Wolf to the Slaughter (12 page)

During the latter part of this explanation Kirkpatrick’s face had grown red and he fidgeted uneasily.

‘It can’t have been more than half-past seven, if that,’ Wexford said. He was wondering why Burden had gone to the window and was staring down, his expression amused. ‘Surely there was time for your artistic researches, especially as you’d missed your evening meal?’

The flush deepened. ‘I asked her if I could come in for a bit and then I said I’d take her out for a meal before the party. She had her ocelot coat on ready to go out, but she wouldn’t let me in. I suppose she’d just changed her mind.’

Burden turned from the window and when he spoke Wexford knew what he had been scrutinising. ‘How long have you had this car?’

‘Since last Monday. I sold my own and got this one from my firm.’

‘So Miss Margolis had never seen it before?’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

‘I think you do, Mr Kirkpatrick. I think Miss Margolis wouldn’t go out with you because she didn’t care to be seen about in such a conspicuous car.’ The shot had gone home. Again Wexford marvelled at Burden’s perspicacity. Kirkpatrick, who blushed easily at mild slights, had now grown white with anger and perhaps with mortification.

‘She was a woman of taste,’ Burden said, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised to hear she burst out laughing when she saw all your pink and mauve decorations.’

Apparently this was the salesman’s soft spot. Whether he was a connoisseur of modern painting or just a philanderer, there was no room in either image for this ridiculous vehicle. It was the scar of the branding iron, the yellow armband, the shameful card of identity.

‘What’s so funny about it?’ he said aggressively. ‘Who the hell did she think she was laughing at me?’ Indignation began to rob him of caution. ‘It doesn’t alter my personality, make me into a different man, just because I have to have a car with a slogan on it. I was good enough for her before, my money was good enough to spend on her . . .’ He had said too much, and his rage gave place to a sudden recollection of where he was and to whom he was speaking. ‘I mean, I’d given her a few samples in the past, I . . .’

‘For services rendered, no doubt?’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘You said she showed you her brother’s paintings without his knowledge. A kindly act, Mr Kirkpatrick. Worth a pot of nail varnish or some soap, I should have thought.’ Wexford smiled at him. ‘What did you do, borrow a more innocuous car?’

‘I tell you, we didn’t go anywhere. If we had, we could have gone in hers.’

‘Oh, no,’ Wexford said softly. ‘You couldn’t have used hers. The radiator was leaking. I suggest you got hold of a green car and used this to drive Miss Margolis into Stowerton.’

Still smarting from the derision his car had aroused, Kirkpatrick muttered, ‘I suppose someone saw me in Stowerton, did they? Cawthorne, was it? Come on, you may as well tell me who it was.’

‘Why Cawthorne?’

Kirkpatrick flushed patchily. ‘He lives in Stowerton,’ he said, stammering a little over the dentals and the sibilant. ‘He was giving that party.’

‘You were on your way to Scotland,’ Wexford said thoughtfully. ‘You must have made a detour to go through Stowerton.’ He got up ponderously and went over to the wall map. ‘Look, here’s the London Road and you’d have to go that way, or East into Kent, if you wanted to by-pass London. Either way, Stowerton was miles off your route.’

‘What the hell does it matter?’ Kirkpatrick burst out. ‘I had the whole evening to kill. There was nothing else to do. I didn’t want to land up in Scotland in the small hours. I should have thought the main thing was Ann wasn’t with me. My God, she wasn’t even in Stowerton, she didn’t go to that party!’

‘I know,’ Wexford said, returning to his chair. ‘Her brother knows and Mr Cawthorne knows, but how do you know? You never got back into Sussex till this morning. Now listen, an identification parade would clear the whole thing up. Do you object?’

Suddenly Kirkpatrick looked tired. It could have been mere physical exhaustion or that the strain of lying – and lying ineffectually – was telling badly on him. His good looks were particularly vulnerable to anxiety. They depended on a swagger in the tilt of his head, a laugh on his full mouth. Now there was sweat on his upper lip and the brown eyes, which were his most compelling feature, looked like those of a dog when someone has trodden on its tail.

‘I’d like to know what it’s in aid of,’ he said sullenly. ‘I’d like to know who saw me where and what I’m supposed to have been doing.’

‘I’ll tell you, Mr Kirkpatrick,’ said Wexford, drawing up his chair.

