Devices & Desires - Dalgleish 08

by P. D. James

  Pascoe said bitterly: 'Forget and forgive? You make it . sound so easy.'

  'I don't suppose you can forget, or perhaps even want to. But I can't see why you have to use the word forgive. She never promised more than she gave.'

  'You despise me, don't you?'

  Dalgliesh thought how unattractive it was, the self-absorption of the deeply unhappy. But there were questions he still had to ask. He said: 'And she left nothing, no papers, no records, no diary, nothing to say what she was doing on the headland?'

  'Nothing. And I know what she was doing here, why she came. She came to be near Caroline.'

  'Did she have any money? Even if you fed her she must have had something of her own.'

  'She always had some cash but I don't know how she got it. She never said and I didn't like to ask. I know she didn't draw any welfare payments. She said she didn't want the DHSS snooping round here to check whether we were sleeping together. I didn't blame her. Nor did I.'

  'And she got no post.'

  'She got postcards from time to time. Pretty regularly really. So she must have had friends in London. I don't know what she did with them. Threw them away I suppose. There's nothing in the caravan but her clothes and make-up and I'm going to burn those next. After that there'll be nothing left to show that she was ever here.'

  Dalgliesh asked: 'And the murder. Do you think that Caroline Amphlett killed Robarts?'

  'Perhaps. I don't care. It doesn't matter any more. If she didn't, Rickards will make her a scapegoat, her and Amy together.'

  'But you can't really believe that Amy connived at murder?'

  Pascoe looked at Dalgliesh with the frustration and anger of an uncomprehending child. 'I don't know! Look, I really never knew her. That's what I'm telling you. I don't know! And now that Timmy's gone I don't really care. And I'm in such a muddle, anger at what she did to me, at what she was, and grief that she's dead. I didn't think you could be angry and grieving at the same time. I ought to be mourning her but all I can feel is this terrible anger.'

  'Oh yes,' said Dalgliesh. 'You can feel anger and grief together. That's the commonest reaction to bereavement.' Suddenly Pascoe began crying. The empty beer can rattled against the table and he bent his head low over it, his shoulders shaking. Women, thought Dalgliesh, are better at coping with grief than we are. He had seen them so many times, the women police officers moving unconsciously to take the grieving mother, the lost child, in their arms. Some men were good at it too, of course. Rickards had been in the old days. He himself was good with the words, but then words were his trade. What he found difficult was what came so spontaneously to the truly generous at heart, the willingness to touch and be touched. He thought: I'm here on false pretences. If I were not, perhaps I, too, could feel adequate.

  He said: 'I think the wind is less strong than it was. Why don't we finish the burning and clear up that mess on the beach?'

  It was over an hour before Dalgliesh was ready to set off for the mill. As he said goodbye to Pascoe at the door of the caravan a blue Fiesta with a young man at its wheel came bumping over the grass.

  Pascoe said: 'Jonathan Reeves. He was engaged to Caroline Amphlett, or thought he was. She fooled him like Amy fooled me. He's been round once or twice to chat. We thought we might walk to the Local Hero for a game of bar billiards.'

  It was not, thought Dalgliesh, an agreeable picture, the two men, bound by a common grievance, consoling each other for the perfidy of their women with beer and bar billiards. But Pascoe seemed to want to introduce Reeves and he found himself grasping a surprisingly firm hand and making his formal condolences.

  Jonathan Reeves said: 'I still can't believe it, but I suppose people always say that after a sudden death. And I can't help feeling that it was my fault. I should have stopped them.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'They were adult women. Presumably they knew what they were doing. Short of physically dragging them off the boat, which would hardly have been practicable, I don't see how you could have stopped them.'

  Reeves reiterated obstinately: 'I should have stopped them.' Then he added: 'I keep having this dream, well, nightmare really. She's standing at the side of my bed with the child in her arms and saying to me, "It's all your fault. All your fault.'"

