by Dan Kavanagh
‘Is it…?’ Duffy hovered by the door. Mrs Colin had been crying, but she waved him in and pointed at a small Lloyd Loom chair. Duffy didn’t know whether or not she would think it proper for him to shut the door; he hesitated, then firmly did so. Yes, that was probably the right approach. ‘Mrs Colin,’ he began, and it was a statement not a question, ‘you didn’t steal those spoons.’ She didn’t reply. ‘I don’t think you stole those spoons.’ Not unless it was a symbolic gesture aimed at achieving social reintegration, in which case Duffy would just climb into his van and drive away. ‘I’ll tell you why you didn’t do it,’ said Duffy. ‘Because you wouldn’t do so. Because you don’t do things like that. And because anyone who did anything like that would be daft to leave them under their bed.’
‘They found them,’ said Mrs Colin. ‘You found them. I have to go.’
‘Are you happy here?’
‘Yes. Happy here.’
‘How do you get on with Mr and Mrs Hardcastle?’
‘Oh, very nice.’
‘They aren’t… I don’t know, jealous of you?’
‘Jealous?’
‘Jealous, sure.’ Well, why not, it seemed to be the flavour of the day. ‘They don’t think you work too hard? They don’t think you’re too popular with Mrs Crowther?’
‘No. They are normal. Mrs Crowther, she is nice.’
‘What was that run-in you were having with Nikki? What was she shouting at you about?’
‘Oh, she’s a bit spoiled, Miss Nikki. No, that’s normal. I just caught her in the video room watching something she shouldn’t be watching, so I send her off. That was a few days ago, but she’s still cross with me.’
‘What about Jimmy?’ Well, he’d promised Vic he’d try and pin it on Jimmy.
‘Mr Jimmy, what’s he done?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘Mr Jimmy, he’s a gentleman,’ she said forcefully. ‘He helps with things.’ Maybe Jimmy could go into business designing Hoovers you drove around on, Duffy thought, and Mrs Colin could do the advertisements. Maybe he could; when he gets out in six or seven years.
‘Mrs Colin, if I did something for you, would you do something for me?’
‘I do something for you anyway. What you want done? These shoes don’t look too clean.’
‘No, well, that’s how I like them. Look, don’t just go off or anything. I mean, the police will want to talk to us all, I expect.’
At the mention of the police Mrs Colin reached for her handkerchief. ‘No, no, Mrs Colin. About Jimmy. They’ll want to talk to you about Mr Jimmy.’
‘Mr Jimmy, he’s a gentleman,’ said Mrs Colin.
‘Sure.’
Whether or not Mr Jimmy was a gentleman was a matter much discussed over dinner, and speculation became the freer because Henry, after telephoning Detective-Sergeant Vine, had obtained permission to go home and look after his aged mother. Angela and Belinda had returned at about six o’clock; Angela had been put to bed with a large drink, a meal on a tray, a portable television and a bell to ring if she wanted company; now Belinda’s report of what had emerged at the station gave things a new impetus.
The first point was that Angela hadn’t seen who had attacked her. She’d been walking at the edge of the woods, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, she couldn’t say when, and had been attacked from behind. A hand was over her mouth, a knife which she didn’t see and couldn’t describe was at her throat. She didn’t resist as she was dragged, blindfolded, and gagged. Strong, that was all she could say about the man, he was strong. She didn’t see his hands, might have glimpsed some bit of greeny-buff sleeve but she couldn’t swear to it. No, she absolutely didn’t recognize the man who’d made her walk to Jimmy’s camp. That’s what she said. How did she know it was a man, then? Well, it would have had to have been an incredibly strong woman. And a woman couldn’t have done what happened at the camp.
