An Air That Kills (29 page)

‘Have you seen Mr James?'

‘He went upstairs half-an-hour ago.' One of Quale's eyelids drooped in a wink. ‘With his bill. I understand Mr James is leaving us in the morning.'

Thornhill nodded and turned towards the stairs.

‘Mr George left about five minutes ago,' Quale said casually. ‘Him and Mr Williamson left together.'

‘Thanks,' Thornhill said over his shoulder as he went upstairs. Almost certainly, Quale had seen and overheard the entire altercation, and he was shrewd enough to understand the implications.

In Room 15, Yateley was still sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. But he must have got up while he was alone, because the writing case was open on the dressing table, and beside him on the bed was the photograph of Jill Francis.

Thornhill shut the door. ‘They'll be sending up some tea in a moment.'

Yateley raised his head. There were tear tracks on his cheeks, which embarrassed Thornhill.

‘You'd rather be by yourself, I expect,' Thornhill said. ‘Take some aspirin and get some sleep. Best thing to do.'

‘For God's sake,' Yateley said, ‘please don't go.'

‘I'll have to go soon.'

‘Yes but not now. Have a drink – there's a hip flask in my bag. Or have a cigar or something. But stay with me for a little.'

Thornhill shrugged and sat down in the armchair beside the fireplace.

‘Sorry,' Yateley said. ‘Can't remember your name.'

Thornhill told him.

‘That man downstairs called you sergeant.'

‘I'm a detective inspector in the Lydmouth CID.'

Yateley blinked, assimilating the information. ‘You got children, Thornhill?'

‘Two. A boy and a girl.'

‘I've got three. Not that I see much of them. They're up in Yorkshire most of the time, and I'm in town. They cost me an arm and a leg, and his mother makes the boy call me “Sir”.' He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose loudly. ‘I've made a fool of myself tonight, in more ways than one. I'd rather that it didn't get about.'

‘I hope it won't. As far as I'm concerned, there's no reason why it should.' Thornhill glanced at the photograph on the bed. ‘Is that Mrs Yateley?'

‘No.' Yateley shook his heavy head from side to side. ‘That's the trouble.' He was very drunk, and the urge to confide was still strong. ‘Funny creatures, women. She was going to have a baby, you know. Absolutely impractical. Sheer bloody lunacy, for her as much as me. She's got a job, you see – career woman. Hasn't got a penny apart from what she earns. And it wasn't as if I was in a position to help.' He stared angrily at Thornhill, as if daring him to criticise, as though it were his fault. ‘Damn it,' Yateley snapped. ‘What does it matter? She wanted a child, and that was that. Nothing else counted. Then she had a miscarriage which, if only she'd see it, was a real stroke of luck. By the way she acted, you'd have thought her mother had died or something. Or me. But it was only a miscarriage, for God's sake. It wasn't even a person. Just a bit of waste matter her body rejected.'

Thornhill sat without moving in the armchair. His hands were cold. He felt oppressed by all the suffering in the world, and his inability to do anything about it. He, too, felt guilty. The silence between the two men stretched into something long and uncomfortable.

‘I say,' Yateley said. ‘You do understand this is completely confidential?'

‘Yes, sir,' Thornhill said, taking refuge in formality. ‘I understand.'

Chapter Fourteen

By the time Dr Bayswater left the hospital, it was almost half past eleven. He drove up Chepstow Road into the town. Instead of going home, he turned towards Templefields. A moment later, the Wolseley drew up in Minching Lane. He got out of the car and knocked on the door of the Meagues' little house, whose windows were in darkness. He waited a few seconds and then tried again, this time hammering on the door. There was a scrape as a door opened further down the street.

‘What's all the racket? Some people are trying to get to sleep.'

Dr Bayswater turned. He saw Mrs Halleran standing in the lighted doorway leading to the private quarters at the King's Head. She was still dressed, though her hair was in curlers, and she had armed herself with a poker.

