The Killings at Badger's Drift (22 page)

Barnaby climbed the stairs. There were about a dozen of them, broad and solidly based, quite unlike the capricious aluminium approach usually leading to a conversion. The opening had been enlarged, no doubt to accommodate Mrs Rainbird, and there was a rail on two sides of the entrance about three feet from the floor. Barnaby heaved himself up and Troy followed.

The loft was very large. The beams were unpainted, the walls white, the floor covered with a porridge-coloured tweed carpet. At either end of the loft was a round window. Directly beneath each stood a plain wooden chair. They also each had a narrow sill holding a notebook and ballpoint. On the seat of one of the chairs was a magnificent pair of Zeiss binoculars. There were two large grey filing cabinets and that was all. Barnaby, who had been expecting either the usual piles of lumber or a wildly baroque spare room, looked about him in some surprise. He picked up the binoculars and looked out at the Street.

A face in the crowd sprang at him in the most astonishing detail. Open pores, nostril hairs, pink plastic rollers, petals on a flowered scarf. He adjusted the focusing ring and got a broader sweep. The forecourt of the Black Boy was now packed. More cars were pulling up by the minute. All human life seemed to be out there. And it was not a pretty sight.

‘Empty those cabinets, Sergeant. Start taking the stuff downstairs.’ He put down the glasses and flicked through one of the notebooks, picking a day at random. The entries read:

Barnaby closed the book. Mrs Rainbird’s daily occupation did not surprise him. He never underestimated the tremendous satisfaction that knowing all a neighbour’s business gave to some people. A passionate interest in everyone else’s affairs seemed to him a very human characteristic hardly reprehensible enough to be called a failing, let alone a sin. If he himself wasn’t endlessly concerned with other people’s behaviour he wouldn’t be doing the job he was. He watched Troy lowering himself down through the loft opening, pulling a stack of envelope files after him.

No. What interested Barnaby was not the revelation that Mrs Rainbird watched human beings rather than waxwings but what she did with the knowledge she so obtained. There was something very pared down, almost ruthlessly functional about the room he thought as he collected the rest of the files and the other notebook and prepared to follow Troy. Downstairs all was voluptuous indulgence but this place was something else. This place, thought Barnaby, taking a last look round, meant business.

The portable pod had just arrived, giving rise to great excitement. The delivery lorry was backing away. Hydraulic machinery wheezed, four legs dropped to the ground, the shell settled into position. A man in the crowd shouted, ‘Glad - the libry’s here. You brought your books?’ Loud laughter. A woman said, ‘Robbie - run home and tell your mam the Martians have landed.’ A generator and cables were set up and a GPO line connected.

As soon as Barnaby reached the pavement he was nobbled by the white trench coat, now topped by a Fred MacMurray trilby, from the
Echo
.

‘Chief Inspector - do you have a statement for the press?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘The public has a right to know.’ Dear God. Dialogue by RKO out of Universal Pictures. ‘Is it true that the most terrible murder has been committed?’

‘A suspicious death has been reported, yes.’

‘Oh come off it, Inspector Barnaby. What’s in the files?’

‘Please . . .
oh please
. . .’ A young girl lugging a Uher tape recorder stepped directly in his path. ‘Are you in charge of the case?’ She sounded breathless and exhilarated as if on her way to a party. ‘Local radio,’ she added, thrusting a bulbous windsocked mike under his nose. ‘If you give me something now it will make the seven o’clock news.’

‘Big deal,’ muttered Troy.

‘Has a communication relations officer been appointed yet?’ cried the reporter, showing off in front of the girl.

‘No. Give us a chance to breathe,’ said Barnaby, pushing by.

‘But Inspector—’

As Barnaby walked away he heard one of the villagers (the one who had made the remark about the library) seize his moment of fame. ‘Oh it was horrible! Horrible!’ he cried into the microphone. ‘The son did it . . . he came out covered in blood. They’ve took him away in an ambulance. They reckon he had a brainstorm. He’s queer, you see . . . it takes them like that . . .’

‘But who’s been killed?’ asked the girl.

‘Well . . . it’d be his mother, wouldn’t it?’ He gazed brightly round. ‘Am I on camera?’

Barnaby stowed the files safely in the car boot and locked it.

‘It didn’t take long for them to start sniffing round,’ said Troy.

‘Oh there’s always a village correspondent for the local rag. Does WI reports and flower shows. I expect they got in touch.’ He started walking briskly down Church Lane, Troy hurrying alongside.

As they reached the wooden footpath sign to Gessler Tye Troy asked, ‘Are you going after the suspects straight away, sir?’

Barnaby did not reply. He was breathing quickly, his face was flushed, his lips tight. For him the murder of Mrs Rainbird had shocked the case, yesterday so arid and at a standstill, into new pulsating life rich with fresh insights and possibilities. And although the killer still remained faceless his scent became strong and somewhere, not very far ahead, Barnaby could sense his quarry no longer running swift and gleeful, laughing over his shoulder but back-tracking, threshing about, sensible that the distance between them was shrinking.

Many years before, becoming gradually and sometimes sharply aware of the pleasurable exhilaration he felt at this moment in a case, Barnaby had become extremely depressed and unhappy. He had felt his role, a hunter of men, to be a base one. He had struggled for some time to work in a more disinterested manner. To pretend that this sweep of excitement as he drew the net tighter was not happening. Or that if it was happening it was nothing to be ashamed of. When that failed he went through a phase, lasting several years, when he had played the hard man, ignoring or angrily stamping on these earlier perceptions. The quarry was scum. There was only one thing they understood. Give them an inch and they’d cut your throat. It takes one to know one.

