For this he needed full light, and the overhead floods up in the steel rafters were on. I could see now how they got the boats in.
The crane lifted them from the water and carried them to the doors, from where they were winched inside on a cradle. A hook in the towing ring, attached to blue nylon rope, stretched tautly to a winch at the far end of the shed. I walked round to the rope and twanged it to attract his attention. It thrummed.
He looked up.
‘You’ve got something to tell me?’ he asked eagerly.
I shook my head. ‘Nothing of interest. Is Mark around?’
His eyes indicated interest. ‘You’re gonna grill him?’
‘Talk to him, that’s all.’ Larry was too eager. The idea had his approval, but he’d lost interest now.
‘He’s up at the house. You want to watch your step, there’s a grand old row going on there.’
‘With his father?’
‘Never.’ Nobody argued with Malcolm Ruston. ‘He’s away at Lowestoft, ordering supplies.’
‘His mother, then,’ I decided, there being no one else.
‘I could hear it from here. That’s why I put the tranny on.’
Then he returned to his painting. Nothing done here seemed to permit interruption. But he said over his shoulder, ‘I left you that picture.’
I nodded my thanks, and we went out into the darkness. After the bright light, this was positively dangerous, with so much cast-off ironware littering the place and the water not all that distant. We stood and waited for our eyes to adjust.
‘There’s a torch in the car,’ she reminded me.
‘I’m not sure I could find the car.’
Then I could detect the reflected purple of the sunset on the water, and there was just enough moon to assist our progress along the yard.
We heard them before we reached the steps. Mark and his mother. With a hand on Amelia’s arm, I paused.
‘We can’t intrude,’ she whispered.
We didn’t need to. Mark’s voice rang out, and light appeared at the top of the steps as he opened the kitchen door.
‘You always hated the sight of her!’ he shouted back.
‘What could you expect?’ she screamed.
‘You signed the bloody papers. You signed for her, damn it. Like a soddin’ load of coal. And that’s all she ever meant to you. You drove her to it!’ he bellowed, and cut off all possible response by slamming the door behind him.
Then, before I could decide if he had now decided Nancy’s death had been suicide, and was blaming his mother for it, he was bounding down the steps as though he could see them. This he obviously couldn’t, because he was completely unaware of our presence, and would’ve crashed through between us if I hadn’t spoken up quickly.
‘Mark! It’s Richard Patton.’
He came to a dead halt, breath hissing between his teeth. ‘For God’s sake! D’you want to give me a heart attack?’
‘Sorry. We were coming to see you.’
‘Then why not come the proper way, and ring the front door bell?’
‘I thought you’d be somewhere in the yard.’ Now I could see him dimly. He looked dishevelled and unorganized. ‘I wanted a few words with you.’
‘Not now.’
He tried to thrust his way through but I caught his arm and held him. ‘It’s got to be now.’
I felt his weight tense against me, and for a moment it seemed he was going to use violence. In the dark, and with no stance to go by or expression to interpret, I had no way of guessing from which direction it might come. Then he relaxed, and shrugged himself free.
‘Keep your blasted hands to yourself.’
‘I don’t want to have to chase you round the yard, Mark. You’re going to have to answer some questions, sometime. Rather me, I’d have thought, than the police Inspector.’
‘You’re off your bleedin’ head, matey. There’s nothing to tell you. Now clear off out of these premises. You’re on private property.’
Amelia put in: ‘We could come again tomorrow, Richard.’
This was a strange concession from her at this time, but she could feel we were very close to violence and she hates the sight of blood.
‘And it is private property, as he says,’ she added.
I realized, then, that she was playing the soft and reasonable part of the duo. In contrast, my persistence would be more effective. I spoke, therefore, angrily.
‘It’s business property, and he knows it. It’s business I’ve come to discuss with him, and I’m not leaving here until I do.’
Above us the kitchen door opened again. ‘Is that you, Mark? Who’ve you got out there? Answer me.’ There was trepidation in her voice. Clearly, Mark was a forceful son to handle.
