In for the Kill (16 page)

Do you now! I hadn’t realised that Steven could fly an aeroplane. I recalled Percy’s words that first day I’d seen him when I had asked how he knew that I had been released, ‘
Steven told
me.’
How had Steven known? Perhaps he was friendly with, Angela, Miles’s cleaning lady.

I said, ‘Someone buzzed me in a plane a week ago last Thursday as I was walking across the airfield. I’d like to know who. Can I find out?’ I had walked around so that I now faced him. I watched him carefully for a reaction. There was none.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Can’t you check your records. He must have radioed in to say he was landing or coming over the air space or something?’ I said, with exasperation and irritation.

Steven looked up. He gazed steadily at me with hazel eyes. In his right hand I could see the knuckles whiten as he tightened his grip on a wrench. There was something akin to disgust on his face.

‘What is it, Steven? Don’t you like associating with ex cons?’ I said harshly.

He glanced away. ‘It’s not that.’

‘What then?’

He put down the wrench and said, ‘Shall we take a walk?’

I agreed with some reservations. I wasn’t sure where his walk would lead; fraternising with types like Rowde had made me edgy. Was Steven about to tell me he was Andover and then try to kill me? I was glad he had relinquished the wrench.

We stepped out of the hangar and walked across the grass towards the bird sanctuary where I had taken shelter from the maniac pilot who had tried to scalp me. My heart was beating faster. Steven was silent. I couldn’t believe he was Andover, and yet…

‘I saw her go into your houseboat,’ he said.

I froze and held my breath. I knew he must have meant Deeta.

‘She didn’t come out again, not until the morning,’ he added.

‘You were outside all night?’

‘In my car.’

I groaned. On his evidence Steven could have me arrested. ‘What do you want, Steven? Do you want to see me go down for murder? Wasn’t embezzlement good enough? How did you do it? And why for Christ’s sake?’

‘That fucking war.’ He spat with venom.

His answer took me by surprise. I stared at him.

I could recognise a soul in torment. I recalled the carefree little boy with the sticky out ears and the wide grin. That Steven couldn’t have ruined my life and my reputation. But could this one have done so? I wasn’t sure.

‘What happened?’

‘Gulf War syndrome. I got chucked out of the RAF.’

Had the war somehow affected Steven’s mind?

He’d had many years to brood about it. Had it tipped him over the edge into insanity? Had all the past injustices welled up in him and focused on me?

‘Why pick on me, Steven?’

‘You slept with Deeta,’ he rounded on me.

It wasn’t the reply I had expected. I didn’t see hatred in his eyes now, only a deep and inconsolable sorrow. I knew that he had been in love with Deeta.

‘I stopped her at the Toll Gate café but she didn’t want to speak,’ he continued. ‘She was angry with me for spying on her. We rowed. She stalked off along the beach and around the point.

I went after her, then realised how hopeless it was. An hour later she was dead.’

‘You didn’t frame me?’

He stared at me confused. I had got it wrong, again. Andover wasn’t Steven.

‘Frame you? For what?’

‘Have you told the police any of this?’ I tried not to sound nervous.

‘No. They haven’t asked. You made love to her, didn’t you?’ he rounded on me. ‘Did you love her?’

‘No, I –’

Suddenly his fist struck my chin. I stumbled back surprised, but as I stared at him and felt the blood from my cut lip I didn’t feel angry with him. I guess this was what he had asked me here for. He stepped back, and looked away. His shoulders sagged and I knew he wouldn’t hit me again. I was glad. I was getting rather fed up with being everyone’s punch-ball.

‘That’s all she was interested in, the war,’ he said sorrowfully.

I scrambled up. ‘Why did she want to know about the Gulf War?’

‘Not that one. The Second World War,’ Steven snapped.

Of course. My brain quickly reassembled the facts as Steven continued:

‘She and Dad became good friends. She’d spend ages with him talking about the old days, not many people bothered. I got to know her because of it. Poor Dad. The doctor has given him some pills. I loved her, not like some people who used her and thought nothing of it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He turned away and began walking back to the hangar. ‘I’ll see what I can find out about that plane buzzing you,’ he called over his shoulder.

