‘There’s more in the pot.’
‘Thank you, but I really ought to be moving. Perhaps I’ll see you again? Can I phone you if I need your help? Are you on the phone?’
She got to her feet. The cup and saucer rattled. She gave me a number. ‘Gledwyn had it put in. He’d phone any damned hour, and I’d go running like a ninny.’ Her voice broke. Then she went on calmly. ‘Phone if you like, but I don’t seem to be much help.’
‘Oh, you are, you are,’ I said.
As I walked across the courtyard I looked up. She was a dark shadow leaning over the balcony railing, most dangerously I thought. I waved, but there was no response.
The route took me over the alternative road Angie had shown me, and past the scene of Carla’s death, if I’d known just which bend she’d been parked around. It was late, getting on for ten, and I felt exhausted. As I approached the point where Angie had shown me the view I slowed, intending to stop a moment and try to spot the lights in the house, always a cheering sight after a long day. But there was a car parked there already, a head on a shoulder in the front seats as my headlights swept over it, so I drove on.
The house was dark and empty. I let myself into the caravan and lit up inside, then went to try the side door. Angie always left it open. Careless of her. I snapped on the kitchen light.
She’d left me a note. ‘This came! What next? I can’t sit waiting for you, Harry. Cook yourself something. Angie.’
‘This’ was an envelope lying beside her note. It had been torn open raggedly. I stared at it, hardly daring to look inside, regretting bitterly that I’d left, that morning, before the post delivery.
It had been posted in Whitchurch the previous evening. The address and Angie’s name — but as Griffiths — was printed in ballpoint. Inside was a plain sheet of cheap paper, printed in the same hand.
WHY DON’T YOU GET OUT, YOU BITCH.
YOUR FATHER / DIED AND SO CAN YOU.
What struck me at once was that the suggestion of a deliberate death for Angie was coupled with the death of her father. The inference was his death had also been deliberate. I was struck, too, by the insertion of the word DIED. A mistake is easily corrected in a thing like this by doing the whole note again. Perhaps this was a person unused to printing — or somebody very clever pretending to an uncertainty with capitals, when in fact he, or she, was very sure with them.
I waited. I brewed myself tea and smoked, and thought about the information Lynne had given me, whether consciously or unconsciously.
There was a car engine buzzing gently in the yard, a slammed door, voices. I was careful not to get up and look out of the window. Then she came in. No more the relaxed head I thought I’d seen on a shoulder, but blazing eyes and a purposeful stride.
‘God, but he can be exasperating!’ she said. She stared at me angrily, as though I was just as bad.
‘The letter,’ I reminded her tersely.
She snatched at it. I caught her hand. Instinct, that was, thinking of fingerprints and handwriting analysis, though it was doubtful we’d ever get to that.
‘Temper,’ I said. ‘Have you been discussing it with Evan?’
‘I had to discuss it with somebody. You weren’t around. Why is it that you’re always missing…’
‘There’s tea in the pot. Might be stewed by now, though.’
She flopped herself down on a chair, fumbling for a cigarette, and I went to pour her
a cup of tea. It was close to black. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘And what did Evan say?’
One shoulder moved. ‘Something ridiculous — that I ought to leave.’ She tried the tea and grimaced. ‘At first.’
‘And later?’
‘He said he reckoned he could hang around and keep an eye open for me.’
‘Protective.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Of course you can.’
She was silent. After a few moments she gave a wry twist of her lips and glanced at me sideways with mischief.
‘Well…I can.’
‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘who’d gain if you packed your bags and left?’
‘Gain? How can there be gain? The person who’d buy this house, I suppose.’
‘And Phil. Let’s not forget Phil.’
‘Are you seriously suggesting—’
‘Of course not. I just thought I’d remind you that Phil’s involved.’
‘If they think they’re going to chase me away…’
‘Or perhaps it’s simply hatred. Somebody who feels they’ll be happier if you’re dead.’
