A Capital Crime (32 page)

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Mrs Robinson doesn’t like me much, does she?’

Lally grimaced. ‘I suppose she’s another kind of dinosaur – a Victorian one. Divorced women not allowed across the threshold … She’s been with Jock’s family for about five hundred years. But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll manage to get round her somehow. Now, you look absolutely shattered, and I forbid you to set foot out of bed until you’ve revived a bit. When you’re better, Jock will take you to see your landlady and sort out the rent.’

‘Are you sure? I don’t know when I’ll be able to repay you.’

‘Don’t you get any money from Guy? I don’t mean to pay us back – you mustn’t worry about that – but to live on.’

Diana shook her head. ‘I was getting a small allowance, but it stopped when James and I married. We ploughed what was left of my money into James’s projects, but none of them came to fruition, so … That’s it, really.’

‘What about James’s family?’

‘All dead. The close relatives, anyway. There are some others somewhere – abroad, I think, but I don’t see why they should help me. In any case, I hate the idea of leeching off people. I need to find a job.’

‘Well, what about the film studio?’

‘I doubt they’d have me back.’

Lally frowned. ‘You won’t know until you try. I shan’t open the curtains – you need to rest. You can have a bath later.’

‘Thank you, Lally. I really am grateful.’

‘Listen, darling …’ Lally stood up. ‘It may feel like the end of the world, but it isn’t – not really. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again,” as Nanny used to say.’

‘Mine used to say, “Those who ask don’t get,”’ said Diana, glumly. ‘And she said, “You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.” Or perhaps that was a different nanny. I had quite a procession of them. I was always told they wouldn’t stay because I was such a naughty little girl. It was only years later that I realised they’d all fled because Pa used to take liberties.’

‘My nanny was obviously a better philosopher than all of yours put together – and I’d have backed her against your Pa any day.’ Lally adopted an outraged tone, chin up and hands on hips. ‘None of your sauce, my man!’ Bending to smooth the bedclothes, she added, ‘I may have reconciled Mrs Robinson to your presence, but I certainly won’t be able to change her mind about the decadent implications of sitting on beds. Now then,’ she wagged her finger, ‘Good night, Sweet repose, Lie on your back, And not on your nose.’

I’ve fallen flat on my nose, Diana thought when she’d gone. How shall I ever recover?
Try, try again …
To succeed at what? She stared up at the smooth white emptiness of the ceiling. The same as my future, she thought with dread: nothing there.

Chapter Forty-Six

Waking with a start as the front door slammed, Stratton realised that he must have fallen asleep in the armchair. Stiff-necked and befuddled, with a foul taste in his mouth, it was a few seconds before he remembered: Pete’s dinner. Oh, hell. He’d meant to telephone Doris to apologise as soon as he got in, and he’d only sat down for a moment …

What time was it? Past eleven. The footsteps in the kitchen were heavier than Monica’s, so it must be Pete. She must have come in already and gone upstairs to bed. Why hadn’t she woken him? The sitting room light was on, so she must have realised he was there.

He was just about to get up and go through to the kitchen when Pete appeared, larger and beefier than ever. He was still in uniform with a bottle in his hand and a loose co-ordination to his movements which – together with his general air of beery belligerence – suggested that he was, if not actually drunk, then certainly well on the way.

‘Hello,’ said Stratton, cautiously. ‘Pete, I—’

‘Hello, Dad. Want one?’ Pete held up the bottle in one hand, and attempted to point to it with the other, but missed.

Stratton, realising that he did very much want one, and deciding that it couldn’t make a bad situation worse, and might even help a bit, said evenly, ‘Yes, thanks.’

Pete withdrew and, after some banging about, returned with a second bottle. Positioning himself once more in the doorway he lobbed it, underarm, at Stratton, who lunged forward and caught
it just in time to field the bottle-opener that followed. ‘Steady on, old chap!’ Stratton placed both objects on the sideboard. ‘Why don’t you sit down? I’ll fetch a glass.’ Pete, he noted, hadn’t bothered with one, and was swigging straight from the bottle.

