“I didn’t go as a tourist.”
“As what, then, sir?”
“I used to know someone who lived there. Look, are you ‘
“Jaywick’s where Mr. Considine was found. By the old sea wall, where the chalets fizzle out and the marshes begin. A man out walking his dog came across the body yesterday morning.”
“How long had he been … I mean …”
“We think he was killed late Saturday night. Where were you on Saturday night, incidentally, sir?”
“Here.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Nobody who could corroborate that, is there?”
“No. But there wouldn’t be. I live alone, Inspector.”
“Quite, sir, yes. Take your point.”
“Where was Considine - I mean, was he killed at Jaywick or dumped there afterwards?”
“Why do you ask, sir?”
“I just can’t think of any reason for him to go there.”
“Know him well, then, do you, sir?”
“I wouldn’t say so. It’s just ‘
“We’re more or less certain he was killed in situ. His car was parked back down the road. If you can call it a road. Since you’re familiar with Jaywick you’ll know what I mean.”
“I’m not exactly fam… ‘
“When did you last see Mr. Considine, sir?”
“A week ago.”
“In Clacton?”
“No, Truro.”
“What took you both there?”
“An inquest. We were witnesses.”
“Really?”
“Considine’s stepson was an old friend of mine. He committed suicide in Truro two months ago. You probably read about the case. It got quite a lot of publicity at the time.”
“Nicky Lanyon.” Jordan snapped his fingers. “Of course. Son of Michael Lanyon. I didn’t know Neville Considine was his stepfather.”
“Well, he was.”
“Really?” Jordan frowned. “Been to Clacton since the inquest, have you, sir?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. The day after.”
“To see Mr. Considine?”
“Yes, but he’d ‘
“Gone away?” Jordan flipped out his notebook and consulted it. “A neighbour told us a man was hammering at Mr. Considine’s door in Wharfedale Road late on the night of the twenty-seventh. That you, sir?”
“I wasn’t hammering. I simply ‘
“It was you?”
“Yes.”
‘“A matter of considerable urgency.” That’s what you told the neighbour. You declined to elaborate. Care to do so now?”
“I was … hoping to be able to … obtain a memento of Nicky.”
“Hardly an urgent errand, surely, sir.”
“I suppose not. That was just a … turn of phrase.”
“Not called again since?”
“No. I phoned a couple of times, but.. .” I ventured a smile. “No luck.”
“Really? The neighbour said Mr. Considine came home on Friday. But you didn’t catch him in?”
“It seems not.”
“Think of any reason why Mr. Considine should be in danger?”
“No.”
“Anyone who might wish him harm?”
“No.”
“Or harbour violent feelings against him?”
“No.”
“Sufficient to beat him about the head with a tyre lever and leave him to die in a ditch?”
“I told you. No, I don’t.” Alarm bells were ringing inside my brain, more loudly with every question. “How … do you know it was a tyre lever?”
“Abandoned by the body, sir. The murderer must have dropped it in a panic. You know the kind of tool I mean?”
“Naturally.”
“Being in the car restoration business yourself. Yes, sir, I do see that. No doubt you possess several.”
“Just the one.”
“Not lost in the fire?”
“No. I… retrieved quite a few tools … from the wreckage.”
“A tyre lever among them?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it now?”
“In the garage.”
“Mind if I take a look at it? Just to check it’s still there, I mean.”
“Not at all. Follow me.” We walked slowly out of the house and round to the garage, my thoughts racing ahead as we went. I had no alibi for Saturday night. By setting up a meeting with me, Emma had ensured I wouldn’t have. The anonymous late-night phone call could have been her checking I’d waited in. And she’d had access to the garage when dropping the car off. A very ugly fit-up was beginning to take shape.
“Here we are,” I announced, unlocking the garage door. “I think I can remember where I left it.”
“Let’s hope so, sir.”
I swung the door open, switched on the light and walked down beside the car to the box standing against the wall in the corner. The tools didn’t look to have been disturbed, but, even as I began to sort through them, I knew the tyre lever wasn’t going to be there. It was in a forensic science laboratory in Essex, bagged and tagged, with Considine’s blood and my fingerprints all over it. Emma Moresco had proved herself too clever for both of us.
“Found it, sir?” asked Jordan from the doorway.
“No.” I stood up and turned to face him. “I’m afraid not.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He was going to arrest me. That was the thought clamouring loudest for my attention as I looked at the approaching figure of Detective Inspector Jordan. He was going to arrest me on suspicion of murder and, before the day was out, I’d find myself formally charged with beating Neville Considine to death. The murder weapon belonged to me, I couldn’t prove where I was on the night in question and I’d been seen behaving suspiciously outside Considine’s house. It already sounded like an open and shut case and Jordan was about to close it.
