Dying on Principle (34 page)

Meanwhile I was left with the problem of what to do next. Mrs I. M. Cavendish knew more about the goings-on at Muntz than anyone, I reckoned, and I cursed myself for not having talked to her properly on Monday morning when she'd seemed altogether more kindly disposed towards me.

Not really expecting a reply, I dialled her home number again. I let it ring and ring, before replacing the handset.

No one had ever spelled it out, but I suspected that unaccompanied members of the public were not encouraged to stroll around inside a police station, particularly one as full of important information as this must be.

I opened the door and looked out on an empty corridor. No, though I knew where to go, I couldn't do it, lest it should rebound on him in some way. Back inside. How about an internal phone call? There was a directory thumbtacked to the wall beside the phone. I'd try Ian's number.

I was just going to put the phone down in despair when Ian answered, breathless, apologising for forgetting to reroute it.

‘It's OK, Ian – only me. Look, Chris has left me in his office, and I've just thought of something he might want to know. You couldn't help, could you?'

‘In what way help?' Ian's voice was instantly suspicious.

‘Either escort me to see him, or tell him I want to talk to him, or simply give him a message. You can choose! And when you've chosen, you can buy me a cuppa in the canteen – I'm getting claustrophobia up here.'

‘OK. Save my legs if it's message first, then I come and get you.'

‘Tell him that neither Curtis nor Mrs Cavendish, Blake's secretary, is in college, and I can't raise Mrs Cavendish on the phone at home.'

He agreed, albeit reluctantly, and promised to come and raise my siege.

‘As and when we want to talk to Curtis, we'll talk to him,' said Chris in a fierce undertone. ‘Sophie, I really do not have to account to you for my movements.'

I pushed away from the canteen table, leaning back in my seat. I suppose the gesture I made was pacifying, but inside I was seething. ‘OK. What about Mrs C? Are you going to look for her?'

‘Sophie, this is police business.'

‘It's been made my business too, and you know it has.' My seethe was showing. ‘Chris, she knows more about what's been going on at Muntz than anyone. The number of times I've caught her off guard and didn't think about it till now! She's like a spider pulling together all the threads of a web. And without her loyalty to Mr Blake, she might sing.'

‘Interesting mixture of metaphors,' he observed. This was a peace offering.

I refused to be drawn. ‘And you never know, someone, knowing she could sing, might have decided to silence her.'

‘Do you have any evidence at all for that?' He could sound so very paternal at times.

I caught his eye and held it. ‘No. And I've been wrong before. But—'

‘But?'

‘If I were you I'd want to see she was all right.'

He straightened up, looking away as if the floor might provide some answers. ‘I've hardly any officers left. Look, I'll talk to Ian.'

‘And tell him I want to go with him,' I yelled at his departing back.

‘These hunches of yours, where d'you reckon they come from?' asked Ian, opening the passenger door for me. He was driving his own car, a Rover a couple of years old.

‘No idea. And don't think for one minute I believe you or Chris gives them any credence.'

‘No?' He started the engine and eased out of his space.

I waited until he'd found a gap in the traffic and pulled into the main road before replying. ‘No, of course you don't. Otherwise you wouldn't be going without backup and I wouldn't be sitting here beside you.'

‘You'll do,' he said, and we settled down to talk about bedding plants and hanging baskets.

Mrs Cavendish lived in a pleasant road in Warley, in a semi notable even among other respectable semis for its air of wellbeing. It must have been a bit younger than mine, perhaps 1935, and was joined to its neighbour in the conventional way, by the living-room wall. The neat front lawn was surrounded by pansies and primulas, still flourishing. The drive had been recently swept. The double-glazed front door was locked. I'd have given up at that point, but Ian headed off down the side of the house, on the path between the house and the detached garage. Two more points of entry for him to check – the door to the kitchen, and a French window. He mimed flipping a coin, and tried the French window first. It was locked. This made him quite casual about the kitchen door, so that when it opened he nearly fell on the floor. Recovering, he raised an eyebrow at me, and spoke into his radio. Then he started calling: ‘Police! Is there anyone there?'

