A Place Of Safety (8 page)

Usually the conversation meandered easily about, touching on books or music or the theatre. Sometimes absent friends would be gently maltreated. Once upon a time, before the hearts of the couple had been chastened by the pain of their own unhappiness, such friends would have been savaged without mercy.

Sometimes Val would talk about his work but these occasions were not frequent. Barley Roscoe, the boy who had made Val’s fortune, was only seven and inevitably his daily experiences, though wildly, magically adventurous in comparison with the average child of a similar age, could not sustain much in the way of adult conversation.

But tonight, like everyone else in the village (except the Lawrences), Val and Louise were mulling over the grisly discovery in Carter’s Wood. Also like everyone else, they were convinced the dead person was Charlie Leathers.

‘One, he’s missing.’ Valentine ticked the points off on his fingers. ‘Two, it was his dog found nearby, badly beaten. And three, absolutely nobody likes him.’

‘Not liking is no reason—’

‘It’s a damn nuisance. We’re going to have to find someone else to do the garden.’

‘He only does - did a couple of hours a week. I can manage that. It’s the Old Rectory that’ll feel the pinch. Which reminds me . . .’ She told Valentine about her meeting with Ann Lawrence the previous afternoon when they had discussed Carlotta’s disappearance.

‘There is no way she would have got into that state over just a row. Trembling and shaking - she could hardly speak.’

‘Perhaps she’s the one who bumped off Charlie.’

‘That’s not very funny, Val.’

‘Murder’s not supposed to be very funny.’

‘More likely to be—’

Louise stopped, realising immediately it was too late. The time to stop had been when the words were still in her mouth. And she had been so careful. Always thinking, anticipating. Ever since the night, months ago, when she had first spoken her mind on the subject in question and Val had spoken his mind and it was plain there could be no meeting of the two minds, ever. She had never seen her brother behave as he had then. He was like a man possessed. Which, of course, he was.

‘More likely to be?’

The words lay across her heart like lashes from a whip. ‘I’m sorry, Val.’

‘One mistake and he pays for the rest of his life, is that it?’ He got up, taking a leather jacket from the back of his chair, cramming an arm into one sleeve, shrugging it over his shoulders.

‘Don’t!’ She ran round the table, not caring what she said now that the damage had been done. ‘Don’t go over there.
Please
.’

‘I shall go where I like.’ He was running down the curved glass staircase. At the bottom he turned round and stared back up at her, his face quite expressionless, his eyes burning. ‘If all you can find to do is criticise the one person who makes me glad to be alive then I suggest you find another place to do it in.’

 

Of course, someone had phoned the Old Rectory. The caller seemed to think that Lionel Lawrence, whom she insisted on addressing as ‘Your Reverend’, would wish to visit Mrs Leathers in his role as ‘our living Lord’s rod and staff and comforter’.

Much to Lionel’s irritation the general view around the village seemed to be, once a cleric, always a cleric. He was still frequently addressed as Vicar and from time to time called upon to involve himself in deeply fraught situations that were none of his making. He always declined but people could be extremely, sometimes quite unpleasantly, persistent. In the present case, after a few judicious questions, Lionel felt obliged to refuse. It seemed the body had not yet been positively identified. Lionel was not easily embarrassed but even he drew the line at offering solace to a widow whose husband might pop his head round the door at any minute.

His main concern at the moment was his own wife. When he told her the news, Ann’s reaction was deeply disturbing. She leapt up and seized his arm, asking him over and over again just where the dead man had been found and when exactly it had all happened. She was in a feverish state, wild-eyed, her skin so hot that he suggested calling the doctor. She calmed down then. Or pretended to. He could see her struggling to appear more tranquil but her eyes, dazed with alarm, danced and flickered round the room.

