The Graveyard Position

by Robert Barnard

  Oddie and Peace found their encounter with the Bates family distressing and unenlightening. Terry’s mother and father were both in the house on the Peabody estate where he had lived, but they gathered in the course of the interview that his father was living with a new woman friend two streets away on the same estate. The parents seemed to have remained friends, or to have been brought together by grief. Grief there certainly was. Terry’s ten-year-old sister and his mother both sobbed on and off, while his father looked straight ahead, seemingly into nothingness. His hand, though, was in his wife’s.

  “I can’t take it in,” said Mrs. Bates, trying to gather herself together. “He were in bed when I went upstairs. Ten o’clock it were, or just after. He were in bed and fast asleep.”

  Oddie doubted that last bit, but it was neither here nor there whether it was true or not. By the early hours Terry was out on the streets and joyriding to his death.

  “He’d had warnings for joyriding, hadn’t he?” he asked.

  His mother shrugged. “They all do it, don’t they? They’re just lads.”

  She hadn’t managed to shift to the past tense yet, the two policemen noticed. It would come slowly.

  “Who is ‘they all’?” asked Charlie. “Who were his mates?”

  Mrs. Bates shrugged again. “I dunno. He doesn’t talk about them.”

  “I think you do know,” Charlie persisted. “We’re just trying to save time. We’ll have their names somewhere on our records, if we’ve got Terry’s. And you can’t get Terry into any more trouble.”

  “He thought the world of his mates. I wouldn’t want to land them in for anything. They’re nice lads.”

  “Mrs. Bates, there may well be a charge of murder here, and I doubt if it will be one of Terry’s mates who’s charged. The car was tampered with, we think, and it’s a fair bet that the intended victim was the car’s owner, not your Terry.”

  There were people who would have taken this information as a signal to commence legal action on the car owner, but Mrs. Bates was not one of them. She looked at Charlie, horror-struck.

  “You mean—what do you mean? Were there a bomb or owt like that? Like in Northern Ireland? Or had they got at the brakes?”

  “The brakes, we think,” said Oddie quietly.

  “That’s evil! And it was our Terry that got it! His mates were Billy Benson, Matthew Parsons, and Jed Peterbridge,” said his father suddenly. “They’re the main ones. One or other o’ them will have been out wi’ Terry. Go easy on them. It’s not them you want. They’re good lads.”

  “It’s not them we want,” said Charlie.

  But they got very little out of Terry’s mates. Apparently only Jed Peterbridge had been with him, and he had seen nothing that caused him to have doubts about the car. Jed was in bed with a swollen foot and ankle and a pile of pornographic magazines, which he didn’t bother to hide.

  “O’ course I didn’t see anyone tamperin’ wi’ the car. Think we’re fuckin’ crazy? The car were just outside the ’ouse, an’ it were the oldest in the street. We just took it to ride it to the car park near Kirkstall Abbey an’ ’ave a bit of a bonfire. If we’d ’a’ seen anyone underneath we wouldn’t ’a’ gone near it, would us?”

  No, of course they wouldn’t, the policemen agreed. And that was that, really. Jed was even vague about when they’d stolen the car. They’d met up at midnight, at the corner of Jed’s street, gone to a piece of waste ground down from the cricket and rugby stadium in Headingley, and had “a few tinnies” together. At some point (Jed’s indifference to time was magnificent and total) they’d gone in search of a car to hijack, and Terry (with a few illegal driving lessons from his father under his belt) had had no difficulty starting the car and driving off—he’d been doing this on and off since he was thirteen. When they got to the top of Kirkstall Lane, Jed realized something was wrong. Terry was pressing the brake pedal to no effect. Dodgy brakes were familiar to habitual joyriders. Jed shouted “Get out” to Terry, opened his door, and threw himself out, badly spraining a foot. Terry went on, the car going faster and faster down the hill till it was out of sight. Jed, Terry’s best mate, limped home.

