Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (46 page)

Wexford remembered the figures in a landscape, the air of something romantic that had pervaded the scene that evening, and he said, "We'll park here. It's a fine view."

Vine put on the handbrake and the engine died. The silence was broken by the chattering, tinny, unmusical song of birds in the giant limes, ancient survivors of hurricane. Wexford wound down the window.

"We know now that the killers who came here on 11 March didn't come in a car. It would have been impossible to have done so and to have got away unobserved. They didn't come in a car or a van or on a motorbike. We only assumed they did, but the evidence for doing so was strong. I think I can say anyone would have made that assumption. However, we were wrong. They came on foot. Or one of them did."

Burden looked up at him sharply.

"No, Mike, there were two involved. And no motor transport or any other sort of transport was used. The time too, we've known that from the beginning. Harvey Copeland was shot at a few minutes past eight, say two or three minutes past, the two women and Daisy at perhaps seven minutes past. The getaway was at ten past or a minute or so earlier, at which time Joanne Garland was still on her way to Tancred.

"She reached the house at eleven minutes past. When the getaway was made she would have been coming in the main drive. While she was ringing and knocking at the door, trying

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to see in the dining-room window, while she was doing all these things three people were already dead. And Daisy was crawling across the dining-room and hall floors to reach the phone."

"She didn't hear the bell?"

"She thought she was dying, sir," said Vine. "She thought she was bleeding to death. Perhaps she did hear it, perhaps she can't remember."

Wexford said, "It would be wrong to put much credence on what Daisy said happened. For instance, it's unlikely anyone suggested the noise upstairs was made by the cat when the cat normally rampaged about at six, not eight. It's very unlikely her grandmother suggested the noise came from the cat. We should also discount everything Daisy said about a getaway

car."

"We'll leave these circumstantial things for a moment and enter a more speculative area. The reason for Andy Griffin's murder was certainly to silence him after he had made a blackmail attempt. What was the reason for the murder of Joyce Virson?"

"The perpetrator thought Daisy would be in the house that night."

"You believe that, Mike?"

"Well, Joyce Virson wasn't blackmailing him," Burden said with a grin, which he decided was misplaced and changed to a scowl. "We've agreed he was after Daisy. He must have been after Daisy."

"It seems a roundabout way of doing things," said Wexford. "Why go to the trouble of fixing

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a timed arson, risk killing others, when Daisy was most of the time totally alone at Tancred and easily accessible? On Freebee's orders she was no longer protected by night and the stables were empty. I have never believed the burning of The Thatched House was designed to kill Daisy.

"It was designed to kill someone but not Daisy." He paused and looked from one to the other speculatively. "Tell me, what have Nicholas Virson, John Gabbitas, Jason Sebright and Jonathan Hogarth in common?"

"All male, all young," said Burden, "all English-speaking ..."

"They live round here. Two are American or part American."

"All Caucasian, middle-class, quite good looking or very good-looking ..."

"They're Daisy's admirers," said Vine.

"That's right, Barry. You've got it. Virson is in love with her, Hogarth is very keen and Gabbitas and Sebright, I think, are considerably attracted. She's an attractive girl, a lovely girl, it's not surprising she should have many admirers. Another one was Harvey Copeland, rather old for her, more than old enough in fact to be her grandfather, but a handsome old fellow for his age and once a Vow on campus'. And a real prince in bed, according to Davina."

Burden was making his Puritan Father face, mouth pulled down eyebrows drawn together. Laid-back Vine's deadpan look didn't change.

"Yes, I know the idea of old Harvey initiating Daisy sexually is disgusting. It's disgusting and

KGD31

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it's also a bit of a joke. Remember there was no coercion, probably not even much persuasion. Just a thought, wasn't it? You can hear Davina saying it: 'It was just a thought, my dear.' Only a monomaniac with ideas of revenge very different from most people's would have held it viciously against Harvey Copeland. And who, anyway, would have known?"

"Her father knew," Burden put in. "Joanne Garland wrote and told him."

"Yes. And no doubt Daisy told people. She would have told a man who loved her. She didn't, however, tell me. I had to find it out from her mother's best friend. Let's go to Edinburgh now, shall we?" Burden's involuntary glance out of the window made Wexford laugh. "Not literally, Mike. I've brought you far enough for one morning. Let's imagine ourselves in Edinburgh at the Festival in the last week of August and the first of September."