‘When am I going to get my carpet back?’ said Ruby Branch.

‘We’re not cleaners, you know. We don’t do an express service.’

She must be lamenting the days, Burden thought, when women wore veils as a matter of course, as often as not just to go out in the public street. He could remember one his grandmother had had on a toque, a thick, seemingly opaque curtain which when lowered was a perfect disguise for its wearer.

‘Pity we’re not in Morocco,’ he said, ‘you could put on your yashmak.’

Ruby gave him a sulky glance. She pulled down the brim of her hat until it almost covered her eyes and muffled her chin with a chiffon scarf.

‘I shall be a marked woman,’ she said. ‘I hope you lot realise that. Suppose I pick him out and he escapes? The jails can’t hold them these days. You’ve only got to look at the papers.’

‘You’ll have to take your chance on that,’ said Burden.

When they were in the car she said diffidently, ‘Mr Burden? You never told me whether you’re going to do anything about that other thing, that keeping a what-d’you-call-it house?’

‘That depends. We shall have to see.’

‘I’m putting myself out to help you.’

They drove in silence until they reached the outskirts of Kingsmarkham. Then Burden said, ‘Be honest with me, Ruby. What’s Matthews ever done for you except take your money and pretty well break up your marriage?’

The painted mouth trembled. There were callouses and the long grey indentations housework makes on the fingers that held the scarf to her lips. ‘We’ve been so much to each other, Mr Burden.’

‘That was a long time ago,’ he said gently. ‘You’ve got yourself to think of now.’ It was cruel what he had to say. Perhaps justice always is and he was used, if not to administering it, at least to leading people to its seat. Now, to find out what he wanted, he would lead Ruby away from it and cruelty would have to be his means. ‘You’re nearly ten years off your pension. How many of those women you work for would employ you if they knew what you’d been up to? They will know, Ruby. They read the papers.’

‘I don’t want to get George into trouble.’ It took him, as it had Wexford, a moment’s reflection before he remembered that George was Monkey’s Christian name. ‘I was crazy about him once. You see, I never had kids, never had what you’d call a real husband. Mr Branch was old enough to be my father.’ She paused and with a tiny lace handkerchief dabbed at the tear-stained space between scarf and hat brim. ‘George had been in prison. When I found him he seemed – well, so kind of happy to be with me.’ In spite of himself, Burden was moved. He could just recall old Branch, doddery and crotchety in advance of his years. ‘Four quid George had off me,’ she said unevenly, ‘and all the drink I’d got in the place and God knows how many good dinners, but he wouldn’t lie down beside me. It’s not nice, Mr Burden, when you’ve got memories and you can’t help . . .’

‘He’s not worth your loyalty. Come on now. Cheer up. Mr Wexford’ll think I’ve been giving you the third degree. You never heard that Geoff Smith call the girl Ann, did you? It was all made up to save Monkey.’

‘I reckon it was.’

‘That’s a good girl. Now then, did you search the room at all when you’d found the stain?’

‘I was too scared for that. Look, Mr Burden, I’ve been thinking and thinking about it. George was alone in there for hours and hours on the Thursday doing that letter while I was out at work. I think he must have found something they’d left behind them.’

‘I’ve been thinking, too, Ruby, and I think great minds think alike.’

When they got to the police station a dozen men were lined up in the yard. None was more than five feet nine and all had hair of shades between mid-brown and coal-black. Kirkpatrick stood fourth from the end on the left. Ruby came hesitantly across the concrete, cautious, absurd in her high heels and with her swathed face. Wexford, who had not heard her story, could hardly keep himself from smiling, but Burden watched her rather sadly. Her eyes flickered across the first three men on the left and came to rest for a brief moment on Kirkpatrick. She came closer and walked slowly down the line, occasionally turning to look over her shoulder. Then she turned back. Kirkpatrick looked afraid, his expression bewildered. Ruby stopped in front of him. A spark of recognition seemed to pass between them and it was as marked on his part as on hers. She moved on, lingering longest of all in front of the last man on the right.

‘Well?’ said Wexford just inside the door.

‘For a minute I thought it was the one on the end.’ Wexford sighed softly. ‘The one on the end’ was Police Constable Peach. ‘But then I knew I’d got it wrong. It must be the one with the red tie.’

Kirkpatrick.

‘Must be? Why must it be?’

