Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

KISSING THE GUNNER'S DAUGHTER

The thirteenth of May is the unluckiest day of the year. It is the day Sergeant Caleb Martin of Kingsmarkham CID will lose his life in a bank robbery, and the first link in the chain of events that will lead to more deaths. When three people are discovered shot at Tancred House, Chief Inspector Wexford believes there is a connection between the two crimes, but only the daughter of one of the victims survives to provide a clue, a clue that is so confusing that Wexford needs all his deductive powers.

RUTH RENDELL

--------------4--------------

KISSING THE

GUNNER'S

DAUGHTER

Complete and Unabridged

CHARNWOOD

Leicester

First published in Great Britain in 1992 by

Hutchinson

London

First Charnwood Edition

published April 1993

by arrangement with

The Random Century Group Limited

London

The right of Ruth Rendell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Copyright � 1992 by

Kingsmarkham Enterprises Limited

All rights reserved

British Library CIP Data

Rendell, Ruth

Kissing the gunner's daughter. --Large print ed.-- Charnwood library series I. Title II. Series 823.914 [F]

ISBN 0-7089-8702-8

Published by

F. A. Thorpe (Publishing) Ltd. Anstey, Leicestershire

Set by Words & Graphics Ltd.

Anstey, Leicestershire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

T. J. Press (Padstow) Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall

In memory of Eleanor Sullivan

1928- 1991 A great friend

1

THE thirteenth of May is the unluckiest day of the year. Things will be infinitely worse if it happens to fall on a Friday. That year, however, it was a Monday and quite bad enough, though Martin was scornful of superstition and would have engaged in any important enterprise on 13 May or gone up in a plane without a qualm.

In the morning he found a gun in the case his son took to school. They called it a satchel in his day but it was a briefcase now. The gun was among a jumble of textbooks, dog-eared exercise books, crumpled paper and a pair of football socks, and for a single frightening moment Martin thought it was real. For about fifteen seconds he thought Kevin was actually in possession of the largest revolver he had ever seen, though of a type quite beyond his ability to identify.

Recognising it as a replica didn't stop him confiscating it.

"You can say goodbye to this weapon and that's a promise," he said to his son.

The discovery was made in Martin's car just before nine on the morning of Monday 13 May on the way to Kingsmarkham Comprehensive. Kevin's briefcase, insecurely fastened, had fallen off the back seat and some of its contents had come out on to the floor. Kevin watched ruefully

1

and in silence as the replica gun found its way into the pocket of his father's raincoat. At the school gates he left the car with a muttered goodbye and did not look back.

This was the first link in a chain of events which was to lead to five deaths. If Martin had found the gun before he did and Kevin left the house, none of it would have happened. Unless you believe in predestination and fate. Unless you believe our days are numbered. If you can imagine it, if you can perceive them numbered in reverse, from death to birth, Martin had reached Day One.

Monday 13 May.

* * *

It was also his day off, this Day One of his life, Detective Sergeant Martin of Kingsmarkham CID. He had come out early, not only to take his son to school -- that was incidental, a by-product of leaving the house at ten to nine -- but to have a new pair of windscreen wipers fitted to his car. It was a fine morning, the sun shining from a clear sky, and the forecast was good, but still he wouldn't risk taking his wife to Eastbourne for the day with wipers that failed to function.

The people at the garage behaved in typical fashion. Martin had made this arrangement by phone two days before but that did not prevent the receptionist reacting as if she had never heard of him, or the only available mechanic shaking his head and saying it was just possible,

it could be done, but Les had been called out unexpectedly in an emergency and Martin had better let them phone him. At last Martin got a promise of sorts out of him that the job would be done by ten thirty.

He walked back along Queen Street. Most of the shops were not yet open. The people he passed were commuters on their way to the British Rail station. Martin could feel the gun in his pocket, its weight and its shape, the heaviness of it weighing him down on the right side. It was a big heavy gun with a four-inch barrel. If the British police were eventually armed, this was how it would feel. Every day, all day. Martin thought this might have its drawbacks as well as its advantages, but anyway he couldn't imagine such a measure getting through Parliament.

