A Taste for Death (64 page)

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blotched hands thin as talons; the ridged nails on which the remnants of polish, months old, clung like dried blood; the eyes still sharp, but glittering now with the first glint of paranoia; the sour smell of unwashed clothes, unwashed flesh.

Without touching her, Kate sat beside her on the vacant chair. She thought: I mustn't make her ask, not now, not when it has become so important. At least I can spare her that humiliation. Where did I get my own pride if not from her? She said:

'It's all right, Gran. You're coming home with me.' There had been no hesitation and no choice. She couldn't look into those eyes and see for the first time real fear, real despair and still say no. She had left her side only for a few minutes to speak to the staff nurse and confirm that it was all right for her to leave. Then she had led her, docile as a child, to the car, driven her to the fiat, and put her to bed. After all the scheming and agonizing, the self-justification, the determination that she and her grandmother would never again live under the same roof, it had been as simple and inevitable as that.

The next day had been hectic for both of them. By the time Kate had seen the local CID, driven her grandmother back to her flat and packed a case with Mrs Miskin's clothes and the odd collection of possessions from which she couldn't bear to be parted, left notes for the neighbours to explain what had happened, and spoken to the social service department and the housing office it was mid-afternoon. Then on their arrival back at Charles Shannon House there had been tea to makO, drawers and a cup-board to clear for her grandmother's things, her own paint-ing gear to be stowed away in the corner. God knows, she thought, when I'll be able to use that again.

It was after six before she was free to set off to the Notting Hill Gate supermarket to shop for enough food to leave ready for the next few days. She only hoped that she would be able to get back to work the next morning, that her grandmother would be well enough to leave. She had insisted on accompanying Kate and had stood up well to

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day's exertions. But now she was looking tired and Kate was filled with a desperate worry that she might refuse to be left next morning. She had struck her head and bruised her right arm when the youths had jumped on her. But they had been content to grab her purse with-out kicking in her teeth and the physical damage was superficial. Her head and arm had been X-rayed; the hospital were satisfied that she was fit to be at home if there was someone to keep an eye on her. Well, there was someone to keep an eye on her, the only person in the world she had left.

Pushing her trolley along the aisles at the supermarket, Kate marvelled at the amount of additional food which one other person made necessary. She needed no list. These were the familiar items demanded by her grandmother which she had shopped for every week. As she placed them in the basket she could still hear the echo of that old, confident, disgruntled voice in her ears. Ginger biscuits ('not those soft ones, I like them hard for dipping'), tinned salmon ('red, mind you, I can't be doing with that pink muck'), tinned pears ('at least you can get your teeth into them'), custard powder, packets of cut ham ('keeps fresher that way and you can see what you're getting'), the strongest tasting teabags ('I wouldn't bath a newt in that stuff you bought last week'). But this a pounds ernoon had been different. Since coming to the flat she had sat without complaint, a pitiable, fired, docile old woman. Even her

! expected criticism of Kate's latest painting - 'I don't know why you want to stick that thing on the wall, looks like ;

kid's drawing' - had sounded more like a ritual objection, 'an attempt to revive her old bravado, than genuine out-rage. She had let Kate set off for the shops with nothing but a sudden deepening of fear in the faded eyes and an anxious:

'You'll not be long then?'

'Not long, Gran. Just off to the supermarket at Notting Hill Gate.'

Then, as Kate reached the door, she called her back and raised her small gallant pennant of pride:

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'I'm not asking to be kept. I've got me pension.'

'I know, Gran. There's no problem.'

Manoeuvring her trolley down the aisles stacked with tinned fruit, she thought: I don't seem to need a super-natural religion. Whatever happened to Paul Berowne in that church vestry, it's as closed to me as painting is to the blind. Nothing is more important to me than my job. But I can't make the law the basis of my personal morality. There has to be something more if I'm to live at ease with myself.

