Written in Blood (39 page)

Her husband, having laid the brief communication from their daughter on the television set, was staring gloomily into a mirror over the fireplace.

‘What’s it a sign of when policemen start looking older?’

‘That their wives are extremely hungry.’

‘Is that a fact?’ He smiled at her in the glass, turned, made his way to the kitchen. ‘Did you get everything?’

‘Nearly. I bought fromage frais though, instead of double cream.’

Expecting a rebuke, she was surprised when he said, ‘Good. I won’t use butter either.’

‘Tom?’ He was wrapping a blue-and-white striped tablier around his middle and didn’t look at her. It barely met round the back. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on.’

‘What?’

‘Something’s happened.’

‘No.’

Barnaby set out his materials and
batterie de cuisine
. Copper bowl and pan. Whisk, kitchen scissors. Brown free-range eggs, smoked salmon, a day-old cob of French bread, pot of chives.

Best not to tell her. She would worry and fret and it wasn’t as if he was not already mending his ways. When the case was over he would go back to the doc. Get his progress monitored. Start taking proper care of himself. Maybe even do a spot of exercise.

‘Shall I wash the watercress?’

‘Pour me a drink first, Joycey.’

‘If you have it now you can’t have wine with your meal.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘She opened the fridge, which was half full of glasses. Tom preferred a cold container to cold wine, saying he never had the patience to wait for the latter to warm up sufficiently to release its scents and savours whereas, the other way, within seconds the wine was just right.

Joyce opened a bottle of ’91 Gran Vina Sol. Barnaby, scissoring open the salmon packet said, ‘If I can only have one glass you might at least fill it up.’

‘Any fuller and it’ll spill when you lift it.’

‘So I’ll lap. Which reminds me - where is our guzzly little scumbag?’

‘Tom!’ She put some bread in the toaster before turning on the cold tap and holding watercress in the clear stream. ‘You know you like him really.’

‘I do not “like him really”.’ He covered strips of fish with fromage frais. ‘I want him to pack his clobber in a red-spotted handkerchief, tie it on the end of a stick and sling his hook.’ Barnaby drank deeply. Only once but with great relish. ‘Ohh . . . wonderful. This is wonderful. Try some.’

‘Hang on.’ She patted the watercress dry before sipping at her drink. ‘Mmm . . . nice. But I preferred the other stuff. The one that smells of elderflowers.’

Barnaby whisked the eggs and tipped them into the pan saying, as he did so, ‘Watch the toast.’

When it was crisp and pale gold Joyce painted all the slices thinly with low-fat spread.

‘Aren’t you having butter?’ He tipped the salmon and chive snippings into the pan and agitated the wooden spoon, easing moist curls of scrambled egg from the sides and bottom of the pan.

Joyce said, ‘Seems a bit flaunty when you can’t.’

‘Don’t be silly. No point in both of us fading away.’

I can hack this calorie caper, decided Barnaby, sitting now at the table, his mouth full of peppery cress, creamy eggs and golden wine. It’s all a question of attitude. I’ve been looking at it from quite the wrong angle. Like a prisoner facing a life sentence. In fact the only meal you need to diet at is the one you’re eating. All the rest can be as fattening as you like. By the time he started on his huge, fat Comice pear and tiny shred of Dolcelatte he was feeling not merely resigned but almost content.

Joyce made some excellent Blue Mountain coffee and, after she had poured it out, stood behind her husband’s chair, slid her smooth, soft arms around his neck and laid her cheek against his.

Barnaby turned his head, showing pleasure, wamth, a faint surprise. They kissed at some length like dear, close friends who were in love. Which is what they were.

‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Good grief, Tom. Don’t make it sound as if there has to be an R in the month.’

What had brought it on? That rapid disclaimer against her concerned question? That lying disclaimer. For that something had occurred to make him aware of his own mortality she had no doubt. He would tell her eventually, when he thought the danger was past. He always did.

Joyce experienced a vivid recollection. Herself at nineteen. A first-year concert at the Guildhall. Afterwards, on the fringe of a milling crowd of students, teachers, proud parents and friends, a slim young copper, ill at ease and hopelessly out of place, clutching a bunch of flowers. Waiting with dogged patience for his turn to be noticed.

