Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (27 page)

*?-It is rare to see people shiver. Wexfbrd, matching her, did not see this galvanic movement j^R the body, only the outward signs of the inner |pkudder, the draining of colour from her face; goose-pimpling on her neck. He considered Gaining to her what he had in mind for her )tection but thought better of it. Decidedly are sensible would be to present her with a ft accompli.

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She had closed her eyes. When she opened them he saw she had made an effort not to cry. The lids were swollen. He thought that after he had gone she would allow herself a transport of grief, but as he was leaving the telephone rang.

She hesitated, lifted the receiver, and he heard her say, "Oh, Joyce. It's nice of you to phone but I'm quite all right. I'll be fine ..."

* * *

Karen Malahyde would spend the night at Tancred House with Daisy, Anne Lennox the following night, Rosemary Mount joy the next one, and so on. He thought of mounting a further guard from the stables, two men on duty throughout the twenty-four hours, but his heart quailed at the idea of the Deputy Chief Constable's response to that. They were shorthanded, anyway, they usually were. The girl had no business to be there on her own, she had friends to stay with, he could hear Freeborn saying it; it wasn't for them to spend public money for the protection of a young woman who had chosen to return to this great lonely place on a whim.

But Karen and Anne and Rosemary were only too pleased. None of them had ever slept under a roof that covered more than a three-bedroomed semi or a block of flats. His decision to let Karen tell Daisy was formed on the spur of the moment. He was protecting her but this was to protect himself. Whenever

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it was avoidable, he must not see her. Briefly, he thought he understood the meaning of that sense of warning and alarm he had experienced in St Peter's.

It horrified him. For a whole ten minutes, sitting at his desk in the stables, staring at the Persian cat cactus, but unseeing, unseeing, he believed he was in love with her. He saw it as some terminal disease Dr Crocker might have enlightened him about, some fearful blight, he saw it as Jem Hocking saw the fate that would surely overtake him.

Of course there had been instances in the past. He had been married to Dora for more than thirty years, so of course there had been instances. That young Dutch girl, pretty Nancy Lake, others apart from his work. But he loved Dora, his was a happy marriage. And this was so ridiculous, he and this child. But how the whole day lit up for him when he saw her, when he saw her sad face! How happy he was when she talked to him, when they sat together talking! How beautiful she was, and clever, and good!

He put it to the test, the only test. He tried lf> imagine making love to her, her nakedness i&id wanting to make love to her, and the whole IConcept was grotesque. It wasn't that he wanted ||er, it wasn't that at all. A positive revulsion >m that made him flinch. He couldn't have >ntemplated touching her with the tip of his tger, not even in some secret fantasy. No, he tew what it was he felt. Instead of groaning, foich he had felt like doing ten minutes before, let out a sudden guffaw, a bellow of laughter.

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Barry Vine, previously glued to a report he was reading, turned round to stare. Wexford cut off the laughter and made his face grim. He thought Vine was going to say something, ask some fool question as poor Martin might have done, but he constantly underestimated DS Vine. The man was back to his clipboard and Wexford revelling now in the realisation of what it was that had happened. Not sex, not being 'in love', thank God. His mind had merely replaced the lost Sheila with Daisy. He had lost a daughter and found one. What a strange thing was the human psyche!

Thinking about it, he saw that this was exactly what had happened. He saw her as a daughter, for he was a man who needed daughters. Guilt touched him that he had not instead turned to that other, to Sylvia, his elder girl. Why go a-whoring after strange goddesses when he had his own near at hand? Because the feelings and the needs blow where they list, he thought, without regard for what is fitting and what is appropriate. But he made up his mind to see Sylvia soon, perhaps to take her a present. She was moving house, moving to some old rectory in the countryside. He would go and ask her about her move, how he could help. And meanwhile that resolve to see less of Daisy might stand, lest the less dangerous love become as consuming as that other fearful sort.

