This Way Out

by Sheila Radley

  And what did it matter if any of them noticed his edginess? They would expect him to be shaken after finding his mother-in-law murdered, and his bandaged hand would draw attention to the fact that he was in some pain.

  He was most reluctant to go into Enid’s bedroom, and the police understood that too. When he told them that he really wouldn’t know whether anything of hers was missing or not, they said they were satisfied that the intruder hadn’t disturbed her room and that he needn’t go in.

  But he couldn’t prevent himself from glancing through the hinge of the open door as he passed. Her body had been removed, of course. Her bed had been completely stripped. It was ridiculous to imagine that a stripped bed looked defenceless, and yet that was Derek’s impression: without its buoyant duvet and pillows it seemed pathetically small for the large room. Its irrevocable emptiness was exactly what he had striven for, but now that he saw it he turned away, choked.

  ‘I daresay you could do with some coffee,’ said the very young constable, contriving to seem avuncular in spite of his downy cheeks. ‘If you’ll start writing up your list – you can use the big room that looks over the garden – I’ll bring you a cup. Then the DCI and Sergeant Lloyd would like to hear whatever you can tell them about last night.’

  The list of stolen property wasn’t long. Packer had at least stuck to that part of their agreement. Although a few small items were missing from the living-room, most of the things that had been taken were Derek’s own valuables that he had purposely planted in the hall cupboard.

  But the saving of her treasures would be of precious little comfort to Christine now. As he sat at the dining-room table trying to steady his hand sufficiently to make a fair copy of the list, Derek thought of the last time he had been in that room – just two days ago, when he had helped his wife put up the striking blue and green and lilac curtains. That was when he’d finally realized that the only way he could rid her of her mother was with Packer’s help. But what a mistake it had been to forbid the man to ransack the house! If the bastard had expended his energies on that, he might have been less violent with poor Enid.

  The detectives arrived at the same time as the coffee. Derek’s stomach dipped as they walked in and introduced themselves. The big, tweedy, Suffolk-voiced chief inspector had spoken to him sympathetically in the middle of the night, but the woman detective was new to him. She was in her early thirties: tall and thin and dark, wearing stylishly casual clothes, and with a frowning scar on her forehead; more sophisticated than the chief inspector, a different proposition altogether.

  ‘We’re making use of your kitchen, I’m afraid, Mr Cartwright,’ she said as the constable set down a tray with three steaming mugs. ‘But we do bring our own coffee – catering size.’

  She had an unexpectedly attractive smile, and she made a point of moving her chair so that she wasn’t facing him inquisitorially across the table. By the time she had asked after his injured hand, and after his wife (Christine had been sitting motionless in her lop-sided dressing-gown in Sylvia Collins’s kitchen when he left, too withdrawn from him to take any notice when he said where he was going) Derek felt more relaxed.

  The chief inspector apologized for taking over his house and promised to let him have it back as soon as possible within the next few days. Derek asked when he would be able to make arrangements for his mother-in-law’s funeral. It had been part of his plan to get that under way as soon as possible, thinking that it would help Christine to have something practical to discuss, and that the sooner her mother was buried, the sooner she would be able to come to terms with what had happened. He was dismayed to hear that the body was now within the jurisdiction of the coroner, who would release it for burial at his own discretion; possibly not for some time.

  The detectives explained that Derek would be required later to make a formal witness statement about the finding of the body. Meanwhile, they wanted to be clear about the sequence of events at the Brickyard during the course of the previous evening.

  Derek was ready with his story. He told them the truth in so far as he wanted them to know it, beginning with his arrival home after his mother-in-law had gone up to her room, tired after her visit to Southwold, and his decision to make himself a sandwich.

  He had originally intended to mention the loss of the dog, thinking that it would explain both his late return and his clumsiness with the carving knife, but Christine’s questioning last night had decided him against it. After all, he wasn’t being accused of anything. If he started offering explanations, the detectives might wonder why. Keep it simple, that was the safest plan.

