Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

by Ruth Rendell

  He told her where he lived, that he was married, had two daughters, three grandchildren. Yes, they remembered his birthday, more or less.

  ‘I wish I had a father.’

  Why had he neglected to ask about this? ‘But surely you have? You see him sometimes?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him. Or not that I remember. Mum and he were divorced when I was a baby. He lives in London but he’s never shown any sign of wanting to see me. I don’t mean I wish I had him, I wish I had a father.’

  ‘Yes, I expect your – er, your grandmother’s husband filled the place of a father in your life.’

  It was unmistakable, the incredulity in the look she gave him. She made a sound in the back of her throat, somewhere between a snort and a cough. ‘Has Joanne turned up?’

  ‘No, Daisy. We’re worried about her.’

  ‘Oh, nothing will have happened to her. What could have?’

  Her serene innocence only served to exacerbate his concern. ‘When she came to see your mother on Tuesdays,’ he said, ‘did she always come by car?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked surprised. ‘Oh, you mean, did she walk? It would be a good five miles. Anyway, Joanne never walked anywhere. I don’t know why she lived here, she hated country things, everything to do with the country. I suppose it was on account of her old mum. I’ll tell you what, she did sometimes come by taxi. It wasn’t that her car had broken down. She liked a drink, did Joanne, and then she’d be scared to drive.’

  ‘What can you tell me about some people called Griffin?’

  ‘They used to work for us.’

  ‘The son, Andy, have you seen him since they left?’

  She gave him a curious look. It was as if she marvelled that he had hit on something so unexpected or secret. ‘I did once. How funny you should ask. It was in the woods. I was walking in the woods and I saw him. You probably don’t know our woods at all but it was near the by-road, that little road that goes off to the east, it was near where the walnuts are. He may have seen me, I don’t know, I should have said something to him, asked him what he was doing, but I didn’t, I don’t know why. It frightened me, seeing him like that. I didn’t tell anyone. He was trespassing, Davina would have hated that, but I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh, last autumn sometime. October, I should think.’

  ‘How would he have got here?’

  ‘He used to have a motorbike. I expect he still has.’

  ‘His father says he had a job with an American businessman. I had a hunch – that’s all it was – they might have got in touch through your family.’

  She thought. ‘Davina would never have recommended him. I suppose it could be Preston Littlebury. But if Andy worked for him it would only have been – well . . .’

  ‘As a driver perhaps?’

  ‘Not even that. Maybe to clean his car.’

  ‘All right, It’s probably not important. One last question. Could the other man, the man you didn’t see, leave the house and start the car – could that have been Andy Griffin? Think before you answer. Take it as a possibility and then think if there was anything, anything at all, that might have identified him with Andy Griffin.’

  She was silent. She seemed neither shocked nor incredulous. It was plain she was obeying his instruction and thinking it over. At last she said, ‘It could have been. Can I say there was nothing to make me certain it wasn’t? That’s all I can say.’

  He left her then, telling her he would be at the

  * * * *

  ‘I’ll tell you my idea of what happened, if you like,’ Burden said. They were in his house, his son Mark in pyjamas on his lap, Jenny having gone to her evening class in advanced German. ‘I’ll get you another beer and then I’ll tell you. No, you can get the beer so I don’t have to shift him.’

  Wexford came back with two cans and two steins.

  ‘Those tankards, you see they’re identical. There’s a third one on the shelf. It’s quite an interesting illustration in economics. The one you’ve got – let me have a closer look – yes, the one you’ve got Jean and I bought on our honeymoon in Innsbruck for five shillings. Before decimal coinage, you see, well before. The one I’ve got, it’s actually a fraction smaller, I bought ten years ago when we took the kids there. Same difference and it cost four quid. The one on the shelf’s a good deal smaller and in my opinion not such a good piece of work. Jenny and I bought it in Kitzbühel while we were on holiday last summer. Ten pounds fifty. What does that tell you?’

