This Way Out (10 page)

He wanted to ask for more time: it was too soon, he hadn't made a decision, there were so many things to be considered; not yet, not just yet. But he couldn't bring himself to beg.

‘Surprise, surprise. Fancy seeing you here, Derek! How are you?' The man's swarthy grin was replaced by a look of spurious concern, and a tone of voice to match: ‘And how's your wife?'

The pavements were crowded. It was Friday, market day, as warm and sunny as when they had first met, and half the population of west Suffolk seemed to have converged on the town. For the sake of public decency, Derek suppressed the retort he would have liked to make. ‘Get lost!' he said instead, through his teeth.

With one last burst of independent energy he elbowed the smaller man aside. Abandoning considerate behaviour – and why not, when his sense of morality was already half way down the drain? – he barged through the crowds of shoppers in the Butter Market, pushed past a stallholder's rails of spring dresses, dived into the County hotel, shouldered his way among the customers thronging the bar, and emerged from the back door into Tanner Street. A quick glance round confirmed that he had shaken Packer off.

He had parked his car on Angel Hill, two minutes'walk away. As soon as he reached it, he could have jumped in and driven off. He knew, when he thought about it later, that he ought to have done so. But what he did instead, without consciously considering what he was doing or why, was to take his time.

He removed his suit jacket, and folded it neatly before putting it beside his briefcase on the back seat. He wiped his forehead, acknowledging wryly – since he prided himself on being fit – that the beads of sweat were the result of anxiety rather than exertion. He settled in the driver's seat, clipped on his seat belt, and turned the ignition key. He was in process of adjusting the rear-view mirror to his complete satisfaction when Packer came sauntering up to the open window and bent to speak to him.

‘Stop playing silly buggers, Derek. I know where you live, and where your office is, and I can always follow your car. That's what I did when you went to your conference. That's what I did this morning.' He jerked his thumb. ‘Mine's the Toyota parked in the row behind.'

Derek turned his head.

‘Don't waste your time trying to identify it,' said Packer. ‘It isn't my personal car – I'm in the trade, remember? I can follow you for weeks if I have to, using a different one every time. So no more games of hide-and-seek, eh? You've got a problem, I've got a problem, and together we've come up with the perfect solution. The sooner we get the jobs done, the better.'

Compact as it was, Packer's body seemed to be blocking the sun. Derek suppressed a shiver. He despised himself for being influenced by the man, but there was someting about Packer's one-fanged tooth – its gleaming sharpness, the beaded line of spittle that linked it to his full lower lip – that held him mesmerized.

‘Switch off your engine,' said Packer.

Derek switched off his engine.

Packer walked round to the passenger door. Derek leaned across to unlock it, but having done so he made a final verbal attempt to break free. The idea had come to him in the early hours of the morning, and it was only by clutching it to him that he had at last managed to fall asleep.

‘The whole thing's off,' he announced, trying to deny Packer's ascendancy by keeping his eyes on the car parked immediately ahead. ‘And it's your own fault for going snooping round my place yesterday. You were noticed, and by more than one person. If a crime is committed' – he couldn't bring himself to say anything about his mother-in-law being murdered – ‘the police will start hunting for someone of your description right away. You blew it, you idiot.'

Packer was sitting sideways in the passenger seat, looking directly at Derek from very close quarters. His dark-browed face was smoothly shaven, and he had brought into the car with him a hint of masculine toilet water. He wore a natty blazer with two vents and crested gilt buttons, well-pressed grey flannel trousers, a fashionably striped shirt and a club tie. The combination was just a bit over the top, almost a caricature, and it made him seem charmingly untrustworthy; a rogue, but essentially a harmless one.

Derek knew better. And now that they were in such close proximity, it seemed to him that Packer exuded the latent strength of some half-tamed animal. Glancing at the small man's comparatively large hands, and at the unusually thick growth of hair that crawled from under his shirt cuffs and along the backs of his fingers, Derek felt a moment's revulsion on behalf of the magnificent young woman Packer had married. No wonder she had looked unhappy. God, if only he could escape the man's influence and go straight home to his own wife –

But if he did so, he'd be back to square one. And having come so far, mentally and emotionally, could he really bear to give up this opportunity to get rid of his mother-in-law? He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, trying to steady himself while conflicting wishes see-sawed in his mind.

