‘Why not?’
‘Well, principally because I’m very happy just sitting here, and there’s still a long time till last orders,’ said Janet. ‘More to the point, once the police are in, we’re out. Instead of asking our questions, we start answering theirs. Big solid men with faces like flagstones and tongues all blue from licking little stubs of pencil. They’ll give us less rope than a flying picket!’
‘So what are you suggesting? That we sit here till it’s closing time and we’re legless, then ring the police?’ said Trudi.
‘Don’t be silly. No, all I’m saying is, we ought to be sure that we know at least as much as they do before we contact them.’
Trudi digested this with the help of a large mouthful of whisky.
‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘We already know more than they do. And they won’t know anything unless we’ve told them it.’
‘Wrong,’ proclaimed Janet. ‘They’ll know everything they can find out about that thing in the freezer. And you can bet your social security giro they won’t be telling us any of that!’
‘I haven’t got a social security giro.’
‘No, but you’ll be needing one pretty soon if you can’t get your hands on some of that cash in E. Blair’s account. You can kiss goodbye to that once the police come in, of course.’
‘I haven’t got it, so I can hardly kiss it goodbye,’ protested Trudi. ‘Janet, are you saying now we shouldn’t tell the police?’
‘No. I’m saying that first of all we owe it to ourselves to find out all we can about that man.’
‘But how?’
‘Go through his pockets,’ said Janet boldly. ‘Look for identification. See if we can spot how he was killed.’
The only real response to the implied suggestion that they should return to Well Cottage and search the frozen corpse was hysterical derision. Trudi made the mistake of controlling it and attempting a rational objection.
‘But he’s frozen solid, Jan. You can’t look in pockets when they’re blocks of ice!’
‘He should be defrosting nicely by closing time,’ she said. ‘Not oven-ready by a long chalk, but we should be able to get in his pockets at least!’
The two women regarded each other, each aghast in her own way at the callousness of the comment and its implications. But whisky, warmth and friendship are strong solvents and gradually their fears and inhibitions melted into slightly hysterical amusement at the absurdity of men, life, and the whole of God’s creation.
They were still laughing when they left the pub some time later. Janet’s difficulty in fitting the key into the ignition and her crashing of gears as they set out up the hill struck them both as screamingly funny. But by the time they were bumping along the track to Well Cottage, the funniness had faded and only the screaming remained in their minds.
This time they drove right up to the cottage gate.
‘I thought we left the lights on,’ said Trudi, looking at the darkened building.
‘I don’t remember anything except running like hell,’ replied Janet.
Slowly they went up the path. The door was shut.
‘You closed the door behind you, didn’t you?’ said Janet.
‘Was I last out? I thought you were.’
‘Dead heat, if I remember, girl,’ said Janet.
Trudi unlocked the door.
‘After you,’ she said.
‘Don’t go polite on me.’
‘All right. I’ll go first through this one but you go first into the kitchen.’
Their attempts at lightness sounded forced and unconvincing.
At the kitchen door they hesitated, both looking down. Then they looked up at each other, realizing they had both been searching for a telltale pool of water seeping beneath the door. Now with one accord they pushed it open.
They were keyed up for the repetition of horror.
What they saw was both less and more shocking than what they were expecting. For a long moment they stood completely still. Then Janet flicked the light switch on, but the illumination from the corridor had not deceived their eyes.
The body was gone.
The red light still glowed on the freezer.
‘It’s not possible,’ said Janet.
For answer Trudi reached forward, pulled at the cabinet handle and jumped back.
Slowly the freezer door swung open, spilling its internal light on to the kitchen floor. But nothing else. It was quite empty.
‘Perhaps,’ said Janet in a low voice, ‘it was an ice sculpture and has melted away to nothing.’
For answer, Trudi stooped and touched the bone-dry floor.
‘I think,’ said Janet, ‘in that case, we ought to go.’
They did not speak as they switched off the lights, locked the door behind them, got into the car and slowly drove back towards Sheffield.
4
Janet stayed the night at Hope House.
‘I’m not driving off into the dark and leaving you alone after that,’ she said firmly.
‘Frank will hate me,’ protested Trudi.
‘No, he won’t. I’ll tell him the car’s playing up. He won’t want me belting over the Snake on a winter’s night in a dicey car,’ said Janet confidently.
She was right. Trudi listened to the phone call enviously.
‘I feel guilty. He was very worried,’ said Janet.
‘I wish I had someone to feel guilty about.’
‘You concentrate on the worry, girl. That’s what you’ve got plenty of.’
Curiously, as they talked about the events of the evening, they discovered their positions had merged. Janet, eloquent for delay earlier, was now uneasily wondering if they should not instantly contact the police. Her change of heart seemed to have little to do with social conscience, everything with Trudi’s well-being. And perhaps her own.
‘A frozen body, that’s one thing. Could’ve been there for months. Years! Don’t ask me why! But a vanished body’s different. That’s here and now, girl. Whoever took it was too close to us for comfort. You may need protection.’
Trudi shook her head. ‘Protection from what? And what are the police going to do? Put a bobby at my gate?’
