One Under (44 page)

‘He came here on the Wednesday of that week after the Fleet Review,’ Ollie Bullen explained. ‘He phoned ahead and Ginnie picked him up at Petersfield station. To be frank, he looked awful. It takes a lot to shock my darling sister, but she couldn’t get over the state of him. His face, Inspector, here, here … ’ Her fingers touched her right cheekbone, her left eye. ‘And when Ginnie got his clothes off, upstairs in the bathroom, the bruising was just everywhere. You know, the way bruises go after a while? That livid, yellow colour?’

‘Did you ask him what had happened?’

‘Of course we did.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said he’d been beaten up the previous week. He wouldn’t go into details but it seemed to have something to do with money. Some people down in Portsmouth, business types. In fact one of them lives up this way. He told Ginnie he was going to have it out with the man. I’ve no idea whether he did.’

‘Did he mention a name at all?’

‘Yes … ’ she frowned ‘ … he did.’

‘Does Cleaver ring a bell?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, it does. That’s funny, isn’t it? Ginnie thought he was making it up.’

Faraday reached for his pocketbook, signalling for Barber to take over.

‘Did your sister tell you anything about Duley before you met him?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes, she’d told me plenty. This talented young man who scooped up one of the prizes. This gorgeous young thing who’d swept her off to bed. She was full of it, just full of it. Not him, necessarily, but the fact that it had happened. She’s no spring chicken, Ginnie. It did her no end of good.’

‘And what did she make of him?’

‘Of that, to be frank, I wasn’t so certain. She said he was very … ah … wrapped up in himself. This is Ginnie talking. You wouldn’t appreciate the joke unless you knew her.’

‘She’s like that too?’

‘Completely. Utterly. Always has been. That’s one of the reasons she never married, at least that’s my theory. And it also explains what she’s doing in the Languedoc. Normally, she can’t stand other people, has absolutely no time for them. Mark Duley was a very lucky young man. I put it down to booze, myself. That, and the fact that he was so young.’

‘So it was a conquest?’

‘Indeed. Call it a notch on her belt. Before that Wednesday she had absolutely no interest in ever seeing him again. To tell you the truth, the phone call came as a bit of a shock. It was only the fact that he seemed to be in some kind of trouble that persuaded her to meet him at all. One look at him, of course, and it was all very different. You couldn’t just walk away. No one could. Not even Ginnie.’

‘You looked after him?’ It was Faraday again.

‘We did, Inspector. Both of us. Ginnie moved in with me. Mark had the spare room.’

‘And how was he?’

‘To be honest, at first I thought he was on drugs. He just didn’t seem to, you know,
connect
. He’d just sit where you are now, perch himself on the stool, try and get comfortable, and talk. He never stopped. He’d talk morning, noon and night. And it was always the same thing, the same topic. He was like a man with an itch, a scab. He just couldn’t leave it alone.’

‘Leave what alone?’

‘Some girlfriend of his. He never gave her a name. Just “she”. Ginnie said he’d been the same in bed, at the conference thing. The poor boy was totally obsessed.’

‘He took your sister to bed and talked about this woman of his?’

‘Yes. That’s exactly what he did. She said it was like listening to the plot of some dreadful novel. He just wittered on and on about her. How she was married. How she had young kids. How she was trapped in a marriage she didn’t want anymore. Ginnie didn’t care two hoots, of course, not my sister. She knew exactly what she was after, and she got it, more or less, and the rest was just drivel. That’s her term, Inspector, not mine.’

‘But back here? After he’d … settled in?’

‘Exactly the same. By the Thursday morning, to be frank, we were beginning to wonder what we’d let ourselves in for. He was
unrelentingly
miserable. Not an easy thing to put up with, not in a tiny cottage like this.’

Faraday nodded. The cuckoo in the nest, he thought.

‘Did he go out at all?’

‘Yes, and that’s another thing. In fact that’s why I phoned you in the first place.’

Duley, she explained, had been nervous of going into Petersfield and looking at him you could understand why. But on the Thursday, at Ginnie’s suggestion, he’d taken himself off for a little walk.