Her eyes were bleak. ‘You’re a great help!’ she snapped. Then she flapped her palm on the table, but the little laugh she gave was in itself a slap. ‘Sorry. I’m being stupid. Of course you’re being a help. Don’t you see what this really means? It means that daddy was killed. You can’t get round it. Whatever it is you’re doing, they don’t like it.’
I nodded. ‘I don’t like it either.’ I cleared my throat. ‘When Evan told you you’d have to leave — you were angry?’
‘He knows me better than to suggest such a thing.’
‘But you were angry.’
‘I was furious.’
‘But of course, he wasn’t serious. As you said, he knows you better than that. Probably nobody knows you better than Evan.’ I cocked an eye at her, then blew down my pipe.
‘You’re getting at something,’ she said dangerously.
‘I asked who gains if you leave. Perhaps it’s the other way round — who gains if you stay. And who, knowing you so well, would realise that a message like that would make you even more determined to stay...’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘And take it one stage further back, and ask yourself: who gained by your father’s death? It brought you back home here, and it’s brought Evan running — to lend a hefty shoulder.’
‘How dare you!’
‘And just when I might be heading for something that’d send you back to good old Phil...’
She was on her feet, pointing at the door. ‘You can just get out of my house...off my property...’
I stood and considered her calmly. My, but she had a temper.
‘It’s your own fault. You want me to prove your father was killed, but it hasn’t got to be by anybody you like. Your trouble is that you like everybody.’
You can’t stand forever with your arm outstretched. She lowered it. ‘You can go off people.’
‘And vice versa. I was leaving, anyway, so don’t fret. Things to do, something to look into.’
‘You’re determined, aren’t you!’
‘It’s not finished, is it! And...I was going to ask you, Angie. Could you find me a key to the garage door? It’s a new car, and I’d like to lock it away.’
‘Well...’ On an outward breath of exasperation, that was. She stared at me a moment, and I’ll swear that humour crept into her eyes. ‘What is there to look into?’
‘I’ve found out, from Lynne, that the Escort was out on the drive for a full hour, with the keys in, on the Saturday that Neville brought your father back from seeing Paul at Aberystwyth.’
She frowned, perhaps at the mention of her brother’s name. ‘What of it?’
‘That was the evening that Lynne’s friend, Carla, was killed by a hit-and-run driver.’
She turned away abruptly, I’ll swear so that she wouldn’t have to consider the idea. Then she began searching in the back of the cupboard, and came up with a jingling bunch. There must have been a dozen keys on it. She was grimacing.
‘He kept them all together. Most of these are for drawers in the lab. Here, I think this is it. Better try it on the way out.’ She detached it and handed it over.
I suddenly realised how exhausted she appeared. ‘I’ll be about an hour.’
‘Does it have to be now?’
I gestured to the letter on the table. ‘That makes it a bit urgent.’
‘Give me a minute to get a jacket or something.’
‘I’m going alone.’
Big eyes watched me. ‘Because it’s dangerous?’
‘Shouldn’t be.’
‘I couldn’t rest. Give me a minute.’
Then she was gone, clattering up the stairs, exhaustion shaken off with the same ease as her anger.
I went out into the yard and tried the key in the garage door lock. There was a T-handle four feet from the ground, with the cylinder lock in its centre. The key slipped in easily enough, but when I tried it the cylinder went round and round and nothing happened. No click as the latch slipped back. I tried the handle. It turned, and when I heaved it the door went up and over as smooth as you like.
The lock had been broken. Put a bit of tube over one end of the handle, and you can snap that kind of lock easily. So much for the key! I slipped it into my pocket as she came running into the yard, leaving the side door wide open.
There was no point in telling her about the garage door lock. She’d ask me what it signified, and I didn’t know.
After a minute, she said: ‘This way again, Harry? It’s beginning to give me the creeps.’
‘The quickest way into town.’
A dark, nearly-deserted town again, but this time with dry cobbles. I went straight on through, turned up past the police station, and on towards Cadwell’s quarry. I wasn’t sure of my ability at climbing gates, but I needed to see the wreckage of that Escort again.
