Jigsaw (32 page)

‘The first three or four times, all we did was walk and talk, talk, talk. But it was getting steadily colder by then, so I suggested sitting in my car. By the time we arrived there, it was often the only one left – most people use the multi-storey – and I started parking it over in the far corner, away from the lights. And, of course, things progressed from there.'

She gave an unexpected gurgle of laughter. ‘I never thought I'd still be making love in the back of a car when I was in my forties!'

‘Not this car, I presume?' Rona suggested, with a glance over her shoulder at the narrow back seat.

‘No, no, I had a much more sedate – and roomy – one then. I know what you're thinking,' she said again. ‘Yes, I
was
cheating on my husband, but our marriage is a sham. He married me because he needed a wife for the headship, I married him because I was sure I'd never fall in love again and I desperately wanted children. Of the two of us he got the better deal, achieving both his aims, while I – well, as it turned out we didn't have children, and although Richard had two sons, they were already in their teens and never accepted me as their mother. And to crown it all, I
did
fall in love again, very, very deeply. Alan loved me too, there's no doubt about that, and since Beth was no comfort at a time when he desperately needed it, I just couldn't accept that what we did was wrong.'

They drove in silence for several minutes, Helena obviously lost in the past. Rona was longing to know what happened next, but there was no way she could prompt her. Nor could she ask if Richard had found out about the affair.

Finally, Helena spoke again. ‘You went to see him, didn't you? How did he seem?'

‘I think the word is “resigned”.'

She sighed. ‘How could anyone possibly blame him?'

Rona looked at her quickly. ‘You think he did it?' Somehow, she'd not expected that.

‘Of course,' Helena answered, and there was surprise in her voice, too. ‘Who else could it have been?'

Rona was thankful that the question was rhetorical; she could hardly have answered,
Your husband?

As they rounded a bend, a brown heritage sign indicated that Lammerden lay two miles down a side road to their left. Helena swung into the narrow lane, with Rona hoping they wouldn't meet a tractor coming in the opposite direction.

The Kit Tempest Display and Exhibition Centre, as Helena had implied, dominated the unremarkable little hamlet. One of the cottages, no different in appearance from the rest, had placards in its garden proclaiming it to be his birthplace, and a few people were standing on the path, reading leaflets. Outside the village shop stood a cardboard cut-out of a figure in highwayman's garb, with a sweeping hat, a mask and a pistol in each hand.

However, all this was dwarfed by the large glass-fronted building set back from the road with a car park in front of it and flagpoles flying a variety of international banners. Helena swerved into it and turned up one of the aisles, looking for an empty space.

Suddenly, she slammed on the brake, sending Rona hurtling forward, restrained only by her seat-belt from hitting the windscreen.

‘What is it? What's the matter?' she demanded, struggling upright.

Helena was staring at a large grey Daimler parked in one of the slots. ‘That's Richard's car,' she said, and before Rona had processed the thought they shot forward again, gravel flying under their wheels as they screeched up the aisle, down the next one, and straight out onto the village street. An approaching car screamed to a halt with inches to spare and a barrage of furious honking, and, with the way home temporarily blocked, Helena veered instead to the left and went speeding through the village and up the hill on the other side.

‘We'll look at the gibbet first,' she said jerkily, as though that explained everything.

‘But – why do you want to avoid your husband?' Rona asked in bewilderment and growing unease.

‘He thinks you know something,' Helena said, and then, before Rona could question her further, ‘I'm not entirely sure where this road leads. There's an Ordnance Survey in the glove compartment – could you get it out for me?'

Rona leant forward and as she extracted the map, something rolled out of the compartment on to the floor at her feet. It was a red ballpoint pen.

‘W
ell, don't just sit there staring at it!' Helena said impatiently, and Rona's heart jerked. Then she realized she was referring to the map and as Helena, after a quick check in the mirror, drew in to the side of the road, she numbly handed it over. There must be millions of red ballpoints in circulation, she was telling herself, and yet . . .

She heard herself say, ‘Did you write to Barry Pollard in prison?'

