Guilty Thing Surprised (21 page)

Twohey would know. It was terribly frustrating to Wexford to think that perhaps Twohey was the only person now alive who did know and that he was hidden away comfortably with his secret. And it might be days, it might be weeks.…

On to Myfleet. The church bells of Clusterwell were ringing for Evensong and, as soon as their chimes died away behind them, he heard those of Myfleet ahead, eight bells ringing great brazen changes through the evening air.

There was a note pinned to Mrs Cantrip’s front door:
Gone to church. Back 7.30.
An invitation to burglars, Wexford thought, only he couldn’t remember any burglary taking place in Myfleet for ten years. Its trees shrouded crimes of greater moment. He turned away, and the ginger cat, locked out among the flowers, rubbed itself against his legs.

Breathing in the scent of the pines that all day had been bathed in sunshine, Wexford entered the forest. The path he took was the path Elizabeth Nightingale had taken that night, and he followed it until he came to the clearing where Burden believed he had met Twohey and he believed—what?

Perhaps Burden was right again, after all. Those
parcels might never have been posted but delivered by hand. She would hardly have carried such large sums of money loose in her handbag. Anyway, she hadn’t had a handbag, only a coat and a torch … He stared at the lichened log where she had sat. The scrape marks of four shoes were still apparent on the dry sandy ground and in the whorls of pine needles four shifting feet had made.

If her companion was Twohey—observed perhaps by Sean who misunderstood the purpose of their meeting—how had Twohey come? Over the black wooded hill from Pomfret? Or by the path that skirted the Myfleet cottage gardens and came out eventually—where? Wexford decided to explore it.

The church bells had stopped and the place was utterly silent. He walked between the straight narrow pine trunks, looking up sometimes at the patches of pale silvery sky, and sometimes from side to side of him into the forest itself which was so dark and, up to head height, so sterile, that no birds sang there and the only visible life was that of midges which danced in swarms.

It was on account of the midges that he was glad that the trees to the left of him petered out and he found himself walking against the cottage fences. Presently, ahead of him, he heard a whisper of music. It was a sentimental treacly melody that he soon defined as belonging to the pop or dance-music order, and it reminded Wexford of those soft and faintly erotic tunes which had floated down to him from Katje Doom’s transistor. Just as he was thinking how pleasant and undemanding it sounded on this peaceful summer evening, it ceased and was succeeded by an appalling cacophony, the furious result of several
saxophones, organs, drums and electrical guitars all being played at once.

Wexford put his head over the fence and stared into the square plot of land, part wilderness and part rubbish dump, which was the Lovells’ back garden. From the open kitchen window some fifty feet of electric lead stretched to the shed from which the noise emanated. Wexford backed a little, covering his assaulted ears.

Then he took his hands down.

Inside the shed someone was speaking. The tone and timbre of the voice were unmistakable, its accent deliberately cultivated. Mid-Atlantic, Wexford decided.

With mounting curiosity, he listened.

Addressing his unseen, indeed non-existent, audience as ‘guys and dolls’, Sean Lovell, with smooth professional patter, made a short dismissive comment on the last piece of music and then, more enthusiastically, announced his next record. This time it was the effusion of a big band and it was even more discordant than the composition which had made Wexford cover his ears.

It stopped. Sean spoke again and, as he took in the full implication of his words, a shaft of intense pity pierced Wexford. Perhaps, he thought, there are few things so sad as eavesdropping on a man alone with his daydreams, a man indulging his solitary, private and ridiculous vice.

‘And now,’ said the disembodied voice, ‘what you’ve all been waiting for. You’ve come a long way tonight and I can promise you you’re not going to be disappointed. Here he is, boys and girls. Let’s have a big hand for your own Sean Lovell!’

Unaccompanied, he began to sing. Wexford walked away very delicately and softly for such a big man, his feet scarcely causing a crackle on the needled forest floor.

He knew now what Sean had been doing that night and would perhaps do for years until some girl caught him and showed him how daydreams die and that life is digging a rich man’s garden.

15

W
exford was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as his head was on the pillow. Like most people approaching that phase of life which succeeds middle age but it not yet old age, he was finding it more and more difficult to get a good night’s sleep. Years ago, when he was still young, he had acquired the sensible habit of emptying his mind at night of all speculations and worries which troubled him during the day, and of turning his thoughts to future domestic plans or back to pleasant memories. But his subconscious was outside his control and it often asserted itself in dreams of those daytime anxieties.

So it was that night. In his dream he was down by the Kingsbrook, the scene of many of his favourite walks, when he saw a boy fishing upstream. The boy was fair and thin with a strong-boned Anglo-Saxon face. Wexford went nearer to him, keeping in the shadow of the trees, for some inexplicable dream reason not wishing to be observed. It was pleasant and
warm down by the river, a summer evening that, he felt, had succeeded a long hot day.

Presently he heard someone calling and he saw a girl come running over the brow of the hill. Her light, almost yellow, hair and the cast of her face told him she was the boy’s sister, older than he, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. She had come to fetch him away, and he heard them break into bitter argument because the boy wanted to remain and go on fishing.

