Presumption of Guilt

by Jeffries, Roderic

  “It’s all right, I know Newingreen and Hythe well. My brother lives not all that far away…”

  “A room is booked. Someone speaks to you and takes the car. Is that certain?”

  “Couldn’t be more certain.”

  “Very well.” She tugged at the collar of the printed cotton frock she was wearing, which would have looked charming on someone half her age and size.

  “Now that business is concluded, will you change your mind and have a coffee?”

  “I do not change my mind.”

  He believed her. She stood. He did the same, smiled, and said goodbye. She nodded, then left. Old Battleaxe hadn’t liked him either, he thought, as he watched her through the window and saw her stride across the forecourt. To his surprise, she unlocked the door of a BMW. He’d have placed her in a Renault 5.

  *

  Belinda, dressed in the clothes she’d bought the previous afternoon, yawned as she refilled her coffee cup.

  He said: “My mother used to say, the more you sleep, the more tired you become.”

  “I just couldn’t get to sleep — my mind was going round and round. Then when I did finally drop off, I crashed out. You really should have woken me up.”

  “There’s no rush.”

  She looked out at the sunny forecourt. “Thank God the rain’s cleared. I was born for sun. If I had to live in somewhere like Sweden, I’d commit suicide.”

  “You’d get used to it.”

  She’d bought a small, cheap but attractive handbag the previous evening and from this she brought a pack of cigarettes. She lit one.

  “By the way, Belinda, I don’t know what your plans are, but I’m driving up to Calais, probably via Périgueux, Limoges, Chartres, and Rouen. If you’d care to come along, I can take you back to England.”

  “I live here, in France.”

  He was surprised, then realised that he shouldn’t have been since her French was so fluent. “Whereabouts?”

  “Not all that far from Chinon.”

  “Isn’t that fairly close to my route?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can drop you right on your doorstep. Why on earth didn’t you let me ring your parents yesterday?”

  Her mouth tightened.

  “Sorry… I never did learn to mind my own business.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s me who’s never learned…” She didn’t finish.

  He waited, then said: “You’re coming as far as Chinon, then?”

  “If you’ll put up with me?”

  “I’m only sorry you don’t live at Calais.”

  She smiled.

  “Tell you what. We’ll buy some food for a picnic and…” He stopped.

  She stubbed out the cigarette. “There’s no need to treat me like a shrinking Victorian violet.”

  “It’s just…”

  “That was yesterday. This is today.”

  “Sometimes associations hurt.”

  “There aren’t any.”

  He wondered.

  *

  They drove through the village of Brillant at a quarter to five. As they passed the last of the shuttered houses, she broke the companionable silence which had lasted almost ten minutes. “Do you like secret gorges?”

  “I don’t think I know any.”

  “Then go right at the next crossroads.”

  At the crossroads, he turned off the wide main road into a lane which ran dead straight up the rising land ahead of them until it became lost among trees.

  “Jean — my stepfather — brought me here for the first time when I was just sixteen, seven years ago.”

  He’d placed her as slightly older than 23: perhaps because the lines of fear had still not entirely gone.

  “It was a day when I’d been even more obnoxious than usual.”

  He smiled.

  “I promise you that at sixteen I was nearly as obnoxious as I was hypocritical…” She became silent.

  He did not break into her thoughts and they reached the wood and carried on through this to breast a rise, beyond which was a T-junction. “Turn right,” she said.

  “Into that lane?” he asked, judging how narrow it was.

  “You’ll get through. I’ve been along it in a Peugeot five-o-six and that’s just as wide as this car.”

  He slowed to a crawl and turned right. Soon, the lane was bordered by high earth banks.

  “Jean brought me here on my sixteenth birthday after I’d been very rude to him,” she said suddenly.

  “Why were you rude?”

  “To begin with, I hated him for all the usual reasons — but also, I think I was just a little bit afraid of him. I seemed to see in him someone strong and able to be cruel… But in fact he’s one of the kindest men: at least to Evelyn, my mother, and me. Anyway, he could so easily have told me a few home truths, but he didn’t. Instead, he brought me here to the secret gorge where he’d always come when he’d been young and in trouble. He said it was so peaceful that after a little while everything in his mind began to sort itself out because there wasn’t any longer any room for things like envy and hate. Of course, I just sneered: at sixteen I knew much better than to go for that sort of sentimental claptrap. And in any case, if he said something was white, I knew it was black.

  “The funny thing was, when we reached the gorge I couldn’t, try as I did, stop myself beginning to think that perhaps life wasn’t so terrible, I wasn’t born to a malign fate, and Jean wasn’t an ogre.”

  The lane made a very sharp left turn and to get round this he had to reduce speed to a walking pace. Once round, the trees thinned and then there were open fields, rising on either side, in which sheep grazed. The lane continued to climb, more slowly, for half a kilometre.

  “I hope nothing’s coming in the opposite direction,” he said. “We’ve not passed a turning point and I’d hate to have to back all the way.”

  “There won’t be anyone. I told you, this is a secret gorge.”

