A Talent For Destruction

by Sheila Radley

  He watched her in the ensuing silence, his eyes as green and hard as little apples. Her own red-rimmed eyes blinked, but when she spoke again her voice had regained all the firmness and authority of a parson’s wife with sixteen years’experience of dealing with disaffected parishioners.

  ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but I have nothing more to say.’

  Baulked, but determined to use every tactic he knew, Quantrill sent her out to wait with a policewoman in another office, and had the Rector brought in.

  ‘Now, Mr Ainger,’ he said, standing formidably behind his desk. ‘I’ve talked to your wife and she has given me her version of the circumstances surrounding Athol Garrity’s death. Now I want to hear, in your own words, exactly what happened.’

  For a moment, the Rector’s handsome face sagged. He glanced doubtfully, anxiously, towards the door that led into the corridor down which he had glimpsed his wife being escorted. He swallowed nervously, and then his face began to clear.

  ‘I have nothing to say,’ he said.

  Quantrill glared at him, his frustration mounting. He had put so much conviction into his hypothetical account of Athol Garrity’s death that he had almost persuaded himself that he knew it to be true. Now he remembered, with reluctance, that in fact he knew nothing; not even that a crime had been committed.

  Well, he’d gone too far to draw back. Might as well go all the way. If the Aingers were innocent, they had behaved remarkably suspiciously, and he had almost sufficient justification for the question he was about to put. Even if it led to a complaint from Ainger to the Chief Constable, he intended to put it.

  ‘Mr Ainger,’ he said slowly, ‘a young man you knew, a man you have entertained at the Rectory, has died in unexplained circumstances, and the body has been found on your land. You’ve already told me something about him, and you’ve been frank enough to tell me that you disliked him, but my information suggests that you know more than you’ve said. I am going to put a question to you and I expect you, as a man of God, to answer me fully and truthfully. Did you have any part in, or are you in any way an accessary to, Athol James Garrity’s death?’

  The Rector’s eyes were a vivid, unfocused blue. He hesitated for a moment, and then said loudly and clearly, ‘I can tell you nothing more.’

  ‘County operations room, Inspector Tait here.’

  ‘Quantrill, Breckham. The inquest’s over: verdict open, file closed. I tried to get an admission from the Aingers but they wriggled out of it.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Didn’t you –?’

  ‘Don’t let’s hold another inquest. I went as far as I could – a lot further than I should have done, considering we’ve no evidence of a crime – but they were obviously expecting something of the sort and they came prepared. I spoke to them together and separately, but I got nowhere.’

  ‘I knew that I should have been there.’

  ‘What the hell do you think you could have done that I didn’t? They’re not thick, they’re an intelligent couple who knew why they’d been sent for and had planned exactly what they were going to say. But I’m not going to leave it at that. They know now that I’m suspicious of them, and I’m going to try to rattle them by letting them see that they’re being watched. And for a start, I’m going to watch the Reverend Robin bury what’s left of Athol Garrity. Monday morning, nine-thirty at the town cemetery. If you’re not on duty, do you want to come?’

  ‘Now you ask me,’ complained Inspector Tait.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ snapped Chief Inspector Quantrill, and slammed down the receiver.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Sunday night, winter returned briefly to East Anglia. A cold northerly airstream lowered the temperature sharply. Freezing fog gathered, shrouding every hedge and tree so closely that when it dispersed in the early hours it left clinging deposits of rime.

  By nine-fifteen on Monday morning, with the low sun shining from a cloudless sky, the landscape was a dazzling white. Hoar frost filigreed every twig and frond, making Breckham Market cemetery seem, for the space of a hour or two, ethereal.

  Quantrill chose to arrive early, driving along the infelicitously named Cemetery Road with the sun visor down to keep some of the blinding brightness out of his eyes. The road was semi-rural, used only by local traffic, and the Chief Inspector was able to park close to the cemetery gates, immediately behind the Rector’s Morris 1300. His companion, Detective Constable Ian Wigby, got out and went to talk to a cub reporter from the local newspaper, who was loitering for the purpose of extracting as much lineage as possible from his Skeleton in Parson’s Close: Mystery Man from Down Under story. Quantrill was about to walk through the gates when he saw that Gillian Ainger’s father, Henry Bowers, was huddled in the back of the Rectory car.

