She wandered about for several minutes, but the extensive grounds appeared as deserted as the house. Since there was no one there to challenge her, she got out her camera and went to work. She began with the area round the pool before turning her attention to the garden. It had obviously been designed by a professional, someone with horticultural expertise combined with an artist’s eye for form and colour. Whichever way she turned she found perfect examples of imaginative planting. Memories of what she had been taught at college about composition, angles, contrast and the effects of light and shade came back to her as she worked. It was a long time since she had had such an opportunity to use her creative skills and she soon became absorbed, enjoying the change from her normal job where accuracy rather than artistic achievement was the watchword.
She saved her last few exposures for the patio area. She had already covered it pretty thoroughly, but the sun had gone round in the meantime and there was no longer the glare off the sliding glass door that had hampered one or two of the shots that she wanted. There was something else different as well. The door had been closed when she arrived. Now it was open. There must be someone in the house after all. She stowed the camera in her pocket and stepped indoors.
She found herself in a sitting room that looked as if it had been lifted bodily from a furniture store. It was clear that no expense had been spared; everything had been carefully chosen and colour coordinated, but the overall effect was of a show house rather than a home. There were no books, no fresh flowers or plants, no personal items of any kind. The few pictures were somewhat garish reproductions of hackneyed pastoral scenes in over-bright gilded frames.
The door into the hall was ajar. She went over to it and called, ‘Excuse me, is anyone there?’ No one answered. She called again, and this time she thought she detected a faint sound overhead. She listened intently for a few moments, but it was not repeated. She hesitated, uncertain whether to investigate further or to go quietly away. Whoever was up there might be no one more sinister than a hard-of-hearing domestic help. But, on the other hand… her instinct, coupled with her police training, told her that all was not as it should be. Since she was, after all, on the premises by invitation of the owner, a quick, systematic check would surely be in order.
None of the ground-floor rooms showed any sign of disturbance. Sukey was about to go upstairs when she spotted a cast-iron stand by the front door containing a couple of umbrellas and a stout walking stick which would, she decided, make a handy defensive weapon in case of need. She picked it up and made her way cautiously to the upper landing, where all the doors were closed except one, which was wide open. It was evidently the main bedroom, with built-in furniture covering the wall to her left, a glimpse of an en suite bathroom opposite and a king-sized bed on which lay a bulky holdall, its flap partially unfastened as if someone had been disturbed in the act of searching it. Holding the stick firmly at the ready, Sukey moved forward to take a closer look.
She sensed rather than heard the movement behind her. Before she had time to turn round an arm was hooked round her throat, dragging her backwards, while a hand wrenched the stick from her grasp and then clamped firmly over her mouth, stifling her cry of alarm. For a second she was paralysed with shock and terror. It was the kind of situation that she had been trained to deal with in her karate classes, but the suddenness and unexpectedness of the attack had taken her completely off guard. Then, as the pressure on her windpipe increased, threatening to cut off the air to her lungs, her brain cleared. This was no practice session. This was the real thing.
She kicked backwards with her right foot, felt it connect with a leg and dragged her heel downward, pressing with all her weight against the shin-bone and at the same time jabbing her elbows into her assailant’s stomach. There was a muffled grunt of pain and the grip on her throat slackened. Bending forward from the waist, she thrust her backside against him, seized him by the wrists and heaved. A figure in blue denim surmounted by a motorcyclist’s helmet shot over her shoulder and crash-landed against the wardrobe.
Sukey fled from the room and pelted down the stairs, clearing the last three in a single jump. Dashing across the hall on her way to the sitting room, she heard the thud of her would-be assassin’s boots as he came charging after her. She glanced over her shoulder as she stumbled through the open patio door; he was almost on her. Any minute now and she would once more be fighting for her life. At the edge of the pool she stopped short, swerved and ducked, grabbing desperately at an ankle. Caught off balance, her pursuer toppled forward. Dodging his outstretched hand, she gave a hefty, sideways shove which sent him spinning helplessly towards the water, where he landed on his back with a resounding splash. Her last sight of him was of a bobbing helmet and flailing arms as he struggled to his feet.
