‘And damn the consequences? Or hope against hope?’
‘Simon, do you remember when you came back from the war, and we decided that it wasn’t time yet to start a family? But it would be, very soon, when we’d got a few odd things behind us, like housing, and saving for furniture, and your examination for inspector? But after a few months had gone by we were more inclined, without coming to a positive decision, to let things take their course? Instead of taking measures, we were taking half-measures. Oh, Simon, you know we were. The night I conceived Peter, I knew we were doing it. I knew the tally—and I wanted it that way.’
‘I don’t think the two cases are at all comparable.’
‘I do. Not in fine detail, but on a broad basis. It was the elemental versus the prudence of civilisation.’
‘But we were married. We were so much more …’
‘I won’t press the parallel. She wanted him. She wanted him to impregnate her.’
‘To present him with a fait accompli?’
‘Certainly not consciously. But it’s deep in the elemental make-up of every woman. That’s what biology is about.’
‘It can never have occurred to her that he would renege.’
‘Of course it didn’t. But he treated her appallingly. In the event it worked out a good deal worse than even he had intended. He’d been posted to North Africa. I can’t remember what battles there were that autumn, but she could hardly bear a newspaper or a news bulletin. And she knew it was likely to take weeks for her letter to reach him, telling him that she was pregnant and that she wanted to be. Then followed one of those terrible cruel strokes, one of those accidents that happen however well you’ve tried to plan things. This happened probably because old Prudhoe took the formalities into his own hands. She had a letter that she didn’t even begin to understand for the first few readings: a fat wad of typescript that knocked her helpless when she grasped it. It was a draft settlement, for her comment and suggestion, from their solicitors. It arrived two postal deliveries before Mervyn’s cavalier letter.’
‘God! And he’s been to see her in that hospital!’
‘Once. I think Sally was still too sick to take it in properly. And I think she’s got a reasonable perspective about it, now, in so far as you could expect any woman to. She’s even sorry for him, because half his pelvis was shot away in one of the Rhine landings. You know how people gossip in hospital, and people who saw him have told Sally that there are things that surgical advances could still do for him. But he won’t…’
‘You mean masochism? Conscience?’
‘I don’t know. You found him an odd man, didn’t you?’
‘A well-heeled oddity.’
‘Yes. And the financial settlement was a handsome one, in so far as money and that kind of security are any substitute for what was Sally’s real due. As she says, money did matter. In her initial rage she was tempted to turn the lot down. But that didn’t last long. Commonsense soon got the better of hysterical pride. The son is doing well, by the way. He went into medicine, and when this happened to his mother, he switched to neurology. He’s a registrar in a teaching hospital already.’
‘And she married Hammond on the rebound?’
‘It was not quite like that, in fact not like that at all. He wrote to her when he heard what had happened; he pressed her assiduously when he was demobilised. But she staved him off for a year or more. In the end, she said, she had to take him, because she knew she could trust him. And life with her mother was impossible.
‘They’ve not been unhappy, not desperately so. Brian has always loved her, in his way, but he’s an inhibited man. He’s apt to dismiss what he doesn’t understand. Aesthetically he has had nothing to give her. There are no flights of fancy about Brian Hammond. On academic parchment he’s a moderately qualified industrial chemist. But all he’s ever done is routine analysis from stock production. He has no ambitions for anything more and he hasn’t kept sufficiently abreast to make it if he wanted to. Sally’s never let herself get into a state of abject misery about her lot. But she’s always known-herself as unfulfilled, not that that makes her an exception amongst twentieth-century women. The strange thing is, she feels she’s been more contented since she’s been bed-ridden.’
‘That’s an illusion.’
‘And a merciful one with which Edward Milner has had a lot to do. But even there she finds herself in a dilemma. Characteristic Sally. She knows that it’s finished between her and Brian. She thinks he’s got another woman now and she doesn’t blame him for it. She’s glad for his sake. She says that there are things in Brian that could still be unlocked, but not by her. She’d like to give Brian his freedom. But if she does, Edward will press her to marry him. And for Edward’s sake …’
‘She’ll perhaps think her way out of that one, or be talked out of it.’