  Besides, he would get quite enough cross-questioning from the rest of the family when they arrived later in the day. Derek was very glad that Tim and Richard and Lyn were coming so promptly, for Christine’s sake. For himself, he felt apprehensive. He’d softened the detail as much as possible when he telephoned them with the news, but they weren’t children, they would have to be told exactly what had happened to their grandmother, and when they heard it they would be horrified. Angry, too.

  They were certain to want to talk it over and over with him, questioning him about all the circumstances – and that would include his loss of the dog. Derek realized, now, how that incident cast a shadow over his otherwise perfect alibi. He looked covertly at his watch, which he was wearing on his right wrist because of the bandages on his left. He couldn’t do any driving himself, but Les Harding had kindly agreed to take him to the forest in search of the dog as soon as the detectives had done with him.

  Derek was reasonably confident of finding Sam. With any luck the beagle would still be somewhere near where he’d parked him. The forest was a favourite dumping-ground for unwanted dogs, and Derek had more than once reported to the police that he’d seen some wretched animal wandering by the roadside, dashing anxiously towards every approaching car in the forlorn hope that its owners had returned for it. If he and Les could pick up Sam this morning, Christine would be comforted, and the rest of the family need know nothing about it.

  ‘So you went to your mother-in-law’s room,’ the chief inspector was saying, ‘as soon as you saw the hi-fi equipment piled in the hall?’

  ‘Yes. I was a bit stupefied, because of the pain from my hand, but Les Harding said, “You’ve had a burglary,” and my wife said, “What about Mum?” so I went straight up to her. It was so quiet that I was afraid she might be dead, but I never imagined anything quite so horrific. Do you think she disturbed the burglar? Was that why he killed her?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like. It’s a unique tragedy for your family, Mr Cartwright, but I’m afraid it does sometimes happen these days.’ The chief inspector, a heavily handsome man a few years older than Derek, shook his head with middle-aged gloom. ‘Time was when burglars were professionals, and we could rely on’em not to use violence. But now there are more and more opportunists about, and some of them – like this one – don’t hesitate to kill if they’re disturbed. It’s a very sad business.’

  ‘An opportunist?’

  ‘Looks like it. This is the first domestic burglary we’ve had in Wyveling, or any of the villages round about, for some years. Professionals don’t work rural districts unless they’re after church antiques or big country houses. This chap must have seen your place, thought you were all out, and decided to try his luck.’

  ‘Will you catch him?’

  The chief inspector shed his gloom. ‘That’s what we’re here for,’ he said.

  For the first time since the start of their talk, Derek felt uneasy. Until now the detective had seemed no more alarming than any other stolid countryman, but the quiet confidence of his words was disconcerting.

  ‘I mean –’ Derek hoped he didn’t sound anxious ‘– did he leave any clues, or anything?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the sergeant, equally confident. ‘To begin with, we know he’s a small man. He climbed through the pantry window, you see.’

  Derek tried to look surprised. ‘I wondered
how he got in.’

  ‘He smashed the glass and unfastened the catch. Luckily for him, the window wasn’t locked. Mrs Cartwright seems to be puzzled about that – she told Val she was sure she hadn’t unlocked it.’

  ‘Ah no, I unlocked it myself yesterday evening when I went to the pantry for some food. There was a large spider scuttling about. Christine hates spiders, so I opened the window and put it outside. I know I closed the window again, but I must have forgotten to lock it. Would a man really have to be small to get through it, though? Mightn’t this one have been tall and thin?’

  ‘Not according to the footprints he left,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’re definitely looking for a small man, probably somewhere about five foot six. And we know that he has very dark hair.’

  Derek gaped at the description of Hugh Packer. For a moment he felt close to panic. How could they know so much already? And as for Packer being a professional – it had been criminally careless of him to leave so many traces. With all that information the police couldn’t fail to catch him. God what a fool he’d been to trust the man –

  Wait, though. Think.