  It was persistence rather than kindness that prompted Quantrill to speak to the old man. Henry Bowers might be decrepit but he was not gaga, and according to Martin Tait he had been lively enough the previous summer. There was a chance that he might be able to remember something useful about the Australian, and Quantrill was determined to cover every possibility before he finally admitted defeat.

  He opened the driver’s door and put his head inside the car. ‘Morning, Henry.’

  The old man was sitting slack as a turtle inside the gaping neck of his heavy overcoat, staring vacantly into space and sucking a peppermint. When Quantrill addressed him, his body jerked with surprise and his mouth fell open.

  ‘Sorry,’ apologized the Chief Inspector. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. Remember me – Doug Quantrill? We had a drink together at the Boot a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh ar?’ mumbled Henry Bowers uneasily. He peered up through the bristle of his eyebrows, wiped his damp mouth and shifted his peppermint into the opposite cheek. ‘I know, you’re the copper. Bought me a nice drop o’whisky … but I didn’t talk, did I? Didn’t let the family down.’

  ‘No, you didn’t let them down,’ Quantrill agreed. He sat himself behind the wheel and closed the door against the cold, turning sideways to talk to the old man. ‘You’re up and about early today.’

  Henry Bowers nodded. ‘Got to go to the health centre this morning,’ he said importantly. ‘Got to be fitted for a truss. Our Gillian’s going to take me as soon as they’ve finished the funeral.’

  ‘Is your daughter here?’ said Quantrill, surprised.

  ‘Ar. They’re burying the Aussie, and he’s got no relations over here so they thought they’d both go. Looks better that way. Looks as though they cared.’

  ‘And do they?’

  The old man fumbled about in his pocket and produced a pack of peppermints. His shaky fingers had difficulty in tearing the wrapping, and Quantrill had to restrain himself from taking over. ‘Do they care about the Australian’s death?’ he persisted.

  ‘Not them. Why should they? Bloody good riddance, if you ask me. Want a peppermint?’

  ‘Not just now, thanks. Look, Henry, I need to know how that man died.’

  ‘That’s no secret, now the coroner’s sat on him. All that fizzy canned beer he drank … probably choked hisself to death. That’s what it said in the Daily Press.’ He put another mint, with a piece of wrapper still adhering to it, into his mouth.

  ‘Yes, but I want to know what he was doing just before he died. Was he by any chance at the Rectory?’

  Henry Bowers’s watery eyes were suddenly shrewd. ‘Didn’t think you knew for sure when he did die. Not according to the paper.’

  ‘We don’t. I’m talking about the day when he was last seen, July the 29th last year.’

  ‘Oh ar. Well, the Aussie wouldn’t have been at the Rectory then, because he‘d told him to keep away, weeks before.’

  ‘The Rector had told him?’

  ‘Ar. They’d had a row – about brass-rubbing, or something o’ the sort. Anyway, the Aussie didn’t show his face after that. Bloody good job, too. Couldn’t stand the feller. D’y know what he had the nerve to call me? Grandad! Bloody Aussie …’ He s
ucked vigorously at his peppermint, looked surprised, slowly pushed out his tongue from between his dark lips, and picked off a fragment of wet wrapping-paper with the tough nails of his thumb and forefinger.

  Quantrill stared at him thoughtfully. ‘And what about you, Henry? Do you know anything about Athol Garrity’s death?’

  ‘I could ha’told you about that right from the start. Too much canned beer, that was his trouble. I told him it’d rot his guts.’ The old man brightened, and pointed over Quantrill’s shoulder at the approaching hearse. ‘Here he comes! They’ve taken long enough to get him buried, eh? It’s weeks since they found him.’

  ‘He came to no harm while he waited,’ said Quantrill drily. He opened the car door. The conversation, like most of the others he’d had concerning the Australian, had been tantalizingly inconclusive. ‘All right, then, Henry,’ he said. ‘Mind what you get up to.’

  ‘Better take a peppermint,’ suggested the old man. ‘It’s always cold enough to perish you in that cemetery.’

