Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

by Ruth Rendell

  Casey laughed self-deprecatingly at this last remark of his. He tasted the wine. It was then that things began to go wrong. He tasted the wine, winced and used his second wine-glass as a spittoon for receiving the offending mouthful. Then he gave both glasses to the waiter.

  ‘This plonk is disgusting. Take it away and bring me another bottle.’

  Talking about it afterwards with Dora, Wexford said that it was odd nothing like this had happened on the previous Tuesday at La Primavera. Casey wasn’t the host there, Dora said. And, after all, if you tasted wine and it was really unpalatable, where were you supposed to spit it out? On the cloth? She was always making excuses for Casey, though she was finding it difficult this time. She hadn’t, for instance, much to say in Casey’s defence when, after their starters had been sent back, with three waiters and the restaurant manager grouped round the table, he told the head waiter he had about as much idea of nouvelle cuisine as a school dinner-lady with PMT.

  Wexford and Dora were not the hosts but the restaurant was in their neighbourhood, they were in a sense responsible for it. Wexford felt too that Casey was not sincere in what he was doing, it was all for effect, or even what in his youth the old people called ‘devilment’. The meal proceeded in miserable silence, broken by Casey, after he had pushed aside his main course, saying very loudly that he for one wouldn’t let the bastards get him down. He returned to the subject of Davina Flory and began making scurrilous remarks about her sexual history.

  Among them was the suggestion that Davina had still been a virgin eight years after her first wedding. Desmond, he said in a loud raucous voice, had never been able ‘to get it up’, or not with her and who could wonder at it? Naomi, of course, had not been his child. Casey said he wouldn’t hazard a guess at who her father might have been and then proceeded to hazard several. He had spotted an elderly man at a distant table, a man who was not, though he strongly resembled him, a distinguished scientist and Master of an Oxford college. Casey began speculating as to the possibilities of this man’s doppelgänger being Davina Flory’s first lover.

  Wexford stood up and said he was leaving. He asked Dora to come with him and said the others could do as they pleased. Sheila said, ‘Please, Pop,’ and Casey asked what in Christ’s name was the matter. To his chagrin, Sheila succeeded in persuading Wexford to stay. He wished very much he had stuck to his guns when the time came to pay the bill. Casey refused to pay it.

  A frightful scene ensued. Casey had consumed a great deal of brandy and though not drunk had become reckless. He shouted and abused the restaurant staff. Wexford had resolved that come what might, even if the police should be sent for, he would not pay that bill. In the end Sheila, paid it. Stony-faced, Wexford sat by and let her. He said to Dora afterwards that there must have been times in his life when he felt more miserable but he couldn’t remember them.

  That night he had no sleep.

  * * * *

  The missing pane of glass in the dining-room window was patched over with a sheet of plywood. It served its purpose of keeping out the cold.

  ‘I’ve taken it upon myself to send away for some eight-ounce glass,’ Ken Harrison said gloomily to Burden. ‘Don’t know how long they’ll take coming up with that. Months, I shouldn’t be surprised. These criminals, the villains who do this sort of thing, they don’t think of the trouble they cause to the little folk like you and me.’

  Burden didn’t much like being numbered among the ‘little folk’, it made him feel (as he remarked to Wexford) like an elf, but he said nothing. They strolled towards the gardens at the rear, towards the pinetum. It was a fine sunny morning, cold and crisp, frost still silvering the grass and the box hedges. In the woods, among the dark leafless trees, the blackthorn was coming into flower, a white scattering on the network of dark twigs like sprinkled snow. Harrison had pruned the roses during the weekend, hard, nearly to the ground.

  ‘We may be finished here for all I know,’ he said, ‘but you have to carry on, don’t you? You have to carry on normal, that’s what life’s about.’

  ‘How about these Griffins, Mr Harrison? What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing. Terry Griffin helped himself to a young cedar out of here for a Christmas tree. Couple of years back, it was. I came on him digging it up. No one’ll miss that, he said. I took it upon myself to tell Harvey – Mr Copeland, that is.’

  ‘Was that the cause of your falling out with the Griffins, then?’