And it seemed to her that she had made a discovery about herself and about her job which was of immense importance, and she smiled that it should have happened while she was hesitating between two brands of tinned pears in a Notting Hill Gate supermarket. Odd, too, that it should have happened during this particular case. If she was still with the squad at the end of the inquiry she would like to say to AD: 'Thank you for having me on the case, for choosing me. I've learnt something about the job and myself.' But immediately she realized that it wouldn't be possible. The words would be too revealing, too confiding, the sort of girlish enthusiasm she wouldn't be able to recall afterwards without a flush of shame. And then she thought: For God's sake why not? He's not going to demote me, and it's the truth. I shouldn't be saying it to embarrass him, or impress him or for any other reason except that it's true and I ned to say it. She knew that she was over-defensive, probably she always would be. Those early years couldn't be wiped out and they couldn't be forgotten. But surely she could let down one small drawbridge without yielding the whole fortress. And would it matter so much if it were yielded?

She was too clearsighted to expect this mood of ex-altation to last long but it depressed her how quickly it drained away. A wind was blustering around Notting Hill Gate, shaking out the sodden litter from the raised flower-beds and swirling it damply against her ankles. On the parapet an old man, corded in rags and surrounded by bulging plastic bags, lifted his querulous voice and ranted

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feebly against the world. She hadn't brought the car. It was hopeless to try to park near Notting Hill. But the two bags were heavier than she had expected and their weight began to drag on her spirits as well as her shoulder muscles. It was all very well to indulge in self-congratulations, to muse on the imperatives of duty, but now the reality of the situation struck her like a physical blow, filling her with a misery close to despair. She and her grandmother would be locked together now until the old lady died. She was getting too old to cope with independence and soon she would compensate for its loss by persuading herself that She didn't really want it. And who now would give her priority for a single-person flat or a place in an old people's home, even if she would accept it, with so many more urgent cases on the waiting list? And when she was too old to be left during the day, what then? How could she, Kate, carry on her job and at the same time nurse a geriatric patient? She knew what officialdom would say. 'Can't you ask for three months' compassionate leave, or find a part-time job?' And the three months would become a year, the year might be two or three, her career would be finished. No hope now of a place on the Bramshill course, of planning for a senior command. What hope even of staying on in the special squad with its long un-predictable hours, its demand for total commitment.

The storm was over now but the great plane trees in Holland Park Avenue still shook down heavy drops of rain which seeped, disagreeably cold, under the collar of her coat. The evening rush hour was in full spate and her ears were battered by the grind and roar of traffic, a noise which normally she hardly noticed. As she waited to cross Ladbroke Grove, a van hissing too fast through the running gutters splashed her ankles with dirt. She shouted her protest, unheard above the thunder of the road. The storm had brought down the first autumn fall of leaves. They drifted sluggishly against the barks of the trees and lay, delicately veined skeletons, on the tacky pavement. Aa she trudged past Campden Hill Square she gazed up to-wards the Berowne house. It was hidden by the trees of

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the square garden but she could picture its secret life -,t had to resist the temptation to cross the road and walk up to it to see if the police Rover was parked outside. She seemed to have been away from the squad for weeks rather than a single day.

She was glad to turn from the roar of the avenue into the comparative quiet of her own road. Her grandmother didn't speak when she rang the bell and called her own name into the entry-phone. But there was a burr and the door was released with surprising speed. The old lady must have been near the door. She humped her carder bags into the lift and was borne upwards past floor after floor of empty and silent corridors.

She let herself into the flat and, as she always did, turned her key in the security lock. Then she hauled the bags of groceries on to the kitchen table and turned to walk the three yards across the hall to the sitting room door. The flat was silent, unnaturally so. Surely her grandmother would lave turned on the television? Small facts, un-regardet in her self-obsessed mood of resentment and misery, suddenly came together; the sitting room door tight closed whe'n she had left it open, the swift but voice-less response to her ring at the street door, the unnatural silence. Even as her hand touched the knob and she pushed open the sitting room door, she knew with absolute certainty that something was wrong. But by then it was too late.

