The Price of Failure (16 page)

As one of the television reporters said: ‘The daughter of one of the richest men in the country and a relation of the Queen is kidnapped by the same mob who raped that other girl silly and he tells us to play it with violets–stupid bastard!'

*   *   *

‘I don't understand,' Gloria said. ‘How can people be so foul?'

‘God knows,' Carr muttered.

‘But you must have some idea. You deal with them all the time.'

‘The villains we handle are angels compared to this mob.'

‘The police will find her in time, won't they?'

‘They didn't find Victoria Arkwright.'

‘But Angelique's almost a royal.'

He was about to say that in this context social position offered no advantage, but cut the words. Gloria would be far from alone in believing that because of her royal connections, Angelique Lumley must escape the appalling brutality to which Victoria Arkwright had been subjected. But both royal and commoner bled if pricked.

They had rigged a mobile warning system between downstairs and the nursery upstairs and the speaker began to broadcast sounds that were not immediately identifiable. ‘He sounds as if he's choking,' she said, as she stood. She hurried out of the room.

He stared into space. He had not given the blackmailer any information that could in any way have assisted this second kidnapping, he could not have provided his superiors with information that would have enabled them to prevent it, yet from the moment the news had broken, he had experienced a self-hatred even more bitter than any felt before …

She returned. ‘Just gurgling in his sleep.' As she sat, she smiled self-consciously. ‘I suppose it'll take time not to panic fifty times a day. It's just that after we've been through so much…' She was silent for a moment, then said: ‘When I was upstairs and looking down at him and realizing how extraordinary it was that he was there, I began to think of the poor girl. It's agony for her, but it can't be any easier mentally for her parents – perhaps it's even worse in one terrible way because she knows what's happening, they don't and must imagine the very worst. How do people begin to cope with that sort of ghastly situation?'

‘If one has to do something, one just does it.'

She looked at him in some surprise. ‘But surely circumstances can be so terrible that it all becomes too much?'

‘No one's ever found the limits of suffering.'

‘That's an odd thing to say. You sound as if … Was it that awful for you all the time I was in hospital?'

‘Let's drop the subject.'

‘I'm sorry.' She was not quite certain for what she was apologizing.

*   *   *

‘They should be hanged,' Freda said.

‘It's like tiger soup,' Wyatt replied. ‘First you've got to catch 'em.'

‘And when they're caught, what'll happen? They'll be given a few years in jail and that'll be all and they'll be let out to do it all again. You tell me where's the justice in that? What's the use of the likes of them to the world?'

He said nothing.

‘Speak to anyone and they say that sort of people should be hung. So why aren't they?'

‘Ask the politicians, not me.'

‘They're supposed to do what we want.'

‘You've got to be joking. With them, it's kiss the babies before the election, up yours after it.'

‘I was talking about it to Hetty in the supermarket. She says, give her the chance and she'll pull up the rope herself.'

‘They didn't pull a rope, they opened up a trapdoor.'

‘What's it matter? If there were more like her and me, there wouldn't be these awful crimes.'

‘But there'd be a lot more hen-pecked husbands.'

‘You hen-pecked? You're more like a fattened capon.'

‘Steady on.'

She giggled. ‘I forgot that they don't have their necessaries.'

They were silent for a while, then she said: ‘Hetty was telling me that she saw an advert in the local paper for exactly the house they want. She went back to the estate agent and asked if their place had increased in value by much. He told her that if anything, it had gone down. And when she said what I'd told her, that the manager of Mike's building society had given him a second mortgage because prices had gone up, the estate agent said that if the manager did all his business like that, the society would very soon be bust.' She yawned. ‘I'm tired. I'm going to bed.'

‘There's that programme on the telly at ten-thirty.'

‘That's all right. You stay down and watch it.'

She left the room. He checked the time. Twenty past ten. He stared across the room. Only the Lumley family knew how savagely they were suffering, but he could appreciate a little of their pain because he had talked to women who had been raped and to parents whose children were missing and he had seen the agony in their eyes. He hated the men of violence every bit as keenly as did Freda, but he was too much of a realist to believe that capital punishment would return. Those in power had for too long been beguiled by the siren songs of the liberals who could command public attention and who did not have to live near the real world where crime caused untold suffering. A kidnapping always faced the police with the need to make an impossible choice. The family wanted the victim back at the first possible moment, the police wanted time to plan, to follow up every clue however insignificant, to stretch the kidnappers' nerves to the point where they might make a mistake. Yet time had not saved Victoria. How could the parents of Angelique meet the advice of the police not to pay the ransom immediately it was demanded when they must realize that not to do so must place her at risk of suffering similar appalling degradations to those that Victoria had? Could any parent hesitate and agree to follow the police's advice?… Grant had said that his DCS was projecting the possibility that a policeman was working with the blackmailing mob. Some senior officers were ignorant bastards, incapable of realizing that no policeman could ever begin to consider working with such scum, whatever his reason for doing so … Mike's contact had overheard two loudmouths mention MacClearey, presumably because of a proposed kidnapping that for whatever reason had not taken place, which meant that if only contact could have been made with them, vital information regarding the identities of the kidnappers might have been eased out of them – one way or another. Odd they should have been so voluble when the kidnapping of Victoria had shown the mob to be really tightly run, so that one would have expected them to keep their mouths shut in public places … His mind began to drift as he closed his eyes. Another odd thing was the way in which Mike's house had increased in value when it seemed every other one in Everden hadn't … He opened his eyes, sat upright, and silently cursed himself because into his mind had swept a shocking possibility. And it was no good his trying to excuse himself on the grounds that it was his job to be suspicious, since only a moment before he'd been criticizing Grant's DCS for disloyal suspicions. The next thing would be, he'd start wondering who Freda entertained when he was at the station …

He stood, turned off the television at the plug, left the room. He checked that the front door was locked, the windows were secured, the back door was locked. He went upstairs. The bedroom was in darkness, so he began to edge his way round the end of the bed, able to judge the route exactly because of the many times he'd returned in the middle of the night.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘I only turned the light off a moment ago.' She switched on the wall light above her side of the double bed. ‘Was it a good programme?'

