David Webb 8 - Symbols at Your Door

by Anthea Fraser

  At the incident room, however, there was more positive news.

  “DS Partridge just phoned in, sir. He left a number and would like you to ring back.”

  Webb went into the small back room, which was presumably used for Sunday School; there was a lumpy Easter Garden on a shelf, and highly coloured drawings of improbable donkeys round the walls.

  “DS Partridge.”

  “Hello, Don. I believe you called.”

  “Yes, Guv.” Partridge’s voice quickened into animation. “We’ve traced the girl who was involved with Carey, and guess what—she’s dead, too!”

  “Must be catching. Recently?”

  “No, over two years ago. In childbirth, apparently.”

  “And her husband?”

  “He works on an offshore oil rig, but he’s on leave at the moment. We haven’t seen him; I thought you might like to go yourself.”

  “I would indeed.” Webb fumbled for notebook and pen. “What’s his address?”

  “Pinner. Fourteen Linden Avenue.”

  “OK, Don, thanks.”

  He went back to the incident room, where Jackson was watching one of the computer screens. “M4 again for us, old son. Husband of Carey’s deceased lady-friend.”

  “Deceased? Then she didn’t do it.”

  “No, but he might have. She died in childbirth two years ago. Could have been Carey’s.”

  “Would the husband have known?”

  “Quite likely. He works on an oil rig, and if he wasn’t home at the appropriate time... ” Webb lifted his shoulders expressively.

  “But what has all this to do with Mrs. Dexter?” Jackson asked, as they went out to the car.

  “I keep telling you, Ken, damn-all.” And he opened the door and climbed inside.

  ***

  Linden Avenue had seen better days. Some of the houses had been turned into flats, and several front gardens were concreted over to provide parking space. There was a general run-down air about it, though one or two houses were defiantly double-glazed.

  Number 14 was a small semi at the far end, and there was a car in the drive. So far, so good. As Jackson drew in to the kerb, Webb glanced up and saw a face at the downstairs window before it darted back out of sight. However, their knock was answered, and they found themselves facing a large, broad-shouldered man with curly ginger hair. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and jeans.

  “Mr. Mayfield?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Chief Inspector Webb and Sergeant Jackson, from Shillingham.”

  “Where?”

  “Shillingham, sir. Broadshire.”

  “Yes?”

  “Could we come inside? We have a few questions to ask you.”

  “What kind of questions?” It wasn’t said aggressively.

  In fact, there was as little expression in his voice as in the pale blue eyes that steadily returned Webb’s gaze.

  “Concerning the death of Mr. Neil Carey.”

  “The one in the paper? What’s it to do with me?”

  “We believe your late wife was a friend of his.”

  For a moment longer Mayfield maintained his stance. Then his shoulders sagged. “All right. You’d better come in.”

  The hall felt cold and unlived-in and there were boxes and packing cases against the wall.

  “You’ll have to forgive the mess,” Mayfield said over his shoulder. “I’m hardly ever here.”

  He led them, probably instinctively, to the kitchen. It was long and narrow, and at the far end was a drop table and two chairs. These he indicated, and as they sat down, drew up a stool for himself. Through the pane in the back door Webb could see a paved area and a small square of neglected garden.

  “Now, what’s all this about?”

  Webb said, “We were sorry to hear of your wife’s death.”

  Mayfield’s fingers clenched, but he said steadily, “That was some time ago now.”

  “What happened to the child?”

  “It died too.”

  “That’s tough.” He paused. “I believe you work on an oil rig, Mr. Mayfield?”

  “Been doing your homework, haven’t you?”

  “Away for long stretches at a time, are you?”

  There was silence. Then Mayfield said softly, “Damn you.”

  “Look, sir, this isn’t easy, with your wife being dead and everything.”

  “But was the child mine? That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? Well, it wasn’t, it was that bastard Carey’s.”

  “She told you?”

