A Taste for Death (63 page)

But there were still questions that he needed to ask and to ask now while she had passed beyond the extremity of misery and loss into an acceptance of defeat. He said:

'When Mr Swayne arrived, did he go alone into any part of the house other than your sitting room and the kitchen?'

'Only to take his toilet bag to the bathroom.' '

So he would have had the chance to enter the study. He asked:

'And when he came back, was he carrying anything?'

'Only his evening paper. He had it with him when he arrived.'

But why not leave it in the back of the house? Why carry a newspaper with him to the bathroom unless he proposed to use it to conceal something, a book, a file, private letters? Suicides commonly destroyed their papers; he would find something in the house to take with him and burn. It had probably been fortuitous that he had

opened the drawer and found the diary ready to hand. He turned to Sarah Berowne and said:

'Miss Matlock is obviously distressed. I think she would like a cup of tea. Perhaps one of you could go to the trotJble

of making it for her.'

She said:

'You despise us, don't you? Every one of us.'

He said:

'Miss Berowne, I am in this house as an investiga officer. I have no other right here and no other functi

He and Massingham had reached the door before L v Ursula spoke, her voice high, unwavering.

'Before you leave, Commander, I think you should know that a gun is missing from the study safe. It belonged to my elder son, a Smith and Wesson .08. My daughter-in-law tells me that Paul got rid of it, but I think it would be safer to assume that she is -' She paused and then added

with delicate irony, 'that she is mistaken.'

Dalgliesh turned to Barbara Berowne.

'Could your brother have got hold of it? Did he know the combination of the safe?'

'Of course he didn't. Why should Dicco want it? Paul got rid ofit. He told me. He thought it was dangerous. He threw it away. He threw it in the river.'

Lady Ursula spoke as if her daughter-in-law were not present.

'I think you can assume that Dominic $wayne knows the combination of the safe. My son Changed it three days before he died. He had the habit of noting the new com-bination in pencil on the last page of his diary until he was sure that he and I had memorized it. His practice was to circle the digits on next year's calendar. That was the page which I think you showed me, Commander, had been torn out.'

It was nearly five o'clock by the time he had bought the chisel, the strongest the shop had on display. There hadn't in the end been time to get to a Woolworth's, but he had !old himself that it didn't matter and had bought the chisel m a hardware shop off the Harrow Road. The assistant might remember him, but then, who was going to ask? The theft would be seen as an unimportant break-in. And afterwards he would throw the chisel in the canal. Without the chisel to match with the marks on the edge of the box, how could they possibly link him with the crime? It was too long for his jacket pocket, so he placed it with the gun

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in the canvas bag. It amused him to carry over his shoulder that innocuous commonplace bag, to feel the weight of the gun and the chisel bumping against his side. He had no fear of being stopped. Who would want to stop him, a respectably dressed young man walking quietly home at the end of the day? But the assurance was more deeply rooted. He walked the drab streets head high, invincible. and could have laughed aloudat the grey, stupid face staring ahead as they passed him, or bent to the ground as if instinctively searching the pavement in the hope of find-ing a dropped coin. They were corralled in their hopeless lives, endlessly trudging the same bare perimeters, slaves of routine and convention. He alone had had the courage to break free. He was a king among men, a free spirit. And in a few hours he would be on his way to Spain the sun. No one could stop him. The police had nothitv to justify holding him, and now the only physical evidem linking him with the scene of crime was within his reach. He had enough money to last for the next two months then he would write to Barbie. The time wasn't ripe to her yet, but one day he would tell her and it' had to soon. The need to tell someone was becoming an obsessions. He had nearly confided in that pathetic spinster drinks at the St Ermin's Hotel. Afterwards he had almost frightened by that urge to confess, to have someoe marvel at his brilliance, his courage. Most of all he needcd to tell Barbie who had a right to know. He would tell that she owed her money, her freedom, her future to She would know how to be grateful.