  Quantrill helped himself from the proffered pack. Henry Bowers was looking not at him but at the hearse as it turned in through the gates. He had on his face a look of sly glee that the Chief Inspector had once or twice before noticed on old people who watched their juniors being buried; presumably a manifestation of triumph at the thought that they had outlived someone younger and stronger. Such childishness was one of the aspects of ageing that Quantrill, at forty-seven, found particularly unattractive. He had long ago decided that he himself would prefer not to live much beyond seventy, although he had sufficient imagination to concede that he might, once he passed sixty, begin revising his idea of what constituted a ripe old age.

  He pocketed the peppermint, nodded to Henry Bowers, shut the car door behind him and walked through the cemetery gates. The hearse was travelling decorously up the gravelled centre path, and the Chief Inspector took a short cut over the frosted grass, between two rows of tall white marble Victorian headstones, to reach the area that was in current use.

  There were more people present than he had anticipated. Martin Tait had come, and was standing with DC Wigby a short distance from the newly dug grave. The verger of St Botolph’s, Edgar Blore, stood in his black cassock on the far side of the grave, with the newspaper reporter, and the man who lived in the lodge at the cemetery gates and trebled as the town’s park-keeper, gardener, and grave-digger.

  The Reverend Robin Ainger, looking like a ’30s film star in the full-length black winter cloak that he wore over his surplice, was waiting beside the path for the coffin to be removed from the hearse. At the graveside, where the relatives would normally stand, were Gillian Ainger and a man of about fifty who looked, with his neatly brushed greying hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and tailored overcoat, like a successful professional adviser.

  ‘Morning, Martin,’ Quantrill said as he joined the other policemen. ‘Does either of you know the man with Mrs Ainger?’

  ‘No,’ said Wigby, ‘but I thought we ought to, so I asked the verger. His name’s Reynolds. Don’t know his occupation, but he lives somewhere near Yarchester. He’s been over here on Sundays quite often during the past six months – he goes to Evensong with Mrs Ainger.’

  ‘He’s either a very good friend,’ said Tait, ‘or a solicitor. I don’t see what he’s doing out here so early on a Monday morning otherwise.’

  The three policemen looked across the intervening low modern headstones at Gillian Ainger and her companion, and were interested to see that she was conscious of their presence. She turned her head to say something urgent to Reynolds, and then moved her position so that she was partly masked from their view by the frost-candied branches of a rose-bush. But they could see enough to observe Reynolds stepping closer to her, and putting a hand under her elbow.

  Wigby slapped his sheepskin-gloved hands together. ‘Either a very friendly solicitor, or a very solicitous friend,’ he suggested breezily. Tait, the shorter man, contrived to look down his nose at him.

  ‘I see what you mean, sir,’ he said to Quantrill. ‘Gillian certainly seems worried about us.’

  ‘I’d give a lot to know why,’ said the Chief Inspector. He reconsidered his offer in the light of his bank balance, and made a hasty amendment. ‘At least, I’d be prepared to make a small donation to the church restoration fund out of my own pocket.’ He took off his hat and nudged Ian Wigby to do the same; with nothing in the coffin but bones, and no mourning relatives to consider, the detective constable had temporarily forgotten the proprieties.

  Preceded by the Rector, the bearers carried the coffin towards the grave. The burial expenses of the stranger were having to be met by the local ratepayers, and so the ceremony was being performed as cheaply as possible. Quantrill approved of it that way, not only in the interests of economy but because it was simple and traditional. The undertaker was a small Breckham builder and joiner, who made coffins as an extension of his trade. He wore the same black suit that he had worn at funerals for the past thirty years, and his hearse was a vintage Daimler; the bearers were his workmen, taken off their regular work for an hour to put on suits and shoulder the coffin.

  ‘At least he’s nice and light,’ muttered Ian Wigby irreverently, as Athol Garrity’s scant remains were lowered easily into the grave.

  The Reverend Robin Ainger, hearing the remark on the still frosty air, hesitated in the middle of Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live. He looked up, and for the first time noticed the stolid row of policemen watching him. He resumed almost immediately, but his recital was mechanical; he glanced anxiously at his wife while he repeated the next two verses, then faltered over Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts. All three policemen stared at him, willing him to crack. But his wife was looking at him too, willing him to go on, and he seemed to pull himself together. The verger stepped forward to cast earth on the coffin, and Ainger finished the committal service in a firm voice and record time, with his breath going up like smoke in the cold air.