Promotion had been steady. He had done well. Three men he had caught during this period had been hanged. He had been offered a lot of respect, frequently from people he despised. But as this carapace of contemptuous hatred for the criminal hardened around him so, inexplicably, self-hatred grew until the day came when he felt he would almost rather die than be the man he was slowly turning into.

He had gone to see George Bullard, speaking in only the vaguest terms of stress and headaches, and was granted a month’s leave with hardly a question asked. He had spent the time gardening, painting watercolours, talking things over with Joyce. At the end of the month he knew there was no other job he would ever wish to do and that the shell had been broken beyond repair. And so he went back and continued: at first insecure (although never less than competent), realizing that lack of instant and extreme opinions on matters of the day made him appear insipid to some of his former colleagues who usually had a surplus of both. He was also at that time over-reacting against his former harshness, loathe to bawl out and discipline when necessary. That was mistaken for weakness. Gradually he repaired this misconception. And now he walked down a dusty country lane having come, in a way, full circle. A policeman neither proud nor ashamed of his job entering the last phase of his career and of a murder hunt, feeling excited by this and accepting that excitement as a fact of life. Part of how he was. Troy touched his arm.

They were halfway along the dirt track leading to Holly Cottage. Barnaby stopped and listened. Someone was yelling, the words thick with rage and unintelligible. The two men moved silently along, hidden behind the tall hedge, to where it opened out into the car space. Keeping in the shadow of the trees they approached the house. A window on the ground floor was wide open. And the words became clear.

‘But you must come, Michael . . .
you must
. . .’

‘No must about it. You needn’t expect me to present myself with a carnation up my nose and a pair of matching bloody candlesticks to watch you sell yourself to the highest bidder.’

‘It’s not like that. You’re so unfair. I do care for him . . . I do. How can I help it? He’s been looking after us for years.’

‘I’ve never heard such sentimental crap. It makes me want to vomit. You’ve certainly pulled the wool over his eyes, poor bastard.’

‘That’s a lie! He knows exactly how it is . . . I haven’t pretended to anything I don’t feel. I shall be a good wife—’

‘God! Tied to a bloody cripple at your age.’

‘You just won’t understand! It’s different for you. All you care about is your work. It’s all you’ve ever cared about. As long as you can paint, the rest of the world might as well not exist. But I’m not like that. I’m not especially good at anything. I’m not trained for anything. I have no money - I wouldn’t even have a home if it wasn’t for Henry. For heaven’s sake, Michael, what’s so wrong with wanting security—’

‘We’ve
got
security. He’d never turn us out. He’s so besotted with you you could keep him dangling for years.’

‘But I don’t want to stay in this damp gloomy place. I hate it.’

‘Well you certainly don’t come cheap. Tye House and five thousand acres. I don’t know why you don’t just take to the streets and make a proper job of it.’ There was the sound of flesh meeting flesh with some force. Michael Lacey shouted, ‘Spiteful bitch!’ Katherine cried out. Barnaby drew his sergeant behind a clump of larches. Moments later Katherine Lacey flew past them, her face contorted, making little strangled choking sounds, and disappeared down the path towards Church Lane. The cottage door slammed and Michael stood in the porch for a moment looking undecided. Then he turned and strode off into the woods behind the house, kicking a fallen branch furiously out of the way.

When he had disappeared Barnaby approached the house, opened the front door and slipped inside. Troy, concealing his surprise, followed. If I’d suggested this, he thought, I’d have got a right bollocking.

They stood in the hall, the dank chill seeping into their bones. It seemed perfectly natural that these walls should witness bitter words, tears and sorrow. Barnaby felt that any happiness accidentally immured in such surroundings would have no chance to develop and thrive but, like the honeysuckle by the porch, be slowly choked and strangled by the forces of despair. He led the way to the kitchen. It was not an attractive room. The units were cheap and showing signs of wear. A few rugs lay about on the original cold and bumpy brick floor. A half-empty can of spaghetti and a clumsily hacked wedge of bread were on the wooden table with a mug, teapot and half a bottle of cheesy-looking milk. There were flies everywhere.

The room adjacent to the kitchen facing the front of the house had rush matting, a table, four chairs, bookshelves, a two-seater settee and a telephone. The second room on the ground floor was locked.

‘This is the place where he was painting when we came before, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Barnaby tried the door again, then left it. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about that without a warrant. We’ve bent the rules enough already.’

Too right, thought Troy, following his chief up the uncarpeted stairs. He couldn’t see why they were roaming around the place at all. Surely the whole point of coming to the cottage was to check Lacey’s alibi for that afternoon?

‘The more you know about a suspect, Sergeant, the more cards you hold. And that includes his natural habitat.’

Troy blinked in some alarm at this spot of telepathy. A very worrying development. If a man couldn’t call his thoughts his own a man could remain a sergeant for life.

There were three bedrooms. The smallest had a single bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. The bed was rigidly and efficiently made, a hospital bed. A nightdress was folded neatly on the pillow. The wardrobe was nearly empty and the chest of drawers had a thin film of dust. A bunch of wild flowers in a jar gave the room a mild fragrance. Again Barnaby recalled the Serotina struggling in the nettle patch.