Time stood waiting in the wings. I put my hand on her arm to stop her leaving. It wasn’t easy because Blackie had become a part of my life already.
“Come and see,” I said. “Call it coincidence, call it what you like, but see what I found recently.”
I opened the door that leads to the scullery where I’d put the litter tray under the sink. The black cat was perched on the draining board, grooming himself as if in readiness for the reconciliation.
“Look who’s here,” I said to him.
I heard her small gasp. So did he.
His ears perked. He took one surprised look at Leroy then made a flying leap into her arms with a throaty purr of pure adoration. I couldn’t compete with that.
*
I drove the ladybird to Tarrant Close and parked two doors down outside No 18. This was legitimate, no yellow lines. I could arrive openly. There was still crime tape surrounding the house and garden but I ducked under it. If anybody asked any questions, I would wave my licence.
The SOCOs had already dusted the house for trace elements. A film of white powder lay over everything, even the kitchen. They had given up on searching the kitchen. It seemed pretty much the same as when I’d last been there. I took off my trainers and put on a couple of thick plastic overshoes borrowed from some hospital. I didn’t want to leave traces.
I did not know where to start or what I was looking for. It was worse than a needle in a haystack, more like a pin in a vast land tip. More chance of winning the lottery. Wow! Champagne by the crate. No spraying it about like a rally driver, I’m going to drink the lot. Or rather, we are going to drink the lot. DI James and some retired female detective.
The body had been removed and so had the bedclothes. The bare mattress, worn in the middle, was a depressing sight. I peered into the wardrobe and chest of drawers. She did not have many clothes or possessions being in the throes of reinventing herself from scratch. Her standard housewife gear had been decanted to the charity shops long ago. I was probably buying the items for surveillance.
At the top of the wardrobe, I found a large hatbox, securely tied. It did not look as if it had been opened for years. The police had not touched it. A few hats were of no interest to them, but women don’t tie up hat boxes unless there’s a good reason.
There was a good reason. It was full of baby clothes. All brand new, price tags still in place, hand-knitted matinee coats folded in tissue paper. Leroy had got that right.
Leroy’s bedroom held no surprises except that I found a few black hairs on her duvet. Blackie had been a nocturnal visitor. Her wardrobe was a rainbow of clothes. I held up one of her dresses, a floaty blue chiffon thing, clasped it close to my waist and looked in the mirror. We were near enough the same size except I never wore dresses. The dress made me look different. Softened the shape, gave me a waist. Made my hair look almost normal.
“For heaven’s sake,” I said aloud. “Put it back. This isn’t a fashion show.”
I went into the third bedroom, the smallest room. It looked the same, characterless, cramped, cold. Then I noticed something which made my heart jolt. On the floor were some crumpled striped pyjamas. I could have sworn I last saw them folded on the pillow.
A chill touched the back of my neck as if a door had opened downstairs. I froze. The house was very still. A stairboard creaked. It was the tiniest noise. I hoped it was my imagination.
Slowly, I put out my hand to find something solid on the chest of drawers. My fingers closed over the bottle of brilliantine. It would have to do.
“Fancy fixing your hair. Miss Lacey? It’s got a nice scent,” said a cool voice. “Sandalwood.”
“Who are you?” I said, equally cool. It was an effort to keep my voice steady.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” said the man.
Twenty-Two
“You scared me, creeping up like that,” I said, swinging round, the bottle held high in my hand. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same,” said the man. “And mind that brilliantine. It’s expensive.”
“Come one step closer and you’ll get an expensive clout in the face,” I warned.
“Little firebrand, aren’t we? Do put that bottle down before you do yourself an injury.”
“You haven’t answered my question. What arc you doing in this house?” It was an effort to keep my voice steady. He could hardly call me little. The man was only an inch taller than me, carrying his weight well.
“My house actually,” he answered mildly. “This is my house and I live here.”