  Harrison gave him a sidelong look, truculent and suspicious. ‘They never knew it was me told on them. Harvey said he’d discovered it himself, he made a point of not involving me.’

  They passed among the trees into the pinetum, where the sun penetrated only in streaks and bars of light between the low coniferous branches. It was cold. Underfoot the ground was dry and rather slippery, a carpet of pine needles.

  Burden picked up a curiously shaped cone, as glossy-brown and pineapple-shaped as if it had been carved from wood by a master hand. He said, ‘D’you know if John Gabbitas is at home or if he’s off in the woods somewhere?’

  ‘He goes out by eight but he’s down there about a quarter of a mile ahead, felling a dead larch. Can’t you hear the saw?’

  The whine of it, coming then, was the first Burden had heard. From the trees ahead came the harsh cry of a jay. ‘Then what was it you and the Griffins did quarrel about, Mr Harrison?’

  ‘That’s private,’ Harrison said gruffly. ‘A private matter between Brenda and me. She’d be finished if that got out, so I’m saying no more.’

  ‘In a murder case,’ Burden said with the deceptive smooth mildness he had learned from Wexford, ‘as I have already told your wife, there is no such thing as privacy for those involved in the enquiry.’

  ‘We’re not involved in any enquiry!’

  ‘I’m afraid you are. I’d like you to think about this matter, Mr Harrison, and decide whether you’d like to tell us about it, or your wife would, or the two of you together. Whether you’d like to tell me or DS Vine and whether it’s to be here or at the police station, because you’re going to tell us and there’ll be no two ways about it. See you later.’

  He walked off along the path through the pinetum, leaving Harrison standing and staring after him. Harrison called out something but Burden didn’t hear what it was and he didn’t look back. He rolled the fir cone between the palms of his hands like someone with a worry egg, and he found the feeling good. When he saw the Land-Rover ahead and Gabbitas operating the chain saw, he put the fir cone into his pocket.

  John Gabbitas was dressed in the protective clothing, blade-repellent trousers, gloves and boots, mask and goggles, which sensible younger woodsmen put on before using a chain saw. After the hurricane of 1987 surgical wards of the local hospitals, Burden recalled, had been populated by amateur tree-fellers with self-amputations of feet and hands. Daisy’s description of the gunman, now on tape, returned to him. She had described the mask he wore as ‘like a woodsman’s’. When he saw Burden, Gabbitas switched off the saw and came over. He lowered his visor and pushed up the mask and goggles.

  ‘We’re still interested in anyone you might have seen when you were coming home last Tuesday.’

  ‘I’ve told you I didn’t see anyone.’

  Burden sat down on a log, patted the smooth dry area of bark beside him. Gabbitas came reluctantly to sit there. He listened, his expression mildly indignant, while Burden told him of Joanne Garland’s visit.

  ‘I didn’t see her, I don’t know her. I mean, I didn’t pass any car or see any car. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘We can’t find her. She’s missing.’ He said, though it was unusual for him to announce moves to possible suspects, ‘In fact, we start searching these woods today.’ He looked hard at Gabbitas. ‘For her body.’

  ‘I came home at twenty past eight,’ Gabbitas said doggedly. ‘I can’t prove it because I was alone, I didn’t see anyone. I came along the Pomfret Monachorum road and I d
idn’t pass a car or meet a car. There were no cars outside Tancred House and no car at the side of it or outside the kitchens. I know that, I’m telling you the truth.’

  Burden thought, I find it hard to believe that coming at that time you didn’t see both cars. That you saw neither, I find impossible to believe. You’re lying and your only motive for lying must be a very serious one indeed. But Joanne Garland’s car was in her garage. Had she come in some other vehicle and if so, where was it? Could she have come in a taxi?

  ‘What did you do before you came here?’

  The question seemed to surprise Gabbitas.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s the kind of question,’ Burden said patiently, ‘that does get asked in a murder enquiry. For instance, how did you come to get this job?’

