Miss Pink Investigates- Part Four

by Gwen Moffat

  Miss Pink let him talk, and he was more voluble than ever this morning; it crossed her mind that he was talking in order to stop her from asking questions. Did he know about the bone? How shrewd was he? Definitely not the helpless old fellow Anne implied. Her eyes on the road, with fleeting glimpses of water among dry boulders below, of scorched slopes above, she set herself to manipulate the conversation, suggesting that the image of moss troopers and cattle raiders riding through the heather was glamorous but the reality must have been bleak.

  ‘No doubt about that,’ he agreed. ‘Atrocities were rife: retaliation. They did take prisoners but captives were left to starve in dungeons, someone was even boiled — in a pot. There was a family who existed for twenty-five years on the flesh of travellers they attacked —’

  ‘No, Harald, you’re thinking of the Bean family over in Galloway, not this neck of the woods.’

  ‘It makes no odds, it’s all Border country, beyond the pale if truth were told.’

  ‘You relish it. You’re a bloodthirsty soul.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s history.’ He was silent. She glanced sideways and saw that he had slumped in his seat, his eyes dull.

  ‘A very long time ago,’ she prompted.

  ‘We have long memories on the Border.’

  She stiffened and her gaze returned to the road.

  ‘Rape and pillage,’ Harald intoned, and shuddered.

  ‘What is pillage?’ she asked idly. ‘It’s one of those words you always mean to look up and never get around to it.’

  ‘It means plunder: from the French, piller.’

  There was a further silence which he broke eventually but as if talking to himself. ‘Rape, yes, but not followed by murder. No need: rape wasn’t a crime. A sin maybe. What was the Church’s view on that? Did they have ministers here?’ He regarded the bare slopes. ‘Doubtful. At all events the victims would be women: adults. Raping children has always been a crime, a sin, a horror. And to murder a child! Of course he had to, to silence her. He could be identified.’

  Where were they? With the moss troopers or closer to home, to now? ‘Quite.’ She spoke through dry lips. ‘The same motive: often with grown women, always with children.’

  He nodded jerkily. ‘That’s why she wanted me out of the way.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘In case the police insisted on talking to me.’

  ‘What harm could you have done?’

  ‘None, actually. But there I let her take charge. Walter Thornthwaite was her husband; it’s her territory, her responsibility. And she’s more than competent, she won’t let them rattle her. You know’ — he shifted in his seat and turned towards her— ‘despite what it looked like it could have been an accident: placing his hands on her throat and pressing too hard on the hyoid.’ He touched his own throat delicately. ‘If he did strangle her it’ll be broken but they’ll never find such a tiny bone now. The foxes and ravens will have been at work.’

  ‘You’ve known all along?’

  ‘Of course. Everyone knew. Joan disappeared; a few days later he followed. It was obvious — although Anne’s always believed in his innocence. Ostensibly.’

  *

  Perry and Rick were coming home through the churchyard. They had been walking Bags by the river and the collie was still shedding water.

  ‘Miss Pink has something of mine,’ Rick announced vaguely, not wanting to admit that he’d handed over some of his features for a constructive opinion. ‘You wait here, I shan’t be a minute. Keep Bags on the lead.’ He’d bought one to replace the baler twine.

  ‘No need,’ Perry said. ‘I’m training him. Stay, boy.’ She sat down on a bench. Bags dropped at her feet. She leaned back and closed her eyes, listening to the hum of insects in the trees, her head like fool’s gold in the sunshine. After a while she felt the dog move and opened her eyes. The Mondeo driver stood a few yards away, his mouth open, his eyes fixed. Seeing her flicker of panic his lips closed and stretched in the travesty of a smile.

  Perry swallowed. On the next seat were two women with strollers, their kids playing on the dry grass. There was no sign of Rick. She stood up and approached the women.

  ‘Have you got the time?’

  They glanced at her, transfixed by the haircut. ‘Twelve o’clock,’ one said, and looked meaningly at the church tower but the clock couldn’t be seen from here.

  ‘Come on, boy, race you!’ Perry cried and dashed away, round the church, along the walk past Nichol House, glancing back to make sure he wasn’t coming after her. He’d be known locally: a tax inspector, he wouldn’t dare attract attention whatever he might intend on the sly. She made for Doomgate — and beyond the bollards that blocked access to the church walk a police car was parked, the driver behind the wheel, the windows down, a radio squawking inside.

  She stooped and clipped the lead to Bags’ collar, straightened up, stared with her generation’s contempt at the driver and walked past, her eyes searching for a clear run, some yard where the car couldn’t follow, trying to remember if there was a back gate to Nichol House by way of its garden so that she could abandon the dog. But anyone with a back entrance would keep it locked these days.

  She was frantic; if they caught her they’d put Bags in the pound, they’d put him down... She kept walking along Doomgate. There was no shout from behind her, no revving of an engine. Crossing the road she looked back. The police car hadn’t moved and that man, the Mondeo guy, would never follow her now, not with police about. She walked on, looking for somewhere to hole up until she could contact Rick.

  *

  Getting no reply when he rang Miss Pink’s doorbell Rick had wandered into the bookshop. Emerging with a copy of The Second Jungle Book, smiling as he visualised Perry’s reaction to it, he saw that the seat where he’d left her was vacant. Then he realised that the big fellow talking to two women on the next bench was the Mondeo chap, Jonty Robson. So she’d seen the guy coming and had scarpered — but had Robson seen her, or was his talking to the women merely a coincidence? At that moment the chap left them and strode down the flagged path towards Doomgate. Rick approached the women. ‘I’m looking for a girl with a collie,’ he said.

  They regarded him knowingly. They’d have seen him leave Perry a few minutes ago. ‘She’s in demand,’ one said, elaborately arch, ‘he’s after her too.’ Nodding at Robson’s back.

  Their eyes anticipated excitement. ‘Although he says,’ put in the other woman, ‘that it’s the dog he’s after: knows who it belongs to, says it went missing.’

  ‘Like she were one of them travellers and she stole it,’ the first woman suggested.

  ‘Which way did she go?’ Rick was harsh. ‘Don’t tell me: he’s gone after her.’

  ‘Right, and maybe the police too.’

  He moved away, having no time to consider that last comment because there, to his astonishment, was Jonty Robson, strolling casually round the churchyard away from the exit for which he’d been making so precipitately. Their eyes met across the tombstones. Robson halted and stared at him. Puzzled, Rick looked from the fat man to the exit. A police car was parked on the other side of the bollards. He grinned, enlightened, and crossed the grass to Robson.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked pleasantly, as if he stood on his own property. ‘Or would you care to ask a policeman?’

  Robson’s eyes flickered then his head tilted to one side so that he resembled an interested mastiff. ‘She’s still with you,’ he breathed.

  Rick saw the danger and played for time. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Don’t give me that. She’s fifteen, you said so. And here she’s shacked up with you.’

  ‘Shacked up? Oh, you’re talking about the kid you abducted, right?’

  ‘Lies, all lies. And you’re not on The Sun neither.’

  ‘Wouldn’t stoop to it,’ Rick said airily. ‘I’m a freelance. I sell my stuff wherever there’s a market. Sex and violence fetch a good price, particularly where Authority is concerne
d, like big fish in little ponds, respected family men, you know the kind of thing: blow jobs in the backs of cars.’

  ‘I know where you live,’ Robson said, his eyes slits above his fleshy cheeks.

  ‘But only temporarily. Your home is here, you have neighbours, your girls go to school in Kelleth’ — a guess, but Robson didn’t deny it — ‘your wife will have status, married to the VAT man. You will have status.’

  ‘It’s her word against mine.’

  ‘You see,’ Rick said chattily, ‘when an item like this is broadcast —’

  ‘Try it! You just try it!’

  ‘— or appears in print, and you deny it publicly, it usually happens that other girls — women, schoolgirls, they come forward to point out that this isn’t the first time, it’s happened before — to them.’

  ‘Of course!’ The scorn was overdone. Robson licked his lips. ‘Every slag in town will see her chance to make a few quid from the media.’

  ‘A few quid more? How much do you pay them?’

  Robson bared his teeth. ‘Watch your back,’ he grated. ‘I’m going to get you both.’

  Rick raised an eyebrow and walked away; he couldn’t counter that threat. Fortunately Robson didn’t appear to have noticed the Kipling; he’d surely guess that Rick didn’t intend to read it himself. But so what, the man knew Perry was staying in the flat, he’d been watching. Not a pleasant thought. Rick didn’t think she’d be waiting for him outside the flat but just to be on the safe side he walked round the churchyard instead of heading straight across for Plumtree Yard. Robson didn’t follow.

  He started to consider what should be done. He didn’t think Robson would go to the police, he thought he’d come pretty close to the truth there when he’d suggested that Perry wasn’t the first youngster he’d propositioned, and if Robson tried an anonymous tip-off he’d know that Rick would guess the identity of the informant and retaliate. Robson had everything to lose. No, it wasn’t a charge of consorting with a minor that bothered Rick, he was worried about Perry’s safety. If Robson could hang around the churchyard in the daytime, he could do so in the dark. Perry ought to leave Kelleth, and at the thought his guts contracted. He’d known her for two days and already he’d lost sight of what life was like before he met her. He couldn’t remember being depressed, unfulfilled, bored, but he knew without a doubt he’d feel like that tomorrow, if he set her on the road to Scotland tonight. So why not go with her? He stopped in his tracks, grinning like a maniac, and then he sobered and glanced back, but there was still no sign of Robson. He headed for Plumtree Yard.

  Two men were at Edith’s door. One was dressed conventionally: dark pants, shirt-sleeves and, of all things in this weather, a tie. The other was in baggy jeans and a shirt in blue plaid. Beyond them Edith stood in characteristic pose defending her castle, arms folded, alert, defiant, listening as if she were granting a favour. Her eyes slid past her callers to Rick and her lips tightened. She nodded curtly. Her visitors turned, glanced at Rick, and turned back.

  Footsteps slapped softly as someone entered the yard behind him. It was a uniformed policeman. Rick kept walking to his own front door and took out his key.

  As he let himself into the flat he realised that the police had nothing to do with Perry or himself. The bone had been mentioned on local radio this morning — and Edith was old Orrdale. They were questioning people who had lived there when that child disappeared. He sighed with relief, dismissed them from his mind and started to wonder where Perry was. She’d have seen the police car and would wait until the coast was clear before she came home. Home — God, he’d have to see Anne Fawcett to settle up — No, he’d paid in advance. But he must leave properly, say goodbye, particularly to Harald. He’d wait for Perry and go round to Nichol House this evening, see Miss Pink too; she had his clippings.

  6

  The churchyard was a mosaic of moonlight and shadow, the leaves hanging motionless. Miss Pink, opening her curtains before she went to bed, recalled a weird movie of her childhood with vampires hauling themselves out of graves. A B-picture, probably accompanying a more appropriate film; her parents would have walked out had they suspected how long she would be haunted by those images of the earth giving up its dreadful dead... She stiffened. Something low crept across a path of light, turned back, nosed a headstone and moved on: Bags, dragging his lead.

  She looked for Perry but there was no sign of her, nor of anyone else. Puzzled, she watched the collie appear and vanish without apparent direction. She sighed, aware of her responsibility.

  He was still there when she emerged from the door beside the bookshop and he came to her immediately. Obviously he disliked being on his own. So what had happened?

  She went to Plumtree Yard but the only light was in Edith’s flat and there was no answer when she rang Rick’s bell. She returned to her own place, Bags trotting happily beside her, accepting her as a friend. Miss Pink was more of a cat-person but she had nothing against dogs and this one was so amenable and well mannered it was a pleasure to be in his company.

  She wrote a note: ‘Bags is with me. M. Pink’, went back and stuck it on Rick’s front door. ‘So we go home and talk while we wait for him,’ she told the collie, but as she walked across the churchyard again she was hailed by the man himself, hurrying across the grass.

  ‘Hi,’ he gasped. ‘Where’s Perry?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I saw Bags from my flat, trailing his lead, so I came down and took him in charge. I left a note —’

  ‘Where is she?’ He looked away, throwing the question into the night.