He wondered whether he should tell his wife about the gun, he seriously wondered if he should tell Chief Inspector Wexford. What does a boy of thirteen want with a replica of what was probably a Los Angeles policeman's weapon? He was too old for a toy gun, certainly, but what could be the purpose of a replica except to threaten, to make others believe it was real? And could this be for anything but criminal intent?

There was nothing Martin could do about it at present. Tonight, of course, whatever else he decided on, he must have a serious talk with Kevin. He turned into the High Street, from where he could see the blue and gold clock on the tower of St Peter's Church. It was coming up to half past nine. He was heading for the

bank, intending to draw out enough to cover the garage charges as well as pay for petrol, lunch for two, incidental expenses in Eastbourne, and have a bit left over for the next couple of days. Martin distrusted credit cards and though he possessed one, seldom used it.

His attitude was the same in respect of the cashpoint dispenser. The bank was still closed, its solid oak front door firmly shut, but there was the automatic bank, installed in the granite facade for his convenience. The card was in his wallet and he went so far as to get it out and look at it. Somewhere he had written down the vital number. He tried to recall it � fifty-fifty-three? Fifty-three-0-five? He heard the bolts shifted, the hammers in the lock fall. The front door swung inwards to reveal the inner door of glass. The huddle of bank customers who had been waiting when he arrived went in before him.

Martin made his way to one of the counters which were provided with a blotter and a ballpoint chained to a false ink-well. He took out his cheque book. His credit card would not be needed here to back the cheque, for everyone knew him, this was where he had his account; he had already caught the eye of one of the cashiers and said good morning.

Few, however, knew his Christian name. Everyone called him Martin and always had. Even his wife called him Martin. Wexford must know what he was called, and the accounts department must, and whoever attended to such things in this bank. When he was married he had uttered it and his wife had repeated it.

Quite a lot of people thought Martin was his first name. The truth of it was a secret he kept locked within himself so far as he could, and now as he made out the cheque he signed it as always, *C. Martin'.

Two cashiers dispensed cash or received deposits behind their glass screens: Sharon Fraser and Ram Gopal, each with name tag on the glass and overhead light to flash to indicate they were free. A queue had formed in the area newly designated for waiting in with chrome uprights and turquoise-blue ropes.

"As if we were cattle in a market," said the woman in front of him indignantly.

"Well, it's fairer," said Martin, who was deeply committed to justice and order. "It makes sure no one goes out of turn."

It was then, just after he had spoken, that he was aware of disturbance. There is something very calm in the atmosphere of a bank interior. Money is serious, money is quiet. Frivolity, amusement, swift movement, haste, can have no place in this seat of custom, of pecuniary exchange. So the slightest change of mood is felt at once. A raised voice is remarked on, a pin dropped becomes a clatter. Any minor disturbance makes waiting customers start. Martin felt a draught as the glass door was opened too suddenly, he sensed the falling of a shadow as the front door, which was never shut in the daytime, which remained permanently fastened back during opening hours, was carefully and almost silently closed.

iflri^jiiT'

He turned round.

Everything happened very fast after that. The man who had closed the door, who had bolted the door, said sharply, "All get back against the wall. Quickly, please."

Martin noticed his accent, which was unmistakably Birmingham. He would have called it Brum. When the man spoke, someone screamed. There is always someone who screams.

The man, who had the gun in his hand, said in his flat nasal tones, "Nothing will happen to you if you do as you're told."

His companion, a boy really, who also had a gun, advanced up the passage of turquoise rope and chrome uprights, towards the two cashiers. There was a cashier behind a window to the left of him and another behind a window to the right of him, Sharon Fraser and Ram Gopal. Martin got back against the left-hand wall with all the others from the queue; they were all on that side, covered by the man's gun.

