Rosie (62 page)

Burglary was something Seth knew all about. Right from the age of fourteen he’d been an opportunistic thief, nipping through an open door and grabbing what he could stuff in his pockets. Later on, after the war, he’d progressed to breaking and entering houses in Wells and Glastonbury. He’d never bothered with doing big houses – wealthy people paid too much attention to security and they rarely had cash lying about, which interested him far more than stuff that he’d have to fence. Over the years he’d done dozens of jobs when he was short of readies, and cottages like Miss Pemberton’s were the easiest of all. Hers stood on its own, backing on to fields, and he’d observed this afternoon that there was only an old lady living next door. When this old girl went toddling off to the village shop, he’d nipped in round the back of Miss Pemberton’s and taken a good look round.

Aside from a tiny kitchen there was just one large room, with stairs leading up. Her desk was right under the back window, an address book lying on it beside the telephone. If he hadn’t been afraid the old lady next door might return suddenly, he might have smashed the window and grabbed it then and there. But he’d spotted one or two other things which were worth having anyway, and she might have a bit of money tucked away too. It would have to wait until later.

Seth finished his fish and chips, put on a dark jumper and leather gloves, then tucking his jemmy, a sharp knife and a torch into his belt, and his cigarettes into his pocket, he got out of the van and climbed over a five-barred gate. It took quite a while to walk across the fields and reach the hedge enclosing Miss Pemberton’s garden. It was a lovely warm night, masses of stars in the sky, and enough light from the moon to see where he was going without needing the torch.

He felt powerful again because he was back on home territory. In London he never felt entirely in control of his life; he was a mere runaround for Del Franklin and his boys, and more often than not he suspected he was their patsy. Perhaps after tonight he could make the break from them and move on to something better.

Two minutes later Seth was watching Miss Pemberton from the safety of her garden shed. She’d drawn the curtains at the front of the cottage, but left the back ones open and with the light from a couple of table lamps he could see her clearly. She was sitting on a settee with her feet up on a stool, her glasses on, reading a book. To his delight she was older and smaller than he’d expected, just an ordinary, plump, middle-aged woman. Seth struck a match, lit a cigarette and checked his watch before blowing it out. It was almost eleven. He guessed a woman of her age would go to bed soon; the old woman’s house next door was already in darkness. He planned to wait another couple of hours before going in to make sure she was sound asleep.

A few minutes later she got up from the settee and went into the kitchen. The glass in the door there was reeded, but he could see her silhouette and he guessed she was making herself a hot drink. She opened the back door to let her cat out, but although she locked it afterwards, she didn’t close the little window beside it. The kitchen light went out, then she went back into the living-room and turned the lights out there too. A few seconds later the light came on upstairs and he could see her drawing the curtains.

He heard the toilet flush and water running, but still the bedroom light stayed on. The wooden box he was sitting on was uncomfortable. He wanted to unfold one of the deckchairs stacked against a wall, but he was too scared of knocking something over. Finally, about half an hour later, the light went out.

Seth moved to the floor, leaned back against the box and lit another cigarette. He hadn’t known such utter silence since his days back at May Cottage, and it pleased him. In London there was always noise at night, banging car doors, tyres screeching, drunks shouting. He thought back to nights like this when he went out catching eels with Norman. If they stayed quiet they could actually hear the eels slithering, and when they caught them and put them in a bucket the sound of their skin rubbing together was almost like listening to hot sex. He missed those kinds of things – and Norman. He still didn’t fully understand why his brother ran out on him; they could have had such a good life together.

His eyes were used to the gloom by now and he studied the contents of his hidey-hole. The orderliness of it said a great deal about the woman’s character. Garden tools hanging from hooks, a neat stack of flowerpots, pots of paint on a shelf and brushes in a jam jar. It even smelled clean in here. From what he’d seen of her cottage, that was equally orderly. It was going to be a doddle. He could be in and out within ten minutes.

At half past one Seth crept silently up the garden, slid his hands through the small window, reached the lock on the door, turned it and went in. He had always prided himself on his stealth. A teacher at school had once said he moved like a cat. He went straight to the desk, but to his disappointment the address book he’d seen earlier was no longer there. Taking his torch from his belt, he flashed it around the room. The beam caught two nice silver candlesticks, a couple of photograph frames and a carriage clock which looked as if it might be valuable. But he had to find Rosie’s address first.

