I watched his fingers loosen their grip on his glass. He reached a hand up and swept back his hair.
‘Nancy wouldn’t have died like that. Not Nancy. Not in anything involving water.’
‘You’re thinking in terms of murder?’ I asked gently, knowing that most ordinary people shy from the word.
‘If you like.’
‘It’s not for me to like. It’s what you think, Larry.’
‘All right. I think she was killed.’
‘Any ideas on that?’
He seemed to think the balance of question and answer had again swung in my favour. ‘What was all that about — the yellow Wildlife stickers?’
‘My wife explained...’
‘No she didn’t. You were after something.’
I smiled at the vigour of his attack. ‘I wanted to know the date of the collection.’
‘Saturday,’ he said, ‘May the 7th. What about it?’
I allowed a small silence to build up, wondering what he might already know about it, and afraid to push him into concealment. Then I said: ‘What if I told you that there was one of those stickers on her anorak when she was found?’
‘I’d say...I’d say...’ He paused, his mind scanning the implications and his eyes hunting. ‘She couldn’t get one before the Saturday, and you don’t go on wearing one after. It means — I dunno — means she was here, around here, on the Saturday. But she wouldn’t come back to the Broads and not let me know.’
‘But she must have done,’ I reminded him gently. ‘She did come back.’
He blinked. ‘Must’ve, I suppose.’
‘Because she died here, Larry.’
He looked down and said nothing.
‘And you really didn’t know she was here?’
‘Of course not.’ There was hesitation, then, ‘You’re trying to trap me into something.’
I thought, then, that I’d lost him. Candour, I decided, was all that would retrieve him. ‘Larry, try to look at it from my point of view. The police aren’t making any more advances. It’s not a case to them. I’m the one trying to get at the truth, and I’ve got past experience to draw on. At this time, I virtually know nothing that makes any sense. So...ask yourself. I know nothing about you. You could have killed her yourself, as far as I know. All right! Relax. It’s possible, and you’re got to admit it. A lovers’ quarrel. It happens.’
‘We were not lovers,’ he told me tensely. Why did he take me so literally?
‘Just a phrase. But you really must see — I have to start from scratch. I need to know anything I can find out. From you just as much as anybody else. Am I making myself clear, Larry? Either you trust me or you don’t. Make up your mind. Do you or don’t you?’
There was an inch of something flat and unpalatable in his glass. Nevertheless, he stared at it for a full two minutes. Then he lifted his head.
‘Yes, she must’ve been in the district, and no, she didn’t tell me.’
‘But you’d surely have kept in touch.’
He nodded. ‘She used to phone me every Wednesday, or me phone her. Alternately. She rang from her digs, and me from home.’
‘You live with your family?’ This was no more than a mild interest, background colour.
‘With my mother. Dad’s dead. Ten years ago, that was.’
‘And the last time she spoke to you?’ I asked. ‘Would that’ve been the Wednesday before the Saturday of the Wildlife collection?’
He nodded. His expression was empty. His mind was miles away. ‘Yes,’ he said absently.
‘And at that time there was no mention of her coming to Norfolk?’
He shook his head impatiently. The impatience was with him-self. ‘I’m trying to remember — exactly. You don’t understand. There wasn’t any talk about coming to the Broads, or I’d have fixed up to meet her. Yes...’ He met her my eyes brightly. ‘I’ve been trying to remember...looking back. I’m beginning to. You know, fitting it together. That last time — well, she was kind of strange, all excited and tensed up. And scared. I remember, I said I’d go with her, meet her somewhere and we’d go together, but she said no, she’d got to tackle it this time on her own. But there was no mention of where. You get what I mean? She’d got me thinking of somewhere in Buckinghamshire. I don’t know how, though I suppose that was some sort of subconscious association —’
‘Now hold on.’ It was a pity to break into the flow. ‘I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about. You seem to think I’m psychic or something. What’s this all about?’
He stared at me with comical surprise, then he gave a peculiar pout of dismay, and a short laugh of amusement at himself.