‘I think so, too, Simon, but …’ She stopped. Kenworthy was aware of the silence and the brocaded lounge. ‘I haven’t finished. That poor woman …’
Kenworthy could see that her eyes were not far from filling up. ‘Darling!’
Elspeth composed herself. ‘You’ve got things to do, Simon. It’s terribly late. I haven’t much more to tell you. Suppose we leave it till you come to bed. Go and do your necessary phoning.’
Kenworthy looked at his watch. He suddenly remembered with a terrible shock that this was his case now.
Chapter Twelve
Late as his bedtime had been, and restless the night, Kenworthy was busy the next morning at an efficient man’s hour in the headquarters office that Derek had provided for him.
Whilst shaving and breakfasting he had had an hour approaching panic. He had never let the strings of a case dangle so far. Damn it, he was in charge of nothing and nobody. There was nothing on paper; he had not even met the members of the hierarchy, above or below him.
But he felt a little better after he had met the sergeant whom the Yard had sent down for him: one of the new school of promoted young men, whom Kenworthy always found it difficult to get to know quickly: bespectacled, slightly intellectual, not given to a healthy ration of self-doubt, but quick, energetic and unambiguous: Duncan Tabrett. Kenworthy had never worked with him before, but had heard nothing to his disfavour in colleagues’gossip.
Tabrett had tabulated full-time and reserve resources. Manpower, transport, communications, specialist services: these had been listed and the necessary stand-by briefed. The woolly rolling ball of previous events had been reduced to the intelligible, if ruthlessly pruned, table of an official log. Derek, up to his ears in his daily round, was in and out all day, listening, suggesting, easing and lubricating. A technical bod was on his way this morning to try to make sense of a four-year-old fault in a steering-box.
Edward Milner was in the hospital wing of a remand prison; enough strings had been pulled for him still to be treated as Menschel’s patient, and Menschel was dropping in to see him. Yesterday morning he had made one of those less-than-two-minutes appearances in the magistrates’ court that people will block a shopping-street to watch. He had been formally charged on the stupid trespass issue, remanded for a week for further enquiries, medical attention stipulated.
But Kenworthy was determined that that week had to settle everything. There must be no more remands after that.
And first there was Kemp to be kept happy—the MI5 observer who had been waiting patiently since yesterday to interview him. He was too well fed and expense-accounted, too full of his own exotic (in his view) experience, almost too ready to express his readiness to co-operate. Kemp did not appeal to Kenworthy. But he did not look as if he was likely to be difficult.
‘Well whose is he, Kenworthy? Yours, mine, or the trick-cyclist’s?’
‘I shall be surprised if he’s yours.’
‘So shall I. I’ve read all the back files. Milner’s a nutter.’
‘God! I hate that word.’ And immediately Kenworthy cursed himself for betraying his feelings. He hadn’t to have feelings.
‘We don’t like it, either. It makes it too easy to run for cover. Though with present day techniques … I only hope that this man Menschel…’
‘Nothing for you to worry about there.’
‘I’m taking a back seat, then.’
‘Is that your brief?’
‘My brief’s open-ended. Keep me posted.’
‘You can get what you want from Sergeant Tabrett, night or day. He doesn’t leave that desk to eat or sleep.’
A dutiful thin smile from the sergeant: a superior bugger; Kenworthy would have to remember that his own sense of humour dated him.
A nutter. What would Elspeth have said about that?
Last night, before they switched out the bedside lights, she had told him how things had wound up with Sally. Distressing. But already Kenworthy was beginning to feel the impersonalising effects of distance.