  The lane curved right and abruptly ended at a miniature plateau. He stopped the car. Below them was the gorge, not deep or rugged enough to be dramatic, but a place of soft, gentle beauty: at the bottom, a river ran wide and slowly.

  They left the car and walked along a rough, natural, zigzagging path until they were two-thirds of the way down and there they sat. Two swallowtails fluttered by; several crag martins swooped and wheeled; a pigeon planed in and then, with one quick clap of wings, landed in an oak tree; a wren began to sing.

  He watched her face and saw the peace relax her. He closed his eyes and let his own mind drift…

  “I should have come here when it first blew up,” she said. “Maybe then I’d have seen sense.”

  He’d been nearing sleep and her initial words startled him.

  “I knew at the time that that’s what I ought to do, but I wouldn’t because then I’d maybe realise how stupid I was being. I don’t suppose you can begin to understand the logic of that.” She picked up some small stones and let them trickle back on to the ground. “Jean’s the kind of person who doesn’t mind coming straight out with what he thinks and he said that Michel was nothing but a rotter. That hurt my pride so I tried my damnedest to hurt him. I said that the only reason he talked like that was that he was jealous of Michel. Twenty-three and just as much a bloody fool as at sixteen: as if I hadn’t learned over and over again that Jean loved me as a daughter and in no other way. My mother was angrier than I’d ever seen her before because she was so afraid that Jean would be really upset and hurt. But he knows far too much about the world to be hurt by such stupidity. What hurts him is when someone he loves is heading for trouble and he can’t get them to realise it…

  “I suppose one of the reasons I fell for Michel was the hint of viciousness. There’s often some strange attraction to playing with fire. And I’d convinced myself that underneath the surface was an ordinarily decent man and I could bring that part of him to life… Women are suckers for saints.

  “I’d always had mone
y and Michel obviously thought I’d a fortune in my own right. When he discovered that most of the money came from Jean he told me to write and ask him for money. Jean refused to send any, so Michel wanted me to write again, saying we were living in appalling conditions and I was ill and couldn’t afford a doctor… With all his sharpness, he couldn’t realise it would be patently obvious who’d composed that letter.

  “It was then that I finally accepted what kind of a man Michel really was and decided to leave him. I could have just disappeared, but I’ve never liked doing things the coward’s way, so I told him. First he tried to bully me into changing my mind, then he started hitting me. I just managed to escape a bad beating-up… After that, I couldn’t get home quickly enough to tell Jean something he didn’t need telling — that he’d been quite right. But I fell in love with a red frock and there was a Ferrari with two Italians in it…”

  She was silent for a while, then she said: “Shall we move?”

  He said nothing, but was surprised by this sudden suggestion.

  As they drove back on to the main road, he said: “Where do we go from here?”

  “Go?” she said, her thoughts obviously miles away.

  “Which way do I drive to reach your place?”

  “But…”

  “But what?”

  “Nothing… Keep going along this road until I say.” They passed through an undulating countryside, mainly given over to corn-growing and stock-grazing although there were a few vineyards. They passed through Bruyinal, a small town noted for its gem of a gothic church, and left on the Chinon road. They had just reached the outskirts of the village of Vertagne when she said: “Stop here.”

  He braked. “Is something up?”

  “No.”

  He looked through the windscreen at the small, drab house just this side of a sharp bend. “You live here?”

  “No. But I’m leaving you here.”

  A lorry, easing its way round the bend and past them, drowned some of her words. “What did you say?”

  “I’m leaving you here, Angus. So it’s a case of trying to say thank you…”

  “It’s a case of explaining why I’m dropping you here instead of at your home.”

  “Because…”

  “Is that the answer?”

  “Oh God, you’re making it difficult for me.”

  “All I’m asking for is an answer.”

  “You’ve been so wonderful to me and I owe you more than I can ever repay, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Please, won’t you just accept things as they are?”

  “I can’t,” he said bluntly.

  “Oh God, why does life have to become so complicated?”

  “What are you finding it so difficult to say? That you don’t want me to know where you live so you don’t have to see me again?”

  “It’s not really like that.”

  “Then what is it really like?”

  There was a quick squeal of brakes and he automatically looked up to see a blue Rover which had just come round the bend. The two men in it had obviously been surprised by something and he imagined there must have been a dog or cat which had run across the road. The car passed them. “Do you want to see me again?” he asked.

  “I… I can’t answer you… D’you know we’ve seen that car three times today?”

  “Really. Why can’t you answer me?”

  “It’s got the same registration letters as my initials.”

  “I don’t give a damn if it’s got HRH. Why can’t you say if you do or don’t want to see me again?”

  “Each time it’s been going in a different direction from us.”

  “Belinda, for God’s sake, forget that bloody car, even if it’s got six wheels. You told me earlier on you weren’t a coward and you always tried to say what you had to. So now tell me, do you want to see me again or am I suffering from a bad case of BO?”

  “I don’t know what I want,” she said despairingly, “and that’s what’s so terrible, after all you’ve done for me. But the truth is…” She swallowed heavily.

  As he saw her distress, his disappointment and pique gave way to compassion. “It’s all right. You’ve got reasons and they’re yours and no business of mine.”

