Orchestrated Death (34 page)

‘That’s why she suddenly started pursuing poor old Simon!’

‘He was her only hope. She had to move fast, she hadn’t time to start from scratch, and the only other man she knew well was
already married.’

‘Martin Cutts.’

‘He was probably more of a friend to her, for all his faults,’ Slider said with distaste. ‘When she found it was no use, she
turned to him for comfort. She was beginning to get very frightened. She said to him, “I’m so afraid”.’

‘Yes, you told me,’ Joanna said quietly.

‘She was right to be. Already the order had gone out. The vet – Hildyard – knew Ronnie Brenner. Ronnie hangs out at Banbury
racecourse, and that isn’t far from Stourton. If we check, I think we’ll find Hildyard was a regular there. We may even find
he’s the official racecourse vet. Ronnie has no previous – they’d never use anyone with a criminal record -but he looks shady
enough, the type who’d do a job for cash without asking questions. Ronnie said his contact had a posh voice. And Mrs Gostyn
mentioned his voice, too.’

‘Who’s Ronnie Brenner?’

He hadn’t told her that part yet, but he shook the question away – no time now. ‘Hildyard must have met Anne-Marie before
Christmas – in London, I suppose. That was when he stole her diary, so he knew her movements, and knew she had a free period
in January when no-one would miss her. Ronnie found the empty flat for him and watched it to see when there was no-one going
in or out on a regular
basis. Then Hildyard arranged to meet Anne-Marie at the pub that evening. I don’t know how, but I imagine it was a prearranged
signal. Something to do with her car – a note under the windscreen or something. She’d been resigned to her fate, but now
suddenly she took fright. I suppose she guessed something was up, and now it was upon her she realised she didn’t want to
die.’

‘Yes,’ Joanna whispered. She was very pale.

‘She ran back to try to get her friends to come with her, thinking that if she turned up at the pub with a group, he’d have
to call it off. It would look like something she couldn’t have helped, to have a bunch of friends tagging along. But of course,
when it came to it, she found she hadn’t any friends. She had to go alone.’

Joanna could see that he had forgotten that she was one of the ‘friends’ in question. She felt a little sick now, and kept
her lips tightly closed. He was looking stretched and exhausted, but he went on.

‘He met her in the car park, well muffled up, wearing a racing man’s brown trilby – a hat like Lord Oaksey wears on the television.
They didn’t see Paul Ringham sitting in his car with his lights off, waiting for his wife. They left together in her car,
with Anne-Marie driving. Perhaps she hoped then that she’d been mistaken. She’d known him all her life -maybe she persuaded
herself that he really just wanted to talk.

He finished his drink at a gulp and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his eyes. ‘It all fits. But I could never prove it.
No proof at all. And anyway, the case is closed – that’s official.’

‘Wouldn’t they reopen it, if you told them what you’ve just told me?’

‘No. I’ve no evidence. Besides, they aren’t interested in Hildyard. They want the men at the top, and they don’t want anything
to disturb the setup until they’re ready. Going after Hildyard would probably lead to them closing down the whole network
and starting up again somewhere else. Anne-Marie simply isn’t important enough. Oh God, what a world it is. What a bloody
awful world.’

He rubbed and rubbed at his face, as if he might rub away his thoughts. There was more here, she could see, than
Anne-Marie. This was the culmination of a long, long story of disappointment and disillusion, frustration and personal conflict.
She put up her hands carefully to stop him rubbing, afraid he might hurt himself, and his hands closed like steel traps around
hers, making her gasp with fear and pain.

‘Hold on to me,’ he said, staring at her fiercely. She could feel the unendurable tension through the contact of their hands.
‘Hold on to me. I need you. Oh God.’

‘You’ve got me,’ she said. But she was afraid. She had never been this close to someone so near the breaking point, and she
didn’t know what to do. He was so overwound he might snap at any moment.

