A Taste for Death (48 page)

'And was there?'

For a moment Dalgliesh thought that he would refuse to answer. Then he glanced at Duxbury and said:

'Not as far as we've been able to discover. Do you think

Garrod is your man?'

'He could be.'

'Well, good hunting.' He seemed suddenly ill at ease as if uncertain how to bring the interview to an end. Then he said:

'It has been useful talking to you, Adam. We've taken notes of the points you've raised. And you'll watch the procedures, won't you? The IR49. A modest little form but it has its uses.'

As the lift bore him down to his own floor it seemed to Dalgliesh that he had been closeted with Special Branch for days rather than less than an hour. He felt contam-inated by a kind of sick hopelessness. He knew that he would shake off its symptoms soon enough; he always did. But the infection would still be there in his blood-stream, part of that sickness of the spirit which he was beginning to think he must learn to endure.

But the interview, humiliatingly fractious as it had been, had served its purpose, clearing away a tangle of ex-traneous brushwood from the main path of his inquiry. He knew now the identity and motive of the poison pen writer. He knew what Diana Travers had been doing at Campden Hill Square, who had put her there, and why, after the drowning, her room had been searched. Two young women were dead, one by her own hand, one by accident. There was no mystery about why and how they had died and little now about how they had lived. Why then was he still obstinately convinced that these two deaths were not only linked but central to the mystery of

Paul B '

erowne s murder?

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2

When he got back from that secretive and self-sufficient world on the eighteenth and nineteenth floors, Dalgliesh found that his own corridor was unusually silent. He put his head in his secretary's office but Susie's typewriter was shrouded, her desk cleared, and he remembered that she had a dental appointment that morning. Kate was meeting Carole Washburn in Holland Park. Irked by his own bad temper he had hardly given a thought to the possibilities of that encounter. Massingham was, he knew, visiting the Way~ farers' Refuge in Cosway Street to talk to the warden there about Harry Mack before going on to interview two of the girls who had been in the punt on the Thames when Diana Travers had drowned. According to their evidence at the inquest neither of them had seen the girl dive into the fiver. They and the rest of the party had left her with Domii' Swayne on the bank when they pushed out the punt had seen and heard nothing of her until that awful momet when the punt pole had struck her body. Both had admitted at the inquest that they had been half-drunk at the time. Dalgliesh doubted whether they would have anything more useful to say now that they were sober but, if they had, Massingham was the one best suited to get it out of them.

But Massingham had left a message. As he entered room, Dalgliesh saw a single sheet of white paper pinr to his blotter with Massingham's paper knife, a long ad remarkably sharp dagger which he claimed to have at a fairground when a child. The dramatic gesture the few lines of letters and figures in a stark black upriy;ht hand said it all. The forensic science laboratory t,d telephoned the result of the blood analyses. Without pull ig out the dagger, Dalgliesh stood silently and looked dowt ;t the evidence which, more than any other, was vital to ]is theory that Berowne had been murdered.

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Berowne

Mack

Rhesus Pos

ABO A

AK 2-1 (7.6%) (enzymes)

PGM 1 + (40%) (enzymes)

Razor blade:

AK 2-1

PGM 2+, I-, 1+

Pos

l

Smears on carpet and jacket pocke Pos A 2-1

2 + I - (4.8%) l+

The PGM system was, he knew, a strong one. There woulc have been no need to set up a control reaction with th, dirty carpet. But the lab must have worked over the week end despite their heavy load and the fact that, as yet there was no suspect in custody, and he was grateful. Ther was blood of two different types on the razor, but that wm hardly surprising, the analysis a mere formality. But, more important, the smear on the carpet under Harry's coa wasn't his blood. Dalgliesh had another interview booked for late in the afternoon which promised, in its differen' way, to be as irritating as the session with Gilmartin. I was helpful that this important piece of scientific evideno had arrived in time.