I hurried back to the houseboat, taking the footpath behind the village at the back of my mother’s house and coming out by the Pilot Boat Inn. Even then I couldn’t avoid the small huddled groups of villagers and dog walkers. I caught snatches of conversation about Deeta’s death.

Someone said that the police had set up an incident room in the village hall. I was worried that if the police questioned Steven he’d tell them about Deeta and me. I couldn’t afford to lose any time sitting in a police interview room.

Where the hell was Rowde? Why didn’t he get in touch? Perhaps he’d be waiting for me back at the houseboat. He wasn’t, Scarlett was.

‘Where have you been?’ she declared. ‘I’ve got some news for you about that blonde woman.

You’ll have to come with me though. I can’t leave Mum alone.’

Ruby was staring at the television, her hands clasping her straw handbag.

Scarlett glanced at her mother and then at me.

She spoke in hushed tones. ‘I was cleaning Deeta’s room in the hotel the day before she was killed. I had to take Mum with me. I can’t leave her here, can I?’

She glared at me as if I was going to chastise her. I wondered where all this was leading.

‘Usually Mum’s pretty good. She just sits there muttering to herself or singing. I was called away to another room; a guest wanted his breakfast brought up and there was no one else to do it so I had to leave Mum, only for a few minutes. I didn’t realise she’d taken it until yesterday,
after
I heard that Deeta had been killed.’

‘Taken what?’

‘This.’ And she stretched across me to the bread bin which she flipped open. She pulled out a photograph in a silver frame. As she straightened up she looked at me and I felt something jump between us that startled her as much as it did me. She frowned and thrust the photograph into my hands.

I gazed down at it. I wasn’t sure what I expected but it wasn’t the photograph of a young man in his early twenties, handsome with a square jaw and broad smile, tall and slender. He was dressed in a lounge suit, shirt and tie. In the background was a chalk cliff and sea. It looked remarkably like Whitecliff Bay to me. Judging by the type of photograph and the clothes I would have said it had been taken in the 1930s.

‘Who is it?’ And what, more to the point, was this to do with me?

Scarlett rolled her eyes. ‘How the devil should I know? Mum thinks it’s someone called Max.

I’ve only just managed to get it away from her.

They’ll think I’ve stolen it. I can’t tell the police, you know how their minds work. I’ll lose my job. I don’t know what to do.’ She thrust a hand through her hair, which was now copper with black streaks.

I was flattered that she had confided in me.

Her trust warmed my aching heart.

‘Let’s see who it is.’

I prised open the back and extracted the photograph whilst Scarlett kept an eye on her mother.

‘It
is
Max.’

Scarlett looked shocked. I didn’t blame her.

We’d both dismissed everything Ruby said as nonsense. If Ruby was right about this could she possibly be right about someone pushing my mother down the stairs?

I read aloud the writing on the back of the photograph. ‘Maximilian Weber, Whitecliff Bay 1938.’

‘Weber, that was Deeta’s surname,’ Scarlett said. ‘This must be her grandfather. She was too young for it to be her father, and, besides, he’s arrived at the hotel. I saw him check in last night.

Did you know she was German?’

It explained her accent and maybe her conversations with Percy. ‘She said something about her grandfather being here at the beginning of the war. Perhaps that’s when Ruby knew him.

Steven Trentham told me Deeta used to talk about the war endlessly with Percy.’

Scarlett scowled. ‘You’ve spoken to Steven?’

‘Yes.’ I could see she looked uncomfortable and wondered why.

She turned round and began to fill the kettle.

‘Steven followed her from your houseboat. I saw him.’

‘He’s just told me.’

‘Did he also tell you that we were once married?’ She spun round. ‘I can see not, judging by your shocked expression and your gaping mouth. I suppose it surprises you that someone wanted to marry me.’

‘I never said –’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Why are you always so defensive?’ I cried, exasperated.

‘Takes years to perfect and with a father like mine I got plenty of chance to practise.’

Her tone was light but I could hear the pain behind the words. I saw a life of pretending she didn’t care what they said about her father. Her hostility was a shield to prevent her from being hurt. I wondered if her eccentric hair colour and style of dress were also used as a kind of barrier to stop people from getting too close.