  Pascoe said: 'Caroline comes with Timmy?'

  Reeves looked at him as if surprised that he could be so obtuse. He said: 'Not Caroline. It's Amy who comes. Amy, whom I never met, standing there with water streaming from her hair, holding the child in her arms and telling me that it's all my fault.'

  Just over an hour later Dalgliesh had left the headland and was driving west along the A1151. After twenty minutes he turned south along a narrow country road. Darkness had fallen and the low scudding clouds, torn by wind, moved like a tattered blanket over the moon and the high stars. He drove fast and unhesitatingly, hardly aware of the tug and howl of the wind. He had taken this route only once before, early that same morning, but he had no need to consult the map; he knew where he was going. On either side of the low hedges stretched the black, unbroken fields. The lights of the car silvered an occasional distorted tree flailing in the wind, briefly illuminated as if with a searchlight the blank face of an isolated farm cottage, picked out the pin-bright eyes of a night animal before it scuttled to safety. The drive was not long, less than fifty minutes, but, staring straight ahead and shifting the gear lever as if he were an automaton, he felt for a moment disorientated as if he had driven through the bleak darkness of this flat, secretive landscape for interminable hours.

  The brick-built, early-Victorian villa stood on the outskirts of a village. The gate to the gravel drive lay open and he drove slowly between the tossing laurels and the high, creaking boughs of the beech trees and manoeuvred the Jaguar between the three cars already discreetly parked at the side of the house. The two rows of windows in the front were dark and the single bulb which illuminated the fanlight seemed to Dalgliesh less a welcoming sign of occupation than a private signal, a sinister indication of secret life. He did not need to ring. Ears had been alert for the approaching car and the door was opened just as he reached it by the same stocky, cheerful-faced janitor who had greeted him on his first summons earlier that morning. Now, as then, he was wearing blue overalls so sprucely well cut that they looked like a uniform. Dalgliesh wondered what was his precise role; driver, guard, general factotum? Or had he, perhaps, a more specialized and sinister function?

  He said: 'They're in the library, sir. I'll bring in the coffee. Will you be wanting sandwiches, sir? There's some beef left or I could put up a bit of cheese.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'Just the coffee, thank you.'

  They were waiting for him in the same small room at the back of the house. The walls were panelled in pale wood and there was only one window, a square bay heavily curtained with faded blue velvet. Despite its name the function of the room was unclear. Admittedly the wall opposite the window was lined with bookshelves, but they held only half a dozen leather-bound volumes and piles of old periodicals which looked as if they were Sunday colour supplements. The room had an oddly disturbing air of being both makeshift yet not devoid of comfort, a staging post in which the temporary occupants were attempting to make themselves at home. Ranged round the ornate marble fireplace were six assorted armchairs, most of them leather and each with a small wine table. The opposite end of the room was occupied by a modern dining table in plain wood with six chairs. This morning it had held the remains of breakfast and the air had been oppressively heavy with the smell of bacon and eggs. But the debris had been cleared and replaced by a tray of bottles and glasses. Looking at the variety provided, Dalgliesh thought that they had been doing themselves rather well. The loaded tray gave the place the air of a temporary hospitality room in which little else was hospitable. The air struck him as rather chill. In the grate an ornamental fan of paper rustled with each moan of the wind in the chimney and the two-bar electric fire which stood in the fender was barely adequate, even for so meanly proport
ioned and cluttered a room.

  Three pairs of eyes turned on him as he entered. Clifford Sowerby was standing against the fireplace in exactly the same pose as when Dalgliesh had last seen him. He looked, in his formal suit and immaculate linen, as fresh as he had at nine o'clock that morning. Now, as then, he dominated the room. He was a solid-fleshed, conventionally handsome man with the assurance and controlled benevolence of a headmaster or a successful banker. No customer need fear to enter his office, provided his account was well in credit. Meeting him for only the second time Dalgliesh felt again an instinctive and seemingly irrational unease. The man was both ruthless and dangerous and yet, in their hours apart, he had been unable accurately to recall either his face or his voice.