That was the second point, the one that led to the main part of the discussion. Angela hadn’t been raped. There was a genuine exhalation of relief when Belinda revealed this piece of information; and Duffy heard Mrs Colin’s voice in his head ‘Mr Jimmy, he’s a gentleman.’ Angela had been dragged the last few yards, then thrown down on to what didn’t feel like the ground and turned out to have been a tarpaulin. She heard a hammering noise quite close. She didn’t try and kick, or stand up, or do anything, because she realized how hopeless things were; and she also thought that this was perhaps what the fellow wanted her to do. After a minute or two she found her elbows being roped tightly to whatever had been banged into the ground. Something extra was put over her head. Her ankles were tied together — she did try to kick out against that—and her tights pulled down. When her skirt was hauled up round her waist she lay there and expected the worst. She expected worse than the worst. Then nothing happened for a while, though she thought she heard some distant noises, some scrabbling, perhaps. After a few minutes she felt something, perhaps a knee, against the outside of her right thigh, and shortly afterwards something wet began to fall across her buttocks. It wasn’t rain. After that, there had been waiting, and feeling cold, and thinking about suffocation, and wondering if anyone would find her, and wondering what would happen if someone else, someone who didn’t want to rescue her, found her instead.
There was a silence around the table. ‘The thing I couldn’t get over,’ said Belinda, ‘was that this fucking policeman kept asking her about her knickers.’
‘I thought they got policewomen to do the questioning.’ Another nasty job for WPC Carol Lucas, thought Duffy.
‘Yeah, well, we’re a bit backward in the provinces.’ Belinda didn’t hold back on the sarcasm. ‘They got in some trainee girl, I don’t know, she had the uniform but I shouldn’t think she was more than seventeen, and obviously Ange didn’t want to talk to her, ’cause she knew she’d have to go through it again with the detective fellow, so she just asked for him.’
‘Bloody plucky.’ Damian for once was looking subdued.
‘But what he seemed to be most interested in was where her knickers were. “He pulled down your tights. Can you tell me what happened about your knickers?” She said she didn’t wear knickers, just tights. He was incredible, I thought he was getting off on it. “What happened about your knickers?” — he came back to it later. Like either Jimmy had stolen her knickers and if they went through his pockets and found them they’d have him all locked up, or else she was a tart because she went around only wearing tights, and so she got everything she deserved.’
No, it wasn’t like that, Duffy thought; but he didn’t say anything. You had to ask, and you had to repeat the question. Stealing knickers was a completely normal thing to do — given that you were the completely abnormal person who’d already done everything else to Angela.
‘They’re all perves, coppers,’ observed Sally.
‘Now, now,’ said Damian, ‘I bet there are some really sweet ones somewhere.’
‘Why did he do that?’ Lucretia asked suddenly. ‘Why did he just wank off on her? Why didn’t he rape her?’
No one answered for a bit. Duffy remembered the four-year-old copies of Playboy in the green tin. Maybe that was what he liked doing best, and doing it with a real person was even better than doing it with magazines. Maybe, for all the brutality leading up to it, he just didn’t have the guts to go ahead and rape her. Maybe, in a funny sort of way, he thought it showed he loved her. A very funny sort of way, admittedly.
‘Perhaps Taffy can give us a line on this one,’ said Damian mischievously.
‘Never did understand sex offenders,’ Taffy shook his head gravely. ‘They’re not like your ordinary offender. They always keep themselves to themselves when they’re inside.’ Duffy thought this the understatement of the decade. If sex offenders didn’t keep to themselves in prison, they lived a very short life. They got it from the screws, and they got it from the other inmates. Everyone thinking, that could have been my girlfriend, my daughter, my little boy. It
wasn’t, but it might have been. Thump. Filthy pervert.
‘Perhaps it’s all about humiliation,’ Lucretia tried answering her own question. ‘That’s what they say, isn’t it? Maybe he reckoned it was more humiliating this way. Sort of, I could have raped you but you aren’t even worth doing that to. Does that sound likely?’
‘Sounds likely,’ said Belinda. ‘The only thing is, can you see old Jimmy thinking like that?’
‘Who knows what went on in old Jimmy’s head.’ Vic was rueful. ‘I was wondering. Maybe I should have let him build his assault course. Work it all off, sort of.’
‘Did she actually ever, you know, go out with him?’ Duffy asked.
Damian chuckled, and his face shone. ‘Isn’t it funny how people say “go out with” when what they really mean is “stay in with”.’
‘No,’ said Belinda. ‘She never teased him or anything. He was always around, sort of useful, could you shift that, Jimmy, please, and so on, but she never showed him any leg or anything.’ Not like an experienced Page-Three girl might have done.