‘Oh Christ!’ he said softly. Then he raised his voice. ‘It’s all right, ma. Visitors.’ The door closed with a thump. He turned to me. ‘What bloody business?’
‘Relating to Nancy and to Olivia Dean.’ He has silent. I could feel the silence, the tenseness of it. ‘I’ve been talking to Philip.’
He grunted as though I’d hit him in the belly. Then he growled, ‘The office, then. And this’d better be short. Dad’ll be back soon.’
This time I allowed him to thrust his way between us. We would need his lead, and follow his bulk against the lighter shadows of the yard.
Fortunately the office was the nearest shed. The smallest, too, though it was constructed, like the worksheds, of steel girders and corrugated iron sheets. The door was wood, and the naked, unvarnished desk surface was wood, but nothing else in there was. Even the two chairs were metal. A single unshaded bulb swung from the roof rafters, apparently set moving by the opening of the door. With an angry gesture, Mark indicated the two chairs, but we declined, Amelia preferring to stand by the door, and I not intending to lose the psychological advantage of my height. I stood in the middle of the floor. Mark sat, almost upright, against the edge of the desk, with an attitude of contemptuous ease.
I looked round. As an office it was a mess. Papers were scattered on the surface of the desk, which was a set of planks roughly nailed to battens and supported on angle-iron legs. A similar but smaller desk against the wall held an unshrouded old Royal typewriter, laden with dust, no letters visible on the keys. There was a metal filing cabinet, a black phone bolted to the metal wall, and a picture facing it of a sea-going motor yacht, which at one time the Rustons might have fitted out. Or even owned.
I returned my attention to Mark. His black and unresponsive expression was no doubt a hangover from his recent dispute with his mother. This put him at a disadvantage. On the reverse side of it, though, was the fact that I would not be able to gauge his response to what I had to say unless I had a clean sheet of expression to start with. He was poised between an attitude of annoyed innocence and wary defence, conscious that he had already committed himself by reacting to my mention of Philip and Olivia. He knew what I intended to talk about. He didn’t want it, but he couldn’t avoid it.
In an attempt to relax him, I opened quietly.
‘You know I’m not a policeman, Mark. I can’t give you warnings, and I can’t demand answers. All I can do is talk, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.’
This was as near as dammit to an official warning, but he might not have known that. Because of this, it had emerged in a rather more formal manner than I’d intended. He laughed lightly.
‘Then that’s all right. We know where we stand. I can tell you to leave. Right?’
‘Quite right. Say it calmly and after consideration, and we’ll have no choice. We would have to leave.’
Couldn’t be fairer than that, I thought. The temptation was there, I could see it fighting away behind his eyes, but already I’d said enough to arouse his curiosity. He waved a hand invitingly.
‘Then say what you’ve got to, and then leave.’
I nodded. Amelia leaned back against the door, and sighed.
12
‘We
met Philip Dean for lunch, Mark,’ I began, in the way of introduction. ‘I wanted to know more about that time you went to their house, and —’
He interrupted. ‘Why?’
‘Why...what?’
‘Why did you want to know more about it?’
‘Because I thought it could be related to Nancy’s death.’
‘Her death was an accident. The coroner said that.’
‘All the same —’
‘Are you arguing with that — or what?’
He had gone directly on to the attack, and it took me by surprise. It would have taken a long while, and a complex argument, to have explained how I’d come to that conclusion.
‘I’m not disputing it, Mark, but there’re other things that’ve happened, and if I put everything together I get the impression she didn’t die of any accident.’
‘Impression!’ He had contempt for such vagaries.
‘A reasonable supposition, then.’ I took it along with a smile, trying to keep the talk on an amicable basis.
‘Didn’t die accidentally!’ he said, using exactly the same tone as I had. ‘What does that mean? If not an accident — what?’
‘Not what your remark to your mother suggested.’
‘What remark? You’ve been spying!’