‘I just assumed. Sorry. What don’t you understand?’
‘Pretty well everything.’ I sighed. ‘Can we go back a bit? She was going to tackle it, you said, this time on her own. Tackle what?’
He was helpless at organizing his story, going off at all sorts of angles. I just had to let him get on with it. ‘I told you...I’m sure I did. She’d written, you see. In the end, she’d got up her nerve to write. I was mad at her, I can tell you.’ He crinkled his forehead into a frown. I had difficulty imagining him being mad at anybody, but he didn’t give me time to say so. ‘But she’d written, and on that last Wednesday she said she’d had a reply, and they were going to meet. She just wouldn’t tell me where. I can see it now. She knew I’d be around, in the background, if I knew where.’
‘Or when.’ I dredged for grains of fact.
‘That neither. Some time over the weekend, I assumed.’ He lapsed into brooding silence.
‘Or even who,’ I suggested at last. ‘Who was she intending to meet?’
He jolted out of his reverie and stared at me. ‘Well, her mother, of course.’ His scorn swept over me. He was really very immature.
‘Mrs Ruston?’
‘Of course not. Oh dear, it is hard work.’
I agreed silently.
‘Her real mother,’ he said. ‘The one who didn’t want her.’
He said this with a passionate disgust, which was disturbing to watch.
I tapped out the dottle from my pipe into the ashtray, and began to fill it. My hands were steady, and I made the movements slow and smooth, indicating no more than a vague interest, when in fact I’d felt the jolt inside me that I always do when a break comes along. Here, at last, was an emotional background, a possible motivation. Suddenly the bar seemed brighter, as though the power had jumped up, and I was seeing everything about me in more crisp detail.
‘So she’d traced her natural mother,’ I said softly.
‘What the hell d’you think I’ve been talking about?’ he demanded, an insignificant and unassuming young man suddenly bouncing with fury.
‘It seems to have annoyed you.’
‘Annoyed! If only we’d been married I could’ve put my foot down.’ He nodded, certain he could have done so, or at least tried. ‘They brought in this stupid law — any adopted person over the age of eighteen could get to know the names of their real parents. It was like handing round lighted fireworks. They must’ve been crazy. Nancy was adopted. You know that much...’
‘I know that.’
‘From birth. So why the stupid buggers had to tell her I don’t know. There was no need. It wouldn’t have hurt her not to know. Now would it? But she had to be told.’
‘You mean the Rustons?’
He gave a snorting sound, leaning forward in confidential emphasis. ‘That was her doing, I reckon. Sour-faced bitch. She hated Nancy. Oh yes. No good denying it. It was part of it, like as if her nasty-minded dislike had to have an excuse. I never heard her say it, but it sort of hovered behind everything she ever said to Nancy. “You mustn’t forget you’re adopted, Nancy.” Not for a blasted minute! It was one of the reasons Nancy wanted to get away from there.’
‘Was it?’
‘She actually liked Birmingham.’
That was proof if I needed it. And a reason she would want
to locate her real mother — the one who’d given her away, as a possible substitution for the one who now rejected her. But as Larry had said, it might not have been a good idea. The psychologists who had decided it was a sensible thing to take the child directly from the mother, might also have been thinking of the emotional effect on the mother. They might reasonably be supposed to have omitted even the mention of the child’s sex. The possibilities for upset were enormous.
‘So,’ I said, ‘she did what was necessary to trace her real mother. When was this?’
‘Oh...ages ago. Fifteen months or so. Just after she was eighteen.’
That long ago? I asked: ‘Did you help her in that?’
He shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t let me. Mark helped her.’
‘And the parents were traced?’
‘Parent, is all I know. There was no name for the father.’
‘So why did she wait all that time before contacting her mother?’
‘She’d moved. There was an address given in Buckinghamshire.’
‘Which was where you got the subconscious idea.’
‘I suppose.’ He shook his head. It was an irrelevance. ‘She’d got married and moved to...somewhere.’