Helena's hands stilled on the map. Then she gave a forced little laugh. ‘Talk about non sequiturs!' she said. ‘Whatever brought that up?'

Rona released her belt and bent down to retrieve the pen. ‘This; someone wrote to him regularly in red ink.'

‘You really are the most amazing woman! How in hell do you know that?'

‘He said so.'

‘He—?' Helena removed her sunglasses and turned to stare at her.

‘Not to me, of course, but to some friends at the pub. Hate mail, he called it.'

‘Oh, it was certainly that,' Helena said slowly. ‘I'll never stop hating him, even though he's dead. May he rot in hell.'

The words rang incongruously in the still, hot afternoon and Rona shivered. In front and behind them stretched the deserted country road, glinting in the sunlight, and on either side featureless expanses of scrub and low bushes stretched to the horizon. Oh Dave, Rona thought suddenly, where are you?

Helena was still speaking, and Rona felt inside her handbag and surreptitiously switched on her recorder. ‘I told you how much I loved Charlotte. She was the little daughter I never had; I was able to see her regularly, spend time with her, watch her grow, and that more than made up for all the disappointments and failures. Then, suddenly, her life was snuffed out, extinguished like a candle, all because that bastard not only couldn't hold his drink, but had the criminal insanity to get behind a wheel. And the really incredible part –' her breath was coming in great, tearing rasps – ‘was that no one seemed to take it seriously. He was sentenced to eighteen months –
eighteen months
– for murder – because that's what it was. And not satisfied with that, they let him out in nine! Can you believe it? So I vowed that for every week of those months, he'd be reminded of what he'd done.'

She turned to face Rona defiantly. ‘So yes, the answer to your question is that I did write to Barry Pollard in prison. Making him suffer was the only comfort I had.'

Rona swallowed drily. ‘Did Alan know about it?'

She shook her head. ‘That was something I never told him. It was my own, private revenge.' She swung the car door open. ‘Let's go for a walk. I'm tired of being cooped up in here.'

Rona was also glad to stretch her legs. ‘Is it safe to leave the car with the top down?' she asked.

‘We're not going far, and there's no one within miles.' Helena looked about her at the empty landscape. ‘The gibbet's not on this road; we must have taken a wrong turning. According to the Survey this is a dead-end, and only leads to a farm. Bring your bag, though, just in case.'

Rona, aware of the almost inaudible humming of the recorder, had every intention of doing so. She accepted she was being unethical, but assured herself she'd own up later, and obtain Helena's permission before making use of it.

They set off, walking parallel to the road on the springy turf. It was easier on their feet than the hard surface which, in any case, was starting to melt in the heat. Bees hovered overhead and far away over the hill a dog could be heard barking incessantly. They might have been the only two people left on earth. Then, mingling with the hum of the insects, another noise impinged on them, and with one accord they turned. Away in the distance the sun glinted off glass – a windscreen – that was rapidly approaching, growing larger even as they watched.

‘Run!' Helena shouted. She seized Rona's arm and began pulling her away from the road towards the stunted bushes, stumbling and tripping in her high-heeled sandals. Rona tried to hold back, but the pressure was insistent.

‘It's probably someone going to the farm,' she protested, as the brambles scratched her ankles. ‘And there's no point in running – there isn't anywhere we can hide.'

‘He mustn't catch up with us,' Helena gasped, dragging on her arm. ‘Come
on
! Can't you go faster?'

Down on the road a car skidded to a halt – presumably behind theirs. A door slammed, and a man's voice called, ‘Helena! For God's sake, darling, come back!'

‘Keep going!' Helena panted. ‘He might give up if we put a fair distance between us.'

It seemed to Rona that Richard Maddox wasn't the man to give up on anything, but she'd no breath to argue. Her mouth was dry and her heart hammering, partly from their headlong flight, partly from fear, though of what, she wasn't sure. The footsteps were gaining on them and behind her, bewilderingly, she heard another car stop, another door slam.