He was getting up now. Turning to take her in his arms. His eyes moved intently over her face, as if stamping every individual feature to memory. And asking a silent question. Joyce laughed and said, ‘If we were really imbued with the spirit of adventure we would fall to here and now on the kitchen table.’

‘Eh?’

‘I was reading this article on how to be sexually spontaneous. In the hairdresser’s.’

‘Who the hell wants to be sexually spontaneous in the hairdresser’s?’

‘Called “How To Keep Your Marriage Alive”.’

‘How to put your back out more like. No’ - they linked arms and made their way into the hall - ‘it’s the boring marital bed again I’m afraid, sweetheart.’

‘Dreary old missionary.’

‘You knew my faith when I proposed.’

After they had made love Joyce fell quickly asleep, her head on her husband’s breast, still cradled in his arms. Not wishing to disturb her he eased an extra pillow beneath his shoulders and half sat, half reclined, running over the events of the day, the previous day, the one before that. Searching his mind for connections and resonances, hidden meanings, false interpretations.

He did not dwell at any length on that evening’s debriefing, for it had been unprofitable to say the least. It produced only one new scrap of information and that from the outdoor team. In 1983 Beecham’s Removals had collected Gerald Hadleigh’s furniture and personal effects, neither from Kent nor London SW1, but from a storage depot in Staines.

This being the sum total on offer, Barnaby had then offered his notes on the interview with Mrs Lyddiard, plus his ideas on Hadleigh’s feminine
alter ego
, which had been received with a mixture of wary caution and polite incredulity. Indeed, as he described the psychological persona that he had so confidently constructed earlier in the day, he started to wonder himself if it was not so much imaginative as imaginary.

Eventually he slept, dozing and waking intermittently, disturbed by the wind howling through the trees and a branch tapping on the window. At one point, in that dark hinterland between sleeping and waking, he found himself walking down a narrow street of bulbous cobblestones illuminated sporadically by pools of ochre-coloured light. He was carrying something very heavy. His arms were stretched out parallel and this heavy object lay, a dead weight, across them. Not that it was dead in fact for there were shallow, panting sounds emanating from it.

He halted beneath an overhead iron bracket holding a funnel, from which the strangely coloured light was flowing, to take a closer look at his burden. It was a seal. Lumpen and graceless on land, its prickly grey-brown fur was dull and dry. The head hung loosely down. There was a strange mark - a ring of darker fur, like a collar or noose - about its neck. As he stood holding it, concerned and perplexed, it turned a pointed, doggy face and stared at him. The round eyes were also dull and covered with a gluey film. He realised, with a shock of horror, that it was dying.

He must find water. He started to walk as quickly as he was able. In his mind there was a picture, just around the bend of the street, of a river. He remembered the bridge, people fishing. He staggered along, knees buckling, sweat streaming from his face and hair. But, when he finally turned the corner, the river and bridge had disappeared. In its place was an open sandy plain on which strange animals roamed.

Barnaby looked into the seal’s clouded eyes. They seemed to bestow no blame for his stupidity, only to be consumed by a quiet and terrible sadness. He could not bear it and began once more to struggle on. The world was full of water. Surely soon he must find some.

The surface of the pavement had become transformed. It was now spongy and yielding and his feet sank further in with every step. It was cold too. He felt the chill dampness of it seeping over the edge of his shoes. There was moisture on his hands and he saw that silvery froth had formed around the animal’s mouth. The yellow lights were getting dim.

Then, just as he felt his back was breaking, he saw, shining at his feet, a puddle. He lowered the seal into it, feeling the muscles of his arms jump and quiver at the moment of release. The seal turned over and over in the water. Its fur sparkled, the eyes and whiskers shone. Then, as Barnaby watched, the beads of light on its coat and the reflected light in the puddle conjoined until the seal and the water were one oddly shaped mass of gleaming silver. Trees, tall as telegraph poles, sprang up all around. Faxes chattered in their branches and reams of paper tumbled down. A woman, veiled all in black, appeared and disappeared, rushing through the air, draperies flying, on a high swing. The mysterious silver shape was becoming transformed into something longer and more streamlined.