The afternoon was so dark now that it could have night, the sky thick and furred as a blanket, the air to breathe and with the sharp metallic taste of the comig storm. Just as he turned the corner of the road and s the church, it broke. The air and sky glittered with first flash of lightning, then almost at once there came crack of thunder. Two large drops stained the pavem in front of him and the rain sheeted down. He ran into shelter of the church porch, laughing aloud. Even weather was on his side; the main approach road to

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church had been empty, and now he looked out from the porch into a wash of rain. Already the terraced houses seemed to shiver behind a curtain of water. From the glisten-ing road spurts rose like fountains and the gutters ran and gurgled in torrents.

Gently he turned the great iron handle of the door. It was unlocked, slightly ajar. But he had expected to find it open. With part of his mind he believed that churches, buildings of sanctuary and superstition, were always left open for their worshippers. But nothing could surprise him, nothing could go wrong. The door squeaked as he closed it behind him and stepped into the sweet-smelling quietness.

The church was larger than he had imagined, so cold that he shuddered and so still that he thought for a second that he heard an animal panting before he realized that it was his own breath. There was no artificial light except for a single chandelier and a lamp in a small side chapel' where a crimson glow stained the air. Two rows of candles burning before the statue of the Madonna gusted in the draught from the closing door. There was a locked box attached to the branching candleholder but he knew that it wasn't this that he sought. He had questioned the boy carethlly. The box containing the button was at the west end of the church in front of the irn ornamental grille. But he didn't hurry. He moved into the middle of the nave facing the altar and spread his arms wide as if to take possession of the vast emptiness, the holiness, the sweet-smelling air. In front of him the mosaics of the apse gleamed richly gold and turning to look up at the cleres-tory he could see in the half-light the ranks of painted figures, one-dimensional, harmlessly sentimental as cut-outs t?om a child's picture book. The rainwater ran down his hair to wash over his face, and he laughed as he tasted its sweetness on his tongue. A small pool gathered at his feet. Then slowly, almost ceremoniously, he paced down the n:ve to the candleholder in front of the grille.

There was a padlock on the box, but it was only small, and the box itself more fragile than he had expected. He

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inserted the chisel under the lid and heaved. At first it resisted, and then he could hear the gentle splinter of the wood and the gap widened. He gave one 'more heave and suddenly the padlock sprang apart with a crack .so loud that it echoed through the church like a pistol shot. Almost at once it was answered by a crack of thunder. The gods, he thought, are applauding me.

And then he was aware of a dark shadow moving up to him and heard a voice, quietly untroubled, gently authori-tative.

'If you're looking for the button, my son, you've come too late. The police have found it.'

8

Last night Father Barnes had dreamed again the same dream which had visited him on the night of the murder. It had been teirible; terrible on first waking and no less terrible when he thought about it later, and like all nightmares it had left him feeling that it had been no aberration but was firmly lodged in his subconscious, powered with its own terrible reality, crouched ready to return. The dream had been a Technicolour horror. He had been watching a procession, not part of it but standing on the edge of the pavement, alone, disregarded. At its head was Father Donovan in his richest chasuble, prancing in front of the processional cross while the congregation streamed out of his church behind him; laughing faces, bodies leaping and steaming, the clash of the steel drums. David, he thought, leaping about before the Ark of the Lord. And then came the sacrament borne high under a canopy. But when he drew close, he saw that it wasn't a proper canopy but the faded, grubby carpet from the Little Vestry of St Matthew's, its fringe swaying as the poles lurched, and what they were carrying wasn't the sacra

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ment but Berowne's body, pink and naked like a stuck pig with its gaping throat.

He had woken up calling out, fumbling for the bedside lamp. Night after night the nightmare had returned and then, last Sunday, mysteriously, be had been free of it and for several nights his sleep had been deep and undisturbed. As he turned to lock the dark and empty church after Dalgliesh and Miss Wharton had left he found himself praying that it wouldn't revisit him tonight.

He glanced at his wristwatch. It was only quarter past five, but the evening was as dark as midnight. And when he reached the edge of the porch the rain began falling. First came a flash of thunder, so loud that it seemed to shake the church. He thought how unmistakable and how eerie it was, that unearthly sound, something between a growl and an explosion. No wonder, he thought, men have always feared it, like the anger of God. And then, immedi-ately, came the rain spilling from the porch roof in a solid wall of water. It would be ridiculous to set out for the Vicarage through such a storm. He would be soaking wet in seconds. If he hadn't insisted on staying on for a few minutes after Dalgliesh had left to enter the candle money in his petty cash register he could probably have had a lift

The Commander was dropping Miss Wharton at her flat on his way to the Yard. But now there was nothing

it but to wait.