  To give him his due he seemed to have guilt feelings about this, and to have genuine grief at Terry’s death—strong emotion he could only put into words with a struggle.

  “I never knew he were goin’ to die—how could I? We’d been in pileups before and both walked away. He were me mate—best mate I ever ’ad. I’ll never ’ave another mate like Terry.”

  There was nothing to be done but slip quietly away and leave him to his thoughts. Charlie and Oddie got into their car, and Charlie said, “If the boys didn’t tamper with the car for added kicks—”

  “I don’t think they did,” said Oddie. “I don’t think Jed was on drugs, and it’s only hopheads do that as a rule.”

  “Right. So if it wasn’t them, the only real alternative is that this was aimed at Docherty.”

  “Aimed at Docherty by a Cantelo, do you think?”

  “Most likely,” said Charlie. “I’m not up in Common Market affairs these days. Could there be anything of interest there? It seems to have been his life for the last ten years.”

  “Maybe. You said he’d had a lot to do with bringing the Eastern European countries in, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. What are you suggesting? Eastern Europe means Mafia?”

  “It’s something we might eventually have to look into. But I would have thought that a bullet in the street would be more in their line—less dodgy and uncertain than fixing brakes on an old car. But yes, I agree: first things first, and that means the Cantelo family.”

  They parked outside Millgarth and went into the area for members of the public. They were just starting through to the station proper when they were hailed by the duty sergeant. They went over to his desk, and he spoke low.

  “There’s a lady waiting to talk to you, Superintendent. To both of you, actually. Lady over there.”

  He gestured toward a middle-aged woman, dressed in a smart but severe suit of charcoal gray. She was bespectacled, and looking rather dourly at them. Oddie went over to her, and she got up and held out her hand.

  “Superintendent Oddie? I’m Rosalind Frere.”

  She hadn’t looked at Charlie, but something told him she was a Cantelo. He nodded imperceptibly to Oddie.

  “You wanted to speak to me, didn’t you? Perhaps you’d like to come along to my office.”

  Oddie led the way, his visitor walking with all the businesslike bustle of a highflier in business or politics. Charlie walked silently beside her. Once in Oddie’s office, Rosalind took the chair facing the desk and got straight down to business.

  “I believe there’s something been happening at number fifteen Congreve Street.” Oddie said nothing, but he nodded. “You’ve been talking to Merlyn Docherty.” Oddie nodded again. “There’s something you ought to know about that man.”

  “Really?” Oddie ventured.

  “You see, my aunt, Clarissa Cantelo, was a spiritualist, a medium—perhaps you have heard. Of course one doesn’t take that sort of thing seriously, not in this day and age—”

  “But?”

  “—but in her case there was a strong brain behind it. Often she was wonderfully acute and accurate.”

  She halted, and seemed uncertain how to proceed.

  “And?” asked Oddie.

  “And one thing I think you ought to know is why she sent Merlyn away when he was hardly more than a boy.”

  “And that was?”

  “She was afraid. Afraid of what might happen.” She looked at their impossible faces. “She sensed a terrible violence in him. She thought he was going to murder someone.”

  Chapter 13

  Talk of Killing

  “There!” said Rosalind Frere. “I can see I’ve surprised you.”

  Since both men had kept their expressions studiously neutral they wondered about her eyesight or her state of mind: perhaps she lived in such
a settled condition of self-satisfaction that she always assumed she had produced the effect she had aimed to produce. But they also noticed a slight shaking of the hands that clutched an elegant bag. She was dressed up, and she was nervous.

  “That’s a very damaging accusation you are making, Mrs. Frere,” said Oddie. “What is the basis of it?”

  “Why, Aunt Clarissa herself, as I said. After Merlyn took off for Italy, and when family members started asking her where he’d gone and why he’d gone so quickly, without good-byes or anything, that was what Auntie said. She’d got rid of him because she was just terrified about what might happen.”

  Oddie left a short pause.

  “Was it said at the time that he’d gone to Italy? I understood the family was under the impression he was in India.”

