Rotten Apples (30 page)

There was nothing to see, and yet there was still the elusive smell of burning that had clung about her ever since her dream. Then she thought she understood. Rob must have set the house on fire and come to check that she was deeply enough asleep to die of suffocation before she woke and called for help.

Devoutly thankful that she had not betrayed her wakefulness, she thought suddenly of Serena and ran into her bathroom to wet a towel. Holding it around her face, she went quietly out into the passage, turning on the light outside her bedroom. There was no sign of any smoke, let alone any flames. Pulling the towel away from her nose, she sniffed again, and then saw that Tom's study door was open.

Running silently in her bare feet along the passage, she looked in. It was empty and there was no fire. Determined to find out what Rob had done so that she could stop it, she turned on the light. There was nothing in the room that seemed at all out of order, and she could not smell anything either.

Beginning to think that she must have imagined everything except Rob's flight, Willow went downstairs. There, the smell of burning was slightly stronger, and she went first to the kitchen. It looked in its usual pristine state. There was nothing poking out from under the lids of the Aga's hotplates and the oven doors were firmly closed. She checked them even so, and found them all empty. The microwave oven was switched off and, as usual, Mrs Rusham had removed its plug from the socket, as she had done with the coffee grinder, the blender, the toaster and all the other bits and pieces of machinery that were ranged at the back of one of the long worktops.

Following the faint smell that held such horror for her, Willow went on into the drawing room. There, too, everything looked as it should. But the burning smell was stronger.

She ran her hands over all the electric switch plates, all the lamps and even the telephone, but none of them were hot—or even warm. Then she turned on the lights and saw, at last, where the smell had been coming from. There was paper smouldering in the fireplace. She leaned against the wall, panting. She felt a fool, and she let the damp towel drop on the parquet floor.

It must have been Rob, she thought, and went to kneel before the fireplace, poking at the mass of blackened paper with the tongs. Most of it disintegrated into ash, but there were some sheets that were only blackened around the edges. Manoeuvring the tongs with difficulty, she pulled the papers on to the tiled hearth and spread them out Each one was covered with the same big, sloppy writing, which she had never seen before.

Testing the paper with her unbandaged wrist to check that it was cold enough, she picked up one piece and read.

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mum, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

Willow castigated herself bitterly for the fear that had kept her pinned to the mattress when Rob had come. Probably all he had wanted was comfort from the only person whom he had told about his mother's letter.

‘Oh, God! What ought I to do now?' she said aloud, thinking of all the things that Rob might be doing to himself. ‘When am I going to learn that people's emotions aren't dangerous? It's Tom all over again: all that need, which frightens the life out of me and makes me shut myself off.'

Checking the front door a few minutes later, she found it was closed. Rob had taken her keys from the pewter plate. She was relieved to realise that at least he intended to come back and she could not decide whether it would be hysterical of her to wake his aunt or irresponsible not to.

Eventually she did go to Serena's room and explained simply that she had woken to hear the front door closing and found that Rob had gone, taking the keys.

‘But why?' said Serena, pushing the tousled hair out of her eyes. She turned to look at the small clock by the bed. ‘It's two-thirty in the morning.'

‘Perhaps he just couldn't sleep and went for a run or something. It's possible.'

‘But you don't think that, do you? You think he's gone off to set fire to some building.' Serena sounded almost hysterical.

Knowing how irrational anyone could be when suddenly woken out of a nightmare, Willow only shrugged and shook her head.

‘Well, I don't know what we can do now,' said Serena, rubbing her eyes with both hands. ‘I'm hardly going to ring the bloody police and send them after him, and there's no point our trying to find out where he's gone.'

‘I don't know what we can do either,' said Willow, sounding as tired and defeated as she felt, ‘but I thought you ought to know he's up and about. Perhaps he's gone back to your sister's house for something. Look, I'll let you go back to sleep, but if there's anything you want me to do, tell me.'

