Cast in Order of Disappearance (9 page)

So Charles had a good view. The bungalow didn't look so large from the back, just discreetly expensive, a low white outline from which the lawn sloped gently down to a neat concreted waterside. To the left there was a small boat-house whose locked doors gave on to the river.

The bungalow showed no sign of life, and there had not been any when they had driven past on the road. Charles had persuaded Miles to stop and tried ringing the bell on the gate. No reply.

But somebody had been there overnight. Not only was there the evidence of the changed recording on the telephone. The puddles outside the bungalow gates showed fresh tyre-marks. Steen was certainly around somewhere; it was just a question of waiting; and, in the meantime, fishing.

‘I think the thing for these sort of conditions,' said Miles, ‘is a swimfeeder.'

‘Ah.'

‘Yes. Quite definitely. Filled with a gentle and bread-paste mixture, with a couple of gentles on a number twelve hook, I think it'd be a cert for bream.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Yes. Or roach.'

‘Hm.'

‘Well, that's what it recommended in this angling magazine I was reading. I reckon these are the sort of conditions it described. More or less.'

‘Yes.' Charles flipped his line out into the water. He'd been lent an old relegated rod with two mottled bamboo sections and a greenheart tip, a plastic centre-pin reel and a yellowed quill float. He'd put a couple of maggots on a small hook. He sat and watched the quill being borne along by the current and then leaning over as it tugged at the end of the swim.

‘Have you plumbed?' asked Miles.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Plumbed the depth of the swim. You'll never catch anything if you don't do that. You see, what the angler has to do with his bait is to make it imitate as nearly as possible the conditions of nature. In nature things don't dangle awkwardly in the water. They flow, carried along by the current, a few inches above the bottom. Depending on the season, of course.'

‘Of course.'

‘Would you like a plummet? I've got one.'

‘No thanks. I'm trying to give them up.'

Miles was silent, preoccupied with opening his latest piece of equipment. Proudly he stripped off the packaging and screwed a limp length of fibreglass to the end of his sleek fibreglass rod. Charles looked on with an expression of distaste which Miles took for admiration. ‘Swingtip.'

‘Ah.'

‘Best sort of bite-detector for bottom-fishing.'

‘Ah.' Charles reflected how Miles always talked out of books. His son in-law was the least spontaneous person he'd ever met. Nothing came naturally; it all had to be worked at. Whatever interest he took up, he would begin by a painstaking study of the language and then buy all the correct equipment, before he actually did anything practical. Fishing was the latest accomplishment which Miles thought the young executive should not be without.

Again Charles found himself wondering about Miles and Juliet's sex-life. Had that been approached in the same meticulous way? ‘Well, here we are on our honeymoon, Juliet darling. What I will do, when we are in bed and an atmosphere of mutual trust and relaxation has been established, is to practise a certain amount of foreplay. This is likely to begin with a kneading or massaging of the breasts in an accelerating stroking motion. This will be followed by manual clitoral stimulation . . .' The idea was intriguing. Charles wondered if he was becoming a dirty old man. But it
was
intriguing. Guiltily, he disguised his interest in a standard father-in-law question. ‘Miles, have you and Juliet thought of having a family?'

Miles sat up with irritation. He'd just been trying to squeeze a split-shot on to his line and it had popped out of his fingers. ‘Yes, Pop, we have. We reckon in about four and a half years I should have gone up at least a grade, so, allowing for the usual increments, and assuming that the mortgage rate doesn't rise above the present eleven per cent, I should think we could afford to let Juliet stop work then.'

There was no answer to that, so Charles sat and looked out over the water to Steen's bungalow. Nothing. It was very cold. The air stung his face and he felt the ground's iciness creep into his feet through the soles of Miles' relegated gum-boots. His body was stiff and uncomfortable. Always got like that when he sat still for a long time. He felt his years. A sure sign he needed a drink.

Miles had now completed the cat's cradle at the end of his line, and had loaded the perspex tube of his swim-feeder with a porridgy mash of bread and maggots. Two favoured maggots squirmed on the end of his size twelve hook (hooked, no doubt, as the books recommend, through the small vent in the thick end). Miles rose to his feet and fiddled with the knobs of his gleaming fixed-spool reel. ‘The important thing,' he quoted almost to himself, ‘is to remember it's not brute force with a fixed-spool reel; just a controlled flick.'

