The Reckoning (10 page)

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, Sandy!'

Lost for some minutes in the pain of remembering, Tom came to his senses abruptly and, losing patience, gave an even harder yank on the lead, dislodging the terrier from its chosen spot and dragging it after him along the path. Sandy had been particularly difficult that afternoon, running off as soon as they reached the meadow, where Tom had let him off his lead to pester a pair of French poodles trotting peacefully along behind their mistress and wanting nothing to do with the irritating presence that had suddenly appeared, snapping at their heels. Tom had been forced to hurry after them faster than he would have liked, in order to collar the terrier and attach him to his lead again: all this under the irritated glance of the poodles' mistress, who had made her annoyance plain. As a consequence he had been overcome by a fit of coughing, which had kept him immobile for minutes, red in the face and with tears streaming from his eyes.

The walk that followed – Tom had elected to circle the wide pond that occupied the middle of the meadow and cross the River Isis near Fiddler's Island – had calmed them both and by the time he led Sandy off the bridge and onto the towpath, the terrier had quieted down and was trotting along obediently at his side. Such walkers as were still out – the sun was low in the sky – were headed towards the city, and Tom went the other way, up the towpath, until he came to a bench bordering the track, where he stopped to let Sandy off his lead. There was a clump of bushes behind the seat and, knowing from experience that the terrier would be happy to nose around in them for a few minutes, Tom sat down on the bench for a breather.

He looked about him. Across the river there were still people walking through Port Meadow, either on their way home or simply
enjoying the last of the sunlight, unseasonable for early November though it was, but welcome just the same. The last school he had taught at had been near Oxford, and on his retirement two years earlier he and Nell had decided to make the city their home. They had met during his convalescence after he'd been gassed. Nell had been a nurse at the hospital where he was treated, a job she had quit when they got married, and although Tom had always dreamed of having a son to carry on his name, he had been more than consoled by the three daughters Nell had borne him; and when war broke out again he had blessed the good fortune that had denied him a boy, whose fate it would have been to follow in his father's footsteps and perhaps not return.

Remembering the train of his thoughts earlier, he sighed. It wasn't often now that his memory went back to the years he had spent in uniform: a time already fading into history, and in any case overtaken in the public mind by the more recent triumph of arms, which – unlike the exhaustion that had marked the end of the terrible death-struggle earlier in the century – had been celebrated throughout the land. Yet perhaps it was not so surprising. In a few days the country would be marking Remembrance Day, when the fallen of both wars would be remembered at a ceremony in Whitehall. Wreaths would be laid, veterans wearing their medals would march again and although Tom had never felt drawn to attend the event, it was a time of year when the pull of the past was strongest, when the winds of memory blew coldest.

He shivered and looked at his watch. The light was beginning to fail: it was time to go home.

He whistled to Sandy and then, as he was about to turn round to look for him in the bushes, noticed that there was a college boat crew out practising some way downstream. An old oarsman himself (he had rowed for his school), he paused to watch as the flashing oars sent the arrow-shaped craft speeding upriver towards him.

As he called to the dog by name, he heard a noise in the bushes behind him and looked round.

‘Hello! I didn't know there was anyone there.'

A figure wearing a dark coat and cap had emerged quietly from the shadow of the tangled greenery behind him. Tom narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the face beneath the peak. Then his gaze dropped and he stared in disbelief at the dull metal shape gripped in the gloved hand. It was pointed at him.

‘Don't move.' The quiet voice when he heard it was yet another shock. ‘Do as I say. Face the front.'

Speechless, Tom obeyed. He felt the cold touch of steel on his neck.

‘There's something you need to know before you die.' The voice had a terrible calmness. ‘Something you need to hear. Listen now.'

Tom tried to speak, but the enormity of what was happening – of what was about to happen – robbed him of all words. Instead he sat rigid as the voice murmured in his ear. Through tear-filled eyes he saw that the boat was drawing closer. He heard the splash of the oars in the water, the cry of the cox, yet none of it seemed real. There was only the voice in his ear . . . the terrible words.

