A Certain Justice (50 page)

“In what way, Mrs. Buckley? Was he aggressive, threatening?”

“Oh no, he was perfectly polite. Cold, but not threatening. But he was always watching me, calculating, hating. And Octavia was the same. He influenced her, of course. It isn’t happy living in a house where you’re resented and hated. She really needs help and kindness, but I can’t give it. You can’t give love where you’re hated. I’m glad that they’ve gone.”

“And you’ve no idea where? They never spoke of taking a holiday, or said where they might go?”

“No, never. Ashe said that they would be away for a few days. They didn’t leave an address. I’m not sure they knew where they were going. And they never spoke before of taking a holiday, but, then, we didn’t speak much. Mostly it was Octavia giving me orders.”

“Did you see them go?”

“I watched them through the drawing-room window. They were gone by ten-thirty. Afterwards I came down to the flat to see if they’d left a note, but there was nothing. But I think they meant to camp out. They took nearly all the tins from my kitchen cupboard. I could see that Octavia, on the pillion, had her backpack, the one Miss Aldridge bought her when she went on a school hike some years ago. And she had a sleeping-bag.”

They went upstairs and into the kitchen. There Dalgliesh asked Mrs. Buckley to sit down and gently broke the news to her about Janet Carpenter’s murder.

She sat very still, then said: “Oh no. Not again. What is happening to us, to our world? She was such a nice woman, kind, sensible, ordinary. I mean, why would anyone want to kill her? And in her own flat, so it wasn’t a mugger.”

“Not a mugger, Mrs. Buckley. We think it could have been Ashe.”

She bent her head and whispered: “And he’s got Octavia with him.” Then she looked up and gazed straight into Dalgliesh’s face. Kate thought: She isn’t thinking first of herself, and felt an increased respect.

Dalgliesh said: “Was he here early on Monday evening?”

“I don’t know. During the afternoon they were both out on the bike. They very often were. And, of course, they were working on their collage by nine o’clock, but I don’t know whether they were in the basement earlier that evening. I think Octavia must have been, because I could smell cooking — spaghetti bolognese, I think. But they were very quiet. Of course, I can’t hear when anyone goes down to the flat, but I usually hear the bike.”

Dalgliesh explained that the house would be kept under police surveillance and that he was arranging for a WPC to sleep there at night. For the first time Mrs. Buckley seemed to be aware of the possible danger.

Dalgliesh said: “Don’t worry. You’re his alibi for the murder of Miss Aldridge. He needs you to be kept safe, but I shall be happier if you aren’t alone.”

As they left, Kate asked: “Will you put out a general call, sir?”

“I must, Kate. He’s already killed once, probably twice, and it looks as if he’s panicked, which makes him doubly dangerous. And he’s got the girl. But I don’t think she’s in immediate danger. She’s still his best chance of an alibi for Monday night, and he won’t give up his chance of marriage and her money unless he has to. We won’t give out her name. It’ll be enough to say that he’s wanted for questioning and that he may have a young woman with him. But if he comes to believe that he stands a better chance alone, do you think he’d hesitate to kill her? We need to contact the Suffolk police and the care authority, find out the addresses of every foster parent he had, every children’s home he was in. If he’s hiding out he’ll almost certainly go back to a place he knows. We need to find the care assistant who spent most time with him. His name is in Venetia Aldridge’s blue notebook. We need to find a Michael Cole. Ashe called him Coley.”

A
she had neither spoken nor stopped until they reached the house on Westway. She was surprised that they were to stop there, but he gave no explanation. They dismounted and he wheeled the Kawasaki into the back garden, heaved it onto the centre stand, then unlocked the kitchen door.

He said, as she dismounted: “Wait in the kitchen. I won’t be long.”

