An Accidental Shroud (20 page)

'You think – you think –
Nigel?
Oh, but that's
gross!
'

Although immediately realizing the enormity of her mistake, Christine noticed that Lindsay didn't deny the abortion itself. 'It wasn't Nigel? Who was it, then?'

For a long time, Lindsay said nothing. 'Nobody who matters,' she said at last, in a low voice. 'A boy I knew at school. After a party. You won't believe it, but it was the first time.'

'Of course I would, if you say so.' And, knowing Lindsay, she might be so consumed with guilt that Christine could well believe it might be the last. She needed help. At the same time, she knew that Lindsay wasn't ready for that, she wouldn't talk to her yet, she'd need time before she could. She'd only clam up if she were pressed now.

'Well, Lindsay, what about this ring? How did you come by it?'

'I can't tell you that, I can't!'

This is murder we're talking about, Christine said to herself, it's no time for being squeamish, or soft, even if you suspect your child of unimaginable horrors. Her resolve strengthened. She made herself sound firmer than she felt.

'What are you going to do?' Lindsay asked nervously.

'It's not up to me, Lindsay, it's what you have to do, isn't it?'

The narrow road, a turning off the main road, wound upwards into the partially developed housing site. A large board at the entrance announced:

FORDE MANOR GARDENS

ANOTHER PRESTIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 

BY

WILDING HOMES.

LUXURY THREE-BEDROOM AND FOUR-BEDROOM HOUSES.

PHASE ONE NEARING COMPLETION.

Home and Dry with Wilding Homes!

The site was imaginatively designed. Several small cul-de-sacs and crescents led off the central main road which wound sinuously up the hill, some of the front gardens already partly landscaped.

Ask for Thelma, they'd been told, and were now directed to the site office, housed in a portakabin near the bottom of the site, down among the earth-moving equipment and the wire-meshed compound where raw materials and machinery stood.

Considering the state of the unmade roads and the rain of the previous day, which had left behind a sea of red mud, the office was unbelievably spick and span, smelling strongly of floral air-freshener. At an equally sterile desk sat Thelma, papers neatly spread and a small computer switched on as an indication that she'd been working on them. A Mills & Boon paperback peeped out from under a file.

'Oh, it's you again!' she said when she knew they were the police. 'When are you going to let us have that pick-up back? Mr Wilding's going spare.' She was a redoubtable-looking woman, with a middle-aged perm and too much make-up, sucking a sweet. Despite the unenthusiastic greeting, their arrival had obviously created a welcome diversion and when the coolness had worn off, she was ready to help. The police activity and subsequent inquiries which had already taken place on the site, the questioning of the first-aider about any recent on-site accident involving quantities of blood, must have had the place jumping with speculation and she was no doubt hopeful of picking up some tasty titbit of gossip.

'Joss Graham?' Transferring the sweet from one cheek to the other, she informed them that today they'd find him working on one of the houses near the entrance to the site. They must already have passed him. He had no specific duties but worked at whatever job he was told to do. 'And very willingly,' she added approvingly. 'Joss never minds what he does. Not like some. But being so much better educated, he's no need to stand on his dignity, has he? You know he's a microbiologist?'

'Is that so?' Mayo felt obliged to show the surprise Thelma evidently expected. 'What's he doing working here, then?'

'He couldn't get a job in his own field, but he's not the sort to be too proud to take what he can get.' Clearly, Thelma saw herself as cheerleader of the Joss Graham fan club. Mayo thanked her, prepared to meet a cross between Einstein and the Archangel Gabriel.

'Go up Lineker Road and then Christie Avenue, and you'll find him at the first house in Mansell Crescent,' Thelma had said. Before going up there, however, Mayo decided to take a look at the collapsed ruin of the old house, Forde Manor, less than a hundred yards away. The vehicle tracks Carmody had mentioned had been obscured by the recent heavy rain, but the flattened fence hadn't yet been repaired, leaving a clear view of the field beyond. It told them nothing. There was nothing to see, apart from a heap of rubble. Incredibly, scarcely one brick had been left standing on another and it was impossible to tell what the original house had been like. They left the desolate scene behind and went in search of Joss Graham.

