A Species of Revenge (14 page)

‘No, I was in my bedroom at the front by then. I sat by the window, looking out for the postman, but he was late, he didn't get here until after nine.'

It was a long time to sit watching for the postman. But as she spoke, he caught the hint of pain in her voice, perhaps over an expected letter that hadn't come, the almost inaudible indrawn breath, a small, abrupt dismissive movement to herself. The hairs actually stood up on her slim, bare brown arms, as if a goose had walked over her grave. He was reminded that Alex had told him she was separated – from Tom Loxley, wasn't it? That Euro MP who'd made his mark over European Agricultural Policy ... Hadn't he had something pungent to say recently on the subject of British cheeses (as one smart-aleck journalist had it) and the European diktat as to how they should be manufactured?

‘She'd delivered our paper as usual, you know, poor child.'

‘You saw her bring it?'

‘No, she must've left it before I went back to my bedroom. She used to deliver first to next door – Edwina Lodge – and leave her bicycle there before she came on here.'

‘You'll have a good view of the entrance to the Close from your bedroom, then?'

Ellington Close was approached by a narrow road between the two older houses, walled either side, after which it broadened out into a rough crescent shape.

‘Yes, there's a side window, as well as one at the front, but I saw no one, other than the people who lived round about, setting off for work in their cars. I'd no idea what was happening until Doreen Bailey rang to say she wouldn't be in today and told me why. I'm so sorry I can't help you. Believe me, I would if I could – I've a daughter about the same age, away at school.'

Following the direction of her involuntary glance at the collection of photos on the mantel, he saw a girl with a thin, clever face, smiling up at the man next to her, who had his arm around her shoulder. ‘Is this her?' he asked, studying it with interest. ‘I can see the resemblance.'

‘Yes, that's Melissa. Mel, we call her.' Her smile was that of any proud mother, but it also seemed to him slightly strained. Understandable, if her marriage was breaking up, and there was a daughter to consider ... She said nothing about the man in the photograph, whom Mayo had recognized from TV appearances as Tom Loxley.

There seemed nothing more to pursue here at the moment, until Francis Kendrick returned. He left with a general impression that despite her outwardly cool poise, she had been distinctly on edge throughout the interview, and had been relieved when it was over.

Sarah Wilmot hadn't been in when he telephoned but it was possible she'd returned meanwhile. It was unlikely, he thought as he crossed the road, that she'd be of much help, in view of the short time the Voss family had been in residence, and he'd have to see her brother-in-law later, but both had to be routinely questioned, and it would fit in with his busy schedule if he could see her now.

Edwina Lodge was one of those red-brick Gothic edifices whose ornate and irregular design seemed to have no relevance to its function. Having received no answer to his first ring, he circumnavigated the house but found no one at the back either. He guessed that it had been converted vertically, with the three flats in one half, but he gave up trying to work out what the interior layout might be. The back of the house overlooked the wood; it would be difficult to see very far into it through any of its lower windows because of the garden's slope, though it didn't seem impossible for anyone to have made an escape from the wood via the garden and then the front entrance. The same, of course, would apply to the garden at Simla.

Both front gardens had very little depth, probably due to the widening of Albert Road at some time, and were filled by dusty spotted laurels. Here, a heavy, ornate arch attached to the side of the house marked the entrance to a broad driveway leading to something that looked like a fairly derelict coach house at the end. The drive was paved with blue bricks and a high wall ran alongside, behind which ran the road into Ellington Close. This was the wall, presumably, against which Patti had been wont to prop her cycle.

He was standing back and trying to decipher the entwined initials below the date, 1859, on the stone cartouche in the centre of the arch when someone came up behind him.

‘Were you wanting anything?' asked a suspicious female voice.

He turned to see a thin, sharp-featured young woman, laden with carrier bags, with hair that appeared to have been cut with a knife and fork, wearing a grey T-shirt stretched across her nonexistent bosom, and baggy flowered shorts.