He took a glass from the kitchen cupboard, then went into the scullery and splashed his face with water. Standing in front of the sink, wet hands resting on the wooden draining board either side of the porcelain rectangle, images crowded his mind: the bodies in the alcove, Davies’s face, the baby lying on the slab, the squalid terror of the women’s last moments … He shook his head violently and began to count to ten. Deal with the situation in hand. Pete was clearly in a dangerous mood. He must have been to the pub after leaving Doris’s, Stratton thought. All the guilt that formed the undertow of every thought he’d had about his son since Jenny died seemed to wrench itself upwards like a shipwreck breaking through to the surface: his preference for Monica; not loving Pete enough or even, in truth, liking him all that much; his utter failure to communicate with the lad …

At least, he thought, he could go back in there and apologise properly for not being home – wait until they were both settled so that the words could be given – and, he hoped, received – with the weight and importance that was due. Taking a deep breath, he picked up his glass and returned to the sitting room.

‘Thought you weren’t coming back.’ Pete was slumped in ‘his’ armchair, legs outstretched, and Stratton noticed that he’d almost finished his beer. Concealing a flash of irritation – you’re not in the bloody NAAFI now – he sat down opposite his son.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘as you can see, I’m here.’

Pete nodded as if confirming this fact and then, peering down at his feet as if from a very great height, bent forward so suddenly that he almost fell on the hearthrug and began unlacing his boots with a series of savage jerks. This done, he heeled them off, punted them in the direction of the empty fireplace and looked up at his father expectantly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Stratton. ‘I got held up at work. New case.’

Pete waved a dismissive hand. ‘’S’all right, Dad.’

‘No, it isn’t. But it was unavoidable and, as I said, I’m very sorry that I wasn’t there. Did you have a nice time?’

‘Uncle Reg bored us all stiff with a lot of guff about the Coronation, but the food wasn’t bad.’

This would ordinarily, given the trouble that Doris must have gone to, have deserved a rebuke, but Stratton felt that this was neither the time nor the place. ‘Went down to the Swan after,’ Pete continued. ‘Some pals from school … One of them’s working in an abattoir, out Woodford way. Kept going on about how they kill the cows. Wouldn’t get off it. Even worse than listening to Uncle Reg.’

‘You should have asked him if he can’t get us a bit of meat off ration.’

Ignoring this feeble attempt at levity, Pete said, ‘So, this case that kept you, this
unavoidable
case … What was it, then?’

‘You don’t want to hear about that.’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Pete aggressively. ‘I want to hear
all
about it. Got to be more interesting than anything else I’ve heard this evening.’ Widening his eyes so that his face became a horrible parody of an eager child’s, he added, ‘Go on, Dad. Give us a bedtime story.’

‘All right, then …’ Stratton, thinking that actually enunciating the whole wretched business might help him clarify things a bit – and that, given the state of Pete, he’d be talking mainly to himself anyway – said, ‘Well, it started a few years ago, when—’

‘Hold on.’ Pete was pawing at his top pocket. ‘Lemme get a fag going.’

Not wishing to witness the owlish fumbling with matches that was bound to ensue from this, Stratton lit two of his own and passed one across. ‘There you are.’

Pete sucked in the smoke hungrily, then leant back and shut his eyes. ‘Go on, then, Dad. Once upon a time …’

Stratton began to talk. He spoke for some time, trying as best
he could to relate the events in chronological order and as objectively as possible. All the while, at the back of his mind, he was conscious that he was looking for things to salvage from the mess in order to reassure himself … of what, he wasn’t entirely sure. The possibility that Davies might, after all, be guilty, that he’d done his job to the best of his ability, that … he didn’t know. A leaden numbness had settled on him, burying all his previous reactions beneath its weight. ‘So,’ he finished, ‘that’s why I wasn’t there tonight.’

Pete’s eyes remained closed and, for a moment, Stratton thought that he must have fallen asleep. He lit another cigarette and sat staring into the empty grate. Why had Pete asked him about it all, anyway? He was about to suggest going to bed, when Pete opened his eyes. ‘Looks like you hanged the wrong man, then.’

‘Well, the investigation’s barely started, but—’

‘But you hanged an innocent man.’

‘We don’t actually know that he was—’

‘Don’t you?’ Pete leant forward. ‘Don’t you, Dad? After all, two stranglers in one house – taking coincidence a bit far, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, I would, but—’

‘But what, Dad?’