  “Yes, she told me. And you know something? I agreed to accept it. You see, it wasn’t only because I’d been away that I knew it wasn’t mine. I can’t father kids myself. Belinda’d always wanted one, and we’d talked round adoption, but I wasn’t keen. You don’t know what you’re getting. At least this one would have been half hers.”

  “Wouldn’t you have resented it, though?”

  He shrugged. “Never got the chance to find out. The poor little blighter was premature and died within hours. Belinda was haemorrhaging badly and needed a transfusion.” He stopped, then ended flatly, “She was given contaminated blood. She didn’t stand a chance.”

  There was a silence. Pointless to keep saying they were sorry. He knew it anyway. Webb said, “And you blamed Neil Carey.”

  “Too right I did. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have died. But by that time he’d gone off God knows where, and in any case he was the last person I wanted to see. I went back to the rig and worked all the hours God sent. I told myself it would get easier; after all, we were used to being apart. But she’d always been here at home, waiting. The Carey business hadn’t been serious; we both knew that. He set his cap at her and she was lonely. A lot of blokes in our profession run up against that. With what we had going between us, we could have coped. But we didn’t get the chance.”

  He stared down at his clenched hands. “Everyone said it would get easier, but it hasn’t. Each time I come back here, I expect to find her. Daft, isn’t it? People tell me I should sell, move out, but how can I? It was our home. It’s all I have left of her.”

  “And then,” Webb said heavily, “by chance you learned where Carey was.”

  “Yes. From a chap at Stanley Marcus. We used to go to the pub sometimes with him and his wife. He heard on the grapevine that Carey had a job with Banks Moorhouse in Reading.

  “Well, I was on leave and I’d nothing else to do. I went along out of curiosity, to see what the man who’d wrecked my life looked like. I was going to ask someone to point him out to me, but it wasn’t necessary. There was a car-park at the back of the building, and as luck would have it, the directors had their own spaces with their names printed on a board. I only had to wait till five o’clock, and when he came out and got into that car, I’d know who he was. Honest to God, that’s all I meant to do—have a look at him.

  “But when he did come there was a pretty girl with him, and they were laughing and joking together. And I thought, ‘What if he’s got his eye on her, and she’s happily married? Will some other poor bastard have to go through this?’”

  “Mr. Mayfield,” Webb interrupted, “I think we should caution you that—”

  “Save your breath. You want to hear this, don’t you, and I don’t give a damn anymore.”

  “Nevertheless...” Webb nodded to Jackson, who obliged. Mayfield waited impatiently till he’d finished, then immediately continued.

  “Anyway, the girl went off to her car and I watched Carey get into his. And without even thinking about it I started to follow him. I never even wondered where he was going; he could have driven to Scotland for all I cared, I’d still have stuck on his tail. But he went to this place up on the hill in your part of the world.

  “Well, as you know, there’s a pub opposite where he lived, and it seemed quite likely he’d come over for a pint later on. I didn’t want to go to his house, because his wife mightn’t know about Belinda. So I sat and waited till c
losing time, but he didn’t come so I drove home.

  “The next day I went back to Reading and waited for him again. By this time it had got to me. All I could think of was the way he’d laughed and chatted with that girl, while Belinda would never laugh again. She’d paid with her life for the time they spent together, but he’d got off scot-free. I could feel the hatred building up in me. I knew I should stop then, let it go, but I couldn’t.

  “Well, the same thing happened again. He went home and stayed there. Who could blame him, with a wife waiting? If I wanted to approach him, it seemed it would have to be before he got there. Over the weekend I worked out what I’d do, planned it down to the smallest detail. It was the most exhilarating two days I can remember; for the first time in two years my life had some purpose to it. And on Monday, I went ahead of him to the woods halfway up the hill. I parked my car there, then I walked back to the main road and waited for him at the turning. I’d allowed plenty of time, and it was just as well, because he was early. And when he arrived, I hitched a lift up the hill.”