  “India, Italy—I don’t remember. I was only about fifteen at the time. And of course the important thing was that Aunt Clarissa was scared of him—that’s what we talked about.”

  Oddie left another pause. No need to give her the impression they were jumping to her skipping rope.

  “You first said Clarissa Cantelo was scared about what might happen. This could mean anything, including a threat to not from, Merlyn Docherty.”

  “Oh no—”

  “You then said she was scared of him, which makes it a lot more concrete. But was she so concrete? By ‘scared of him’ do you mean that she conceived the threat as directed at herself?”

  “Well, she was vague…It could well have been, since he’d been living with her. On the other hand, it could have been some other member of the family, a girlfriend—anyone! Auntie was often vague about specifics: she might tell one of her clients that disaster would result from a certain course of action, but she’d be vague about what form it would take.”

  “That sounds like par for the course,” said Charlie, “going by the horoscopes you read in the papers.”

  Rosalind bridled.

  “Oh, you mustn’t confuse Auntie with those frauds. Auntie believed in what she was doing and what she saw in the future.”

  “I see,” said Oddie. “Though I don’t suppose she was alone in that respect. Let’s just stick to Merlyn Docherty for the moment, shall we? Now, you say his aunt had some kind of premonition that he might commit violence—even murder. Often premonitions like this are based on quite down-to-earth observations such as anyone might have. You, for example, are not too far from his own age. What are your memories of Merlyn Docherty at that time?”

  Rosalind had clearly prepared herself for that question, and was relieved she had been asked it.

  “Oh, very mixed up—Merlyn, I mean, not my memories. He was full of grudges and grievances, angers and resentments. Of course his poor mother had died when he was very young, and he didn’t get on with his father, so in a way you could understand why he was like he was. There was real rage there—I’d say hatred.”

  “Hatred? Of anyone in particular?”

  “Well, if there was anyone special it would be his father.”

  “So if you could have prophesied yourself, it would have been that all this suppressed violence would be directed at Jake Docherty?”

  “I suppose so. But it was also very general. It could have been directed at any of us—any of the Cantelos. I mean, the feelings of violence in him were sort of, well, random ones.”

  “Right…And at this time, when he was here for eighteen months, living with his aunt, did you see a lot of Mr. Docherty?”

  “Well, quite a lot. I was often at Aunt Clarissa’s, and we had both lost a parent, so—”

  “You were close.”

  “Closeish.”

  “You’d lost your father, had you?” asked Charlie.

  “That’s right…No, wait.” She seemed genuinely to have to think. “No, he didn’t die until 1985. But he was a top businessman, a really highflier, so we hardly ever saw him, my mother and I. So Merlyn wasn’t the only one who was neglected, was he? I loved my father to bits, and when he was around he was a super father. To me it was very sad, but it was inevitable, given his work.”

  “So when he actually died, it didn’t make all that much difference to you?”

  “Not much, really,” said Rosalind, after considering. “There was less money around, but we never wanted, never went short of anything, so I can’t say that it mattered—or that I even noticed any lack of it. I’ve never been an extravagant sort of person.”

  “Do you remember the time when Docherty…disappeared? Went away?”

  “Oh yes,” said Rosalind, a distinctly avid expression appearing on her face. “He had just done his GCE exams. I was going to do them in a year’s time—or was it two years? Anyway I was interested, and would have talked them over with him, maybe even gone through the papers. But I never did, because he did disappear. I mean, no one was told he was going to take off like that. We were just told he was gone.”

  “Ye-e-es,” said Oddie slowly. “Now, we’ve collected some basic details on Mr. Docherty since he came to see us soon after he arrived back in this country.” Rosalind Frere seemed to start, but quickly recovered her composure. “He was born in 1966, so he presumably took his GCEs in 1982. He must have disappeared—or, as it turned out, simply emigrated to Italy—in the early summer of that year, June or July.”

  “I’m sure that’s right,” said Rosalind.

