by William Paul
‘David Fyfe as I live and breathe,’ she said.
‘Which is more than your friends do,’ he replied, gesturing with a flick of his head.
Fyfe had not set out from police headquarters with the intention of going to Gus Barrie’s. He had left a note on his door saying he had gone to eat and taken the car to collect Jill and Number Five from Catriona’s. There he had drunk coffee from a Dennis the Menace mug and watched himself on television and tried to shake the niggling thought that Gus Barrie was the key to the slaughter going on in the city. So, reunited with his dogs, he decided to take a drive past the Barrie house because it wasn’t that far and he had been there before to question Gus on a drug death case that was destined to go no further. At one point it had been believed there was enough evidence to charge him but Barrie had bluffed it out, never needing to consult the smart-alec lawyer hovering in the background all the time. A team of accountants could not pick holes in his money management system. In the end the evidence was far too circumstantial and no self-respecting fiscal would take it to court. Case closed.
The gates of Barrie’s house were open. If they had been closed Fyfe would have turned round. Instead he drove in. Jill sat beside him on the front seat, staring ahead. He knew he was breaking all the rules, but he could not stop himself. He was acutely aware of the risk he was taking by coming alone. Who did he think he was? What did he think he was playing at? If Barrie was involved in the murders, an unarmed policeman with no back-up and no clear conception of what he was doing would hardly pose insurmountable problems. It would be better to forget this rash impulse, better to return to headquarters and share the information about the Transit van. Then he could join the snatch squad and descend on the house, sirens wailing.
The curve of the driveway disappeared into the tall, straight trees that lined each side. He would just look, he told himself. He would check the house from the outside. He would do no more than that.
A corner of the house came into view and then, as he rounded the bend, the whole frontage. The walls were floodlit. Glass gaped black to the touch of the light. Barrie’s Jaguar was at an angle across the entrance, its wheels on full lock showing the fatness of the tyres and the scar lines of the tread.
Fyfe got out of his car. The dogs watched him go. Wood pigeons cooed above him. One took off, making him flinch as its wings beat their way through a curtain of thin branches. His heart was pounding furiously; not from fear but from the prospect of gross embarrassment if he was caught. How could he explain that he had come alone because unknown forces had summoned him to this spot? He had come because of the death of a suicidal old man, the out-of-character decision of a homosexual judge, and an encounter with a computer screen. That was the real reason he was outside the front door of a ruthless criminal. As a career move it was rather regressive. All that could be said for it was that his behaviour might help him get early retirement on health grounds.
If the door was locked, he told himself, he would turn round and leave. It was open. It allowed him to pass into the darkened hallway. As he entered, concealed lights at head height switched themselves on to illuminate the space he was in. There was no one to be seen, no sound to be heard. Fyfe straightened up, deciding to brazen it out and flash the warrant card as protection. He would worry about the propriety of it later. He set off down the dim hallway. The lights followed alongside, always keeping just a little in front.
He came to the brightly lit swimming pool area and marched straight in. A bear hug of apprehension enveloped his chest. It took him several seconds to work out that the water-thrown shadows were glittering and sparkling on piles of broken glass strewn all over the ground. He was shocked by his calmness in the presence of the death and destruction. He was unsurprised to see Angela dancing nervously at the edge of the swimming pool. It would all make perfect sense. That was why he had come. To help it make sense.
‘It looks like you’ve had quite a party,’ he said.
‘Will it do any good to tell you none of this has anything to do with me? I didn’t kill anyone. Can you believe it?’
‘Probably. You and I were always honest with each other. Remember?’
‘Oh yes. I remember.’
She launched into an explanation of events while he watched the bodies floating in the pool. One had its arms spread wide and the jacket flapped back like the cloak of a cartoon superhero. It was Barrie. Beyond it another body was lying on its side, its arms wrapped loosely round its knees. Its eyes were wide open. He recognised John Adamson. That’s it then, he thought. Case closed.
‘It was Gus that caused this,’ Angela explained. ‘He got me across from Spain with the promise that he would be recovering Mike’s money. He was fixated on me, desperate for me to marry him. I came over because I was curious. I always knew the money was destroyed.’
‘So did I,’ Fyfe agreed.
‘But Gus said it had been hidden away all this time and if I came over he would make Adamson get it for me. Just for me.’
Everything had flowed from Gus Barrie trying to buy Angela’s affection by emulating his little brother. Father Quinn’s downfall had been the calling in of debts to achieve the necessary liquidity. Father Byrne must have known about Adamson and the money and tried to get in on the act. The whole episode was shot through with deception but it all made sense.
Angela was waving at the sacks of money on the snooker table. Fyfe had not appreciated what it was before.
‘They paraded Adamson in front of me,’ she said. ‘They were going to kill him but he fought back and they all ended up dead. All of them. I couldn’t do anything. Poor Gus. He thought he was untouchable.’
Angela looked round, expecting more policemen to come rushing in. She seemed resigned to her fate. Fyfe had no crisis of conscience about rescuing her. It seemed the natural thing to do.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘We can be out of here before the police arrive.’
