‘So, was it you, Alec? Did you have some reason, then, to be down in Sandymount that evening?’
‘Conor. Conor told you I was.’
‘Well, no, he didn’t as a matter of fact. We had a description that fitted you from another source altogether. But tell me the truth now, what were you doing down there?’
‘No.’ He gulped. ‘No, I wasn’t there. I don’t care who told you I was. They got it wrong. I was never there at all.’
A spate of denial that meant, surely, the exact opposite of what was said. Take the boy in now? He’s certainly as much in the frame as ever Conor was. Guilt, guilt at least of some sort, written all over him. A single session with Verney, we’ll find out just what the strength of it is.
But no. No, I’d like to talk to Verney first, see what he thinks. I could be wrong. See both sides of it. All right, the boy was pretty certainly near Percival Road on Monday evening. But he may only have been hoping to get some Ecstasy.
So just smooth him down so he won’t try running.
‘Well,’ he said to the gangling figure he was sharing the glistening fog-encased envelope with, ‘I’m happy to take your word for it. If you weren’t there, you weren’t there. And you can’t help us. So I’ll say goodnight. I expect I’ll see you about with Conor sometime.’
Alec swung away, quickly as an object released by a spring. In a moment the fog and dark had swallowed him up.
He decided, before going to see Verney, to ring the Frogs Lane cottage again. If Verney really had not let Vicky know officially that Conor was no longer a suspect, he could hardly see how he could ask him directly whether or not he had contacted her. Altogether too much like criticizing a senior officer to his face.
But, once more, the phone at the other end rang and rang and was not picked up. He tried the number twice again in case he had been misrouted. Then he gave up.
After all, Vicky could have been officially informed and then had decided to take Conor out for a meal. Or to the cinema. Anywhere. Because - the thought only came wholly into his consciousness now - Conor, although he had seemed when he had let him into the cottage last night, to be very much as usual had perhaps been a little subdued. Was his mild joking then only a sign of inner unease? Had his time under Verney’s tongue-lashing done more psychological damage than it appeared on the surface?
No doubt it had. No fifteen-year-old could undergo that and not be affected. Deeply affected. So Vicky was probably - no, almost certainly - right to do all she could to take his mind off those long hours in the interview room, the chilling atmosphere of its harsh painted-brick walls, the daylight coming in only through an area of dull glass bricks, its bare, hard-surfaced green table, the recording machine whirring on and on.
Not that I blame Verney entirely for any harm Conor may have suffered. His duty to do what he did. Find out, if he could, who had killed, brutally killed, old Professor Unwala. And the circumstances at the time had clearly indicated Conor might be that killer. So any tough tactics to break him down in order.
Yet tough tactics perhaps not the only way of getting a confession. Don’t I myself believe otherwise? Understanding the best way in the end. But there are detectives in plenty, successful detectives, with the opposite view. The no-holds-barred school.
So, if Conor isn’t at home - at home, the words were still bitter - at the cottage, he isn’t. What’s more, if Vicky doesn’t actually know Conor’s off the hook, she may have gone out with him so as not to be there if the phone should ring and Verney want to question him once more. Again, a more or less reasonable thing to do.
Verney, though grudging as ever, agreed that Alec Gaffney should be left unquestioned for the time being.
‘Dare say you’re right, Phil. I don’t see there’s much point in having him in tonight. Don’t want some bloody clever solicitor saying we used Gestapo tactics. No, tomorrow’s Saturday, so he won’t be at school. You go along to the house nice and early before the lad’s had time to go gallivanting off, and we’ll see what he’s got to say for himself then.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Ask now whether he’s informed Vicky about Conor?
One look at Verney’s solid, straight-mouthed face - those hefty eyebrows and sombre eyes - made him realize that, however good the terms they now seemed to be on, suggesting he had not done what he should have was not a clever idea.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, sir, with the boy. About nine?’
‘Very good, Mr Benholme.’
