‘I don’t want to hear your news.’ She turned a shoulder to him, and he raised his eyebrows at me.
‘They picked it up in the States,’ he explained. ‘It’s in all the papers. Star Of Colossus Seized By Brit Police.’
‘I haven’t been seized!’ she protested angrily.
‘No? That’s what they said. I bought every paper I could get.’ I thought it time I put in a word. ‘She was wanted for questioning.’
‘And that’s been done, has it, this questioning?’
‘You could say,’ I informed him cautiously, ‘that some questioning has taken place.’
He slapped his palms together, then spread his arms. ‘That’s just great. So you can get packed, Bella my love, and I’ll book a return flight for two —’
‘Don’t be more ridiculous than you can help, Jay,’ she said coldly. ‘You’re acting like a demented clown.’
Indeed, he seemed to be riding a high on something, tension, triumph, excitement, but certainly not drugs. He wouldn’t allow such contamination to get anywhere near that perfect body. And he had not asked the vital question: on what had his wife been wanted for questioning? Perhaps she had already told him. Now, he seemed to realize the impression he was making, because he was abruptly serious, glancing at me as though for encouragement, then at Bella with his brows lowered.
‘It’d look better,’ he suggested, ‘for you to come back voluntarily. Better than holding out until they apply for extradition.’
‘Extradition!’ They could have heard her in the street.
‘Though I suppose...’ He looked doubtful. ‘With a good brief —’
‘What the hell d’you mean by extradition?’ But now her lips were thin, and there were red patches high on her cheeks.
I looked from one to the other. This was not, apparently, an unusual scene for these two. I had gathered that they must be used to snapping and snarling at each other, pecking away at tender spots and trying to establish a position of ascendancy. In an attempt to dash cool water on their emotions, I intervened.
‘You don’t have to worry about that, Bella,’ I told her. ‘Even if they try to extradite you, you’ll be safe. They couldn’t get you, because the British police will have a prior claim.’
It had the required effect. Perhaps because they were not used to their squabbles being interrupted, they were now both standing very still, and staring at me intently. I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes to ten.
‘In half an hour or so there’ll be a woman arriving here. A policewoman, who knows me under my real identity, which is Philipa Lowe and not Tonia Fields. She’ll be able to testify as to my name and the rest. Inspector Connaught will also be here, so in half an hour’s time I’ll be able to walk out of your life, Bella. Won’t you be pleased! Do you understand what I’m saying, Jay? Has she explained what’s been going on?’
He nodded, jaw firm, eyes bleak. ‘Get on with it.’
‘What else is there? Oh yes, of course. It’ll mean, you see, Bella, that from that moment on the police will have a reasonably solid case against you for the killing and burial of both your father and your sister. So you don’t need to worry. The New York police won’t be able to have you back.’
‘Is this supposed to be a joke?’ she asked huskily.
‘A joke!’ I was angry with her. No — furious. Suddenly I felt hot with fury. ‘And who’s been playing jokes?’ I demanded forcefully. ‘Who’s landed me in no end of trouble with stupid claims that I’m your sister?’
‘I claimed nothing.’
‘And denied nothing!’ I shouted.
There was silence. Then she shrugged, possibly because there was nothing worth saying. The anger drained from me, leaving me cold.
‘So you’re safe here, Bella,’ I said emptily. ‘Unless the police in New York can produce a charge better than two murders, then you’re safe.’
She made a movement with her lips, very like spitting. It didn’t become a word.
But it seemed that Jay had himself completely in hand. He was composed. Composed but puzzled. Perhaps the visible exterior of such a superior being hid the possession of an inferior brain. Certainly he didn’t seem to have a full grasp of the situation.
‘It’s New Haven, actually,’ he observed. ‘Not New York. And it is murder over there, too. But only one.’
Bella made a choking sound and sat down on the edge of her bed. ‘What? Who?’ she whispered.
Jay was pleased to offer an answer. The big, complacent bastard was enjoying himself. ‘A woman. Dead on the floor in the living room of our holiday place. You know that little pistol you keep, locked in the bedside table? It was lying there beside her on the rug. That Bokhara of ours...’