There was no reply.

‘You stay here, Sophie.'

‘Not on your bloody life,' I said, following him into the kitchen and looking round.

It was perhaps a little too plastic but it was as immaculate as my friend George's. The whole house was. Unlike his, however, this held no neat shelves of books, records, tapes and CDs. There were no books anywhere, in fact.

Her bedroom was pleasantly chintzy, everything matching but not offensively. The guest bedroom was more austere, and the boxroom full of neatly labelled boxes. The bathroom was a bit on the frilly side for my taste, but Ian saw no harm in it, probably because it was almost identical to his Val's.

The front room was definitely too floral, and smelled of something a bit sickly, but the back one, with the French window, was cosy and welcoming. Needless to say, there was not even a freebie newspaper out of place. We stood and stated at each other, mirror images of puzzlement. We went back into the kitchen. Ian opened the fridge door with a pencil. It was clean and relatively full of food. The opened milk bottle wore a blue and red plastic lid.

‘I don't know, young Sophie, I really don't.'

I shook my head; neither did I. But there was something, wasn't there, something out of place. I covered my face with my hands and smelled Chris's soap. That therapeutic bonk hadn't done him any good, had it? He was more abrupt than ever this morning.

‘One more look round,' said Ian. ‘Just in case.'

It was in the living room we found it. An apple, not fully eaten, brown, on the mantelpiece.

Goodness knows why I dropped my voice. ‘There!'

‘Eh?'

‘Get on to Chris. Tell him she's been taken, but at least whoever's done it left his calling card. That bloody apple. She'd never leave anything like that there, she's far too well-ordered. And look at those tooth marks. They'll match with someone's teeth, even if there's no DNA in the saliva. You get whoever it is, Ian, and by Christ that'll jail him.'

‘An apple!'

‘Yes! There was a terrorist waiting to ambush someone. When the target appeared he threw down his apple. After the murder, some bright young bobby picked up the apple, and it became the clinching evidence. It was on TV.'

‘Ah, a film.'

‘No! A documentary. Ian, please! Oh!' At last I noticed the expression on his face. ‘You've been winding me up!'

He grinned tolerantly and spoke into his radio.

‘I suppose you'd prefer me outside in your car by the time people arrive?'

‘Not a lot of point, love. Forensic'll need to eliminate your shoe prints and – no, you didn't touch anything, did you?'

‘Would I dare?'

‘You know,' he said, consideringly, ‘I don't reckon there's much you wouldn't dare. But you do know the difference between right and wrong. That's something.'

I stood by Ian's car, looking wistfully at the team now gathering to give Mrs Cavendish's house the going-over of its beautifully maintained life. Not that I'd have wanted to pick over her clothes or check her waste bin, but they at least were doing something useful and constructive whereas I was neither use nor ornament, just someone it would take valuable resources to protect. There was the problem of where to put me, too: somewhere I'd be safe, not a liability. After some discussion over my head – I might have been a stray cat – it was agreed that Ian should take me to his home, from where Chris would collect me later. I acquiesced – to argue would have wasted their valuable time – but made one stipulation: I could go home and get some books and other necessaries first. Chris nodded curtly, and had turned away before I was in Ian's car.

Ian took a circuitous route, but no one appeared to follow us. Then, as we headed down the home straight of Balden Road, a car I recognised came up towards us. The driver pulled over to our side of the road, coming to rest outside my house.

‘Richard Fairfax's,' I said briefly in response to Ian's whistle.

‘Nice car, anyway,' he said, parking nose to nose with the BMW.

We got out and greeted Alan, the chauffeur, with no particular cordiality. I felt he should have done more to protect me – tried, at least. Perhaps Ian distrusted anyone in a car that size, or perhaps he knew
he
'd have done better. But Alan looked so distraught I soon thawed. ‘Are you all right?'

‘
I
am, miss. But not Mr Fairfax. There's a message on your machine, but you didn't answer so I thought I'd come myself. He doesn't know. So if you were to phone as if I hadn't asked you to …?'

‘It's his stomach?'