‘You’ve changed your tune, girl,’ said Janet. ‘You were all for the police before.’
‘Was I? I suppose I was just plain terrified. I still am. But listen, Jan, all this is to do with Trent, isn’t it? How or why, I don’t know. But without knowing, I don’t just feel I can hand it over to the police. I owe Trent that much, don’t I?’
‘Trent’s dead, Trudi!’ said Janet savagely. ‘You owe him nothing! What should be concerning you, my girl, is your own living future. Everything connected with that husband of yours has brought nothing but aggravation since he died. You want rid of it. Off-load it on to someone else. That’s what we pay the police for!’
Trudi said in a voice close to tears, ‘I’m sorry, Jan, I should never have got you mixed up in this in the first place …’
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ snapped Janet rather ill-temperedly. ‘I got myself mixed up without any help from you!’
‘All right. But what I’m saying is, it’s my problem, whatever it is. I don’t want to end up being a silly hysterical widow, bothering the police with her neuroses.’
‘Neuroses! Assault? Murder? False identity? Hundreds of thousands of pounds in a bank account? Come on, Trudi!’
The mockery in Janet’s voice took Trudi back to their school days when she had been foolhardy enough to voice a suggestion or opinion running counter to the Welsh girl’s ideas. Then she had usually subsided into a tearful silence. Now by contrast she found that the scorn dried up her desire to weep.
‘Assault,’ she said crisply. ‘Someone threw a dust-sheet over me in Vienna. Murder: what murder? There’s no body, nor any sign there ever was one. Impersonation: a man called Blair bought a holiday home in Derbyshire and it’s all locked up. What’s wrong with that? People don’t usually take country holidays in t
he middle of winter.’
‘And the money in his account?’
‘So he’s a rich man. Or perhaps I read the figures wrong.’
‘Well, that’s one thing we can easily check out. Tomorrow we’ll go into town and take a look together.’
Janet seemed content to shelve her arguments for involving the police at this point. Indeed she seemed almost relieved. Perhaps she didn’t relish telling Frank what had happened, thought Trudi, as she got into bed.
She dreamt of Trent that night, but not a nightmare. In fact it was less a dream than a simple memory of a picnic they’d had in the Vienna woods during their last spring there. Recently Trent had been very distracted and she had been delighted when he suggested this outing.
After they had eaten he’d said, ‘It doesn’t bother you any more, this?’ gesturing up through the steepling pines to the vault of the sky.
‘No. Especially not with you here,’ she replied.
‘And without me?’
‘I wouldn’t have come. I can’t drive.’
He looked at her with what she now recognized as his normal expression when looking at her, a mixture of puzzlement, concern, and exasperation.
He said, ‘Twenty years. Where’s it gone? More than twenty years, and …’
‘And what, Trent?’
‘And …’ Still he hesitated, then he shook his head slightly and concluded, ‘And we’ve never made love in the open air!’
He came to her then. She was surprised. After some initial terrors, she had always been a willing partner in sex, though her own satisfactions had been emotional rather than physical, enjoying the act because it brought Trent so close to her. His demands, never great, had diminished over the years and it was the unexpectedness of this approach, especially here and now, that surprised her. Trent was a careful and, on the surface at least, conventional man, and the woods were a popular picnicking spot. Indeed they could hear the sound of a transistor not too far away as he unbuttoned her blouse. But she did not protest; if Trent judged it safe, then safe it must be.
But as she lay on the car rug and looked up at the cloud-flecked sky and felt his hot hardness pushing into her, she felt a second and greater surprise. She had missed this not simply because of the closeness with Trent but because … because … The beginnings of a mindless physical pleasure pushed thought out of her mind. She felt herself relaxing, giving her entire being over to it … then suddenly Trent had finished, had withdrawn, was rolling away from her and pulling on his pants.
She had lain there, looking up at the sky but not seeing it. It was as if the shock of frustrated pleasure had half opened a door, and she felt almost strong enough to push right through it and to ask Trent, who stood on the other side, ‘Yes? What about all these years of married life? What do we have to say to each other about them?’ Only rarely before in their marriage had this door opened, and never so wide as now.
But before she could speak, Trent had said, ‘Someone’s coming. Hurry up, Trudi!’ and she realized she was still lying naked, legs splayed, and the sound of the transistor was getting louder.
By the time they got home, that door had closed. All that remained was the afterglow of a fine day spent in Trent’s company, and a sense of security which confirmed the wise structure of her life.
But now in the dream, it was the beginnings of delight she most remembered, and here dream and reality parted for now Trent looked down at her body as he rose and smiled and said, ‘Next time, Trudi, I promise.’
She awoke and recollected that there had never been a next time. For Trent perhaps, but not for her. But the memory of that smile and promise were oddly comforting, almost as comforting as the domestic noises and smells rising from the kitchen below.
Her unexpected sense of well-being lasted through breakfast till Janet said, ‘Right, let’s dump the dishes and get right off to town.’
‘Town?’