‘What does it matter which rug?’ Bella demanded, searching for anything that would break down his story.
‘Three little holes in her,’ said Jay. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’
I remembered clearly what Bella had said about walking in on them with a pistol in her hand.
‘One of your whores!’ she snapped, nodding, nodding. Too much nodding for the remark.
‘No, no.’ He shook his head with confidence. ‘Not one of mine. I wouldn’t dare. What would Odile say? And Dawn would cripple me, and as for Felicia —’
‘You filthy rotten bastard!’ she shouted, and he laughed, throwing his head back.
‘By God, you’re a gullible fool, Bella. No, this wasn’t one of mine. Nobody I could recognize. The police seem to think she came to see you. She’d flown in from the west coast. They reckon you took one look at her, and you assumed she was one of mine. Bella — admit it — you do have these strange ideas.’
‘This is some sort of trick!’ she cried wildly, thumping the bed with her fist. ‘You’re a liar, Jay. You always were a damned liar. Besides...’ A thought twisted her lips into the best she could manage of a sour smile. ‘Besides, I’ve been here, and my passport will confirm it.’
‘Me too,’ I murmured.
‘They’ve set the time of death at two days before you boarded the QE2, as a matter of fact.’ Jay was calmly practical.
He’d come armed, his speech rehearsed, probably in front of a mirror so that he could perfect that near-casual smile with a hint of pity in it, that Bella should be in trouble, but I didn’t think he’d been able to master the light in his eyes. He was enjoying every minute.
‘Name?’ I put in, as Bella seemed unable to bring herself to ask.
‘No name.’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing on her but the return half of her air ticket from Los Angeles. Nobody I’d know, nobody you would, Bella. They fetched me — drove me there. Not that I wanted to see, but somebody had got to. About thirty, they said, but she looked a damned sight older. Really old and worn out. They told me she’d been on drugs, cocaine and heroin — probably both. You wouldn’t have liked to see her, Bella. You know what I thought at the time? D’you want to hear?’
She mumbled something and shook her head, premonition tightening the lines round her mouth. He smiled wickedly, though there was pain in his eyes.
‘I thought, seeing as she’d possibly come to see you — not me, not a woman like that… I thought — maybe it was sister Tonia. You know, come to see whether she could get money to keep her going on her habits. I didn’t say anything. It was just a thought,’ he said soothingly. ‘And how could she be?’ He nodded to me, smiling, as though we were in conspiracy.
Bella gave a small moan, her eyes rolled and her head slumped. I went to her quickly, but Jay thrust me away and lifted her chin with his left forefinger. Then he slapped her face, rather harder than necessary, I thought. She came out of it spitting in his face, her nails going for his eyes, but he’d had practice and was anticipating it. He caught her wrists, laughed in her face, and flung her away from him, sprawling across the bed.
‘How many sisters have you got, Bella?’ he demanded. But he was still smiling.
He glanced over his shoulder at me and winked. I looked away quickly
before I did something stupidly violent, and grabbed one of my cases, flung it on my bed, then began to stuff clothes into it. No time for delicate folding. They were silent. When I risked a glance I saw he was standing, those huge and powerful hands on his hips, gazing out of the window. Bella had found her way to the dressing-table and was examining her face. Then she seemed to notice my activities.
‘What the hell’re you doing, Phil?’
‘Packing.’
‘Where’re you —’
‘With your husband here, I’ll book another room.’
‘Don’t you dare!’
Jay laughed.
‘Don’t you laugh at me!’ she shouted. ‘Do you think I’d have you in here? Not while I can stand. Get out of this room, Jay. Get out! Before I kill you.’
‘Kill, kill. It’s all you think about.’
‘Out!’
He held up his palms, backing towards the door. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already booked another room —’
‘Not even in the same hotel!’
‘A room at the Clarendon, lover. Somehow, I guessed you wouldn’t be pleased.’
She threw the ashtray. He closed the door behind him. She didn’t even hit the door. I sat on my bed and waited.
