Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  ‘Very sad affair, Mr Marklin, very sad affair. That’s why they moved away and changed their names, you know. Down to Dorset. I hear from Mr Wall occasionally. He’s making a figure for our church, you know.’ The vicar made a steeple with his fingers. (His church didn’t have one.)

  I couldn’t hide my excitement at my hunch being proved correct. ‘What was sad about the Walls? What happened? You must tell me. It may be very important.’

  ‘Mr Marklin, I’m not sure whether I should. Private grief should remain private, should it not? If you know the Walls, or Muirs as they now call themselves, as you claim to, then surely they would have told you all about it already, if they wanted you to know.’

  ‘Look, I must know right now what happened. It may literally be a matter of life or death.’ I was sorely tempted to tell him my suspicions, but decided he would be so horrified that he would have thrown me out of the house — if he could have found me in the dark. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll knock on every door in Jordans until someone does.’

  ‘All right, Mr Marklin. I suppose you could look over back editions of our local paper anyway.’ He dismantled his steeple, and leaned towards me as if he were just about to hear my confession.

  ‘It must be getting on for a year ago now since she died. Lovely girl she was. I christened her. She was the apple of her father’s eye, and rightly so, brought up in a sound Christian tradition, brilliant at school. Took eleven O-levels at just fifteen, including, would you believe, Russian. Her father, I remember, was very concerned about that choice in case she developed left wing leanings, you understand.’

  ‘You’re talking about Muir’s, sorry Wall’s, daughter? I did not know they ever had a child.’

  ‘She was their only child. That was what was so tragic. I can’t imagine, even now, what made her change so. Maybe her father was too strict, I don’t know, but suddenly, when she was seventeen, she seemed to change. It started when she took up with a local boy who was mad keen on motor racing. She started neglecting her A-level work and spending all her time at race meetings and with the racing set.

  ‘Then, one day, quite out of the blue, she announced she wanted to go to Monte Carlo that spring for a Grand Prix race — and with her boyfriend. Naturally, her father was very upset, and they had a terrible row before she left, according to what Mrs Wall told my wife at the time. And it was at Monte Carlo that she was first introduced to drugs, the drugs that were to take her young life.’

  ‘Was her boyfriend into drugs?’

  ‘No. That’s the tragedy. He tried to stop her experimenting, but she had fallen under the influence of another man, very much older, for whom, eventually, she gave the boy up. Anyway, he came back to England without her, and she remained with the racing team in Monte Carlo, and then seemed to follow them around Europe.’

  The vicar shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I’m told there are quite a few young girls who are drawn to the excitement generated by motor racing, and to the drivers themselves, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a familiar scene. They’re called groupies. But tell me, do you know the name of the man she fell for? It wouldn’t have been a Ben Maxwell, would it?’

  ‘I’m being very truthful, Mr Marklin, when I say I don’t know. Mr Wall only confided in me so far, you know, and it’s not a vicar’s role to pry. Suffice it to say, by the time she eventually returned to England at the end of the racing season, she was a confirmed drug addict. I never saw her, of course, at that stage. Indeed, her family saw almost nothing of her. She lived in London in some sort of commune.’ I could see him literally shudder as he said the word.

  ‘How long ago was that?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose, around two and a half years ago.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘It must have been about a couple of months after her return that she had the accident. It was something called LSD, I believe. She suffered, what do you call it now...?’

  ‘A bad trip?’

  ‘That’s the expression. She leapt out of the window of where she was staying. It was quite a few floors up in a tower block. She thought she could fly, so a friend of hers told her father. Anyway, she hit the ground.’

  ‘She wasn’t killed?’

  ‘Killed? Oh no. In a way, it might have been better if she had been, for the next two years were ones of almost unbelievable pain and anguish for the Walls. She remained in a coma, on a life-support system the whole time. Can you imagine what her father and mother went through, visiting her hour after hour, day after day, looking in vain for the slightest sign of her regaining consciousness? I was with them on quite a few occasions at the bedside, and we all prayed together. But to no avail, I’m afraid. God walks mysterious ways.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, I’m afraid rather impatiently. ‘And she died and soon after, the Walls packed up and moved away?’