He was working on what was to be the front garden of one of the houses, sitting on a yellow-painted excavator and manipulating it to cut out the curving driveway as delicately and precisely as if with a knife and fork, manoeuvring round the porcelain bathroom fixtures which stood waiting outside the front door to be carried in.

Abigail wondered if she could have met him before and then decided that it was the glimpse she'd had of him yesterday that had made her think so. He was a type, there was at least one on every building site, a big, macho bloke with a tanned, outdoor complexion. Under a yellow hard hat, longish, wavy fair hair that any girl would have been proud of. Very blue eyes, one earring and a lazy smile. He leaned out of the cab to speak, looking down on them. The smile was directed at Abigail, not Mayo, whom he largely ignored. He was the sort to have been stripped to the waist, had it not been so cold. As it was, he wore nothing more than jeans and a check work shirt, pushed up to the elbows so that the tattoos on his forearm were only partly covered.

He had stopped work, switching the machine to idle as they approached. Mayo showed his warrant card and told him they were making further investigations into the murder of Nigel Fontenoy.

'The guy who had the antique shop, yeah. Yeah, I know. I've heard Matt Wilding talk about him.'

'Ever met him?'

'You think I move in those sort of circles?'

'Is there somewhere we can talk?' Mayo asked, giving him a sharp look.

'Sure.' Graham switched the machine off, jumped down and led them into the kitchen of the house next door to the one with the bathroom fittings outside. There was a smell of damp plaster and new wood. The kitchen was finished, and there was an electric kettle, coffee mugs, a jar of instant coffee and a bag of sugar on the counter. 'Like a coffee?'

Mayo waved the suggestion away. 'Thanks, but we don't want to keep you from your work. Inspector Moon here has one or two more questions to ask you. It shouldn't take long.' Graham had, like the rest of the workforce, previously been questioned, but now that his connections with both Jake and Matthew Wilding were known, it was necessary to be more specific.

'Feel free.' He had a pleasant voice and a classless intonation, but his conversation was sprinkled with too many of these deliberate Americanisms, which Mayo found irritating. He nodded to Abigail and leaned back against the sink, while Graham hitched himself on to a corner of the central unit.

It didn't take Abigail long to establish that Joss Graham was no product of the higher education system of this country, or any other. His schooling had stopped when he was fifteen, legally or illegally hardly mattered now. The job he was doing here was similar to the dozens of other unskilled jobs he'd worked at around the world. What would Thelma say when that piece of news percolated through to her? Mayo decided she'd find some excuse to justify it. Like a few bits of paper saying what exams you'd passed not equating with intelligence, or some such. Possibly true, in Joss Graham's case. He was obviously no fool.

'Why did you lie to Mr Wilding about your qualifications?' Abigail was asking.

'I wanted the job. I wasn't the only one going for it and I figured if there was any choice, it would give me a head start.' His lips twisted in a smile little short of insolence. 'Mr Wilding, having none himself, is impressed by that sort of thing.'

'Mr Wilding took you on himself? Doesn't he leave that to his foreman, or personnel manager or whatever?'

'Mr Wilding never allows
anyone
to work for him without his say so.'

'Wouldn't it have been easier simply to tell him who you were? That he was your father?' Mayo put in.

'Who says he's my father?' A brief, blazing look came from the blue eyes, but was quickly extinguished.

'Your mother seems to think he is.'

'Well, she should know.' With a lazy grin, Graham tipped his yellow hat further over his brow, folding his arms. 'But you shouldn't really believe everything my mother says.'

'We're not playing games here, Graham!' Mayo intervened sharply. 'A man's been murdered, in case you've forgotten.'

'Right. But what has that to do with me, or my parentage?'

'For your sake nothing, I hope. For the moment, I'd like to know just what your game is – why you came here to work at all?'

'Isn't a guy entitled to be curious about someone who might be his father? If I liked what I saw, who knows? If I didn't, I could always forget it.'