‘Where did he go?’

‘Down the lane there to the pond. If you follow the little road round, it leads to the railway. Go under the bridge, and you’re up in the forest. There are the most glorious walks, Inspector. I’m up there with the dog most days. Keeps us both fit.’

‘And Duley?’

‘He ignored the forest, took absolutely no notice of our directions. Instead of going on under the bridge and then following one of the paths into the forest, he turned left. That takes you along beside the embankment. There’s a fence of course, but I don’t think he took much notice of that.’

‘He went up onto the railway line?’

‘He did. And then he walked into the tunnel.’

Faraday shifted his weight on the stool. He knew every step of this journey. He’d made it himself, only last week. He’d had it photographed, mapped, plotted - the lot.

‘Why the tunnel?’ he asked.

‘That’s exactly what we asked him. He said it was irresistible. I remember the word exactly. Irresistible. He said he stood on that railway track and looked into the darkness, and knew that’s where he belonged. Am I wrong, Inspector, or is that not creepy?’

Faraday nodded. Creepy was one word for it. Dramatic was another.

‘Did you get a feeling that this was some kind of -’ He frowned. ‘-
performance
?’

‘For our benefit, you mean? No. Definitely not. Most of the time he was talking to himself. We needn’t have been here. I suppose you’d call it a soliloquy. That place, that thing - the tunnel - just fascinated him.’

‘He went back?’

‘He spent the night there.’

‘The
night
? When?’

‘The Thursday. The day after he arrived. We all had supper. We watched a bit of telly. We were about to turn in. And he suddenly announced he was going for a walk. We weren’t to worry. He might not be back until daybreak. He said it was just something he had to do. Apparently there are little recesses in there, holes in the tunnel wall where you can keep out of the way of the trains. He called them refuges.’

‘Weren’t you worried? Concerned on his behalf?’

‘Well, yes, in a way. But he seemed so certain that he’d be back that we just assumed he meant it. In any case, Inspector, what else could we have done? We weren’t his keepers. We couldn’t lock the poor boy up. And of course at that point we hadn’t the first idea he’d really be spending the night in the tunnel. I think both Ginnie and I had some vision of him sleeping under the stars. That would have been perfect, of course.
Most
therapeutic.’

Next morning, she said, he was back as promised. He still looked terrible and there was something strange about his eyes.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t describe it. Ginnie thought he looked like something out of a Renaissance painting. I told her she was being fanciful but maybe she had a point. It was almost an
otherworldliness
. Do you know what I mean? There was a light in his eyes. He said he was making a journey. He said that twice, I remember. Then there was the music.’

He’d gone to bed for a couple of hours, she said. They’d both been downstairs when suddenly they heard this music. It was choral music. He’d arrived with one of those Buddha bags and it turned out he’d brought a little mini-CD player.

‘What was the music?’

‘Bach. The St Matthew Passion. Do you know it at all?’

‘Very well. There was a performance down in Portsmouth, over Easter.’

‘Excellent. Then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. It wasn’t the whole of the work, not at all, just one part of it. The “Descent from the Cross”. You know the bit I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it was that. He just played it and played it, over and over. Drove us mad, to tell you the truth. I’ve still got the CDs, as a matter of fact. He was kind enough to leave them.’

Faraday nodded.
Gethsemane
, he thought.

‘When did he go?’

‘He went on the Friday. I know it sounds awful but we’d really had enough by then. Ginnie kept dropping these heavy hints about having to get back to France the following week and in the end I think the message got through. Poor boy. I feel terrible now, just telling you.’

‘Did he go by train? Back to Portsmouth?’

‘No. That was another thing. The plan was to go by train, but when they both got to Petersfield, he said he couldn’t face it.’

‘Face what?’

‘Another train journey. People looking at him. In the end Ginnie had to drive him back. At least that way she’d know he’d got back safely.’ She offered Faraday a weary smile, then shook her head. ‘There was something else though, Inspector. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you.’

‘Go on.’

‘When they were in Petersfield, Ginnie and Mark, he made her stop at a hardware store. There’s a place called Basset’s Ironmongers. It’s on Swan Street. He gave her some money and asked her to do him a favour.’