He sighed and this time Barry Vine didn't turn round. The London phone directories had been brought here when they moved in and Wexford went to look in the book that used to be pink,

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E-K, and on whose cover pink still predominated in the picture. Of course there were hundreds of Joneses, but not too many G. G. Joneses. Daisy had been right when she said Davina would have the correct address for her father. Here it was: Jones, G. G., 11 Nineveh Road, N5, and a phone number on the 832 exchange. On the 071 area code, no doubt, it was inner London. But Wexford didn't pick up the phone. He sat wondering what those initials stood for, and wondering too why such an absolute breach had been established between Jones and his daughter.

He thought about inheritance too and the variously different outcomes there might have been if, say, Davina had been the one not to die, or Naomi had been. And what, if any, significance was there in the fact that neither Naomi nor her friend Joanne Garland had been interested in men, had apparently preferred each other's company?

A report in front of him expressed the opinion of a small-arms expert. His mind relieved, he read it again and more carefully. The first time, when he feared he was in the grip of the most overwhelming of obsessions, he hadn't taken it in. The expert was saying that though the cartridges used in the Martin killing appeared different from those used at Tancred House, they might not in fact be. It was possible, if you knew what you were doing, to tamper with the barrel of a pistol, to engrave on the inside of it lines which would be themselves imprinted on a cartridge passing through it. In his view

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this might well have been done in the present case . . .

He said, "Barry, it was true what Michelle Weaver said. Bishop threw down the gun. It skidded across the floor of the bank. Strange as it seems, there were two guns careering around that floor after Martin was shot."

Vine came over, sat on the edge of his desk.

"Hocking told me Bishop threw the gun down, the Colt Magnum. It was a Colt Magnum .357 or .38, no way of telling. Someone in the bank picked that gun up. One of the people who didn't hang around till we came. One of the men. Sharon Fraser had the impression the ones that went were all men."

"You only pick up a gun with malice aforethought," said Vine.

"Yes. But perhaps no particular malice. A mere generalised bias towards lawbreaking."

"In case it might come in useful one day, sir?"

"Something like that. The way my old dad used to pick up every nail he saw lying in the gutter. In case it came in handy."

His phone was bleeping. Dora or the police station. Anyone who wanted them in connection with the Tancred murders would presumably know to call on the freephone number that had daily appeared on television screens. It was Burden, who had not come up to the stables that day.

He said, "Reg, a call's just come through. Not a 999. A man with an American accent. Phoning on behalf of Bib Mew. She lives next

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door to him, hasn't got a phone, says she's found ,� a body in the woods."

"I know who you mean. I've spoken to mm.

"She found a body," said Burden, "hanging from a tree." 6 &

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16

SHE let them in but said nothing. To Wexford she gave the same sort of blank hopeless stare she might have bestowed on a bailiff come to make an inventory of her goods. That typified her attitude from the beginning. She was stunned, despairing, unable to struggle against these waters which had closed over her head.

Oddly enough, she looked more masculine than ever in corduroy trousers, check shirt and V-necked pullover, the earring missing today. "I could find it in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel and cry like a woman," thought Wexford. But Bib Mew wasn't crying and wasn't that a fallacy anyway, that women wept and men did not?

"Tell us what happened, Mrs Mew," Burden was saying.

She had led them into the stuffy little parlour that lacked for romantic authenticity only a shawled old woman in an armchair. There, without a word to them, she subsided on to the old horsehair sofa. Her eyes never left Wexford's face. He thought, I should have brought a WPC with me, for here is something I haven't understood till now. Bib Mew is not simply eccentric, slow, stupid if the term isn't too harsh. She's backward, mentally handicapped. He felt a rush of pity. For such people shocks were worse,

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they penetrated and somehow overturned their innocence.

Burden had repeated his question. Wexford said, "Mrs Mew, I think you should have a hot drink. Can we get that for you?"

Oh, for Karen or Anne! But his offer had unlocked Bib's voice. "He gave me that. Him next door."

It was no good expecting what Burden expected. This woman wasn't going to be able to give them any sort of factual account of what she had found. "You were in the woods," Wexford began. He looked at the time. "On your way to work?"

The nod she gave was more than frightened. It was the terrified movement of a creature cornered. Burden left the room silently, in search, Wexford guessed, of the kitchen. Now for the hard part, the bit that might set her off screaming.

"You saw something, someone? You saw something hanging from a tree?"

Again a nod. She had begun to wring her hands, a series of rapid dry washing movements. Speech from her surprised him. She said, very warily, "A dead person."