On hearing who he was, Tina Baverstock, for so she announced herself, with a gleam in her eye and the eagerness of the inveterate gossip, promptly invited him in for a cup of tea. Such people being as gifts from the gods to policemen hard pressed for information, Mayo accepted. He was lucky she was here, she informed him, Monday being the day when her wholefood shop closed. ‘A lot of people don't like it – they expect everybody to keep open all hours nowadays, but I have my customers who know when I'm open and when I'm not. Anybody wants anything, they'll take the trouble to come at the right time.'

Or go somewhere else, he thought, amused, as he followed her in.

The entrance to her ground-floor flat was via a side door, where a back staircase, originally built to keep the sight of servants from offending the eyes of visitors, ascended to the upper storeys. The inside of the house confirmed his assumption that the house would be a rabbit warren. Its division into flats seemed to have happened more by an unforeseen accident than through any planning on the part of an architect. The Baverstock living room, at any rate, was an uneasy compromise, wrought from what must once have been a gracious reception room, now ruined by having had a partition thrown across it to make the kitchen, cutting the deep cornice in half and regrettably bisecting a large window.

Tina Baverstock emerged from this kitchen area with tea, predictably a herbal infusion. Well, he'd drunk worse in the interests of getting at the truth. In any case, he suspected she might take offence if he didn't drain it to the dregs. She began talking at once while she was pouring the tea, greedy for excitement, the way some people always were, even in the face of tragedy; perhaps, he thought, striving for charity, through the need for drama in their lives ... there couldn't, after all, be much of that, working in a health-food shop.

‘She shouldn't have been delivering papers, that Patti, it isn't safe, they shouldn't allow girls to do it –' was the first thing she found to say of the murdered girl.

‘She used to leave her cycle here, I understand,' he interrupted without too much compunction, abandoning charitable thoughts, but all that did was to start her off on another tack.

‘Yes, but not with
my
approval. It fell over once and scratched our new car. She was cheeky when I reprimanded her about leaving it there – but what could I do when the landlord supported her?'

It was clear that her opinion of Dermot Voss was not high, either. Rankling amongst other things was his refusal to promise them a new bathroom installation, and his disturbing them by leaving home at ungodly hours in the morning. ‘Half past seven this morning – and by the look of what he was stowing in the boot, he won't be home tonight, either. Not much of a father to those children.' She sniffed, unattractively.

‘Presumably that's part of his job.'

She must surely know Voss's circumstances, he thought, but she seemed to have taken against the poor devil, without a good word to say for him.

‘But he was back within half an hour, in a right old state about something or other,' she said with satisfaction. ‘Then another car came and picked him up about an hour later. I should think his own had broken down, it doesn't seem to be very well maintained. My husband says the engine sounds as rough as – well, rough.'

She'd evidently expected things to take a turn for the better when the house ownership had changed hands and was disappointed that they hadn't, and she'd turned her spite on to Dermot Voss. Her neighbours fared no better when she moved on to them: Henry Pitt, who worked in the library and who let horrid cooking odours float down the stairs, with never a thought of opening a window. And James Fitz allan, who rented the attic as a sort of
studio
–

‘He's an artist?'

Her look suggested there were artists and artists. He suspected she'd never actually seen his work or been into this studio and that it ate into her soul. The gossip continued, spilled out, venomous, unlovely.

‘I saw her talking to him, you know, this morning.'

‘To Mr Fitzallan?'

‘No, no, Henry Pitt.'

‘What time was this?'

‘Quarter to eight. They seemed to be having what I can only say was a very
animated
conversation! Not the first time I'd seen them talking, either. Of course, I'm not one to gossip, but he scuttles away quicksticks every time any other woman approaches him and it's funny he happened to be on his way out so often, just at the time she was here to deliver the papers, when the library doesn't open until half past nine! Well, I mean, a young girl and an old man like that –
unhealthy,
I call it.'

‘Are you saying, Mrs Baverstock,' Mayo asked coldly, ‘that Mr Pitt could have had something to do with Patti Ryman being murdered?' He was aware by now of disliking her extremely.

