by P. D. James
He thought that he had seldom seen a more depressing place than Scudder's Cottage. A thin drizzle was falling and he saw the cottage and the neglected garden through a shimmering mist which seemed to absorb shapes and colours so that the whole scene was one damp amorphous grey. Leaving DC Gary Price in the car, Rickards and Oliphant made their way up the weed-infested path to the porch. There was no bell and when Oliphant thudded on the iron knocker the door almost immediately opened. Ryan Blaney stood before them, six foot tall, lank, bleary-eyed and gave them a long unwelcoming stare. The colour seemed to have drained even from his ruddy hair and Rickards thought he had never seen a man look so exhausted and yet still be on his feet. Blaney didn't invite them in and Rickards didn't suggest it. That intrusion had better wait until he was accompanied by a WPC. And Blaney could wait. He was anxious now to get to Larksoken Power Station. He gave the news that the portrait of Hilary Robarts had been slashed and found at Thyme Cottage, but offered no other details. There was no response. He said: 'Did you hear me, Mr Blaney?'
'Yes, I heard you. I knew that the portrait was missing.'
'When?'
'Last night, at about 9.45. Miss Mair called for it. She was going to take it to Norwich with her this morning. She'll tell you. Where is it now?'
'We have it, what remains of it. We shall need it for forensic examination. We'll give you a receipt, naturally.'
'What good will that do? You can keep it, the picture and your receipt. Slashed to pieces, did you say?'
'Not to pieces, in two clean slashes. Perhaps it can be repaired. We'll bring it with us when we come so that you can identify it.'
'I don't want to see it again. You can keep it.'
'We'll need the identification, Mr Blaney. But we'll talk about it when we see you later today. When, incidentally, did you last see the portrait?'
'Thursday evening when I wrapped it and left it in the painting shed. I haven't been in the shed since. And what's the good of talking? It was the best thing I've ever done and that bitch destroyed it. Get Alice Mair or Adam Dalgliesh to identify it. They've both seen it.'
'Are you saying you know who's responsible?' Again there was a silence. Rickards broke it by saying: 'We'll be with you late this afternoon, probably between four and five if that's convenient. And we shall have to talk to the children. We'll have a WPC with us. They're at school, I suppose, the children?'
'The twins are at playgroup, Theresa is here. She isn't well. Look, you're not going to all this trouble about a slashed portrait. Since when have the police cared about pictures?'
'We care about criminal damage. But there is something more. I have to tell you that Hilary Robarts was murdered last night.'
He stared intently at Blaney's face as he spoke. This was the moment of revelation, perhaps the moment of truth. It was surely impossible for Blaney to hear the news without betraying some emotion: shock, fear, surprise, real or simulated. Instead he said calmly: 'You don't have to tell me that either. I knew. George Jago phoned early this morning from the Local Hero.'
Did he indeed, thought Rickards, and mentally added George Jago to his list of people to be questioned as soon as possible. He asked: 'Will Theresa be in and well enough to speak to us this afternoon?'
'She'll be here and she'll be well enough.'
And then the door was closed firmly in their faces.
Oliphant said: 'God knows why Robarts wanted to buy that slum in the first place. And she's been trying to force him and the kids out for months. There's been a great deal of feeling about it in Lydsett as well as on the headland.'
'So you told me on the way here. But if Blaney killed her he'd hardly draw attention to himself by hurling that portrait through the window of Thyme Cottage. And two unrelated criminal acts, murder and malicious damage on the same night, is too great a coincidence to swallow.'
It had been a bad start to the day. The drizzle, seeping coldly under the collar of his coat, added to his mild dejection. He hadn't noticed that it was raining on the rest of the headland and could almost believe that Scudder's Lane and that picturesque but sour little hovel generated their own depressing climate. He had a lot to get through before he returned for a more rigorous confrontation with Ryan Blaney, and he wasn't looking forward to any of it. Forcing the gate shut over a clump of weeds on the path, he took a last look at the cottage. There was no smoke
from the chimney and the windows, hazed with salt, were tightly closed. It was difficult to believe that a family lived here, that the cottage hadn't long been abandoned to damp and decay. And then, at the right-hand window, he glimpsed a pale face framed with red-gold hair. Theresa Blaney was looking down at them.
Twenty minutes later the three police officers were at Larksoken Power Station. A place had been reserved for them in the car park outside the perimeter fence close to the guard house. As soon as they approached the gate it was unlocked and one of the security police came out and removed the cones. The preliminaries took only a little time. They were received with almost impassive civility by the uniformed security guard on duty, signed the book and were issued with their lapel badges. The guard telephoned the news of their arrival, reported that the Director's PA, Miss Amphlett, would be with them very shortly and then appeared to lose interest in them. His companion, who had opened the gates and removed the cones, stood casually chatting to a stocky man dressed as a diver and carrying his helmet under his arm, who had apparently been working on one of the water towers. Neither of them seemed particularly interested in the arrival of the police. If Dr Mair had instructed that they were to be received with courtesy but the minimum of fuss, his staff couldn't have done it better.