‘Do you believe in God?'

The finality of the question pierced him like an arrow.

‘ . . . Yes . . .' It was all he could do to utter the single word.

‘Then make your peace with him.'

He heard a metallic click behind him. The sound was repeated. In desperation he tried to act, half-rising to his feet, thinking perhaps to throw himself to one side, to make one final effort, but he had hardly moved when a white light exploded in his head and all was lost.

9

‘T
HERE – UP THE PATH
where that crowd is. That's where it happened.'

They had just crossed the river onto a towpath that ran alongside it and Morgan pointed ahead of them. A detective inspector with Oxford CID, he was in his late thirties, about Billy's age, with dark-red hair and foxlike features.

‘Singleton was sitting on a bench. He was shot from behind through the back of the neck. It was starting to get dark and nobody saw it happen – or no one we've found as yet. But a couple of people heard the shot.'

They had already spoken that day. On instructions from his chief constable, Morgan had rung the Yard first thing in the morning to notify them of the killing, and shortly afterwards Billy had been on his way to Oxford. With the roads mercifully free of traffic, thanks to the petrol restrictions, he had reached the city before midday to find Morgan awaiting him at the central police station.

‘I hope this isn't a wasted journey, boyo.' Morgan's Welsh accent had a musical lilt. ‘But we live a quiet life down here. We don't go around blowing each other's heads off; not as a rule. I'd lay odds this is your man.' He handed Billy a sealed envelope. ‘Here's the slug we recovered: if ballistics can match it to the
two you've got in London, then Bingo, I say! Oh, and by the way, he left us a
billet-doux
this time, your shooter.'

‘A what . . . ?' Billy was weighing the envelope in his hand.

By way of an answer, and with a conjuror's flourish, Morgan had produced a small object from his pocket, which proved, on examination, to be an unexpended bullet, but one whose copper jacket had been painted black.

‘It's a nine-millimetre all right. I've had it dusted for prints, but it was clean.'

‘Where did you find it?'

‘On the ground behind the bench. I'll show you when we get out there.'

‘Why is it painted black?' Billy was examining the object. ‘I've never seen that before.'

‘Neither have I.'

‘What does it mean?'

‘Search me. You Yard fellows are supposed to be the experts.'

‘How did he come to lose it?'

‘Now that's a question I can answer.' Morgan winked. ‘At least I think so. It hasn't been tested yet, but I'll bet you now it's a dud. My guess is the killer hit on it with his first try and had to eject the cartridge and fire again. He's a cool customer, all right, but not so cool that he remembered to pick up the bullet afterwards. It could be his first mistake.'

He had shown Billy photographs of Singleton's body lying on its side on the towpath, curled into a near-foetal position.

‘Looks to me as though he might have tried to get up just as he was shot, and fell forward and to the side.'

Other pictures taken at the morgue showed a blackened hole at the base of the victim's skull.

‘According to the pathologist, the gun was only inches away when the shot was fired. It struck the base of the skull, severing the spinal cord. We won't have the full post-mortem results until
this afternoon, but he said it must have been carefully aimed. Death would have been instantaneous.'

When Billy offered to give the bullet back to Morgan, he shook his head.

‘You keep it. This is going to be a Yard case: I feel it in my bones. But if I were you, I'd get my ballistics boys to have a look at that.'

They had driven out to Port Meadow in Billy's car. On the way Morgan had filled him in on the events of the previous afternoon.

‘It was getting on for five o'clock when Singleton got out there. He walked the dog every day – his wife told us that – and they generally went to Port Meadow.'

‘So it was a fixed routine?'

‘Pretty much so. He was as regular as clockwork.'

