A Talent For Destruction (8 page)

The boys, having told their brief story so often the previous day, had become blasé. Justin's Gran had forbidden them to go out, in case the Anglia van should come, and so they were sprawled on the sitting-room floor playing a television game, an electronic ping-pong. DC Wigby joined them for a few noisy minutes while Mrs Muttock made a pot of tea, and then she switched off the set and Quantrill addressed the boys heartily.

‘I expect the two of you often play in Parson's Close?'

Justin and Adrian glanced at each other. They were healthy and bright, tough in jeans and miniature army sweaters, but dutifully wearing slippers so as not to clump about on Justin's Gran's fitted carpet. They exuded innocence, but the look they exchanged had counselled caution.

Adrian, the elder, cleared his throat. ‘Oh no,' he said virtuously. ‘It's private – it says so on the gate.'

Quantrill tried to reassure them. ‘I never let a thing like that stop
me
when I was a boy,' he said with heavy jollity.

They stared at him with total disbelief, as though they imagined he had been born that age and size. Quantrill tried again, thinking they might find it easier to imagine Ian Wigby at junior school: ‘And as for the constable here, he was always up to mischief.'

‘A young monkey, I was,' agreed Wigby. ‘Nothing really wrong, mind,' he added responsibly, ‘but generally naughty.'

Mrs Muttock senior fluttered her mascara'd eyelashes at the detective constable over her teacup. ‘You were a proper little devil, I can tell that,' she said with admiration.

‘The point is,' said Quantrill, ignoring her contribution, ‘that if we'd wanted to play in Parson's Close when we were boys, we wouldn't have worried about a
Private
notice.
Private
,' he explained, ‘means that you have no business to be there. You'll get into trouble with the owner if he catches you, and quite right too. But it isn't against the law. As long as you don't do any damage, it's no concern of the police.'

‘But we don't want to go into Parson's Close,' said Justin. ‘We only went there yesterday because of the snow. We always play in Castle Meadow, don't we, Adrian?' He reached up to the table for a cellophane packet of savoury snacks. A lurid red and green monster was printed on the packet. Weird green lettering, dripping red to represent blood, announced that the bag contained monster food. The creature's jaws drooled green saliva, and in its talons it grasped a thigh bone.

Mrs Muttock senior leaned over to poke DC Wigby in the ribs. ‘Did you ever?' she demanded, half amused, half shocked. ‘It beats me how they can fancy that stuff, after they've found a skellington. Poor little dears …' Unconcerned, the boys began to munch the contents of the packet, which looked and smelled like bone-shaped fragments of polyurethane fried in vegetable oil.

‘Parson's Close,' said Quantrill firmly, trying to retain control of the interview. ‘We know that a man camped there last summer. He had a small orange tent, and he pitched it somewhere up near the trees. Now, what I'd like to know is whether either of you boys saw that man, at any time during the summer – saw him, or spoke to him, or heard him speaking to anyone else?'

Justin and Adrian glanced sideways at each other, and then looked at the Chief Inspector over their monster food, with hugely guileless eyes.

‘We always play in Castle Meadow,' said Adrian.

‘We don't go into Parson's Close,' said Justin. ‘It's private, you see,' he explained, as though to a couple of retarded eight-year-olds.

The policemen elected to drain their teacups and retire in good order. Mrs Muttock went with them to the front door.

‘There's a chance that the boys may remember something that could be useful,' Quantrill told her. ‘If you do hear them saying anything about Parson's Close, I'd be much obliged if you'd give DC Wigby a ring at the station.'

Mrs Muttock brightened, glad that her brief importance was not yet at an end. Wigby had just pulled on his coat, and she stepped forward to settle the dark fleecy collar for him. ‘Definitely,' she said with fervour.

Alarmed, Wigby bolted down the snow-fringed concrete path. Quantrill thanked her for the tea and had begun to follow, when she called to him.

‘I say –'

He returned to her side, thinking that this might be an equivalent of what he had heard described as the ‘By the way, Doctor,' syndrome. He felt certain that the boys were concealing something; they were too virtuous by half. Probably Justin's grandmother had a shrewd idea of what it might be, but found it difficult to express.