Through the window of the guard house they saw a woman, obviously Miss Amphlett, walking unhurriedly down the concrete path. She was a cool, self-possessed blonde who, on arrival, ignored Oliphant's bold stare as if he weren't present and gravely greeted Rickards. But she didn't respond to his smile, either because she thought a smile inappropriate to the occasion or, more likely, because in her view few visitors to Larksoken merited such a personal welcome and a police officer wasn't among them.
She said: 'Dr Mair is ready for you, Chief Inspector,' and turned to lead the way. It made him feel like a patient being shown into the presence of a consultant. You could tell a lot about a man from his PA and what she told him about Dr Alex Mair reinforced his private imaginings. He thought of his own secretary, tousled-haired, nineteen-year-old Kim, who dressed in the more bizarre extreme of contemporary youth fashion, whose shorthand was as unreliable as her timekeeping, but who never greeted even the lowliest visitor without a wide smile and the offer, which they were ill advised to accept, of office coffee and biscuits.
They followed Miss Amphlett between the wide lawns to the administration building. She was a woman who induced unease and Oliphant, obviously feeling the need to assert himself, began to prattle.
'That's the turbine house to our right, sir, and the reactor building and the cooling plant behind it. The workshop is to the left. It's a Magnox thermal reactor, sir, a type first commissioned in 1956. We had it all explained to us when we went round. The fuel is uranium metal. To conserve the neutrons and to allow natural uranium to be used the fuel is clad in a magnesium alloy called Magnox with a low neutron absorption. That's where the reactor gets its name. They extract the heat by passing carbon dioxide gas over the fuel in the reactor core. That transfers its heat to water in a steam generator and the steam drives a turbine coupled to an electric generator.'
Rickards wished that Oliphant didn't feel the need to demonstrate his superficial knowledge of nuclear power in the presence of Miss Amphlett, and only hoped that it was accurate. Oliphant went on: 'Of course this type of reactor is out of date now. It's being replaced by a PWR, pressurized water reactor, like the one being built at Sizewell. I've been shown over Sizewell as well as Larksoken, sir. I thought I might as well learn what's going on in these places.'
Rickards thought, And if you've learn
ed that, Elephant Boy, you're even cleverer than you think you are.
The room on the second floor of the administration block into which they were shown struck Rickards as immense. It was almost empty, an arrangement of space and light deliberately deployed to make a statement about the man who now rose to his feet behind the huge black modern desk and stood gravely waiting while they walked across what seemed endless yards of carpet. Even as their hands touched, and Alex Mair's grasp was firm and disconcertingly cold, Rickards's eyes and mind took in the salient features of the office. Two of the walls were painted a smooth light grey, but to the east and south sheets of plate glass reached from ceiling to floor giving a panorama of sky, sea and headland. It was a sunless morning but the air was suffused with a pale ambiguous light, the horizon blurred so that sea and sky were one shimmering grey. Rickards had for a moment the sensation of being weightlessly suspended in outer space in some bizarre and futuristic capsule. And then another image supervened. He could almost hear the throb of the engines and feel the ship shudder as the great surge of ocean divided under the prow.
There was very little furniture. Alex Mair's uncluttered desk, with a high but comfortable armchair for visitors, faced the southern window before which stood a conference table set with eight chairs. In front of the east window was a display table holding a model of what Rickards presumed was the new pressurized water reactor shortly to be constructed on the site. Even at a glance he could see that it was beautifully made, a marvel in glass and steel and perspex, as intricately crafted as if it were a decorative object in its own right. On the north wall hung the only picture; a large oil showing a man with a rifle on a skinny horse, posed in a bleak landscape of sand and scrubland with, in the background, a range of distant mountains. But the man had no head. Instead he was wearing a huge square helmet of black metal with a slit for the eyes. Rickards found the picture disturbingly intimidating. He had a faint memory that he had seen a copy of it, or of something very like it, before, and that the artist was Australian. He was irritated to find himself thinking that Adam Dalgliesh would have known what it was and who had painted it.
Mair went over to the conference table and lifting one of the chairs, swung it lightly and placed it by the desk. They were to sit facing him. After a moment's hesitation, Gary Price took a chair for himself, placed it behind Mair, and unobtrusively took out his notebook.
Looking into the grey sardonic eyes Rickards wondered how Alex Mair saw him, and a snatch of conversation, overheard some years ago in the mess at New Scotland Yard, came unbidden into his mind. 'Oh, Ricky's nobody's fool. He's a bloody sight more intelligent than he looks.' 'He'd better be. He reminds me of one of those characters you get in every war film. The poor honest son-of-a-bitch who always ends up with his face in the mud and a bullet in his chest.'