‘That your mother had driven her to it.’
‘Ha!’ He threw back his head, but the bark of mirthless laughter was loaded with contempt. ‘Impressions again. It just goes to show how you can get yourself all tied up —’
‘Just what was the impression I should have got?’ I asked, trying to go on the attack.
‘What ma drove her to was that bloody stupid idea of trying to trace her real mother. You knew she was adopted?’
‘It’s been mentioned.’ I inclined my head. His attitude was one of belligerent innocence in what he had in mind. It seemed safe to let him run loose with his ideas, and see what emerged.
‘Yes. So it was. So it has been. For as long as I can remember, it was always being mentioned. By ma. Oh...she was going to make sure Nancy knew she’d been adopted. No child of my mother — Nancy wasn’t — and she’d better get that into her head right from the start. Is it any damned wonder that Nancy got to wondering who her mother really was? I mean — everybody’s got a mother. Or so Nancy was always telling me. When she was little, she used to say, “but Mark, you’ve got a mother, so why haven’t I?” I mean, what could anybody say to that?’
He stopped. It had been a genuine question, expecting an answer. But, from Mark as I knew him, it had all been too sentimental, as though he’d scripted it for use when necessary. Now was the necessary time, and his eyes were on me, waiting for my reaction. All I could do was shake my head and offer: ‘I can’t see any answer to it.’
‘Well...exactly. I couldn’t understand what she was worried about myself. What’s the odd mother here and there, anyway?’ This was more the real Mark. He looked from one to the other of us, clearly believing this was amusing and would lighten the atmosphere. We stared back stonily, and he shrugged.
‘You didn’t take her seriously, then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, young girls are likely to go all sloppy over —’
‘Oh, but I did. Don’t think...oh hell, how can I put it? I’m just fifteen months older that she was. We grew up close. Well, we started our lives at this place, and it’s a bit lonely. We were close. Close, see. I didn’t understand what was getting at her, but I wasn’t going to jeer at her and try to laugh it out of her. If Nancy said it mattered to her, then it did. You get me? I told her she’d got me, so what more did she want? But I didn’t measure up, seems to me. I didn’t fill her life right up.’
I wondered whether he knew Larry had done that. ‘But she filled yours?’ I asked, very quietly, so as not to distract him now that it was coming without any prompting.
His knuckles whitened as he increased his grip on the desk. ‘There was dad and the yard, and I grew up with dad’s ideas and ambitions, and he taught me all I know. Nancy filled the rest. You could say. Yes, you could say that.’
I heard Amelia stir against the door behind me. I thought she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.
And so did Mark. The impetus seemed to have run from him, perhaps chasing after the truths he could dare to confide. When we’d run out of those, it was going to become more difficult.
‘And the time came,’ I prompted, ‘when she could apply to the authorities to discover the name and address of her mother? I expect that put you to the test.’
‘How’s that?’ he challenged. ‘What’re you getting at?’
‘Your concern for her. She’d always said how much she missed knowing who her real parents were. Now the time had come to find out. What did you think of that?’
‘Ah well...yes...I see. It came as a bit of a shock, I’ll tell you that. I thought those things were secret. But there was a new law. It wasn’t a secret any longer. What do they care, these high-ups who make the laws? What do they know about people and their lives — and what a thing like that can do! Jesus — there she was, Nancy, nearly dancing with excitement ‘cause she’d found out she could do it, and me expected to help her. Me! When I knew it’d all end up in tears. I mean — a complete stranger! You meet her...and she’s your mother. What can you expect? You’ve still got your own life to lead. And all that...all this upset! It’d be sure to lead to trouble. What else?’
In this, his sentiments closely resembled Larry’s, yet whereas Larry had seemed concerned about the effect on Nancy, Mark seemed more concerned about the effect on Mark.
‘Yet you did help her?’
‘Couldn’t get out of it.’ Now his smile held a shyness I hadn’t seen before. ‘It was expected of me, if you see what I mean. All her life, old Mark had been there, to help her get anything she wanted. Now she wanted this. I could hardly tell her to do it herself, could I!’