‘So you don’t know where.’
‘She wouldn’t tell me.’ He flicked the rim of his glass with his nail, provoking a ting. ‘They got a detective on that.’
His enthusiasm was failing him. I had to prompt. ‘And then what?’
There was no response. He was staring through me as though I was no longer there, his face sad and long.
‘What happened when they traced her mother?’ I asked. It couldn’t have taken more than a month to trace her. ‘Larry —you with me?’
His lips twisted sourly. ‘She didn’t want her, that’s what. Didn’t want Nancy.’
That anybody could not want Nancy was beyond his comprehension, though he knew one example in Angie Ruston. That Nancy had faced a rejection from her other and real mother infuriated him. He moved uneasily, and one fist clenched.
‘You’d better tell me,’ I said quietly.
9
It was too much to expect that he would continue straight-forwardly. He was lost in memories, and I knew I would have to sit through them. But I didn’t need to do much, simply sit there and listen, watching his animation as he spoke of her, and dwell on my own thoughts. There was already an obvious pattern visible. I was mildly surprised that Inspector Poole hadn’t uncovered it, but I had to remember that she would have been constrained by the inquest verdict, and wouldn’t have been able to expend official time on a death when there was no evidence of violence.
‘May,’ he said dreamily. ‘That time I’d have been getting ready for the summer. I’ve got a sailing dinghy, and she’d have been back for her long vacation before the month was out. We searched every corner of the Broads in that dinghy. There’re private waters the public never see, but the owners knew us, and never said anything. We did no harm. Me taking pictures...you know, birds mostly. And Nancy. I’ve got this marvellous camera with a smashing lens with adjustable focal length. I’ll have to show you, sometime.’
‘You say you’ve got pictures of Nancy?’ I asked, he having mentioned it.
He smiled. ‘Hundreds.’
‘I’d like to see one, when you can spare the time.’
‘Sure. I’ll let you have one. Outdoor stuff, they are. We used to spend the summer out there on the water, all weathers. When I could get the time off.’
He suddenly grinned, a wide, flowing stretch of sheer devilment. ‘And sometimes when I couldn’t. Mark was mad at me. Not his dad. Mr Ruston’s easy-going, and most of the work’s in the winter anyway. We were going to write a book, Nancy and me. The pictures mine, the words hers. It’s a secret. Mr Ruston’d got all these fancy ideas, her degree and the yard and designing. She went along with it, not arguing. A degree’s a degree, she used to say. Looks good, and nobody cares what you got it for. I said writers — intending writers — ought to study English, but she wouldn’t have it. Said you only learn to write correct English, not interesting English. I never understood that.’
He had stopped, his mind miles away. I prompted: ‘So you had a secret.’
‘We were going to get married and go away together. Work our way round the world, she writing, me photographing.’
‘And live on what?’
He shrugged. ‘Nancy would’ve worked it out. Commissions, she said. But that’s what sparked off all that business of trying to trace her mother. She said she couldn’t go until she knew what she was going from. Can you make sense of that?’
I contemplated the ceiling beams. I wasn’t used to handling all this psychological stuff, and could only go by my old-fashioned logic. ‘Maybe. It’s a matter of identity. Belonging. You need to know where you originated, so that you’ve got somebody and somewhere to come back to. Nancy would have to meet her natural mother — if no more than that — so that she could sort of relax. It’s a question of fixing your place in the scheme of things.’
‘I still don’t get it.’ He shook his head stubbornly. ‘Anyway, that was what she wanted. And as I said, she and Mark managed to get a name and address. Why she wouldn’t let me help her I don’t understand.’ He stared at me in misery.
I pointed my pipe stem at him. ‘You were what she was heading towards. She wanted to keep you separate from what she was leaving behind.’
His eyes brightened. ‘You really think so?’
It had been a bit specious, but if it helped him, what did that matter? ‘It’s how women think,’ I assured him, all confidence, as though I knew.