At least, she thought as she tore back to her car, it was the shallow end – he wasn’t going to drown even if he couldn’t swim. She thrust the key into the ignition with a shaking hand, praying that the engine would start first time and sending up a heartfelt message of thanks as it fired. There was no sign of the machine on which, presumably, the intruder had arrived, but it couldn’t be far away. He was probably out of the water already, but with luck his ignition key would be in his pocket and need drying off before he could use it. That gave her a few seconds’ advantage. He had not appeared when she shot out of the drive and raced along the mercifully deserted street towards the main road, keeping an anxious eye on her rear-view mirror. There was still no sign of pursuit when she joined the stream of traffic heading for the centre of town.
She was trembling from shock and her heart was thudding in her chest like a stampeding elephant, but her brain was crystal clear. Whatever that holdall contained was so valuable that someone was prepared to commit murder rather than allow anyone else to get their hands on it. When at last she was confident that she was not being pursued by a helmeted motorcyclist in soaking denims, she stopped, pulled out her mobile phone and dialled 999.
Thirteen
When the ten thirty train from Cheltenham Spa pulled into Reading station, Oxford-bound passengers alighted for their connections, but Barbie Bayliss stayed in her seat until the end of the line at Paddington. There, she went down the steps to the Underground and boarded a westbound train on the Bakerloo Line. During the journey, she had started to think of herself as Brenda Foss. By the time she stepped out at Willesden Junction, her mental metamorphosis was complete.
It was only a short distance from the station to the block of council flats where her late mother’s sister had spent most of her married life and the long widowhood brought about by her husband’s untimely death in a brawl during one of his numerous spells in prison. During the few minutes’ walk the memories that flitted through Brenda’s mind spanned thirty years. She had lived with Auntie Gwen from the day her mother died when she was ten years old until her marriage to Charlie Foss. During her teenage years her appearance, pop music and boys had been her main preoccupations; she spent her wages as a shop assistant on clothes and make-up and her evenings in discos and bars. Many of her friends had police records by the time they left school, but good luck and a certain native shrewdness, coupled with a respect for the weight of Auntie Gwen’s right hand, had kept her out of serious trouble.
She was just under nineteen when she met Charlie at a local disco and fell for him at first sight. He made a pass at her right away and from that day on she thought of no one else. Handsome, well-dressed, never short of money and a lavish spender, she found him utterly irresistible. He was a passionate lover and she joyfully gave in to his every demand. All her girlfriends were jealous of her, but Auntie Gwen had been dead against the relationship. Time after time she had warned her niece not to be taken in by his superficial charm, always ending her lecture with, ‘Got a cruel streak, that one, you mark my words.’ But her advice was like writing in the sand, swept away by the crashing breakers of desire that surged over Brenda at Charlie’s lightest touch.
Charlie
left her in no doubt from day one of their married life that he expected her to submit to his will in all things. He became violent if he thought she had stepped out of line, but always – as she reminded herself while soothing away the aches and pains in hot baths and disguising the bruises with make-up – there were plenty of compensations. She had no financial worries, they ate in posh restaurants and took holidays on the Costa Brava, and she was better dressed and had more fancy gadgets and expensive furniture in her home than any of their friends. And in any case, by the time she at last faced up to the fact that Charlie’s good looks and personal charm concealed the soul of a tyrant, a bully and a heartless womaniser, she had become so accustomed to the comfortable lifestyle he provided that she could not bring herself to cut her losses and return to Auntie Gwen’s poky little flat. She never knew for certain how Charlie came by his money, although she had a shrewd idea that the law would not approve. The only time she had asked him, he’d told her it was none of her bloody business and made it clear that further questions would be unwise. A fist held a couple of inches from her nose drove the point home. Brenda had grown up in an environment where practically everyone either had some sort of racket going or knew plenty of people who had. Keeping one jump ahead of the law was a constant preoccupation for most of them and failure to do so regularly caused separation from friends and families for long periods. Charlie was the exception. Whatever he dabbled in, he always came up smelling of roses, with plenty of cash up front and even more salted away. Brenda had once come across a stash of banknotes hidden away in a drawer. He had caught her with some of it in her hand and gone ballistic, given her the worst hiding she could remember, and told her it was a slap on the wrist compared to what she’d get if she ever poked her nose into his affairs again. Shortly after that he spirited her away to Gloucestershire, cut all ties with his former associates and ordered his wife to do the same. He bought an ailing company, turned it round and became a respectable member of the Cheltenham business community. Five years later, they had moved out of their modest semi into their present home.
