Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (43 page)

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once have been morning room, sewing room, study or 'snug'. An oil heater burned at one corner, making a smell but not much heat.

Wexford said, "Look at these things in my glass. They look like marbles. Now what would you call them? Not ice cubes because they're round. How about ice spheres?"

"No one would know what you meant. You'd say 'round ice cubes'."

"Yes, but that's a contradiction in terms, you'd have to ..."

Burden interrupted him firmly. "The DCC phoned while you were with that Joanne woman. I talked to him. He says it's a farce talking about a 'murder room' four weeks after the event and he wants us out of Tancred by the end of the week."

"I know. I've an appointment to see him. Who calls it a murder room, anyway?"

"Karen does, and Gerry, when they answer the phone. Worse than that. I heard Gerry say, 'Massacre room here.'"

"It doesn't matter much. We don't have to be there. I feel it's in my grasp, Mike, I can't say more than that. I need one or two things to fall into place, I need one spark of enlightenment ..."

Burden was looking at him suspiciously. "I need a whole lot more than that, I can tell you. D'you realise we haven't even got past the first hurdle, that is how they got away from Tancred without someone seeing them?"

"Yes. Daisy made her 999 call at twenty two minutes past eight. This, she says, was

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somewhere between five and ten minutes after they had gone. But she doesn't know and this is a very rough estimate indeed. If it was as much as ten minutes, the maximum time I should think, they must have left at eight twelve which is four minutes before Joanne Garland left. I believe that woman, Mike. I think she knows about time like these punctuality addicts do. If she says she left at sixteen minutes past, that's when she left.

"But if they left at eight twelve she must have seen them. That was the time she was walking about the front of the house, trying to see into the dining-room window. So they left later and it took Daisy nearer five minutes than ten to reach the phone. Say they left at seventeen or eighteen minutes past eight. In that case they must have followed Joanne Garland and might well be supposed to be driving faster than she ... " "Unless they took the byroad."

"Then Gabbitas would have seen them. If Gabbitas is guilty of some involvement in this, Mike, it would be in his interest to say he had seen them. He doesn't say that. If he's innocent and he says he didn't see them, they weren't there. But to get back to Joanne Garland.

"When she reached the main gate she would have had to get out of her car and open it. Then she would have to drive through, get out and close it again. Is it conceivably possible that, with the killers' car close behind her, she could have done this and the other car not caught up with her?"

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'We could try it out," Burden said.

'I have tried it. I tried it this afternoon. Only we left three minutes, not two, between the departure of car A and that of car B. I was driving car A at between thirty and forty miles per hour and Barry was in car B, driving as fast as he felt he safely could, forty to fifty, sometimes over fifty. He caught up with me as I got out the second time, to close the gates.

"Could their car have left before Joanne Garland arrived?"

"Hardly. She got there at eleven minutes past eight. Now Daisy says they didn't hear the gunmen in the house until a minute or two after eight. If they left at ten past that allows them nine minutes at most in which to go upstairs and turn the place over, come down again, kill three people and wound a fourth and make their getaway. It could be done -- just. But if they got away by the main road through the wood they must have met Joanne coming in. And if they took the by-road road at, say, seven minutes past eight, they would have overtaken Bib Mew on her bicycle, since she left Tancred at ten to eight."

Burden said thoughtfully, "You make it sound impossible."

"It is impossible. Unless there's a conspiracy between Bib and Gabbitas and Joanne Garland and the gunmen, which is patently not so, it's impossible. It's impossible that they left at any time between five past eight and twenty past eight, yet we know they must have done so. We've been making an assumption all this time,

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Mike, based on a very flimsy piece of evidence. And that is that they came and left in a car. In or on some sort of motor vehicle. We've assumed there was a vehicle involved. But suppose there wasn't?"

Burden stared at him. At that moment the door opened and a crowd of people came in, all carrying plates of food, all in search of somewhere to sit. Instead of answering his own question, Wexford said, "It's supper. Shall we go and get something to eat?"

"We oughtn't to stay in here, anyway. It's not fair on Sylvia."