Ruby said simply, ‘I know his face. I don’t know none of the others. His face is kind of familiar.’

‘Yes, yes, I daresay. My face ought to be familiar to you by this time, but I didn’t hire your knocking shop last Tuesday.’ Under the veil Ruby looked resentful. ‘What I want to know is, is he Geoff Smith?’

‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t know him if I saw him now. Ever since then I’ve been dead scared every time I’ve seen a dark man in the street. All I know is I saw that fellow with the red tie somewhere last week. May Be it was Tuesday. I don’t know. He knew me too. You saw that?’ She made a little whimpering, snivelling sound. Suddenly she was a little girl with an old face. ‘I want to go home,’ she said, darting a vicious glance at Burden. He smiled back at her philosophically. She was not the first person to make a confession to him and then regret it.

Kirkpatrick came back into Wexford’s office, but he did not sit down. Ruby’s failure to identify him had restored his confidence and for a moment Wexford thought that he was going to add further touches to the image he had tried to create of himself as a patron or connoisseur of the arts. He picked up the blue glass sculpture and fingered it knowingly while giving Wexford a sullen glance.

‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been very patient. You could see that woman didn’t know me.’

You knew
her
, Wexford thought. You were in Stowerton and although you were not at the party nor in her brother’s confidence, you knew Anita Margolis never went there.

Kirkpatrick was relaxed now, breathing easily. ‘I’m very tired and, as I say, I’ve been particularly patient and forthcoming. Not many men who’d just driven four hundred miles would be as accommodating as I’ve been.’ The foot-high chunk of glass was carefully replaced on the desk and he nodded as if he had just subjected it to expert evaluation. You poseur, thought Wexford. ‘What I want now is a good sleep and to be left in peace. So if there’s any more you want you’d better speak now.’

‘Or else hereafter for ever hold our peace? We don’t work that way, Mr Kirkpatrick.’

But Kirkpatrick hardly seemed to have heard. ‘In peace, as I say. I don’t want my family bothered or frightened. That woman not identifying me should settle the matter for good and all. I . . .’

You talk too much, Wexford thought.

 

 

 

‘The Vine had struck a Fibre; which about

If clings my being – let the Sufi flout;

Of my base metal may be filed a Key,

That shall unlock the Door he howls without.’

After the rain the town looked cleansed. The evening sun made the pavements gleam like sheet gold and a thin vapour rose from them. It was mild, warm even, and the air heavy with damp. Excitement made a hard knot in Drayton’s chest as he drove up the High Street in Cawthorne’s hire car and parked it in the alley. He wanted to fill his lungs with fresh air, not this cloying stuff that made him breathless.

Seeing her was a shock. He had fantasies about her in the intervening time and he had expected reality to disappoint. She was just a girl he fancied and would possess if he could. It had happened to him a dozen times before. Why then, although the shop was full of customers and pretty girls among them, were they all faceless, all so many zombies? The sensuality which had flooded into him last night outside the shop and had since been transmuted into a clinical tickling calculation, came back like a blow and held him, staring at her, while the doorbell rang in his ears.

Her eyes met his and she gave him the faint secret smile that was just a lifting of the corners of her mouth. He turned away and killed time playing with the paperback stand. The shop had an unpleasant smell, food stench that came perhaps from whatever they ate in those back regions, the sickliness of unwrapped sweets, dirt that filled up the corners where no one tried to reach. On the shelf above his head the china spaniel still carried his pot of dusty flowers. Nobody would ever buy him just as nobody would buy the ashtray and the jug which flanked him. What connoisseur of Wedgwood – what connoisseur of anything, come to that – would even enter this shop?

More and more customers kept coming in. The constant tinkling of the bell set Drayton’s nerves on edge. He spun the stand and the coloured covers flickered in a bright senseless kaleidoscope, a gun, a skull under a stetson, a girl who lay in blood and roses. His watch told him that he had been in the shop only two minutes.

Only one customer left now. Then a woman came in to buy a dress pattern. He heard Linda say softly, even scornfully, ‘Sorry, we’re closed.’ The woman began to argue. She had to have it that night, a matter of urgency. Drayton felt Linda’s shrug, caught a firm phrase of denial. Was it thus, with this cool dogged patience, that she habitually refused demands? The woman went out, muttering. The blind rattled down the window and he watched her turn the sign.