Eventually he persuaded her to go to bed. Then he went into the study, placed some applewood logs carefully on the fire and immersed himself in the Gospel according to St Paul. But his mind soon drifted back to its previous occupation and, for the millionth time, he wondered where Carlotta was now and what she could be doing. Had she made her way to London and fallen among thieves? Attempted to hitch hike and been picked up by a man who made it his business to prey on young girls? Was she even now lying lifeless on some scrubby wasteland, her clothes torn, her skirt over her head—

Lionel gasped with shock at the vivid image the thought provoked and turned his scarlet cheeks away from the fire. More safely, he dwelt on the girl’s time in his house. The talks they’d had walking around the garden or in the tumultuous chaos of her room. A compassionate out-pouring of paternal concern on his part which poor, affection-starved Carlotta had soaked up like a thirsty sponge. All you need is love - the naive anthem of his adolescent years - was no more than the simple truth. And he had so much to give.

All this anxiety was affecting his stomach. Lionel went to warm some milk. Settling once more in his wing chair and noting sadly that his wife was still pacing about above his head, he returned to the chaste austerities of St Paul.

Charity suffereth long and is kind . . .

Charity never faileth . . .

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

It was good to know one was on the right track.

 

Evadne Pleat was also preparing to retire. She had taken the dogs for their final frolic, exchanged grave greetings with the occasional villager still out and about and had now settled the Pekes comfortably for the night. They slept in assorted beds and baskets in the kitchen. An early experiment with them sleeping in her bedroom had regretfully to be abandoned. There was so much jealousy. Everyone wanted to get under the blankets at once. And then the jostling for position started. After this had been more or less sulkily agreed upon, one or the other would start washing itself or get up for a drink of water. All in all it was worse than the benching area at Crufts.

Having said her prayers, making sure to include both Hetty and her pet, Evadne plumped up her pillows and nestled down under a beautiful handmade patchwork quilt. (She would have no truck with duvets, considering them merely eiderdowns under a fancy name, stuffed into a quite unnecessary bag.)

For once sleep did not come easily. The discovery of a body in the woods preyed on her mind. As did the even more dreadful discovery of Candy, more dead than alive, nearby. Evadne felt humbled by her new insight into Mr Fainlight whom she had always thought rather a sneery sort of man. Such kindness he had shown to Hetty in her hour of need.

Moonshine flooded into the room. Illuminating though the hard, cold radiance was, outlining Evadne’s ornaments and pictures, she also found it a touch distracting and got up to close her curtains.

Across the way light flooded the Old Rectory’s garden. Some animal on the prowl must have set off the halogen lamp. This often happened. A nuisance, Evadne remembered Ann Lawrence saying, but a price worth paying for security.

Evadne screwed up her eyes and looked more closely. With increasing frequency over the past few weeks a man would come by night to stand beneath the cedar tree. And here he was again. She could see, even from a distance, how tense the outline of his body was. Taut as a bowstring. She wondered how long he would wait this time. Suddenly a window opened, not Carlotta’s which Evadne had expected but one in the flat over the garage. The young man who lived there leaned out. Evadne heard laughter, and a moment or two later the dark blue wooden door in the wall was eased open. To her surprise the figure beneath the tree almost ran across the drive and went inside. As he turned to close the door, the light fell full across his face and she recognised Valentine Fainlight.

Evadne closed the window and wandered over to a little velvet nursing chair near her bed. She sat down, feeling uneasy without any reason that she could have easily explained. She had barely spoken to the man who drove Lionel Lawrence around but she knew he was not allowed in the house and could not believe Ann Lawrence would enforce such a rule without a very good reason. Also Hetty Leathers, one of the kindest souls alive, had actually said she hated him.

Eventually Evadne took to her bed but she could not settle. It was as if her mind had been suddenly cast over by a dark shadow. She wished now she had not witnessed that sudden urgent sprint across the grass.

 

The main bar of the Red Lion was full to bursting but the atmosphere was not what you’d call lively. Far from generating excited gossip and noisy speculation, the day’s events appeared to have subdued the pub’s clientele; people spoke in muted murmurs.

Valentine Fainlight had been quite right when he said that no one had much liked Charlie Leathers. Even so, his presumed demise seemed to have diminished them all. Everyone knew that sudden death was something that always happened to other people, fair enough. But this was a bit near home. Still not understanding quite how it had come about, the company was very ill at ease.

