No Place of Safety

by Robert Barnard

  ‘He told the lottery story to me, too.’

  ‘So what? Is it obligatory to trust the police these days? They blabber as much as anyone else. If a TV personality’s being questioned, or Linford Christie, some publicity hound in blue rushes straight out and tells the media. Get real.’

  ‘I take your point . . . Do you love Ben?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  She took some time to consider.

  ‘No. Not entirely. He’s left a long line of broken hearts, from what he’s told me. You can say he’s honest about it, tells everyone he’s not made for faithfulness, but in the end the woman’s likely to get drawn in, and in the end it’s her who’s left bruised and lonely, while Ben escapes Houdini-like from his chains and his box on the riverbed, and in one bound he’s free and ready to start out all over again with someone else.’

  ‘But you won’t be hurt when – if – he moves on.’

  ‘I know the type. I’m a social worker. I know all the types, believe me, particularly the unreliable ones. But in the end Ben was bound to go one step too far, bound to meet some woman who wouldn’t accept it when he moved on.’

  ‘It’s possible he just has,’ said Charlie.

  CHAPTER 17

  Straws in the Wind

  The man on the bed was a face only. Below that he was bandages, and a shape under the bedclothes, but they had left a hand out, with a piece of board to tap on. The face looked a little drowsy, but Oddie and Charlie, as they approached and sat down, still could find traces of the man’s intelligence – even of the old charm. Oddie, seeing him for the first time, caught a faint flash of the Pied Piper appeal.

  ‘Hello, Mr Marchant,’ he said. ‘I believe you know DC Peace. He’s on the case with me. We’re going to ask you a few questions, and if you’d just tap once if the answer is yes, twice if the answer is no – right?’ The eyes seemed to want to ask something, and Oddie hastily added: ‘If you can’t answer, don’t tap at all. Is that understood?’

  One tap.

  ‘Do you remember what happened on Tuesday night?’

  One tap.

  ‘You were in the dining room with Mehjabean Haldalwa. Did someone come into the room?’

  One tap.

  ‘Did you see that person?’

  Two taps.

  ‘Did you see anything at all of him or her – hair, an item of clothing, maybe shoes?’

  Two taps.

  ‘Did you get any impression? Did you, for example, think it was a man or a woman?’

  Pause, then one tap.

  ‘Was the impression that it was a woman?’

  Two taps.

  ‘A man, then. He slashed Mehjabean, then slashed you. He wanted to injure both of you, then. Do you have any idea who would have wanted to hurt both you and her?’

  Two taps.

  ‘Would Mehjabean’s father, for example?’

  Two taps.

  ‘Are you conscious of having enemies?’

  Two taps.

  ‘No one you’ve injured?’

  Two taps. Oddie repressed a feeling of irritation.

  ‘I think that’s all I need to ask you.’

  The eyes beneath the bedrail closed. They took themselves out into the corridor, then spoke in hushed tones.

  ‘Is he saying nothing because he’s got nothing to say, or is he saying nothing because he’s shielding someone?’ Oddie asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie thoughtfully. ‘But somehow I feel he knows something, or has guessed something, which he’s not willing to pass on.’

  ‘I feel the same.’

  ‘Mind you, judging him in his present condition is hardly fair. Usually you’ve got body language and suchlike to help you form an opinion. With him at the moment you haven’t even got face language. He hardly moved a muscle.’

  ‘Added to which he was very drowsy, and probably not thinking straight. But the question arises: if he is shielding someone, who could it be? He would hardly shield his attacker, would he? Or could he be doing it for the Haldalwa girl?’

  ‘You don’t think she could have done it?’

  ‘No, not really. I don’t see any tendency towards self-inflicted wounds there, particularly potentially disfiguring ones. But what if it was someone close to her, and he thought the best thing was not to tell us?’

  ‘Bloody fool if he thought that.’

  ‘I asked him questions about her father to see what sort of reply I got. Notice that he replied with answers that he couldn’t possibly have known – that Haldalwa would not want to hurt both him and Mehjabean and so on.’