He didn’t look in the least like Leslie Fairbrother. He had a short-trimmed beard flecked with gray, tanned skin, prominent nose above a fleshy top lip. He was wearing well-cut fawn trousers and a blue cashmere sweater. He was nothing like the old-fashioned tubby figure wearing gold-rimmed specs that DI James had shown me in a photograph.
“Are you sure?”
He laughed, showing the even white teeth of status dentistry. “I don’t need to prove anything to you, young woman. Maybe I have changed my wardrobe, got contact lenses, grown a beard.”
“You’re the manager of Sussex United Banking Corporation? You don’t look like Leslie Fairbrother and I’ve seen a photograph. He’s a bit overweight and wears gold-rimmed spectacles.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Cordelia to give the police an old photograph. She didn’t exactly want them to find me. She much preferred me out of the way so she could have the house to herself and build her monstrosities in the kitchen. All I wanted was that damned key. How was I to know she’d put it inside one of her talentless monuments.”
“Cordelia?”
“My wife. She called herself Waz for some insane reason. How could a bank manager, a corporate bank manager at that, have a wife with such a ridiculous name?”
I took in what I was hearing. So this was Leslie Fairbrother, the missing bank manager, and I didn’t like him one bit. I felt a chill of apprehension. Called herself… past tense. And I remembered the hand-washing. Although he was smiling at me, his eyes were hard and without feeling.
“Ah, the key to the bank vaults,” I said lightly, wondering how I was going to get out of this one.
“No. wrong. The key to Fenwick Future Homes. The one I used to lock Councilor Fenwick into his smoldering pathway to incineration. Foolish man. He was panicking. Love does that, you know, especially when it’s an older man infatuated with a young woman. Not that Pippa’s young any more. She’ll be going for the collagen implants any year now.”
“You know… Pippa?”
“She of the uncertain bike-riding ability. I really had to put on the pressure to get her to do that. Of course, she’s dead worried about her forthcoming marriage to the pop impresario. Money talks and she wants to hear every word.”
Any moment now I was going to have to sit down. I couldn’t take it all in. My legs had no moral courage. This man had just told me he had locked the councilor into the burning show-room; that he had made Pippa ride my bike near the fire, pretending to be me.
“And I suppose you also got her to pay several lots of two thousand pounds into my bank account.” It was a shot in the murk.
“Clever girl. No wonder you are a detective. Not SUBC funds, I hasten to add. Too simple to trace. My own money, but worth every penny if it nails you to the arson and murder.”
“But it hasn’t worked, has it?” I said bravely though I was not feeling at all brave. How was I going to get out of this? “I’m not a suspect any more. Too much circumstantial evidence. And there’s a witness who came up placing me elsewhere at the time of the fire.” I didn’t mention the CCTV footage.
“Don’t be too sure. I can soon fix a postman. Get him to say you paid him. Besides, you’re going to leave a confession. All nice and tidy. Then I can disappear for good. Somewhere warm and sunny. I’ve got my eye on a villa in the Pyrenees. Wonderful views. Can’t wait to get there. What do you think?”
“I think you are mad,” I sai
d, pushing past him.
But he caught a handful of my hair and jerked me back. It caught me off guard. My roots screamed in pain. He pulled my face close to his mouth. “You’re not going anywhere, Miss Lacey,” he said slowly.
“Let… me… go,” I said, matching the determination in his voice. “This is getting us nowhere. Supposing we sit down and talk. We could work something out.”
“What a good idea,” he said, relaxing his grip on my hair but not letting go. “Let’s take a little ride and work something out. This house is so stuffy and it smells… of paint and that damned glue. Not nice.”
“Not nice to kill your wife,” I said.
“It was not something on my agenda,” he said, pushing me downstairs. “She just wouldn’t cooperate.”
He picked up a sharp knife in the kitchen on the way out, one of Waz’s tools. He shot a glance at the kitchen taps and the sink full of saucepans. Somehow, he managed to turn on a tap and put a hand under the water while poking the point of the knife into my side.