Serena frowned. ‘I don't understand what's been going on. If he wanted to go to Fiona's for something he could have told me. Do you know something I don't?'

‘No,' said Willow, lying out of a determination not to break her promise to Rob. Then she thought of another possible meaning of the half-burned note, and added, ‘Except that he was burning this in the fireplace downstairs.'

Serena read it and then looked up at Willow, her face quite white between the straggling dark hair. Before either of them could say anything, she flung back the duvet.

‘I'm going round there.'

‘Shall I ring Harness?'

‘Certainly not. I can cope with Rob. If he…I don't believe it for a minute, but if there is anything… Well, he needs help.'

‘Shall I come with you?'

‘No, I'll manage. Thank you for waking me.'

Serena started to pull up her nightdress and Willow backed away. Later, lying in bed with the light on, she felt horribly torn between wanting to believe that Serena could deal with her nephew and the thought that she was being ludicrously irresponsible in not warning Stephen Harness of what might happen.

Eventually exhaustion took the decision out of her hands, sending her to sleep with the light still blazing.

She did not wake until nine the following morning, when she opened her eyes to see Mrs Rusham standing at the foot of the bed with a tray in her hands.

‘You were very tired,' she said with a faint smile. ‘I thought you might like to have breakfast in bed.'

Willow ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, which felt stale and dry. ‘Thank you,' she said, and then remembered the events of the night. ‘Oh, have you seen Rob this morning?'

‘Yes.' Mrs Rusham looked puzzled. ‘I gave him his breakfast at seven-thirty as usual and he left in time for school, just before Ms Fydgett went off to chambers.'

‘How did he seem?'

‘Tired and not very happy.'

‘Poor boy,' said Willow, deeply thankful that Serena had managed to bring him back.

‘Yes, indeed,' said Mrs Rusham, laying the tray across Willow's knees. ‘Call me if there's anything else you need, won't you?'

‘Yes, thank you. Oh, did Ms Fydgett leave any message for me?'

‘No. She just said that she would see you at dinner.'

When the housekeeper had gone, Willow quickly drank the orange juice she had provided and then picked up the cup of frothing cappuccino. Lying back against the pillows, she tried to decide what she ought to do next. Before anything occurred to her, the telephone rang.

‘Hello?'

‘Willow, is that you?'

‘Yes. Jack,' she said as she recognised the superintendent's voice. ‘What's happened?'

‘I'm not sure quite how to put this,' he began and then waited.

‘Directly. Whatever it is.' The only thing that would really have mattered was bad news of Tom, and Willow knew that the hospital would have told her anything like that long before they bothered with his colleagues.

‘The CPS are going to drop the case against the young men we arrested for the shooting.'

‘What? They can't. I thought you said it was cut and dried.'

There was a silence before Willow let the cold anger take over her remaining doubts.

‘You've cocked it up, haven't you? What didn't you tell me? You had the weapon. You had the fingerprints. What?'

‘The CPS felt that there wasn't a realistic prospect of conviction because a jury might believe the defence.'

‘Which was?'

‘That they had found the gun abandoned on a skip outside the estate where they all live,' he said reluctantly.

‘Why didn't you believe it?' asked Willow.

‘Because it's a ludicrous story on the face of it.' There was a pause, which she did not even try to help him fill. ‘We weren't to know at the time that there's a witness who saw them do it—or says she did.'

‘Oh, shit!'

‘My words exactly.'

‘Who found the witness? Surely it's not the CPS's job to truffle about for that sort of thing.'

‘No. She happened to have reported what she'd seen to another station. It took a while to filter through to us, but when it did…we had to pass it on to the CPS. You must see that, Will. We are doing the scrotes for possession of an unlicensed weapon and for class A drugs. Don't worry about it, they will go down; but it'll be for a lot less than they would have got.'

‘You don't have to sound so pleading,' she said impatiently. ‘I told you once that revenge isn't one of my things… Still less is the desire to have anyone punished for a crime they didn't commit.'