  The same could not be said for Bill Harding. He stood over six foot tall and, with his pale freckled face and thatch of red hair, had obviously decided that anonymity was impossible and that he might as well opt for eccentricity. He was wearing a checked suit in heavy tweed with a spotted tie. Raising himself with some difficulty out of the low chair he ambled over to the drinks and, when Dalgliesh said he'd wait for coffee, stood holding the whisky bottle as if unsure what to do with it. But there was one addition since the morning. Alex Mair, whisky glass in hand, stood against the bookcase as if interested in the assortment of leather-bound volumes and piled periodicals. He turned as Dalgliesh entered and gave him a long, considering look, then nodded briefly. He was easily the most personable and the most intelligent of the three waiting men but something, confidence or energy, seemed to have drained out of him and he had the diminished, precariously contained look of a man in physical pain.

  Sowerby said, his heavily lidded eyes amused: 'You've singed your hair, Adam. You smell as if you've been raking a bonfire.'

  'I have.'

  Mair didn't move but Sowerby and Harding seated themselves each side of the fire. Dalgliesh took a chair between them. They waited until coffee had arrived and he had a cup in hand. Sowerby was leaning back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling and seemed to be prepared to wait all night.

  It was Bill Harding who said: 'Well, Adam?'

  Putting down his cup, Dalgliesh described what exactly had happened since his arrival at the caravan. He had total verbal recall. He had made no notes, nor was it necessary. At the end of his account he said: 'So you can relax. Pascoe believes what will, I imagine, become the official line, that the two girls were lovers, went for an unwise boat trip together and were accidentally run down in the fog. I don't think he'll make any trouble for you or for anyone else. His capacity for troublemaking seems to be over.'

  Sowerby said: 'And Camm left nothing incriminating in the caravan?'

  'I doubt very much whether there was anything to leave. Pascoe said that he read one or two of the postcards when they arrived but they were mostly the usual meaningless phrases, tourist's chat. Camm apparently destroyed them. And he, with my help, has destroyed the detritus of her life on the headland. I helped him carry the last of her clothes and make-up down to the fire. While he was busy burning it I had a chance to return and make a fairly thorough search. There was nothing there.'

  Sowerby said formally: 'It was good of you to do this for us, Adam. Obviously as Rickards isn't in the picture as far as our interest is concerned we could hardly rely on him. And you, of course, had an advantage he lacked. Pascoe would see you more as a friend than a policeman. That's obvious from his previous visit to Larksoken Mill. For some reason he trusts you.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'You explained all that this morning. The request you made then seemed to me to be reasonable in the circumstances. I'm neither naive nor ambivalent about terrorism. You asked me to do something and I've done it. I still think you should put Rickards in the picture, but that's your business. And you've got your answer. If Camm were involved with Amphlett she didn't confide in Pascoe and he has no suspicions of either woman. He believes that Camm only stayed with him to be near her lover. Pascoe, for all his liberal ideas, is as ready as the next man to believe that a woman who doesn't persist in wanting to go to bed with him must be either frigid or a lesbian.'

  Sowerby permitted himself a wry smile. He said: 'While you were playing Ariel to his Prospero on the beach I suppose he didn't confess to killing Robarts. It's of small importance, but one has a natural curiosity.'

  'My brief was to talk to him about Amy Camm, but he did mention the murder. I don't think he really believes that Amy helped to kill Robarts, but he doesn't really care whether the two girls did or did not. Are you satisfied yourselves that they did?'

  Sowerby said: 'We don't have to be. It's Rickards who has to be satisfied and I imagine that he is. Incidentally, have you seen or spoken to him today?'

  'He telephoned briefly about midday, principally, I think, to tell me that his wife has come home. For some reason he thought I'd be interested. As far as the murder is concerned, he seems to be coming round to the view that Camm and Amphlett were in it together.'