"Davina always went to the Edinburgh Festival. Just as she went to Salzburg and Bayreuth, to the Passion Play at Oberammergau every ten years, to Glyndebourne and to Snape. But last year the Book Festival was held as it is every other year and she was due to speak on the subject of autobiographers and also to appear on some literary panel. As a matter of course, Harvey went with her and she also took Naomi and Daisy along.

"This time they took Nicholas Virson as well. An unlikely devotee of the arts but that wouldn't, of course, be his reason for going. He merely wanted to be with Daisy. He was

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in love with Daisy and took every opportunity of being near her."

"They didn't stay with Ishbel Macsamphire, an old college friend of Davina's, but they visited her, or Davina and Harvey did. Naomi was ill in the hotel with flu. Daisy had her own occupations. No doubt Davina talked to Ishbel about her hopes for Daisy, mentioning, in what terms we don't know but can guess at, that she had a boyfriend called Nicholas.

"Then one day Mrs Macsamphire saw Daisy across the street with her boyfriend. They weren't near enough to be introduced but no doubt she waved and Daisy waved back. It wasn't until the funeral that they met again. I overheard Mrs Macsamphire say to Daisy that they hadn't seen each other since the Festival 'when I saw you with your young man'. Of course I thought she meant Nicholas, I have always believed she meant Nicholas."

"She didn't?"

"Joanne Garland said she met Nicholas Virson in the street at the end of August and thought of speaking to him about this sex initiation business with Copeland. She didn't in fact do this but that's irrelevant here. Virson later told me that he and his mother were in Corfu around the end of August. Now none of this meant much. He could have been in Kingsmarkham and next day he could have been in Corfu, but it did make it unlikely he was in Edinburgh as well at much the same time."

"You asked him?" Burden said.

'No, I asked Mrs Macsamphire. I asked her

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this morning if it was a fair-haired man she'd seen with Daisy and she said, no, he was dark and very good-looking."

Wexford paused and said, "Shall we get out and walk a bit? I've a fancy to walk the length of this ride and see what's at the end. There's something in human nature, isn't there, always wanting to know what's at the end?"

The scenario he had dreamed about took a new shape. He saw the sequence reform itself as he got out of the car and began to walk along the grassy path. Rabbits had cropped it close so that it resembled mown turf. The air was very soft and mild, scented with something fresh and vaguely sweet. Blossom was coming out on the cherry trees among the uncurling copper coloured leaves. He saw the table again, the woman lying across it with her head in a plateful of blood, her daughter opposite her in a swoon of death, the young girl crawling, bleeding. Something like rewind mechanism took him back one minute, two, three, to the first sounds in the house, the deliberately created noise as things in Davina's room were overturned, the jewellery already taken earlier in the day . . .

Burden and Vine walked in silence beside him. The end of this roofless tunnel showed itself slowly approaching but with no opening vista of further woods, further wide green path. It was as if the sea might be beyond, or the termination of the ride a cliff edge, a precipice you would step off into nothing.

"There were two of them," he said, "but only one came into the house. He came on foot and

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entered by the back door at five minutes to eight, well-primed, knowing his way, knowing exactly what he would find. He was wearing gloves and carrying the gun he had bought from Andy Griffin who picked it up in the bank after Martin was shot.

"Perhaps he would never have thought of doing any of this but for the gun. He had the gun so he had to use it. The gun gave him the idea. The barrel he had already changed, he knew all about that, how to do it, he'd been doing it since he was a boy.

"Armed with the gun containing the five cartridges which remained in the chamber, he came into Tancred House and went upstairs by the back stairs to carry out the plan of disarranging Davina's bedroom. The people downstairs heard him and Harvey Copeland went to look, but by that time the man with the gun had come down the back stairs and was approaching the hall along the passage from the kitchen regions. Harvey, on the bottom stair, turned round when he heard footsteps and the gunman shot him, so that he fell backwards over the lowest stairs."

"Why shoot him twice?" Vine asked. "According to the report the first shot killed him."

"I said something just now about a monomaniac with ideas of revenge very different from most people's. The gunman knew what had been proposed for Harvey Copeland and Daisy. He fired two shots into Davina's husband in a passion of jealousy, to be revenged on him for his temerity.