‘But you are the police, Dave.’
‘I’m on a break. Do you want me to help you or not?’
‘Are you alone?’ She frowned in bewilderment.
‘I work better that way.’
‘You mean there are no other policemen outside?’
‘Not a one. You and I are the only living souls here. Angela, this is your lucky day.’
‘I always did like you, Dave.’
‘It was mutual.’
They agreed she should get her clothes, that she should leave no trace of herself in the house. She would vanish into thin air. While she was up in the bedroom Fyfe tiptoed through the broken glass to stare in astonishment at the sacks of money.
49
Angela waited for Fyfe to say something in the car but he didn’t. She wanted to know where he was taking her. She wanted to know why he was doing it. She wanted to know what he was going to do with the money. Most of all she wanted to know what he was going to do with the money. But he kept his eyes on the road, never looking at her, and there was a strangely ambivalent expression on his face, a mixture of surprise and amusement.
He had come up to the bedroom to help her with her heavy cases and she had fallen against him, making sure he appreciated the contact of their bodies. Her hands were on his shoulders, so close to him she could feel her warm breath deflected back against her own face. He appreciated it. His hands stroked the soft silver and black fur of her coat when he grabbed her waist to steady her. In the shifting bubble of light, she followed him along the corridors and down the stairs to the outside. The boot was stuffed with the sacks of money. Angela’s cases had to go on the back seat, pushing the dog called Number Five into a corner. Jill lay at Angela’s feet as they went down the driveway.
Instinctively, it felt right. Fyfe was no ordinary policeman who saw things in black and white, good and evil. More and more of their pillow talks came back to her. Even after nine years, she trusted Fyfe to look after her. Don’t ask why. Act dumb and shy. Men liked her that way. There was no point in hiding, no point i
n resisting. Abject surrender was the only course left to her. She had been truthful with him up to a point. He hadn’t seen her kick Adamson into the swimming pool and she hadn’t told him, but she hadn’t lied outright. If Fyfe had realised, things might be totally different. Her luck was holding.
Angela had thrown herself on his mercy and would soon know what she could get away with. She was good at that. She stroked Jill’s head to show whose side she was on.
‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ she asked finally, intimidated by the silence.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re not really dressed for a fast getaway,’ he said. ‘You hadn’t planned anything.’
Angela felt warm air begin to swirl about her bare legs. She pulled the fur coat more closely around her and it rode up over her thighs. The heat in the car crept up and over, making her drowsy. She had travelled a great distance. She was suddenly exhausted. She hardly noticed the streets they drove through, or the people they passed. When Fyfe stopped outside a row of terraced houses and stopped the engine she heard the rain pattering steadily on the car roof.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘A safe place.’
‘Who lives here?’
‘Nobody. That’s what makes it safe.’
They got out of the car and hurried to the door. The dogs scampered after them. Angela stood so close to Fyfe he could not move his arm freely to turn the key. The lock was awkward. Always had been. He had never acquired the knack of working it first time.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Angela said, grabbing at his arm when he held back on the threshold.
‘I’m going to get your cases. Sorry about the mess inside, by the way. I’ve been meaning to decorate.’
The flat was almost but not quite unfurnished. Big rooms, high ceilings, cobwebs in the corners. In the living-room there were two armchairs. In the back bedroom there was a bed, a rocking chair and a gas fire that lit first time with a deep-throated whoomp. The wallpaper had been torn and scribbled on. Fyfe brought in the cases and dumped them on the bed. The dogs sniffed round the skirting boards.
‘The last tenants did a moonlight flit,’ he said. ‘I’m going to buy you a ticket for the late sleeper. You’ll be safe once you’re out of the city.’
‘How do I know you’ll come back?’ she asked.
‘You can hold my dogs hostage. I have to go back to the office though. I’ll be a couple of hours.’
Angela watched him drive away with her inheritance in the boot. There was nothing she could do to stop him.
50
Fyfe stopped at a hole-in-the-wall money machine. He was about to withdraw enough cash to buy a sleeper ticket to London when he remembered the sacks of money in the boot. He cancelled the transaction and helped himself to a handful of notes. He drove down the ramp into Waverley Station and parked diagonally nose-in to the kerb round from the ticket office. A yellow cleaning machine with a whining electric motor whirling brushes on both sides swept accumulated debris into a central gap at the front. The driver mounted on top of it was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a peaked cap pushed right to the back of his head. He picked a cigarette end from his mouth and flicked it on to the ground ahead so he could run over it and clean it up. Fyfe pulled up his collar like a private eye in a melodrama and went to buy a first class ticket in the name of Mrs Smith. The train was due to leave in four hours.
Back in the car Fyfe had to grip the steering wheel tightly to stop his hands shaking. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end when he thought about the bundles of banknotes behind him. What was he doing? He had helped a prime murder suspect to escape from the scene of the crime. Not only that, but he had helped her get away with more than one million pounds in stolen money. What had possessed him to act so outlandishly? On first contact with Angela he had been so calm and collected, so sure of himself. Now he was a nervous wreck, horrified by what he had done but also, in a curiously detached way, proud of himself. Angela was no murderer. The money wasn’t stolen. He was living in a cocoon of self-absorption, like the lights that followed moving bodies in Barrie’s house of the dead. No one was moving there now, Fyfe thought. It was all silence and darkness.
