Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever (17 page)

Rosco was not surprised to see the car driven carefully down the lane. He was surprised it had taken them so long to come for him. He thought it was tactics. They would want to make him sweat.

Claire walked round the cottage through the knee-deep grass to find him.

“Mr. Rosco,” she said formally, “we’d like you to come with us to the police station to answer some questions.”

He stood, poised in the fading light in the shadow of the trees, a peg in the hand stretched above his head.

“Can you give me a few minutes,” he said, “ to wash and shave?” He did not know how long he would be away.

She nodded, and she and Berry waited in the car for him because there was nowhere in the small cottage they could wait without disturbing his privacy. When he came out to them, he was wearing a clean shirt and black cord trousers. They switched on the car headlights as soon as he was at the door, and they could see him quite clearly. He was empty-handed. There was no gun dropped surreptitiously into the undergrowth between the house and the lane. That had been done hours ago.

Back in Heanor Claire insisted on talking to Rosco herself. They sat in the bare, squalid interview room, lit by a bright neon strip light, and throughout the conversation she felt uneasy. Even when she should have been pleased by his answers, she felt she was making a mistake. But she was young and inexperienced and could not trust the instinct which told her he was not a liar.

“Why didn’t you tell us about your prison record?” she asked.

“It was something I wasn’t particularly proud of.” He had known it would come to this— the ugly interview room, the endless meaningless questions. All afternoon, with the saw and the axe, he had been trying to banish the memory of the last time.

“You must have known we’d find out,” the inspector said.

“Yes,” he said. He was looking down at the table. His face was brown, and she saw as his head bent that his hair was thinning and that the top of his head was brown, too. “ When the boy died, I panicked,” he said. “I thought it was an accident, and then all the questions started. It was like the last time. That was a terrible shock, too.”

“But you were responsible for the security guard’s death,” she said. “You did start the fire at the boat yard?”

“Oh, yes,” he said bitterly. “I started the fire.” He paused. “But I wasn’t responsible for young Franks’ death. I had nothing to do with that.”

“Why should I believe you now?”

He looked up at her, not expecting her to believe him, but wanting to explain. “I was happy,” he said. “There was no reason for me to spoil it.” Then he added, with his prisoner’s resignation and hopelessness: “I should have known it was all too good to last.”

She imagined the superintendent’s sneering and refused to accept that he was telling her the truth.

“Where did you get the money for the
Jessie Ellen
?”

“It was a loan,” he said, “ from a friend.”

“What was the name of this friend?”

He shook his head. “ I can’t tell you that.”

“Was this friend involved in the arson on the boat yard?” she asked with a sudden flash of inspiration.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. How could he be?”

“You could have been paid by someone else to set fire to the yard,” she said.

“No. It wasn’t like that.” He paused, then continued. “Look, I’ve been asked questions like these before. By coppers a lot harder than you. I’ve served my sentence. Now it’s my business.”

“No,” she said. “Now it’s my business. You’re a suspect in the investigation of a very serious case. And, as you said, now you’ve got more to lose. More than last time. This time there’s a girlfriend. And a daughter.”

He looked up sharply, and at first she thought he would deny it. Then pride and a possessive tenderness took over. She could imagine him showing snaps of Matilda to strangers.

“So you know about that?” he said.

She nodded.

“Leave them out of this,” he said. “Rose knew nothing.”

“She knows you’ve been to prison.”

“Yes,” he said. “She knows that. I’ve not lied to her.”

“She means a lot to you,” the inspector said.

“Yes,” he cried. “ She means a lot to me.”

“You’d do almost anything to keep her.”

“She’s not mine to keep.”

“Then you’d do almost anything to make her yours.”

The superintendent would laugh when he heard that on the tape, she thought. “My God, woman!” he’d say. “ You talk like a romantic novel.”

There was a silence, and then suddenly he was shouting. “ I didn’t kill the boy!”

A policeman outside the door looked in to see if Claire needed help. She shook her head briefly, and the constable went away.

“When did you leave prison?” she asked with a calm formality.