  ‘The cost of living’s gone up. I didn’t need three beer mugs to tell me that. Could we have your Tancred scenario instead of these disquisitions on comparative ceramics?’

  Burden grinned. He said to his son rather sententiously, ‘No, you can’t have Daddy’s beer, Mark, just as Daddy can’t have your Ribena.’

  ‘Poor old Daddy. I bet that’s a real sacrifice. What happened on Tuesday evening, then?’

  ‘The gunman in the bank, the one with the acne, I shall call him X.’

  ‘That’s really original, Mike.’

  Burden ignored the interruption. ‘The other man was Andy Griffin. Andy was the man with the knowledge, X had the gun.’

  ‘Gun,’ said Mark.

  Burden put him on the floor. The little boy picked up a plastic whistle from the heap of toys, pointed it at Wexford, said, ‘Bang, bang.’

  ‘Oh, dear, Jenny doesn’t like him to have guns. He hasn’t in fact got a gun.’

  ‘He has now.’

  ‘D’you think it would be all right for him to watch half an hour’s television before I put him to bed?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mike, you’ve more children than I have, you should know.’ When Burden still looked dubious, he said impatiently, ‘So long as it’s not more bloody than what you’re going to tell me, and it’s unlikely to be.’

  Burden switched the set on. ‘X and Andy set off for Tancred House in X’s jeep.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘It has to be a vehicle that can handle rough ground.’

  ‘Where did they meet, these two, X and Andy?’

  ‘In a pub. Maybe in the Slug and Lettuce. Andy tells X about Davina’s jewellery and they make their plan. Andy knows Brenda Harrison’s habits. He knows that she announces dinner every evening at seven thirty and goes home, leaving the back door unlocked.’

  Wexford nodded. ‘A good point in favour of Griffin’s involvement.’

  Looking pleased, Burden went on, ‘They drive up by the main road through the gates from the B 2428, but take the left-hand branch just before the wall and the courtyard are reached. Brenda has gone home, Davina Flory, Harvey Copeland, Naomi Jones and Daisy Flory are all in that conservatory place. So no one hears a vehicle arrive or sees its lights, as Andy has calculated they won’t. The time is twenty-five to eight.’

  ‘Cutting it fine. Suppose Brenda had been five minutes late leaving or the others five minutes early going into the dining room?’

  ‘They weren’t,’ said Burden simply. He proceeded, ‘X and Andy enter the house by the back way and go up the back stairs.’

  ‘They can’t have done. Bib Mew was there.’

  ‘You can get to the back stairs without passing through the main kitchen. That’s where she was, working on the freezer. In Davina’s room they search for and find her jewellery and they also search the other women’s bedrooms.’

  ‘They would need to in order to take twenty-five minutes over it. Incidentally, why leave the other women’s bedrooms tidy but Davina’s in a mess if they searched them all?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. They went back to Davina’s room because Andy believed there was some more valuable piece they had missed. It was while they were flinging the stuff about in there that they were heard by the people downstairs and Harvey Copeland went to investigate. They must have assumed he was coming up the front stairs, so they went down the back . . .’

  ‘And out of the back door with their loot to make their geta
way with no harm done beyond the loss to Davina of some heavily insured jewellery she didn’t much care for anyway.’

  ‘We know it wasn’t like that,’ Burden said very seriously. ‘They came through the house into the hall. I don’t know why. Perhaps they had some reason to fear the return of Brenda or they believed Harvey was upstairs, intending to walk the length of the gallery and go down the back stairs. Whatever it was, they came into the hall and encountered Harvey, who was halfway up the stairs. He turned and saw them, immediately recognising Andy Griffin. He took a couple of steps down, shouted some threat at Andy or called to the women to phone the police . . .’

  ‘Daisy didn’t hear him if he did.’

  ‘She’s forgotten. She’s admitted herself she can’t recall details of what happened. She says on that tape we made, “I’ve tried hard to remember but something blocks it off.” Harvey threatened Andy, and X shot him. He fell backwards across the bottom stairs. Andy was now obviously terrified, more terrified, of being recognised. He heard a woman scream from the dining room. While X kicked open the dining-room door, Andy ran to the front door and out.

