The Lily-White Boys (6 page)

‘Age?'

‘Twenties, I'd say. I only had a quick look, because as soon as he saw me I drew back.'

‘
He saw you?
' Dawson leant forward urgently and his tea slopped in the saucer.

‘Goodness, Sergeant, you made me jump! Yes, he saw me. Does it matter?'

‘It might matter very much indeed.'

‘But I don't understand. I thought –'

‘Excuse me a minute. Are you absolutely certain that the man you saw was the driver of the vehicle?'

She stared at him in bewilderment. ‘I don't understand,' she said again.

‘You didn't actually see him get in or out of the van?'

‘No. But it was the middle of the night, for heaven's sake, and there was no one else around.'

‘Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, it is remotely possible that the driver had already left the vehicle and this man just happened to be standing beside it?'

‘I don't for a moment think –'

‘But it's
possible
?'

‘If you say so.'

‘You didn't see him lift the bonnet, or do anything to suggest he'd any connection with the van?'

‘Other than stand beside it in an otherwise deserted street, no.'

Dawson drew a deep breath. ‘Right. This man, whoever he was, saw you looking at him. How did he react?'

‘I really don't know. As I told you, I let the curtain fall. But a minute later I heard him walking off down the hill. I thought he'd gone in search of petrol.'

‘Did he seem worried when he saw you? Nervous at all?'

‘I don't think so. He just looked up, our eyes met, and for a moment we stared at each other. Then I moved back. Look, let's stop playing games, shall we? What's all this about?'

‘The man you saw, ma'am, might or might not have driven the van, but he certainly wasn't the owner.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because,' Dawson said heavily, ‘the owner and his twin brother were lying dead in the back of it.'

Monica put down her cup. ‘Oh no! How absolutely awful!'

‘So it seems likely,' Dawson continued, ‘that if the man you saw
was
the driver, he was also the murderer. And he knows that you saw him.'

There was a short silence. Then Monica said levelly, ‘So now what happens?'

‘For a start, we'll arrange protection. And it would help if you could move to a friend's house for a while, till things die down.'

‘But if he thought I was some kind of threat, wouldn't he have come after me already?'

‘He might just be waiting for the opportunity.'

She thought for a moment. ‘I see now why you were trying to cast doubt on his being the driver, but it won't wash, you know. It was a still night, and my window was open. I heard the car approach and stall. I heard him try to restart it. Later, I heard him walk away. If there'd been anyone else I'd have heard his footsteps too, and voices, because obviously they'd have spoken. So we really can't clutch at that straw.'

‘Pity.'

‘Yes, indeed. And protection's pretty pointless, too. He has only to look up the electoral register to track me down, and I lead a pretty high-profile life, as you doubtless know. Moving to someone else's house wouldn't help; I'd still have to appear in Court and come here every day. Just a minute.' Her voice sharpened. ‘You say the driver
and his twin
were in the back?'

‘Yes, ma'am. The White brothers, of Trafalgar Street.'

‘Oh
dear
! It suddenly occurred to me it might be.'

‘You know them?'

‘They've been up before me several times, usually for soccer violence. I'd hoped we'd reform them in time.'

‘It'll be in the records, but can you recall when they were last in Court?'

‘Not offhand. Earlier this year, I think.'

‘Doubtless there were other lads up with them, that they'd been fighting with?'

‘Yes, half a dozen or more.'

‘The same ones every time, or did they vary?'

‘The Steeple Bayliss fans were always the same.'

Dawson grunted. Rivalry between the two towns dated back to Shillingham's superseding SB as the county town at the end of the last century.

Monica said frowningly, ‘You think they could be responsible?'

‘At this stage, ma'am, anyone could.'

‘But the season's finished, hasn't it?'

‘A week ago, yes. As it happens, the last match was an away one at Steeple Bayliss.'

‘But surely any animosity of that type would be immediate? They'd hardly wait a week and then come over.'