So far, he hadn't given a single straightforward answer, and Mayo felt he was wasting his time hoping to get one, on this subject at any rate. But he knew he'd get nowhere losing his temper with Graham, and there were other questions to ask. 'We'll come back to that later, Graham. Meanwhile, let's see if you can do any better at telling us where you were the night Nigel Fontenoy died, and I don't want any funny answers.'

Graham was unfazed. 'Your people have already been through all this.'

'Never mind that, it won't do any harm to go over it again.'

'OK, OK, go ahead.'

Was he naturally so laid back – or was it a put-on, designed to hide deeper feelings? Mayo thought not. Something told him that what you saw was what you got, as far as Joss Graham was concerned. And he didn't particularly like what he saw; there was that underlying arrogance that set his teeth on edge for one thing – plus a feeling that Graham was laughing up his sleeve, as if he knew something they didn't know, which did nothing to endear him to Mayo.

'You and Matthew Wilding were out drinking the night Nigel Fontenoy was murdered,' he said. 'I suppose you can remember that far back?'

'Sure I remember. It's a night Matt won't forget in a hurry, either. First time he was ever drunk – and I mean drunk! He was knocking them back like there was no tomorrow.'

'What about you?'

'Me? Oh, I've learned how to hold my drink.'

That wasn't what Sal Cellini had originally said. Later, he'd admitted that he'd had a suspicion that Graham wasn't as drunk as he appeared, but had been egging the younger man on unnecessarily. The question of drugs had crossed the nightclub owner's mind, but he'd decided they were only boozed up. All the same, he'd asked them to leave – he'd had a suspicion the lad might not have been as old as he said he was.

'Didn't you try and stop Matthew?' Abigail put in.

'No, why should I? It's an experience everybody has to go through sometime, it's part of growing up.'

'That's one point of view.'

'Oh, come on, he's
nineteen
! And I guess he was entitled to kick over the traces that night.'

'Why that night, in particular?'

'Just a feeling I had, maybe he'd had a row with his father, I don't know. He's all mixed up about his relations with him, doesn't really like being as rebellious as he makes out he is.'

'So – Matthew got completely drunk – then what?'

'I drove him home. I was hesitating about leaving him alone, but as soon as he got out of the car, he threw up. I knew he'd be OK after that, all he needed was to sleep it off. He was making one hell of a racket, though, and Lindsay came out to see what was going on. She said to leave him to her, she'd make him some coffee, get him to bed, so that's what I did.'

'What time was that?'

'Around eleven, eleven-fifteen maybe. I don't keep much track of time.'

'Where did you go from there?'

'Home, of course.'

'And got there at what time?'

'Must've been around eleven-forty-five, or a bit earlier.'

'Jake Wilding was still there?'

'
Jake?
You're not serious?'

'He says he was visiting your mother.'

Amusement lifted the corner of Graham's mouth. 'Was he? Well, if he says so. Maybe he parked his car around the corner. Sure, there was a light in the front room, but my mother often stays up late. I went in the back way and straight upstairs so as not to disturb her.'

'So she couldn't confirm what time you got in?'

'No, but my sister Cassie would. I knocked on her door as I went past. Thought the storm might be bothering her. She asked me what time it was and I said coming up to midnight.'

In that case, he couldn't have been murdering Nigel Fontenoy in the middle of Lavenstock. But ...
another
sister, half-sister, whatever, providing
another
alibi? All these sibling permutations could give you a headache.

The sun was emerging from behind the clouds as they left the site, one of those brilliant shafts on a dark afternoon that light a scene with a lurid unreality. Joss Graham was standing beside the JCB, watching them, waiting to climb back into the seat, and some trick of that odd light made his profile stand out for one brief, illuminating moment in sharp relief. In that moment, Abigail was again aware of that eerie feeling of recognition. Her pulses quickening, she knew that what she'd just seen, and something else she had previously noticed and recorded in her subconscious, had slotted together. She felt a faint chill down her spine but her intuition refused to take her any further.

She took the wheel and, as they left the site, Mayo remarked, 'I think we could be on to something here, Abigail. He's lying in his teeth. What's he being so damned cagey about, if he hasn't something to hide – all that guff about Wilding, implying he isn't his father! You've only got to look at him to see the likeness.'