“Hey, mind the fabric, buster,” I said, twisting sideways.
“I’ll use it if I have to,” he said, changing hands.
As he turned to dry his hands, I leaned against the counter top. My hand was out of sight, behind me, trawling the debris like the claws of a lucky dip in an amusement arcade. I thought of Jack with affection. He wouldn’t stick a knife into my side, even when he’d been drinking.
As we drove away in a new red Ford Fiesta, I glimpsed my own Morris Minor parked forlornly outside No 18. Some kids were peering in the windows. I hoped they wouldn’t vandalize the spots. Kids have little sense of ownership these days.
I had no idea where we were going or why but I was sure that he had murdered his wife, Waz. The man had no conscience at all. He would simply remove anyone who got in his way. It seemed I was next on the list. I needed a less stressful job. Airline pilot perhaps.
“Let’s drive around a little,” he said, fastening his scat belt. “I haven’t quite worked out the exact circumstances of your confession. Your arrival at my house was fortuitous but unexpected.”
“You won’t get me to confess to anything.” I said stonily, staring ahead. I was hardly prepared for any escape plan. No shoes. Only hospital issue plastics.
“Oh yes, I think I will. You see, I can be quite persuasive. Pippa found me difficult to refuse. We had quite a little talk.”
“So why did you lock the good councilor into his burning showroom?” I asked. Shopping list (if I ever go shopping again): tape recorder.
“He was getting panicky. We had a great scheme going. He provided smooth planning permission, never a hitch. I provided the money. The builder built the houses and FFH sold them. You’d be surprised at the rake-off between us. I raised loans and mortgages through the bank, legitimate but using different names. It was over a million in loans. But head office was getting suspicious. So much business through one small branch. I was having to juggle sums.”
“And Adrian didn’t like the juggling?”
“If he was going to blow the lid off, then he had to go. He was getting nervous. He had his reputation on the council to think of. He wanted to be mayor. There were enough properties in the pipeline to get me off the hook. I just needed time.”
“So you locked Adrian Fenwick into his blazing office because he was going to back out of the property deal?”
“Had to splash a bit of petrol around, make it look good. He was only burning stuff in a bin. It was too easy.”
“And your wife… why kill her? She had nothing to do with the property rake-off.”
“I’m not sure how she found out but she did. She was quite a clever woman despite being an artistic nutcase. She found the showroom key, put two and two together, then refused to tell me where it was. A few dollops of glue and she was gasping to tell me. It was in the “Ruin”. But it was already too late. I didn’t know the molding clay stuff was quick-setting. A technical error. Not exactly murder, more ignorance. So I covered her with spray paint just to make it look pretty.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“It’s nice to communicate.”
Leslie Fairbrother was driving the car and using baby wipes on his hands. Modern infant hygiene to the rescue.
I was nauseated. Was I getting an ulcer? Perhaps I ought to see a doctor. They can catch these things in time nowadays.
“So you have the key back.” I took a deep breath. “Adrian is dead, your wife is dead. Why bother with me? Why not let me go and you can disappear to your villa in Spain wearing a beard? No one will know.”
“I don’t trust you,” said Leslie Fairbrother, leaving the A27 and heading down a rustic side lane. Low-lying branches missed the windscreen by inches. I wondered if I could manufacture an accident, grab the steering wheel and plunge the car into a ditch. Guess I’d be the one to get a broken leg. “You know too much now.”
“I could conveniently forget,” I offered, coward of the first order, “I could develop amnesia.”
“You are going to develop amnesia. The permanent kind.”
This was worse than the Scarlatti brothers. They would not have killed me for information. They only wanted to know where Al was then they would have let me go, I think. I looked around inside the car without moving my head. A swivel eye scan. His mobile phone lay on the glove shelf. I doubted if any mental thought process could get it to ring 999. I didn’t even know how to switch it on. Green light or red? I needed to go on a course.