‘So he knew it was hopeless all along?’ This was what Duffy had been told by Jimmy, but you never took people’s word on things like love and sex.
‘Suppose so. No one ever thought, “If Ange breaks up with So-and-so, there’s always Jimmy.” No one got anywhere near thinking that.’
‘Perhaps that was the trouble,’ said Vic.
‘Hey, look, what about Ange, all right?’ It was Sally, almost violent. ‘I mean, fuck Jimmy, that’s what I say. What about Ange?’
Ange, it seemed, had made her statement to Detective-Sergeant Vine in the presence of Belinda and the woman police constable who wasn’t meant to be old enough, then said they could talk to her again tomorrow if they wanted to, and asked Belinda to take her home. By home she presumably meant Braunscombe Hall. She didn’t speak on the journey there, nor did she weep.
‘Christ.’ Belinda suddenly got up from the table and ran upstairs. Everyone else must have been thinking roughly the same; they didn’t look at one another, and just waited. A door banged, and they heard Belinda swear. Then there was silence, and no one knew quite what to do. After a minute or so, Belinda could be heard coming slowly downstairs again. The silence continued; people began wondering whose fault it might be.
‘Christ,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. Christ, I got a shock, though. She wasn’t in her room. She’s in the cot. Fast asleep.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Early night, Vic? She might need us.’
‘Sure, Bel.’ Vic threw his napkin down on the table in a lordly way, a mannerism recently learnt.
Duffy caught Lucretia’s eye as the others politely rose and followed the example of their hosts. When they were alone, she said, ‘I hope you don’t want to discuss restaurants.’
He grinned briefly. ‘Where’s Henry?’
‘At home. With Mum.’
‘I don’t get it. Your girlfriend’s been missing and nearly raped and he’s at home with Mum. Does it make sense to you?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lucretia. ‘You haven’t met Mum.’
‘Bad as that?’
‘And you don’t know Angela.’
‘What is there that I don’t know about Angela?’
‘Well, that Ange’s USP is understanding about Mum.’
‘What’s a USP?’
‘Sorry. Unique Selling Point. Worked in advertising once,’ she explained.
‘So it’s apron strings all round?’
‘Tied in a double bow.’
‘And Angela will put up with that after they get married? No, don’t tell me, I’ve already had the lecture about love from Belinda.’
‘Which one’s that?’
‘About how love means just about being able to put up with the other person.’
‘Do I detect a Romantic?’ She was teasing him now; he could guess that.
‘Dunno. I’m no good with flowers and things.’
‘That’s not what it’s about,’ said Lucretia firmly.
‘Oh, well, maybe I am, then. I’m not good at candlelit dinners, though.’
‘Is that a back-handed way of asking me out?’ This time she sounded less teasing. Was she serious, or was she just trying to draw him out so she could have a good laugh at him?
‘Dunno.’ He couldn’t really ask her out to dinner, not when he almost never took Carol out for a meal, could he? Or could he? Why hadn’t Carol eaten that fish with the low-calorie sauce? This running joke they had about her going out with Paul Newman and Robert Redford: you didn’t have running jokes that meant nothing, did you? And she hadn’t explained about the fish. Maybe … maybe … Then he realized that Lucretia’s eyes were on him. He wondered how much of all that she could read.
She didn’t let on. Instead, she lit a cigarette and said, ‘But anyway, the matter in hand.’
‘They aren’t seeing so much of one another before they’re married because it’s an old posh custom.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Damian.’
Lucretia laughed. ‘Well, for once, Damian’s giving you the censored version. Which is probably only because he doesn’t know the uncensored one.’
‘Which is?’
‘You know that thing that people do?’
‘Sorry?’
‘That thing that people do. When they’re alone. People of opposite sexes. Two of them. The thing they do.’
Did he blush? He cleared his throat and said, ‘Gotcha.’
‘They haven’t done it.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right. They haven’t done it. Angela told Belinda and Belinda told me. Girls’ talk. You know, it goes on, while we’re waiting for you and Taffy to finish your port and tell the one about the nun with big tits.’