‘Buy something?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What was it?’ Faraday knew the answer already.

‘A padlock, Inspector. With two keys. He kept one. Ginnie was to hang on to the other one.’

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t say, not specifically. All he wanted to know was when, exactly, she was going back to France. She told him Tuesday, because that was the plan.’

‘And when
did
she go back to France?’

‘We both went. On the Saturday. The afternoon crossing from Portsmouth. It was a last-minute thing, just something we both decided on.’ She turned to the stove and gave the saucepan a stir. ‘We were in the Languedoc by Sunday evening, just in time for a late supper. It was a bit of a relief, to tell you the truth. That man was beginning to disturb me.’

 

Ollie Bullen had kept the key. She’d handed it over to Faraday, sealed in a white envelope, glad to be shot of the thing. Now, driving back to Portsmouth, he wanted Barber’s view on exactly where this conversation might take them. One lead was Duley’s mention of Chris Cleaver.

‘Winter’s always been convinced he’s tied in with Mackenzie. If Cleaver invested in the Margarita trip, he’d have every reason to want his money back,’ Faraday said.

‘Which might put him in the caravan.’

‘Sure. But what does Duley gain by having it out with him? He’s been beaten half to death as it is. Why risk all that again?’

‘Maybe it wasn’t Cleaver he was after seeing. Maybe he was going to drop by when only his wife was there. That’s Duley’s MO, isn’t it? Always go for the weaker sex?’

Faraday shot her an approving look. He remembered the note Jimmy Suttle had attached to the forms he and Dawn Ellis had brought back from their house-to-house enquiries. They’d both talked to Mrs Cleaver, and they’d agreed that she knew a great deal more than she was prepared to admit. Maybe Duley really had paid a visit the week before he’d died in the tunnel. And maybe the sight of his battered face had awoken all kinds of anxiety. Either way, Faraday made a mental note to enquire further.

They drove on in silence for a while. Then Faraday started musing about Duley’s state of mind during those final few days.

‘He was depressed,’ Barber said at once.

‘Obviously.’

‘Partly over Jenny Mitchell. Partly the beating. Nothing was working out, was it? He’d convinced himself they were going off to Spain together. He’d laid hands on the money to make it possible. He’d suffered badly in the process. But still it wasn’t going to happen.’

‘Sure.’ Faraday nodded in agreement. ‘But was that really enough to put him in the tunnel?’

‘Yes, I think it probably was. But that’s not the issue, is it? What we need to know is whether he was alone or not.’

Faraday glanced across at her. He’d been wrestling with the same question since they’d talked to Jenny Mitchell. Everything he’d put together about Duley convinced him that someone else would have been involved. Sally Spedding again.
This is a man who did everything for a purpose
.

‘Duley was an actor,’ he said softly. ‘He needed an audience. That was the shape of the relationship from the start. He performed. He dazzled Jenny Mitchell. She admitted it. He
knew
so much. He’d
done
so much. That was the role he was playing. She lapped it up.’

‘An audience of one?’ Barber wasn’t convinced.

‘But that’s the whole point. For someone like Duley an audience of one was perfect. Why? Because it gave him sole control. For that period of time before she twigged what he was really like, what he was doing to her, she’d become a kind of mirror. Put yourself in his shoes. She’s beautiful. She’s a bit of a challenge because she’s married. And there she is taking your calls, and listening to you bang on about politics or whatever, and agreeing to secret little meetings, and then getting into bed with you. That’s perfect, isn’t it? That’s the world he created for her. That’s the spell he cast. It’s the same with every love affair. For a while you lose your bearings.’

‘And she did -’ Barber nodded. ‘- Big time.’

‘So you agree?’

‘Yes, I do. I think there are difficulties, but … yes.’

‘What difficulties?’

‘Jenny Mitchell says she didn’t like that bedsit of his. From what I saw of it, I’m not surprised. So where did they meet? Where did they get it on?’

‘Her mother’s place. Has to be. Her mother’s in Malta. She may have been there a while. Jenny would have a key. Perfect.’