Well, he wasn't going to end with his face in the mud in this inquiry. The room might look as if it were specifically designed to intimidate him, but it was only a working office. Alex Mair, for all his assurance, his rumoured brilliance, was only a man and if he had killed Hilary Robarts he would end up, as better men than he had done, looking at the sky through iron bars and watching the changing face of the sea only in his dreams.
As they seated themselves, Mair said: 'I expect you'll need somewhere to interview people. I've made arrangements for a small room in the medical physics department to be made available when you're finished here. Miss Amphlett will show you the way. I don't know how long you'll need it, but we've moved in a small refrigerator and there are facilities for making tea or coffee or, if you prefer, tea and coffee can be brought to you from the canteen. And the canteen staff can, of course, provide you with simple meals. Miss Amphlett will let you have today's menu.'
Rickards said: 'Thank you. We'll make our own coffee.'
He felt at a disadvantage and wondered if this was intended. They would need an interview room and he could hardly complain if this need had been anticipated. But it would have been a better start if he could have taken the initiative and he felt, perhaps illogically, that there was something demeaning to his job in this careful reassurance that he would get his food and drink. The look bent on him across the desktop was unworried, speculative, almost, he could imagine, slightly judgemental. He knew that he was in the company of power and the kind of power with which he was unfamiliar; confident, intellectual authority. A clutch of chief constables would have been less formidable.
Alex Mair said: 'Your Chief Constable has already liaised with the Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary. Inspector Johnston would like a word with you this morning, probably before you begin your general interview. He realizes that the Norfolk Constabulary have the principal responsibility here, but naturally he has an interest.'
Rickards said: 'We recognize that and we shall be glad of his co-operation.'
And it would be co-operation not interference. He had already made himself familiar with the duties of the AEAC and he was aware that there was a potential risk of dissension and overlapping of powers. But this was essentially a matter for the Norfolk CID and was seen as an extension of the Whistler inquiries. If Inspector Johnston was prepared to be reasonable, then so was he, but it was not a problem which he proposed to discuss with Dr Mair.
Mair opened the right-hand drawer of his desk and took out a manila folder. He said: 'This is Hilary Robarts's personnel file. There's no objection to your seeing it, but it merely gives the background information; age, places of education, degrees, career before she came to us in 1984 as deputy to the Administrative Officer. A curriculum vitae from which the vitae is, unusually, conspicuously absent. The dry bones of a life.'
Mair slid it across the desk. The action had a curious finality. A life closed, finished with. Taking it Rickards said: 'Thank you, sir. It will be helpful to have it. Perhaps you could flesh out some of the dry bones for us. You knew her well?'
'Very well. Indeed, for a time we were lovers. That doesn't, I admit, necessarily imply more than physical intimacy but I probably did know her as well as anyone here on the station.'
He spoke calmly and totally without embarrassment, as if it were as unimportant as stating that he and Robarts had shared the same university. Rickards wondered if Mair expected him to seize on the admission. Instead he asked: 'Was she popular?'
'She was highly efficient. The two, I find, do not invariably go together. But she was respected and, I think, generally liked by those staff who had dealings with her. She will be greatly missed, probably more deeply than would be more egregiously popular colleagues.'
'And missed by you?'
'By all of us.'
'When did your affair end, Dr Mair?' 'About three or four months ago.' 'Without rancour?'
'With neither a bang nor a whimper. We had been seeing less of each other for some time before then. My personal future is at present rather unsettled but I am unlikely to continue as Director for very much longer. One comes to the end of a love affair as to the end of a job; a natural feeling that a stage of life has run its course.'
'And she felt the same?'
'I imagine so. We both had some regrets at the break but I don't think either of us ever imagined that we were indulging in a grand passion, or indeed expected our relationship to be lasting.'
'There was no other man?'
'None that I know of, but then there's no reason why I should know.'
Rickards said: 'So you would be surprised to learn that she wrote to her solicitor in Norwich on Sunday morning to make an appointment to discuss her will and that she told him she was expecting shortly to be married? We found the unposted letter among her papers.'
Mair blinked rapidly but otherwise showed no sign of discomposure. He said evenly: 'Yes, it would surprise me, but I'm not sure why. I suppose because she seemed to live rather a solitary life here and it's difficult to see how she could have found time or opportunity to enter into a new relationship. Of course, it's perfectly possible that some man from her past had re-emerged and they
had come to an arrangement. I'm afraid I can't help you.'
Rickards changed the tack of his questioning. He said: 'There seems to be a feeling locally that she wasn't much help to you during the public inquiry into the second reactor here. She didn't give evidence to the official inquiry, did she? I can't quite see how she was involved.'
'Officially she wasn't. But at one or two public meetings, unwisely, she got embroiled with hecklers, and on one of our open days the scientist who normally escorts the public was off sick and she took his place. She was, perhaps, less tactful than she should have been with some of the questioners. After that I arranged that she wasn't directly involved with the public'
