter Nine

  Aspinall had unscrewed the doors before he left Seeton House and it was not until Mrs. Payne, a methodical woman, saw the ladder-back chair was at an angle to the carpet and not square as she always kept it that she knew something was wrong. She was wondering about this when she became aware of the cold draught and this led her to the discovery of the smashed pane of glass in the French windows. Calmly, she went out into the hall and telephoned the police. Once the call was made, she began to suffer a feeling of repugnance that some unknown person or persons had been in her house, doing she yet knew not what, but certainly desecrating her privacy.

  A patrol car arrived within twelve minutes of her telephone ca
ll. The driver and observer entered the house, after carefully cleaning their boots on the mat, and had a look at the window. She mentioned that there was a strong-room behind the chair which had been moved, but added she had not checked whether that had been broken into.

  The driver used a wooden ruler to try to find out if the outer door was fast, not wanting to touch the brass handle, and could not move it. He asked if he might telephone his station and spoke to the divisional detective sergeant.

  The detective sergeant and a detective constable reached the house twenty minutes later and began a general investigation until, a further quarter of an hour on, a second detective constable, the local fingerprint and photographic expert, arrived.

  The outer door handle was checked for prints, then all possible surfaces on the heavy metal door of the strong-room. None was found. Inside the strong-room was a small open square around which were four heights of shelving on which were numerous bundles of dusty paper, six jewel boxes, two metal and four leather, and a considerable amount of silver. A blurred print was uncovered on the lid of one of the metal jewel boxes.

  Mrs. Payne made a hurried check on the contents of the jewel boxes. When she’d finished she said, her face showing only a little of the distress she suffered, that all her jewellery had been stolen, jewellery which had been in her family for a very long time. The detectives noted the obvious fact that the thief was interested only in jewellery, not in silver.

  In the course of a full search of the room, the detective sergeant noticed a small stain on the broken shank of a rusty headless nail in the seat of the ladder-back chair which had been moved. Although the stain was not blood-coloured, due to reaction with the metal, he recognised the possibility it might be blood. He borrowed a torch from Mrs. Payne, carried the chair into a darkened room, and studied the stain under artificial light. Since it now appeared as a dot of glossy varnish, it probably was dried blood, something that laboratory tests would confirm. The villain had obviously jabbed his hand on it when moving the chair.