He made a controlled flick. The line jerked and maypoled itself around the rod. The contents of the swim-feeder sprayed from their case like shotgun pellets and landed with a scattering plop in the middle of the river.

Charles didn't say anything, but controlled his lips and looked at his float. As he did so, it submerged. He struck, and reeled in rather a good perch.

Four hasty pints before the pub closed at two saw Charles through lunch, and there was a bit of wine too. ‘Le Piat Beaujolais Primeur,' said Miles ‘—young, robust and slightly petillant, ideal with meat dishes.' (Obviously he had read a book on wine too.) The combination of alcohols anaesthetised Charles so that he could even watch the holiday slides of Tenerife without excessive pain.

They were not very varied—‘Juliet in front of a shop . . . and here's Juliet in this bar place . . . and this one's of Juliet sitting on a rock . . . and here's Juliet in a boat—that was the day we went for a boat trip . . .' Obviously Miles did not trust her with his camera or there might have been a matching sequence of ‘Miles in front of a shop . . . Miles in this bar place . . .' etc. References in the commentary to shutter speeds, and exposures and lenses demonstrated that Miles had read a book on photography too. Charles let it all flow over him. Time was suspended, and he was too fuddled for darker thoughts.

The peaceful mood lasted until he stood alone on Goring Bridge. Miles and Juliet had offered him a lift to Pangbourne Station, but they'd got some people coming and were very relieved when he said he'd get a minicab to Reading. Miles had been dropping heavy hints about how difficult it was to get petrol and how he intended to use the Cortina ‘for emergency uses only'. (By moving up from the level of salesman in his insurance company, he'd sacrificed a firm's car and was rather careful about using his own.)

When the cab came, Charles left in a surge of family effusiveness, and then, feeling like the hero of some of the terrible thriller films he'd been in during the fifties, he told the driver to go to Steen's home instead. As they approached Streatley, he lost his nerve and asked to be dropped by the bridge. The driver, with the predictability of all motorists over the last few weeks, commented on the petrol crisis, overcharged grossly, and drove off into the night.

The bridge at Goring is long and narrow; there are two spans to an island in the middle; one side is Streatley, the other Goring. Charles stood on the narrow pavement, leaning on the wooden parapet, and looked down into the water, which seemed infinitely deep in the darkness. Somewhere the church bells rang in the distance, calling the faithful to evensong. Their old-fashioned domesticity seemed incongruous as his thoughts darkened.

The pressure which had been building up all weekend was nearing some sort of explosion. The Steen business had to be sorted out that evening. Charles felt an uncomfortable sense of urgency. It was now nearly a week since Bill Sweet's death on Sunday 2nd December, and Jacqui was still in great danger. Charles had known the full implications of the situation for only twenty-four hours, but he had a sick feeling that time was running out. A sense of gloom blanketed his thought as he looked down to the dark water and heard the hiss of it rushing over the invisible weir ahead of him. Somewhere down in the depths, he felt certain, lay Marius Steen's gun, thrown away after the murder was committed.

He'd wasted the day. The fishing, the slides of Tenerife were all irrelevant; he should have been dealing with Steen. It was one of the most important responsibilities of his life. And this was one he couldn't shirk. It must be done straight away. He looked at his watch. Nearly seven. The pubs would soon be open. Just a quick drink for a bracer and then it must be done.

It was twenty past nine when he left the cosy fireside of the Bull. He was braced to the point of recklessness. Two hours of sipping Bell's and listening to the quacks of the local Scampi and Mateus Rosé crowd made the whole issue seem much simpler. If Steen was there, Charles had only to tell him the truth; if he wasn't, then he could leave the photographs with an anonymous note explaining Jacqui's innocence. He couldn't think why it hadn't occurred to him earlier, as he marched briskly (after a bit of trouble with the door latch) out of the pub.