  ‘Correct. Not right away, but after a time, they abruptly left. They felt they had to start again, where memories were not so razor sharp. I was sorry to see them go. They were such devout members of my flock. But...’ he raised his hands as if to his Maker, ‘...I understood their feelings. If they were to have any kind of life before them, to live their remaining years in any kind of peace or serenity, they had to try and leave part of their pain behind them.’

  The vicar smiled a beatific smile. I didn’t like to tell him that the Walls, alias the Muirs, might have devised a very different way of alleviating their agony.

  *

  Directly I’d left the mass of ivy that passed as a vicarage, I made for the first phone box I could find, which was on the outskirts of Slough. But the Knoll House Hotel reported Blake had checked out that morning and wouldn’t give me his home number. Nor would Bournemouth CID, nor Scotland Yard. I toyed with ringing Whetstone, then realised real evidence for my theory just did not as yet exist, and he’d laugh me off the line in seconds. So I called on all the powers of the Porsche engine once more, and dared the police to stop me, but they must have been taking Sunday snoozes. (The only patrol car I noticed was standing in a garage forecourt with its bonnet up.)

  It was only when I was back in Wareham that I felt that I made my final decision not to involve Arabella, for the temptation to turn left to Studland and pick her up was strong, and I was naturally anxious to tell her of my discoveries. But the caution that had prevented me ringing her when I tried to ring Blake won the day, and I continued straight on. I had no idea what I might meet when I arrived at the cottage. After all, if my theories were correct, Mr Wall (I wondered if he had chosen the name ‘Muir’ because the tragedy that had befallen his daughter had originated in France) and, maybe, Mrs Wall, were probably desperate enough in their grief to add another act of violence in the name of God’s avenging angel. And I loved Arabella far too much to give her up to God right now, or indeed, any lesser being, immortal or mortal.

  I parked some distance from the cottage and made my way cautiously on foot the last few hundred yards. I stopped by a clump of trees, from behind which I could scan the house and its garden. The garage doors were unfortunately shut, so I could not tell if the Morris Minor Traveller was there or not, but I prayed at least one of them had decided on a Sunday afternoon stroll.

  I waited for around five minutes, but I could detect no movement of any sort in the house or in the garden, though that still left the shed on which Gus had reported, with its huge figure of the devilish angel, and this was totally obscured by the house and a high hedge. I decided this should be my first objective, for if I was going to meet Muir, I could get away with entering a garden shed more than with breaking into his house.

  I Pink-Panthered (fast motion) across the road, and then crept stealthily along, keeping the hedge as my cover, until I came to a small gap through which I could crawl. The shed was now very visible as the rays of the dying sun flared off the considerable area of glass in its roof. I waited a further minute or two, but, hearing no signs of any activity, I ran across the smallish
lawn and flattened myself against the side of the shed. I had no means of seeing inside without opening the door, as the only windows were too high up, so taking a deep breath, I approached the only door I could see and tried the latch. It gave with a click, and I pushed. Inside, I instantly saw what had so upset Gus that night. Given that he had exaggerated its height by at least the power of three, it was a fearsome figure even without its white shroud, which now lay in folds at its feet. I wondered if the vicar at Jordans had any idea what he had actually commissioned for his church, and how disturbing its presence would be for his flock.

  I walked quickly round the brass figure, which seemed to be almost finished, and at the back of the shed discovered what I thought was another sheet, which, on further inspection, turned out to be a white surplice of some kind, with voluminous wing-like sleeves such as priests and bishops sometimes wear on formal religious occasions. As I replaced it on the garden table on which it had been draped, I spotted a small white bundle in an old-fashioned hat box, tucked between the table’s cast-iron legs. Directly I lifted the bundle, my hand shook like a leaf, for it unfolded into a white hood with holes cut out for the eyes, as penitents sometimes wear in countries where Catholicism has its deepest roots. I dropped it instantly, and looked back in fear towards the door. There was no one, but my eyes caught an inscription that was almost complete on the reverse side of the awesome figure.