  Gabbitas back-tracked. Having considered for a long silent moment, he reverted to Burden’s first query. ‘I’ve got a degree in forestry. I told you I do a bit of teaching. The hurricane, as they call it, the storm of 1987, that got me started really. As a result of that there was more work than all the woodsmen in the county could handle. I even made a bit of money, for a change. I was working near Midhurst.’ He looked up, slyly, it seemed to Burden. ‘At that place, as a matter of fact, where I was the evening this business happened.’

  ‘Where you were coppicing and no one saw you.’

  Gabbitas made an impatient gesture. He used his hands a lot to express his feelings. ‘I told you, mine is a lonely job. You haven’t got people keeping an eye on you all the time. Last winter, I mean the winter before last, the major part of the work there was coming to an end and I saw this job advertised.’

  ‘What, in a magazine? In the local rag?’

  ‘In The Times,’ said Gabbitas, with a little smile. ‘Davina Flory interviewed me herself. She gave me a copy of her tree book but I can’t say I actually read it.’ He moved his hands again. ‘It was the house which attracted me.’

  He said it quickly, for all the world, thought Burden, as if to forestall being asked if the attraction had been the girl.

  ‘And now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get this tree down before it falls down and does a lot of unnecessary damage.’

  Burden made his way back through the woods and the pinetum, this time crossing the garden and making for the wide gravelled area beyond which the stables were. Wexford’s car was there, two police vans and DS Vine’s Vauxhall as well as his own car. He went inside.

  Wexford he found in an uncharacteristic attitude, confronting and gazing at a computer screen. Gerry Hinde’s computer screen. The Chief Inspector looked up and Burden was shocked by his face, by that grey look, those surely new ageing lines, something like misery in his eyes. It was as if Wexford were, for a brief moment, out of control of his face, but then he seemed to make some inner adjustment and his expression returned to normal, or nearly so. Hinde sat at the computer keyboard, having summoned on to the screen a long, and to Burden impenetrable, list.

  Wexford, recalling Daisy Flory’s sentiments, would have liked someone in whom he could freely confide. Dora was in this matter unsympathetic. He would dearly have liked someone he could talk to of Sheila’s avowal that he, her father, was prejudiced against Augustine Casey and determined to hate him. That she was so in love with Casey as to be able to say, strange as it might sound, as to be discovering what that meant for the first time. That if it came to a choice – and this was the worst thing – she would ‘cleave’ (her curious biblical word) to Casey and turn her back on her parents.

  All this, expressed tête-à-tête while out on an unhappy walk, Casey being in bed recovering from the brandy, had cut him to the heart. As Daisy might put it. If there was any comfort to be found it was in the knowledge that Sheila had the offer of a role she couldn’t forgo and Casey was off to Nevada.

  His wretchedness showed in his face, he knew that, and he did his best to wipe it away. Burden saw the effort he made.

  ‘They’ve started searching the woods, Reg.’

  Wexford moved away. ‘It’s a big area. Can we rope in some of the locals to help?’

  ‘It’s only missing kids they’re interested in. They won’t turn out for adult corpses for love or money.’

  ‘And we’re offering neither,’ said Wexford.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘He’s away,’ Margaret Griffin said.

  ‘Away where?’

  ‘He’s a grown-up man, isn’t he? I don’t ask him where he’s going and when he’s coming home, all that. He may live at home but he’s a grown man, he can do as he likes.’

  At mid-morning the Griffins had been drinking coffee and watching television. No coffee was offered to Burden and Barry Vine. Barry said to Burden afterwards that Terry and Margaret Griffin looked much older than they were, elderly already, set into a routine, which was apparent if not explicit, of television-watching, shopping, small regular meals, togetherness in solitude and early bedtimes. They answered Burden’s questions with resigned truculence that threatened, at any moment, to yield to paranoia.

  ‘Does Andy often go away?’

  She was a small round white-haired woman with bulging blue eyes. ‘He’s nothing to keep him here, has he? I mean, he’s not going to get work, is he? Not with another two hundred laid off at Myringham Electrics last week.’

  ‘Is he an electrician?’

  ‘Turn his hand to anything, will Andy,’ said Terry Griffin, ‘if he gets the chance. He’s not one of your unskilled workers, you know. He’s been PA to a very important businessman, has Andy.’