After they had parked, Morgan had led his colleague down a narrow lane and after they had crossed the railway line Billy had seen a wide expanse of grass ahead of them with a pond in the middle of it. Other than some cows that were grazing near the water, the meadow was largely deserted and the two men had walked across it to the towpath.

Now, as they approached the murder site – and the small crowd gathered around it – three men carrying notebooks and pencils separated themselves from the group and hurried towards them.

‘I forgot to mention it,' Morgan murmured in Billy's ear. ‘But the press are on to this. My phone started ringing first thing this morning. They know about the Sussex shooting, but they haven't tied it to that business in Scotland yet, so far as I'm aware.'

As the three men came nearer he spoke to them.

‘Not now, lads. I'll have a word with you later at the station.'

Ignoring their protests, he shouldered his way past. Billy followed and they made their way through the ring of spectators
and joined two plain-clothes men and a pair of uniformed officers who were standing watch over a cartoon figure in outline that had been marked out with white tape pegged to the ground. Beside it was a wooden bench, to which Morgan pointed.

‘As far as we can gather, he was sitting there, and whoever shot him must have come out of those bushes.'

He pointed again – this time to a clump of laurel bushes that were growing a few paces behind the bench.

‘It seems Singleton had let the dog off the lead. We haven't found anyone yet who saw him sitting on the bench – the towpath was more or less deserted; it was getting late – but there was a boat out on the river with a college crew, and their cox heard the shot as they went by.'

Morgan turned to face the river and Billy turned with him.

‘They were coming upstream and the cox was yelling out the stroke through a megaphone. Just as they passed he heard a sound that he later realized must have been a shot and he glanced round for a moment – only a moment, mind you, for he was guiding the boat – and saw the figure of a man wearing a cap, standing here behind the bench, and something lying on the ground in front of it. That must have been Singleton's body, but he didn't recognize it as such. It was just a shape to him.'

‘What about the man behind the bench? Could he describe him?'

‘Hardly.' Morgan grimaced. ‘He only glanced that way. All he could say was that the fellow was wearing a coat and a cloth cap. It was starting to get dark.'

‘And nobody saw him afterwards?' Billy received the news with a frown.

‘Not that we know, as yet. Like I say, there weren't many people around. But we'll be making an appeal through the newspapers and the radio for anyone who was on the towpath that evening to get in touch with us. Something may come of it. The people who found the body were a couple called Blake.
They were walking back into town and they told us they hadn't met anyone coming in the opposite direction, so it looks as though the killer made his escape into Oxford. The couple stopped by the bench long enough to make sure Singleton was dead, then legged it as fast as they could down to the bridge and across Port Meadow to Jericho, where they knocked on the first door they came to and rang the police. It was another fifteen minutes before the first uniformed officer got here.'

‘Plenty of time for the shooter to get away.'

‘I would say so.' Morgan shrugged. He bent to pick up a stick from the ground. ‘This Singleton was a schoolmaster, by the way; a history teacher. He and his wife came to live here a couple of years ago after he retired. From all we've been able to learn, he didn't have any enemies; in fact, quite the reverse. Everyone we've spoken to seems to have liked him. As soon as I heard about the shooting I thought of that advisory that you fellows sent out last week. It sounded like the same chap to me, and nothing I've learned since has changed my opinion.'

He tossed the stick into the river and watched as it was swept away by the current.

‘And, to tell the truth, I'm praying I'm right. Otherwise I'll be up duck creek with no paddle to speak of.'

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Singleton. I know how difficult this must be for you. Just a few minutes and then we'll be done.'

Morgan paused. He'd been doing all the questioning up till now, and under his gentle probing the dead man's widow, a woman in her sixties with white hair and eyes the colour of cornflowers, had told them all she could, little though it was. There was no hidden undercurrent to her late husband's life, no secret that could explain what had occurred. He had been in good spirits when he had left the house to take their dog for its afternoon walk, and her first intimation that all was not well
had come when the animal had returned alone and she had heard it scratching at the door.