Octavia had no wish to follow him. They hadn’t been back to the house since that first visit when he had shown her the photograph. The smell of the kitchen, stronger than she remembered but dreadfully familiar, was like a contagion, the darkness beyond presaged a horror which surprised her by its immediacy and its power. Only a thin wall divided her from that single divan which she saw, in her mind’s eye, no longer decently covered, ordinary, innocent, but soaked with blood. She could hear it dripping. After a second of disorientating terror she identified the slow plop of water from the kitchen tap and turned it off with shaking fingers. The image of that pale slashed body, the gaping mouth and dead eyes, which she had been able either to banish, or to recall with little more than a shiver of half-induced terror, now took possession with greater reality than on first sight. The black-and-white print took shape again before her eyes, but this time in lurid images of crimson blood and pale disintegrating flesh. She wanted to get out of the house, never to see it again. Once they were on the road, speeding through the clean night air, all the bad images would be swept away. Why didn’t Ashe come? She wondered what he was doing upstairs, straining her ears for any sound. But the wait wasn’t long. She heard his footsteps and he was with her again.

There was a large canvas backpack slung over his shoulder and in his right hand, held aloft on his clenched fist as if it were a trophy, a blond wig. He shook it gently and the curls trembled in the light of the single unshaded bulb, and seemed for a moment to become alive.

“Put it on. I don’t want us to be recognized.”

Her revulsion was immediate and instinctive, but he countered it before she could speak. “It’s new. She never wore it. Look for yourself.”

“But she must have put it on. She put it on when she bought it.”

“She didn’t buy it. I bought it for her. I’m telling you, she never wore it.”

Octavia took it from him with a mixture of curiosity and repugnance, and turned it over. The lining of what looked like fine net was pristine. She was about to say, “I don’t want to wear anything that belonged to her,” when she looked into his eyes and knew that he was the stronger. She had taken off her crash helmet and placed it on the kitchen table. Now, with a sudden gesture, as if urgency could overcome distaste, she pulled the wig over her head and tucked in the strands of her dark hair.

He said, “Take a look,” and, holding her firmly by the shoulders, turned her towards a mirror of glass tiles stuck to the cupboard door.

The girl who stared back at her was a stranger, but one to whom she would turn in the street with a start of recognition. It was difficult to believe that this contraption of blond curls could so extinguish personality. Then there came a second of fear as if something already precarious, nebulous, had been further diminished. She saw him reflected over her shoulder. He was smiling with a critical, speculative gaze, as if the transformation had been his creation, born of his cleverness.

He asked: “How do you like it?”

She put up her hand and touched the hair. It felt unnatural, stronger and slimier than real hair. She said: “I’ve never worn a wig before. It’s weird. It’ll be hot under that helmet.”

“Not in this weather. I like it. It suits you. Come on, we’ve got a way to go before midnight.”

“Are we coming back here?” She tried to keep the revulsion out of her voice.

“No. We’re never coming here again. Not ever. We’ve finished with this place for good.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere I know. Somewhere secret. Somewhere we can be absolutely alone. You’ll see when we get there. You’ll like it.”

She asked no further questions and there was no more talk. He drove westward out of London, then joined the M25 She had no idea where they were going, except that by now she thought they must be travelling north-east. Once London was behind them Ashe chose the secondary roads. For Octavia the ride was without thought, without anxiety, a journey taken out of time in which she was aware of nothing but the exhilaration of power and speed, of a rushing air which tore from her shoulders all the weight of her nothingness. Poised on the pillion, her gloved hands loosely round his waist, she relinquished everything but the sensation of the moment: the surge of the evening air, the throb of the engine, the darkness of country roads where the hedges seemed to close in on them, the wind-blown trees no sooner visible than dissolving into a black limbo, the white lines endlessly disappearing under their wheels.

At last they were nearing a town. Hedges and fields gave way to terraced houses, pubs, small shops, closed but still with lighted windows, the occasional larger house set back behind railings. He turned down a side road and stopped the engine. Here there were no houses. They had stopped outside what looked like a small urban park near a children’s playground with swings and a slide. Opposite was a commercial building, perhaps a small factory. A name which meant nothing to her was painted on the blank windowless wall. Dismounting, he took off his helmet and she did the same.

She said: “Where are we?”

