A Species of Revenge (16 page)

‘He's dead,' Doreen Bailey informed them, pursing her lips. ‘Killed just after he left them, in a motorbike accident, and good riddance.'

‘Doreen.'

‘All right. I'll say no more.'

‘I should never've let her take that paper round!' Patti's mother said suddenly. ‘I tried not to be overprotective – you need freedom when you're young, but it was a mistake – I wouldn't have let her keep it on when the dark mornings came but I thought, this time of year ... and it's a nice neighbourhood. She begged me, see, wanted to feel she was pulling her weight. Girls that age want clothes and things like their friends, and she knew I couldn't afford them.'

‘It's unlikely the paper round had anything to do with it,' Abigail said gently, and as the difficult, unshed tears began at last to threaten, she thought it might be tactful to leave the sisters alone for a while. ‘Is it all right if we take a look at her room, Mrs Ryman?'

‘Linda, please. It's just at the top of the stairs.'

No more than a boxroom, really, with the dressing table doing duty as a desk, a T-shirt draped over the mirror to avoid distraction. Bookshelves showing a fairly wide reading for her age, with copies of
King Lear
and
A View from the Bridge,
plus A level text notes, on the bedside table. The top dressing-table drawer held a brush, comb and electric hair-curler, the others nothing but underclothes, T-shirts, tops and sweaters. In the single wardrobe were a couple of summer school-uniform cotton dresses, some school shirts, two very short skirts, jeans and a leather jacket. Sandals and a pair of the ugly, clumpy shoes girls favoured at the moment stood on the floor. The walls were covered with the usual pop-idol posters, pictures of animals and two RSPCA posters. There was also an RSPCA collecting box. It was the room of any teenage girl, with nothing in it to give any sort of clue as to why she'd been murdered.

When they returned to the living room, Linda's tears had dried. ‘We've been talking over what you said about there being anything different, well, it's probably nothing –'

‘Anything at all, it doesn't matter how unimportant it seems.'

‘It's just that she came home in a taxi last Saturday from Gemma's.'

‘Taxi?'

‘I made it a rule she had to be in by ten unless it was something special, and she always kept to it, she knew how I worried.'

‘But it wasn't usual for her to take a taxi?'

‘Heavens, no! Gemma's mother always brought her back if it was late, but she's a doctor, and she was called out during the evening. She knew she was likely to be away for some time, so she told the girls to ring for a taxi when Patti was ready to go home, and gave her a ten-pound note to pay for it. She rang up a minute or two after ten – Dr Townsend, I mean – to see if she'd got home all right. She's a single parent, too, so she knows the problems. Patti came in the door just as I was putting the phone down and wanted to know who'd been ringing and – well, it ended up with a bit of an argument.'

‘Why was that?'

‘It didn't amount to much, but she went on a bit about being checked up on, and having to be sent home in a taxi, and taking money from Gemma's mother like that – why couldn't she come home on the bus, she was old enough, you know the sort of thing.'

‘It's not what happens on the bus, it's when you get off – I hope you told her that,' her sister said.

"Course I did, but girls of that age, you can't tell them anything. Though I think it might just have got home to her. She went a bit quiet after that, and then said she was sorry for giving me all that hassle. It wasn't long before she went up to bed.'

By the time Mayo had finished talking to Tina Baverstock, he felt in need of something long and cool to wash away the taste of her nasty herbal tea. And not only the tea. The Drum and Monkey was just around the corner. What was ten minutes to a thirsty man?

It was a pleasant pub with a forecourt and tables, and a shady corner, fortunately empty. He carried his half of ginger-beer shandy to the table under a sycamore, threw his jacket on to the bench beside him, took a long, cool swallow and sat back, reviewing his thoughts.