The moon was fuller than the night before, but its light was diffused by cloud. He could see quite clearly as he climbed the hill out of the village. It didn't feel as cold as it had done earlier in the day. He stopped to relieve himself into the roadside bushes and almost lost his balance as a car screeched round the corner in a clatter of gravel. He zipped himself up and strode onwards. A strange sense of purpose filled him, even a sense of honour. Sir Galahad nearing the end of his quest. Marius Steen, the giant who seemed to have been looming over his life now for a week was about to be confronted. A fragment repeated itself inappropriately like a mantra in Charles' mind. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.'

He was almost disappointed when he reached the gates. He'd expected a great brazen trumpet hanging, with a legend in outlandish characters—‘Who dares to brave the giant's wrath, let him sound this trump.' And in the trees, clattering sadly, the armour of those who had dared, and failed in the combat. He turned to look at the trees, but they were bare. And the only sound was the wind breathing on their branches.

Charles leant unsteadily against the gate-post and pressed the fluorescent button. He didn't wait for any response, but pushed open the heavy white gates with a scrunch of gravel. The bungalow again seemed to have grown in the moonlight, and was now a Moorish temple, where the infidel foe lurked. A light shone through a chink in the curtains of a window above the garage door.

No one appeared as Charles approached the front door, but he felt as if he was being watched. Suddenly the night had become very silent. He beat a tattoo with the door-knocker, and again its reverberations filled the whole world. But no one came. The quarry was lying low.

Charles pushed the door but it was very solid. He backed away and looked along the front of the house. The windows appeared to be shut firm. Garage? He walked heavily down the ramp and grasped the handle that should lift the door up and over. Locked.

But he had reached a pitch where he couldn't give up. He stumbled round the side of the house, through the flower beds, feeling the windows. All were tightly locked.

Round the back of the bungalow he was suddenly aware of the slow wash of water at the end of the lawn. There was no other sound and no light was visible on this elevation. But he knew Marius Steen was inside.

There was a small door which corresponded with the back of the garage. He walked up a crazy-paving path and tried the handle. Braced for a shove he nearly overbalanced when the door gave inwards.

It was very dark. He blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the change, but still couldn't see much. There were no windows and only a trickle of light came in through the door behind him. From what he could see, it illuminated a pile of boxes. Perhaps he was in some sort of store-room rather than the garage. He moved slowly forward, groping ahead with a breast-stroke motion.

But discretion was difficult in his alcoholic state. There was some thing in the way of his foot, then an object with a sharp edge fell agonisingly on to his ankle. Whatever it was precipitated an avalanche of other objects which thundered down around him as Charles fell sprawling to the ground.

He lay frozen, waiting for some reaction, but there was nothing. It was only his tense state that made the crash sound so loud. Gingerly he reached forward, found a wall and levered himself up against it. Then he felt along to a door frame and followed its outline until he found a light-switch.

The sudden glare was blinding, but when he unscrewed his eyes, he could see he was in a kind of windowless utility room. There was a washing machine, a spin dryer, a washing-up machine, a deep-freeze and rows of neatly hanging brooms and mops. Above these was a cluster of meters, fuse-boxes and power-switches. Deep shelves on the opposite wall contained boxes of tinned food and crates of spirits. There was a spreading honeycomb of a wine-rack, full and expensive-looking.

And on the floor Charles could see what had caused his fall. A pile of boxes lay scattered like a demolished chimney. He knelt down and re-piled them. They were heavy, as he knew from the numbing pain in his shin. He looked at the writing on the boxes. ‘Salmon', ‘Trout', ‘Strawberries.' ‘Do not refreeze.' Marius Steen certainly knew how to live.

When he had finished piling the boxes up, Charles looked once more round the room and his eyes lighted on the very thing he needed at that moment—a torch. It was a long, black, rubber-encased one, hanging from a hook by the back door. He took it down, switched on, turned off the light and opened the door into the rest of the house.

He was in the garage. It was large, but dominated by the huge form of a dark blue Rolls-Royce. Remembering a detail with sudden clarity, Charles knelt down and looked at the left-hand side of the front bumper. There was a little dent, which he'd lay any money corresponded to the dent in the back right-hand wing of Bill Sweet's Ford Escort. The door of the Rolls was not locked. Key in the ignition, nothing in the glove compartment and the petrol gauge read empty.