Trial by Fire (22 page)

`Not much success, sir, in any direction. Apart from the committal, of course; you know about that. But I found out a bit on William Featherstone, our arsonist, sir.'

So did I, Bailey thought. Rather too much, really; can't afford to feel for a fire raiser. I know all about where he goes and what he chooses to buy and steal. He watched with surprise as Amanda produced a clumsy bracelet from a tidy handbag.

Ìn his spare time he hides in a shed in the garden, and he makes these things in the kitchen,'

she said gravely, as if revealing the crown jewels.

The bracelet lay on his desk like a gaudy and lumpish pebble: Bailey wanted to laugh. 'Do they know you have this?' he asked quietly.

She flushed, furious to be caught at a disadvantage so soon. She should have begun at the beginning and gone on to the end of her afternoon, giving her report the authority of chronology. 'Well, no they don't. I sort of picked it up.'

Ì think I'll return in at some stage,' said Bailey evenly. `Someone's treasure, isn't it?

Well, well, clever William,' putting the thing in his pocket, continuing. 'No jewellery in the Blundell house, by any chance? Was he helpful?

`Yes, ' she replied with sincerity this time, 'yes, he was. Very. We went through the place with a fine-tooth comb,' repeated like a parrot and, to forestall any further questions on that line, entered a rider that did not follow the question at all. 'Sir, there's something I must tell you.'

`Sit down, Amanda, please.'

So she told him with relish, keeping the spite out of her voice and her whole stance as she had learned to do as a child, wrapping it into a parcel of concern. 'I was puzzled, sir, very puzzled at the committal proceedings . . . I don't think you can have known about it . .

`Go on.'

`Well, sir, your wife, sir — sorry, girlfriend, Miss West, I mean, of the Crown Prosecution Service,' to prove she understood exactly Helen's dual importance. 'She brought Evelyn Blundell into the committal proceedings. They sat at the back and listened to the pathologist.'

`They what . . . Helen?' A remarkably satisfying jump.

`Yes, sir. I'm afraid so. Not from the beginning. I was just checking the public gallery halfway through when I saw them. Your . . . Miss West saw me; she grabbed Evelyn and they left together. I thought I'd better tell you.'

`Thank you,' he said dryly. 'No doubt there was some purpose in it. She works for Mr Redwood; I'm sure he approved.'

`He didn't know, sir. Not until I told him.'

You would, wouldn't you? Well done, Amanda and what are you hiding with this taking-the-wind-out-of-my-sails kind of exercise? Shrugging it away, pretending to do so. 'You're sure there's no jewellery in Blundell's house?'

Ònly what she left, sir.'

The revelations about Helen had the ring of truth, were in any event verifiable and therefore not the subject for lies, while the helpfulness of surly and difficult John Blundell had the tincture of dishonesty, but for the moment, Bailey was too dispirited to persist.

Ànd were the Featherstones co-operative?'

`No, sir, not very.'

Good, serves you right, but I'll remember the bit about the garden shed. If our William starts fires, he also stores paraffin. That will do, Amanda, you have played your upper hand with great effect; you deserve an Oscar.

Helen, why did you do it? How dared you interfere with such crass, such unbelievable insensitivity? He could not believe it, had to believe it: Amanda would never lie with such vulnerability. He had been aware for a little while now that she was in the habit of lying, but never where she could be caught. He wondered how much her impressive record owed to lying and to her delightful habit of always ducking the sort of awkward situation where careers were blighted.

The question of Helen dogged him more hour by hour, often minute by minute; an explosion of incredulity, not yet anger; an indignation of disappointment, still capable of being placated by reasonable explanation, but hardening into firm belief of the worst without scope for forgiveness each time he rang either her office or home to find her defiantly absent.

Who did she think she was? Frustrated detective, trying to fiddle with the jigsaw pieces to find a reaction? Mad scientist playing with poison on a younger life? He had gone home early to expiate the anger, bring forward the explanation, forced the same anger to new heights in the long hours of waiting.