She flushed bright red at his tone and bridled. ‘How could he have? He got straight into Vic's car – my husband's – and went into town with him. Naturally, I didn't mean to imply

Why, he'd wondered while she was complaining, if she equally disliked her neighbours and living here so much, didn't she move, surely she and her husband earned enough between them for something better? Her last words as he left were enlightening on this point. ‘Of course, things would've been different if that woman had kept to her promises – Mrs Burgoyne. She always promised she'd give us first refusal to buy this place when she left, that's the only reason we've stayed here, but she conveniently forgot that when she had a better offer.'

‘Thank you for your time,' he said, and with relief went to where he'd left his car, further up Albert Road.

For a moment, there, he'd contemplated asking her if he might look through her bedroom window, which must overlook the back garden, but had immediately decided that the unlikely chance of there being a possibility of seeing into the wood from there wasn't worth it. He wished he hadn't been such a coward, but he'd a strong feeling there was every possibility of her being the type of woman who'd immediately think the suggestion an invitation to rape.

It was the young, uniformed constable, Kevin Marsden, he who had distinguished himself by finding the murder weapon and was now keeping an eye on the entrance to the wood, who first noticed the commotion.

He set off at a run towards the end of the Close, from where shouts and scuffles travelled on the still, early-afternoon air, putting out a call on his radio as he did so. Kite and Farrar were, as it happened, just rounding the corner on their way back to the crime scene and within seconds, close behind Marsden, they all arrived at the spot where two people were struggling on the pathway outside number seven, Ellington Close.

Mrs Loates had finally flipped. She had somehow tottered out of the house before Stanley could stop her, and in the struggle to get her back inside, had fallen to the ground, where she now lay, mumbling and muttering and offering passive resistance. Her flowered quilted dressing gown had fallen apart to reveal a dingy flannel nightdress that had ridden up over her mottled, varicosed legs. The legs terminated in zipped felt bootee slippers. Her hair, stiff and iron grey, hung in two rat's-tail plaits down her back.

Stanley was trying to yank her to her feet, desperately begging her to come back inside the house. ‘Come indoors, do, you'll do yourself a mischief!' When that failed, he tried another tack. ‘Everybody's looking at you, Mother, you're making a spectacle of yourself.'

Groups of neighbours stood around, embarrassed, unwilling or unable to intervene. A mother with a baby in her arms clutched her toddler's hand. An elderly couple stood together by their gate, stunned by this further chaos and disorder which had descended on their hitherto quiet and respectable Close. Trevor Lawley came out and hovered on the sidelines for a moment or two, then went back indoors.

Stanley's normally doughy face was red. Hilda Loates had once been a big, strong woman and his belly quivered with the effort of trying to lift her. She looked at him balefully and let her weight sag slackly against him. The three policemen arrived.

Thankfully, Stanley left them to it. He relinquished his hold on his mother and stood back, breathing heavily as they manoeuvred her bodily into the house and put her in her chair.

The spectators muttered together in shocked tones and presently went back into their own houses.

Inside the house, Stanley said, ‘Should we give her some brandy?'

‘Don't let him near me,' the old woman said suddenly, muffled but quite clear. ‘He's after me – he wants to kill me!'

‘Now then, Mrs Loates,' Kite said, and to Marsden, ‘Get an ambulance,' not liking the bad colour of the old woman's face.

‘Right,' Marsden said, thankful to have something to do that didn't involve watching the old woman. Domestics of any kind he hated, one involving a batty old woman without her teeth in he could do without any day.

The others stood around, keeping a wary eye on her. She seemed to have shot her bolt with her accusation at Stanley, however, and sat slumped into the chair where she'd been placed, her mouth opening and shutting like a fish. Kite sent Farrar to find a blanket and he came back with an old-fashioned pink sateen eiderdown which they wrapped around her. Her eyes wandered and her colour came and went alarmingly. She sat speechlessly now, huddled into the eiderdown, chumbling her lips, seemingly unaware of the crowded room.