  Outside, an aeroplane droned over a cloudless blue sky. Inside there was silence. Then Mayfield looked up. “Well, you can probably guess the rest. I’d taken a knife with me and I forced him to park next to my car in the lay-by, screening it from the road. Then I made him walk with me into the forest. And I told him who I was, and exactly what had happened to Belinda. He insisted he hadn’t known she was pregnant. It might have been true. On the other hand, he’d have said anything at that moment.”

  He sighed and looked up at Webb. “So there you have it. I didn’t think it’d take long to find me.”

  Damn that Warrender woman! Webb thought vehemently. If it hadn’t been for her gossiping phone calls, Carey would be alive and this man guilt-free.

  Mayfield had got to his feet, lion-like with his broad shoulders and red mane. He must have been a terrifying figure in the dim forest, with the knife in his hand. Well, Neil Carey hadn’t got off scot-free after all; he’d paid the same price as Belinda Mayfield.

  CHAPTER 14

  Murder on Monday, arrest on Thursday had a ring of “Solomon Grundy” about it. It didn’t usually happen so swiftly, and Webb wished he could feel duly gratified; instead, he felt profoundly depressed. In part this was due to his sympathy for their prisoner, but also because, as he’d suspected, finding the answer to one crime had brought them no nearer to solving the other.

  Before going to work the next morning, he stood for some moments staring at his sketches. The murderer was depicted here, he was sure of it. In his mind’s eye he moved the little figures about in a deadly gavotte. If this one had been here instead of there, could he—? But why?

  At Carrington Street he brushed aside Crombie’s congratulations. “It was handed to me on a plate,” he said.

  “Good PR none the less. And there’s something else to celebrate; Regional Crime have collared another four of the motorway gang. What’s more, once they knew they were nailed two of them admitted seeing the graffiti at Mews Grange.”

  Webb looked up. “What day would that have been?”

  Crombie consulted his notes. “They turned it over on the Tuesday, and the drawing was there then. The day before the Dexters got theirs.”

  Webb said irritably, “It’s perfectly ridiculous that we can’t discover who did it. Damn it, someone must have seen something.”

  “Not necessarily. Those high hedges shield the houses from the road.”

  Webb stood up with a sigh. “Well, I’d better go and tell Mrs. Carey we’ve nabbed the bloke who did for her old man.”

  “Good luck!” Crombie said, and bent once more over his files.

  ***

  It was a cold and sunny morning. Primroses were scattered over the grass, daffodils nodded and purple aubretia cascaded over stone walls. In Chantock Forest the trees were washed with soft green and the sunlight filtered through the branches to make checkered patterns on the road. Where every prospect pleases, Webb thought glumly, And only man is vile. And he averted his eyes from the lay-by where Carey’s car had been found.

  “I need some space to think, Ken,” he told Jackson as they entered the village. “You go and break the news to Mrs. Carey. And you might let the Cummings know, too; they’ll be going back to London tomorrow.”

  “Wonder if they’ll ever come back?” Jackson mused. “I don’t think I would, in their shoes.”

  Webb got out of the car. “See you in a couple of hours at the incident room.”

  The village appeared deserted. News of the arrest had reached the incident room the previous evening, and inquiries about the second murder were thankfully abandoned. With police presence chiefly confined to the village hall, Beckworth had sunk back into the daytime lethargy which had so depressed Carol Dexter.

  Thinking of her, Webb walked back along the main road and stood on the pavement outside the bungalows, staring across at her home. The house itself had figured largely in the tragedy. Its front door had been daubed, it had been the scene of the quarrel which the Parrishes overheard, and from it Carol had gone to meet her death. Why had she been killed? Had he been wrong to attach so much importance to the graffiti? They’d been shown to have no connection with either Neil Carey’s death or the burglaries.

  Perhaps they also had no bearing on hers. Yet of all those who’d been subjected to the drawing, she alone had been disturbed by it—and within a week she was dead.

  His eyes moved from the glowing stone farmhouse to the building that had been its stables, now itself upgraded to a desirable residence. How had they both looked when the Barlows lived there, when there had been a school and a shop and a bit of heart in the village? He would never know.