  And if a man cause a blemish to his

  neighbour; as he hath done,

  So shall it be done to him;

  Breach for breach, eye for eye,

  tooth for tooth; as he hath caused

  a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.

  Leviticus 24:19-20

  I closed the shed door as softly as I could, then ran back across the lawn in order to make my getaway through the hedge. But as I did so, something seemed to draw me inexorably towards the cottage itself, but I stayed by the hedge for some time, my heart racing, before I finally plucked up enough courage to give in to its call.

  When I came opposite to what I remembered as the dining-room, I sprinted across and cautiously peered in the window. It was darkish inside, but sufficiently light to show no one was there. I then ran past the front door to the next mullioned window, which I knew to be that of the sitting-room. Again, at first, there seemed to be no one, but then I saw a figure slumped over an open desk in the far corner of the room. I pelted around the side of the house (luckily, no windows on the ground floor), and peered in the windows at the back of the room. It was then I saw it was a woman. And that woman was Mrs Muir, and she was as still as a tomb.

  At first, I felt like running the fastest mile on record away from that chill place, but then realised that Mrs Muir might yet be alive but unconscious, perhaps due to a stroke or some illness, so I picked up one of the stones that marked the border of the flower-bed, and crashed it against the nearest diamond of glass to the window catch. The glass tinkled inward, down on to the window-sill and floor as I released the catch, and in my hurry to climb in scratched my hand. I dropped on to the floor inside. As blood began welling from the small cut, I ran to the inert figure slumped over the desk, but within a few seconds, realised my haste had been in vain. Mrs Muir’s ashen face said it all, and the lack of pulse confirmed it. She was dead. In front of her right hand was an empty medicine bottle and a glass of water three-quarters empty.

  As I moved away from the desk, my foot kicked something across the carpet. I bent down to pick it up. It was a Biro. I held it in my hands for a second, and then had a thought. I returned to the desk, and forced myself to lift her torso a few inches from the desk top. But all that was underneath her was a traditional blotting-pad. I was about to lower her down when the slanting evening light from the window showed up some indentations on the top sheet in the blotter. Holding her body with my arm, I pulled out the sheet, and was relieved to find a similar coloured one underneath. I lowered my burden then folded the sheet of blotting-paper carefully into a size that could be concealed in my trousers pocket.

  Then I moved over to the sitting-room and went out into the hall, where I’d noticed the phone on my previous visits. I was about to dial for an ambulance, when I heard the unmistakable click of a Yale key in a lock. And a few seconds later, I was looking straight into the close set and intense eyes of Mr Muir, alias Wall.

  I instantly moved back from the telephone towards the sitting-room door.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Wall.’

  His stare did not flicker one iota.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Marklin. May I ask how you got into my house?’

  ‘I broke in, Mr Wall, because I saw your wife slumped at the desk in there.’ I pointed into the sitting-room.

  His eyes left mine for the first time. ‘Slumped?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wall. I’m afraid I have bad news for you. I was just about to ring for an ambulance.’

  ‘She’s ill. Had a stroke?’ He rushed towards me and I instinctively held my hands up in some form of self protection, although, of course, it was the door he was making for.

  I watched as he crossed the room to the desk, and carefully lifted his wife’s left hand to feel for a pulse. He looked more like an ordinary local GP on his rounds, than a grief-stricken husband or a crazed and tormented avenger, self-appointed in the name of his Lord. My initial fear at his arrival evaporated enough for me to walk slowly into the room towards him.

  ‘It looks like she couldn’t take any more suffering, Mr Wall. The pain of your daughter’s death, or was it more the horror of watching you exact your vengeance on Ben Maxwell and his daughter?’