Auntie Gwen lived in a four-storey block, one of several built round an open area, referred to by the council as ‘the garden’, but known to the police as ‘the rat run’ on account of the narrow interconnecting alleys which led out of it, making ideal escape routes for suspected villains. It was covered with worn turf and surrounded by an informal hedge of tired-looking shrubs, home to an assortment of discarded rubbish, with gaps where the youth of the estate rode through it on stolen bicycles. The flat was on the top floor and if you stood on tiptoe on the balcony you could catch a glimpse of the trees in Gladstone Park, but it was a long time since Auntie Gwen herself had seen them. An arthritic hip made standing on tiptoe a distant memory. Because she couldn’t manage the stairs and was afraid of lifts and being mugged she hardly ever went out except when one of her late husband’s nephews took her for a spin at weekends. She had married into a close-knit clan whose members saw she was all right, sent their kids round after school to do her shopping and run errands for her, and topped up her pension whenever they could afford it.
They had some pretty hard things to say about Brenda: too stuck up and too mean, now she was rich and living in a posh area, to do anything for the aunt who’d treated her like her own daughter. They never believed she had hardly any ready cash of her own, or that Charlie had threatened to knock the living daylights out of her if she had any contact with them or anyone else from the old days. Only Auntie Gwen herself defended her and bore her no grudge. ‘There’s an ’ome for you with me any time if you feel you can’t take it no more,’ she’d say whenever her niece managed to sneak up to town and pay her a flying visit. ‘If that bugger steps out of line once too often, you know where to come.’ And Brenda would give her a hug and say, ‘Yes, I know’, aware in her heart that, faced with the stark choice, the pull of money and luxury would always outweigh the occasional beatings.
The entrance to the flats was a gloomy cavern. Brenda wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell of stale urine and averted her gaze from the graffiti on the walls and the litter in the corners. Never, she thought as she climbed the stone stairs – as usual, the lifts were out of action – could I come back to this. She walked along the open balcony, stepped over a couple of children scuffling on the ground and knocked at her aunt’s front door. Several moments passed before she heard the familiar dragging footsteps and the tap of a stick on the floor of the passage, and felt rather than saw the eye that inspected her through the spy-hole let into the door-panel. There was the sound of bolts being undone and the rattle of a safety chain before the door opened to reveal the dumpy body and apple-cheeked countenance, surmounted by an abundance of white hair, of the one person in Brenda’s life whom she truly loved.
The old woman’s face lit up and she took her niece by both hands and drew her inside. ‘Bren, love, ’ow are you?’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s a fancy outfit you’ve got on… but … Jesus, ’e gave you a right goin’ over this time!’ she went on as she reached up with her free hand and removed Brenda’s sunglasses. ‘What was the excuse for that? No, tell me later. Come and sit down – you look knackered.’ She led the way into her tiny living room as she rattled on. ‘Fancy a cuppa tea?’
‘Let me make it,’ said Brenda.
‘’Sall right, I can manage.’ Independent as always, leaning heavily on her stick, Auntie Gwen shuffled out of the room and into the kitchen. Brenda sat down and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the gas hissing under the kettle and the clatter of cups and saucers being set out on a tin tray. The room had the familiar smell that she remembered from her childhood, a mixture of cigarette smoke and lavender-scented polish. Auntie Gwen had always smoked like a chimney and even nowadays, when moving around was painful, still spent much of her time obsessively waxing her furniture. It was nothing out of the way for her to get up in the middle of watching a television programme to take a duster to some fancied finger-mark or dull patch on her sideboard. Always been very houseproud, had Auntie Gwen, kept her home shining like a new pin.
