The Old Wine Shades (38 page)

Tilda put her hand on his shoulder, ran it down his arm and found his hand. ‘If you can’t see squeeze my hand.’ He did, hard.

She heard a shout and looked toward the house. A figure moved on the patio and down the steps. He seemed in no hurry walking down the wide lawns. He was whistling.

Timmy heard him even at this distance. Timmy heard everything. It was hard, hearing everything.

The dog grabbed Tilda’s sock with his teeth and pulled. At the same time the boy grabbed her hand and yanked her.

The three of them took off deeper into the woods. At first, Tilda thought maybe they could go to her house. But when she looked toward the wide lawn through the trees, she could see he was moving a little faster and there wouldn’t be time.

She made it to the big oak and said, ‘You can climb, can’t you?’

Timmy (who’d never climbed a tree in his life) got hold of her hand, squeezed it hard, yes.

Tilda blessed this tree she was climbing and blessed herself for knowing it so well she could climb it without seeing it properly. Well, she’d climbed it in the dark, hadn’t she? She knew how high she could go and the best branch to sit on. Another branch and another. She looked down; the boy was coming. He was coming up quickly, like a monkey. But she guessed being followed by someone this dangerous could turn anybody into a monkey.

Another branch, another branch, and she stopped. The boy caught up, almost completely out of breath. She motioned for him to sit on the branch just below her.

What about the dog. Mungo? He had started up barking again and for a moment she was afraid he was at the bottom of their tree. But no, he’d gone somewhere else.

The man had come into the woods. He was calling the boy. His name was Timmy. Tilda had forgotten his name. Now, the man was whistling for the dog Mungo.

Mungo sounded farther away than he had a minute ago. The man had stopped right beneath their tree, but now walked off, in the direction of the bark, which grew a little fainter still. Tilda blessed the dog; he was leading the man away from this tree.

She calculated it was almost five minutes since he’d followed the dog’s barking. They might be able to get down from the tree and get home through the woods if the dog had led the man off in a whole different direction. She put a foot on Timmy’s branch and whispered for him to go down. He scrambled off, lowering himself to another branch.

Squinting her eyes did no good, they were too cloudy. They felt like rain. But she’d be able to separate a moving figure from the rest of the woods, and as she set her foot on each new branch, she could tell there was no one moving around. When they reached the ground, she heard Mungo’s bark coming closer. She grabbed onto Timmy and whispered to him to follow her.

Timmy didn’t move. Mungo’s barking was getting closer, sounded almost what she’d call hysterical (if her aunt had been doing it).

Tilda pulled on the boy, but he stood fast.

Then she knew he was waiting for Mungo. He wouldn’t budge without the dog.

In a few seconds, here was Mungo bursting through the trees, probably in one last attempt to get them out of this place.

Of course, it was too late, for here he came. The tall figure stood over them sounding as pleased as if he’d found some secret hoard of treasure. Tilda found Timmy’s hand, and Mungo just stopped.

‘Well, that was fun, kids.’

Funny, but he sounded friendly, not at all dangerous.

That was how, Tilda bet, the most dangerous ones sounded.

50

Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Copley-Sutton was still at reception and musing over the delights of Upper Sloane Street, then turning her mind to improvements sorely needed at Lark Rise Special School.

Suddenly the door opened and a man, a stranger, walked in and up to the desk.

He showed her identification. New Scotland
Yard?
What on earth . . . ?

‘Superintendent Richard Jury. Are you Mrs Copley-Sutton?’
 

Hand smoothing hair again, she answered, ‘Yes. I’m the head. May I help you?’

He showed her the local paper, the item and picture of Rosa Paston. ‘Do you know this woman?’

Again, here was this dead woman being brought up. She frowned, took the paper to look at the photo more closely, but still couldn’t place her. ‘No, I’ve never seen her.’

‘Is there anyone else who might have?’

It was then Mr. Purdy appeared. ‘Madam, something’s bad, something’s wrong—’

‘Mr. Purdy, can’t you see I’m busy here? This is the police.’ About time, Mr. Purdy thought. ‘You remember that woman come for Timmy last year?’

Hermione Copley-Sutton knew, she had suspected at the time, that day last year
—
knew
this would come back to haunt her. She worked her mouth in nervous silence, delaying. ‘Let me think, now . . .’

‘We believe she was interested in one of the children here. One of the boys,’ said Jury.

Mrs. Copley-Sutton frowned. There was no reason not to tell the truth, was there? She hadn’t committed any crime. ‘But she looked so utterly
different
then. Yes, you’re quite right—she came here to collect one of the boys. I believe she was his aunt . . . ?’ She believed nothing of the sort. There had been a donation to the school. She was wearing part of it, the Sonia Rykiel dress, purchased at one of those shops on Upper Sloane Street and still smart after a year. That was the thing about really good clothes, they simply didn’t wear out their welcome.

‘What was the boy’s name?’

‘Oh. Timmy. Timmy Radcliffe.’

‘She took Timmy out, did she?’

‘Why, yes. He was gone most of the day I think.’

‘Excuse me, madam, but I was lookin’ out t’window. Timmy and that dog, you recall that dog—’

Timmy had liked that dog. She said this, and the policeman seemed to stiffen.

‘What dog?’

‘Same one as was here before. Timmy went with him.’

‘Where are they?’

Mr. Purdy shook his head. ‘All I know is, Timmy was playing with that dog’—he pointed toward the back of the building—’and next I looked, they was gone.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Bout twenty minutes, I’d guess.’

Such a short time. Jury was furious, more with himself for spending those twenty or so minutes in the pub than at her for allowing her charges to be checked out like coats.

In another moment, knowing words would simply waste time, he thanked her and walked out. He got into the car, slammed the door and let the engine idle. Where would he take the lad? Winterhaus? London? Anywhere. Anywhere he damned well wanted to.