Going straight from one house to the other had given him no opportunity so far to assess the interview with Imogen Loxley, but uppermost in his mind was the notion that if she'd been truthful about sitting at her window like the Lady of Shalott, looking out for the postman – and there was no reason at this stage to think she'd any conceivable reason to lie, or conceal the truth – it seemed clear that Patti's murder had occurred after she'd delivered the paper to Simla and before Imogen arrived upstairs at, say, five past eight, no more than a fifteen-minute time span. Unless the assailant had either been lurking in the wood before she was attacked, or entered it via one of the gardens which adjoined it – and presumably escaped the same way. But how could he have known Patti would go into the wood?

He didn't in any case see how anyone planning a murder would have contemplated one such as this, with all the attendant risks. There could have been no guarantee that the perpetrator would have got away without being seen or heard. When questioned about their movements, few people could be exact about what they'd been doing at a precise time during the day, but breakfast-time was different. The human race is on the whole more habit-orientated than it cares to admit. Morning routines are established by office, school and factory starting times, and in his experience, people usually knew exactly where they were, or should have been, when the day was beginning – and which people they normally encountered. A stranger hanging around was almost certain to have been noticed. On the other hand, a moment only would have sufficed to slip along that path and disappear from sight, and the same would apply when he emerged from the wood, not much later.

But it was fruitless at this stage in a murder inquiry to start looking for any sort of pattern. Until more facts were collected, names of witnesses had been obtained, others eliminated from the inquiry, until a suspect emerged and the motive became clear. Speculating before that, there was always the danger of jumping to wrong conclusions ...

A kamikaze wasp, intent on suicide, zoomed in on his beer mug. He moved his glass further into the shade, covering it with his hand. The wasp decided to concentrate on his ear. He flipped irritably at it and watched it land on the table, legs in the air. Gotcha! Where were we? Wrong conclusions ... ah, yes.

It's a well-known fact that nobody can ever concentrate wholly on one subject for any length of time. According to the shrinks, at any rate. The more you try, the more the mind wanders ...

All right, then. Who had he been, the man with Alex? Jealousy was an immature emotion, not to be considered in well-adjusted senior police officers. Anyway, it wasn't part of his make-up. He was curious, that was all. Far be it from him to be suspicious of every man Alex had dealings with. She'd worked for years in a man's world, and not without exciting admiration, and it had never been a problem for him. And it was months – well, a long time, anyway, since he'd thought of Liam, the Irishman. The bad-news man, the playboy of the western world, the hound who'd spoiled so many of the best years of Alex's life, kept her dangling with promises he'd no intention of ever fulfilling, playing up his so-called need of her, until at last, seven years on and no further forward, she'd come to her senses, seen things as they really were: the wife in the background, still the semi-invalid she'd always been, and Liam, no nearer asking for a divorce than he'd ever intended.

It was several years now since she'd gathered her courage, moved away and given him the push.

He'd gone, gone forever, hadn't he? Hadn't he?

Of course he had. But Alex had never blamed him entirely, always made excuses, always saw the other side of the equation. Could it explain that brittle, nervous excitement about her recently that he couldn't understand and didn't want to ask about, not even tentatively or obliquely? And she'd been smiling and lifting her glass to the man opposite her in the restaurant...

What the hell.

He took a long, reflective pull of his shandy.

And became aware of increasing activity outside the church on the opposite side of the road, of the number of cars parking there. He watched more arrive, driven mostly by women, but with one or two men among their number. As they walked up the path to the church door, and he decided from their casual clothes and their demeanour that it was unlikely to be either a wedding or a funeral they were attending, a red Renault drew up. Sarah Wilmot got out, locked the door and also made for the church.

Mayo finished his drink, strolled across the road and followed the rest of them up the yew-bordered path through the old churchyard, shaded by ancient oaks, renowned in spring for its great sheets of daffodils, its tombstones now laid flat and the graves grassed over for easy maintenance, their occupants far too long dead to care.

Sarah was sitting motionless in one of the back pews, while the people he'd seen entering moved purposefully about the church. A regular hive of activity, it was. Someone was practising on the organ. ‘Jesu, joy of man's desiring'. Trite, but gentle and oddly appropriate, and played well. There was to be an organ recital next month – he'd spotted a notice stuck up in the porch as he came through. He made a mental note that it might be worth attending.