“The tyre lever’s not there?” he said, his expression hardening in the silty light cast by the dusty fluorescent tube above us.
“No.”
“Then where is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you saying you don’t have it?”
“No.” My mind was a tangle. What should I do? Tell him the whole story and hope he believed me? Admit nothing and deny everything?
Neither course seemed likely to serve me well. Emma Moresco sounded like a figment of my imagination even to me. But I knew she was real, and that my only chance was to do whatever she hadn’t anticipated.
“It’s here somewhere. I’m not… the tidiest of people.”
There aren’t that many places to look.” Jordan glanced around at the cobwebbed corners and I realized he too was struggling to catch up with events. He’d come here to tie up a loose end, not to nail the prime suspect. “I’m going to have to insist on seeing it, Mr. Napier.”
“Of course.” I slapped myself on the temple. “I remember now. It’s in the cupboard.”
“What cupboard?”
“There. Under the bench.” I pointed to the workbench running along most of the rear wall of the garage and the double-doored cupboard beneath it. The front bumper of the Stag was resting a few inches from the door handles. “I cleaned up some of the tools over the weekend and put them in there. The tyre lever must be among them. I’ll back the car up and you can have a look for yourself.”
“OK.” He frowned at me. “If you’re sure that’s where it is.”
“I’m positive. Hold on.” I squeezed past him, climbed into the car and started the engine, aware of him watching me and forcing myself to move slowly. Then his attention switched to the cupboard as I eased the car back.
“That’ll do,” he called, raising his hand to signal that the gap was sufficient.
But it was also the signal for me to put my foot down hard on the accelerator. The Stag roared backwards out into the lane and, as I swung it round, I heard the rear wing crunch into a parked car. Then I slammed it in
to drive and took off through the potholes. In the mirror, I saw Jordan run out of the garage and fling himself into the car I’d hit. He was bound to see which way I turned on to the main road. I chose right, towards Reading, narrowly missing a Post Office van in the process. But I didn’t have a big enough lead. Jordan would contact the local police on his radio and pretty soon every squad car in Reading would be on the lookout for me. It was going to be a short chase to nowhere. Unless
I took the first left, checking the mirror to be sure he wasn’t yet in sight and slowed to an almost unbearable thirty miles per hour as I followed the quiet residential road round towards its end. There was an access track, as I remembered, leading under the railway line to the sewage farm, and a footpath beyond that across the fields to the river, where it linked with the towpath. I could walk back into Pangbourne by that route without being visible from the road and catch a train at the station, either into London or up to Oxford and from there … But it didn’t matter where for the moment. I simply had to hold my nerve and get well clear of the area before Jordan and his reinforcements realized I’d abandoned the car.
I parked outside the last house in the road, locked up and casually walked away towards the railway bridge, wondering if at any moment I’d hear Jordan shouting for me to stop. But I heard nothing. He’d fallen for it. As soon as I was out of sight of the houses, I stepped up my pace, bludgeoning my brain to think as I went. Making a run for it as I had would spell certain guilt in the minds of the police. In the space of half an hour, I’d turned myself from a reputable local businessman about to negotiate a bank loan into a fugitive who’d soon be the target of a nationwide manhunt. It was difficult to hold panic at bay. What could I hope to achieve? What in the name of sweet reason could I possibly accomplish by such a mad course of action?
I had no answer, except that I knew who’d really murdered Neville Considine: Emma Moresco. No-one but me would even believe she existed, let alone try to find her. Once I was in police custody, she was free and I was finished. But if I could just stay one step ahead of the law for long enough, I might be able to get the better of her. I was angry as well as frightened. Using me to trick money out of my father was one thing, framing me for the murder of her accomplice quite another. I wanted revenge now as well as justice. I wanted to wipe the smile I could all too easily imagine off her face for good, to finish it between us on my terms rather than hers.
It was a grey and gloomy morning, with a chill edge to the breeze and a threat of rain in the air. I wasn’t dressed for riverside strolling and I felt acutely conspicuous. But I knew I wasn’t really. The few ramblers and dog-walkers I encountered on the towpath passed me without a second glance. No-one was interested in me, although later, when my name and likeness were flashed up on the local television news, they might think back and realize who I was. But for the moment I had a good chance of putting a lot of miles between me and the places where I was known.