“You’ve got the records,” he said angrily. “ You know better than me.”

“Almost four years ago to the day,” she said. “What did you do?”

“I bought the boat in Bristol,” he said, “and I came home.”

“You bought the boat,” she said. “Just like that!”

“It took some time to find what I wanted,” he said, choosing to misunderstand the question. “And to sort out the loan from my friend.”

“How much time?”

He shrugged. “Six months.”

“Where did you stay during that six months?”

“With friends in Bristol. Different friends. I moved around a lot.”

“Did you report to a probation officer during that time?” He nodded. “I was on parole,” he said. “I wasn’t going to take any risks. I couldn’t see the point of it, but I did as I was told.”

“Where did you go?”

“To the office in White Heath, just outside Bristol. A friend from the prison lived on the estate there.”

“What was the name of your probation officer?” Claire Bingham held her breath, convinced for a moment that he would name Jane Pym. There were so many coincidences in this case that one more seemed inevitable. But Rosco shook his head, unaware of her tension.

“I can’t remember,” he said. “It was a man. Young. Straight out of college. I expect there’ll be records somewhere.”

“And when you left prison,” she asked, “did you go to stay with your mysterious friends immediately?”

“No,” he said. “Not straight away. They couldn’t put me up straight away. The welfare officer in the nick found me a place for a while. In a probation hostel. I wasn’t there for long. There was a fire, and they moved everyone out.”

Then there was the inevitable coincidence. Claire had discovered the link between Louis Rosco and Greg Franks which Wargan was so certain existed. She sat back in her chair and regarded the man with wonder and pity. It was as if he had convicted himself.

“Can you remember any of the other residents at the hostel?” she asked.

“No,” he said with indifference. “ They were mostly youngsters. I didn’t mix much.”

Again she was astounded by the folly of his confession. It was possible, of course, that he had no memory of meeting Greg Franks in the hostel, though the memory of the fire meant they must have been there at the same time. Alternatively, if he was the killer and the murder stemmed from the meeting four years before, perhaps he thought it wise to admit to staying there. If he was not aware that all the records had been lost in the fire, he would assume that the police would find out anyway. Most likely, she thought, looking at his brown, blank, ordinary face, he had been trapped by a coincidence the superintendent would never believe, and for a moment she felt ashamed of her part in it. She even considered letting him go back to the cottage, but she had her career to think of and decided it would be safer to keep him there. They would have to search the place before they allowed him back.

In Myrtle Cottage they were sitting round the table after a late supper when the car came to take Jane Pym to the police station. Rose had cleared most of the plates but had become distracted halfway through the task, and there were still empty wine bottles, glasses, a plate of cheese, a bowl of fruit. During the meal there was little conversation. Each person seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. They talked in occasional bursts about the weather, foreign travel, and with more commitment about seabirds. Roger reported Gwen Pullen’s theory that the petrel had come from an isolated colony on the Aleutian Islands and discussed ideas for raising money for an expedition during the following breeding season. It was as if murder, the wearing day’s interviews, had never taken place. They were tired and drained.

The first interruption to the evening came with George’s phone call to Molly. Rose answered it quickly, as if she were expecting the telephone to ring, then called Molly to the phone. When Molly returned to the table, the others looked at her eagerly, though they were too polite, too exhausted, to ask for news. They knew about George’s reputation and hoped for some miraculous end to their misery. They were like a group of ex-patriots trapped in some bleak and hostile country, waiting for information from the civilised world. George had escaped the tedious police questioning and the irritation of continuous shared company. They were a little jealous and thought he should be there to endure it with them.

“He’s not coming back tonight,” Molly said, and sensed their disappointment, “He said the traffic’s too heavy. It’s the bank holiday.”

“I’m sorry,” Roger Pym said languidly. “It would have been pleasant to have someone new to talk to.”

“Where will he stay?” Rose asked. She seemed obliged still to look after them all.

“There’s an hotel,” Molly said. “ It’s near the village where he was phoning from. I think it’s called Rashwood Hall. Do you know it, Duncan? It must be quite close to your home.”