  ‘He just tapped. It was just an opinion,’ Charlie pointed out.

  ‘If he is shielding them, it would give him a handle on the family. Has it ever occurred to you that Ben Marchant rather likes playing God?’

  ‘Yes, it has,’ said Charlie frankly. ‘Even – judging him harshly – that he’s a spider-God, spinning benevolent-seeming webs. You could say that Alan and Katy have been caught in one. It’s a point of view, a possibility. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I just want a word with the doctors. See when, if ever, we’ll be able to have a real talk with him. Looking at him, I’m not hopeful.’

  ‘Mind if I go and talk to Mehjabean? She had them phone me from the hospital that she was going home – back to the Centre – and would like to talk to me.’

  ‘Fine. You go along. You may get more joy out of her than I would, or both of us together.’

  Mehjabean was a much more lively figure to contemplate than Ben, sitting up in Katy’s bed, Wuthering Heights open against her knees, a box of sweets near her right hand. Her liveliness of mind and temperament triumphed over the plaster covering her right cheek, and when she heard Charlie’s ‘Hello, Midge’ she looked up to see him towering over her, and would have grinned broadly if it hadn’t been painful.

  ‘Hello, Charlie.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘Seems you’re pretty well known at the hospital. Seems both victims and criminals often land up there.’

  ‘They do. Some of them have to be chained to their beds. One tried to take the bed with him once.’

  ‘But I gather Charlie is a nickname – after some criminal or other.’

  ‘Policeman-killer, middle of the last century. It was more of a big deal then. I’ll tell you my real name one day, if you promise not to laugh. Now – you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Midge slowly. She had been putting off the moment. ‘I’m afraid it’s really nothing – maybe even pure imagination. It’s just that Alan said I ought to try to remember, that maybe some little thing would come back that was crucial. I thought he was being a bit Hercule Poirot, and I tell you it really is painful to remember back – not just my own pain, but cradling Ben in my lap and all that . . . But what brought back a memory, or seemed to, was the words Alan used, because he said “something light as a feather”, and it brought back this memory – if it is a mem –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I? Just before it happened – a second, half a second before – I felt on my face, my cheek, the other one, a sort of light, tickling feeling, like a feather might make, and then –’ she flinched.

  ‘Then you felt the knife?’

  ‘Yes. I can hardly bear to think about it.’

  ‘Then don’t. But – let’s say it wasn’t actually a feather – could you make a guess at what it might be?’

  ‘No. I’ve thought and thought. I nearly didn’t call you because it sounds so silly, not knowing what it could be. What could give a feeling so light. Charlie – bend down.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Bend down. I pulled this feather out of my pillow – just like Cathy in Wuthering Heights. Shut your eyes. This is what it felt like.’ She gently drew the feather across his cheek. ‘Just for a moment. And then there was the pain.’

  • • •

  Next morning it was
tying up loose ends time. Or rather, pursuing loose strands that could be nothing, could be significant. Every interesting case had many of these, because every case involved willy-nilly people whose lives had suddenly been intersected by crime, and a conscientious policeman had to find out whether this was by chance or by design.

  They had a large Trades Directory at police headquarters, and it was brief and factual on Sabre plc. Its head office was in SW1, but its factory and a subsidiary office was in Leeds. Interesting, Charlie thought. But a check with the police computer drew a total blank, as did a check on Sir George Mallaby, beyond the fact that he had tested positive when breathalysed in 1990, but only marginally over the limit, so he had escaped with a warning. A blameless life. Or should there be a question mark after that, Charlie wondered.

  It might be worth paying a visit, he decided, to the Yorkshire Post offices in Wellington Street. He knew a friendly young lady in the archives section, who would always turn up whatever had got into print on whatever or whoever was interesting him at the moment. He phoned her first, went through the ritual chatting-up that was part of their relationship, then told her what he wanted. When he arrived they grinned with the intimacy of people who would have fancied each other if not already attached – or, truth to tell, did fancy each other, regardless – and then she shook her head and pointed to a pile of papers.