While he maneuvered the car along the drive, the mobile phone Dryer had given him in one hand together with the scrap of paper with the numbers of the station and the house Dryer was going to. He tried the station. Dryer was back. Jury told him what he’d found.

‘Buggered off to London, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Dryer.

Jury said he was going to Winterhaus first.

‘When I get done here with some work . . . ring me if you find them at that house.’

Jury said he would and flipped the phone shut.

It took another twenty minutes to drive to Winterhaus.

The empty house filled Jury with a kind of dread. It seemed for a moment bent with the sadness of recent vacancy, as if it had seen its occupants leave for the last time.

When he’d seen no car in front of the house, he assumed that Harry must have gone to London. Or had he been here and gone? Just now?

He went out to the patio and looked down the lawn. No sign of Tilda. He walked to the Wendy house. Nor here. Jury was looking, fruitlessly, he knew, for some telltale sign of their having stopped here. Why he wasted minutes doing this, he didn’t know.

Harry, he was sure, would include Tilda as part of his cleanup, for Tilda might have seen him, might even have been in the house when he and Rosa Paston had been here. And Tilda, unlike Timmy, could talk up a storm.

What little girl?

That had been the only fault line Jury had seen in Harry Johnson’s defenses—if he believed there was even a small
chance
that Tilda had seen him, well . . .

He thumbed through his small notebook, found Brenda Hastings’s number, called. He listened to the telephone ring in the empty house. Then he called Surrey police again and asked Dryer if someone there could check with Brenda Hastings to see if Tilda was home.

Jury climbed into the car once more, drove fast down the drive and headed for London.

51

Three hours later, Harry came to the door of his Belgravia house and smiled upon seeing Jury. ‘Richard! Or should I say ‘Superintendent,’ as we appear to be at odds these days?’

Jury forced a smile. ‘Harry.’

‘Come in, come in.’

Did the son of a bitch have to be so expansive? Jury walked into the drawing room and sat down in one of the armchairs. ‘We finally tracked down the lad, the one masquerading as Rosa Paston’s nephew
_r
Timmy Radcliffe.’

‘Oh?’

‘So did you, Harry.’

‘So did I what?’

‘Track him down.’

Harry looked puzzled. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about the Lark Rise Special School, the boy you took away from there just a few hours ago.’

As if light had honestly dawned, Harry’s eyes glittered. ‘What boy?’

It echoed so closely Harry’s earlier question.
What story?,
that Jury could hardly sit there, outwardly calm, inwardly seething. ‘You know what your trouble is, Harry?’

‘No, but I bet you’re going to tell me.’ Harry grinned. There was just enough of the sly child in it to turn the smile to a grin. ‘Care for a drink?’ He rose and went to the cabinet where he kept the liquor.

Jury sighed. ‘No, I don’t want a drink, Harry. Where are Tim and Tilda?’

Harry turned from the bottle and glass. ‘Tilda? Who the devil is Tilda? Are you going to hold me responsible for every missing child in Surrey?’

Jury looked at him. ‘I didn’t say child; I didn’t say missing; I didn’t say Surrey.’

‘Wow!’
Harry whirled dround in mock wonder. ‘That was one of your trick questions-that police try out on suspects! Please, Richard. If this Tilda is mentioned in the same breath as Timmy, she’s clearly all three.’

Harry’s logic was, as usual, both flagrant and flawless. Damn. It was hard to think anyone who was as quick as he was could at the same time pretend to the extent that he could. Or maybe it was all imagination or madness.

Harry went on: ‘I’m disappointed in you to think I’d fall for something like that. Sure you won’t have that drink?’ He held up his own finger or two of whiskey in a squat tumbler.

‘Yes, I’m sure. Mind if I have a look round?’

‘My
house?
Don’t be absurd; of course I mind.’ Harry lowered himself into the deep cushions of an armchair.

‘I can get a warrant.’

‘To search the house? I don’t think so, otherwise you’d have come with one.’

‘What have you got to hide?’

‘It has nothing to do with hiding. It has a lot to do with my civil liberties.’

‘Hell, yes. We certainly want to protect those. Two kids aged eight and nine—what about their rights?’ Jury knew this was stupid talk. You didn’t argue with the Harry Johnsons of this world. You didn’t lock horns with sociopaths. You either walked in and took what you wanted or you didn’t go in at all. There were some expert safecrackers who believed that, too.

‘You know, I recalled something you said about Mungo in the pub. Something to the effect that he’d ‘always been like that.’ Had always hated your cat. It was a comment no one but an animal’s owner would make. I should have seen that.’ Jury shook his head.

Mungo could not go down into the basement. The door was locked and bolted. So he lay down outside the door and thought about the situation.

They couldn’t yell for help because their mouths were pulled shut by that tape. They couldn’t use their hands, either, as they were tied together behind their backs.

And here they were, down there, with the Spotter actually sitting in the living room, sitting almost
over
them, talking.

Life just wasn’t fair.

This was not something Mungo had just discovered.

According to Chief Inspector Dryer, there had been no report to Surrey police about a missing person—-or persons—and dog. That’s what really gave the police a chuckle, one of the things that would keep anyone from believing there’d been a kidnapping. ‘You kept a lot of plates in the air, didn’t you, Harry? I must say the juggling was first rate.’

Harry drank his whiskey. ‘No.’

‘Oh, come on, Harry. You’re not going to tell me that none of this happened? None of that story you told me over those evenings in the Old Wine Shades?’

Harry looked as if he were truly considering this story. ‘Well, some of it must have happened, I expect, since a woman was indeed murdered in that house, but none of it has anything to do with me.’ Harry flashed Jury a smile.