‘I'm looking for Charlie Meague.'

‘Oh – sorry, doctor. Didn't realise it was you.' The woman's tone was unctuous and gloating. ‘Have you been up the hospital? They rang me twice this evening. I told them to try the Bathurst Arms.'

‘He wasn't there, either.'

‘She's been taken worse, has she?'

Bayswater nodded and turned to go. ‘I'll drop by in the morning,' he said. ‘If you see Meague, tell him to get in touch with me or the hospital, will you? Good night.'

He got back into the car. He was just about to close the door when he heard Mrs Halleran shuffling across the wet pavement in her slippers.

‘Is she dead, doctor? Is she dead?'

Chapter Fifteen

Before she went to bed Antonia shook two barbiturates into the palm of her hand. She had given two to her father an hour earlier. She stared at the tablets for a moment, debating the pros and cons. Eventually she made up her mind and slipped them into the pocket of her cardigan.

Her father, still dressed, was asleep in his chair in front of the fire. He had the whisky bottle and a glass on the table beside him. It was the new bottle, the one which she'd found hidden in the bureau when she was searching the room; he must have got up to fetch it while she was washing up in the kitchen. He had managed to spill the remaining poppies and they lay all over the hearth rug. She did not bother to pick them up.

With a sense of relief she left the room, closing the door behind her. The wind was very loud tonight. For the third time that evening, she checked that all the outside doors were locked and bolted. Collecting a glass and a hot-water bottle from the kitchen, she went upstairs where she got ready for bed as quickly as she could. She kept on her vest, and wore bedsocks and a dressing gown over her nightdress. Her chilblains itched furiously. After a while, she stopped shivering.

The wind moaned and rustled through the trees in the garden. The house filled with a host of tiny creaks and patterings. Rain tapped on the windowpane like a distant typist. Somewhere, Antonia thought, there was a baby crying.

Part Five

Remembrance Sunday

Chapter One

Charlie Meague counted the strokes of the church clock across the green. The wind gusting through the trees made it difficult to hear, which was why he made the number not twelve but thirteen. He was relieved that the waiting was over. In the last few hours, his head had been full of pictures he did not want to see. Carn liked knives and razors, and the fact that he had the manners of an old maid just made it worse. Charlie had seen his handiwork in London. On one occasion, Carn had got carried away with the pretty daughter of a former colleague and the business had gone beyond mutilation.

With the empty kitbag over his shoulder, Charlie slipped out of the summerhouse and walked diagonally across the lawn. It was no longer raining but the wind had grown steadily stronger throughout the evening. He slipped through the archway to the yard between the back of the house and the outbuildings. A strip of light streamed across the cobbles from the window of the room which Harcutt used. Although the curtains had been drawn across the window, there was a triangular gap near the bottom where they failed to meet. Charlie crouched and peered inside. By shifting his position, he could see most of the room.

A standard lamp was burning behind the sofa. Major Harcutt was in the armchair beside the sofa, his legs stretched out towards the fireplace. His hands were folded across his stomach and his eyes were closed. Charlie noted the bottle and the glass on the table beside the chair. Harcutt's face was turned away from the window. The old boozer was dead to the world.

Charlie moved cautiously through the yard, past the back door until he came to the casement window of the scullery. Before the war the window had been loose in its frame. One of the maids had told him how, after a night out, she could open the catch with the blade of a knife. He knew that it was still possible to do this because he had taken the trouble to check. The catch slid up and he pulled the window open. He slipped off his boots and, knotting the laces together, slung them round his neck. He hauled himself up on to the sill and dropped lightly down to the tiled floor of the scullery.

The old fool was asking for trouble, living alone in this ill-guarded house; he had made it almost too easy. Charlie hadn't wanted to get the money from Harcutt this way – making the old man give it to him would have been far better. But Carn had given him no choice. Bloody faces passed through Charlie's mind: his mother's and Gloria's, their eyes full of reproach and their mouths open as they screamed.

