Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (17 page)

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Tuesday evening. She was an over-punctual person, we're told by Daisy Flory, in other words too early for appointments as a general rule, so we may take it she got to the house soon after eight."

"If she went there. What are you going to have?"

Wexford wasn't going to say anything to him about celebrations. "I was thinking of Scotch but I'd better think again. The usual half of bitter."

When he came back with the drinks, Burden said, "We've no reason to believe she went there."

"Only the fact that she always did on a Tuesday," Wexford retorted. "Only the fact that she was expected. If she hadn't been going, wouldn't she have phoned? There was no phone call received at Tancred House that evening."

"But look, Reg, what are we saying? It doesn't add up. These are ordinary villains, aren't they? Trigger-happy villains after jewellery? One of them a stranger, the other possibly with special knowledge of the house and its occupants. That presumably is why only the blond beast, as Mrs Chowney calls him, let himself be seen by the three he killed and the one he attempted to kill. The other, the familiar face, kept out of the way."

"But they're typical villains, they're not the sort who carry off a possible witness and dispose of her elsewhere, are they? You see what I mean about it not adding up. If she came to the door

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why not shoot her too?"

"Because the chamber of the Magnum was empty," Wexford said quickly.

"All right. If it was. There are other means of killing. He'd killed three people and wouldn't jib at killing a fourth. But, no, he and his pal carry her off. Not as some sort of hostage, not for information she may have, just to get rid of her elsewhere. Why? It doesn't add up."

"OK. You've said that three times, you've made your point. If they killed her at Tancred House, what became of her car? They drove it home and put it neatly in her garage?"

"I suppose she could be involved. She could be the other one. We only assume it was a man. But, Reg, is it even worth considering? Joanne Garland is a woman in her fifties, a prosperous, successful businesswoman -- because, God knows how or why, that gallery is successful, it does work. She's well enough off to be independent of it, anyway. Her car's a last year's BMW, she's got a wardrobe of clothes I know nothing about but Karen says are top designers, Valentine and Krizia and Donna Karan. Have you ever heard of them?"

Wexford nodded. "I do read the papers."

"She's got every kind of equipment there you can think of. One of the rooms is a gym full of exercising gear. She's obviously rich. What would she want with the sort of money some fence would give her for Davina Flory's rings?"

"Mike, I've thought of something. Is there an answering machine? What's her phone number?

KGD12

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There may be a message on it."

"I don't know the number," Burden said. "Can you get Enquiries on that thing of yours?"

"Sure." Wexford asked for the number and was quickly given it. At their table in a dim corner of the Olive's lounge, he dialled Joanne Garland's number. It rang three times, then clicked softly and a voice that was not at all what they expected came on. Not a strong self-assertive voice, not confident and strident, but soft, even diffident:

'This is Joanne Garland. I am not available to speak to you now but if you would like to leave a message I will get back to you as soon as I can. Please speak after the tone.'

The routine statement of identity and availability recommended in most answering-machine literature.

"We'll check on what messages have been left, if any. I'm going to try it again and hope this time they realise and pick up the phone themselves. Is Gerry up there?"

"DC Hinde," said Burden, keeping a straight face, "is busy working, but elsewhere. He has constructed what he calls a tremendous database of all the crime committed in this area in the past twelve months and he's mousing away in it

-- I've probably got the terminology all wrong

-- looking for coincidences. Karen's up there and Archbold and Davidson. You'd think one of them would have the sense to answer."

Wexford dialled the number again. It rang three times and the message began to repeat itself. Next time, Karen Malahyde picked up

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the receiver after the second ring.

"About time too," said Wexford. "You know who this is? Yes? Good. Play back the messages, would you? If you're not familiar with the working of these things, you should look for a button marked play. Do it once only, note what's on it and take the tape out. It's probably the kind that will only play the same thing back twice. All right? Call me back on my personal number." He said to Burden, "I don't think she's involved in Tuesday night's murders, of course not, but I do think she saw them. Mike, I'm wondering if instead of searching, her house we should be looking for her body up at Tancred."

5 "It's not in the vicinity of the house. It's not in the outbuildings. You know we've searched."