  As soon as he decently could, Quantrill clapped his hat back on his head and put Henry Bowers’s peppermint into his mouth. As the old man had said, the cemetery was perishingly cold. He watched Robin Ainger and the man called Reynolds walk away briskly, one on either side of Gillian, their feet crunching on the whitened grass. The gravedigger moved in immediately to complete his work, and frozen lumps of earth began to thud down on the coffin.

  ‘Well, what did you make of it, Martin?’ asked Quantrill as he began to move towards the gate. But Inspector Tait lingered, studying a new headstone that had caught his eye.

  ‘Michael Dade,’ Tait said. ‘Wasn’t he the church organist? I met him last summer, and he died in October … that would have been just after I got my promotion and moved to Yarchester. Thirty-one when he died … what was it, an accident?’

  ‘Suicide,’ said DC Wigby. ‘He was disappointed in love, so he put a plastic bag over his head.’

  ‘I met him just once, at the Rectory,’ said Tait. ‘A small dark nervy man, with a big nose and a bad stammer.’

  ‘That was him,’ said Wigby. He corrected Tait with relish: ‘Deputy organist at the church, though. I did the enquiry into his death – you won’t remember it, Mr Quantrill, you were on leave at the time. He got it into his head that some foreign girl had promised to marry him, but then she went off. He kept hoping that she’d come back, or at least write to him, but she didn’t. He finally gave up, wrote a note telling his widowed mother to look after herself, put the bag over his head and died of asphyxia. It was a perfectly straightforward case of suicide.’

  ‘Who was the girl?’ asked Tait.

  ‘Ah, that I didn’t find out. According to his mother she was a student at Yarchester. Not that his poor old Mum had ever set eyes on her, because Michael didn’t take her home. And he had no real friends, so he didn’t confide in anyone.’

  ‘But what was the girl’s name?’ said Tait impatiently.

  ‘His Mum’s deaf, and didn’t ever cat
ch it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the love affair was mostly in Michael’s imagination. He was a pathetic little sod, still living at home, still doing the same clerical job he’d had ever since he left school, too shy and too much of a stammerer to attract girls.’

  ‘But did you say that this girl was a foreign student at Yarchester?’ asked Quantrill. He turned to Tait. ‘I suppose it couldn’t have been –?’

  ‘I think it was,’ said Tait, his voice tight and eager. ‘He was at the Rectory when I met Janey Rolph. He was obviously besotted by her, hanging about hoping for a look or a kind word. Not that she seemed to give him any encouragement, but as Wigby says it could have been all in his mind. It certainly fits as far as timing is concerned. I know that Janey was due to leave this country at the end of July. Michael Dade killed himself in October. That means he spent three months waiting and hoping to hear from her before he gave up. Yes, it fits.’

  ‘Holy cow,’ said the Chief Inspector slowly, though without attempting his son’s impression of an Australian accent. ‘So one young man who visited the Rectory last year has died in unexplained circumstances, another has committed suicide. The parson and his wife are feeling and acting guilty, their friend Reynolds is obviously supporting them, Gillian’s father is being as obstructive as they are – and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it because we’ve no idea what really happened. What in heaven’s name did go on at that Rectory last summer?’

  Part 2 – last summer

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gillian Ainger had been married for nearly sixteen years, and during the whole of that time she had never once thought to ask herself whether her marriage was happy. Over the years she had come to have increasingly frequent private doubts about her role as a parson’s wife, and about the faith she professed, but none at all about her husband. Quite simply, she loved him.

  That he – handsome, strong, clever, much admired – should choose to marry her rather than a prettier, livelier girl was for Gillian a continuing source of wonder. They had met as students at King’s College, London. Robin Ainger, then twenty-three, was completing a post-graduate theological course, and Gillian had just begun her pre-clinical medical training. She was eighteen. She knew herself to be shy and plain, and she couldn’t understand why Robin sought her company in preference to that of the more attractive girls who vied for his attention. Having gone to university with no thought, let alone expectation, of acquiring anything other than her medical qualifications, she was dazzled to find herself, a year later, with a newly ordained parson for a husband.