  ‘An American gentleman. He placed implicit trust in Andy. Used to go backwards and forwards abroad and he left everything in Andy’s hands.’

  ‘Andy had the run of his house, had his keys, let to drive his car, the lot.’

  Taking this with more than a grain of salt, Burden said, ‘Does he go away looking for work, then?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know and I don’t ask.’

  Barry said, ‘I think you should know, Mr Griffin, that though you told us Andy went out at six last Tuesday, according to the friends he said he was with, no one saw him that evening. He didn’t do the round of the pubs with them and he didn’t meet them in the Chinese restaurant.’

  ‘What friends he said he was with? He never told us no friends he was with. He went to other pubs, didn’t he?’

  ‘That remains to be seen, Mr Griffin,’ said Burden. ‘Andy must know the Tancred estate very well. Spent his childhood there, did he?’

  ‘I don’t know about “estate”,’ said Mrs Griffin. ‘“Estate’s” a lot of houses, isn’t it? There’s only the two houses there and that great place where they live. Lived, I should say.’

  Demesne, Burden thought. How would it be if he had said that instead? A lifetime of police work had taught him never to explain if he could avoid it. ‘The woods, the grounds, Andy knows them well?’

  ‘Of course he does. He was a little kid of four when we first went there and that girl, that granddaughter, was a baby. Now you’d think it’d have been normal for them to play together, wouldn’t you? Andy would have liked that, he used to say, “Why can’t I have a little sister, Mum?” and I had to say, “God isn’t going to send us any more babies, lovely”, but let her play with him? Oh, no, he wasn’t good enough, not for little Miss Precious. There was only the two children there and they wasn’t allowed to play together.’

  ‘And him calling himself a Labour MP,’ said Terry Griffin. He gave a low hoot of laughter. ‘No wonder they kicked him out at the last election.’

  ‘So Andy never went in the house?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Margaret Griffin was suddenly huffy. ‘I wouldn’t say that at all. Why d’you say that? He’d come with me sometimes when I went to help out. They had a housekeeper woman living next door on her own before those Harrisons came but she couldn’t do the lot, not when they had company. Andy’d come with me then, go all over the house with me, whatever they said. Mind you, I don
’t reckon he ever did after he was – well, ten, like.’

  This was her first mention of Ken and Brenda Harrison, the first indication either of them had given of the existence of their erstwhile neighbours.

  ‘When he goes away, Mrs Griffin,’ Barry put in, ‘how long is he usually away for?’

  ‘Might be a couple of days, might be a week.’

  ‘I understand you weren’t on speaking terms with Mr and Mrs Harrison at the time you left . . .’

  Burden was cut short by the crowing Margaret Griffin made. More than anything else it was like the wordless utterance of a heckler at a meeting. Or, as Karen said afterwards, a child’s jeer at a playmate proved wrong, a reiterated, ‘Aah, aah, aah!’

  ‘I knew it! You said, didn’t you, Terry, you said they’d get on to that. It’ll come out now, you said, for all Mr Harvey Labour Copeland’s promises. They’ll get hold of that to smear poor Andy after all this time.’

  In his wisdom, Burden didn’t betray by the movement of a muscle or the flicker of an eyelid that he hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant. He maintained a rather stern omniscient gaze as they told him.

  * * * *

  The valuation of Davina Flory’s jewellery joined the rest of Gerry Hinde’s data on the computer.

  Barry Vine discussed it with Wexford. ‘A lot of villains would consider thirty thousand pounds worth killing three people for, sir.’

  ‘Knowing they’d get maybe half that for it in the sort of markets they use. Well, yes, maybe. We’ve got no other motive.’

  ‘Revenge is a motive. Some real or imaginary injury perpetrated by Davina or Harvey Copeland. Daisy Flory had a motive. So far as we know, she inherits and no one else does. She’s the only one left. I know it’s a bit far-fetched, sir, but if we’re talking motives . . .’

  ‘She shot her whole family and wounded herself? Or an accomplice did? Like her lover Andy Griffin?’