‘You haven’t forgotten? We’re just going to check on Mr E. Blair’s account. And after that, well, we’ve got to think seriously about the police.’
That her friend was right, Trudi could not deny. She wasn’t even sure why she herself should feel so reluctant. She had always been a member of the law-abiding, police-respecting class; hadn’t she?
The interrogative phrase tagged itself on unexpectedly. She frowned and considered what had been intended as a simple assertion of incontrovertible truth.
She had been brought up in a country and an era when children were still taught to trust the police, but looking back, she realized she had always been afraid of them. Nor was it simply natural timidity. It was her father’s example. What persecution by the Nazi authorities he had undergone before he fled to England she could only guess at. What suspicion and what indignities were heaped upon him in England during the war she had been too young to notice. But now she recollected that he shunned uniformed authority as much as possible and wondered how much of this feeling had been communicated to his worshipping daugher. Similarly with Trent. He had preferred to sort out his own problems. Once, while living in Amsterdam, their flat had been burgled. He hadn’t called the police. The cure can be worse than the disease, he had said, and simply spent a lot of money reinforcing the flat’s security.
Trent. Her father. The two strong men, strong influences, in her life. Both police-distrusters. Perhaps it was no wonder she felt reluctant to follow Janet’s advice.
She found herself wondering what James Dacre’s advice would be and then pushed the thought away. He might be a candidate for strong man number three, but he was still a long way from elected.
It was Saturday and the centre of Sheffield was crowded. They had to stand in a queue for the cash dispenser outside the bank. Janet took up a position to block the screen off from the woman behind them.
‘OK, girl,’ she said. ‘Let’s take a look.’
Trudi inserted the card, pressed 4 … 8 … 9 … 1 and then the Balance button.
A longish pause. Then the green letters glowed on the screen.
The message was simple:
ACCOUNT CLOSED.
CARD RETAINED.
Disbelieving, Trudi punched other buttons at random.
Finally the screen cleared. And then the message inviting the next customer to insert his card came up.
‘Are you finished, luv?’ enquired the woman behind them.
‘Oh yes,’ said Trudi. ‘Sorry.’
They walked slowly away.
‘It was there,’ insisted Trudi. ‘I saw it.’
‘I believe you,’ said Janet. ‘The account was certainly open yesterday when I rang the bank, remember? Maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised. People who can make a body disappear will have no trouble with money. I can make money disappear! Oh Trudi, why didn’t you help yourself while you had the chance?’
‘What do we do now?’ asked Trudi, ignoring the reproach.
‘Suddenly you want advice again, is it?’ said Janet without much satisfaction. ‘Well, we can still go to the police. Tell them we found a body and two hundred thousand pounds, but now we’ve lost them both. Maybe we can persuade them to take us seriously, and maybe forensic experts will find some traces in that freezer, and certainly financial experts should find some traces in that bank. But …’
‘But?’ echoed Trudi.
‘I don’t know. Trudi, don’t take this wrong, girl, but there’s nothing you haven’t told me, is there? Nothing you know and I don’t?’
‘All I can promise you is anything you don’t know, I don’t know either,’ said Trudi.
‘And you still don’t want us to go to the police?’
‘No,’ said Trudi, much more definitely than she felt.
‘All right. I’ll go along with that. On one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You do nothing, absolutely nothing, without telling me first. OK?’
‘Does that include my sex life?’ asked Trudi. ‘What if I get carried away on a tide of irresistibl
e passion?’
‘In that case, I want his address,’ laughed Janet. ‘Seriously, a bargain?’
‘Bargain,’ said Trudi.
Janet spat on her hand and held it out in a gesture resurrected from their school days. Trudi slapped it with hers.
‘Right,’ said Janet. ‘Now where do you reckon a woman of good standing can get a drink in Sheffield at this hour on a Saturday morning?’
Part Five
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle …
BURNS: To a Mouse
1
The weekend dragged by slowly but also, to Trudi’s relief, uneventfully. She was half expecting James Dacre to ring and when Sunday night came without any contact, she was surprised to detect in herself a strong sense of resentment.
On Monday morning, she was pleased to find a fairly considerable body of mail to deal with at Class-Glass. Even so, by eleven in the morning it was all sorted out and she was faced with the prospect of several more hours of catching up on her reading.
There was a tap at the office door.
‘Come in,’ she called.
‘Hello,’ said James Dacre. ‘I was in the area and I thought I’d call and see what your place of work was like. Are you busy?’
‘Only on getting to the end of this chapter,’ she said, holding up her book.
‘And then?’
‘Then I sit and reflect.’
He glanced at the mirrors and smiled.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t get our cup of tea on Friday,’ he said. ‘Was everything all right?’
‘Why do you ask?’ she said sharply.
‘Your friend seemed rather anxious to see you, that was all,’ he said. ‘I just hoped there wasn’t any kind of emergency.’
‘No. Janet is just rather single-minded,’ replied Trudi. ‘When she wants to see you, she wants to see you.’
‘There are worse qualities. Are you doing anything tonight?’
Death of a Dormouse Page 12