  ‘X shot the two women, he shot Daisy. From upstairs he heard someone racketing about. It was the cat but he didn’t know that. Daisy was on the floor, he thought she was dead, he followed Andy out of the front door where the jeep had been brought round for him. Andy had fetched the jeep from where it was parked at the back . . .’

  ‘It won’t work, Mike. This was the time Bib Mew was leaving. She was leaving on her bike from the back of the house. Daisy heard a car start up, not “brought round”.’

  ‘It’s a small point. Would she swear to that, Reg? Her mother and grandmother had been shot before her eyes, she was shot, she’s on the floor wounded and bleeding – just imagine the noise that Magnum would have made, for one thing – and she can differentiate between a car starting up and one being driven?’

  Turning his eyes from a nature programme on lions killing and disembowelling wildebeests, Mark said happily, ‘Wounded and bleeding.’ He nodded and pointed the whistle at his father.

  ‘Oh God, I must get him to bed. Just let me finish this, Mark. While Andy is round the back fetching the jeep and X is making mayhem in the dining room, Joanne Garland arrives in a taxi. Once again she is afraid to drive because she has had a drink or two . . .’

  ‘Where? Who with?’

  ‘That remains to be seen. That remains to be discovered. She paid the driver and he left. Her intention was to phone for another taxi when she was through with her book-keeping with Naomi. The time is ten past eight. She isn’t supposed to be there until eight thirty but we know she was one of these over-punctual people, always early.

  ‘The front door is open. She steps inside, perhaps she calls out. She sees Harvey’s body spreadeagled across the stairs, perhaps she hears the last shot. Does she turn and run? Perhaps. Andy has appeared by now with the jeep. He jumps out and seizes her. X comes out, kills Joanne, with the sixth and last cartridge in the chamber, and they put her body in the back.

  ‘Fearing they might meet someone on the road, Gabbitas, us, some visitor, they take off through the wood, using paths negotiable by a jeep but not by your average saloon car.’ Burden picked up his son, switched off the television. The little boy was still grasping his whistle. ‘Subject to a few minor amendments, I suggest that’s the only way it could have happened.’

  Wexford said, ‘What did the Harrisons and the Griffins quarrel about?’

  Indignation had briefly contorted Burden’s face. Was that all? Was that the only reception his analysis was going to get? He shrugged. ‘Andy tried to rape her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what she says. The Griffins say she made advances to him. Apparently, he tried a sort of blackmail on those grounds and Brenda told Davina Flory. Hence, if we were to be kept out of it, the Griffins had to go.’

  ‘We’d better have him in, Mike.’

  ‘We will,’ said Burden, and he carried his son away to bed, Mark firing the whistle over his shoulder and shouting, ‘Wounded and bleeding, wounded and bleeding’, all the way upstairs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Had they no friends but the Virsons and Joanne Garland, this family who were wealthy and distinguished, whose nucleus was a famous writer and an economist and former MP? Where were Daisy’s school friends? Their local acquaintances?

  These questions had interested Wexford from the first. But the nature of the crime was such as to preclude hitherto law-abiding members of the public from being involved, and his usual investigation in a murder case of everyone known to the victims had not been carried out. It had simply occurred to him, while talking to Daisy, and to a lesser extent to the Harrisons and Gabbitas, that there seemed to be a dearth of Flory family friends.

  The funeral showed him how right he had been – and how wrong. In spite of the fame of one of the dead and the distinction, by association with her, of the others, he had supposed those who mourned Davina Flory and her family would wait to attend the memorial service. Daisy, as well as Joyce Virson, had said a service would be held. St James’s, Piccadilly, had been suggested, in two months’ time. The service in Kingsmarkham parish church would surely have a small congregation, a few people only proceeding to the distant cemetery. As it turned out, they were queuing up.