Instinct took over. He slid forward out of the chair, still holding her hands, and pushed her down onto the carpet. Then he
made love to her, not even waiting to take off his clothes, merely undoing and parting them sufficiently for the act. He was
not rough with her – he was even kind, but in an impersonal way which came from his character, a kindness which was ingrained
in him and nothing to do with her. But she took him, accepted his need, and forgave him for being -as she knew he was – unaware
of her as a person just then. She loved him, and knew that it was a kind of love which had made him turn to her to exercise
the healing frenzy. All the same it was the beginning of sadness. When it was over he fell against her exhausted, and began
to cry, and she held him while he said over and over, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I love you.’ But she knew it was not to her that he was apologising.

When she had gone to work, leaving him reluctantly, he got into his car and drove slowly around the streets. He couldn’t rest.
The idea of going home to Ruislip, of talking to ordinary people who didn’t know what had happened, nauseated him. He couldn’t
have endured to explain anything to anyone. His mind threshed at the problem; and somehow the other problem, of Irene and
Joanna, had become tangled up in it, so that it was both emotional and intellectual, and he felt he couldn’t resolve the one
without the other.

Perhaps if he could get Ronnie Brenner definitely to identify Hildyard as the man who had paid him to find the flat, they
would let him take up the vet quietly and nail the murder to him without mentioning the organisation at all. It would be easy
to impute some other motive to him, without mentioning the Family. If only he could do that, perhaps he would be able to go
and live with Joanna, and then everything would be all right.

He must get a statement out of Ronnie straight away. He’d take him in to the station now, and then discuss some way of getting
a tape recording of Hildyard’s voice. He drove back to Cathnor Road and left the car parked outside The Crown and Sceptre
where it was hidden amongst the customers’ cars. He walked back to the house, and it was still dark and quiet; the street
seemed deserted, too. He went quickly and quietly down the area steps and stood in the shadow under the railings a moment,
listening, but everything was still.

And then he saw that the door to Brenner’s flat was not completely closed. He stepped closer and saw the dented and splintered
wood of the frame where the jemmy had been inserted next to the Yale lock. His scalp began to crawl with a cold dread which
worked its way down his body and settled in his feet and legs, weighting them. He pushed the door with a knuckle and it swung
inwards into the dark hall, and the abused lock fell off with a thump and clatter that made him jump as though he had touched
a live wire. The opening looked like a gaping mouth, and he shivered as he stepped into it. His hair had risen on his scalp
so far that he could feel the cold air against the skin. Without realising it, he rose involuntarily on tiptoe as he started
down the narrow, black passage.

Half way along his foot struck something that was blocking his way – something large, heavy and soft, a bundle on the passage
floor. He drew out his pencil-torch and squatted down and shone it. Brenner’s face leapt out of the darkness at him, contused
and bulging, the eyes gleaming dully white like hard-boiled eggs stuffed into the sockets. The tip of a tongue, dark blue
like a chow’s, protruded from between clenched teeth, and there was a smear of blood at the corner of the mouth where he had
bitten it. Around
Brenner’s neck was a length of plastic-coated wire, the sort you might use in a garden to support climbers. It was drawn so
tight that it had disappeared into the concentric rings of swollen flesh to either side of it.

Slider heard himself whimper. He stood up, and his legs were trembling so much that he had to rest his hand against the wall
to support himself until he regained control.

After a moment he made himself squat down again and touch Brenner’s skin. He felt cold. The murderer must have entered as
soon as Slider left, he thought. He must have been watching. Was it Hildyard, or one of the organisation clearing up after
him? Well, it hardly mattered now, to him or to Brenner. The only chance of linking Hildyard to the case was now gone. Slider
stood up again, felt the blood leaving his head, and had to bend over for a moment until the ringing stopped. Then he walked
away quickly, out of the flat, up the area steps, and across the road to his car.

Outside the magic heat-ring of London a cold rain was falling, and in the wet darkness there was nothing to detract from his
sense of nightmare. He got lost twice, and another time had to stop and find a phone box with a directory to look up the address.
In between whiles, he drove fast. His reasoning mind had shut down, the circuits blown, leaving him in peace. The simple act
of driving gave him a spurious sense of achievement, as if he really were getting somewhere at last.