‘I blew it, did I?' the man was saying in an interested voice. ‘How did that happen?' His tone changed: ‘Who saw me, and where?'

It had seemed such a good idea, at two a.m. Derek had reasoned that the fact that he hadn't met anyone on the field path didn't mean that no one had seen Packer earlier in the day. The man could well have been spotted without knowing it. He certainly couldn't disprove that he had been seen.
Got him
, Derek had thought.

But now, as he explained that two of his neighbours had noticed a short, dark, curly-haired stranger walking along the path at the far end of their gardens, he felt less sure. Packer continued his cross-examination.

‘Short, dark, and curly-haired, eh? Was that how you described me to them, when you asked them if they'd seen me?'

Derek scorned the trap. ‘Of course I didn't ask them! It was my neighbours who mentioned you to me, precisely because it's so unusual to see any stranger walking along the path. They both described you, wondering if I knew you – and of course I said I didn't. But you must realize that this makes the whole thing impossible.'

Packer was looking at him with what seemed like unqualified approval. ‘Well, well … I took you for an honest man, Derek – and here you are, lying with the best of us! That's good. I wouldn't work with you if you couldn't think on your feet. But –' His expression hardened as he jabbed his forefinger viciously into Derek's ribs, making him wince ‘– I won't work, either, with any man who's fool enough to underestimate me. If you want my help – and you do –
don't ever call me an idiot again
.'

Despite the fact that the window was half open, Derek felt a build-up of heat and tension inside the car. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘But you can't possibly be sure you weren't seen, either on the path or somewhere else in the village,' he argued. ‘How can we risk it?'

‘I'm sure,' said Packer, ‘because I didn't go anywhere near the path. I didn't need to. I used to be in the Army – and after spending four years of my life training infantrymen, I should know how to use an Ordnance Survey map. I've studied – and since dumped – a large-scale map showing every detail of your village, including the footpaths. It also named larger properties such as the Brickyard. I drove along the main street just once yesterday morning, so that I could get a quick look at your house. Then I parked the car down by the bridge on the road to Doddenham, and used binoculars to check the route of the lane and identify your back garden gate.'

‘You must have been seen while you were doing that,' insisted Derek. ‘It's a quiet road, and the traffic is local. Somebody would have noticed you.'

‘They did. Two cars, one butcher's van and a tractor crossed the bridge while I was there, and all the drivers gave me a glance. But shall I tell you what they saw? An old Ford Fiesta, with number plates that I've since changed; and a scruffy man hung about with binoculars and a camera, wearing a weatherproof jacket and a woolly hat. They saw a bird-watcher – satisfied?'

Derek was silenced. His head ached with conflict. Part of his brain was still trying to escape Packer, but another – perhaps the greater part – was beginning to respect the man's cunning.

‘Don't think I don't know you're trying to wriggle out of it,' went on Packer. ‘But I'm not forcing you to stay parked here, am I? You're a free agent. If you don't want to co-operate, you can say so and drive off.

‘But you could have done that ten minutes ago, couldn't you? I gave you the opportunity when you bolted. You didn't take it, though. You deliberately sat here and let me come to you. Why?
Because you know you need me
.'

Acknowledging it, Derek lowered his head and abandoned the conflict.

When Packer spoke again, he sounded almost benevolent. ‘You're a lucky man, Derek, d'you know that? I mean, to have met me.

‘True, it wouldn't have been difficult for you to find someone else who shared your problem. There must be an army of middle-aged people out there, seething with frustration and resentment because they're hog-tied by ancient dependants. Medical science has got a hell of a lot to answer for, in my opinion. Where's the sense in old people being kept alive at the expense of younger people's freedom?

