A Place Of Safety (38 page)

‘And no doubt it would have been more the third time?’

‘Why not? Terry reckoned that place must have been worth a quarter of a million. Anyway, he said we should give her a breather - a false sense of security, like. Maybe for a month. We was going to Paris for a few days. He’d got the five grand—’

‘And you’ve got it now, Tanya. Right?’

‘No. He never brought it with him.’

‘You expect us to believe that?’ said Troy.

‘It’s true. He hid it ’cause he thought you might be round the flat with a warrant. Then he couldn’t pick it up ’cause that filthy poof was spying on him. With binoculars.’

Barnaby thought that certainly tied in with what Bennet had later told him about Fainlight. The money was probably stashed with the clothes in the rucksack. Find that and you’d copped the jackpot.

‘Do you know how he came by the second lot of money?’ Sergeant Troy attempted ironic patience but, as always, failed to pull it off. Even to himself he sounded merely peevish.

‘Same as the first time. How many ways are there to collect a drop?’

‘Try following the victim, crashing her head down on the bonnet of a car and just taking it.’

Tanya stared at Barnaby who had spoken, then at Sergeant Troy and back to Barnaby again.

‘You tricky bastards. You wouldn’t tell such lies if he was here to defend himself. She left it in Carter’s Wood just like the first time.’

‘Mrs Lawrence didn’t leave any money anywhere. She’d decided not to pay and was returning it to the bank.’

‘Yeah, well, that might be what she says—’

‘She isn’t saying anything,’ said Troy. ‘She’s been in intensive care for the last three days. It’s not even certain that she’ll recover.’

Barnaby looked across the table at the girl. She had begun to look pitifully uncertain and his gaze was not unsympathetic.

‘He did have a record of violence, Tanya.’

‘No he didn’t.’ She immediately contradicted herself. ‘There was reasons.’

‘For a knife attack on—’

‘He never done that. Terry was the youngest, he took the blame so he could belong. The actual guy would’ve got life. On the streets you gotta be accepted. If you’re not, you’re finished.’

Troy wanted to ask about the old man left in the gutter but was strangely reluctant. The fact was he was fighting sympathetic feelings himself. Not for Jackson, never that, but for her. She was visibly distressed now and was struggling not to cry. Barnaby had no such qualms.

‘There was another incident. An old man—’

‘Billy Wiseman. He was lucky.’

‘
Lucky?
’

‘I know people - he’d never have got up again.’

‘What do you mean, Tanya?’

‘I were ten when they fostered me, him and his wife. What he done - I couldn’t even say it in words. Over and over. Sometimes in the middle of the night I’d wake up and he’d be . . . Then, when I were fourteen, I were down by Limehouse Walk with Terry. I just started talking and it all came out. He never said nothing. But his face was terrible.’ Tanya gave a single cry then. A wild sound, like a frightened bird.

Barnaby said, ‘I’m sorry.’

And Troy thought, Christ, I’ve had enough of this.

‘I hadn’t seen him for ages. He’d been in two or three places, then Barnardo’s. I’d been moved about - once we lost touch entirely. Not knowing where each other was. And that was the worst. Like everything in the world closing down at once.’ Tears poured down like rain. ‘He was the only person who ever loved me.’

Troy clumsily attempted comfort. ‘You’ll meet someone else, Tanya.’

‘What?’ She gazed at him blankly.

‘You’re young. Pretty—’

‘You stupid fuck.’ She drew away from them then, staring from one to the other with fastidious contempt. ‘Terry wasn’t my boy friend. He was my brother.’

 

They would have solved the crime anyway in a couple of days as things turned out. When the prints in Tanya’s room in Stepney turned out to be a perfect match with the ones in the Old Rectory attic.

Or when Barnaby remembered that Vivienne Calthrop had described Carlotta as far too short to be a model so how come she had to duck her head not to bang it on the Old Rectory door frame? Or when the bicycle on which Jackson had ridden back from Causton was found propped against the wall of Fainlight’s garage under half a dozen others. And the money, still in the saddle bag. The rucksack and clothes were never found. Received opinion in the incident room had it that Jackson had buried them under the other rubbish in the Fainlights’ wheelie-bin the day before it was emptied.