“Outskirts of Ipswich. You’re going to spend the night in a hotel I know. It’s only just around the corner. I’ll be back for you in the morning.”

“Why can’t we stay together?”

“I told you, I don’t want anyone to recognize us. I want us to be private. They’ll be looking for two of us together.”

“Why should they be looking?”

“Maybe they won’t, but I’m not taking the risk. You’ve got money?”

“Of course. You said to bring plenty of cash. And I’ve got my credit cards.”

“The hotel’s round the corner, about fifty yards further on. I’ll show you. Go in and tell them you want a single room for one night only. Say you want to pay at once because you have to leave very early to catch the first train to London. And pay cash. Register in any name you like, as long as it isn’t yours. Give a false address. Got that?”

“It’s terribly late. Suppose they haven’t got a room?”

“They’ll have a room, but I’ll wait here for ten minutes. If you come back there are other places I know. When you’ve registered, go straight up to your room. Don’t eat in the dining-room or bar. They’ll be closed anyway. Ask them to send up sandwiches. Then meet me here at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. If I’m not here, walk up and down the road until I come. I don’t want anyone to see me waiting.”

“Where will you go?”

“I know places, or I can sleep rough. Don’t worry about me.”

“I don’t want to be parted. I don’t see why we can’t be together.”

She was aware that her voice had become querulous. He wouldn’t like that. But he was trying to be patient.

He said: “We shall be together. That’s what this is all about. We shall be together and there’ll be no one to bother us. There’ll be no one in the world who’ll know where we are. I need to be alone with you just for a few days. There are things we need to talk about.” He was silent, and then said with gruff intensity, as if the words were forced out of him: “I love you. We’re going to be married. I want to make love to you, not in my aunt’s house, not in your mother’s house. We have to be alone.”

So that was what it was all about. She felt a spring of happiness and reassurance, and, moving over to him, put her arms round him and lifted her face to his. He didn’t bend his head to kiss her, but he clasped her tightly in a hug that was more like a violent restraint than an embrace. She could smell him — his body, his breath — stronger even than the leather of his jacket.

He said: “All right, darling. Until tomorrow.”

It was the first time he had called her “darling.” The word sounded strange on his lips and she had a second’s disorientation, as if he were speaking to someone else. Walking beside him to the end of the road, she put out her ungloved hand to hold his. He didn’t look at her but responded with a grip that crushed her fingers. It seemed to her that nothing mattered now. She was loved, they were going to be alone together, everything would be all right.

A
she had reorganized their baggage to make her backpack less bulky but had said that she must take it in with her. The hotel would be suspicious of a guest with no luggage even if she paid in advance. She said; “Suppose they won’t have me?”

“They’ll have you. They’ll be reassured as soon as you open your mouth. Haven’t you ever heard yourself?”

And there it had been again, that small note of resentment, like a pinprick, so slight, so quickly felt that it was easy to pretend that it had been imaginary.

There was no one behind the desk when she entered the lobby, which was small with a mean fireplace, the grate filled with a large vase of dried flowers. Above the mantelpiece was a vast oil of an eighteenth-century sea battle, the paint so grimy that little of the scene was decipherable except the lurching ships and small puffballs of smoke from their guns. The few remaining pictures were animal and child prints of a revolting sentimentality. A high rail running the length of each wall held a display of plates which looked like the relics of smashed dinner services.

Octavia was hesitating, wondering whether to clang the bell on the desk, when a girl little older than herself came in through the door marked “Bar” and slammed open the hatch. Octavia spoke the words she had been given.

“Have you a single room just for tonight? If so, I’d like to pay now. I want to be up early to catch the first train to London.”

Without replying, the girl turned to an open cupboard and took down a key from the keyboard. “Number Four, first floor at the back.”

“Has it got a bathroom?”

“Not
en suite
. We’ve only got three rooms
en suite
and they’re taken. That’ll be forty-five pounds if you want to pay now, but there’ll be someone on duty from six o’clock.”

Octavia said: “Forty-five pounds including breakfast?”