‘All the same, your chances of finding a fellow-sufferer who had the guts to do something about it would have been pretty small. And even if you'd found somebody, the pair of you would almost certainly have botched it. An operation like this needs meticulous planning – and luckily for you I'm a professional.

‘I've already planned both phases of the operation. All you have to do is exactly what I tell you. Oh – and remember this: the Army taught me how to plan, and it also taught me how to be a bastard to anyone who doesn't give me one hundred per cent support. If you let me down, in any way, the rest of your life won't be worth living. Understood?'

The knot in Derek's stomach tightened. He sat rigid behind the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. The situation was unreal. He couldn't believe that he was actually there, in his own car, on the familiar open space of Angel Hill between the creeper-covered Georgian façade of the Angel hotel and the Great Gate of the former Abbey, with cars neatly parked all round him and an ice-cream van doing a sunny day's trade ten yards away, allowing this poisonous little man to talk him into committing murder.

Whatever Packer said, Derek knew that he couldn't do it.

It wasn't any longer a question of trying to wriggle out of the conspiracy. The conflict in his mind had resolved itself in Packer's favour. But the actual commission of murder was another matter, one that he'd already contemplated and dismissed.

‘I can't,' he said. ‘It's no good – I know I can't.'

‘Can't what? I'm not asking you to do anything, initially, except keep out of the way. Where's the problem?'

‘I'm talking about … the other end of the operation. I couldn't bring myself to kill anybody. I certainly couldn't touch that old man.'

‘You don't need to touch him,' said Packer, benevolent again. ‘I knew I couldn't rely on you for that, so I've made your job as simple as possible. Sidney's a diabetic, and he's going to slip into a coma one day when my wife and I are out and there's only an untrained minder with him. I'll explain the details when you need to know them. Basically – to set your mind at rest – all you'll have to do is switch his plastic beaker of orange juice for one laced with insulin. Easy. No problem.'

As far as he could recollect, Derek had never before in his life bitten his fingernails. He wouldn't have known how to go about it. Now, deprived of both willpower and initiative, he found himself instinctively trying to cram the nails of all four fingers of his right hand between his clenched teeth. He removed them long enough to say, ‘Yes, but –'

‘Look,' said Packer: ‘there's nothing
selfish
about what we're planning, is there? We're not doing this for our own benefit. Poor old Sidney's a burden to himself as well as to my wife. You said yourself how wretched he looks.

‘And as for your mother-in-law – she's already lived out her own life. It's not right that she should be battening on the two of you in her old age, when your wife is fighting against cancer. Any loving husband would put his wife first in those circumstances. Just remember that you're doing it for
her
sake.'

Packer got out of the car and went round to the driver's side.

‘I'm going for a walk,' he said, jerking his thumb towards the Abbey gardens that lay beyond the Great Gate. ‘Come on if you're coming.'

As he watched the man strut off, conspicuously dapper among the lunch-time ice-cream lickers, Derek was aware that he was being given one final chance of escape. All he had to do was to switch on the ignition and drive away.

But that would require an act of will that he no longer possessed. With a numbing sense of inevitability, he got out of his car, locked it and followed.

Five minutes later Derek was sitting on a bench in the Abbey gardens, with a note pad and pencil provided by Packer, making sketch plans of the interior of the Brickyard. Packer himself, at the other end of the bench, was engrossed in the financial pages of the
Daily Telegraph
.

Derek found it almost impossible to draw the lines straight. His hands were shaking, and they left dark smudges of sweat on the paper. But he concentrated fiercely on doing the job he had been given, leaving himself no room to think about its true purpose.

Operation Brickyard, as Packer had briefly referred to it, was planned to look like a burglary gone wrong. Derek was to give himself an alibi by going out for an evening with his wife. Packer would then break in, and take some of the Cartwright's valuables. At the subsequent investigation, the police would believe that Mrs Cartwright's mother had met her end because she had disturbed the intruder. There would, Packer said, be no reason for the police to look for any other motive; nor would there be any possibility of their tracing the burglary back to him. And Derek would of course be completely beyond suspicion.