‘Well...that’s what she did. Mark drove there, and she told me afterwards she was absolutely rigid with nerves and fear. I can understand that, right enough. She’d been building up to it for months, not knowing who or what to expect. And I suppose I didn’t help her much. There I was, not knowing what to advise her, when she might’ve met somebody who fell all over her and couldn’t make enough of her, and wanted her back — and that’d be a grand thing to offer to Nancy, who’d got nothing to stay with the Rustons for...’
I saw what was worrying him. ‘And you thought you might lose her?’
‘Yes.’ His misery mouth was there again, comical if I’d been in the mood. ‘Sheer bloody selfish, that’s what I was. Not thinking of her and her happiness.’
‘Which was with you?’
‘I liked to think so. Why’re you distracting me?’
‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘She told me, later, that in the end her nerve went. She couldn’t go on with it. They parked in the lane, half a mile short of the house, and Mark argued with her, shouted at her, she said. Well...I suppose he’d spent a lot of time and money on it...’ Always ready to find excuses for other people, was Larry. ‘In the end he lost patience with her, and said he’d go to the house himself and feel out the situation, then come back for her if it was optimistic. He was gone an hour. She said she nearly went insane. Then he came back all furious and said the damned woman was impossible and she’d almost gone into hysteria, saying she never wanted to set eyes on Nancy. And that,’ he said with finality, ‘was that.’
But he offered no excuse for this woman. Perhaps it had hurt Nancy too much for even Larry’s forgiveness.
‘Nancy,’ I said gently, ‘had been thinking about it for a long while, but it was dropped on her mother without any warning.’
‘I blame them in Parliament,’ he burst out with a force I wouldn’t have expected. ‘Them and their stupid laws. Causing nothing but trouble. They want their laws rolled up and stuffed right up.’
‘But Nancy gave it time, and then she wrote to her mother. Then what?’
He’d exhausted himself with emotion and now seemed sullen.
‘She phoned me, the Wednesday before that...that collection Saturday, and said she’d had a reply. She was all excitement, though it didn’t sound encouraging to me. Just: “I am, willing to meet you and discuss ma
tters.” Not very nice, I thought.’
‘Nancy didn’t mention when or where?’
‘I’ve told you she didn’t. She knew I’d be there if I knew. Couldn’t have kept away, could I?’ His eyes brightened. ‘But if she had a yellow sticker on her anorak, it must’ve been Saturday.’
If my theory was correct, and the sticker had been affixed when the photographer found her body, then Nancy could have died any time between the Friday, say, and the Tuesday. I didn’t mention that. But we had a clue, or he could at least give me one, on where she’d possibly gone into the water.
‘But you’d know,’ I suggested, ‘about currents. You know where she was found?’
He looked haunted, not wanting to discuss it. ‘I know.’
‘Say four or five days in the water — Where could she have started from?’
I made this casual, as though she’d been a bit of flotsam. But it didn’t work. He saw me as callous.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ His image of her was still very much alive, and he wanted to keep it like that.
‘It might help. I wouldn’t imagine there’s much current in the Broads themselves.’
‘Only where the river enters or leaves.’ His eyes hated me. ‘So it must’ve been in the Thurne or the Bure. Even they’re slow-moving. It’d have to be somewhere below Horning Ferry on the Bure, or Heigham Bridge on the Thurne.’
‘Horning Ferry, I suppose, is not very far from the Rustons’ place?’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing,’ he shot back heatedly.
‘I only meant to imply that she wouldn’t make an appointment to meet anybody so close to her home. She could’ve met you there, by chance.’
He relaxed. ‘I suppose.’
‘Then possibly — Heigham bridge?’
‘Yes. Why can’t you leave it alone! What’s it matter now?’
‘I don’t know.’ But a bridge sounded like somewhere useful for throwing someone from.
‘I’d better be going,’ he said, uncomfortable now, having unloaded pretty well all he was carrying, and realizing he still had it.
Death of an Innocent (Richard and Amelia Patton) Page 11