Still, Charlie told himself, it could have been much worse. No one was going to get slashed. He knew the house, and he had seen enough on his previous visit to know that apart from the decay following neglect very little had changed since before the war. Best of all, if Harcutt suspected who was responsible for the burglary, he wouldn't dare tell anyone of his suspicions.

Using his torch as little as possible. Charlie padded through the kitchen and along the hall. He paused outside Harcutt's door. There were no sounds from within. He continued along the hall until he came to the foot of the stairs. Method is everything, Carn used to say: make a plan and stick to it.

Charlie worked his way round the reception rooms overlooking the front and side of the house. First there was the dining room where the sideboard yielded a canteen of silver. Next came the big drawing room which was disappointing because it had been stripped of its pictures and ornaments; some of the furniture looked valuable, but Charlie regretfully realised it would be impossible for him to remove it without a van and another pair of hands. It occurred to him that there was no reason why he should not have his cake and eat it too: he could eventually persuade Harcutt to let him sell the heavy stuff, just as he had originally planned. Why stop at a thousand pounds? By one means or another he could bleed Harcutt white.

There was also a study which now seemed to be used mainly as a repository for empty whisky bottles. Charlie ran through the drawers of the big partner's desk and struck lucky: in the centre drawer was an unlocked tin box containing two heavy gold hunters, a pair of jade earrings and three rings – two set with opals and one with diamonds.

Leaving the kitbag in the hall, he went slowly up the stairs. Every other tread creaked, but he didn't think the old man would hear him. At the top of the stairs he hesitated, wondering which bedroom would have been Mrs Harcutt's. If there were valuables up here, that was where they would most likely be. As a boy he had never had reason to come upstairs.

He tried a door at random and found himself looking at a small, cold room with a heap of soot in the fireplace. There was a bare bedstead but no other furniture. He opened a built-in cupboard and flicked the torch beam inside. A small, white face loomed out of the darkness. For an instant he thought it was alive. He almost dropped the torch and ran. It was only a doll, he realised, and he shivered.

Even so, he left the room more quickly than he'd entered. Instead of continuing in his methodical circuit round the landing, he went across to the door at the head of the stair which was the furthest away from the door of the room he'd just been into. There was no calculation in this, only a powerful feeling that he didn't want to be close to that pale baby face on the cupboard floor.

He opened the door. This room was warmer. He ran the torch across the floor. The beam caught the corner of a suitcase. He raised the beam to waist height and found first a chest of drawers and then a bed.

He received his second shock. There was a long, human shape under the eiderdown on the bed.

Charlie snapped off the torch. He stood there, listening, every nerve straining to gather information. His own breathing, his heartbeat and the wind outside threatened to drown out all other noises. He held his breath. From the other side of the room came the sound of breathing, soft, slow and steady.

He backed through the doorway. He didn't know who was in that bed and he didn't want to know. There was enough in the kitbag, surely, to keep Carn satisfied for the time being. As he fled, Charlie's mind filled with a jumble of speeding thoughts. Images of bloody faces pushed their way back into his head. He wondered whether his mother would survive the shock and whether he would want Gloria if her face were carved up like something in a butcher's shop. Carn had a taste for symmetry which he expressed with red stripes and flaps of skin. When the blood had drained away, what would be left? Charlie glimpsed a bloodless baby face on the cupboard floor and heard the slow, steady breathing from the bed.

He padded down the stairs, pausing to listen after each creak and squeal from the old wood; he was terrified of waking whoever was in the little room. It had been a mistake to come to this house, a mistake to go to ground in Lydmouth. It was always a mistake to go back. When you started remembering, there was no stopping and eventually the past could swallow you up. And today, he thought, was Remembrance Sunday.

Chapter Two

Antonia lay in the darkness and prayed for the world to end.

She had prayed for the world to end many times before in this house, but the world had continued. She concentrated on her breathing, for it was important to keep it regular and slow; deep sleep was sometimes a refuge.