The anger was overlain with appalling anxiety as he listened to the rain, pacing the modern room he privately hated, smoking cigarettes he felt inclined to grind into the carpet, too sick to eat or drink, apart from two furious whiskies consumed without effect. By now anxiety had the winning streak, a tyrannical fear, premonition of Helen's loved body broken by bus or train, victim of something or someone; some tentacle of this case reaching her in punishment for her wilful involvement. He could recall as vividly as the shape of his own hand feeling the same anxiety the last time she had been hurt and he had seen her as battered and bruised as he now imagined her, obscenely injured.

Half past eight o'clock: no phone call. No word from this woman of his who was punctilious in such courtesies. And then she knocked at the door. He pulled it open, expecting some bearer of bad news, finding her instead smiling, carrying a bag. Been shopping. Like a father finding a lost child, his first reaction was the sheer fury of relief. He wanted to shake or hit or shout at her, to establish the reality and let her know she had cost him about ten years of his life. Of course she had neither wanted nor needed that. And even when he had yelled at her, shortly after the slap, he shouted, 'What were you doing bringing a child into court to listen to her mother's death being rehashed? How could you do it?'

He witnessed her disbelief that he could ever imagine she had done such a thing, heard the reply that she had removed the girl, certainly, yes, but never conducted her there. He knew it was true, it still did not shift the anger. Anger remained with him like a leaden weight throughout the rest of her words. The slap and the guilt rendered him impotent to change his feelings; even when he saw how white and drawn she was, and he pretended to listen, the anger, like indigestible food, refused to shift.

`Listen to me, Geoffrey: I'm too tired to talk long. I'm sorry I slapped you, sorrier that you should think so badly of me, but listen: I took Evelyn out of court; she had sneaked in without anyone seeing. We had a chat afterwards. I saw William Featherstone recognize her; then I saw them together today. They're buddies, probably something more. He adores her, but I got the distinct impression that she was trying to push him under a train.'

Bailey did not interrupt this recitation to ask for details, and in the light of the living room it did indeed seem incredible enough to defy elaboration. 'Anyway, she ran off, and he pretended she'd never been there, some prearranged story in which he was well drilled, but then he let it out. He seemed to like me.' She laughed shakily. 'He also told me that both of them saw Mrs Blundell dead after having seen her perform live.

He was very distressed in the telling, acted up a bit. He's not with it, Geoffrey, this William, and he's got the hormones of a raging bull, brains seated in his underpants, and a weird gentleness with it. Don't you think it's probable he could have done something to Mrs B.? He'd do anything to protect Evie, I don't know from what, or keep her. Perhaps he's bedding her.'

It sounded to his ears like so much nonsense. 'She's only fourteen, Helen, for God's sake.'

`So what? They begin at twelve elsewhere; you know that as well as I. But not in Branston, where they're civilized by nice houses, is that it? Suppose he thought Mrs Blundell was on to him, they watched her, maybe she watched them. Suppose — '

`For Christ's sake, stop supposing, Helen. Will you let that bloody imagination of yours rest?

Go to bed. You've been sitting in a clapped-out train listening to the ramblings of a crazy boy, and you've constructed a whole scenario out of air. Who knows what he's read in the papers or imagined for himself?' Then in a gentler tone, 'You're whacked, Helen. Go to bed; I'll bring you a drink.'

She looked at him, defeated. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll stop thinking too. Like any policeman.'

And then, in the bathroom, Bailey saw Helen washing, half crying, grey and tired, fingerprint bruises on her upper arm, similar to the marks he had seen on countless prisoners arrested in struggles, the autograph of heavy, sometimes careless, needlessly painful hands.

Bailey was appalled. 'What's this, Helen? What the hell is this?'

`Nothing,' said Helen. 'Absolutely nothing. I told you William Featherstone was violent. You weren't listening.'

Òh Christ,' he said taking her limp figure into his arms. 'Oh, Christ almighty, Helen, I'm sorry, darling, I'm so dreadfully sorry. Tell me —

`That's quite all right, Superintendent.' She spoke brightly, her voice brittle with pride, eyes sparkling with quiescent tears. `Perfectly all right. No problem at all. I'm going to sleep now. You can do what you like.'