‘But… but…’ But Angela’s meant to be a right little goer is what he wanted to say; in the circumstances it didn’t seem the proper phrase.
‘Yup. Henry,’ she said, with a lecturer’s emphasis, ‘is saving himself for marriage.’ Something about the way she pronounced the phrase suggested that it had been used originally by Henry and dutifully transmitted down the female line.
‘Christ.’
‘Yup. You’re a pretty weird bunch, you men, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’
‘How long have they been going out together?’
‘Which in this case does not mean staying in together. About a year.’
‘Hmm. Still, if it takes two to tango, it takes two not to tango as well.’
‘That’s a funny way of putting things but I suppose I see what you mean.’
There was a pause. Duffy wasn’t sure if he was on dangerous ground or not. ‘Do you know,’ said Lucretia, ‘with horses, really top horses, the ones that race, they don’t get any sex. They aren’t allowed it. Then if they turn out to be good at racing and they’re worth breeding from, they’re sold to stud. By that time they’ve usually forgotten what they never learnt. Have to be helped to do it.’
Well, if Henry’s like that, Duffy thought, Angela will certainly be the right girl to know how to help him, by all accounts. He coughed. ‘Do you think that Basil Berk’s a good writer about restaurants?’
‘He’s not bad.’
‘It looks a bloody easy job to me.’
‘Just say there’s saffron in everything.’
‘That’s right. Well … goodnight.’
Lucretia waved an arm in dismissal. If you could wave an arm in dismissal and not seem unfriendly, she managed it. Or maybe Duffy was fooling himself. He wondered what the joke about the nun with big tits was. He’d have to ask Taffy.
He lay on his bed thinking over the events of the last twenty-four hours. It didn’t make sense, except on the psychopath theory. This was a very common phenomenon in American detective series on television, but less frequently encountered in real life. It was useful because it explained everything: Jimmy, for instance, left a dead bird on Angela’s doorstep, killed her dog, planted some spoons on Mrs Colin,
stashed four cases of wine in the Hardcastles’ shed, hid the dog, found the dog, kidnapped Angela, tied her up, wanked over her, and when the police came ran off into the lake. He also let down Duffy’s tyres, and Sally’s confession was bogus. Why did old Jimmy do all these things? Because he’s a psychopath. What’s the definition of a psychopath? Someone who does all these things. Perfect.
There were times, of course, in police work, when you longed for the odd psychopath — especially one with a willingness to confess to any old crime you shoved in front of him. Compliant psychopaths would certainly help tidy up the crime figures. Though there were simpler ways of cooking the books if that’s what you were after.
The next morning, while they were still in theory housebound and awaiting the return of D/S Vine, Duffy decided it was time to make a very small start. He was pretending without much sincerity to examine a bit of wiring in the alarm system when he saw Nikki coming along the corridor. She stopped, looked up at him, and before she could open her mouth, he said, ‘I’d love to see your dance, Nikki.’
‘I thought you didn’t. Taffy doesn’t want to. Taffy always says he’s got things to do.’
‘I’d love to see it. Can you do it anywhere?’ She looked dubious. ‘Can I choose where I’d like you to do it for me?’
‘All right.’
‘The summerhouse. Now I’ve chosen that, you can have the second choice: either I can sit on the verandah and you can dance on the grass, or you can dance on the verandah and I’ll sit on the grass.’
She thought it over as they crossed the lawn to the pagoda-like building that had been painted white in the days of the not-quite Lord Mayor and in psychedelic stripes under the tenancy of Izzy Dunn, but had now been toned down under the Crowthers to a mere bright Chinese red. Nikki took to this as a location and walked the length of the verandah as if pacing out her jumps. While Duffy lolled on the grass, she explained rather sombrely that she didn’t yet go to ballet class, so what he was about to see wasn’t a ‘proper’ dance, but rather something she’d invented. The music was also something she’d invented; at least, Duffy hoped no one had ever been paid for writing down the whoops and wails and little tra-la-las with which she accompanied her dance. As for the ballet itself, it didn’t look bad to Duffy, who admitted he knew absolutely nothing at all about dance. She seemed to hop and twirl rather gracefully, he thought; even if he couldn’t be said to be concentrating.