One more phone call to the cottage. Once again the distant bell ringing and ringing. Once more a mental parade of all the reasons why the cottage should be unoccupied.
He looked at his watch.
Not yet half past five. By six or shortly after, if what Vicky had said was true when he had been trying to find out exactly what time Conor had come in, lover-boy Mike should be home. Two minutes after he came in I was in the bedroom. On the bloody bed. Then perhaps I’ll find out what’s been happening. Even if, when I ring, it turns out Conor and Vicky are back too. And Vicky on that bed. With Conor in the next room only too aware of what’s going on between his mother and that sports-mad idiot. Who, thanks to my neglect of my wife in favour of police duties, does have some sort of right to be on the bed, trousers round under his bum.
But after sitting in the Incident Room riffling point-lessly through old witness statements, he still got no answer when, promptly at six, he rang once more. Wryly he told himself that by making the call on the dot, with the unacknowledged object of forestalling events on the bed, it served him right not to get a reply.
He sat then, not even flicking through the old witness statements, watching the second hand of his watch sweep slowly round and round till five past six had been reached. Then he put through yet another call.
And at a quarter past six, another. And at twenty-past, yet one more.
What the hell has happened to the fellow, he asked himself. Why isn’t he home by now? And where’s Vicky? Where’s she taken Conor? Are they really at the cinema? If they are, how long have they been there? When’s it reasonable to expect them back?
Or have they, a new idea, contacted Mike at his work - what the hell is it he does? - and suggested he meets them somewhere in town for an early dinner? To celebrate? Well, Vicky would be well capable of feeling that Conor escaping Verney’s clutches was reason to go out to celebrate. Lack of celebrations, and suddenly cancelled celebrations, had in the old days been one of the sharpest causes of her discontent.
Abruptly he stood up.
‘Jumbo,’ he said, ‘are you on duty much longer?’
‘Another hour, boss. Then old Arnold’s coming in. Keep things going overnight, in so far as anything is going.’
‘Right. Well, I’m off. If I’m wanted I won’t be at home. I’m going out to Vicky’s place, see how my lad is. The number’s there, if you need it. OK?’
‘OK, guv.’
But is it OK, he asked himself as, hurrying, he went out to the yard to find his car. Is it OK? Why do I feel it isn’t?
The fog, sweeping in from the sea once more, made the drive out to Frogs Lane appallingly slow. Leaning forward over the wheel, eyes red with staring at the scarcely penetrable blanket in front of him, he cursed and swore. At times he could go no faster than a five-mile-an-hour crawl, and even when the fog seemed to lighten he could scarcely double that speed.
But at last he reached the cottage.
Dark. Not a light coming from the window beside the door. Not, as he felt his way up the path, even a chink of light from under the door.
Snickering with anxiety, he felt for the tinny goblin knocker and tap-tap-tapped a long tattoo with it. No answer.
Then the slightest of movements of the door under the feeble impact of the trumpery knocker alerted him. He put his hand flat on the door’s surface and gently pushed. It swung open in front of him.
No one at home, and the door left unlocked? What on earth …?
He reached
around for a light switch, found it. The narrow entrance way told him nothing more. He pushed open the sitting-room door, already just ajar, and found the light switch in there.
The room seeming just as he had seen it when he was last at the cottage. When, he thought with a pang of sharp self-questioning, Vicky had so furiously accused him of ruining Conor by indulging him. The chintz-covered armchairs loomed hard against each other as before. The mantelpiece of bulky hacked-out stone stood over the little electric fire, as before, except that no orange glow was coming from its heater wires. The telephone, which he instinctively glanced at on the gateleg table, thinking how it must have rung and rung in the empty room when he had called and called again, was just where it had been before.
With, beside it, the spiral-bound message pad, fresh page uppermost. He strode across to see - he hardly knew why - what was written on it.
Yes. In Conor’s unmistakable handwriting, using a ballpoint plainly on the edge of running out, just four words.