‘Do you think Steven killed her?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’ And that, I could see, was eating her up. ‘He was always so jealous, so possessive.

It suffocated me. He was even worse after the Gulf War. It wasn’t his fault. He started to drink.’

‘Scarlett, Scarlett,’ came a plaintive wailing.

‘Where are you? Why has everyone left me?

Where’s Teddy.’

Scarlett brushed against me as she went to Ruby. I felt something stir inside me that was more than sexual attraction.

‘The bombs they frighten me. Do they frighten you?’ Ruby said.

‘Sometimes.’ Scarlett turned to me. ‘These days she lives so much in the past that she hardly knows who I am. Sometimes she asks me when her real daughter is coming back.’

‘Can’t you get help?’

‘You mean put her in a home,’ she rounded on me again, her eyes blazing.

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ I said wearily. ‘Look, I think it’s best if you say nothing about the photograph. They might not even know that it’s missing.’

Scarlett said, ‘There’s something else I think you should know. Deeta was on your houseboat before you came back.’

‘I know. She found the door open and discovered the place had been ransacked.’

‘I mean she was inside for a long time before you showed up.’

‘How long?’ I asked, suddenly suspicious.

‘About half an hour, forty minutes.’

‘Are you sure?’ I was struck by the thought that maybe she had ransacked the place. But why would she do that? What could she have been looking for? Had someone told her I could possibly have three million pounds? Was that why she had been so willing? Had she been after my money, rather than my body? Deeta had made a play for me from the start. Deeta had been in Brading church when the aeroplane had buzzed me. Did she have any connection with what had happened to me?

Scarlett said, ‘I thought you might also like to know that her hotel room was trashed.’

Was it indeed! Had her killer thought she’d discovered something on my houseboat and had taken it back to her hotel? What though? Did this have anything to do with Andover? Was I wasting time thinking this? It didn’t feel like it.

If Gus wasn’t the link between Andover’s three victims then who and what was? Deeta was a link between me and Steven Trentham, and Steven with my past. Steven could fly an aeroplane and Scarlett said he was possessive and possibly even unbalanced. I had seen that and could still feel his punch on my chin. I had ruled Steven out, but could I? I thought it was about time I had a word with Percy.

I found Percy on the beach. His forlorn little figure was staring out to sea. We were alone except for a woman walking her West Highland terrier the other side of the long thin pier that stretched out to sea, on the end of which was the lifeboat station.

‘Do you want a tea or coffee?’ I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the café to my right.

‘No thanks. Let’s sit up the top there.’

We climbed the slope up to the small car park by the toilets and Royal National Lifeboat Institution shop. On the bank of grass to the left of it were a handful of seats. We took the second one of the benches facing seaward. Percy had lost some of his sparkle and his breathing was a little laboured. He looked off-colour, a dejected figure now rather than a comical one. I suddenly realised he was an old man.

It was mid morning and low tide. The sea washed gently onto the sand, and across the Solent in a distance haze I could just make out the shores of Hayling Island. It looked like summer but there was a fresh wind that reminded me it was still only April. A small fishing boat was chugging steadily towards Sandown Bay. I thought of Westnam and the person who might discover his sea-worn body.

The crabs and sea life would have made a meal of him and it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.

‘It’s a sad world,’ the old man said quietly and wearily, echoing my thoughts. ‘And the more I see of it the sadder it gets. She was such a lovely girl.’

‘It must have been terrible for you to find her.’

‘It was, though I’ve seen worse in the war.’ He glanced at me. ‘I’ve seen things that would make your stomach heave and your legs turn to jelly and I weren’t nothing but a boy then. Seeing her lying in a heap on the beach brought it all back to me. I thought I’d forgotten it, but I hadn’t. I suppose you just push it away and get on with life, well leastways that was what we used to do in them days. Now it’s all counselling. Don’t do no good if you ask me. It hasn’t helped our Steven much. Poor Scarlett had a terrible time of it; no wonder she couldn’t stick it. I don’t blame her for wanting shot of him. But he seems to be getting himself together now. He’s been back with me for ten years and buying that plane a few years ago has given him something else to think about. Doesn’t do to brood on things.’