A Place Of Safety (16 page)

He’ll have to lump it then, thought Sergeant Troy. He spent a pleasant few moments picturing Lionel lumping it and rather hoped Mrs L would stand firm. But he was to be disappointed.

‘He won’t have a choice,’ warned Barnaby, ‘when we come back after lunch.’

‘Well . . . I should have to be present,’ said Hetty, adding quickly, ‘No offence.’

‘We would expect you to be,’ Sergeant Troy assured her.

And Barnaby said, ‘Could you show us the way, please?’

 

It was a long climb to the attic. The first two sweeping staircases had wide and shallow steps, carpeted with deep blue and red Axminster patterned in the Turkish style and so faded in places its backing showed through. The banisters were solid dark oak ending in huge octagonal lantern shapes with large carved acorns on top.

‘Mrs Lawrence used to slide down these,’ said Hetty.

‘Mrs Lawrence?’ Troy stared at the wide gleaming bars in amazement.

‘When she was little.’

‘Ah.’ He felt foolish and covered up quickly. ‘I didn’t realise you’d been here so long.’

‘She used to put a cushion at the end. One day her father took it away and she really hurt herself.’

‘What, on purpose?’

Hetty chose not to reply.

Having paused on the first landing for a breather, Barnaby said, ‘You must have started straight from school.’

‘That’s right,’ said Hetty. ‘Fifteen I was. All my friends thought I was daft, coming to work here. They were off getting jobs in Boots or Woollies or some office or other.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t like those big places, full of people crowding you - foreigners as like as not - all gossip and backbiting. I wanted a quiet, orderly job with a nice family.’

Barnaby had started climbing again. Hetty followed, with Troy bringing up the rear, gazing about him. He was amazed at how much old stuff there was about. Dark, dreary oil paintings like you get in museums. Little carved brass tables. A big gong on a stand and a padded drumstick, the head wrapped in linen. Plus a fully-grown crocodile in a glass case. It was covered all over by cracked squares of shiny caramel-coloured skin. The beast was smiling, flashing hundreds of winky, twinkly teeth.

‘Keep up, Sergeant.’

‘Sorry.’ Troy hurried across the second landing. The chief and Hetty Leathers were about to ascend a much more steep and narrow set of stairs covered in fawn haircord. There were only about a dozen steps leading to a white painted door. This was of the cheapest type, available from any B & Q. Plywood, hollow inside, with a silver-coloured oxide handle. It was closed.

As Hetty reached out, Barnaby touched her arm.

‘Have you been in here since Carlotta disappeared?’

‘No. She wouldn’t let me - Mrs Lawrence. Said she’d see to it.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘It certainly is.’ Hetty clucked gently. ‘I was quite put out, I don’t mind admitting.’

‘And has she? Seen to it?’

‘Not to my understanding. But then, I don’t live in so I wouldn’t know everything she does.’ She turned the handle and opened the door. All three stood staring into the room’s interior.

Eventually Hetty said, ‘Well! I’ve seen some messes in my time but I’ve never seen anything like this.’ She sucked in another highly indignant breath. ‘Filthy young madam.’

Troy, never one to create a newly minted epigram when a well-worn one was to hand, muttered, ‘Looks like a bomb’s gone off.’

Barnaby said nothing. He was recalling what the Lawrences had said at their first interview. He remembered Lionel putting the blame for Carlotta’s departure on his wife. There had been a disturbance. She and the girl had had ‘an argument’. Some argument.

Once again he put his hand on Hetty’s arm, this time as she was about to step inside the room.

‘I think the fewer people walking around the better, Mrs Leathers.’

‘If that’s what you want, Inspector.’ Hetty positioned herself firmly in the centre of the doorway. She kept her eye on both policemen while they were together and on Troy when they had separated to different parts of the room. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

If Barnaby had not known the circumstances he would have assumed he was looking at the aftermath of a burglary. There was the same sense of wild, angry searching, clothes ripped from hangers and flung all over the floor, magazines -
Minx
,
Sugar
,
19
- torn to shreds, posters ripped off the walls and torn across. He picked up a couple. The names - All Saints, Kavana, Puff Daddy - meant nothing to him. Since Cully had left home eight years ago, he was totally out of touch.