He’d found what he wanted, the showroom key in the ruin. So why did he need me? I was nothing, no one, except that he had told me too much.
We were bumping down some farm lane, the wheels jolting over ruts. I had no idea where we were. The fields were empty, old buildings stood gathering decay and dereliction. Another farm gone bust. He drove past the farmyard and up another narrow lane. The mud was inches thick. He stopped, choosing a spot where overhanging branches would disguise the shape of the car.
“Thought we’d go to church.” he said. “The perfect place for a confession. Good for the soul.”
“My soul is already in great shape. Nothing on my conscience,” I said.
“Get out,” he said, using the knife on the side of my neck. The blade was lethal.
I had to go with him. My feet squelched into the mud. My toes registered the cold. The mud enclosed my feet as if they were bare. We were in a valley, the Downs stretching in all directions, gorse and rabbits and unshorn grass. No one came here.
Yet a single storeyed stone building stood halfway up the hill, clusters of gravestones on the slopes. It had been there a long, long time, the centuries etched on its walls like graffiti.
It was the oldest church in Sussex, built by the Saxons on a Roman site sometime in the twelfth century, the nave widened by the Normans, every century changing windows and doors, serving a slowly diminishing farming community. I wondered if they still held services.
Leslie Fairbrother herded me up the hill, pricking the back of my neck with the knife. I wondered how he planned to kill me. He’d already done burning and glueing. Perhaps he was going to starve me to death, a martyr’s death.
None of the graves had flowers. They were all neglected. The headstones were fallen or broken. Weeds climbed over crosses and recumbent angels with crushed noses. Positive thinking: grab a headstone, hit abductor on head, escape. Plan success rate: zero.
“Don’t even think of making a run for it,” he said. Are my thoughts so transparent? “I’ve got the keys to the car.”
The church door was unlocked. It felt used inside, revered, not neglected. If the circumstances had been different, I would have enjoyed being there, among the thousands of souls who had prayed on their knees in the worn pews.
Gutted candles stood on the altar. Kneelers lay askew in the pews. There was no stale smell, only the fading scent of flowers.
“They still have services here, once a month. Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “Look at
the vaulted ceilings and the scraps of medieval paintings still on the walls. You can see them better if you block out the direct light from the windows.”
“Really.”
“The windows and doors have been changed a dozen times. Bigger, smaller, higher or lower. The trefoil-headed windows are fourteenth century. And on the floor… all these marble floorslabs. They’re impossible to read, the dates and names half worn away. And see this tiny door in the wall? A hermit used to live behind there. A hermit’s cell. Amazing, isn’t it? I love history. I ought to have been a historian instead of a bank manager.”
He was showing me round like a guide. Yet he was on the point of killing me. It was bizarre.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said. Nearly true.
“Sorry, no such facility in the church. Still, it won’t be a problem for long. Let’s get this over with. Sit in a pew and we’ll write this confession.”
“I’m not writing any confession.”
“Oh yes you are. I can inflict quite a bit of pain with this knife. Such an unpleasant distraction.” Leslie had a pad of A4 lined paper. He pushed me down on to a pew and handed me a pen. “Now write ‘I, Jordan Lacey’, or whatever your full name is.”
I scribbled Help, Help, HELP all over the page. For a moment, he looked angry and then he laughed. He tore the page off, crunched it up and threw the ball on the floor.
“Very funny, let’s try again,” he said. “‘I, Jordan Lacey, being of sound mind, do confess to the murder of Councilor Adrian Lacey’.”
I wrote very slowly. I put being of unsound mind. I spelt councilor incorrectly. He did not seem to notice the mistakes. It was getting cold in the old church with the door open. The Downs were blowing a winter wind. My feet were slowly turning to ice. Perhaps I was going to freeze to death.
“‘I also confess to receiving six thousand pounds from Pippa Shaw as a bribe. I confess to starting the showroom fire with petrol’—”
Wave and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 2) Page 22
