A Deceptive Devotion

by Iona Whishaw

  “What are you doing there?” she asked quietly. “What are you looking at?”

  She slipped off the rock and stood about where he must have been standing if he’d fallen forward when he died, and looked out. But there was nothing unusual. Twenty yards on, the forest started up again. She looked around, puzzled, and then in a fit of nerves looked behind her. It wouldn’t do to be snuck up on oneself! Turning back, she took one last look at the stain of dried blood, and it was then she realized that there was a kind of shelf of rock, low down, at the base of the outcrop just ahead of the blood.

  Skirting the dark mess, she went around to the other edge of the flat stone and knelt down. Had there been something there? She sighed. Fruitless. Why had she bothered? And then she saw it—a tiny scrap of brown cloth the size of her little fingernail, flattened into the rough surface of the rock. Was this something? She tried to lean closer, but somehow the more she looked at it, the more it seemed like nothing at all. She started to reach for it, and then stopped herself. If it was anything, Darling could decide. It could be a scrap of the hunter’s clothing for all she knew, and Darling would have seen what he’d been wearing.

  Memorizing the details, she got up and looked around the area again. Already she was trying to imagine how she could possibly explain to Darling her reasoning for coming up to the scene of the murder. She scarcely understood it herself. But she would have to phone him and tell him.

  Chapter Twenty-FOUR

  Aptekar accepted the key from the motel clerk, who eyed him with some misgivings. “You stay more than a week you’re going to have to pay up front every time.”

  “Thank you. I should not be that long.”

  “Don’t wipe your shoes on the towel,” the man called out as Aptekar went out the door.

  Wondering what sort of reprobates the motel was used to accommodating, Aptekar threw his small bag on the single bed and opened the curtains to try to reduce the dinginess of the place. Well, he’d wanted dingy. The motel was a mile out of town by the side of the road between Nelson and nearby Salmo. He would have to think about how to proceed. He’d been lucky and caught a ride with a truck driver who was making the full journey from Vancouver to Castlegar, and then he’d picked up another ride to this nearly unoccupied motel.

  Now that he had come this far, he was filled with misgivings. He had thought that if he could find Lane, she would know whom to contact in the government, but then what? Someone had known he was to meet the British agent. Had he been followed from the minute he was so ceremoniously “retired”? Or had someone in Britain betrayed him to the Russians? He had thought he would seek asylum with the Canadians, but could they be trusted any more than their staunchest allies, the British? No doubt they worked hand in glove. His only safety lay in having enough to trade on, and he was certain they would be interested in the information he had, if not in him. It had only been two years since he’d learned of the Russian embassy man who’d turned himself over to the Canadian authorities with a list of all the Canadian and Russian operatives at work in the country. It was the list of new recruits that he had in his head, and the urgency to get to Lane had only grown when he’d seen the lay of the land in Vancouver. Soviet operatives were at work there as well.

  Aptekar lay down on the bed, feeling with annoyance the metal springs through the thin mattress, and closed his eyes. He was on the last leg of his trip. The idea that he had been betrayed by someone in Britain had taken a firm hold, and this betrayal had set off the workings of the Soviet machinery, which he had seen work so well when he was on the right side of it. Now he was the rat they were chasing. The country near here looks innocent, he thought, but he had seen the persistence of the Soviet machine. They would be here. Nowhere was safe for him right now. Maybe ever again. Lane lived far out in the country. He had not the means to hire a car. He would have to find another way to get to her. His survival would depend on his being able to spot the people chasing him before they spotted him.

  “Blast!” Ames pounded the steering wheel with his fist and pulled over to the side of the road. The flapping sound of the punctured tyre stopped, and the car settled with a tilt to the back-passenger side. He got out and walked around to look at the damage. It must have been a massive nail, he thought. The rim was resting right on the completely deflated tyre. Looking in either direction he could see no traffic, not that he’d want to see anyone. Indeed, he’d rather not. He had always thought changing a tyre was an undignified procedure. It somehow suggested a failure to look after the vehicle properly in the first place.

  He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, casting a warning look at the sky. The clouds of earlier had dissipated somewhat, and the threatening storm had not broken but rather taken itself off somewhere over the mountains, but there was still a dark roll banked on the west. The trunk was surprisingly full of things he’d never kept in it. A bucket and a stiff dried cloth, some boots caked in drying mud that must have been part of the murder investigation.

  His every sense of propriety was outraged. He had babied this car when he was in charge of it. Cleaned it, checked the equipment and the oil and the instruments. And he never would have left dirty boots and an unsavoury looking bucket in the trunk. He took these out as they covered the wheel well, and then pulled away a blanket that covered the spare tyre. To his utter chagrin, instead of a spare tyre, there was a small brown suitcase. Absolutely puzzled, and with his irritation climbing to indignant anger, he lifted the suitcase by its edge to see if the tyre was impossibly somehow jammed under it in the wheel well. Who the blazes put anything but a spare tyre where the spare tyre should be? Emitting a volley of bad language, he slammed the trunk shut and considered what to do next. He knew that the Balfour store and gas station was a good two miles off, the last half mile up a long steep hill. But they might have a spare, or a tow truck—at the very least he could call the office to report and then call Miss Winslow. She might pick him up, though to what end he wasn’t sure just yet.