‘We won't stop looking for proof, you know. I'm pretty sure they are the ones, although I don't know how they squared the witness. But we'll get them in the end.'

‘I'm sure you will. Thanks for letting me know.'

She replaced the receiver and the telephone rang again almost at once.

‘Yes?' she said, sounding breathless.

‘I hope I haven't rung at an inconvenient moment. It's Brian Gaskarth here. Those names you wanted checked against the police computer…'

‘Yes,' said Willow. ‘That's remarkably quick. I'm most impressed.'

‘The only one with a record is Daniel Hallten. Breaking and entering in the late seventies. He did a couple of years in Wandsworth.'

‘Did he though? I don't suppose you've any information on the offences of the men who shared his cell?'

‘Sorry. No can do.'

‘Never mind,' said Willow, who had been optimistically hoping to hear that the electrician had been banged up with an arsonist ‘You've been very helpful. Send me a bill.'

‘Sure. And don't hesitate to call on me again.'

‘I won't Goodbye, Mr Gaskarth.'

Willow slowly ate her croissant and decided what to do next With vivid memories of Tom's past distress when she had risked confronting violent suspects, she felt that she had to involve Harness before she did anything else. When she had wiped the buttery crumbs off her fingers she telephoned his office, only to be told that he was very busy.

‘Can I take a message?' said the young officer who had answered her call.

‘No, I don't think so,' Willow said, reluctant to make a fool of herself—and therefore Tom—in front of someone who might not feel constrained from publicising it by loyalty to him. ‘Except just that I rang and I'll try him again later.'

‘Very well. Has he got your number?'

‘Yes.'

Putting aside the breakfast tray, she got out of bed and bathed, trying out first one plan and then another. Eventually, she decided that she would have to find out at least whether Hallten had an alibi for the night of the fire. She rationalised away Tom's possible objections by telling herself that, as a self-employed electrician with large tax debts, Hallten was bound to be away from home on a job during working hours. Calling on his wife, who the tax files had told her had no paid work, to ask where he was on the evening before the fire would hardly constitute wild recklessness.

Built of the same red brick as Len Scoffer's house, the Halltens' also had a bay window on the ground floor and two flat ones above it A small garden, about four foot deep at the most, separated the house from the pavement. It was a lot less tidy than the Scoffers'.

In fact the whole house was less well maintained, but to Willow's eyes at least it was more attractive. The windows were the original softwood sashes and, although the white paint was old and peeling, there were no signs of rot. The door was the original, too, or one very like it, made of creampainted wood with two narrow, engraved glass panels set into it.

Willow pressed the bell. No one came to the door. Stepping back so that she could peer in through the net-curtained windows, she could not make out any signs of life. She tried the bell again.

‘All right, all right. I'm coming,' called a plaintive female voice.

There was a pause during which Willow noticed a fish-eye lens in the wooden part of the door, then she heard the sound of keys being turned and bolts being undone. The door opened to reveal a pretty young woman with untidy brown hair and a harassed expression. She was wearing a loose flowered cotton dress, and she carried a naked baby on her hip.

‘I am sorry,' said Willow at once. ‘I thought that the bell hadn't worked the first time. Am I disturbing you horribly?'

‘I was just changing her. Can I help? Are you looking for Dan? He's out on a job.'

‘Don't let me hold you up,' said Willow, looking anxiously at the baby's powdered bottom. She remembered the script she had invented on her journey south of the river.

‘I had hoped to see your husband, but perhaps I could have a word with you?' She took her driving licence out of her handbag and held it up. ‘My name's Willow King. I am a civil servant.'

‘I'm not sure,' said the woman, not moving. ‘Oh, no! Tammy! Couldn't you wait?'

Willow looked at her and saw a damp stain spreading between the baby's plump legs over the pink and blue flowered skirt. The legs waggled suddenly as though in pleasure and the baby smiled at Willow, revealing a bright friendliness. She could net help responding to it with a smile of her own.