He was pretty sure the gun in the boy's gloved hand was a toy. Not a replica like the one in his own pocket, but a toy. The boy looked very young, seventeen or eighteen, but Martin knew that, although not himself old, he was old enough not to be able to tell if someone was eighteen or twenty-four.

Martin made himself memorise every detail of the boy's appearance, not knowing, not dreaming then, that any memorising he might succeed in doing would be in vain. He noted the man's appearance with similar care. The

boy had a curious rash on his face, or spots perhaps. Martin had never seen anything like them before. The man was dark with tattooed hands. He had no gloves on.

The gun in the man's hand might not be real either. It was impossible to tell. Watching the boy, he thought of his own son, not so many years younger. Had Kevin contemplated something of this sort? Martin felt the replica in his pocket, met the eyes of the man fixed on him. He removed his hand and brought it up to clasp the other.

The boy had said something to the woman cashier, to Sharon Fraser, but Martin hadn't caught what it was. They must have some alarm system in the bank. He confessed to himself that he didn't know what kind. A button that responded to foot pressure? Was an alarm going off even now in the police station?

It did not occur to him to commit to memory any details of the appearance of his companions, those people cowering with him against the wall. In the event it would have made no difference if he had. All he could have said of them was that none of them was old, though all but one were adults. The exception was the baby in a sling on its mother's chest. They were shadows to him, a nameless, faceless public.

Inside him was rising an urge to do something, take some action. He felt an enormous indignation. It was what he always felt in the face of crime or attempted crime. How dare they? Who did they think they were? By what imagined right did they come in here

to take what was not their own? It was the same feeling that he had when he heard or saw that one country had invaded another. How dare they commit this outrage?

The woman cashier was handing over money. Martin didn't think Ram Gopal had set off an alarm. He was staring, petrified with terror or merely inscrutably calm. He was watching Sharon Fraser pressing those keys on the cash dispenser at her side which would tumble out banknotes already packed into fifties and hundreds. The steady eyes watched pack after pack pushed under the glass barrier, through the metal valley, into the greedy gloved hand.

The boy took the money in his left hand, scooping it up, shovelling it into a canvas bag strapped round his hips. He kept the gun, the toy gun, trained on Sharon Fraser. The man was covering the rest of them, including Ram Gopal. It was easy from where he stood. The bank interior was small and they were all huddled together. Martin was aware of the sound of a woman crying, quiet sobs, soft whimpers.

His indignation threatened to spill over. But not yet, not quite yet. It came to him that if the police had been authorised to bear arms he might now be so used to them that he would be able to tell a real gun from a false. The boy had moved to stand in front of Ram Gopal. Sharon Fraser, a young plump girl whose family Martin slightly knew, whose mother had been at school with his wife, sat with her hands in fists and her long red nails digging into the palms. Ram Gopal had begun passing packs of notes under

8

the glass barrier. It was nearly over. In a moment it would all be over and he, Martin, would have done nothing.

He watched the dark stocky man retreat towards the doors. It made very little difference, they were still all covered by his gun. Martin slid his hand down to his pocket and felt there Kevin's huge weapon. The man saw but did nothing. He had to get that door open, the bolts drawn, for them to make a getaway.

Martin had known at once that Kevin's gun wasn't real. By the same process of recognition and reasoning, if not from experience, he knew this boy's gun wasn't real either. The clock on the wall above the cashiers, behind the boy's head, pointed to nine forty-two. How swiftly it had all happened! Only half an hour earlier he had been in that garage. Only forty minutes ago he had found the replica in the satchel and confiscated it.

He put his hand into his pocket, snatched Kevin's gun and shouted, "Drop your guns!"

The man had turned for a split second to unbolt the door. He backed against it, holding the gun in both hands like a gangster in a film. The boy took the last pack of notes, swept it into his canvas bag.

Martin said it again. "Drop your guns!"