  Harding said: 'And he's probably right.'

  Dalgliesh asked: 'On what evidence? And since he's not allowed to know that one of them at least is a suspected terrorist, where's the motive?'

  Harding said impatiently: 'Come off it, Adam, what real evidence does he expect to get? And since when was motive the first consideration? Anyway, they had a motive, at least Camm did. She hated Robarts. There's one witness at least to a physical fight between them on the Sunday afternoon of the murder. And Camm was fiercely protective of Pascoe and connected to that pressure group he started. That libel action would have ruined him and put PANUP out of business for ever. It's precarious enough as it is. Camm wanted Robarts dead and Amphlett killed her. That will be the general belief locally and Rickards will go along with it. To do him justice, he probably believes it.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'Camm fiercely protective of Pascoe? Who says so? That's supposition not evidence.'

  'But he's got some evidence, hasn't he? Circumstantial evidence, admittedly, but that's all he's likely to get now. Amphlett knew that Robarts went swimming at night; practically everyone at the power station knew that. She concocted a false alibi. Camm had access, like anyone else, to the jumble room at the Old Rectory. And Pascoe now admits that it could have been 9.15 when he got back from Norwich. All right, the timing is tight but it's not impossible if Robarts swam earlier than usual. It adds up to a reasonable case; Not one which would have justified arresting them if thqrwere still living, but enough to make it difficult to get a conviction against anyone else.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'Would Amy Camm have left the child?'

  'Why not? He was probably asleep, and if he wasn't and started yelling, who would hear? You're not suggesting, Adam, that she was a good mother, for God's sake? She left him at the end, didn't she? Permanently, as it happens, although that may not have been intentional. If you ask me, that kid had a pretty low priority with his mother.'

  Dalgliesh said: 'So you're postulating a mother who is so outraged by a minor assault on her child that she avenges it with murder, and that same mother leaves him alone in a caravan while she goes sailing with her girlfriend. Wouldn't Rickards find that difficult to reconcile?'

  Sowerby said, with a touch of impatience: 'God knows how Rickards reconciles anything. Luckily we're not required to ask him. Anyway, Adam, we know of a positive motive. Robarts could have suspected Amphlett. After all she was Acting Administrative Officer. She was intelligent, conscientious - over-conscientious, didn't you say, Mair?'

  They all looked towards the silent figure standing against the bookcase. Mair turned to face them. He said quietly: 'Yes, she was conscientious. But I doubt whether she was conscientious enough to detect a conspiracy which had eluded me.' He turned back to his contemplation of the books.

  There was a moment's embarrassed silence which was broken by Bill Harding. He said briskly, as if Mair hadn't spoken: 'So who was better placed to smell out a spot of treason? Rickards may have no firm evidence and an inadequate motive, but essentially he'
ll probably get it right.'

  Dalgliesh got to his feet and walked over to the table. He said: 'It would suit you to get the case closed, I see that. But if I were the investigating officer the file would stay open.'

  Sowerby said wryly: 'Obviously. Then let us be grateful that you aren't. But you'll keep your doubts to yourself, Adam? That doesn't need saying.'

  'Then why say it?'

  He placed his coffee cup back on the table. He was aware of Sowerby and Harding watching his every move as if he were a suspect who might suddenly make a break for it. Returning to his chair he said: 'And how will Rickards or anyone else explain the boat trip?'

  It was still Harding who answered: 'He doesn't have to. They were lovers, for God's sake. They fancied a sea trip. It was Amphlett's boat after all. She left her car on the quay perfectly openly. She took nothing with her and neither did Amy. She left a note to Pascoe saying she'd be back in about an hour. In Rickards's eyes and everyone else's that adds up to an unfortunate accident. And who is to say that it wasn't? We were nowhere near close enough to have scared Amphlett into making a run for it; not yet.'