‘The cancer's spread. Secondaries all over the place. He phoned the hospice this morning.'

We stood there in the bright sun, cold from his words. I looked from Alan to Ian, grim-faced and perhaps already working out what I should be allowed to do without an outburst from Chris.

‘Come in, both of you. Ian, can you fix us all some tea while I phone? Alan, just keep an eye on both those cars, will you? I know I'm getting paranoid, but—'

‘I'm sorry,' he muttered, taking up his station by the window. ‘I bottled out, didn't I? But that car's his pride and joy, miss, and with him so ill I couldn't have faced him if it had been all smashed up. Mind you, I think he'd rather it had been the car than you. When you took him those puddings, with your hands all covered with plasters … He was took bad soon after you went last night, miss.'

I nodded, biting my lip. To be having sex while he was dying …

I dialled the number. A woman answered it, the housekeeper, her voice strangely familiar. She put me straight through to Fairfax. Richard.

‘Ah, my dear. A little local difficulty here. I wonder, could you do an old man another favour? I need someone to drive me to an appointment this morning, and I'm afraid Alan is unavailable. I've fixed the insurance.'

I nodded to Alan across the room. I'd keep his secret. ‘Of course, Richard. I've got someone here at the moment. I'll get him to give me a lift.'

In the end, I got Ian to drive me, while Alan set off briskly via a more direct route.

‘Chris won't like your doing this,' he said, checking I'd locked my front door. ‘But I think you're right. When I spoke to Fairfax yesterday morning – just a little follow-up visit after Tuesday evening, you understand – he hadn't any fight in him.'

‘Fight?'

He unlocked the passenger door thoughtfully. ‘I don't know how you'd describe him. Resigned? You'll see soon enough.'

‘He is up to something?'

‘I didn't say that. Chris would like to nail him for something, because—'

‘Because Chris is jealous. But does he have a criminal record? I know he's got those bloody files, but he's the Chair of the governors and would have to—'

‘Let's wait and see. I'd rather it was Curtis. Still not talking, you know – roll on the Criminal Justice Act, say I. OK, I know what you're going to say. I don't think even Chris really agrees with it, either. Anyway, he's got this solicitor character sitting there with him—'

‘Not one Frank Laker?'

‘The same. Know him?'

‘Not well. Hardly at all. But—'

‘Ah, there's always buts …'

‘Is there a but about Fairfax?'

‘Never give up, do you? Proper little terrier you are. Tell you what, Sophie, I can't ever believe a man gets that rich without, let's say, bending the odd rule. Some people think that doesn't matter. I happen to think it does – and remember what they taught in chapel about rich men and eyes of needles. And –' he took his eyes from the road to glance at me – ‘I'd reckon it would matter to you, too. Smethwick Baptist, were you, or Oldbury Congregational?'

‘Put it this way, Ian, I shan't mourn him as a friend. Just as a man who's had a nasty death rather before his time.'

‘Oh, they can work wonders with drugs these days,' he said brusquely.

Fairfax's front door opened.

‘Mrs Cavendish!' I squeaked. ‘No, you're—'

‘Iris's twin,' she said. ‘Violet. On account of our eyes. Come along in, dear. He'll be glad to see you.'

I got no further than the mat. If only I could have consulted Ian, but he'd parked discreetly down the road. I had rather expected he'd tail me – and possibly make adverse comments on my driving. ‘Your sister,' I began, hoarse with embarrassment.

‘D'you want to talk to her? She's in the back somewhere.'

‘She went out leaving her kitchen door unlocked,' I said.

‘No, that'd be Alan. I always told him it'd get him the sack one day, being careless like that.'

‘And he left his apple on her mantelpiece.'

‘Stupid man – but it isn't that he got the sack for!' She turned on me. ‘That was you! You got him the sack!'

I shook my head, stupid in the onslaught.

‘If it hadn't been for you it would have been redundancy, wouldn't it, but no, you have to—'

‘That will do, Violet!' said Fairfax, coming into the hall, his hand on Pilot's head. ‘Sophie, my dear, if you could just feed Pilot, we could be on our way.'