He drove up the one-way ramp out of the station. There were drunks staggering about on the streets and hanging on to lampposts as though the city had been struck by an earthquake. The Scott Monument soared spectacularly above the trees of Princes Street Gardens. Moonlight glowed between its arches and flying buttresses like something out of a science fiction tale.
He had to return to headquarters. He had to show face. It wouldn’t be an alibi but it was the sensible thing to do. His mind was operating independently, working out in best police officer fashion what he could do to minimise the chances of being caught. There was no way back. He couldn’t turn Angela in or she would tell the whole story. How could he explain? Why would anyone install a woman in an empty flat and then buy a train ticket to London for her if he didn’t intend to see her escape? Angela knew it too. She was dependent on him. He was dependent on her. They shared the new secret.
He parked his car and walked into the busy incident room, straight through to his office without hesitating. No one challenged him. No one asked him where he’d been for the previous two hours. No one seemed to have missed him.
Fyfe sat down and the back of the chair bounced off the wall. A new pile of interview reports had grown in the in-tray. He called up the Sleeping Dogs program and typed in the registration numbers again. Windfall Construction’s name appeared on the screen. He lifted the phone and dialled Mark Munro’s extension. It answered on the second ring. Fyfe told him about the old witch and the Windfall van being in the street outside the redhead’s flat and its link to Gus Barrie.
‘That’s hard enough in my book,’ Munro said. ‘Worth a visit. What do you think?’
‘It’s a big company. A lot of vans. There could be a million reasons.’
‘We can ask Gus to think of a few. It’s time we rattled a few cages. How about you and me?’
‘Tomorrow morning?’
‘Seven. Just to keep Gus on his toes.’
‘See you here at six thirty.’
‘Okay, Dave.’
‘I’m going to take this pile of reports home with me and sift through them to see if there’s anything we need to know.’
‘Right. See you tomorrow. Bright and early.’
‘It will be a good start to the day. Trust me, Mark. I’ve got a good feeling on this one. We’re on the right track.’
Fyfe held the interview reports under his arm and walked out, passing conversational remarks about the weather and what a long day it had been on the inquiry. He opened the boot of his car and slid the reports down the side of the bulging money sacks. No point in bothering to read them, he thought, slamming the lid.
Fyfe knew he was acting recklessly but he didn’t care. Fatalism surrounded him like a winding sheet. The illicit thrill of joining the criminal class was nothing more than a hollow feeling in his stomach and maybe that was simple hunger because he had eaten hardly anything that day. He reasoned that if Sylvia could marry a queer judge to buck the system, why shouldn’t he help a blameless victim of circumstance to do the same? Angela had done nothing wrong.
The real criminals were out of the game. Tomorrow would be a short day. Case closed before breakfast. Guaranteed. How was that for co-ordination?
51
Angela hid by the side of the window in the near-empty living-room and watched Fyfe’s car stop outside the flat. He went straight to the boot and lifted out two of the sacks, one in each hand. Bundles of banknotes spilled from the neck of one and fell on to the road. She stepped in front of the window, making an involuntary grab at the notes through the glass. Fyfe crouched down and stuffed them back in with the rest. He paused to let a pedestrian pass before carrying the sacks over the pavement and up the steps to the door. Angela heard the key scraping in the lock. She saw
the third sack lying in the open boot with the lid rocking in the wind. A group of three people passed by without a backward glance. ‘He’s gone mad,’ she said. ‘He’ll have us both caught.’
She hurried through to where he was still trying to work the tricky lock and opened the door. He smiled, threw in one sack and kicked the other after it over the floor. Then he went to collect the other one.
Angela waited, staying back from the door. Since he had left her she had been prowling anxiously about the flat, her mood swinging erratically between resignation and resentment. Jill and Number Five followed her around for a while but quickly got bored and curled up in front of the fire in the stiflingly warm bedroom to sleep. She kept her fur coat on and moved around constantly in the chill air outside the bedroom worrying that Fyfe would turn her in. There was nothing she could do to stop him. He was the master of the instance. She was completely at his mercy.
She had mostly stood by the window and waited for him to return, remembering the torrid, clandestine affair that had developed between them nine years before. They had slept together for the first time on the morning of Mike’s funeral. How had it happened? He was going on duty that afternoon and had come round early. She had given him a key. She had been startled to wake to see him standing over her. But then it seemed so natural that he should climb into the bed beside her and she could close her eyes and imagine he was Mike. And again, when Fyfe returned after midnight and she was sitting up waiting for him in her funereal black dress. There had been no arrangement. She willed him to appear. She remembered that they had never said much to each other, only inconsequential conversations among the slippery physical stuff. She had never understood how or why it had happened. But when it ended it seemed natural too. She willed him out of her life. Fyfe had served his purpose at the time. Now he was serving another purpose. He was being Mike again for her, finally delivering the reward promised so long ago.