"We haven't searched the woods."

Burden gave a sort of groan. "D'you want the other half?" J- "I'll get them."

1 Wexford went up to the bar, holding the ^empty glasses. Sheila and Augustine Casey would be on their way to Brighton now. With satisfaction -- because it would soon come to an end, soon only be heard under the shadow of the Sierra Nevada -- he imagined the conversation ift the car, the monologue rather, as Casey gave pent to streams of wit and brilliance, esoterica, cious anecdotes and self-aggrandising tales, e Sheila listened enraptured.

Burden looked up. "They might take her away them because she saw them or was a witness

*he murders. But take her where and kill her

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how? And how did her car get back into her garage?"

Wexford's phone bleeped. "Karen?"

"I've taken the tape out like you said, sir. What would you like me to do with it?"

"Have it copied, phone me and play the copy to me, then bring it to me. At my home. The tape and the copy. What were the messages?"

"There are three. The first one's from a woman calling herself Pam and I think that's Joanne's sister. I've written it down. It says to phone her about Sunday, whatever that means. The second's a man, it sounds like a sales rep. He's called Steve, no surname. He says he tried the shop but got no answer so he thought he'd phone her at home. It's about the Easter decorations, he says, and would she call him at home. The third's from Naomi Jones."

"Yes?"

"This is it verbatim, sir: 'Jo, this is Naomi. I wish it was you sometimes and not always that machine. Can you make it eight thirty tonight and not earlier? Mother hates having dinner interrupted. Sorry about that but you understand. See you.'"

* * *

Lunch at home, just the two of them.

"He's going to be writer-in-residence in the Wild West," said Wexford.

"You oughtn't to rejoice when it's making her so unhappy."

"Is it? I don't see any signs of unhappiness.

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*

More likely the scales are falling from her eyes and she sees what a good miss he'll be."

What Dora might have said in reply to these remarks was lost in the ringing of the phone. Karen said, "Here it is, sir. You asked me to

pounds ay it."

Like the murmur of a ghost, the dead woman's ivoice spoke to him. "... Mother hates having ^dinner interrupted. Sorry about that but you imderstand. See you."

; He shivered. Mother had had her dinner interrupted. An hour or so after that message was left her life had been interrupted for ever, fie saw the red cloth again, the seeping stain,

*he head lying on the table, the head flung back to hang over the back of a chair. He saw Harvey Copeland spreadeagled on the staircase

* pounds d Daisy crawling past the bodies of her dead, ^igrawling to the phone to save her own life.

* "You needn't bring it, thanks, Karen. It'll %eep."

At half past three he set off for Myfleet and the house where Daisy Flory had found her jatefuge.

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11

THE first thing that came into his mind was that she was in the attitude of her dead grandmother. Daisy had not heard him come in, she had heard nothing, and she was slumped across the table with one arm stretched out and her head beside it. So had Davina Flory fallen across a table when the gun found its aim.

Daisy was abandoned to her grief, her body shaking though she made no sound. Wexford stood looking at her. He had been told where she was by Nicholas Virson's mother but Mrs Virson had not accompanied him to the door. He closed it behind him and took a few steps into what Joyce Virson had called 'the little den'. What names these people had for parts of their houses others would have designated 'greenhouse' or 'sitting room'!

It was a thatched house, as its name indicated, something of a rarity in the neighbourhood. A kind of self-deprecatory snobbery might cause its owners to call it a cottage but in fact it was a sizeable house, of picturesquely uneven construction and parged patterns on the walls. The windows were large or medium-sized or very small, and several peeped out under eyelid gables close up to the roof. The roof was a formidable reed construction, ornately done and with a woven design round where the ribbed and

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parged chimney pots protruded. A garage, of the kind estate agents call 'integral', was also roofed by this dense layer of thatch.

Their popularity on calendars had made thatched houses faintly absurd, the butt of a certain kind of wit. But if you cleared your mind of chocolate-box images, this house could be made to appear what it was, a beautiful English antiquity, its garden pretty with windblown spring flowers, its lawns the brilliant green result of a damp climate.