‘Unless something more serious had occurred, and it developed into a full-blown vendetta. The age of the man you described puts him in the right bracket.'

‘In which case he won't be hanging round here, he'll have gone back to Steeple Bayliss.' Which was twenty-seven miles away, a good forty-five minutes' drive.

‘All the same, it'll do no harm to be careful. I expect the DCI will put a policewoman in your house.'

‘I hardly think that's necessary. In an emergency I can do as much as a policewoman. What I would appreciate, though, is someone keeping an eye on the house. If anyone tried to break in, it would be very upsetting for my mother.'

‘I'm sure that can be arranged. Now, ma'am, if you'd be good enough to read through the statement DC Cummings has written out, perhaps you could sign it.'

Minutes later the policemen were shown out. Monica sat staring at the closed door, her normal, orderly life suddenly upside down. As a magistrate, she had long accepted that she could be the target of someone's spite – resentment over a sentence or even a misconstrued comment in Court. But the thought that she might be able to identify a murderer, and that he knew it, was distinctly unsettling. If only, she thought uselessly, she'd settled down earlier that night, not bothered to get out of bed, slept through the whole thing.

With a sigh she reached for the latest pile of catalogues.

The post-mortem was held first thing the next morning. It was a part of his job that Webb had never become resigned to, and at this early hour he was finding it particularly trying. Broodingly he surveyed the circle of faces round the table: Steve Cummings, already green about the gills, Bob Dawson, Dick Hodges, Penrose, Smithers, each of them held in sickly fascination by the grisly task in hand.

Since even the Trubshaws had been unable to say with certainty which twin was which, Webb had resorted to fingerprints – fortunately on record – to establish that it was Gary White who had been stabbed.

During the last hour his clothing had been removed and examined closely, item by item, before being bagged for despatch to the laboratory. As expected, the tear in the green sweatshirt corresponded to the angle of the chest wound. Now, the high-powered lamps above the slab spotlit the naked young body as, ignoring the constantly flashing camera, Stapleton recorded his progress into the suspended microphone.

Slowly and with painstaking thoroughness the examination proceeded, the heat from the lamps and the pungent smell of disinfectant adding to the malaise of the onlookers.

They learned that the partially digested food appeared to have been in the stomach about four hours, which suggested death had occurred around 11.0 p.m. It had been caused by a single thrust of a short, serrated blade. No surprise there. The exact dimensions of the blade and the lethal path it had followed, Webb allowed to pass over his head. Such details would be on his desk in due course.

The hands of the clock circumnavigated its face and had started round it a second time before the body was removed and an identical one laid in its place: identical in all respects but one – there was no stab wound. In fact there were no external marks whatever on this second boy, a fact unusual enough in the circumstances to arouse curiosity. The performance started once more: intrusive incisions into the firm flesh, the removal and weighing of organs, the steady, expressionless voice speaking into the microphone.

Another hour and a half had passed before Stapleton announced it as his opinion that the deceased had died from vagal inhibition.

Webb stared at him in disbelief, his normal tact overwhelmed by frustration. ‘You mean he stopped breathing? Oh, come on, doctor! That's how we all die!'

Stapleton fixed him with a cold eye over the top of his mask and continued as if he hadn't spoken. ‘The malfunction appears to have been caused by trauma.'

‘What kind of trauma?'

The pathologist raised thin shoulders. ‘Shock? Fear?'

‘You're saying he was frightened to death?' This time Webb strove to keep his voice neutral. But really! A healthy young thug, not averse to the odd punch-up and having led anything but a sheltered life, to have died from
fright
, like a dippy old spinster who finds a man in her bedroom?

‘There is no defect in any of the organs, nor, as I expect to have confirmed when the specimens are analysed, is poison indicated. Digestion had progressed to the same degree as that of the first body, leading to the assumption that they died within minutes of each other.' He paused and cleared his throat raspingly. ‘Sometimes, I understand, an abnormal affinity exists between twins; if he saw his brother killed, it's possible the trauma he suffered could have resulted in his own death.'