  ‘The records hardly come up trumps,’ she said. ‘Company reports, Annual General Meetings, a couple of rounds of redundancies, but minor ones. What there is there, you’re welcome to, and it’s all there.’

  It was indeed a meagre haul. All together the pieces gave a picture of a middle-sized company, struggling during the long recession to retain a middling degree of profitability. It formed a convincing basis for Sir George’s country landowner status, while never suggesting he was going to be one of the country’s leading tycoons.

  Charlie was just closing the earliest of the papers, a Yorkshire Evening Post for April 1990, when his eye was caught by a picture, or rather a face in a picture. It showed a group at a Conservative function in one of the more marginal Tory constituencies in Leeds, attended by a government minister now discredited, and not particularly credited even then. He was, Charlie knew, one of the men who had escaped with extensive moral bruising in the arms for Iraq investigation. But that wasn’t what interested Charlie. What had caught his eye was a woman to the side of the group, with immaculate hair-do, clothes that were certainly designed-label and probably Parisian, a confident social poise and – yes – beauty. Beauty of a certain age, but undoubtedly the real thing.

  • • •

  The knot of lunchtime locals in the Black Heifer in Monkton was not being co-operative. Oddie was used to that. He had left Charlie behind at the other, unpromising local toping house because a black detective was unlikely to prove helpful in the Heifer. He knew this and Charlie knew this, but it had not been mentioned. They were by now too close to need to touch on such topics. However, even without Charlie the going was tough. Most of the locals tended to back off to a distance and stick to it, while Oddie was left with a congenitally cussed old rustic.

  ‘Marchant was well known around here, I suppose?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘A very good estate manager, Sir George said.’

  ‘’Appen.’

  ‘You didn’t think so?’

  ‘I didn’t say nowt to the contrary.’

  ‘Bit of a one for the ladies, I heard.’

  ‘Did you? . . .’ Then in a burst of pseudo-informativeness: ‘Us wouldn’t know about that. Us be drinkers, not fornicators.’

  There was an appreciative snicker all round.

  ‘I’m sure you made a wise choice,’ said Oddie, feeling like a sucker-up. ‘Fornication doesn’t seem to have done Ben Marchant much good, does it?’

  There was no more than a complacent nodding of heads.

  ‘I heard tell about him and a local postmistress – what was her name?’

  They stared back at him.

  ‘Post office’s down the road. Name’s over t’door,’ said his informant.

  ‘And a woman who owns a hat shop in Otley?’ hazarded Oddie.

  ‘Oh aye? . . . Not many hat shops around for the womenfolk these days. They stand out. Shouldn’t be difficult to find, if you have the nose.’

  Oddie made an unwise last throw.

  ‘And there was talk of one of the tenant farmer’s wives.’

  ‘Was there now? An’ what if ’er ’usband was drinkin’ ’ere this day? ’Appen you’d be lookin’ for a clout round the chops.’

  Oddie drank the rest of his pint in silence.

  • • •

  The drinkery where Oddie had left Charlie was hardly more than a cottage – was attached, indeed, to a terrace of cottages, and was just a little higher, broader and deeper than they were. It was called the Farmer’s Arms, and Charlie, once he had stooped to enter the public bar, found it poky, dimly lit, and probably dirty. Five or six pairs of eyes glinted in the gloom. Charlie had already decided that matiness was likely to get him nowhere.

  ‘Pint of Tetley’s,’ he ordered, then looked around him. ‘I expect you can guess who I am.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ came one reply, after a pause. It was not exactly hostile, more suspicious, defensive, emphasizing that they recognized he was different from them, because he was black, a cockney townie, and, above all, represented the law.

  ‘Pints all round,’ said Charlie. ‘And there’ll be a second where that came from.’

  The fact that he did not make the second round conditional was immediately appreciated. There were gratified murmurs, drainings of glasses and trips to the bar.

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ said one.

  ‘And I hope you will be, too,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Well, we know what you want,’ said one of them, a tall, gnarled grey-headed chap, who everyone seemed to look to. ‘’Twas you were out at t’Manor yesterday, warn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘With my boss.’