Oh God, he thought, unless it's in her mind, and I don't think it's in her poor mind, this is Joanne Garland. "Man or woman, Mrs Mew?"

She repeated what she had said. "A dead person," and then, "hanging up."

"Yes. Could you see it from the byroad?"

A fierce shake of the head and then Burden came in with tea in a mug printed with the faces

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of the Duke and Duchess of York. A spoon stuck out of it and Wexford guessed Burden had put enough sugar in to make the spoon stand up.

"I phoned in," he said. "Got Anne to come up here." He added, "And Barry."

Bib Mew held the mug close to her chest and closed her hands round it. Incongruously Wexford recalled someone telling him how the people of Kashmir carry pots of hot coals under their clothes to warm them. If they hadn't been there he thought Bib would have put the mug up under her sweater. She seemed to take comfort from the tea as a heater rather than a drink.

"Went in the trees," she said. "I had to go."

It took Wexford a moment or two to understand what she meant. In court they still called it 'for a natural purpose'. Burden seemed baffled. She could only have been ten minutes from her own house but of course it was possible even then, one could be 'caught short', that she might be troubled in that way. Or be in awe of using the bathrooms at Tancred House?

"You left your bike." he said gently, "and went in among the trees and then you saw it?"

She began to tremble.

He had to persist. "You didn't go on to Tancred, you came back?"

"Scared, scared, scared. I was scared." She pointed a finger at the wall. "I told him."

"Yes," Burden said. "Could you -- could you tell us where?"

She didn't scream. The sound she made was a kind of gibbering and her body shook. The

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tea rocked in the cup and splashed over the side. Wexford took it gently from her. He said in the calmest, most soothing voice he could achieve, "It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. You've told Mr Hogarth?" She looked uncomprehending. He fancied her teeth had begun to chatter. "The man next door?"

A nod. Her hands went back to the mug of tea, clasped it. Wexford heard the car, nodded to Burden to let them in. Barry Vine and Anne Lennox had taken precisely eleven minutes to get there.

Leaving them with her, Wexford went next door. The young American's bicycle rested against the wall. There was no bell or knocker, so he flapped the letter-box lid up and down. The man inside took a long time coming and when he did he looked far from pleased to see Wexford. No doubt he resented this involvement.

"Oh, hi," he said rather coldly, and then, with resignation, "We've met before. Come on in."

It was a pleasant voice. Educated, Wexford supposed, though not up to the immaculate Ivy League standard of Mr Littlebury's. The boy showed him into a grubby sitting room, just what he would have expected someone �f his age -- twenty-three or four -- to be Mving in on his own. There were a lot of Ixooks in bookcases made by resting planks i�* stacks of bricks, a smartish television set, *i broken-down old green settee, a gateleg table

ighed down with books, papers, typewriter,

"efinable metal instruments of the clamp and

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wrench type, plates, cups and a half-empty glass of something red. Newspapers occupied the only other thing provided for sitting on, a Windsor wheelback chair. The young American swept them off and on to the floor, removing from the wheelback, where they were hanging, a dirty white T-shirt and a pair of muddy socks.

"Can I have your full name?"

"I guess." But he didn't give it. "Do I get to know what for? I mean, I'm not involved in all this."

"Routine, Sir. Nothing for you to worry yourself about. Now I'd like your full name."

"OK, if that's the way you want it. Jonathan Steel Hogarth." His manner changed and he became expansive. "They call me Thanny. Well, I call me Thanny, so everyone else does now. You can't all be Jon, can you? I figured if a girl named Patricia can be Tricia, I can be Thanny."

"You're an American citizen?"

"Yeah. Should I be calling my consul?"

Wexford smiled. "I doubt if that will be necessary. Have you been here long?"

"I've been in Europe since last summer. Since the end of May. I guess I'm doing what they call the Grand Tour. I've lived here maybe a month. I'm a student. Well, I've been a student and hopefully I'm going to be one again. At USM in the fall. So I found this place -- what would you call it? A cabin? No, a cottage -- and settled in and the next thing there's this massacre on the property up there and the lady next door finds some poor guy hanging off of a tree."