Inside, a certain shabbiness, an air of make do-and-mend, made him doubt his own original assessment of Nicholas Virson's city successes. The little den where Daisy hung slumped over the table had a worn carpet and stretch-nylon covers on the chairs. A weary houseplant on the window sill had artificial flowers stuck into the soil around it to perk it up.

She made a little sound, a whimper, ah acknowledgement perhaps of his presence.

"Daisy," he said.

i The shoulder that was not bandaged moved at little. Otherwise she gave no sign of having heard him.

:%*''

Daisy, please stop crying.'

feShe lifted her head slowly. This time there was IP* apology, no explanation. Her face was like jUlfefaild's, puffy with tears. He sat down in the opposite her. It was a small table between i such as might be used in a room of this for writing, for playing cards, for a supper Jwo. She looked at him in despair, ould you like me to come back tomorrow?

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I have to talk to you but it need not be now."

Crying had made her hoarse. In a voice he hardly recognised she said, "It may as well be now as any other time."

"How is your shoulder?"

"Oh, all right. It doesn't hurt, it's just sore." She said something then which, if it had come from someone older or someone else, he would have found ridiculous. "The pain is in my heart."

It was as if she heard her own words, digested them and understood how they sounded, for she burst into a peal of unnatural laughter. "How stupid I sound! But it's true -- why does saying what's true sound false?"

"Perhaps," he said gently, "because it isn't quite real. You've read it somewhere. People don't really have pains in their hearts unless they're having a heart attack and then I believe it's usually in the arm."

"I wish I was old. I wish I was as old as you and wise."

This couldn't be treated seriously. "Will you be staying here for a while, Daisy?" he asked her.

"I don't know. I suppose so. I'm here now, it's as good a place as any. I made them let me out of the hospital. Oh, it was bad in there. It was bad being alone and worse being with strangers." She shrugged. "The Virsons are very kind. I'd like to be alone but I'm afraid of being alone too -- do you know what I mean?"

"I think so. It's best for you to be with your friends, with people who'll leave you alone when

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you want to be on your own."

"Yes."

"Would you feel like answering some questions about Mrs Garland?"

"Joanne?"

This, at any rate, was not what she had expected. She wiped her eyes with her fingers, blinked at him.

He had made up his mind not to tell her of their fears. She could know that Joanne Garland had gone away to some unknown destination but not that she was a 'missing person', not that they were already assuming her dead. Censoring what he said, he explained how she couldn't be found.

"I don't know her very well," Daisy said. "Davina didn't like her much. She didn't think she was good enough for us."

Recalling some of what Brenda Harrison had said, Wexford was surprised and his astonishment must have shown on his face, fqr Daisy said, "Oh, I don't mean in a snobby way. It was nothing to do with class with Davina. If mean -- " she lowered her voice " -- she didn't much care for -- " she cocked her thumb towards the door " -- them either. She hadn't any time for people she said were dull or frdinary. People had to have character, vitality,

mething individual. You see, she didn't know ordinary people -- well, except the people worked for her -- and she didn't want me either. She used to say she wanted me to Surrounded by the best. She'd given up on , but she didn't like Joanne just the same,

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she'd never liked her. I remember one phrase she used, she said Joanne dragged Mum down into a 'quagmire of the commonplace'."

"But your mother took no notice?" Wexford had observed that Daisy could now talk of her mother and grandmother without a break in her voice, without a lapse into despair. Her grief was stemmed while she talked of the past. "She didn't care?"

"You have to understand that poor Mum was really one of those ordinary people Davina didn't like. I don't know why she was, something to do with genes I suspect." Daisy's voice was strengthening as she talked, the hoarseness conquered by the interest she could still take in this subject. She could be distracted from her sorrow for these people by talking of them. "She was just as if she was the daughter of ordinary people, not someone like Davina. But the strange thing was that Harvey was a bit like that too. Davina used to talk a lot about her other husbands, number one and number two, saying how amusing and interesting they were, but I did wonder. Harvey never had much to say, he was a very quiet man. No, not so much quiet as passive. Easy-going, he called it. He did what Davina told him." Wexford thought he saw a spark burn in her eyes. "Or he tried to. He was dull, I think I've always known that."