I had to wait a long while, through all her fury and passion, her hatred and her tears. I had to endure the listing of his monstrous parading of a dozen or more females. Privately, I thought he’d invented them, partly for use as a torture instrument, partly to boost his own ego. There are men, vast macho objects, who openly parade their wares, and yet are not greatly sexed. A wife would probably be all that Jay could manage, but he wouldn’t care to have it known. Was it possible that he was a one-woman man? If so, he was caught in the trap of his own public image. He would certainly have to hide it, especially from Bella, and how better to do that than to torment her with a promiscuity he didn’t in fact practise? In any event, I’d caught no messages from him, no hints, no special glances. I admit to receiving such messages from time to time.
It was then, at the moment that I rounded off this pleasant theory in my mind, when she was weak and lost and in need of a confidante, that she completely destroyed my reasoning.
‘We haven’t’, she whispered, ‘slept in the same bed for five years.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
I glanced at my watch. Nearly ten minutes past ten! What the devil was happening? Where was Jennie Lyons? And just when I needed a diversion.
The tap on the door jerked up my head. It was unlike Jennie to knock, especially in these circumstances. Walk right in — ‘Here I am!’ That sort of thing.
I went to open the door. Inspector Connaught said, ‘Here I am. Where is she, this witness of yours?’ His practised sweep of the room with his eyes told more than just the absence of Jennie. ‘What’s been going on? You two been fighting?’
‘It’s just Bella’s husband. He’s turned up.’
‘No cause for distress, surely.’ So casually that was said, even dismissively, but it was clear he felt it to be of importance. ‘What time is she due?’
‘Who? Jennie? We reckoned ten to ten-thirty.’
‘Late, then.’
‘Not really — the road can be tricky.’
‘Hmm!’
He went to stand at the window. Bella had a hand mirror perched in front of her face and was frowning at something. She’d be itching to repair the damage. Connaught’s stance was casual, hands in his trouser pockets. But his shoulders were tensed. Without turning, he said, ‘What car does she use?’
‘I don’t know.’ He was making me nervous.
He leaned closer to the glass. The white-painted window frame was flushed orange from the street lights. He leaned forward, the glow tinging his shoulders. As I watched it, the colour shaded to grey, wavering and waning, orange, grey, orange, grey. Not grey though now, more blue as the predominant colour took over, until it was blue, blue, blue.
Connaught stiffened. He flattened his face against the glass, peering downwards. There had been no siren. The blue shading ceased and the frame was restored to orange.
He snapped, ‘Stay here,’ and was across the room in three strides.
The door slammed behind him. I heard myself whispering, ‘Jennie! Jennie?’
Bella demanded from behind her mirror, ‘What is it?’
I didn’t answer, but backed away, turned on my heel. ‘I’ll be back.’ I didn’t know whether I said it. I crashed through the door and ran, stumbling, to the head of the stairs, my heart pounding, fumbling my way down the staircase, trying for two steps at a time but my feet missing the treads. Then through the lobby into the yard, which was packed with people and cars. There was no room for more than half a dozen, but those had their lights on, with the beams concentrated on one patch beside the gaunt outline of a Citroën 2CV.
I thrust through, panting. Connaught was crouching there. I fell heavily to my knees beside him. Jennie’s red hair was redder still, the lights blazing on to the colour, the blood soaking it. Beside her lay the GENTLEMEN sign. There was blood on that too.
‘Jennie,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, Jennie, Jennie...’
And Connaught put his arm round my shoulders and said softly, ‘I’m sorry. Sorry. She’s dead, Phil.’
Before I passed out, I registered the fact that he’d called me Phil.
Chapter 7
I was sitting alone in the little Green on one of the two benches, having discovered a tiny gate in the low, spiked fence. The seat was damp, and maybe I would develop rheumatism in my behind, but I had to have solitude, air around me and nothing near. My skin felt tender, the nerves close to the surface. I would scream if anyone touched me. The huge chestnut to my right was trying to throw a shadow, as the sun was doing its best to push its way through the morning mist. Perhaps I was cold. I could feel nothing.
The street seemed very busy, with traffic edging along nose to tail and pedestrians flooding the pavements. Maybe it was Saturday.