Sally and Elspeth had been talking in the rose-garden. Suddenly the peace was shattered by a veritable tornado of wheel-chairs. A train of no less than five of them, furiously propelled, shot by them within inches. Some of the young men, immobilised in that hospital, many of them irremediably, had become adept at dicing with death down the long corridors and round the polished corners.
‘Teatime!’ Sally said. But she did not want to disturb their talk to go in out of the sunshine. Elspeth went back into the ward and borrowed a tray to take out tea, bread and butter, jam and cake. And while she was queueing at the trolley, she saw that someone had brought in the afternoon paper. There was a moment of semi-frustration, trying to read a headline that was being waved about in someone’s hand. But there was no need for her to read every word of the two half-columns under the smudgy photograph of the Yarrow Cross barbed wire perimeter. Edward Milner’s name was there. The item covered half the front page.
‘Where were we?’ Sally asked. They had been talking about Brian Hammond’s disaffection.
‘There’s something serious that you need to know, Sally.’
Sally spread jam on her bread and butter, the plate balanced awkwardly on one knee. ‘Greengage! One of our better days.’
‘Sally, you were asking this morning why Edward was writing to you from a Mental Hospital.’
‘I’ll see his leg’s pulled about that all the way down the ward when he comes on Saturday. He said he was using it as a hotel.’
‘He isn’t, Sally.’
A pause: Sally’s knife in mid-movement; a toffee-paper blowing about the freshly hoed soil of a border.
‘What do you mean, Mrs Kenworthy?’
‘He isn’t mad, Sally.’
‘Of course he isn’t. I know that.’ Then the truth began to suggest itself. ‘He’s tried to go back there, hasn’t he?’
‘He’s been back there, Sally, and somebody has murdered Darkie Pascoe.’
She did not have to say more. As Elspeth described it to her husband, it was like standing by to watch a woman die: not give up her last breath, but suddenly devolved from a fighting spirit to a diseased carcase.
‘I saw the blood drain from her face, Simon, and it left her, not pale and harassed but blotched, stained and ugly. You wouldn’t ever think of applying that adjective to Sally Hammond, would you? But that’s what ugliness is: a complete absence of hopeful purpose. I could see how she’s been fighting for months, cumulating into years, fighting against creeping collapse with a ferocious optimism and faith. You promised us three steps today, Sally.
‘And she had only one thing to say to me, Simon. “You rotten bitch. Now I know why you’ve come.”
‘I started to say something else. But she just said, “Take me back to the ward.” They put her back to bed. The weight of her head was too much for her neck to carry. The ward staff simply thought that I had over-tired her.’
Kenworthy picked up his watch from the bed-side table and remembered to wind it. ‘Tomorrow when you go back there…’
‘I can’t possibly go back.’
‘Well, who else do you think could hope to talk to her?’
‘What on earth could I say?’
‘That you and I and Derek are working flat out to get Milner off the hook. But that my guess is that only Sally can do it for us.’
Kenworthy watched Kemp leave the office. ‘Co-operate with that man, Sergeant Tabrett. What I don’t want him to know, I shan’t tell you.’
‘No, sir.’
He was still play-acting: he couldn’t help it. Sour at himself, he reached for a sheet of paper, started to scribble notes of things he had to do, hoped to restrict them to a single side, Churchill-fashion. There was no order of priority yet. It was just as the ideas came.
Sally Hammond:
Elspeth visiting.
Almoner?
Milner:
Charges and remand.
Willing talk?
Check precise movements since arrival
Norfolk.
How contacted D. Pascoe? Intermediary?
Menschel:
Check hospital staff: Milner’s use of phone.
Threeways Garage:
MoT Test.
Technical report; insurance co; police file on
accident?
Technical Sgt to see Downtown Motors.
Tom Pascoe: relationship with Darkie?
Emma Pascoe:
Interview—aggressively?
Village history.
Sammy Pascoe:
Present whereabouts. Worth interviewing?
Relationships with Tom and Darkie?
Village history.