All the drawers from a small chest had been pulled out and flung across the room, the contents lying where they fell. Cosmetics, underwear, a loose tangle of tights, a pink plastic hair dryer. Brushes, rollers, combs. The place smelt pungently of cheap hair spray overlying a more pleasant, peachy fragrance.

Troy, agitating the corner of the prettily flowered duvet, released a cloud of tawny dust. Then he saw several little piles of it on the bed and the floor. If this was junk it was a new one on him. He bent down and sniffed.

‘She’s been chucking face powder about, chief.’

‘There doesn’t seem to be much that she hasn’t chucked about.’

‘That girl always did have a paddy on her,’ said Hetty. ‘There’s the box - look.’

Barnaby picked up the box, Rimmel’s Honeybun, and put it carefully on the bedside table. Troy, noticing this, went to the far side of the room, retrieved a cushion that belonged to the single armchair and just as carefully replaced it.

‘Don’t touch anything, Sergeant.’

The times I have to bite my tongue, thought Troy, it could double as a sieve. He watched the chief, who was standing by the little porthole window, apparently lost in thought.

But Troy knew what the DCI was really doing. And there was a time, some years since admitted, when he would have attempted to do the same. To observe the scene, noticing every minute detail, to attempt to bring the drama which had brought such destruction about to life. To put flesh on the antagonist’s bones.

Yes, Troy had had a go at all that. But he had so rarely been right and so often monumentally wrong (once he had arrested a shady antiques dealer on suspicion of stealing the local church’s ornaments, only to find it was the vicar) that he soon gave up. As he put it to Maureen, ‘With an ace fishmonger on the doorstep why struggle to catch your own?’

Barnaby was wondering if he had made a mistake asking Mrs Leathers to show him Carlotta’s room. He thought about the coming interview with Ann Lawrence and was beginning to feel it might have been better to arrive with a search warrant and enter the place with her at his side. He would have had a reaction then. Been able to watch the play of expression on her face as he moved around. Getting warmish, warm, warmer! Getting cool, no - cold, icy, brrr!

Irritated, he put the image aside. This was pure fantasy. If she had anything at all to hide there’d been ample time to clean up the place. But perhaps it had never occurred to her that the police might wish to see where Carlotta had lived. Possibly the experience of their extremely violent parting had left her unwilling, perhaps even unable, to enter the room again. Yes, that was more like it.

A heavy sigh and an ostentatious clearing of the throat from the doorway returned him to the present.

‘Mrs Leathers,’ said the chief inspector, ‘thank you for being so patient.’ He nodded at Troy and both men moved towards the door.

‘No trouble, Inspector. Only I must get on.’

As they walked away from the house, Troy, father of one, female, four years, three months, nine days, said, ‘You’ve got a daughter, sir. Was her room ever like that?’

‘Pretty near,’ said Barnaby. ‘The cat had kittens in it once and we didn’t find them for three weeks.’

‘Blimey.’ Troy looked sideways at the boss. He seemed to be smiling but you could never be sure. ‘You’re exaggerating. Aren’t you?’

‘Only slightly.’

 

Ann’s branch of Lloyd’s in Causton not only still had a manager actually in residence but was also open for three hours on alternate Saturday mornings. Richard Ainsley had an office with his designation on the door and a polished wooden Toblerone on his desk with his name printed in gold. Ainsley had known Ann a long time, as he had her father. He had met her husband too, whom he didn’t much like. As Ann had anticipated, he was prepared to lend her what she needed against the security of the house. But she was very surprised at the high rate of interest.

‘It won’t take long to draw up the agreement. If you’ll call in perhaps next Thursday, Mrs Lawrence—’

‘I have to have it now!’ Ann realised she was almost shouting, leaning over the manager’s desk. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Ainsley.’ She sat back, her face scarlet. ‘I don’t know what . . . I’m sorry.’