No one spoke for a minute. Then Stapleton pushed the microphone aside. ‘So there you have it, Chief Inspector. That's the best I can do for you.'

Webb nodded his thanks and pushed his way through the swing doors into the blessedly cool tiled corridor. It was a brief respite, for outside the hot sun awaited him, glinting on the pathologist's sleekly polished car and burnishing the gravel to diamond-like brilliance. But it was a natural life-giving warmth, unlike the harsh white lights inside which illuminated death.

He paused, savouring his return to the living world, and drew a restorative breath. To his left lay the hospital grounds, spreading lawns, colourful borders and clusters of trees now in full leaf. On the terrace at the back of the building, dressing-gowned patients relaxed in the sunshine and in the distance a uniformed nurse was encouraging two others along one of the paths.

On Webb's right was the high wall which separated the hospital from Carrington Street Police Station. With a start he remembered the scheduled press conference and hastily checked his watch. He'd just about make it. Balance restored, he walked briskly down the drive and turned into the next gateway.

‘Monica?'

‘Hello, Justin.' She nodded at her secretary, and the girl picked up the pile of signed letters and quietly left the room. ‘I thought you were away for a few days.'

‘I am, but I just rang home and Eloise told me the news.'

‘A bit shattering, isn't it?'

‘Exchanging glances with a murderer? You could call it that. And what's this about refusing to move out of the house? You really must be guided by the police.'

‘But, Justin, if he wants to track me down, hiding in someone else's house won't stop him. I still have to go to Court and run this place; I refuse to have my whole life disrupted.'

‘Better than losing it, I'd have thought.'

She suppressed a shiver. ‘
Touché
; but I'm not really being foolhardy; the police are watching both the house and the store, and they follow me everywhere. I'm as safe as I can be in the circumstances.'

‘How good a look did you get at him?'

‘Fairly good; he was directly under the lamp.'

‘You hadn't seen him before? In Court, for instance?'

‘Not that I remember. Why?'

‘I wondered if dumping the bodies on your doorstep was deliberate.'

‘No, I'm sure not. The engine was stuttering before it reached the house and he tried to restart it. The fact that I knew the twins was pure chance.'

‘I hope you're right; it's quite bad enough as it is. Look, why don't you move in with us for a few days?'

‘No, really. It's sweet of you, but I'm all right. Anyway, they'll probably nab him before long. There can't be that many criminal redheads on the loose.'

‘Ever heard of hair dye?' he asked drily.

But, as he'd anticipated, he'd been unable to change her mind. Monica's adherence to her own ideas – her stubbornness, in fact – was a quality he'd had to accept, since it was one he shared. They'd clashed more than once over the years, but their underlying affection for each other was undiminished.

As he replaced the phone he was aware that the call had done nothing to still his unease. Had he been her husband rather than her brother-in-law, he might have stood more chance of influencing her – though he doubted it. An independent lady, Monica. George would have his hands full, if and when they married.

He walked across the hotel bedroom and stared out of the window at the busy street below. Monica's sudden vulnerability had brought home to him how fond he was of her, and for the first time in years he thought back to a time when they'd been even closer.

They'd met when he was just down from university and she studying to go into her father's business. Against the façade of the building opposite he conjured up a picture of her as she was then, a small, attractive girl with fair curls and laughing eyes. Yet even at that tender age she'd known where she was going, and he'd recognized a strength of purpose which matched his own. There was an immediate empathy between them; he'd taken her to the theatre and for long, candlelit dinners, over which they confided their ambitions for the future. Looking back, he realized that he'd been on the verge of falling in love with her. But, calling at her home one evening, he'd met Eloise – beautiful, spoilt Eloise, who at that time was engaged to Harry Marlow.