‘The torch is in your side,’ I said.
As I’d previously observed, there was very little activity towards the upper end of the street. The small row of terraced houses seemed to have been abandoned, and only scraps of paper chased around the concrete of the deserted petrol station. The chapel lay silent apart from the flap of a sheet of corrugated iron in the wind.
We approached the quarry. I switched to sidelights, feeling ridiculously theatrical, but after all, I was about to commit an offence. I was still close enough to being a copper to be concerned about that.
The crashing sound was so rhythmic that at first I thought I’d lost a main bearing or something. But then, twenty yards short of Cadwell’s gate, I realised it was external. I cut lights and engine with one movement, and slid on the handbrake, holding off the ratchet.
The noise was coming from inside the scrapyard. I whispered, ‘Torch!’ She slid it into my hand. I clasped her arm, restraining her. ‘No sound,’ I sighed into her ear. I eased open the door and slid out into the night.
The gate consisted of vertical iron rods set at four inch gaps, with a diagonal strainer to each half. A chain and the massive padlock secured them, and both were intact. To climb it was easy; you simply worked up diagonally on one of the strainers, then jumped clear of the spikes. It meant an eight foot drop, but that was a minor consideration.
I peered through the bars. Over by where I’d examined the Escort there was a faint light, breaking the shadowy mass into accents of jagged metal. A shape was swinging an object — which had to be a sledgehammer — high into the air, catching a gleam, then pounding down onto the Escort. Somebody was trying to destroy the wreck.
I got to within two feet of the top before I dropped the torch. It clattered down the other side, unfortunately timed for an upstroke and thus in a period of silence. The silence extended into a pause. I’d stand out against the sky. There was a clang when the sledgehammer was dropped and a flicker of dancing light as the lamp was swooped up. I plunged my feet into the painful angles between strainer and rods, almost ran up the last few, and hurled myself over. I felt and heard the lining of my jacket tear as it caught on the spikes. It flung me off balance, and I fell on hands and knees painfully. I groped for the torch, found it, but it failed to respond to the switch. I turned and began to run towards the Escort.
Already the light was dancing towards the rear of the banked wrecks, the clatter of pounding feet dying away. He was heading around to the left. I stopped and remained still. He had no way out but the gate. I had him trapped. Now all I had to do was trace him by sound and wait for him. Slowly, my ears doing a radar act as my head swung, I backed towards the gate. A yard, stop, listen. No sound now. Was he prepared to wait me out? A yard, stop, listen. The silence became oppressive. Yet he could do nothing, unless there was a graded ascent to the vertical sides which I hadn’t seen in daylight. I backed and stood still, and heard nothing until Angie’s scream brought my head up.
‘Harry!’
It was the last thing I heard until I struggled up from the darkness to hear myself whimpering with pain. I got myself to my knees, making myself stop, but the whimpering appeals continued, and something was tugging at my jacket.
Angie was lying full-length on the ground, her arms stretched between the bars, reaching for my jacket and trying to drag my dead weight towards her. I blinked at her. Blinding lights shattered the image. She took my hand through the bars, steadying me as I hauled myself upright. My left hand went to the back of my head. There was no stickiness.
‘I’m all right,’ I heard myself say.
She was almost sobbing. ‘You didn’t move.’
‘You saw it?’
‘I heard you cry out.’
Had I? I’d been knocked out before. Had I always cried out, and not known it?
‘Did you see him?’ My brain felt sluggish. There was something I should have been realising. Yes — he must have climbed over the gate. ‘Did you see who it was?’ I repeated, more hopefully.
‘Harry,’ she whispered, ‘I was down on my knees, trying to reach you. I didn’t look.’
I groaned, not at her failure to watch my assailant climbing over and running away, but that she’d been there, on her knees, only feet from him. And I’d thought there’d be no danger!
‘Can you get back?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Not yet.’