Valentine Fainlight, when questioned further, admitted that he had shown Jackson round the house and garden on one occasion when his sister was out. And that the man could have taken the garden key away while he was looking elsewhere but what the hell did it matter now anyway and, Jesus, when in hell were they going to leave him alone?

‘So how do you see it being worked, chief?’ asked Sergeant Troy as he and Barnaby walked away from the ravishing glass construction for the last time.

‘Presumably he biked over that back field, through the gate into the garden, down the side of the house and into the garage. Then he could duck down behind the Alvis, change clothes and hide his stuff to be sorted later.’

‘What d’you think he’ll get, Fainlight?’

‘Depends. Murder’s a serious charge.’

‘It was an accident. You heard what he said to his sister.’

‘I also heard him say he was blind with jealousy. He knew the man, Troy. They had a relationship. Which means murder is a possibility. The Met were right to charge him.’

‘But he was allowed bail.’ Troy was getting quite worked up. ‘That must mean something.’

‘It means he’s not regarded as a danger to the public. Not that he hasn’t committed any crime.’

‘So he might be found guilty?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Whether anti-homosexual bias can be weeded out in the jury. How impressed they are by Fainlight’s standing as a well-known author. How appalled they are when Jackson’s record is read out. How they respond to Tanya Walker’s testimony, which will be hostile to say the least.’

Tanya’s interview had concluded with her description of the fight that led to her brother’s death. According to her, Valentine had burst in, attacked Terry, dragged him over the landing and forced him back through the stair rail. Afraid for her own life, she had run away down the fire escape.

‘The Crown have a witness as well, chief. DS Bennet.’

‘He only saw Jackson fall. She can say what led up to it.’

‘And lie.’

‘Probably. The girl’s heart is broken, she’ll want revenge. And who could prove perjury?’

‘Do for his books, this, won’t it?’

‘As he writes for children, I would say so.’

Barnaby had been shocked at Fainlight’s appearance. He looked like a zombie. In his eyes the death of all life and hope. There was not even the colour of despair. His frame, now much less stocky, folded in on itself with utter weariness. He seemed inches shorter, pounds lighter.

Barnaby didn’t envy Louise. He was sure she could tough it out, nurse Fainlight through his dark night of the soul. She had the love and the patience and, certainly at present, the energy. Everything about her had shone. Her eyes, her skin and hair. Her cheeks were rosy, not with the usual skilfully applied cosmetics but with health and happiness.

And she had time on her side. The man who had caused her brother so much agony no longer existed. At least in the flesh. But in Fainlight’s heart - that was something else. And in his mind, where all troubles start and end, what of that? Eaten up by guilt and loneliness, starved of the only company his unhappy soul craved, how would he survive, in or out of prison?

‘If only,’ murmured Barnaby to himself. ‘Sometimes I think they’re the saddest words in the English language.’

‘I’d say pointless more,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘You would,’ replied the chief inspector. He was used to his sergeant’s phlegmatic attitude and occasionally even welcomed it as a sensible corrective to his own rather free-ranging imagination.

‘What’s done’s done,’ pursued Troy. Then, just to make sure there had been no misunderstanding, ‘Junna regret ay reean.’

They were making their way now across the Green, passing the village sign with its robustly priapic badger, stooks of wheat, cricket bats and lime-green chrysanthemum.

Barnaby noticed several pale furry dogs hurling themselves about in a transport of delight, happily too far away to make even the most brief exchange of courtesies with their owner feasible. A small terrier attempted to join in, not making too bad a fist of it. The owners of the dogs walked arm in arm, heads close together, talking.

‘Look who’s over there,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘I’ve seen who’s over there,’ replied the chief inspector, quickening his step. ‘Thanks very much.’