  Wall moved as if in slow motion away from his wife’s body, and sat down on the edge of his usual hard chair.

  ‘Mr Marklin, I would like to ask just how you discovered about our terrible tragedy.’

  ‘From a man who used to work with your father up at the Dinky factory at Binns Road, Liverpool. He said no one he knew there was called Muir. So I got him to describe every one of his colleagues who had worked on the preparation of new models. Eventually he mentioned a Mr Wall, who, in his words, was a bit of a religious nut and had retired to the village of Jordans in Bucks. I asked if Wall had any children, and he said, yes, one son. And he vaguely remembered from a newspaper cutting his sister-in-law had sent him — she lived near Jordans, in Chalfont St Peter — that son had suffered a personal tragedy in the death of his daughter from drug addiction. I remembered you came from Bucks, and, suddenly, a lot of things that had puzzled me became dazzlingly clear. So I drove up this morning and had a word with the vicar for whom you are making your avenging angel.’

  Wall rose from his chair, and said quietly, ‘We should ring for an ambulance, Mr Marklin.’

  ‘And the police, Mr Wall.’

  ‘If you care to. But you’ve got it all wrong. Yes, I changed our name to Muir, because we wanted to start a fresh life in a new part of the country, where nothing and no one could remind us of the prolonged pain of our daughter’s passing. But if, as I gather, you’re also trying to connect me with Ben Maxwell’s terrible death, and his own daughter’s disappearance, about which I only heard this morning on the local radio, then I’m afraid you will have to think again.’

  He moved past me. ‘Now, pray let me ring for that ambulance.’

  I followed him to the phone, and watched his bony fingers dial, fingers that I was a thousand per cent sure had exacted to the letter the biblical injunctions of Leviticus 24: 19-20, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. His voice was calm on the phone, as he described how he and a friend had discovered his wife dead, slumped across a desk in his house, and would they please send an ambulance, together with the police (he looked hard at me as he said that word) as quickly as possible. It was the calmness of a man who knew quite well that he could never be brought to temporal justice on the few facts I had so far collected.

  *

  The rest of that evening and night was a nightmare — of frustration. Two local constables I’
d never seen before turned up a few minutes before the ambulance, and refused to listen to anything until I had recounted, in detail, how I had found Mrs Wall, who, of course, they continued to call Mrs Muir. When I, at last, managed to include my conviction about Wall’s part in the disfigurement of Maxwell’s face, and in Tara-Lee’s disappearance, I could see from their expressions that they thought I was a prime candidate for the Raving Loony Party. In the end, they suggested that I come down to the local Weymouth station and make a statement. I said I’d do better than that: I’d contact Scotland Yard direct, into the bargain. They didn’t even raise a bloody eyebrow. So I kept my piece of blotting paper in my back pocket for later.

  *

  ‘Come back to bed. You can’t go on pacing the room all night. It’s helping nobody.’ Arabella patted the white and empty space beside her.

  ‘How can they all be so stupid?’ I ranted. ‘I mean, the local constables wouldn’t really take me seriously down at the station, Whetstone wouldn’t even speak to me on the phone, and I still can’t get hold of Blake, because it’s sodding Sunday. Meanwhile, that crazed man, I’m convinced, knows where Tara-Lee is, and we’re wasting precious time, every second...’

  ‘Do you think she might be already dead?’ Arabella asked, almost in a whisper.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got a funny feeling even Muir, Wall, wouldn’t kill an eight-year-old child.’

  ‘But you think he’s capable of smashing up a dead man’s mouth and gouging out his eye.’

  I had to admit Arabella had a point, but it was a point I’d forced myself to forget.

  ‘Look,’ I said, suddenly sitting down on the side of the bed, ‘Wall and his wife suffered two years of agony, waiting for their child to die. It could have been that Wall intended to make Maxwell suffer for a long period, in retribution, couldn’t it? And all that dressing up as a hooded angel was to unnerve and torment Maxwell until one day he...’