"You mean it's the party guest's duty to circulate and thus earn his fizzy water and taco chips?"

"Something like that." Burden grinned. He looked at his watch. "D'you know, it's gone ten. We've only got our babysitter till eleven."

"Just time for a sandwich," said Wexford, who was pretty sure that such favourites of his wouldn't be on offer.

While consuming salmon mayonnaise, he talked to two of Sylvia's colleagues, then to a couple of old school-friends. There was something in what Burden said about doing one's bit as a guest. Dora he could see involved in an amiable argument with Neil's father. He kept half an eye on Burden all the while and edged in his direction when the school-friends went off for more chicken salad.

Burden took up their discussion at the precise point they had left it. "There must have been some sort of vehicle."

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"Well, you know what Holmes said. When everything else is impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be so."

"How did they get there without transport? It's miles from anywhere."

"Through the woods. On foot. It's the only way, Mike. Think about it. The roads were positively clogged with traffic. Joanne Garland going up and down the main way in. First Bib, then Gabbitas on the by-road. But that doesn't bother them because they're making their way out in perfect safety -- on foot. Why not? What had they to carry? A gun and some bits of jewellery."

"Daisy heard a car start up."

"Of course she did. She heard Joanne Garland's car start up. Later than she says, but she can hardly be expected to be precise about the time. She heard the car start up after both gunmen had gone and she was crawling to the phone."

"I believe you're right. And those two could have got away without anyone seeing them?"

"I didn't say that. Someone saw them. Andy Griffin. He was up there that night, bedding down in his hidey-hole, and he saw them. Close enough, I imagine, to know them again. The result of his attempt to blackmail them, or one of them, was that they strung him up."

* * *

After Burden and Jenny's departure, Wexford began to think about leaving himself. They had

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left it late, their sitter would be obliged to stay on for a further quarter-hour. It was almost eleven.

Dora had gone with a crowd of other women, under Sylvia's leadership, to be shown over the house. They were supposed to keep very quiet, so as not to wake the little boys. Wexford didn't want to ask Sylvia if she had heard from her sister because such a question might provoke a scene of jealousy and resentment. If Sylvia was feeling good about her new house and her present style of life, she would answer his enquiry like a rational person. But if she wasn't -- and he couldn't tell what her state of mind was this evening -- she would round on him with those old accusations of a preference for her younger sister. He managed to make his way over to Neil and ask him.

Of course Neil had no idea whether Sylvia had recently spoken to Sheila, only vaguely knew that Sheila had been having a relationship with a novelist he had never previously heard of, and was unaware this relationship was over. Without this intention, he made Wexford feel foolish. He said he knew everything would be all right and excused himself to fetch a tray of coffee.

Dora came back, said that if he would like a real drink now she would drive home. No, thanks, Wexford said, he'd found that once you'd had two of these mineral waters, you didn't really fancy alcohol. Shall we go then?

They had both become so delicately careful with this difficult child, bending over backwards not to offend her. But other people were

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leaving. Only a hard core of nocturnals would linger after midnight. They waited patiently for other people's coats to be brought, for those last-minute pleasantries to be exchanged with departing guests that stand upon their going.

At last Wexford was kissing his daughter and saying goodnight, thank you, lovely party. She kissed him back, gave him a nice, warm, unresentful hug. He thought Dora was going a bit far saying, 'Happy house' -- what an expression! -- but anything that helped along the aim to please.

There were various ways home. Through Myfleet itself or a slight detour north to bypass Myfleet, or south the long way via Pomfret Monachorum. He took the by-passing route, though that made it sound like a well-lit twin-track highway instead of what it really was, a cat's cradle of lanes in which you had to know how to pick up the right threads.

It was very dark. There was no moon and the stars were hidden by a thick overcast. In these villages the residents had campaigned against street lighting, so that at this hour they appeared uninhabited, every house in darkness but for the occasional square of drawn-curtain gleam, behind which some nightbird stayed up.

Dora heard the wail of sirens a fraction before he did. She said, "Do your lot have to? At past midnight?"