Mum. Sorry I can’t
And then, to judge by a swath of furious, deep-cut inkless scratches on the paper, his ballpoint had gone totally dry.
Chapter Fifteen
He stood staring down at the table, bare of everything but the old, round-dial, faded black telephone and the message pad beside it, with those four scrawled words and those trenches of infuriated marks where the ballpoint had finally given out.
What did they mean those words in Conor’s unmistakable writing, with all the emotion the scrawlingness of them showed? Mum. Sorry I can’t.
Can’t what? Can’t find a pen that works? Only that? But no, even if Conor had lapsed into one of his childhood rages when his ballpoint stopped functioning, the wild energy with which the four words that had got on to the page had been written put that out of the question.
His eye fell on the ballpoint itself on the floor under the table, half-hidden by the pattern of the old threadbare carpet. He stooped, picked it up, mechanically tested it on a corner of the pad. Yes, totally out of ink.
In his mind’s eye he saw Conor throwing it down. In some rage, of course. Anyone thwarted in that way might in a moment of exasperation have flung the wretched pen to the floor.
But the message itself, Mum. Sorry I can’t, carried far more weight than that. Can’t what? Can’t stand any more of Superintendent Verney’s hammer-hammer-hammer questioning? Well, yes. If Conor had never been told he was now no longer under suspicion, then the fear of yet another session with Verney, the ever-advancing tank, might well have started him writing such a message.
But then what had he done when the ballpoint ran out? How would that message have gone on? How? Would it…?
Now, if ever, he thought, it’s up to me to get into someone else’s mind. To get into Conor’s mind. My son. If I can only feel enough with him, with him as he sat here— No. No, as he stood here. That message was scrawled by someone standing up at this table, desperately stabbing down what was going through his mind.
He flipped up the page.
Yes, the force Conor had used had left a discernible mark on the sheet below. He had never been sitting sensibly down to tell his mother he was going out to meet friends, or to give her some similar everyday message. No, he had been in a desperate state. When the ballpoint gave out he had plainly abandoned any attempt to write whatever it was he wanted to say.
And was the rest of that ferocious message going to be - the terrible idea had been there all along, to be fought away - I can’t go on any longer. I am going to end it all. Sorry, sorry, sorry?
Something like that? And if so … Oh, God.
He whirled away from the table, strode to the door, flung open the kitchen door opposite, groped for the light, found it. As deserted as the sitting room on the other side. No fifteen-year-old boy lying on the floor with his head in the gas oven.
A door at the far end of the hall. Yanked open in its turn. The dark and fog. A bricked backyard and, only just to be made out, the garden beyond.
Almost hopeless to search there. Leave it for now.
Up the stairs. The pinched landing and four doors to choose from. First, bathroom. Empty, a wretched rust-stained tub, a basin needing cleaning, towels draped over a couple of rails.
The door next to it. The loo. Tiny, and bare.
A touch of relief. Often the lavatory the place a suicide chooses. Past experience. But nothing here to hang oneself from.
The next door. Their bedroom. That bed she had boasted about-And Mike was on top of me-still unmade even this late in the day. Vicky had been a better housewife once. But never mind what this room said. What would the last door say, Conor’s door?
His hand on the knob, he could not help standing there. Feeling, yes, his every limb fixed in stone.
But it was for a moment only. Then a twist of the knob, the door swept violently open.
And nothing.
No body hanging, dangling from some beam or hook. No Conor lying on the bed, face drained of all blood, whatever pills he had found having done their work.
He staggered into the room, and, scarcely realizing what he was doing, collapsed on to that same empty bed and sat, a slumped heap. Relief washing and washing through his mind.
But in a minute grim thoughts began to scurry back and forth once more.
All right, Conor hasn’t taken his life here in this house. But did he go somewhere else? Out into that dark garden? Is there anywhere there where he could have hanged himself? Some tree? God knows.