In the village there were only streetlights outside the pub and the post-office stores, and beyond that all was in darkness.
Country addresses in any case were always pretty esoteric – you had to be born there to know which was Church Lane, Back Lane,
London Road. He drove around, wandering down dark, narrow lanes where unbroken hedges reared at him from the oblivion beyond
the headlights, having to backtrack when he snubbed his nose against a dead end, and he found the place in the end completely
by chance.

Neats Cottage. Was that a joke? he wondered. It was a pleasant, long, low cottage in the local grey stone with a lichen-gilded
roof, typically Cotswold; but it had been horribly quaintified with lattice-paned windows, a front door with a bottle-glass
peephole, and olde-worlde ironwork. And one end of the cottage had been bastardised with a hideous redbrick, flat-roofed extension
with aluminium-framed windows. Slider presumed this must be the surgery.

The white garden gate gleamed preternaturally, and on it
was a notice painted in black letters on white with the name of the cottage and then simply ‘B. HILDYARD, MRCVS’. Surprisingly
restrained, he thought, for a man who had given himself away by unnecessary embroidery. The cottage appeared to be completely
dark, but as Slider walked down the garden path he saw that in fact one window in the residential end was lit, but glowing
only faintly behind thick red curtains. The man was still up. Well, no reason why not. There had been people in the pub, still.
It couldn’t be so very late.

Slider had no idea what he meant to do. He had come here simply on instinct, a very physical, unthinking instinct; and now,
faced with the overwhelming normality of the place, he could think of nothing to do but to go up to the door and knock on
it. The elaborate iron knocker did not seem to make much of a noise, and now he was closer he could hear music from within,
too muted to identify. Good thick doors and walls, he thought. Then a light went on, a shadow fell across the square glass
porthole, and it was flung abruptly wide. And there was the bogus vet, as Slider continued to think of him, towering over
him like the Demon King in a pantomime, backed by the light and hard to see.

There was a moment of silence during which Slider had time to appreciate the folly of his being here at all, as well as the
remarkable fact that he felt no fear. Indeed, he was aware of an insane desire to say something completely frivolous.

Then Hildyard said, ‘You’d better come in.’

He looked past Slider’s shoulder into the darkness, and then stepped back and to the side, blocking the way to the left, so
that as he stepped over the threshold Slider had no choice but to turn right. Light and music were ahead of him. He obeyed
the silent urging and entered a large and comfortable room. It was decorated in the chintz, brass and polished parquet tradition
– Irene would have loved it, he thought. Even so, it was warm, pleasantly lit by shaded lamps, and made welcoming by a good
log fire in the grate. Music issued from a stereo stack, turned low as for background. It was a classical symphony, Slider
recognised, but he didn’t know which one.

‘Brahms – Symphony Number One,’ Hildyard said,
following the direction of his eyes. ‘Do you like music? Or shall I turn it off?’

‘Please don’t,’ Slider said. His voice seemed to come out with an effort, as though he hadn’t used it for years.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ There was nothing in Hildyard’s voice or manner to suggest that this was anything but an ordinary social
visit. Slider sat in the chintz-covered wing-back by the fire. The dented cushions of its opposite number suggested the vet
had been sitting there. Doing what? Slider’s roving gaze saw no paper, book, nor even drink to hand. He had just been sitting
there, then, listening to the music. Waiting. For what?

Hildyard surveyed his visitor’s face for a long moment and then said, as if he had just come to a conclusion, ‘What will you
have to drink? Whisky? Gin? A beer? I was just going to have one myself.’

‘Thank you,’ Slider said absently. The warmth, the easy chair, the music were all acting on his aching exhaustion, lulling
him, soothing him. He didn’t notice that he had made no choice, and his eyes followed Hildyard almost drowsily as he crossed
to the table under the window and poured two stiff whiskies from an extremely cut-glass decanter into massive, heavy-bottomed
tumblers. There was something about the cut glass that went with the chintz and brass, Slider thought vaguely. It was what
Irene though of as Good Taste, and it struck him that it was as bogus as the ideal homes illustrated in the colour supplements
– instant decor, everything coordinated, the taste that money could buy. Image without substance, slick, ready-made. Like
Anne-Marie’s flat in Birmingham. That’s what’s wrong with me, he thought: I’ve swallowed the Modern World, and it’s made me
sick.