So long as my nerve held, at any rate. When I reached the bridge, where the Whitchurch road crossed the river, I took a long hard look up and down before dashing across and cutting round to the railway station. The mid-morning lull seemed almost too profound to be believed. The first train due was London-bound. But going through Reading, where the search would be at its keenest, seemed even riskier than sitting it out on the platform for an extra ten minutes until I could catch an Oxford train. Those ten minutes millimetred their way by uneventfully, then a train pulled lethargically in, I climbed aboard and put Pangbourne behind me at last.
It was a half-hour run to Oxford, and on the way I began to assemble a plan of action. I reckoned the police probably didn’t yet know about Considine’s recently acquired wealth. The account he’d wanted the money paid into was at a City of London branch of an international bank; discretion was doubtless their byword. Emma had to have access to the money, since cutting out her partner was the obvious motive for murdering him. So it was presumably a joint account. But she couldn’t simply withdraw the whole lot now because the timing, if it ever came to light, would look highly suspicious. If I’d been her, I’d have bided my time and waited for me to be arrested and charged, and the hue and cry to die down generally, before pocketing the loot and disappearing. While I was on the run, she was vulnerable but only if I could find her, along with some hard evidence of her involvement with Considine. Then maybe the police would listen to me. But where was I to start looking for her? How could I hunt her while others were hunting me?
At Oxford, I walked into the city centre, drew as much as I could against my credit card from a bank, bought a raincoat, a bag, some toiletries and underwear, then went back to the station and caught the next train to Birmingham. The anonymity of a big city was the best refuge I could think of and, with any luck, the transactions in Oxford would have them barking up the wrong tree for a while.
From New Street station I headed out more or less at random and booked into the Holiday Inn under a false name. I lay low in my room for the rest of the day, watching the grey afternoon darken over the city and resisting the powerful temptation to get wrecked on the contents of the minibar. The early evening news on the television didn’t mention me or Considine, but I knew a full-scale search would nevertheless be in motion.
When it was dark, I went out and watched the rush-hour traffic surging round Paradise Circus, ate a fast-food dinner and walked the streets aimlessly. Every pub I passed sang a siren song, and only the thought that I’d be handing victory to Emma on a plate by drinking myself into oblivion gave me the strength of purpose to walk on by.
Eventtnlly, when I was weary enough to sleep, despite all my anxieties, I crept back to the hotel.
Although I hadn’t made the national news on television, the national newspapers were a different matter. The bunch I bought from a shop near the hotel well before dawn next morning all carried inside-page reports that the police were seeking ‘a Berkshire businessman who they believe might be able to assist them with their inquiries into the brutal murder of a Clacton old-age pensioner over the weekend’.
Detective Inspector Jordan of Essex CID was widely quoted in urging
‘forty-five-year-old Christian Terence Napier’ to ‘contact them without further delay’. A couple of the papers also printed a muddy photographic likeness which I recognized as the forty-two-year-old Christian Napier in attendance at his niece’s twenty-first birthday party. The family photograph album was the only possible source and it was all too easy to imagine how distressed my mother must have been at having to relinquish it. My father, however, was evidently maintaining a stiff upper lip. At the tail-end of one of the reports, he was quoted in support of Jordan. “We want our son to contact the police and sort all this out as soon as possible.” I could have done with an expression of confidence in my innocence, but if he’d made one it had been edited out.
My father, of course, was likely to be almost as hard-pressed as I was myself, guarding his tongue and his secrets zealously while coping with my mother’s no doubt distraught reaction to events. It wouldn’t be long, I reckoned, before he bolted to his customary haven at times of stress: the golf club. Sooner or later, I’d be able to catch him at the nineteenth hole. I made my first foray to a call box around noon.
My third, a couple of hours later, was successful; I gave the barman the name of Dad’s accountant and was handed over without demur.
“Anton?”
“No, Dad. It’s me. Listen, I realize you can’t speak freely, but do your best. I’m in one hell of a fix. I didn’t kill Considine.”
“I… never thought you did.”
“Pity you didn’t tell the papers that.”
“I’m in a difficult position myself.”
“Do the police know about the money?”
“Apparently not.”
“And you haven’t told them?”
“No.”
“Well, I may have to. You do appreciate that, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
>
“The girl killed him, Dad. The one who set me up. For the money, presumably. So, it’s hard to see how I can get out of this without revealing that Considine was blackmailing you.”
“You’ll have to.”
“I’m trying to tell you that just may not be possible.”
“I’ll do everything I can … to ensure it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I took the precaution of employing an intermediary in the transaction.
Beyond Recall Page 32