  “So around that time the word was going around in the Cantelo family that Clarissa had sent him away because she feared his violent nature?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now we need to know who we can check this up with. Sergeant Peace…”

  Charlie flipped back several pages in his notebook.

  “Yes, now your father, Hugh Cantelo, is dead, Mrs. Frere, as you’ve just told us. Living and fairly accessible are Marigold, Emily, and the widower of Thora, Mr. Docherty’s father.”

  “He wouldn’t have been told anything,” said Rosalind.

  “I see,” said Charlie. “Two we don’t know about are Paul and Gerald. Could you tell us anything about them?”

  “Oh, I expect they’re dead.”

  “You expect? Why do you expect that?”

  Rosalind became quite brusque.

  “Well, one usually hears of people, even if one doesn’t hear from them, doesn’t one?”

  “Possibly one does,” said Charlie, his mouth twitching. “But you haven’t heard of either of your uncles since—when?”

  “Paul took off soon after Roderick was born—about nineteen seventy-eight or nine I would say. There was a divorce quite soon after, and his wife remarried. At that time he was living in Nevada—was it Nevada?—one of those places. I’ve never heard anything of him since.”

  “And Gerald?”

  “The last I heard of him would be later than that. He’d had religion for years—got it when he was in his twenties, after having a bent that way for quite some time, and was never good for anything after that. You could hardly have a casual chat with him without the Book of Revelations coming into it. You can guess how popular he was. Everyone had had the white horse up to here, and gave him a wide berth.”

  “I see. And when did he actually disappear—or take off, shall we say, and no one saw him again?”

  “You make it sound almost suspicious. It wasn’t. He took off, in your words. The boys were grown up by then, so it would be the middle eighties, I should think. The last they heard he was part of a fundamentalist Christian group living on a caravan site in Skegness. The boys thought good riddance, and I don’t blame them.”

  “And his wife?”

  “She was even gladder than they were. She’d been a bit inclined to way-out religions herself when they met, but he cured her of it. She died last year—premature senility.”

  “Right,” said Charlie, shutting his notebook. “That gives us more than enough to contact. We can think about the next generation when we’ve seen these.”

  “The next generation won’t know anything,” said Rosalind. “They wer
e kept out of it.”

  But you know, thought Charlie.

  “What are you actually going to ask these people?” demanded Rosalind.

  “We would like confirmation that at the time of Mr. Docherty’s leaving Britain his aunt was afraid of him, or afraid of what he might do,” said Oddie.

  Rosalind nodded, apparently satisfied.

  “It’s a long time ago,” she said, “but they’ll remember that.”

  “Good…But of course at the moment we are investigating a tampering with Mr. Docherty’s car, which has led to the death of a teenage joyrider. In other words, possibly a murderous attack on, not by, Mr. Docherty.”

  Rosalind’s expression was scornful.

  “Have you thought he might have done it himself?”

  “No. Why do you think he would have done that?”

  “To give substance to the idea that someone is trying to kill him—that someone being a member of the family.”

  “Rather dangerous, surely?” said Oddie courteously, but raising his eyebrows a fraction. “He couldn’t have known that the car would be stolen by a joyrider. In the normal course of things he would have been the next person to drive it.”

  “Exactly. And he’d have kept it on level ground and in streets that were hardly used. Then the brakes would fail, he’d manage to stop it, and then call the police.”

  She looked at Oddie triumphantly.

  “Well, it’s a thought,” said Oddie. “Definitely a thought.”

  “It was just bad luck for the thug who took it that he decided to drive it downhill,” said Rosalind. “Though I can’t say I have much sympathy for him.”

  Oddie decided he’d had enough. He got up, and Rosalind, after looking up at him for a few seconds, realized that she was being told the interview was at an end.

  “I must be going,” she said. “At least you’ve been told everything now, which I’m sure you weren’t before. The burden is off my mind.”

  “A policeman is rarely told everything early in a case,” said Oddie, showing her through the door. “I shall be surprised if I have been now.”