Christine Summerfield got up to tend her garden, intending it as therapy organized for a day off, but found it already tended, the same therapy last empty weekend having rendered it cleaner than a new pin. She got in her car and drove doggedly to Antony Sumner's deserted cottage, to which she held the only key at his request and despite the wailings of his parents, relatives, and colleagues, who suggested selling it, burning it, or ignoring it as if he were already dead. Christine Summerfield had cleaned it; that was therapy, too.

The place had never been so clean or she herself so bare of hope. She was sickened by her inadvertent discoveries, made while she was in search of the inevitable bills, which were not suspended during his imprisonment, and she was dismayed by her own resilience. She moved towards the cottage like an automaton, trying to think of him and resurrect her early belief that this was all a mistake and one day he would live there again, even live there with her; it was larger than her place.

But that early optimism had faded despite her persistent nurturing of it, turned brown and desiccated like the leaves in the garden, helpless in the temperature of her own cold realism. She had little faith in a system of justice that spewed so many of her clients into her lap, but was fair enough to realize the same system, clumsy but relatively incorrupt, got it right at least half of the time and was as necessary as breath. She knew very well how casualties were created by life itself, not by authorities, and was also aware that Antony, her lover, had been treated as fairly as most. It was nothing as simple as the system that begat her own tremor of doubt; it was Antony.

While tidying his study in search of the gas bill — this indescribable mess of a man was so hooked on the printed page that he could never dispose of a single sheet of paper —

she had found the beginnings of a novella, snapshots of his childhood, which made her weep, pictures of previous girlfriends, which made her peculiarly, possessively irritated, and a little bundle of fairly recent love letters from an unknown pupil, sadly signed in childish, educated script with the anonymous words, 'Yours Ever,' which made her furious. She knew they were recent because of references to local events, such as 'I saw you at the carnival last week, by the rose float; you looked very handsome'.

She knew, too, he would never have responded to this moony devotion, but he should have established through the handwriting who had written them, returned the first letter with an admonition and surely not accepted more. Encouraging students to make a habit of writing was one thing; keeping the results was another. Whether he hoarded from carelessness mattered not. Whatever would he do for flattery, such a precious gift to him, poor man, the same weakness leading him to dead Mrs Blundell and all of this betrayal?

Before the discovery of the letters, Christine had always respected Antony's integrity despite his mistakes, liked his enthusiasms despite his excesses, cherished his affections with all their past lack of discrimination, but on sight of those letters, the whole image of him began to slip, the respect fading by a dangerous degree, tinged by treacherous memories of his passion with its underlying violence.

Were all men thus, madness lurking in their veins, following their organs to disaster because of a kind word, blindly obedient to subliminal commands? She suspected they were, was very tired of the breed, angry with him for what he was.

An element of disgust began before the committal proceedings. Evidence had unfolded while more doubts formed like a mushroom cloud. Christine sat beneath it humbled to camp follower and only supporter, fighting back reluctant belief in what she heard, while there gathered behind her eyes a huge resentment. Not for what he had done to Mrs Blundell

— she could not in all honesty bring herself to care about that, although she wished she could

— but for what he had done to her. For better or worse, from poorer to poorer, she knew, whatever the outcome, she could not forgive him.

She had seen him in a new light while trying to shade it, viewed what she should never have seen, found him lacking, and wondered how she could ever again love him, and she was full of remorse for having come to doubt him. Even when she had never loved anyone half as much before, her mind had already moved to planning life without him, just as she was constantly advising her clients:

Think of yourself, dear, you must, you know, no one else will. The last rat leaves the sinking ship; I don't know how love goes, but when it's gone, it's gone. Not without a self-hatred so acute it left her breathless.

So this was duty, obdurate, labour-intensive duty to prove to herself she still cared; she owed him that much, at least. Thou shalt not be guilty, dearest Antony, before trial, but after that, my pet, I shall have to leave you. I cannot sacrifice my life to you, only part of it.

Tears hot on a flushed face, attacking this messy garden of his. Oh, why did he never do anything about it and why did he shatter my peace of mind? Look at this mess. He never looked after it, lived here three years and never raised spade or trowel. How could he?