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"He then proceeded into the dining room where he shot Davina and Naomi. Lastly, he shot Daisy. Not to kill her, only to wound."

"Why?" said Burden. "Why only to wound? What happened to disturb him? We know it wasn't the noise the cat made upstairs. You say the getaway was at ten past or a minute earlier while Joanne Garland was still coming up the main drive, but in a sense there was no getaway at all. Only an escape on foot. Wasn't it Joanne ringing the front-door bell that sent him running for the back way out?"

Vine said, "If it was her she'd have heard the shots or she'd have heard the last one. He left because he had no more cartridges in the gun. He couldn't shoot her again just because he missed first time."

The green ride had come to an end and in a way it was a cliff edge, a precipice. The borders of the forest, the meadows beyond, in the distance the downs, rolled away below them. A huge bank of cumulus welled up from the horizon but a long way from the sun, too far away to diminish its brightness. They stood and gazed at the view.

"Daisy crawled to the phone and made her 999 call," Wexford said. "She was not only in pain and in a state of terror, of fear for her life, but in mental anguish too. In those minutes she may have been afraid to die, but she wanted to die too. For a long time afterwards, days, weeks, she wanted to die, she had nothing to live for."

"She had lost her whole family," said Burden.

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"Oh, Mike, that had nothing to do with it," Wexford said with sudden impatience. "What did she care for her family? Nothing. Her mother she despised just as Davina despised her, a poor feeble thing who had made a foolish marriage, never got any sort of career together, had been dependant on her own mother all her life. Davina I think she positively disliked, hated her domination of her, those plans for university and travel, even making up her mind what Daisy should study, even arranging her sex life for her. She must have regarded Harvey Copeland with a mixture of ridicule and revulsion. No, she disliked her nearest relations and felt no grief for them after they were dead."

"She grieved, though. You told me you'd seldom seen such grief. She was constantly crying and sobbing and wishing she was dead. You just said so."

Wexford nodded. "But not because she'd seen the brutal murder of her family. She grieved because the man she loved and who she believed loved her had shot her. The man she loved, the only person in the world she loved, and who she thought would risk everything for love of her, had tried to kill her. That's what she thought.

"When she crawled to the phone, in those minutes, the whole world was overturned for her because the man she was passionately in love with had tried to do to her what he had done to those others. And she went on grieving -- for that. She was alone, abandoned, first in 1 the hospital, then with the Virsons, lastly alone in the house that was now hers, and he never got

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in touch, he never tried, he never came to her. He had never loved her, he had wanted to kill her too. No wonder she said to me with great melodrama: 'The pain is in my heart.'"

As the clouds peaked to reach the sun and the chill came quickly, they turned and began to walk back. It was immediately cold, a hard April breeze cutting the air.

They came to the car, got into it and drove back up the byroad to pass the front of the house. Vine brought the car across the flagstones very slowly. The blue cat was on the stone coping of the pool with one of the goldfish between its paws.

The scarlet-headed fish floundered and flapped, twisting its body this way and that. Queenie patted it pleasurably with the paw that was not holding it down. Vine started to get out of the car but the cat was much too quick for him. She was a cat and he was only a man. She snatched up the flailing fish in her mouth and ran for the front door which was a crack ajar.

Someone inside closed it behind her.

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27

MOST of the technology was gone. The blackboard was gone and the phones. The two men Graham Pagett had j sent were carrying out the master computer I and Hinde's laser printer. Someone else was I carrying a tray of cacti in pots. One end of the i stables had been restored to what it had once jf been, a young girl's private retreat. |l Wexfbrd had never seen it this way before. f He had never seen what Daisy had here, the | taste which had governed the furnishings, the j kind of pictures she had on the walls. A J Klimt poster, glazed and framed, showed a j nude in shimmering, all-revealing gold drapery; J another was of cats, a huddle of cuddly Persians j nestled together inside a satin-lined basket. | The furniture was wicker, white and prettily I upholstered in blue and white check cotton. I Was this her taste or Davina's for her? A I houseplant, unwatered and the worse for wear, stood drooping in a blue and white Chinese pot. The books were all Victorian novels, their covers pristine, doubtless unread, and works on a variety of subjects from archaeology to present-day European politics, from language families to British lepidoptera. All chosen by Davina, he thought. The only book that looked as if it had ever been taken out of that bookcase was The World's Greatest Cat Photos.