Startled from thought of his own, surprised, it seemed, to be spoken to, James blinked and nodded.

Yes, he said. He had heard of it. He hoped George would be comfortable there.

“What will the inspector say about his not coming back?” Jane Pym asked. “She didn’t seem very positive when I asked when we could go home.” She was very tense, petulant. She would have liked to explain the importance of her work, to tell them it was vital she return, but the words would not come, and embarrassed, she shrank back into her seat. No one gave her an answer.

Later, when the meal was over and they could think of nothing more to say, the sound of the front doorbell came as a relief.

“Perhaps old George has made it back after all,” Roger Pym said. Then the others joined in with a desperate optimism. Perhaps the traffic had cleared. Perhaps George had heard the long-term weather forecast which predicted the tail end of hurricane Erin crossing the Atlantic with a series of heavy depressions. George liked seabirds more than any of them. He would not want to miss a good blow.

Only Jane Pym remained silent, as if she had a premonition of what was to follow. She watched Rose Pengelly leave the table to answer the door.

The sight of Sergeant Berry, quiet, apologetic but somehow intimidating in his calm, stopped the chatter. He said that Inspector Bingham was sorry to interrupt their evening, but she would be grateful if she could have a few words with Mrs. Pym. He had a car with him and would bring her back when the interview was over. It was only a routine matter, and they weren’t to worry at all.

Jane Pym stared at the sergeant, bewildered and unmoving. It was Roger who replied first. “I’ll come, too,” he said. “I’ll not have you bullying Jane. She’ll need someone with her.”

“No need for that,” Berry said; his voice was firm and gentle. “I’ll look after her for you.”

And before anyone else could protest, Jane walked towards the sergeant, as if in a trance, and was out of the room. They heard the front door slam and the car drive away. There was a silence.

Molly could sense then a general frustration. The remaining people were more awake, quite excited. Most of the gathering wished that Roger would leave the table. They were eager to discuss the implication of Jane’s summons, to indulge in the delight and relief of gossip, but it was hardly tactful to speculate that a woman might be a murderer while her husband was sitting in the same room.

Claire had asked to speak to the woman because she thought she might remember Rosco from the hostel and fill in the gaps from the records lost in the fire. But as the interview progressed, she became aware slowly that the woman had been drinking. At first she seemed quite calm and controlled. She showed little resentment at having been dragged from her supper table out into the night. She did seem to Claire to have aged since the interview in the morning. The lines on her forehead were more noticeable, her hair more lank and untidy. She was easier to intimidate.

Then the indications of drunkenness became more apparent. Listening to the inspector’s patient questions, Jane’s eyes glazed, and Claire had to repeat herself. She mumbled occasional replies. Some of her responses were slightly incoherent and irrational. There were bursts of aggression. Claire wondered then if she had been taking drugs rather than alcohol, but Jane was a respected probation officer, and at first the idea seemed impossible.

“You told me that you worked for a while at the probation hostel in Bristol,” the inspector said.

“Yes,” Jane said. “Just for a few months while the warden was on maternity leave.”

“Can you tell me when that was?”

There was a pause and a mumbled reply, so the inspector had to repeat the question.

“Four years ago, I think,” Jane said. Her head was spinning, and she was finding it impossible to plan what to say. “Yes, it was in the summer four years ago.”

“And you think you saw Greg Franks there?”

“I thought so,” Jane said. “ I was almost sure. You’d be able to check on his records. There must be a file somewhere, even if he wasn’t convicted.”

“We’ve been in touch with the hostel,” Claire said, “but apparently there was a fire, and all the records were lost. It makes things difficult.”

“Yes,” Jane said. She was staring vacantly in front of her. “ I remember the fire. It was just after I left. I’m sure the wardens have done everything they can to help the police.…” Her voice faded into incoherence.

“It’s a pity they’ve not been more effective,” Claire said. “ Though I suppose it’s not their responsibility. Neither of them was there four years ago. None of the field officers can remember Franks, either, though.”