A few moments later they came to the river. Barnaby stopped by the low bridge to look into the swiftly flowing water. He wondered how it had looked in the moonlight on the night Tanya ran away. There must have been a moon for Charlie Leathers to see the faces of the two women as they swayed on the bridge locked together in a struggle which ended with an almighty splash. And he thought what he saw was for real, as we all do. Who questions the evidence of their own eyes?

‘I was thinking, sir. That Tanya—’

‘Poor lass,’ said Barnaby, somewhat to his own surprise.

‘Exactly,’ Troy responded eagerly. ‘If anyone needed a friend—’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘There wouldn’t be anything in it—’

‘Yes there would. Eventually.’

‘But what’ll happen to her?’

‘She’ll survive,’ said Barnaby, with a confidence he didn’t really feel. ‘After all, she managed to fool us.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Not drowning, Troy, but waving.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Never mind.’

Troy bit back a tsk of irritation. It was always happening, this sort of thing. The chief’d say something a little bit difficult, a bit obscure. Some quote or other from something nobody in their right mind had ever heard of. Then, when he tried for an explanation, he was brushed off.

Fair enough, you might say. But then don’t go on at this person for not knowing about opera and theatre and heavy music and books and stuff. Troy had looked up Philistine in Talisa Leanne’s dictionary when he had got home the other night and was not best pleased. Was it any wonder he was ‘a person deficient in liberal culture’ when every time he asked a question some know-all not a stone’s throw away was for ever shutting him up.

‘How about some lunch in the Red Lion?’

‘Sounds good, chief.’

‘What do you fancy? My treat.’

‘Pie and chips’d be nice. And some of that raspberry Pavlova.’

‘Excellent,’ said Barnaby as they strode across the forecourt. ‘That should keep you on your toes.’

 

As things turned out, Louise did not personally nurse her brother back to health. When Valentine returned to Fainlights, it was simply for the few days it took to organise the packing of his clothes, computer and personal files, and a few books. He planned to rent somewhere in London until the trial which he was told would probably not be for several months.

While he was looking for somewhere to stay he was offered the attic flat in his publisher’s house in Hampstead. The usual tenant, the publisher’s son, was now in his third year at Oxford and rarely at home. Though it was rather cramped, Valentine settled there and gradually gave up the idea of looking for another place until the future became more clear. Not that he would have used such a phrase. He rarely thought beyond the present day or even the present moment, simply drifting through the hours in a state of stupefied loneliness.

Louise rang constantly. In the end he used to pull the plug, sometimes for days at a time. Once or twice, at her insistent persuasion, they met for lunch but it was not a success. Val was not hungry and her worried urging that he must eat got on his nerves. The second time they parted, Louise was struggling not to cry and Val was guiltily assuring her that it was all his fault before hugging her in a stiffly formal way and saying, ‘Keep in touch.’

In the train returning to Great Missenden, Louise’s natural resilience reasserted itself. It followed that these things took time. She just hadn’t appreciated quite how much time. Everything would be all right, eventually. Still, she was rather glad, getting into her little yellow car at the station, that she would not be going home to an empty house.

 

When Ann was finally ready to leave hospital for what she had been warned might be quite a lengthy period of convalescence, she was unsure where to go. Her soul revolted at the idea of returning to the Old Rectory. The image of her childhood home had become so abhorrent she almost felt she never wanted even to see it again. But her only relative was an elderly aunt in Northumberland whom Ann had not seen for almost twenty years, during which their correspondence had been perfunctory to say the least. There was also the necessity, as a post-operative outpatient, to be near the hospital. Then, as the day of her release drew near, Louise suggested to Ann that she stay at Fainlights.

Louise had visited Stoke Mandeville almost every day and though very little was said on either side, the long silences were never uncomfortable. Both women, having grown confident in each other’s company, felt the arrangement would suit them.

Inevitably there was a certain awkwardness when Ann first arrived. They had to get used to living together. Ann wanted to do more than she was able out of gratitude. Louise refused all help, convinced she could manage by herself, though for years she’d never tried. (On hearing of Valentine’s crime and subsequent arrest, the domestic agency promptly struck the name Fainlight from their books.)