Brian Hammond:
Assess.
Worth seeing fancy woman?
Village history. Cross-check on Prudhoes,
Pascoes.
Establishment:
Vicar? Post-mistress? Policeman? Crosscheck.
Prudhoes:
Interview when village history complete.
Isolate old man.
See R. Whittle, farm bailiff, preferably
by surprise, without Prudhoes.
Intelligence service—news from Norfolk?
Grenade:
Any references? Collections, military
souvenirs?
Julian Hammond:
Views on mother’s disability?
Theories on car accident?
Village history.
Kenworthy felt better when he had it down.
‘Sergeant, have you gone into when we can get into the Battle Range?’
‘They’re willing to do all they can to help, sir, but they’re hoping …’
‘They would be.’
‘There’s a NATO exercise, big stuff, with a skirmish at Yarrow Cross. Timing uncertain.’
‘They’re begging us not to mess up the march-table unless we have to?’
‘That’s the weight of it.’
‘We have to, Sergeant.’
‘The argument is that no one can possibly interfere with evidence while the place is under fire. They guarantee a cordon-guard while nothing is happening.’
‘I want to get into that well today. Who’s our contact?’
‘Major-General, G.O. C. Blue Force, no less.’
‘Get him on the phone for me. If necessary, I’ll bring Kemp’s masters down on our side.’
Derek came into the office, looked openly at Kenworthy’s notes, put his finger separately against Vicar, Post-mistress, Policeman.
‘Dead. Dead. Senile.’ And he tapped the first entry. ‘Don’t worry on that score. Nobler heads than ours will fall, if any. Procedure agreed in a very high place. The press might possibly try to be clever, but they’re pretty docile hereabouts. And Milner is under mental strain. I haven’t heard yet whether he’s feeling talkative this morning. So where would you like to start?’
Kenworthy looked at his list. ‘Threeways Garage. Principally to see whether I can scare Tommy Pascoe. Can you drop a hint to them that I’m on my way?’
‘I’ll get a patrol to drop by and ask if you’ve been.’
‘
Your call to Command H.Q., sir.’
Kenworthy spoke to the General himself: hearty, businesslike, obviously ready to stand up for reservations that he hadn’t mentioned yet.
‘We’ll do what we can for you, of course. We’re hoping …’
‘So am I.’
‘How long are you going to need in there, Chief Super intendent?’
‘Four hours,’ Kenworthy said. ‘From guard-room back to guard-room.’
It was a guess; it paid to sound precise. He hoped he was wildly over-estimating. There was a rustle whilst the General consulted papers; a whisper to some staff officer behind him.
‘Midnight tonight till tomorrow first light. That do you?’
‘Admirable.’
‘Don’t be late, Chief Superintendent. And make sure your watches are accurate. If they’re not, a white flag won’t be much use to you.’
‘Mind if I don’t come to the Garage?’ Derek had the daily file of last night’s break-ins in his hand.
And the sergeant asked a question with his eyes, his pencil still poised over his check-list.
‘I’d rather not have a witness, this time.’
Kenworthy drove himself out there. The Threeways Garage was a single, low service work-shop, with shop-windows at the front: sweets and tobacco at one side, motorists’ novelties and light accessories at the other. Kenworthy pulled up at the pumps on the central island. A bell had rung somewhere on the premises, but for a long time no one came, and the place seemed deserted. He got out and strolled about the forecourt: a breakdown crane with long grass growing about its hubs, a written-off mini, wheel-less, its bonnet in an incredible state. He went into the small parts shop: it was well laid out, not merely tidy, but clean. But no one in attendance. Crime Prevention needed a quiet word here. He could have filled his pockets.
He walked into the garage itself: tyre-pressure and lubrication charts, the console of an electronic tuning-tester—impressive, expensive. At the bottom end a mechanic had a utility van up on a hydraulic hoist, engrossed in the brake-drums.
No Birds Sang Page 12