They were on one of the long stretches of tree-bordered lane between habitations. The banks on either side reared up like defensive

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walls. In this dark canyon his car lights made a greenish radiance.

"That's not us," he said. "That's the fire service."

"How can you tell?"

"A different kind of howl."

The volume of sound increased and for a moment he thought the engine was coming this way, would meet them head-on. He had already begun to brake and was edging as close as he could to the nearside, when the wail died again a*id he knew the engine -- appliances, they called them -- was on some other road ahead.

The car gathered speed and came up out of the trough of rampart-like banks and dense bushes and sheltering trees, out of the well of darkness. The banks fell away, the road widened and a plain, a spread of downland, opened before them. The sky ahead was red. On the horizon and seeping across the massed clouds was a smoky redness as it might be above some city. But there was no city.

A new wailing began. Dora said, "It's not in Myfleet. It's this side of Myfleet. Is it a house on fire?"

"We shall soon see."

He knew before they got there. It was the only thatched house in the neighbourhood. The redness intensified. From a dull smoky rust it grew richer until the glow in the sky was like a fire of coals, like the bright spaces between burning coal. Then they could hear it. A crackling, licking, rhythmic roar.

Already the road was cordoned off. On the

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other side of the barrier the two appliances were parked. The firemen were hosing with what looked like water but very likely wasn't. The noise the burning house made was like waves of the sea crashing on shingle in a storm, like the rushing tug-back of the tide. It deafened, it made speech impossible, commentary on the blaze, the urgent, streaming flames, silenced by it.

Wexford got out of the car. He went over to the barrier. A fire officer started telling him to get back, to take the Myfleet road, and then he recognised who this was. Wexford shook his head. He wasn't going to attempt shouting above this noise. The heat from the fire reached out here, robbing the air of cold, of damp, blazing like some vast domestic hearth in an abode of giants.

Wexford gazed. He was near enough to imagine it seared his face. In spite of the recent rain, rain that had come too sparsely, the thatch had gone up like paper and kindling. Where it had been, where vestiges of it still were, the blackened roofbeams could be seen through the fierce roaring flames. The house had become a torch but the fire was more alive than a torch flame, animal-like in its greed and determination, its passion to burn and destroy. Sparks spiralled up into the sky, dipping and dancing. A great burning ember, a lump of seething thatch, suddenly blew out of the roof and eddied towards them like a rocket. Wexford ducked and backed away.

When the burning thing was smouldering at

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their feet, he said to the fire officer, "Was there anyone in there?"

The arrival of the ambulance saved the man from answering. Wexford saw Dora reversing the car to make room. The fire officer moved the barrier and the ambulance came in.

"It was hopeless attempting anything," the fireman said.

A car followed. It was Nicholas Virson's MG. The car slowed and stopped, but not as if under control, not as if the driver had braked and gone into neutral and put the handbrake on. It shuddered to a stop and stalled with a jump. Virson got out and stood looking at the fire. He put his hands over his face.

Wexford went back to Dora. "You can go on home if you like. Someone will bring me."

"Reg, what's happened?"

"I don't know. I can't imagine it started by chance."

"I'll wait for you."

The ambulancemen were bringing someone out on a stretcher. He had expected a woman but it was a man, the fire officer who had made a hopeless attempt. Nicholas Virson turned a stricken face to Wexford. Tears were running out of his eyes.

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THE house was in part very old and had been strongly built in that distant past on a timber frame. Two of the main posts survived. They were of oak and nearly indestructible, standing up among the ashes like burnt trees. There had been no foundations and, like trees, these great uprights had been planted deep in the ground.

The blackened site looked more like the leavings of a forest fire than a burnt house. Wexford, surveying the ruins from his car, remembered how he had thought the Virson's home pretty the first time he had seen it. A chocolate-box cottage with roses round the door and a garden fit for a calendar. The man who did this took pleasure in the destruction of beauty, enjoyed defacement for its own sake. For by now Wexford had no doubt this was a deliberate act of arson.