Or can it be he’s just run away? From the prospect of further questioning? Or perhaps because he’s been keeping the names of his friends from Verney? Belinda? Alec Gaffney? Someone else? Possibly, though it was unlikely, no more than relatively innocent buyers of a few Ecstasy tablets? And now had he suddenly doubted his ability to resist the pressure any longer?
But— But, if it is the worst, the very worst, and he has killed himself, who is to blame? In this very house, just two days ago, my wife, my almost ex-wife, Conor’s own mother, told me she believed he had killed Professor Unwala because whenever he had done something wrong I had always seen why, always known how he felt, always found an excuse for him.
Apart from the fact that she probably never really thought Conor was a murderer, was she right? I persuaded myself soon enough afterwards that she was wrong. Or almost persuaded myself. I told myself I had been a good father. And I have been. I have.
But now …? Now, if this is what Conor has done, if he has killed himself, how can I go on believing I brought him up well, made him a strong, confident personality? How do I now answer Vicky’s charge?
Guilty.
Yes, now, looking back at all I did as a father, more, looking back on all I have ever done since I was a boy like Conor at Harrison, I must force myself to admit that I have all my life been too tolerant. That I have hugged to myself too often that one piece I remember from hated French. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.
Because it’s wrong. All right, comprendre, understand everything, or as much as you possibly can. But don’t then go on to pardon everything. Yes, whoever said that in France - whenever it was - did get it wrong. Though, in fact, didn’t old Pasdore use to say it wasn’t a proper quotation at all, that people had got hold of whatever it was originally and had softened it down?
So, admit to myself now I have often failed to do the hard thing. Not always, but frequently enough. And I failed because I so easily saw how and why someone - Conor, Vicky, a friend or acquaintance, a criminal I have had to deal with - had done whatever it was they had done, and I had pardoned them. Pardoned Conor when I should have checked him. Checked him hard when one of those rages of his swamped him. I should have shaken him, bellowed at him, brought him to his senses, told him that that was not the way to behave. Never the way to behave.
And would he have learnt the lesson? He might have done. The chances are, considering the way he seems naturally to behave decently, he would have accepted the rebuke. And even if he
hadn’t, I should still have tried to pull him up. Sharp and hard. I should have corrected him. Not just understood him.
So now - he rose heavy with weariness to his feet - the garden and what I may find there.
But is there a flashlight anywhere in this damn house? I’ll need one. God knows, in the dark and with the fog still lying heavy - I can smell it, the sea tang, even in here - it will be hard enough to see anything. To find anything. But, flashlight or no flashlight, I’ve got to go and look.
To come upon his dangling body? Please God, no. Please God, no. But if he’s there I must find him.
He tumbled down the stairs, jerked open the door of the sitting room. Flashlight. Flashlight. Where would they keep it? At home it was always in the coat-stand drawer. They didn’t have one here. No room. But would Vicky have put one in some similar place? Or Conor?
I could see Conor doing that in the same way as he carried on with the message-pad idea we had at home.
The message pad. Something I half-noticed about it. When - was it? - I flipped up the page to see the impression left by those ballpoint scratches. Something that meant something to …
He darted across to the table, lifted again the page on the spiral-topped pad.
And, yes.
Yes, this is what it was I saw. Saw without seeing. Under the wire spiral, this thin strip of torn paper. Someone had ripped out a sheet. The sheet after the one Conor began his message on.
Yes, almost for a cert he found something else to write with after all, and, yes, continued his message on a new sheet. Of course, those impressions from his scratch marks were in fact too faint, lighter than they should have been. The marks from the empty ballpoint had gone right through the sheet later torn out and on to the next one.
Torn out. But that must mean Vicky got that message, the full message. And she pulled the sheet out of the pad, in her usual way.
And does that mean that whatever Conor wrote just told Vicky he was going to do something else, something less, than hang himself? And when she read that, had she gone off to look for him? It could be. Surely it must be.
The Soft Detective Page 14