He had gagged her grandmother and tied her to one of the dining chairs with strips of white cloth, probably, she thought, a ripped sheet. He himself stood behind her, eyes blazing above the smiling mouth like a bizarre tableau of triumphant youth and age. He was holding the gun with both hands, steadying the barrel, his arms stretched rigid. She wondered if he were used to firearms or whether this was how he had seen a gun held in TV crime series. Her mind was curiously detached. She had often wondered how she would feel if faced with this kind of emergency and it interested her that her reactions were so predictable. Disbelief, shock, fear. And then the surge of adrenalin, the gears of the mind taking hold.

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As their eyes met he slowly lowered his arms, then placed the nozzle of the gun against her grandmother's head. Her eyes above the mouth gag were immense, great black pools of terror. It was extraordinary that those rest-less eyes could be filled with such an intensity of pleading. Kate was seized with such pity and such anger that, for a moment, she dared not speak. Then she said:

'Take off that gag. Her mouth's bleeding. She's had one shock already. D'you want to kill her with pain and fright?'

'Oh, she won't die. They don't, these old bitches. They live for ever.' 'She isn't strong and a dead hostage isn't much use to

yOU.'

'Ah, but I'll still have you. A policewoman, rather more valuable.'

'Will you? D'you think I care a damn except for her? Look, if you want any cooperation from me take off that gag.'

'And have her hollering like a stuck pig? Not that I know what a stuck pig sounds like, but I know the kind of noise she'd make. I'm in a particularly sensitive mood and I never could stand noise.'

'If she does then you can gag her again, can't you? But she won't. I'll see to that.'

'All right. Come and take it off yourself. But be careful. Remember I've got this gun against her head.'

She moved across, knelt and put her hand against her grandmother's cheek.

'I'm going to take offth� gag. Now you mustn't make a noise. Not a sound. If you do, he'll put it on again. Promise?' There was no response, nothing but terror in

the glazed eyes. But then her head jerked twice.

Kate said:

'Don't worry, Gram I'm here. It's going to be all right.' The stiff hands with their parched swollen knuckles clasped the chair ends as if fastened to the wood. She put her own hands over them. They felt like dry crgpe, cold and lifeless. She pressed down her warm palms and felt

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the physical transfer of life, of hope. Gently she put her right hand against her grandmother's cheek and won-dered how she could ever have found this crumpled flesh repulsive. She thought: We haven't touched each other for fifteen years. And now I am touching her, and wih love.

When the gag dropped off, he waved her back and said: 'Stand over there against the wall. Now.' She did as she was ordered. His eyes followed her.

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und in her chair, her grandmother was rhythmically ing and shutting her mouth like a fish gasping for air. A thin dribble of bloodstained mucus dripped over her chin. Kate waited until she could control her voice. Then she said coolly:

'Why this panic? We've got no real evidence. You must know that.'

'Ah, but now you have.'

Without moving the gun he turned up the corner of his jacket with his left hand.

'My spare button. Your people at the lab won't have missed this broken twist of thread. Pity the buttons are so distinctive. This comes fhaving expensive taste in dothes. Papa always said it would be my undoing.'

His voice was high, brittle, the eyes large and bright as if he were on drugs. She thought: he's not really as calm as he wants to sound. And he's been drinking. Probably got at my whisky while he was waiting. But that made him more dangerous not less. She said:

'That's not enough, a single button. Look, don't be a fool. Stop play-acting. Hand over the gun. Go home and call your lawyer.'

'Ah, but I don't think I can do that, not now. You see there's this damned officious priest. Or rather, there was this damned officious priest. He had a taste for martyrdom, poor sod. I hope he's enjoying it.'

'You've killed him? Father Barnes?'

'Shot him. So you see I haven't anything to lose. If I'm aiming for Broadmoor rather than a high-security jail, you could say the more the merrier.'

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There was, she remembered, a mass murderer who had

said just that. Who was it? Haigh?

She said: