by Gwen Moffat
‘Passionate,’ Harald murmured.
‘Let’s go out in the garden and dry Bags in the sun.’
Bizarre events, unconventional behaviour. Ignoring Anne’s obvious disapproval Miss Pink led her host out to a seat under a tulip tree.
‘What’s your theory?’ he asked as they sat down.
‘Jonty Robson has an evil temper and he threatened Perry.’
‘How would he know she was at the Hoggarths’ place?’
‘How do you know?’
‘There’s only one house in Whelp Yard, and anyway you told Clive. You’re slipping, Melinda.’
‘Not so much slipping as suspicious, suspecting everyone.’
‘Quite right too.’ He wasn’t in the least put out. ‘But how would Jonty know?’ he repeated.
‘He saw her in the churchyard two days ago, he told Rick he knew where he lived; he could have followed Rick to Whelp Yard. He’s married, isn’t he?’
‘Married with two daughters. He’d have an alibi.’
‘Would his wife give him an alibi for murder?’
‘Wives do that.’
Their eyes met. ‘Not completely mad,’ he said gravely. ‘I know a hawk from a handsaw.’
9
The day’s heat built up to another storm, its fringe sweeping Kelleth and disrupting outdoor activities. The Robson girls, Charlotte and Becky, soaked to the skin on their ride, had to be brought home early by their father because it was their mother’s night with the Operatic Society. The girls didn’t have their own ponies but rode regularly at the local school. When Christine Robson arrived home she found them in their bathrobes and fiercely accusing each other of spilling her Chanel talc.
‘What were you doing in my bathroom anyway?’ she shouted. ‘You’ve got your own.’
‘It’s Dad’s bathroom as much as yours,’ Charlotte retaliated. ‘And no way was I going to get in a bath with her.’ Glaring at Becky.
‘I told her to use ours,’ Jonty protested wearily. He found his daughters, aged twelve and ten, disturbing and uncontrollable. They knew it and took full advantage.
‘Do you know how much that talc cost?’ Christine began ominously, but the doorbell chimes saved the girls from answering. Christine wiped the snarl from her face and went down to the front door. Two strange men stood on the steps. ‘Yes?’ she asked coldly. Acceptable callers telephoned in advance. The tie marked the first as a Mormon, but he was too old, and the retrievers were wrong. Salesmen then, and you only had to look at the house to see that the Robsons had everything.
‘If you’re selling —’ she began.
The older man produced some form of identification. ‘Mrs Robson?’ At her fierce nod he pronounced ranks and names and looked past her. The girls had rushed downstairs and were blocking his view of the father.
‘What is it?’ Christine snapped, catching his drift but knowing this family was in the clear, and no way could it be a neighbour causing trouble, not in this neck of the woods. It had to be a mistake.
Jonty pushed the girls aside and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mr Robson?’ Tyndale asked brightly.
Jonty peered to the side where his wife’s Fiesta stood in front of the garage. ‘We still have the cars,’ he said. ‘You had me worried there for a moment. Thought you’d picked up one of ‘em: joy-riders. What did you do, chuck?’ — to Christine. ‘Run a red light?’
Tyndale considered the wife and girls and his eyes came back to Jonty. ‘Perhaps we could have a word, sir?’
‘Of course,’ Christine put in coolly. One co-operated with the police: attended their functions, mixed with senior ranks at the golf club; the Robsons were on speaking terms with the assistant chief constable. ‘Come in!’ She stepped back, bumping into the girls, turning to hustle them towards the stairs. Jonty stood aside and eyed the visitors doubtfully. He’d had more than one large whisky since bringing the girls home and he was suddenly alert to Tyndale’s rank. A warning bell rang distantly.
‘We’ll go to my study,’ he said, meaning to be casual but sounding a trifle aggressive.
‘What an idea!’ Christine was amused. ‘We’ll talk here, in comfort. Now girls, off to bed with you. Daddy and I have business.’
‘It’s Friday,’ Charlotte said, dropping on the sofa, her bathrobe falling apart. ‘We stay up on Friday.’ Eyeing her mother, daring her to countermand the privilege. Her sister settled beside her, grinning.
‘Upstairs,’ Jonty ordered. ‘Take a video and be quick about it. What are you drinking?’ Turning to the visitors: ‘Glenlivet? Highland Park?’
‘Nothing for us, thank you,’ Tyndale said, not even suggesting that a cup of tea would be welcome. Behind his back Christine glared at the girls, her eyes directing them to the staircase.
‘I shan’t say it again,’ Jonty told them tightly.
Charlotte’s lips thinned, the bathrobe now revealing that she was wearing purple briefs. ‘We’re staying,’ she said. ‘It’s Friday.’
‘You get to your room this minute or I’ll tan your hide so you won’t be able to sit down for a week, let alone ride a horse.’
The girls gaped. Christine stared at him. Charlotte pulled her robe together and followed her younger sister who’d made a dash for the stairs.
Jonty released a deep sigh. ‘Girls!’ He glowered at his wife. ‘Spoiled rotten.’
‘Tea?’ Christine asked on a high note, and went out without waiting for a reply.
‘Perhaps you’d prefer to come down to the station,’ Tyndale said quietly.
‘What the hell for?’ Jonty hesitated. ‘You’re CID,’ he went on, more reasonably. ‘Has something serious happened?’ There was no sound from outside the room.
‘You know a girl called Perry, sir?’
Jonty pursed his lips. ‘Perry what?’
‘We thought you might be able to tell us that.’
‘No. I don’t know anyone called Perry. Is that the surname or first name?’
‘What was the name of the girl you gave a lift to in Birkdale on Monday?’
His eyes flickered. Christine was standing in the doorway. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said, ‘I did pick up a hitch-hiker that day. I didn’t ask her name.’
‘You’ve seen her since.’
‘No.’
Christine took a step forward, her eyes fixed on her husband.
‘At Orrdale,’ Tyndale said. ‘The drowned village. You spoke to her when she came down off the fell.’
‘No. I never saw her again.’ Jonty took a gulp of his whisky and stared rigidly at the inspector. Christine was expressionless, she could have been watching a rather dull play.
‘And two days ago,’ Tyndale went on, ‘you were in the churchyard at the same time as her.’
‘If I was I didn’t know it. Someone’s got it in for me, inspector. Can I ask what all this is about?’
‘We have reason to believe she’s met with an accident. Or worse.’
‘I don’t see what it has to do —’
‘Rick Harlow.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Rick Harlow: the man she was — staying with. You threatened him — and her.’
‘Oh, come on! This is a load of bull. Who is this Harlow character? D’you know what I am, who I’m with? Customs and Excise.’
‘He means he makes enemies.’ Christine’s tone was icy. ‘Someone’s getting their own back. Tax men, VAT men: they’re sitting ducks for the wildest accusations.’
‘Perhaps you’d come down to the station, sir.’
‘You — you don’t believe — you can’t believe —’ Jonty was spluttering.
‘Oh, no question.’ Tyndale spread his hands. ‘It’s just a matter of identification —’
‘Identify — who?’ He looked terrified.
‘What,’ Tyndale corrected. ‘Not whom. Some sun-glasses: Ray Bans.’
‘Ah.’ Jonty shot a glance at Christine. Her hand was at her throat. There was a long pause. ‘That’s right.’ He nodded sol
emnly. ‘I missed a pair of Ray Bans some time ago, left the car unlocked one morning in Botchergate, looked for them that afternoon — gone. Too easy, lying on the dash; my own fault, cost the earth. Where’d you find them?’
‘Perhaps you’d come and see if they are yours, sir.’
‘Why, of course. Of course.’ He didn’t ask again where they’d been found.
The rain had stopped. They let him drive his own car and he followed them down the hill into town, driving very slowly and carefully, not because he was over the limit but because he wanted to make no mistakes, even the most trivial, like not stopping at a Stop sign, anything that would weigh against him. Oh God, he thought, if only he could turn the clock back, if only this could be last Friday evening before he’d ever heard of Perry — and he’d never even known her surname. A sob burst from him. He was finished: job, house, family, everything thrown away for one moment’s satisfaction — which he hadn’t had anyway. But need it be the end? She wasn’t the first (although she’d certainly be the last); there’d been plenty of others: glad of the money, even glad of a lift for Christ’s sake. He’d never been caught before. He checked. His eyes widened. He wasn’t caught now. It wasn’t illegal, was it? Oh Jesus, she was under-age! Fifteen, Harlow had said. But he wasn’t to know that. He could get away with it; there’d be Christine to placate but if he could cope with the police he could deal with her. She had everything to lose, after all he was the breadwinner, and at her age she had no hope of finding another man with a steady job. No, Christine knew which side her bread was buttered; he could brazen it out: his word against a slag’s. He steeled himself as he entered the station yard to park beside Tyndale’s beat-up Cavalier.
Dusk had come early with the low cloud ceiling, and lights burned in the building. There was a nip in the air and he felt chilly in his thin shirt. There was no one about and Tyndale spoke quietly, ushering him into a building which at this hour of the evening had the air of a fortress occupied by secret police in the Third World. He thought of bright lights and sleep deprivation.
‘Hang on a minute,’ Tyndale said casually. ‘Take a pew.’
Jonty blinked. There was a passage, seats, the younger detective nudging him towards them.
‘I’ll be glad to have those shades back,’ he said chattily, only just stopping himself in time from adding that they were worth six times the twenty quid Perry had filched from him.
He sat down with a sigh, wondering at what point he should come clean — which he had to do. There were witnesses; that old farmer at Orrdale had seen — and heard — the confrontation with Harlow. Of course the police would understand; he had to deny everything in front of his wife and the girls. No way was he having his young daughters —
A door opened. Rick Harlow came through, glanced at him, stared, eyes widening. ‘You fucking bastard!’ he shouted, lunging forward, arms outstretched, reaching for the throat. Jonty threw himself sideways as the passage seemed to fill with men grabbing at his assailant, interposing themselves, shouting — but Rick’s voice rising above them: ‘What have you done with her? Where is she? Is she still alive? You sod, you bleeding murderer!’ He was in a frenzy of rage.
‘No!’ Jonty cried. ‘No, it wasn’t me! I never touched her, she ran off —’
Rick was hustled away. Jonty appealed to Tyndale who was standing there, regarding him with interest. The other one, Tyndale’s side-kick, was dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief.
Tyndale nodded. ‘We’ll have a chat, shall we?’ He was affable but there was no apology for the fracas and Jonty was too shattered to protest. ‘Who was that?’ he asked weakly.
No one answered. Too late he remembered what he’d said, and what had occasioned it, and that he was going to have to come clean.
*
‘He confessed,’ Tyndale said.
‘He killed her!’ Miss Pink’s hand shook as she refilled his coffee cup.
‘No, no. He admitted he knew the girl: confessed to a — commercial transaction. In the end he admitted threatening Harlow — he blustered, of course, terrified when he learned it could be a case of murder. There’s too much blood, you know — but there, you didn’t see it. On the other hand he was relieved when we asked to search his car. Agreed immediately, so I knew he hadn’t carried her in it, not after she was badly injured — or dead. And he didn’t, the car’s clean as a whistle — no, I don’t mean that, there’s dust and stuff. It hasn’t been vacuumed since before last Monday when he met her.’
‘Where did you find the Ray Bans?’
‘In the Hoggarths’ house. Harlow told us it was the girl’s stealing those that had made Robson so angry. But if he killed her in that house, he missed the glasses. Not surprising, the place was in a mess. And if he was there, he wore gloves; he wasn’t concerned about giving us his prints.’
‘Were they his Ray Bans?’
‘He’s playing safe: they look like his but he couldn’t be sure.’