I was procrastinating, no other way to look at it. Sometime I was going to have to drive over to Penley and tell Oliver what had happened. And yet I knew, miserably, that I wouldn’t need to. They would know at Penley. Oliver would know, and I was close to tears at the thought that the news hadn’t come from me first. I’d been afraid. No arguing about that. Couldn’t face it. A coward. I ought to have been able at least to dial the hospital’s number before the sedative grabbed hold of me.
Miserably I sat, knowing that each second’s delay made it worse.
A man’s voice said, ‘What’re you doing here?’ There was concern in his tone.
I turned. I hadn’t seen him arrive, hadn’t noticed he had sat beside me.
It was Detective Inspector Connaught, fumbling in the pocket of his anorak and producing a tin of tobacco and a bent pipe. A Sherlock Holmes pipe. It would be part of his image, I supposed — the quiet smoke and the contemplation.
‘Sitting,’ I answered shortly, not wanting company, certainly not his. He was a complacent and egotistical ass, I thought. Why wasn’t he on the job? Go, go, go. ‘What about you?’ I demanded.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ He was avoiding having to look me in the eye.
‘I don’t feel it. Aren’t you on duty?’
‘That sedative didn’t take, did it?’ he asked mildly, untouched by what I’d tried to be, which was unencouraging.
‘I’m all right.’
‘Good.’ He was rubbing flake between his palms, then he began to pack it into the huge bowl of his pipe. ‘Meerschaum,’ he explained, as though I might be interested. ‘It’s a kind of clay.’
I didn’t reply. On the pavement the far side of the street Bella was parading, the mirror glasses there again — a new pair, they would have to be — and in all her exotic finery, now deliberately exhibiting her other self as Roma Felucci, welcoming it and encouraging it. She might have been ‘our Bella’, but she was set to dispel the past. Head high, swinging her hips and her long skirt, she paraded her beauty and
authority, and very soon she’d have the traffic stopped.
‘Have you done anything?’ I demanded abruptly and angrily, though the anger was aimed at Bella.
‘We’ve been at it all night,’ he said flatly. ‘The team, the lot. And… nothing. That metal sign had been torn off the wall by somebody wearing gloves. Your friend must have parked her Citroën, shut the door, and he struck. One blow. It’s all it took.’
‘He?’ My voice shuddered.
‘We believe it was beyond a woman’s strength.’
‘Depends which woman.’
Scented smoke was drifting around my head. He gestured with the pipe. ‘Not that one, certainly.’
No, not Bella. She had been with me in the room. Not Bella with the wheel nuts, either. I’d already decided that. And yet, she was the only one…
‘But she’s the only one who had any reason to keep my real identity secret!’ I burst out.
There was no reply. I turned and looked at him, for the first time really examining him. He’d been on duty all night, but he was cleanly shaven, his moustache carefully arranged, hair by hair, and he was wearing a tweedy suit I hadn’t seen on him before. There had been time to restore the external part of his personality, but it had done nothing for the internal. This was an Inspector Connaught I’d not previously encountered. Gone was the self-confidence, gone was the man who had to impress. His ego had taken a hammering. The bath, the shave, the change of clothes were no more than a gloss. He was repressed and hurt, as though he’d been slapped across the face.
But of course, he’d probably encountered few murders in this small and tight community. If any at all, they would have been domestic, with no mystery involved other than the question of what had driven the perpetrator over the edge. Connaught was lost in this.
Then at last, as though he’d had to force his mind to the task, he answered my question. If it had been a question.
‘You’ve got to admit that Bella Fields — as I’ll call her — had good reason to be worried. One skeleton popping up, and it would’ve been a good guess it was her father’s. There was half the town who would have been honoured to kill Rowley Fields at that time, so that she’d have been a very minor suspect. But two skeletons, buried side by side… then the assumption has to be that the second was her sister’s. Then our Bella would have to start worrying. She wouldn’t have known that there’s a possibility we’ll be able to put a name to both of them in due course. All she would see was that everybody would say, “That’s her pa and her sister, you can bet your life”. So it would suit Bella to be able to produce a live sister.’
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