And then he remembered Bert Poulson's umbrella. Bert, who sang tenor in the choir, had left it in the bellroom after Sunday's Mass. He could borrow it. He went back into the church leaving the north door ajar, unlocked the door in the grille and made his way into the bellroom. The umbrella was still there. Then it occurred to him that he ought, perhaps, to leave a note on the peg. Bert might turn up early on Sunday and begin agitating when he found it was missing; he was that sort of man. Father Barnes went into the Little Vestry and taking a sheet of .paper from the desk drawer wrote: 'Mr Poulson's umbrella Is at the Vicarage'.

L He had hardly finished writing, and was putting his biro

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back in his pocket when he heard the sound. It was a loud crack and it was very close. Instinctively he moved out of the Little Vestry and into the passage. Behind the grille was a young man, fair-haired, chisel in hand, and the collection box gaped open.

And then Father Barnes knew. He knew both who it was and why he was here. He remembered Dalgliesh's words: 'No one will be at risk once he knows that we've found the button.' But for one second, no more, he felt fear, an overwhelming, incapacitating terror which rendered him speechless. And then it passed, leaving him cold and faint but perfectly clear-headed. What he felt now was an immense calm, a sense that there was nothing he could do and nothing he need fear. Everything was taken care of. He walked forward as firmly as if he were greeting a new member of his congregation and knew that his face showed the same conscious, sentimental concern. His voice was perfectly steady. He said:

'If you're looking for the button, my son, you've come too late. The police have found it.'

The blue eyes blazed into his. Water was flowing like tears over the young face. It looked suddenly like the face of a desolate and terrified child, the mouth, half-open, gaped at him, speechless. And then he heard a groan and saw with disbelieving eyes the two hands stretched towards him, shaking; and in the hands was a gun. He heard himself say: 'No, oh no, please!' and he knew that he wasn't pleading for pity because there was none. It was a last impotent cry against the inescapable' And even as he made it he felt a thud and his body leaped. It was only seconds later as he hit the ground that he heard the gunshot.

Someone was bleeding over the tiles of the nave. He wondered where it was coming from, this steadily spreading stain. Extra cleaning, he thought. Difficult to get off. Miss Wharton and her ladies wouldn't be pleased. The red stream crept, viscous ail, between the tiles. Like that TV advert, liquid enneering. Somewhere someone was groaning. It was a horrible noise, very loud. They really ought to stop. And then he thought: This i

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my blood, this is me bleeding. I'm going to die. There was no fear, but only a moment of dreadful weakness, followed by a nausea more terrible than any physical sensation he had ever experienced. But then that, too, passed. He thought: If this is dying, it is not so very difficult. He knew there were words he ought to say, but he wasn't sure he could remember them and it didn't matter. He thought: I must let go, just let go. After that thought there was no other.

He was unconscious when at last the blood stopped flowing. He was beyond hearing when almost an hour later the door was pushed slowly open and the heavy footsteps of a police officer moved down the nave towards him.

9

From the moment she walked into the casualty department and saw her grandmother, Kate had known that there was no longer any choice. The old lady had been sitting on a chair against the wall, a red hospital blanket around her shoulders, and had a pad of gauze taped to her fore-head. She had looked very small and frightened, her face greyer and more wizened than eve before, her anxious eyes fixed on the entrance door. Kate was reminded of a stray dog brought into the Notting Hill nick and awaiting transfer to the Battersea Dogs' Home which, tied by a string to a bench, had gazed quivering at the door with just such an intensity of longing. Walking up to her, it seemed that she was seeing her grandmother with shocked eyes as if they had been parted for months. The tell-tale signs of deterioration, of the draining away of strength and self-respect that she had either ignored or pretended not to see, were suddenly all too plain. The hair, which her grandmother had always tried to dye back to its origi-nal red, now hanging in vertical stripes of white, grey and a curious orange each side of the sunken cheeks; the