  He was reaching into the back seat to collect his jacket when he turned and went back to the trunk and opened it. He pulled the case properly out of the wheel well. It was heavier than he expected. It had two brass latches that could be locked, and he pushed them outward to release the catches. Whoever had put it there had not bothered to lock them. They slid sideways, and the locking mechanisms snapped up smartly. The sight that greeted him mystified him completely.

  The suitcase seemed to be full of some sort of electrical equipment. There were two black boxes, one of which had some sort of glass dial, and in a cavity left by the boxes, a jumble of wires had been shoved. Carefully Ames pulled out the mess of wiring and saw a small tidy pair of ear phones entangled in them. He pushed them back and frowned at the whole affair. Was this new police equipment? It was obviously some sort of communication device, but it seemed peculiar that he’d not been told. Of course, no one expected he’d have a flat tyre, but it seemed to him very short-sighted of whoever had stowed the new equipment to replace something so essential as a spare tyre. And why had it been covered with a blanket? Granted, expensive new equipment could not be left lying around on the back seat of a car for anyone to see. Even putting a spare tyre in the back seat of the car could indicate to any miscreant that there was something valuable in the trunk of the car.

  He was still staring into the trunk when he heard a vehicle rattle to a stop behind him. It was a Ford runabout truck from the late twenties. An older man with a heavy growth of beard leaned out the window and surveyed the scene.

  “Can I give you a lift somewheres? Looks like you got trouble with that tyre. I’m headed up to Bales’s store. He might be able to help you,” the old man said genially.

  “Oh, yes, thanks! That would be great. Someone’s taken the spare out of the trunk, if you can believe it. Just two ticks.” Ames closed the trunk, and on consideration locked it, and the rest of the car.

  Once t
he truck putted back to life and was progressing slowly up the road the old man said, “Now who’d go and take the tyre out of the car? Isn’t it your car?”

  “No. It belongs to the Nelson Police. I’ve been away out at the coast, so I guess someone else has been driving it.”

  “Police, eh?” the old man chuckled. “You’d think you fellows would be a bit more organized!”

  “Yes, you would,” said Ames.

  Darling heard Oxley go into his office, and called out, “There you are. Step in here please, Oxley.”

  There was the sound of a desk drawer opening and closing, and then Oxley was at Darling’s door. “Sir?”

  “Sit. Now that we have Taylor in custody, I’d like to be clear that we have a solid case against him. We will re-interview Mrs. Brodie, Taylor’s ex, and the landlady, for a start, and I’ll just have you go over again your visit with Ward to the shop where you found the shirt.”

  “Why?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why? Why do all that? We have what we need. Motive, opportunity, the best evidence I’ve ever seen. What jury would not convict?”

  Darling sat for a moment looking at his subordinate, trying to weigh the man’s sense of conviction against his own caution, but also surprised by his tone. Dismissive, Darling would have called it. He was not pleased.

  “There are problems with our case, Constable, and if you had been able to keep an open mind thus far you would see them. Obvious questions around the crime scene alone might be turned into reasonable doubt in the hands of a qualified defence attorney. And so if you don’t mind, I would like to look more fully at everything we have. Now then, would you be good enough to find Ward and send him up to me?” Darling knew he was being petty, making Oxley wait, sending him to fetch Ward. “Oh, and by the way, Constable Ames is back from Vancouver so will likely need his office back. We’ll sort something later.”

  “Sir.”

  Oxley stood in the now-disputed office he’d been occupying and drew in a few deep breaths. He should have been more careful. The word “insubordination” repeated itself in his mind. He would much rather be in the thick of things in Ottawa, but he’d been sent out here. Insubordination was the word they’d used. He knew success here would help him get back to where he belonged. He would have to be much, much more careful. He knew he’d miscalculated in assuming that police in a small town on the other side of the country would be easy for a man like him to deal with. Ward was easy. Darling was not. He would almost admire the inspector if he weren’t so angry.

  Watching Van Eyck’s pickup truck trundle off up the road, Ames thought again of the life of a country policeman. In Vancouver it would have been the work of a moment to find a garage and get the tyre fixed. Here a good two hours had passed. Bales didn’t have tyres, but had given him a ride to the Van Eyck garage where Van Eyck’s daughter, Tina, the lady mechanic, as Ames thought of her, had assessed the situation and, clucking at the incompetence of the police not having a spare, had taken the spare from the trunk of her father’s car. Together they’d driven back to where his car was still listing on the side of the road.

  He thought about Tina now, watching her drive off, leaving a cloud of dust. He’d met her during a previous case when a man called Carl Castle had gone missing from a nearby farm. He’d been surprised that she was a mechanic and had taken a good deal of jibing from Darling on the subject of his backward views on women. She’d been crisp and efficient, and not a little teasing on the subject of the poor preparedness of the police, and wondering aloud how they could solve crimes when they couldn’t even keep their cars in order.