  He retrieved his dropped jaw, swallowed hard, and began to feel steadier. All right, so the police knew what physical type they were looking for. But the advantage of this operation, based on the strangers-in-a-traffic-jam encounter between himself and Packer, was that no one knew of any connection between them. And even if the police were to round up every small dark man in the east of England, they still needed good evidence before they could pin the crime on anyone.

  ‘Did he leave any fingerprints?’ Derek asked casually.

  ‘He took great care not to,’ said the chief inspector. ‘No doubt he thought he was doing a clever job. But then he made the mistake of leaving us something even more significant – his genetic fingerprints.’

  Derek blinked uneasily, trying to remember where he’d come across the expression. Something he’d read in the Daily Telegraph, or one of the Sunday colour supplements, probably. Or perhaps he’d seen it on the Crimewatch programme. Yes: DNA, genetic fingerprinting – didn’t it give positive proof of identification if the police tested the suspect’s blood? Hadn’t it been used already to catch more than one murderer?’

  ‘Did he leave bloodstains?’

  ‘No, his semen. The pathologist has sent a sample of it to the forensic science lab.’

  Derek pushed back his chair in disgust and strode to the window, so angry that he could see nothing through the glass but Packer’s wolfish image. God, what an idiot the man had been, to put them both in such danger of discovery. And what a sadist, to have used poor Enid like that.

  He turned back towards the room, his fists clenched. ‘What he did to her was wicked,’ he burst out. ‘Raping an old lady – it was wicked.’

  The detectives, who had been going through his list of missing items, looked up at him with surprise.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Chief Inspector Quantrill. ‘But less wicked than murdering her, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Oh – yes of course!’ Sensing that he’d aroused their interest, Derek tried to amend his words. ‘I mean –’

  Sympathetic again, the detectives agreed that they knew what he meant: bad enough that the poor old lady had been murdered, without being raped as well. ‘If it’s any comfort,’ the chief inspector added, ‘the pathologist says she would have lost consciousness by the time the rape took place.’

  Derek slumped back into his chair, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I know this sort of thing happens, I’ve read about it in the newspapers. But I’ve never understood it. How can any normal man want sex with an old woman?’

  ‘He isn’t normal,’ pointed out the sergeant, ‘or he wouldn’t have done it. And rape isn’t about sex, it’s about the exercise of power. Not, I’m afraid,’ she added apologetically, ‘that that will be of any comfort to your wife. It’s all going to be very hard for her to live with.’

  Derek was grateful for Sergeant Lloyd’s understanding. ‘Well, at least Christine and her mother weren’t very close,’ he said. ‘That’ll make it easier for my wife. It wasn’t exactly a loving relationship – it’s just the fact that her mother died in this terrible way that has shattered her.’

  The sergeant gave a thoughtful nod, and said nothing.

  ‘And of course you’ve already had more than your share of family problems,’ said the chief inspector kindly, ‘what with your daughter’s death, and Mrs Cartwright’s cancer. I understand that she’s worried about your dog, too. Didn’t it go missing yesterday? She seems to think – rightly or wrongly – that the man wouldn’t have broken in if the dog had been there.’

  Derek had ceased to be surprised that the detectives knew so much. He was tempted to try to laugh off the beagle’s usefulness as a guard dog, but he guessed that belittling Christine’s worries might not go down too well with the detectives. Better to show them that he treated the loss of the dog seriously, and give them the story he had given his wife.

  ‘Christine’s quite right,’ he concluded. ‘Sam might well have deterred the intruder and I blame myself, entirely, for losing him.’

  ‘No need to be too hard on yourself, Mr Cartwright. You couldn’t have lost the dog at a worse time, as it happens, but you weren’t to know that. Tell you what – as you can’t drive, I’ll get the patrol man in that area to keep a look out for your beagle.’