Sliding into the pew beside Sarah, he was struck by her unexpected sombreness. She looked as wholesome and healthy as when he'd met her at the party, her face, as well as her smooth bare limbs, tanned pale gold, and her short, toffee-coloured hair streaked with the sun. She smelled of bluebells and fern. She glanced up when she saw him and smiled, and immediately the impression of some dark shadow hanging over her was gone.

‘Did you want to see me? I thought someone from the police would be coming round, but to tell the truth I'd forgotten you were a policeman. I suppose you have to ask me questions.'

He hesitated. ‘I don't want to disturb you if –'

‘That's all right, I just came in for a few minutes' quiet. It isn't often churches are open on weekdays, these days. Go ahead – unless you'd rather we went across to the house?'

He shook his head. ‘This'll do. I haven't much to ask you ... you don't know the neighbourhood yet, won't know which comings and goings are normal, which are out of the ordinary, who's a stranger and who isn't. For the moment, we're just checking on when people left home this morning.'

Routine comment. True, of course, but also, even at this stage, a matter of being alert to catch nuances, things let slip, of patiently picking up discrepancies or seemingly irrelevant pieces which might eventually fit together.

‘Oh, that's easy,' Sarah said. ‘Dermot left at half past sevenish, or maybe a bit later. I suppose by the time he'd walked back home it must have been after eight. I wasn't there. I'd left with the children for school at five past eight.'

‘Walked back?'

‘Didn't you know? He had his car pinched this morning.'

‘I wouldn't necessarily be told about it. Not my department.'

‘Oh. No, of course, it wouldn't be. He parked it outside Patel's while he went in to get some cigarettes. There was quite a queue and when he came out it was gone. He had to come back home to report the theft and make arrangements for another car and so forth. He's not due home tonight and of course, his overnight bag was taken as well – plus his personal camera. His company's lent him another car but it's really messed up the day for everyone. He was livid.'

Tina Baverstock, though she'd been wrong in her assumptions about the car breaking down, would testify to this fury. She'd heard the door bang. Mayo mentally slotted these times in with the others. Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour wasn't in it, all of them milling around at the same time, and still no one seeing hide nor hair of the murderer.

The church was High, with lace on the altar cloths, candles and a sanctuary lamp burning, a faint smell of incense mingling with the flowers. A young priest in a black cassock moved quietly among the groups. A faint murmur of conversation made a background susurration.

‘What are all these people doing?' he asked, curiosity finally overcoming him as a woman with a large tote bag and a camera slung over her shoulder passed them and took up a determined stance in front of a marble monument on the wall, produced a notebook and started making notes. ‘Who are they?'

‘Oh, church recorders,' she answered, smiling at his mystified expression. Here, she explained, to make a detailed inventory, to record minutely every part of the church and its furnishings, whether it be silver, woodwork, memorials, books, or anything else ... ‘In case of damage, or loss – or theft, which I don't suppose I need to remind you about. My mother's in a similar group, that's how I know about it.'

St Gregory's was a fourteenth-century church which had been enlarged and over-restored by the Victorians. Pevsner hadn't found much to remark on in Lavenstock, other than the public-school buildings, the Tudor almshouses and various ancient inns and dwellings in the mediaeval streets leading from the Cornmarket down to the river. St Gregory's, if Mayo remembered correctly, had received scant mention, apart from the fine organ and some stained-glass windows by Kempe. What a pity. As with the town, there were more subtle attractions than the patently obvious.

‘Did you see Patti at all this morning?'

Her face clouded. ‘Not this morning, no. I didn't see anyone; I left Dermot to it, got the children into the car and drove off.'

The music changed. More Bach. ‘Lovely,' she said.

‘Do you like music?'

‘Oh yes – but that's not why I'm here.' She gave him a quick, sideways glance. ‘I – I actually slipped in to say a quick prayer for her, for Patti, and her mother, but – I'm not sure part of it wasn't for myself. My own sister, dying so recently ... it brings it back. How little we
know
anyone, really.'