  ‘Boss gone on to t’Heifer, most like?’ said the man acutely. Charlie nodded. ‘’E won’t get nowt thee-ar.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘Gaffers’ pub. Gaffers stick together.’

  ‘And this is for the workers?’

  ‘Aye, that’s reet. You’ve got a head on thee, lad, even if thee is from town, and looks like thee’s come out of t’chimney.’

  General throaty, cigarette-coated chuckles.

  ‘Ask away,’ said someone. It was as near as dammit to a welcome.

  ‘Was Marchant liked around here?’ Charlie began with. There was a pause for consideration.

  ‘Aye, as a bloke,’ said his first informant, looking around to get a general confirmation. ‘No quarrel wi’ him as a bloke.’

  ‘As the estate manager?’

  ‘Middlin’. If ’e’d done all ’e promised, ’e’d’ve been the best estate manager ever. Only ’e didn’t.’

  ‘Like as not that were Sir George’s doin’,’ hazarded one man.

  ‘An’ more likely still Sir George never ’eard ’alf o’ what was promised, because it were forgotten as soon as the words were out o’ his mouth,’ said his main informant, who obviously prided himself on his plain talking. ‘Fine talk, that were Ben Marchant’s line. Only often as not it were never followed up.’

  ‘What about his love life?’

  ‘Oh, is that what you call it down in t’big city? ‘Appen we should start talkin’ o’ the love life o’ our cattle.’

  ‘He was a stud bull, you mean?’

  ‘Noo-oo,’ said the old man judiciously, again looking round at his mates. ‘Fair’s fair. But ’e loved ’em an’ left ’em.’

  ‘I heard talk about someone who owned a hat shop.’

  ‘Oh aye. Mrs Gregson. Husband works at the DSS in Leeds. Well out of the way all day. Not many customers for hats these days. Just put up the “Back in ’alf an hour” sign and you’re away.’

 
‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Matter o’ two, three year ago.’

  ‘And the local postmistress?’

  ‘Sally. Aye, Sally’s been reet lonesome since ’er ’usband passed on. Ben were a bit of a godsend to ’er.’

  ‘Angry when it was broken off?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘Who can tell? Not so’s you’d notice. ’Urt, more like, I’d’ve said. Any road, it were four yee-ar sin’ that they were goin’ together. You don’t rush out an’ carve a bloke up four yee-ar after ’e’s ditched you for someone else.’

  ‘Who did he ditch her for?’

  ‘Hattie Jenkins. Bob Jenkins is one of Sir George’s tenants. Nice bloke – a bit dozy-like. Never caught on what were in the air. But it were never reet serious, that one. Just a bit o’ fun now and again, when Bob were safely out on ’is tractor on one o’ the far fields.’

  ‘He could have found out recently.’

  ‘Bob’d just ’ave scratched ’is ear and said, “Oh aye.” There’s nowt worries our Bob.’

  ‘All this seems to be some time ago,’ said Charlie, bringing out something that had been worrying him for a while.

  ‘Ancient news,’ agreed the worthy.

  ‘Ben Marchant doesn’t seem like the type to go in for celibacy all of a sudden.’

  There was a chuckle, and several invaded the bar for their second pints.

  ‘Seems to me we’ve been fed a lot of stale gossip,’ said Charlie looking around. He met some reserved grins.

  ‘’Appen,’ said his informant. ‘And ’appen you’re on the wrong scent entirely.’

  ‘It’s been known.’

  ‘Mind you – us knows nothing.’

  ‘There’s knowing and knowing,’ said Charlie. There were several nods and winks.

  ‘Aye, there is. Us just suspects. Problem is, we’re all employed by Sir George, either on ’is farm, or on one of the tenant farms.’

  ‘He didn’t strike me as an unfair man.’

  ‘Oh, you sit talkin’ to ’im for ’alf an hour and think you know your man, do you? Folk from London think they know it all, an’ they know nowt. Point I’m makin’ is: one o’ us tells you the gossip that went round, ’e’d want it made worth ’is while.’