  She had been standing looking at the flat tyre with her hands on her hips. “If you want to be helpful, you can hand me the spanner, otherwise stay out of my way.” She’d accompanied this with a dazzling smile that had quite unnerved Ames, who had had to figure out what a “spanner” might be.

  “Wrench, you nincompoop. I haven’t got all day.” Tina had wrangled the damaged tyre off the car and had a good look at it. “This one’s kaput. For one thing it’s worn to nothing, and for another it’s torn along the edge where this nail went in here, see?”

  Ames leaned down to look at where Tina was pointing and tried to ignore the faint scent of lavender emanating from her. He saw what she was pointing at.

  “I see. Well, I can put this one on. No need for you—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Just stay out of my way and hand me things,” Tina said with finality. She stood up and held the damaged tyre. “I’ll take this thing back and put a new tyre on it. I better have that spare back by tomorrow!”

  Sighing, and trying not to think about how pretty she’d looked with her blond curly hair falling onto her forehead out of her business-like turban, and how lovely her voice was, mocking him though she had, Ames started the car and resumed his trip to King’s Cove. He’d have to phone Darling from Miss Winslow’s to explain about the mishap with the spare, and once he got back he’d find out who the devil had taken it out of the car in the first place.

  Ward sat in front of Darling, thinking more about the dog, who needed a walk, than about the arrest of Taylor. So much so that he’d had to ask Darling to repeat the question. “Sorry, sir. My mind was somewhere else. The dog needs his walk, and he gets a brush down at the end of the day.”

  “He’s earned it, finding our missing man like that. I won’t keep you long. Can you just go over your visit to Taylor’s repair shop again? I’m interested in particular if you went over every part of it, as I’m wanting to make sure we got every piece of evidence. At the moment, we have a missing hunting rifle, as you know. No, no,” Darling added, seeing Ward’s face fall. “I don’t think you’ve been negligent, I just want to make sure we’ve covered the ground.”

  “Right, of course, sir.” Ward took out his notebook. “We entered the premises at approximately two thirty. I was directed to tackle the workbench as it has a number of drawers and cupboards. It was a big job, sir. The drawers were quite deep and full of tools and the like. I could see that, if I was looking for a weapon, I would need to unpack everything to go through them properly. I decided to check the cupboards that were under the drawers first. These were full of larger objects, outboard motor hulls and parts and so on, so I could be done with those quickly and then get on with the drawers.”

  “And Oxley? What did he tackle?”

  “He went straight for the closet. I think he mentioned later that because the shelves had fallen down when you’d been there before, he guessed that the suspect might have upset the shelves when he was hiding something there.”

  “Good. So you went through the cupboards and then through the drawers, but found no trace of the rifle, or anything else, is that right?”

  Ward paused, looking nervously at the floor. “No, sir. Not exactly. You see Oxley found the shirt with the knife bundled into it in short order and brought it out. He was holding it with a pair of tongs and when he spread it out on the counter it was clear that there had been plenty of blood on the front of the shirt, and with the knife . . . well, we arrested Taylor and came away after that.”

  “So Oxley went straight for the closet, found the shirt and knife, and that was that? The rest of the shop was never searched?” Darling studiously kept a neutral face that was in direct conflict with what he was feeling.

  Ward realized what they had done, or failed to do, and looked crestfallen. “That’s about the size of it, sir. I’d better go back and complete the search.”

  “Yes, you had, and take O’Brien with you. He never gets an airing. And take the dog. You never know, he might do a better job than the two of you did. We’re still looking for that rifle.” Even with the dodgy behaviour of their prisoner regarding the murder weapon and the night-time visit to Brodie’s camp, finding the missing rifle at Taylor’s shop would really seal the thing.

  When W
ard had left his office, Darling chewed the end of his pencil and shook his head. He was interested in the word Ward had used, that he’d been “directed” to go look into the workbench. His thoughts on this were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. O’Brien said Ames was on the line.

  “Yes, Ames, what is it?”

  “I just wanted to tell you it’s all taken a bit longer because I got a flat.”

  “Forgotten how to change a tyre, have you? How long could that take?”

  “Two hours, sir, if you count the fact that the spare tyre has been removed from the car and replaced with some newfangled policing equipment. I had to get that Tina Van Eyck to come and bring me a new one. It was embarrassing standing around watching a woman change the tyre. Luckily there wasn’t much traffic.”

  Darling hated to miss a chance to tease Ames, but he was on the alert. “What newfangled police equipment?”

  “That radio transmitter thing. I should ring off. I understand from Miss Winslow that her guest could return at any moment.”

  When he had hung up, Ames went into the kitchen in the hope of finding something cold to drink. Lane motioned Ames to sit down. “Did I hear you telling the inspector that the police now have radio transmission equipment? That’s frightfully modern. How will it be used?”