She thought I meant I couldn’t make it — which wasn’t far wrong. ‘You’re hurt!’ she moaned.
But I’d climbed that gate for a purpose, and it wasn’t accomplished. I reassured her quickly. ‘There might be another torch in the car. Will you look for it, Angie?’
‘You are infuriating.’
‘Please.’
While she was looking, I felt my foot knock against something. I reached down. It was the sledgehammer. My assailant had been so considerate as to belt me with the wooden handle! The head of it would have cracked my skull like an egg.
‘Will this do?’
It was her own little pocket torch from her handbag. It would have to do. I thanked her, and stumbled over to the Escort.
One flash of the torch confirmed my complete theory. The attack with the sledgehammer had been on the nearside front wing. Bright, lacerated metal was reflected in the weak little light. I crouched in front of it, my pain repressed by the excitement.
The headlight had been destroyed completely in the crash, and the wing buckled. But the recent attack on it had broken free a mass of black, crumbly material, which came away now in chunks in my fingers. The do-it-yourself fanatics use a resin-bonded paste to repair bodywork damage. When this is subjected to heat it bubbles and flames into a nasty tarry mess.
Satisfied, I pursued the idea. Colours were difficult to detect in such conditions, and as I’ve explained, my colour sight isn’t too good. But that’s on blues and reds. Here and there I could see that traces of the body finish still remained in crevices and indentations. I reached out my penknife and detached two flakes of red paint, and put them in an envelope. There should also be some green. I laid them on my white envelope — three bits of green. And then I looked again. I shone the torch closer. There were, to my eyes, two different greens, not much in it, but just discernible. To make sure, I hunted out two more tiny bits of green, so fragile I had to balance them on the blade of my knife to tip them into the envelope. I put it inside my pocket and straightened.
Greatly heartened, with no thought for my throbbing head, I made for the gate, retrieved my damaged torch, and climbed over with rather less agility than b
efore, though now with a hand to help me down. I wondered at the strength of Angie’s arm, turned, and found myself face to face with Sergeant Timmis.
‘Breaking and entering, Mr Kyle?’ he asked stolidly.
‘I haven’t broken anything,’ I claimed.
‘Entered, yes. But I paid a pound for looking at that car, and I only had a few pence worth.’
I didn’t mention that I was taking away a few flakes of paint, which could be worth a great deal. That, I supposed, made it burglary. Even grand larceny.
There was some jocular discussion about charging me, but his heart wasn’t in it. If he’d witnessed the attack on me, surely he’d have arrested my assailant, so I didn’t mention it. There might or might not be fingerprints on that handle, but police intervention I didn’t want at that stage.
We said good night. Angie insisted on driving us back. She then insisted on settling me onto a chair in the kitchen and applying a cold compress to my head.
‘But it’s only a lump!’ I protested.
She decided I should spend the night in her father’s room, which was the big one at the back I’d already strayed into, but there I asserted myself. She was talking about keeping an eye on me. Oh no. That I wouldn’t be able to stand.
I groped out to the caravan, trying not to betray my double-vision.
Chapter Eleven
My eyes were still troublesome over breakfast, but the head was feeling better. No skin had been broken, and the bump was going down. I was aware that I ought to hunt out a hospital and have checks made for concussion, but I said nothing about it. I had an idea I wouldn’t be able to spare the time.
Carefully calculated to help finish the coffee, Neville Green decided to pay a courtesy call. Had I commented critically on the fact that he hadn’t visited Angie? I couldn’t remember. He’d met the postman at the gate and brought in three letters. One of them had Angie’s name and address on it, and printed in a style I recognised. It had been posted again in Whitchurch.
‘Bet you’re surprised to see me,’ he said, smiling in a set way that indicated strain. ‘Just popped in on my way to Whitchurch.’
My head gave a thump. Angie was clattering away at the sink, carefully ignoring the letter that lay on the table. I’d seen her flinch at it. She had not welcomed Neville with any eagerness.
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