Mr Ainsley was not unused to emotional outbursts. Money was the fulcrum on which most people’s lives turned. When it seemed to be slipping away, they panicked. Understandably. But he had handled Ann Lawrence’s financial affairs since the death of her father and was both surprised and mildly distressed to find her in such a predicament. Naturally he wondered what the money could be for. Hardly a conservatory or a new kitchen, two of the most common seductions currently turning up on loan applications. Or a holiday in the Bahamas, though heaven knows she looked as if she could do with one. None of these would give rise to such desperation.

‘This is quite a lot of money, Ann.’ He decided not to mention the withdrawal, only days ago, of a thousand from her current account. ‘Over what sort of period do you see it being repaid?’

‘Oh - very quickly.’ Ann stared across the desk at this round little man with his neat hair and neat, gold-rimmed glasses and neat moustache. All puffed out with his own importance. Pompous, stuffy, fatuous, long-winded rolypoly pudding. And to think in a previous life she had rather liked him. Even been grateful for his kindness. ‘Actually, someone has died. There are funeral expenses to look after. But I am mentioned in the . . . er . . . will. Remembered, that is. So there won’t be any . . . problem . . .’

Concerned though he was, Richard Ainsley decided to call a halt to this wretched business. He could not bear to hear her lying. He suggested a repayment period of six months and, when she agreed, produced a form, quickly filled it in and asked her to sign it. Then he rang the chief cashier to clear payment.

‘I need it in cash, Mr Ainsley.’

 

Ann was hurrying blindly away from the bank, the envelope safely in the bottom of her handbag, when she collided with Louise Fainlight who was just turning away from the cash point.

After the automatic apologies and awkward hellos, neither woman knew what to say. Both were recalling their last meeting. Louise remembered that Ann had asked her to the house and then not wanted her there. Ann remembered thinking it could well be Louise who was doing the blackmailing.

She thought it again now. Thought it with the money held close to her side, burning through the soft beige leather of her handbag. Was this meeting really a coincidence? Or a determined attempt to check that she was actually doing what she had been instructed to do. A sudden wild impulse seized Ann. A mad urge to confront Louise. Brandish the notes in her face. Shout, ‘Here it is! Is this what you want? Is it?’

Appalled, she turned away, mumbling something vague. Pretending she needed the cash machine herself; standing in front of it while Louise walked away. Then, becoming aware that a small queue had formed and that people were staring at her strangely, she stepped aside. Blushing, and on the verge of tears, she affected to look in her handbag for some lost item.

She felt she was losing her mind. The events of the previous few days suddenly overwhelmed her with a kaleidoscope of fear-filled, violent images and sly murmurings. She stared suspiciously at people passing her on the pavement. Coolly they turned aside, pretending indifference and that the whispering was none of their doing, but she knew that secretly they were all laughing at her.

 

Shortly after their strange encounter outside the bank, Louise was driving out of Causton when she saw Ann crossing the road in a wandering sort of way. Her immediate impulse was to offer a lift. She even took her foot off the accelerator and started to brake. But there was something so strange about Ann’s appearance. One hand gripped the edges of her coat, pulling them fiercely together although the day was quite mild. The other was hovering in front of her mouth like a fluttering bird. Even so, Louise could see her lips moving. She was frowning, too, and shaking her head.

Louise drove on. She had her own problems which were rapidly becoming quite severe. This was no time to try and cope with a person not only plainly distraught but who also, Louise was now convinced, didn’t even like her.

She had not expected to have to come into Causton, especially on market day, and had no ready cash. From the first, Louise had insisted on sharing all the bills at her brother’s house and paying the housekeeping alternate weeks. This was her week. She had run out of various items and, a certain cautious friendliness having been reestablished between herself and Val, last night she had asked him for some money to tide her over. He said he didn’t have any. Unthinking and genuinely puzzled, Louise said, ‘But you went to the bank only the other day.’ She remembered picking up the withdrawal slip from the the kitchen floor and throwing it in the bin. It had been for four hundred pounds.

Within seconds the atmosphere changed, becoming thick with anger and resentment.

‘I am getting absolutely sick of this!’ Valentine almost spat out the words.

‘Of what?’

‘Of
you
. And your constant bloody criticism.’