‘Yes, Mrs Muttock?' he encouraged her.

But all she had wanted was to give her neighbours the maximum opportunity of seeing her in conversation with a tall dark stranger. She put her hand on his sleeve, and motioned with her head towards the window of the sitting room.

‘Monster food – did you ever! Funny little devils, kids, eh?' she said proudly.

Quantrill had agreed, but with no paternal pride. And then he had gone home to wait with his family for Peter's interview with Detective Sergeant Tuckswood.

He had said very little to his son since the previous morning, when the Rector had told him about Peter's possible involvement in the church-hall incident. It was a severe embarrassment, exacerbated by Molly's impartial reproaches to her husband on behalf of her son, and to her son on behalf of his father. She kept trying to talk it over, but all Quantrill would say to either of them was that Peter must tell the truth when Sergeant Tuckswood questioned him.

It had been difficult, while they waited for the Sergeant to come, to think of a suitable topic of conversation. Fifteen-year-old Peter had grown rapidly during the previous six months, and in doing so he seemed to have sloughed off all his former interests. His mother was of the frequently voiced opinion that he had outgrown his strength, but his father silently suspected that he was bone idle.

Peter didn't believe in standing when he could sit, or sitting when he could lie down. He was waiting for the interview in a semi-recumbent position in a deep armchair, with his sneakered size tens resting on the coffee table. When his father joined him in the sitting-room Peter grudgingly, but without being told, acknowledged his presence by removing his feet from the table. After that the two of them sat on opposite sides of the room, listening to Molly making agitated noises with pots and pans in the kitchen.

Presently Quantrill cleared his throat. ‘Did you hear about the skeleton that's been found in Parson's Close?' he asked socially.

‘Mm,' said Peter. Had he been wearing a hat, he would have tipped it over his face to indicate that he was not at home; as it was, he made do with closing his eyes and scraping his dark fringe as low as possible with his fingers.

‘We think it might have been an Australian who camped in the meadow last summer.'

‘Umph,' said Peter.

His father's work used to interest him, but now he hated everything to do with it. He hated being a policeman's son, and above all he hated being the son of the head of the Criminal Investigation Department in a small town like Breckham Market, where everyone associated the name Quantrill with the police force. The responsibility was more than he could cope with. He'd had enough of taunts and gibes from his classmates, and of reproaches from adults. What he longed for above all was anonymity.

‘Yes,' went on his father, trying hard. After all, the boy was bound to be apprehensive about the coming interview. That made two of them, so the least he could do was to ease the waiting time in as friendly a way as possible. ‘It's an interesting case. We don't yet know how the man died, and after this lapse of time we may never know. The significant question is, what happened to his tent and camping gear? The scene-of-crime team have found a few likely items dumped in the bushes, but there's no sign of the bulk of the equipment. If he was murdered, then the murderer might have removed the man's belongings to make it look as though he had packed up and gone. But the fact that the gear isn't there doesn't necessarily point to murder, of course.'

Peter, looking excessively bored, began to whistle through his teeth.

‘Did you happen to see anything of a small orange tent in Parson's Close last summer?' his father asked. ‘Or did you see or hear anything in the town of an Australian?'

Peter stopped whistling long enough to say, ‘Nope.' He was silent for a few minutes and then he said, ‘Holy cow. Heowly ceow,' he drawled, in a mock-Australian accent, and then he resumed his whistling.

‘Look,' said Douglas Quantrill, making an effort to be patient, ‘it's really important for me to find out about this tent. You see, supposing the man died accidentally: we know he was a drinker, and he could have fallen down drunk and died from exposure, or asphyxiation. His tent would then have been left in Parson's Close – but it wouldn't have stayed there indefinitely, would it? Camping equipment costs a packet, you know that. Someone would sooner or later have noticed that the tent was left unattended, and would have nicked it – don't you agree?'

‘If you say so.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake,' snapped Quantrill, showing his irritation at last. ‘Use your head, boy – of course it would have been stolen, either bit by bit or in one swoop. And if it was stolen, I need to know. I have to find out what happened to it before I can start to make any sense of the man's death.' He paused, and tried a more conciliatory tone. ‘Look, Peter – can you ask around? Some of your mates may know something, or be able to find out something that will help me.'