He knew he had to follow them across the meadows. They ran ahead of him, the girl’s hair flying. Above him a plane zoomed over, and he saw the bombs dropping like heavy black feathers.

Something of the house still remained standing, bare windowless walls enclosing a smoking mass from which came the cries of those buried alive. The children were neither shocked nor frightened, for this was a nightmare where natural emotions are suspended. He watched, a detached observer, as the girl groped her way into the black inferno, the boy at her heels. Now he could see a long pale arm protrude from the rubble and hear a voice calling for help, for mercy. The children began shovelling with their bare hands and he came closer to help them. Then he saw that they were not uncovering the screaming faces but burying them deeper, laughing like demons as they worked furiously to finish what the bomb had begun, and he jerked awake as he shouted to them to stop.

Conscious now, he found himself sitting up, his shouts coming as half-choked snores. His wife, lying beside him, hadn’t stirred. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the luminous hands of his watch. It was five past two.

If he awoke at that hour he knew he would never get to sleep again and his usual habit was to go downstairs,
sit in an armchair and find something to read. The dream stayed with him, vivid and haunting, as he put on his dressing gown and made for the stairs. In the morning he would set in motion the research necessary to discover exactly what had happened that day the Villiers’ home was destroyed. Now for something to read …

As a young man, when he had had more spare time and less responsibility, he had been a great reader, and literary criticism and writers’ biographies had been among his favourite reading matter. Mrs Wexford couldn’t understand this and she remembered how she had asked him why he wanted to read what someone else said about a book. Why not just read the book itself? And he hadn’t quite known how to answer her, how in this field he couldn’t trust his own judgment because he was only a policeman and hadn’t a university degree. Nor could he have told her that he needed instruction and knowledge because the purpose of education is to turn the soul’s eyes towards the light.

Thinking of this and the pleasure he had had from such works, he turned his physical eye to
Wordsworth in Love
which he had left lying on the coffee table. After only four hours’ sleep he was no longer tired and far more alert than when he had formerly tried to apply himself to this book. He might as well have another go at it. Pity it was about Wordsworth, though. Rather a dull poet, he thought. All that communing with nature and walking about in the Lake District. A bit tedious really. Now if only it had been about Lord Byron, say, that would have been a different matter, something to get his teeth into. There was an interesting character for you, a romantic larger-than-life man with his sizzling love affairs, his disastrous marriage, the
scandal over Augusta Leigh. Still, it wasn’t; it was about Wordsworth. Well, he would read it and maybe, even if it bored him, he would get some idea of the nature of the fascination the Lake poet had for Villiers, the obsession almost that had made him write God knew how many books about him.

He began to read and this time he found it easy and pleasant to follow. After a while he began to wish he had read more of Wordsworth’s poetry. He had no idea the man had been in love with a French girl, had been involved in the Revolution and had narrowly missed losing his head. It was good, bracing stuff and Villiers wrote well.

At six he made himself a large pot of tea. He read on, utterly absorbed, and now considerably excited. The room began to fill with light, and slowly, with the same gradual dawning, Wexford’s mind was illuminated. He finished the last chapter and closed the book.

Sighing, he addressed himself coldly, ‘You ignorant old fool!’ Then he rubbed his stiff hands and said aloud, ‘If only it had been Byron! My God, if only it had. I would have known the answer long ago.’

‘The first Monday morning of term,’ said John Burden, finishing his third slice of toast and marmalade, ‘is worst than the first
day
of term.’ And he added gloomily: ‘Things really start getting serious.’ He prodded his sister with a sticky finger. ‘Isn’t it time you started being sick?’

‘I’m not going to be sick, you beast.’

‘Why ever not? Today’s worse than the first day, much, much worse. I bet you’ll be ever so sick when you start at the High School.
If
you get there. You’ll be too sick to do the exams.’

‘I shan’t!’

‘Oh, yes, you will.’

‘Be quiet, the pair of you,’ said Burden. ‘Sometimes I think there’s more peace and quiet down at the nick.’ He left the breakfast table and prepared to go there. ‘You must be the most unnatural brother and sister in Sussex,’ he said.

John looked pleased at being placed in this unique category. ‘Can I have a lift, Dad? Old Roman Villa’s taking us for Prayers and there’ll be hell to pay if I’m late.’

‘Don’t say “hell to pay”,’ said Burden absently. ‘Come on, then. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.’

A day of hunting for a needle in a haystack, of running a predator to earth. He marched into the police station and met Sergeant Martin in the foyer.

‘Anything turned up on Twohey yet?’

‘No, sir, not as far as I know, but Mr Wexford’s on to something. He said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in.’

Burden went up in the lift.

The chief inspector was sitting at his desk, impatiently drumming his fingers on the blotter. There were pouches under his eyes and he looked, Burden thought, very much the worse for wear. And yet, about his whole demeanour, there was an air of triumph, of momentous discovery that until this moment he had kept suppressed.

‘You’re late,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve had to go over and swear out a warrant myself.’

‘What warrant? You mean you’ve found Twohey?’

‘Twohey be damned,’ said Wexford, jumping up and taking his raincoat from the stand. ‘Hasn’t it yet penetrated your dapper little skull that this is a
murder
hunt? We are going to Clusterwell to make an arrest.’