  Jason Sebright from the Kingsmarkham Courier was taking names at the church gates when he arrived. Wexford quickly perceived that the queue was the press and he pushed past them producing his warrant card. St Peter’s was very large, one of those English churches that would be called cathedrals anywhere else, with an enormous nave, ten side chapels and a chancel as big as a village church. It was nearly full.

  Only the front pews on the right-hand side awaited occupants, and a few scattered seats among the congregation. Wexford made his way to one of these, a vacant space next to the aisle on the left. The last time he was there had been to give Sheila away when she married Andrew Thorverton, the last time he had sat like this, in the body of the church, was to hear her banns called. A marriage come to grief, a love affair or two, and now Augustine Casey . . . He pushed it out of mind and eyed the congregation. A voluntary was playing, Bach probably.

  The first person he recognised was someone he had met at a book launch, taken there by Amyas Ireland. The book, he recalled, had been a family saga with a policeman in every generation since Victorian times, its author’s editor this man three rows in front of him. All the others in the pew looked like publishers to him, though he couldn’t have said how. He identified (again without much to go on) a plump yellow-haired woman in a large black hat as Davina Flory’s agent.

  A preponderance of elderly women, some of them scholarly-looking, in groups or sitting alone, led him to believe these were old cronies of Davina, perhaps from as far back as Oxford days. From photographs he had seen in the newspapers, he recognised a distinguished woman novelist now in her seventies. Wasn’t that the Minister for the Arts in the pew next to her? His name escaped Wexford for the moment, but that was who it was. A man with a red rose in his buttonhole – in questionable taste? – he had seen on television on the Opposition benches. An old parliamentary friend of Harvey Copeland’s? Joyce Virson had secured herself a place very near the front. Of her son there was no sign. And there wasn’t a young girl in sight.

  Just as he was wondering who would take the empty seat next to him, Jason Sebright hurried in to sit in it.

  ‘Hordes of glitterati here,’ he said happily, barely able to conceal his enjoyment of the occasion. ‘I’m going to do a piece called “The Friends of a Great Woman”. Even if I get nine refusals out of ten I should get at least four exclusive interviews.’

  ‘I’d rather have my job than yours,’ said Wexford.

  ‘I’ve learned my technique from US TV. I’m half American, I spend my vacations there visiting with my mom.’ This he said in a horrible parody of a midwest accent. ‘We’ve a lot to learn in this country. At the Courier
they’re dead scared all the time of treading on people’s toes, everyone’s got to be handled with gloves on and what I . . .’

  ‘Sshh, will you? It’s going to start.’

  The music had stopped. A hush fell. There was no whispering. It was as if the congregation had even ceased to breathe. Sebright shrugged and put one finger up to his lips. The silence was of a kind that only ever prevails in a church, oppressive, cold, but for some transcendent. Everyone was waiting, expectant and gradually enclosed by awe.

  The first chords from the organ broke the silence with a heavy and terrible multiplication of decibels. Wexford could hardly believe his ears. Not the Dead March in Saul, no one ever had the Dead March in Saul any more. But that was what it was. Dum-dum-de-boom-dum-de-dum-de-dum-dum-boom, he murmured under his breath. The three coffins were borne up the aisle with ineffable slowness in time to that wonderful and dreadful music. The men who supported them on their shoulders moved in the steps of a stately pavane. Someone with a sense of the dramatic had arranged for that, someone young and intense and steeped in tragedy.

  Daisy.

  She followed the three coffins and she was alone. Or, rather, Wexford thought she was alone until he saw Nicholas Virson, who must have escorted her in, searching for an empty seat. She was in deepest mourning, or perhaps only in the clothes every girl her age had in abundance in her wardrobe, funereal garments habitually worn to discos and parties. Daisy’s dress was a narrow black tube, reaching to her black-booted ankles. Vague black draperies covered her, among them something that could almost be discerned as a coat of roughly coat shape. Her face was paper-white, her mouth painted crimson, and she stared ahead of her, moving at last alone into that empty front pew.