The landlord suggested getting up a collection for his widow, which was well received, for people both liked and sympathised with Hetty. He put a large glass collecting bottle on the counter and by the end of the evening it was half full. In fact, he reflected somewhat sourly, there seemed to be more in it than there was in his till. Soberly the bar emptied. The customers left quietly and went quickly home in small clusters. No one walked alone.

For once George Bullard was as good as his word. When Barnaby reached his desk the next morning the postmortem report was already there. And so was Sergeant Troy, engrossedly reading.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Sir?’

‘You’re never here first.’

‘I know. You’re always having a go at me about it. So I thought I’d make a special effort.’

‘I like consistency in my staff, Troy. Don’t start messing me about, all right?’

‘Yes, chief.’

‘OK. What’s the verdict?’

‘Garrotted, which we know already. Just “very thin wire” it says here. I expect SOCO will have more details. A heavy smoker. When discovered, four thirty yesterday afternoon, he’d been dead about sixteen hours.’

‘Roughly midnight Tuesday, then.’

‘Eaten a solid meal earlier that evening. Some meat dish, vegetables, rice probably in a pudding. Then later beer mixed up with pork scratchings—’

‘Do you mind? I’m still trying to digest my breakfast.’ Barnaby reached out for the report, flicking a page over. He read for a few more moments then put it down and opened a large envelope which had been resting against a silver-framed photograph of his wife and daughter. He drew out several large black-and-white prints and spread them over his desk top.

‘I don’t like the look of this, Troy.’

Who would? thought Sergeant Troy, staring at the bulging, terrified eyes, what remained of the goulashed cheeks, and a thrusting, blackened tongue also pretty well gnawed on. Reminded him of those weird gargoyles you saw on old churches. Either them or Maureen’s mother.

‘Apparently,’ Barnaby tapped the PM report, ‘there was no other bruising. And no skin, hair or fibres under the nails.’

‘So he didn’t fight back.’

‘Everyone fights back, given the chance. But here, once the wire was round his neck, this man didn’t have a chance.’

‘Blimey. Strong-arm stuff.’

‘Yes. Leathers was in his early sixties. Not young but hardly frail or elderly. To strangle the life out of someone in this specific manner takes a lot of muscular strength. Plus, I would think, a certain amount of know-how.’

‘You think he’s done it before, chief?’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as that. But it’s certainly not a method one finds in your common or garden domestic.’

‘Perhaps he’s been practising on a melon.’

‘What?’

‘Like the killer in the
Day of the Jackal
.’

Barnaby closed his eyes briefly, placed the two centre fingers of his left hand on his forehead and drew a deep breath. Then he gathered up the photographs.

‘Get these displayed in the incident room. They’re setting up in four one nine on the ground floor. First briefing two thirty, by which time we should have something from SOCO.’

‘Sir.’

‘And get me a Mars bar while you’re at it.’

 

By the time DCI Barnaby’s team had gathered for their briefing, Dr Jim Mahoney, Charlie Leathers’ GP, had visited the morgue at Stoke Mandeville hospital and positively identified his patient’s body. SOCO had also divvied up their preliminary conclusions.

Barnaby’s team included eight CID officers, one of whom was the delectable Sergeant Brierley, after whom Troy had hopelessly lusted from the moment, seven years earlier, when he had first clapped eyes on her. And twelve uniformed coppers. Less than half the strength the DCI would have liked but that was nothing new.

‘Scene of Crime report,’ Barnaby waved it in the air. ‘Copies available. Make yourselves familiar. He was killed by a piece of wire, possibly already looped, slipped over the head from behind and pulled tight. Dense leaf mould underfoot means we’ve no impression clear enough to be of use, even if the wildlife hadn’t been scuffing around. A torch was found a few feet from the body with Leathers’ fingerprints.’

‘Have we got anything at all on him, sir?’ asked Detective Inspector ‘Happy’ Carson, a lugubrious man, newly made up in rank and longing to shine.