  ‘With the Fawcetts?’

  ‘No, I’ve just come from there, they haven’t seen her today. You know the police were here?’

  ‘They’ll be making inquiries about the bone found at Orrdale.’

  ‘I think she saw them and thought they were after her — but that was this afternoon! She hasn’t left, all her stuff’s in the flat, but Bags: how did he get loose?’ He paused, scratching at moss on a headstone. Bags sat down and leaned against Miss Pink’s legs. ‘I saw her go,’ Rick went on, ‘well — virtually. I was here.’ He looked around. ‘She was on that seat there. I went to your flat but you were out so I went in the bookshop. Bags was all wet, he’d been in the river. I told her to wait. "Put him on the lead," I said, and she said she was teaching him to stay, you didn’t need the lead, I remember her saying that. And I came out of the bookshop and she was gone, and there was that fellow: Jonty Robson.’ Rick stared at the bench with wide eyes. ‘If he’s touched her I’ll kill him.’

  ‘This is the man you were asking the Fawcetts about: the one who gave Perry a lift up Birkdale?’

  ‘And raped —’ He stopped short.

  ‘He raped her?’ She was appalled.

  ‘No.’ He looked away, mumbling. She waited. ‘It’s — a bit complicated,’ he muttered. ‘There wasn’t a rape, he’s not that stupid — surely? But he did — er — make suggestions.’ He swallowed.

  ‘Then it’s he who should be scared of her now.’

  ‘Ye-es, but you see, she reckoned he owed her: taking her out of the way, dumping her in the wilds... I’m afraid’ — he was terribly embarrassed — ‘she lifted his Ray Bans.’

  ‘His — oh, those pricey sun-glasses. I see.’

  ‘And twenty pounds. Apparently he was paying up-front, if you see what I mean.’

  She did. She saw what he had been skirting round, saw the possibility that Perry was a teenage prostitute, but that was immaterial at this moment except that it heightened the risks the girl had run, was running. ‘So he’s after his Ray Bans and his cash,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘And he can’t go to the police because he’s a family man.’

  ‘He threatened me — and her. We had a confrontation. He said he’d get us both.’

  Miss Pink looked down at Bags. ‘If she saw the police —’

  ‘She must have done. There was a patrol car beyond the bollards. According to some women she went that way so she must have
walked right by the car. She would have been scared stiff.’

  ‘You think she’s a runaway.’

  ‘She’s been horribly abused.’

  ‘And you want to protect her. Unfortunately, since she’s probably under-age’ — she paused hopefully but in vain, and his expression was truculent — ‘you’re laying yourself open to a criminal charge.’

  ‘You think I care?’

  ‘Ssh! Keep your voice down.’

  ‘I love her!’ It was an angry hiss.

  ‘When she comes back, bring her over to me. Now you go back to Plumtree, take Bags with you... I think that if she thought that the police were after her, or Jonty Robson, or both, Bags would be an encumbrance. She probably tied him to your front door, or close by, and he worked himself loose.’

  ‘That would fit. She couldn’t put him inside the flat because I have the key.’

  ‘Go home, but bring her across whatever time she comes back. She’ll be safe with me.’

  She left the light burning in her living-room but otherwise she acted normally, undressing and going to bed. She wondered where Perry could be. She was less worried about the police than about Robson — although she couldn’t visualise the VAT man, the local Customs and Excise officer, as anything other than ridiculous in the circumstances. No doubt he had made overtures but it was himself who’d been taken for a ride, and if he recovered his expensive sun-glasses he should feel the score was even. As for the twenty pounds, she preferred not to dwell on that, whether it had been a transaction or a couple of notes slipped out of a wallet — and it was only twenty pounds anyway, when Ray Bans ran to well over a hundred. Here something snagged in the course of her waking dream; the Ray Bans were theft but the cash related to sex. The man had been ridiculed by a child, and the fact that she’d run when he reappeared suggested that she looked on him as dangerous. But if she’d told her story to other people — and Robson would assume that she’d told Rick — silencing her wasn’t the answer...