‘How's that?'

‘Was the programme worth staying up for?'

‘I didn't watch it.' He reached under the pillows for his pyjamas.

‘Fell asleep, I suppose.'

‘I was thinking and kind of forgot.' He began to undress. ‘Remember you were going to see Gloria one day, but couldn't because something turned up and so you nipped round to their place later on and asked Mike to take the fruit and he said to phone Gloria and have a word with her – when you told me, you mentioned he'd had a Caller Display unit installed, didn't you?'

‘It was the first I'd seen.'

‘And you mentioned another bit of equipment which you wondered what it was for?'

‘Did I?'

‘You can't remember?'

She shook her head.

He climbed into bed. She usually read before sleeping, he never did. ‘You can switch the light off.'

‘Aren't you going to kiss me goodnight?'

He kissed her, with deep affection and complete lack of passion.

She switched off the light. He thought about his retirement. A cruise to celebrate it? He knew what her reaction would be to any such suggestion. Spend that much money on themselves for just a few days?… Images of ships, sea, and conch shells began to drift through his mind.

‘I've just remembered,' she said.

‘I was just falling asleep.'

‘Sorry, but you did ask and I've been trying hard to think back. There was another little black box by the side of the telephone and it had just a yellow button on it.'

The description was too vague for him to be certain, yet he'd little doubt that what she'd seen had been an alert unit, supplied by the bureau. Carr had not requested the bureau's help through official channels as he would have done had he been receiving anonymous calls that were connected with some case he was handling and which needed to be traced, so why had the two units been installed? Those ugly, disloyal suspicions returned to make certain sleep did not come quickly.

23

Wyatt despised himself for his suspicions, but they would not disappear. He reached across the desk for the phone, withdrew his hand. He stood, walked over to the window and stared across the street at the leafless sweet chestnut trees that ringed the vicarage garden on the opposite side. Mike might have had cause to ask for an alert unit and forgotten to log his request. There might well be something special about his house or the area that was responsible for an increase in value that was not universal. And, above all, what conceivable motive could there be to cause him to act so completely out of character? Honesty compelled Wyatt to admit the answer to that last question. In hospital, Gloria had become so depressed that there had been fears for the safety of her unborn child and of herself. Carr had been convinced – rightly as it turned out – that if only she could be moved to a nursing home, she would recover from the depression. He had been desperate to find the money to move her.

Wyatt returned to the desk, sat, lifted the receiver, dialled the Malicious Calls bureau and when the connection was made, gave the reason for his call.

‘That's right. We installed the two units last month.'

‘For what reason?'

‘Why d'you think? Because they were requested.'

‘Sure. But what reason for the request was given?'

‘Hang on.'

Wyatt drummed on the desk with his fingers. This call had to be arousing the other's curiosity. Pray God that such curiosity didn't spill out and fuel anyone else's suspicions …

‘Detective Constable Carr said he'd been receiving certain calls and needed to know who was making them. The installation was OK'd by his superior.'

‘Who was that?'

‘Detective Inspector Hoskin. What's the problem? The right hand doesn't know where the left hand is, let alone what it's doing?'

‘Something like that.'

After replacing the receiver, he continued to drum on the desk. Mike might have had a genuine reason for the request, Hoskin might have OK'd it, no one remembered to log the facts. Whether that were so was very easily determined – ask the DI. But to do that would be to expose Mike to an open suspicion of guilt … Wyatt realized he was allowing friendship to blind him to the fact that if Mike had sold himself, he might well have information that would identify the kidnappers and therefore the possibility that he would suffer the trauma of being unjustly suspected could be of no consequence whatsoever.

He left the station and drove up to the High Street and then halfway down Gower Street to the new Sainsbury's, on top of which was an open car park. From there, he walked back to the High Street and into an estate agent whose trade was mainly in the low to middle price bracket.

The receptionist showed him into an office in which worked a woman, younger than he, smartly presented and professionally brisk. She asked him how she could help. He explained.

‘I think I need to know the exact area if I'm to be reasonably accurate.'

‘Watts Road,' he answered reluctantly, as if even to name the road would identify Carr.

She thought for a moment. ‘I seem to remember…' She swivelled her chair round and brought out a box file from a cabinet. She opened the file, checked through the papers inside, brought out two pages clipped together. She skimmed through the pages. ‘I thought so,' she said, not without a trace of satisfaction. ‘Three years ago, we handled a house in Chepstowe Lane, which is immediately behind Watts Road, and sold it for forty-one thousand. It came back on the market in May at sixty thousand, even though we advised the owner that in the current market, that was an unrealistic price. There were a few inquiries, but no offers, and as the owner's job had moved up north and he wanted his family up there, but they couldn't be until he sold, he agreed to bring the price down. The house finally found a buyer at forty-eight thousand.'

‘So it's unlikely that someone who has to know about property values would accept that a house in Watts Road had increased its value by more than three thousand pounds in the recent past?'

‘Very unlikely.'

He thanked her for her help, left. He had to accept that he was faced by an irony. The negation of his suspicions would clear Mike, yet the proof of them might point the way to evidence that would identify the kidnappers.