  He turned and walked slowly back along the road, stopping at the crossroads to look reflectively at the winding drive of Beckworth House visible through its gates. Mentally he followed Carol along the length of it to the forecourt in front of the House. Gina Cummings had seen her there. Where had she gone next? Directly to the lily-pond? And who had seen her go?

  Within the gates the small stone lodge lay humped in the sunshine. Jackson would be there with Mrs. Carey. Would it help her to know how and why her husband had died?

  Webb turned into Tinker’s Lane, still sifting the pros and cons of the case, but his musings were interrupted by a sudden scuffle in one of the gardens, and he turned to see a large black cat erupt from the shelter of some shrubbery in pursuit of a bird. With millimetres to spare, the bird soared to freedom, and Webb watched it alight on the faded swinging sign outside the pub, chattering nervously.

  He was about to start walking again when his eyes slipped to the sign itself and he stiffened unbelievingly. For beneath the bird-droppings, the flaking paint and the weathering of many years, there was, faintly discernible, the outline of a face. Its features were no longer visible, but twisting branches of leaves sprang from its head and Webb knew without doubt that it had once had squinting eyes, a protruding tongue and a malevolent expression. For it was the Green Man, one of the ancient gods, the spirit of the countryside. And all the time it had been swinging secretively above their heads, no doubt mocking their endeavours.

  He pushed his way through the swing doors into the pub. The proprietor straightened from behind the bar. “Sorry, sir, we’re not open. Oh, it’s you.”

  “That sign of yours, Mr. Haydock. I’ve never noticed it before.”

  “Oh?” The man waited, puzzled. Then he said, “I suppose people don’t look up there. The name’s written on the wall, anyway.”

  “And if they did look up, they’d have difficulty making out what it was.”

  “Yes, you’re right there. We keep meaning to take it down and get it repainted.”

  “Other pubs called the Green Man depict Robin Hood in his Lincoln green.”

  “Yes, well that’s a more modern interpretation,” said the landlord, dismissing with magnificent nonchalance an eight-hundred-year-old legend. “Ours is the original one. Ugly little cha
p, isn’t he?”

  Webb drew a deep breath. The ancient spirit of the countryside, deeply resentful of the newcomers usurping village homes. And those newcomers who’d been visited by it had none of them been here longer than three years. They wouldn’t have recognized the drawing as the faded, indecipherable inn sign swinging in the lane.

  Webb turned on his heel and pushed his way out again, leaving the landlord staring after him.

  ***

  Mrs. Barlow greeted his appearance with a sigh of resignation. “This is becoming quite a habit,” she said.

  “Unavoidable, I’m afraid.”

  He followed her down the passage, aware of Bert Barlow’s bright, rheumy eyes staring at him as he passed his open door. Joe was at the sink rinsing his tea mug. He turned sharply as Webb came into the room, and a flicker of fear crossed his face.

  “Mr. Barlow, I think you’re aware we’ve been asking about the graffiti which appeared on five doors in the village?”

  “Aye, I heard.”

  “And you disclaimed all knowledge of it?”

  “Well, of course he did,” Hazel said indignantly. “So did we all.”

  Webb kept his eyes on her husband. “But weren’t you in fact responsible, sir?”

  Hazel gasped and turned to Joe, waiting for him to deny it. He stood stock still, staring back at Webb.

  “Didn’t you draw a Green Man on the doors of the incomers, to show your resentment of their taking over village homes?”

  “I might have done,” he said at last.

  “Joe!”

  “There was no harm in it,” he said defensively.

  “I suppose you did it on your early morning rounds, when no one was about? And if anyone did see you coming back down a drive they’d think nothing of it. You’re the milkman, after all.”

  “Oh, Joe!” Hazel said reproachfully.

  “Why the Lodge, though? That’s hardly a village house, and the Careys aren’t keeping anyone else out.”