This enthusiasm for housework had never rubbed off on Brenda, who was only too happy nowadays to leave it to a domestic help who came in several times a week. Charlie liked the arrangement because it enabled him to refer to ‘our housekeeper’ when they were in company and it suited Brenda in more ways than one because it meant she could wangle some extra cash out of her husband with no questions asked. She paid Mrs Parsons the minimum rate and put the rest of what he gave her in her own pocket. What with that and using the ‘cash-back’ facility in the supermarket from time to time, she’d managed over the years to stash a little away. It was a paltry sum compared with what Charlie spent, but she knew what it would mean if ever he found out. She’d got away with it so far because he never asked to see the till receipts or quibbled over the size of her credit card accounts. He might be all sorts of a bastard, but he was generous to the point of munificence in that respect. It was all part of the image he had created for himself.
Auntie Gwen brought the tea and their conversation went on the usual lines: Brenda enquiring about the old crowd, her aunt grumbling about her aches and pains and not being able to manage the stairs, Brenda saying why didn’t she ask the council to give her a ground-floor flat and receiving the inevitable response that after living in this one for forty years she wasn’t going to move out until she was carried feet first. Presently, as usual, Brenda went out and bought cigarettes for her aunt and fish and chips for both of them for lunch. It wasn’t until they had finished their meal and were sitting together with a second brew of tea that Auntie Gwen lit up her umpteenth cigarette, waved it in the direction of Brenda’s face and said, ‘You goin’ to tell me why that swine done that to you?’
‘It was because of Terry Holland,’ said Brenda. ‘He turned up at the house on Monday.’ She looked her aunt straight in the eye. ‘Charlie reckons you must have told him where to find us. Did you?’
The old l
ady was seized with a fit of coughing. When it was over, she said indignantly, ‘Course I never – ’ow could I? All I knew was, you’d gone somewhere near Gloucester. I said you’d changed yer name but I didn’t know what to and that was all I could tell ’im.’
‘I asked you not to tell anyone even that much,’ said Brenda wearily. During the journey to London she had planned to scold her well-loved but over-loquacious relative, but it hardly seemed worth it now; the damage was done.
‘I thought it’d be all right. Terry and Charlie was good mates, wasn’t they?’ Through the cloud of smoke, Auntie Gwen’s watery eyes pleaded for forgiveness. ‘Tel said there was something ’e wanted to give Charlie, most particular. They was good mates,’ she repeated. ‘I didn’t think it’d do no ’arm.’
‘They’re not mates any more,’ said Brenda. ‘And you know why?’ Auntie Gwen shook her head. ‘Remember why Terry and Frank got sent down?’
‘Course I do – the bank job. What’s that got to do with Charlie? Wasn’t there, was ’e?’
‘Yes, he was. He was driving the getaway. When they were switching cars, he drove off with the money and left the others to get caught.’
Auntie Gwen was outraged at such blatant treachery. ‘The bleedin’ crook!’ she said furiously. ‘No wonder Terry was keen to contact ’im. Wanted ’is share of the takings – an’ I don’t blame ’im neither. ’Ow long did ’e go down for?’
‘Can’t remember exactly. He’s been out on licence for twelve months after getting full remission. Frank’s still inside – he’s the one that clobbered the old boy.’
‘No wonder Charlie done a disappearing act!’
‘I’d no idea at the time, but thinking back – he had the move all planned and only told me the day before we left. Said he’d kept it as a surprise and we was… were going to start a new life together, just the two of us. He said we were going to be rich and we had to break away completely or one or other of the old gang’d be on the scrounge as soon as they knew he was making a bob or two.’ Brenda heaved a sigh and her voice became tremulous as she added, ‘Made it sound so lovely and romantic, he did.’
Death at Hazel House Page 13