3

Holland Park was only a few minutes' walk from Charle: Shannon House. Kate had woken early shortly after sb and by seven had breakfasted and was impatient to gel away. After prowling restlessly round an already immacu. late flat trying to find jobs to occupy the time she stuffed

paper bag of crumbs for the birds in her jacket pocket and

left three-quarters of an hour early, telling herself that

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would be less frustrating to walk in the park than to stay cooped up wondering whether Carole Washburn would actually turn up, whether she might already be regretting her promise.

Dalgliesh had accepted that the agreement with the girl must be kept; she would meet Carole Washburn alone. He had given her no instructions and offered no advice. Other senior officers would have been tempted to remind her of the importance of the meeting, bu, t this wasn't his way. She respected him for it, but it increased her burden of responsibility. Everything might depend on how she handled their encounter.

Just before nine she made her way to the terrace above the formal gardens. When she had last visited the park the beds had been richly patterned with the summer display of geraniums, fuchsias, heliotropes and begonias. But now the time had come for the autumn stripping. Half the beds were already bare; expanses of soft loam littered with broken stems, petals like blobs of blood and a scatter of dying leaves. A council cart, like the dread tumbrel winter, stood.ready for the new strippings. And now, the minute finger of her watch clicked to the hour the squeals and shouts from the grounds of Holland Park School were suddenly hushed and the park lay in its early morning calm. An old woman, bent as a witch, with team of six small discouraged dogs on a lead shuffled alog the side path, then paused to pull and sniff at the last flowers of the lavender. A solitary jogger loped down tl steps and disappeared through the arches leading to orangery.

And suddenly Carole Washburn was there. Almrt precisely on the hour a solitary female figure appeared the far end of the garden. She was wearing a short gr jacket over a matching skirt, her head covered by voluminous blue and white scarf which almost obscur cl her face. But Kate knew immediately and with a lift heart, who it was. They stood for a moment regardi g each other, then advanced between the denuded flo,:'r beds in measured, almost ceremonial, paces. Kate reminded of spy thrillers, the exchange of defectors at so:c

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border crossing, a sense of unseen watchers, ears pricked for the crack ora rifle. When they met the girl nodded but did not speak. Kate said simply:

'Thank you for coming.' Then she turned and together they passed up the steps out of the garden, across the spongy turf of the wide lawn and into the path between the rose gardens. Here the freshness of the morning air was tinged with the remembered scent of summer. Roses, thought Kate, were never finished. There was something irritating about a flower which couldn't recognize that its season was over. Even in December there would be tight and browning buds destined to wither before they opened, a few anaemic heavy heads drooping towards the petal-strewn earth. Pacing slowly between the spiked bushes, aware of Carole's shoulder almost brushing hers, she thought: I must have patience. I must wait for her to speak first. She has to be the one to choose the time and place.

They came up to the statue of Lord Holland, seated on his pedestal, gazing benignly towards his house. Still with-out speaking, they walked on down the mushy path be-tween the woodlands. Then her companion paused. She looked into the wilderness and said:

'That's where he found her, over there, under that slanting silver birch, the one by the holly bush. We came here together a week later. I think he needed to show me.'

Kate waited. It was extraordinary that this wilderness of trees could be close to the centre of a great city. Once over the low palisade it would be possible to believe oneself deep in the countryside. No wonder that Theresa Nolan, reared among the Surrey woodlands, should have chosen this quiet leafy place in which to die. It must have been like a return to early childhood; the smell of leaf loam, the rough bark of the tree against her back, the scurry of small birds and squirrels in the undergrowth, the softness of the earth making death as natural and friendly as failing leep.. For one extraordinary moment it seemed to her that she entered into that death, was mysteriously one with that lonely dying girl under the far tree. She shivered. The moment of empathy was quickly over but its power

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,stonished and a little disturbed her. She had seen enough suicides in her first five years of policing to have learnt detachment, and, for her, it had never been a difficult lesson. She had always been able to distance emotion, to think: This is a dead body. Not: This was a living woman. So why should an imagined death be more distressing than a body actually seen? Perhaps, she thought, I can afford a little involvement, a little pity. But it was strange that it should begin now. What was it, she wondered, about the Berowne case which seemed to be changing even her perception of her job? She turned her eyes again to the path and heard Carole Washburn's voice:

'When Paul learned that she was missing, when the nursing home rang to ask if anyone at Campden Hill Square had seen her or knew where she was, he guessed that she might be here. Before he became a minister and security became a nuisance he often walked through the park to work. He could cross Kensington Church Street, get into Hyde Park and then into Green Park at Hyde Park Corner, walking nearly all the way to the House' ,)n grass and under trees. So it was natural to come and

- I mean, he didn't have to go much out of his way. He wasn't putting himself to any great trouble.'

The sudden bitterness in her voice was shocking. Kate didn't speak. She dug in her jacket pocket for the srall bag of crumbs and held them out on her palm. A spar'(w, tame as only London sparrows are, hopped on her with a delicate scrape of claws. His head jerked, and sh.lt

the beak like a pin-prick, and then he was gone.

She said:

'He must have known Theresa Nolan very well.' 'Perhaps. She used to talk to him in the night hours when Lady Ursula was asleep; tell him about herself, her family. He was easy for women to talk to, some women.'

Both of them were for a moment silent. But there was one question which she had to ask. She said:

'The child Theresa Nolan was carrying, could it have been his?' To her relief the question was taken calmly, almost as if it were expected. The girl said:

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'Once I would have said no and been absolutely certain. I'm not certain of anything any more. There were things he didn't tell me, I always knew that. I know it even better now. But I think he would have told me that. It wasn't his child. But he did blame himself for what happened to her.

He felt responsible.'

'Why?'

'She tried to see him the day before she killed herself. She went to his office, to the Department. It was tactless -the kind of thing only an innocent would do - and she couldn't have chosen a worse time. He was just due to go into an important meeting. He could have made five minutes to see her, but it wouldn't have been convenient and it wouldn't have been prudent. When the young HEO in his private office brought in the news that a Miss Theresa Nolan was in the front hall asking to see him urgently, he said that she was probably one of his constitu-ents and sent down a message asking her to leave her address and he'd get in touch. She went away without saying a word. He never heard from her again. I think he would have got in touch, given time. But he wasn't given time. The next day she was dead.'

It was interesting, thought Kate, that this piece of news hadn't come out when Dalgliesh was interviewing Sir Paul's civil servants. Those careful men, by training and instinct, protected their Minister. Were they extending this protection beyond death? They had spoken of Paul Berowne's speed and skill in mastering a complicated sub-mission, but there had been no mention of the in-convenient arrival of an importunate young woman. But perhaps it wasn't surprising. The officer who had taken the message had been comparatively junior. It was another example of the man who had the interesting information not even being questioned. But even if he had been, he might not have thought it important, unless he had read the inquest report and recognized the girl and, perhaps, not even then.

Carole Washburn still stood gazing into the woodlands, hands deep in her jacket pockets, her shoulders hunched

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as if there blew from the tangled wilderness the first chill wind of winter. She said:

'She was slumped against the trunk - that trunk. You can barely see it now and in high summer it's invisible. She could have been there for days.'

Not for long, thought Kate. The smell would soon have alerted the park-keepers. Holland Park might be a small paradise in the middle of the city, but it was no different from any other Eden. There were still predators on four legs prowling in the undergrowth and predators on two walking the paths. Death was still death. Bodies still stank when they rotted. She glanced at her companion. Carole Washburn was still staring into the woodland with a painful intensity as if conjuring up that slumped figure at the foot of the silver birch. Then she said:

'Paul told the truth about what happened, but not the whole truth. There were two letters in her jacket pocket, one addressed to her grandparents asking forgiveness, the one read out at the inquest. But there was another, marked confidential and addressed to Paul. That's what I've come to tell you.'

'Did you see it? Did he show it to you?' Kate tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice. Could this, she thought, be physical evidence at last?