  “They are your business after what you’ve done for me. But I just don’t know if I can explain without hurting you… I’ve always thought of myself as being reasonably tough-minded, but after those two men had tried to rape me I was so terrified I just couldn’t pull myself together. And last night, when I finally did get to sleep, my dreams were so awful that when I awoke I couldn’t, for a long time, find the courage to get out of bed… I hoped a visit to the secret gorge would make things better, but maybe even that can’t work miracles quickly. So yesterday’s still a nightmare and although it was you who saved me from it, you’re… you’re a part of it. When I look at you, I keep remembering… Angus, I’ve got to be away from you before I can find out if I can separate you from the nightmare… Can you begin to understand?”

  “I think so,” he answered, unable to suggest that this was easy.

  She reached up and touched his arm with brief, but unmistakable gratitude. “D’you mind if I go now?”

  “Mind?” He hesitated, then altered what he’d been going to say. “No, of course not. But you can’t just disappear like that. You’ve no money for a taxi to get you to your place.” He produced some notes.

  “All I need is enough for a phone call.”

  “Take this.” He held out a ten-franc note.

  “Just give me a couple of francs.”

  “Look…”

  “Just a couple of francs,” she repeated, her voice strained.

  He replaced the notes in his pocket and brought out some change. He handed her two one-franc pieces. “There’s something more you’ve forgotten.”

  “What?”

  “When you’ve finally decided we can meet again, how are you going to let me know? …I’ll give you my address in the UK.” He wrote Ralph’s address and telephone number down on a piece of paper. “Guard this well.”

  She managed a brief, strained smile. “That’s a promise.” She turned and opened the door.

  He climbed out and came round to the pavement. “Goodbye, good luck, and an early end to nightmares.”

  “Oh, Angus, if only to God I could be sensible and see things differently…” She came forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Please go quickly,” she whispered.

  As he drove towards the corner, he looked in the rear-view mirror. He saw the slim figure in red and white still standing where he’d left her, and he felt lonely.

  Chapter 6

  He crossed the Channel on Sunday night, on the 7.30 ferry, having driven the last hundred kilometres at a speed which should have resulted in half a dozen speeding tickets. Calais had been enjoying late sunshine, Dover was suffering cloud and the air had the damp promise of rain.

  The tempers of returning motorists were not improved when it became obvious that the Customs officers were carrying out an extensive search on every car.

  “For God’s sake, what the hell are they after?” asked a man who was nearly bald, but had a luxuriant moustache.

  “Whatever they can find,” replied Sterne, as they stood by the side of the Fiesta in which the man’s wife was trying to pacify two small and very tired children.

  “Nobody’s moved for ten minutes now. But I’ve got to make Reading tonight and be back at work tomorrow morning.”

  “We shouldn’t be long now.”

  “It’s too bloody long, whatever. D’you hear ’em?” He jerked his head in the direction of the car in which the two children were now crying. “I said to the lady wife, leave the kids with Granny and let’s have a proper holiday. She wouldn’t. Women are driven crazy by their kids, but when they get the chance to dump ’em, they won’t. Funny, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve no experience in the matter.”

  “Then you’re lucky and if you’
ll take my advice you’ll see you stay that way.”

  A seagull passed overhead and left behind a greeting which splattered the roof of the Fiesta.

  “And the same to you,” shouted the man at the departing bird. He fiddled with his moustache. “You wouldn’t know if the Customs are opening bottles, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t, no.”

  “Shouldn’t think they would be. Only… only they’re taking their time, aren’t they?”

  “Worried?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He lowered his voice and looked around: had any official been nearby his attention would immediately have been caught by the man’s attempts to preserve secrecy. “A pal put me up to it. You buy some of those plastic bottles of mineral water, remove the caps very carefully, empty out the water and fill with gin. Then you replace the caps and glue ’em down so it looks as if they’ve never been touched. Only what the hell do I do if they start poking around too hard and begin to wonder what I’m doing bringing water back to England after a summer when it’s never stopped raining?”

  “Tell ’em you’ve got bad kidneys and this particular mineral water does them a power of good.”

  “You think they’ll wear that?”

  “What have you got to lose?”

  “I suppose… It’d be just my luck to get clobbered. My wife says I’m a born loser.”

  “In that case, try a policy of complete honesty.”

  “What? Admit the bottles all contain gin?”

  “The word ‘complete’ is qualified. Forget the gin, but list everything else in the car, right down to the stale sandwiches. That’ll give the appearance of naivety which always fixes the Customs.”

  The man looked at Sterne uncertainly, but at that moment the line of cars began to move and he hurriedly climbed into the Fiesta.

  Sterne returned to the Mercedes and drove forward, to be brought to a halt by a single-pole barrier. It was, he thought, as he switched off the engine, a pity he couldn’t treat his own case as lightly as he had the other man’s. He was becoming more and more aware of the fact that the car’s papers were false…

  The single pole lifted and he restarted the engine. Small chequered bollards had been used to map out two tracks across the concrete apron and these wheeled round, out of sight of the waiting cars, to two wooden huts, one on either side of a central barrier of hardboard nailed on to a wooden frame.