He still had not indicated any understanding of Nancy’s sense of emptiness. Amelia stirred again, but this time she spoke.
‘And all this,’ she asked, ‘was about her mother? Wasn’t there any mention of wanting to meet her father?’
‘Father?’ His eyebrows contracted. ‘Well no. Not that I can remember. It was always her mother she missed. You know how it is. It was ma who’d always got at her for being adopted. Dad didn’t care a tuppeny cuss about that. So I suppose...oh, I ain’t much good at this...but I suppose Nancy naturally missed her real mother, ‘cause dad was as good as any father she’d find.’
‘I can understand that,’ Amelia murmured.
I wandered over to the picture of the motor launch, casually, deliberately taking my attention from him. At the moment he needed no driving.
‘So that when it came to it,’ I said easily, ‘and Nancy insisted — however much you were against it — that she wanted to do it, you jumped into the breach and helped?’
‘Oh, sure. No skin off my nose, I thought. At the time.’
At the tone in that last sentence I turned. ‘But later...it was?’
‘It got tricky.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’ve got to admit that. But at first it was easy enough. I took her along to see a solicitor, and he got things moving. After a bit, the answer back. The name of her mother. It was Olivia Augusta Martin, at an address in...in Buckinghamshire, I think. Yes. That or Wiltshire. Anyway, I took her there in the pick-up, one weekend, and we found the place. It was a doctor’s house, and he didn’t know a thing about it. Or pretended he didn’t. When we told him what it was about, he looked at Nancy and said it might be just as well if she let it drop. She didn’t say a word all the way back. It was a miserable day, all round.’
He was frowning at the memory, silent. This account was full of detail, and I thought was true. A practised liar will fill his stories with false detail, aware of the value of background in the creation of verisimilitude. Mark had a rough simplicity and not much imagination, I thought. This had the ring of truth.
‘But she didn’t let it
drop?’ I suggested.
‘Nor her! Not Nancy. We went to the solicitor again, and I had to lay out a fair amount of money for a private eye. That’s what you ought to be, Mr Patton, a private detective. They must make a fortune.’
‘Only if they can get results. Go on.’
‘He came back with an answer. She was married and called Dean, and lived at a place called Mansfield Park. Not all that far from here. Fancy that — after all those years, and Nancy’s mother’d been so close!’
‘So of course, you had to take her there.’
‘Had to. But by that time...it’d all been a bit of a strain, for Nancy, you see...by that time she was in a fine mess of nerves. And things weren’t so easy for me, I can tell you, shoved into doing things, and then told not to, then pushed again. And in the end finding I was doing the whole thing for her. I hadn’t bargained for that. You can bet your life on that.’
‘But surely, Mark,’ Amelia said, ‘you ought to have expected it.’
‘How so? How so?’
‘There’d been no mention of her father on the papers — I gathered that from what you said. So Nancy already knew she was illegitimate, and there’d be no chance of tracing him. So her mother was her last chance. Of course she’d be all nerves. I’d have been myself.’
‘Well yeah. Yeah, I suppose.’ He swept both hands over his hair. ‘If you say so.’
‘So this would be it,’she went on. ‘Her one chance. All or nothing.’
I thought she was piling it on a little, but I didn’t say anything.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Mark agreed. ‘Whatever the reason, we found the place and she got me to stop in the lane. We could see the place — and you could tell there was money around. That seemed to put her off even more. “Oh Mark, I can’t! Just can’t!” You never heard such a stupid lot of fuss. After all the trouble we’d taken — that I’d taken — then she couldn’t face it. I nearly lost my temper with her, and that’s a fact. Nothing to it, I said, you just go there and ring the bell. And she came straight back at me. “Then you do it, Mark. I can always go later, if it’s all right.” Did you ever hear such a stupid idea?’
Death of an Innocent (Richard and Amelia Patton) Page 15