‘But it’s not that simple.’ Aware of how feeble that sounded, and aware, too, that Pete was staring at him with an intensity of scorn he’d only ever seen him direct at Reg, he struggled for something to say that might redeem him in his son’s eyes. What?
I’m not perfect?
Pete was only too well aware of that, and, in any case, he was of a generation who, given the events of the last sixty years, had every right to condemn both parents and grandparents. It was bad enough having colleagues at work solicitously monitoring his failure, without attacks from his own family as well. ‘We all make mistakes, I’m afraid.’

‘As
mistakes
go, Dad,’ said Pete with heavy sarcasm, ‘I’d say this one rather takes the biscuit.’ This was said in a derisive parody of
an upper-class accent – the voice, Stratton imagined, that he used for mocking officers behind their backs. Before he could reply, Pete continued, switching back to his normal voice, ‘When you felt so sure that Davies was guilty, was that because of Mum?’

Stratton stiffened. This was almost the first time his son had mentioned Jenny in his hearing since she’d died. There was an almost demonic shrewdness in his eyes. He’d meant the question to strike home, and it had. In as calm a voice as he could manage, Stratton said, ‘One tries to keep one’s emotions out of these things, but I suppose that might have had a bearing on it. With that sort of crime – a mother and child – it’s hard not to think of your own family. And usually, with a case like that, it is the husband who’s responsible.’

There was a moment’s silence – Pete was tipsy enough for it to slow his reactions – before his son said, quietly, ‘Yes. Isn’t it just?’

Stratton took a deep breath, biting back his instinctive reaction – you’re drunk and you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. There was no ducking this. Useless to pretend he hadn’t understood, because he could see from Pete’s expression that his own face had already betrayed him. In any case, he told himself, Pete doesn’t know Jenny was pregnant. He’s angry, and he’s lashing out: don’t rise to it.

‘I do feel guilty about your mother,’ he said evenly. ‘I should have been there to protect her. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about that … and when I don’t miss her. I loved her very much. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Pete. ‘I know that. But perhaps,’ he leant forward, gripping the arms of the chair, and Stratton saw a flash of malicious triumph in his eyes, ‘if you’d been thinking a bit less about that and a bit more about a few other things that are under your nose …’ He stopped, jerking backwards as if tugged by an invisible thread, a flush of guilty confusion flooding his face, cockiness evaporating so that he seemed like a small boy conscious of blurting out more than he’d meant to say.

‘What do you mean,
under my nose
?’

‘It’s nothing.’ The tone was sullen, defensive. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘It obviously does, or you wouldn’t have said it.’

‘It’s none of your business.’

Pete was looking furtive now, seeking a way out. Sensing that he was about to get up, Stratton rose and took a step towards him. ‘If it’s happening in this house, then it
is
my business. Tell me.’

Shrinking back in his chair, Pete stared up at him, wide-eyed, shocked into sobriety by fear. Stratton placed his hands on the arms of Pete’s chair and glared at him. ‘Just bloody tell me!’ he roared.

‘All right.’ Pete reared back even further, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘But stop shouting. Sit down, for God’s sake.’

Stratton, backing off, complied. ‘I’m sitting down. Now, what’s going on?’

With a visible effort, Pete gathered himself together. ‘It’s Monica.’

‘What about her?’

Now he’d made the decision to speak, Stratton saw Pete’s former bravado returning in leaps and bounds. ‘You really have no idea, have you? Well, let me enlighten you.’ The officer-mocking tone was there, and then, in the next second, gone. The look in his son’s eyes was a challenge, brutal and direct. ‘She’s pregnant.’

Chapter Forty-Seven

Dressed in borrowed finery and bejewelled at wrists and neck, Diana fiddled with her fork and wished she felt like eating. She’d already had two glasses of wine on top of quite a lot of champagne and she knew she ought to attempt to soak it up with food, but she was far too jittery to be able to do more than toy with what was on her plate. Lally and Jock had taken her to Ciro’s in an attempt to cheer her up, and she was trying her best to
be
cheered up, but it wasn’t working. All the shining silver and glassware sparkling in the light cast by the rows of chandeliers, the dazzling white napery, the bright music and the alcohol could not dispel her heavy, dull despair, and knowing that she was worrying Lally and boring Jock didn’t help.