She took the coffee pot back to the kitchen, moving slowly, thinking that Rick was still in the frame. She was under no illusions concerning this visit. The inspector had arrived at her flat at nine o’clock, looking drawn but still functioning, even after hours of interviewing, and more time spent chasing people up on computers. She wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d uncovered enough of her own background to guess that she might prove useful to him. That she had a police dossier she’d known since the sixties when she was actively opposed to the Concorde project (‘cramped, noisy and hideously expensive’) and had said so in print, incurring the wrath of both her MP and the unions. No doubt her dossier had been expanded over successive decades not least because on a number of occasions, when violent death was involved, she could have been suspected of knowing more than she’d seen fit to divulge. But if Tyndale, this canny Northerner, had discovered that at least one police authority labelled her subversive, he recognised her potential value and this morning he was ostensibly frank and respectful. He needed help.
He had begun with confidences: his suspicion of Rick (a partner always being the first suspect), Rick’s enraged accusation of Jonty Robson — predictable in the circumstances, and subsequently Jonty’s coming clean once he was out of hearing of his family. He’d been surprised at the passion behind Rick’s attack, but that might be explained by the girl’s being so young. Of course both men swore that they didn’t know she was under-age — ‘How do you know that?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘Have you traced her?’
‘Her name was Sharon Ashworth,’ he said. ‘She was on the run from a foster home in Essex. She would have been sixteen in a couple of days’ time.’
‘You don’t know she’s dead!’
He shook his head. ‘There’s a trail of blood through the garden, even on the tarmac where he left his car... Neither man has an alibi, not Harlow nor Robson — only the wife — and what’s that worth? But she wasn’t carried in the boot of either one’s car — nor in Mrs Robson’s Fiesta, incidentally. She gave us permission to look.’
‘So she knows what happened.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s Robson’s problem.’
‘He’s paying a high price.’
‘It could have been higher, could still be, he’s not off the hook. That body was carried in a vehicle, dead or alive.’
‘But not by Jonty Robson,’ she murmured, ‘nor Rick.’
‘Not in cars belonging to them.’ He nodded, seeing she’d understood. ‘Cars can be borrowed, stolen, hired — but this one wasn’t hired; there’d be a record.’
She thought for a while. ‘Why couldn’t it have been a burglar?’
‘If she’d been struck down merely because she was in the way, the body would have been left.’
‘There must have been cases where thieves tried to conceal a body.’ She racked her brains but couldn’t remember any. She was concerned to get him away from the subject of Rick. It was far more likely that Jonty, with his foul temper — but then Rick hadn’t shown much control at the police stati
on either... Of course, if he thought that Jonty had killed Perry... Sharon Ashworth? She’d always be Perry to Miss Pink: short for peregrine, the swift predator. But this one had become prey.
‘Have you known the Fawcetts long?’ came Tyndale’s voice out of the blue.
‘For ever,’ she responded inanely, then recovered with an effort. ‘Forty years perhaps. Only Harald. I hadn’t met his wife until now.’
‘Has he always been so eccentric?’
She smiled fondly. ‘People become absent-minded in old age. And playful,’ she added quickly. ‘Harald amuses himself teasing people. He’s a great romancer.’
‘He has an eye for the ladies?’
‘He’s always most courteous — ah, you mean romance as in sex. Dear me, no. I meant adventure, history, epics: that kind of romance.’ Actually she’d meant Harald embroidered his tales.
‘He knew the girl. He’ll be worried.’
‘Naturally. We all are.’ She kept her voice steady. So this was the kind of help he was after: pumping her about her neighbours. ‘Particularly as no one can be sure what’s happened,’ she added. `Do you have a theory?’
‘We have to find the body.’ His eyes glazed and he looked very tired. ‘Another empty house — or barn? Buried, thrown in the river, even taken back in the hills; lots of places to conceal a body in this county, but it’s high summer and a lot of people wandering around to find it.’
‘Not to speak of dogs.’ They regarded the collie stretched out in a patch of sunshine. ‘An odd coincidence,’ she went on. ‘There won’t be much serious crime on your patch and here you have two murders — well, one and, at the least, a severe wounding — and both within days of each other.’
‘The other was nearer fifty years ago but certainly they surfaced at the same time, roughly.’
‘And Rick is doing a series on the crime-free North! I take it he’s still in custody.’
‘We have a few loose ends to tie up, ma’am.’
So communication — in this respect — was to be one-sided. She tried again. ‘I gather you’ve put the old case on the back burner.’