Peter went very quiet. His face flushed. He pushed himself upright in the armchair. ‘Are you asking me – do you expect me – to
inform
on my friends?' he demanded in a tight, angry voice.

‘Oh, come on,' Quantrill had protested, trying to cool the situation. ‘
Inform's
a ridiculously emotive word. I just want you to help me out – do a bit of detective work for me. You always wanted to do that, didn't you?'

But Peter, choked with indignation and fury, had retorted, ‘Get stuffed!'

Then there was the ordeal of listening to the interview between his son and Sergeant Tuckswood. And after that, in bed with Molly, her inevitable post-mortem: how could Peter let them down like this? Where had they, as parents, gone wrong? And what was he, Douglas, proposing to do about the boy in future? Little wonder that he had gone to work next morning in a bad humour.

It was a brighter, milder day. Winter had not yet gone, but it was visibly in retreat. The sun was low, of course, but it shone through a melting haze for most of the morning, leaving the roads and pavements wet but – except for the gutters – clear for the first time for weeks.

Quantrill sent DC Wigby into the town on a dry tour of the rest of the pubs, with the express purpose of finding out where the Australian had done his drinking; he himself conferred with Inspector Colman, made a press appeal for information about either the Australian or the tent, and meditated, as he drove his car towards St Botolph's Street and the top of Parson's Close, on what young Justin Muttock and Adrian Orris might be concealing.

That the children knew more than they were prepared to say about their acquaintance with Parson's Close, he had no doubt. He hadn't been a father for twenty years without recognizing the glazed look they had assumed when they protested their innocence. He'd seen it in Peter's eyes often enough, blast the boy. And
blast
the boy for his insolence, his surliness, his lack of co-operation, the damage he had helped to cause –

It was at that moment that he saw, trotting ahead of him along the pavement, another boy he knew: Stephen Nash, a year or two younger than Peter, who lived in Benidorm Avenue two doors down from the Quantrills. Stephen, still childish in features and body but with rapidly lengthening legs, was celebrating half-term and sunshine and rising sap by leaping up to grab the lowest branches of the young lime trees that had been planted along the roadside at public expense the previous year. Some of the trees had already died from natural causes; others had been destroyed by just such antics, and Quantrill, a hard-pressed ratepayer at that moment rather than a policeman, was in no mood to dismiss it as youthful high spirits.

He braked abruptly, wrenched open the door, and stood up, one foot on the road. ‘Stephen!' he bawled.

Stephen stopped dead in the act of taking off for a jump, chest arched forward, hands up, like one of Robin Hood's outlaws transfixed by the Sheriff of Nottingham's arrow.

‘Come here!'

The boy slowly unfroze, turned, and wandered reluctantly towards the Chief Inspector. He gave a nervous, placating grin: ‘Hallo, Mr Quantrill.'

‘Did you have anything to do with these damaged trees?'

‘Me?' said Stephen, his face eloquent of virtue. ‘Oh no, Mr Quantrill – I'm not into vandalism now.'

‘Kids …' thought Douglas Quantrill sourly, giving him a warning and driving on. During the past twenty-four hours he'd had more than enough of the company of under-eighteens. And it was precisely this disenchantment with youth that induced him to stop the car again in St Botolph's Street and speak to the old man who was hobbling, sly in his slippers, from the Rectory towards the town.

Henry Bowers must have been a taller man than Quantrill, in his prime, but age had diminished him. He peered up at the Chief Inspector through the grey furze of his eyebrows.

‘I don't know you, do I?' he said almost apprehensively. He glanced along the way he had come, as though afraid that his daughter or her husband would emerge from the Rectory gates and haul him ignominiously back.

And he ought to go back, Quantrill realized that. He must have sneaked out of the house without his daughter's knowledge, because he was inadequately dressed for a February day; he was overcoatless, shivering, and his fabric slippers had already acquired dark toecaps of damp. His breath was harsh in his lungs, his face mottled with cold, his lips purple.