  The chief inspector opened his briefcase, produced a large-scale map and spread it on the table. ‘Now – whereabouts were you at the time?’

  Derek breathed more easily. Obviously they had seen nothing suspicious in his story, thank God. He would have preferred to do without police assistance, but in his anxiety to comfort Christine and – hopefully – get the dog back before the family assembled, he pointed out the road where he had last seen Sam. The two detectives eyed the distance from there to Wyveling, and then looked up at him.

  ‘That’s a long way to go to take your dog for a walk,’ suggested the chief inspector mildly.

  ‘Well, I – I had to visit a client in that area.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the sergeant, ‘you’re in life assurance, aren’t you? Right, then, I’ll get a message through to the patrol car: one fully grown beagle dog, black, white and tan, yes?’

  ‘Yes. And thank you very much.’

  The defectives made ready to go. There had been nothing at all alarming about the interview, but as they stood side by side they gave the impression of being a potentially formidable team.

  The sergeant smiled at Derek. ‘Can’t promise anything, Mr Cartwright, but we’ll do our best.’

  ‘To find the murderer,’ said the chief inspector, ‘as well as the dog.’

  With Les Harding’s assistance Derek spent the rest of the morning in the forest. He found the right area without much difficulty, but on a sunny Sunday, with parked cars and people about, everywhere looked different. He couldn’t identify exactly where he had left the car, or which of the many forest rides he had walked the dog in. While Les continued to drive slowly along the narrow roads, looking about and stopping to ask anyone he saw, Derek plunged in and out of the pine trees, holding his aching hand up against his chest and calling, calling.

  But Sam was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘We need to talk to you, Dad.’

  Lyn had inherited her attractive face and figure, and her colour sense, from her mother’s side of the family; her lack of sentimentality came direct from Enid. Derek had seen his daughter shed tears for her grandmother during the course of the afternoon, but primarily she seemed to be angry. When she eventually cornered him outside Mrs Collins’s back door, Lyn’s eyes were fierce and her voice had an edge to it.

  Tim and Richard stood behind her, less fierce but equally determined. Crowded round by his progeny, Derek tried to offer excuses: there was nothing he would like more than a good long family chat, but with him staying there and them at the Hardings’ it wasn’t really possi
ble to hold a private conversation, was it? Better to wait until they could get back home, to the Brickyard.

  ‘No, we’re going to talk tonight,’ said Richard. ‘Mum doesn’t want the Hardings to feel obliged to feed us, so I’ve arranged a meal at the Five Bells, at seven o’clock. All right?’

  Derek did his best to get out of going. He didn’t want to leave their mother, he said; but he knew that after the emotion of her children’s homecoming she had fallen into an exhausted sleep. He couldn’t face the stares and sympathy of the villagers, he said; but his efficient younger son had arranged for them to eat in a back room. The food at the Five Bells was notoriously poor, he protested finally, and all three of them looked at him with something like contempt. ‘For God’s sake, Dad,’ Tim growled through his massive beard, ‘at a time like this, what does it matter?’

  None of them had been close to their grandmother, and Derek had been surprised by the strength of their grief. The first hours after their arrival had been filled with sorrow and outrage, and with compassion for their mother. Now, though, they were showing signs of restlessness.

  Had Enid died of natural causes, the need to make arrangements for the funeral would at least have kept them all occupied. Had they been in their own home, there would have been meals to prepare and routines to follow. As it was, there was nothing for any of them to do; the murder enquiry had pushed them to the side of their own lives. Derek supposed that Christine would want her mother’s funeral to be at Southwold, where her father was buried, but there was obviously no need to discuss it with her yet. And anyway she was still reluctant, for whatever reason, to talk to him.

  His children escorted him to the Five Bells by way of the field path, with the sun setting behind Doddenham church on the other side of the valley. It was only a matter of days since he had last used the path, but during that time the cow parsley and docks had grown by inches, narrowing the way so that they had to walk in single file.