Watching this process, so entirely out of his control, Barnaby was overcome by a strong sense of hazard. And yet, when the metamorphosis was complete, the result could not have been more ordinary. A motor car. Pearly pale with an interior full of shadows. As Barnaby bent to peer inside, one of the shadows turned a smiling face in his direction. He knew at once that he had found Max Jennings. And awoke hours later, with a totally numb left arm, a ball of fur dossing on his chest and a clamorously ringing telephone to hear that it was true.

In the end it had simply been a stroke of luck. A motor-cycle policeman, himself a passionate admirer of the Mercedes Benz and the proud owner of a G-registered 230TE, had taken special note when the search had been first registered. Idling by the lights in the town of St Just he had seen the car, facing in the opposite direction, doing likewise. There was a couple inside and the man was driving.

As soon as he was able the patrolman wheeled round and pursued it, keeping a discreet distance, waiting to see if the driver had business in town or was merely passing through. The car took the road to Botallack. The policeman was about to radio in its exact position when the Mercedes suddenly turned left and disappeared down a narrow side lane. He followed, cutting his motor-cycle engine to coast silently.

They had parked outside a small cottage quite close to the furiously pounding sea and were unloading cardboard boxes from the boot. The wind blew the woman’s scarf about and she had to keep pulling it away from her face.

Max Jennings expressed puzzled surprise (so Barnaby was later told) at an unexpected visit from the police, consternation at the reason for it and definite displeasure at the news that he would need to travel back to the Home Counties to answer questions rather than be interrogated in Cornwall.

‘Surely,’ he was now saying in the interview room of Causton CID, ‘I might have gone to the station in St Just. Or, failing that, couldn’t we have talked on the telephone?’

‘I’m afraid that is not possible, Mr Jennings,’ said Chief Inspector Barnaby. ‘The case is being handled here.’

‘I still can’t believe it. How appalling.’ Jennings reached out for his polystyrene beaker of station coffee and sipped with plain lack of appreciation. He took a deep breath as if to speak, moving his hand in emphasis, hesitated, then simply repeated himself.

‘Appalling. Christ - what a terrible way to go.’

‘Are you quite sure you knew nothing of this matter until today?’

‘I’ve already told you. The cottage has no telephone, radio or television. It’s very basic.’

‘But surely your car has a radio.’

‘Today was the first time we used the car. We took food and everything else we needed down with us. It lasted till this morning, when we ran out of milk and bread.’

He’d got everything off pat. And so he should have with six hours on the motorway to work it all out. Not that it couldn’t have happened precisely as he described. If he had reached Cornwall before the evening after the murder, and not bought a paper since, his surprise could be genuine. Unless of course he was guilty, in which case he’d had even longer to get everything off pat.

Jennings opened a dark green leather case lined with pale brown gold-banded cigarillos. On being informed of the No Smoking rule he put the case away without comment, but did not look best pleased. Troy was impressed by the elegance of both case and contents. Far more than by Jennings’ female companion, now shredding her hankie to bits in the outer office. Straight brown hair, frumpy camel coat, hardly any make-up. You’d have thought a famous writer could have done better for himself. In fact the only good thing you could say for her was that her name was Lindsay and not Barbara.

‘So - what is it you want from me?’ Max Jennings glanced at his watch, which was as stylish as the rest of him, with an air of slight impatience.

‘I’d like you to tell us all you know about this matter.’

‘Well, that won’t take long,’ replied Jennings. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘It does appear that you were the last person to see Mr Hadleigh alive—’

‘The last bar one, chief inspector. Let’s stick to the facts, shall we?’

‘I hope we shall both do that,’ said Barnaby and received a sharp-eyed glance for his impudence. ‘Could I ask first when precisely you left Plover’s Rest?’

‘Plover’s what?’

‘Mr Hadleigh’s cottage.’

‘I don’t honestly know. Lateish.’