Helena's urgency infected her, but as she increased her pace her foot caught in a rabbit hole and she went flying, landing heavily on the uneven ground and temporarily winding herself. The earth beneath her vibrated with running footsteps, and heaving herself on one elbow, Rona turned to see Richard Maddox bearing down on them and, a few yards behind him, Dave Lampeter giving chase. Then, within feet of them, Richard drew up sharply, staring past her, and Dave went cannoning into him.

Puzzled by their sudden stillness, Rona looked up at Helena's motionless figure and saw, unbelievingly, that there was a knife in her hand, its blade glinting blindingly in the sunlight.

For an instant their four figures could have been carved from stone. Richard, suddenly pale, was the first to move, holding out a cautious hand. ‘Darling, please,' he said, his voice ragged and uneven from his running, ‘let's be sensible about this.'

‘Go away.' Helena's voice was shaking. ‘Go back to your cars, both of you.' Suddenly she bent forward, seized Rona's hair and forced her head back, holding the tip of the blade against her throat. ‘If you don't go, I'll kill her.'

Frozen, still unbelieving, Rona glimpsed Dave's horrified face over Richard's shoulder. At another level, she was aware that her hand was pressing on a nettle, and almost welcomed its vicious sting.

‘Darling, give me the knife! It's all right – no damage has been done. Just give me the knife, and we can talk things over calmly.'

Helena did not respond, and, seeing the helplessness of the two men, Rona realized the next move must be hers. Very, very slowly, she raised a hand to Helena's and gently pushed it away. In the same instant Richard sprang forward, wrenched the knife from his wife's hand, and hurled it into the bracken. Dave came running to Rona and helped her up, though she could hardly stand and was glad of his supporting arm. Together, they turned to look at the others. Helena was sliding very slowly to the ground, her gaily coloured skirt billowing round her. Richard knelt beside her and pulled her into his arms.

‘My poor love,' he said softly. ‘Why didn't you tell me things were so desperate? I could have helped.'

‘No one can help,' Helena said in a flat, expressionless voice. ‘I killed—'

‘No!' Richard's hand went quickly over her mouth. ‘Don't say anything. We'll go home and—'

She shook him away. ‘I killed Barry Pollard,' she said clearly, ‘and I'm glad I did.'

For a minute there was total silence as her words echoed and re-echoed in their heads. Then Rona said hesitantly, ‘And – Alan?'

Helena looked up then, her face anguished. ‘I loved him so much!' she cried, and Rona saw a spasm of pain cross her husband's face. ‘But in the end he left me, just as Edgar had. How could he do that to me?'

She looked wildly from one face to another as though expecting an answer. ‘Gradually,' she went on quietly, when no one spoke, ‘I came to hate him for deserting me, till in the end I hated him as much as I did Pollard. He had to be punished too, but in his case letters wouldn't be enough.' Rona felt Dave glance quickly at her, but her eyes were intent on the beautiful, vengeful face below her.

‘I wanted –
needed
– to hurt him,' Helena went on in a low voice, ‘to make him suffer as much as he'd made me. Then it came to me, the perfect way to deal with both of them at once, and avenge Lottie at the same time.'

Richard, his attempt to quieten her having failed, had sunk back on the grass, still holding her hand and with his dark, troubled eyes intent on her face. It was Rona who prompted gently, ‘How did you get hold of the knife?'

Helena glanced up briefly. ‘I knew his wife went to work and was unlikely to be home when the boys got back from school, so there had to be a key somewhere.' She was speaking quite calmly now, as though the crisis inside her had been resolved and there was nothing more to worry about.

‘So one day I went round and searched for it. It wasn't in an obvious place, I'll give her that; it took me nearly an hour to find it, balanced on top of a drain by the garage door. In fact, there were two keys on a ring, one for the back door and one for the side door of the garage – so the boys could get their bikes out, I suppose. That was a bonus; it gave me the idea of leaving the knife there instead of in the house. I took them straight to an ironmonger's out at Sunningdean, had copies made, and put them back in their hiding place, with no one any the wiser.'

A plane droned lazily overhead, part of another, more normal, world. The dog had long since stopped barking. The three of them waited, unmoving, until Helena started speaking again.