Holding his breath, he gingerly opened the top drawer in the desk. It was full of stationery. The next drawer down held some cardboard files. He opened one, then another, but all the correspondence was typewritten and unlikely to be from Rosie. The last drawer had ordinary letters, a whole clump of them held together with a paperclip. He put them on the desk and, holding the torch so he could see them properly, he turned them over one by one.

‘Get out of my house!’

Seth nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the woman’s commanding voice. He hadn’t heard so much as a creak from upstairs. He turned in astonishment and dropped his torch. It spun on the floor for a second or two and Seth was rooted to the spot in fear as the beam of light flashed round the room, showing her ghostly figure at the top of the stairs.

‘There is nothing in this house to steal, you scoundrel!’ the woman said in a crisp, cold voice. ‘Get out immediately!’

Suddenly the overhead light was switched on and Seth was astounded to see that the woman was brandishing a heavy stick of dark shiny wood. She came down the stairs towards him and his legs turned to jelly.

‘I’ve killed snakes out in Africa with this stick,’ she said quite calmly. ‘And I won’t hesitate to hit you with –’ She stopped abruptly, her eyes opening wider. ‘Good heavens, you’re Seth Parker!’

It was bad enough to be caught red-handed, but even worse to find himself recognized by a woman he’d never met before.

‘I want my sister’s address,’ he managed to stammer out. ‘Give it to me now or you’ll be sorry.’

‘I think not,’ she said, and came further down until she was almost at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’m going to pick up the telephone and call the police.’

It was her calm and her self-assurance which unnerved Seth. He’d been disturbed before on burglaries and his victims had always been so terrified of him they backed away. She was such a small woman too. Even standing on the stairs, her eyes were below the level of his, grey, steady and utterly fearless.

Seth took a menacing step towards her, expecting her to back off, but instead she raised the stick and brought it down hard. Had he not jumped to one side, she would have caught him on the shoulder. But Seth was a street fighter, and as the stick came down below its intended target, he grabbed the end of it with one hand and with the other he caught her by the shoulder.

‘Drop it!’ he roared, pulling her off the stairs. She was much stronger than she looked and she struggled desperately to get away from him. But she was no match for Seth and he soon wrenched the stick out of her hand.

He lifted the stick above his head, ready to bring it down on her.

‘Don’t,’ she called out. Yet to Seth’s ears it sounded more of a threat than a plea for mercy and for one brief second Seth wanted to let her go. There was defiance in her cold eyes; she wasn’t even cowering from him. She had real courage.

Seth respected bravery, and deep down in his heart he knew he had little of it and it shamed him. But just as he’d often watched a hawk hovering in the air and admired its sheer beauty, yet still felt compelled to lift his gun and shoot it, so he lifted the stick and brought it down hard on her head.

She just collapsed like a meringue struck with a spoon. Seth watched her slither down to the floor in some surprise. Somehow he’d expected her to be more resilient than that. She landed on her knees, holding her head in her hands, her eyes at last wide with terror. ‘Please don’t do this, Seth,’ she whimpered.

He looked scornfully at her. Her courage was gone now, she was just another pathetic woman pleading with him as they always did. He had no desire to kill her, but he knew he must. She knew who he was.

Taking the stick in both hands, he brought it down again on her skull. She keeled over and he continued to beat her jerking, bucking body as if she were a sack of hay he wanted to flatten. It was only when her dressing-gown turned red with blood that he paused. She was still at last, and he knew she was dead.

He dropped the stick beside her. It took a couple of minutes before he realized the enormity of what he’d done. She looked like a broken doll covered in strawberry jam. In panic he rushed for the back door, but as his lungs filled with fresh air and the moment of nausea left him, it occurred to him that he must make it look like a real burglary. Going back into the room, he averted his eyes from her body and drew the curtains at the back window.

He was systematic now. He finished checking through the letters, but there were none from Rosie. He opened the desk drawers and scattered the contents on the floor, then went through every other cupboard and drawer in the room. He came across a nice silver bangle which he put to one side, along with the photo frames, candlesticks and carriage clock. But still he couldn’t find the address book, so he went upstairs.

For some reason the woman’s bedroom unnerved him. It was so bare, just a narrow bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, no feminine frippery, perfume or cosmetics, not even an ornament or two. On the wall was a photograph of her taken when she was much younger. She was in a nurse’s uniform, flanked by several smiling army officers. Seth wondered momentarily why she had never married.

The address book was by her bed, alongside a half-written letter. He snatched it up, but before pocketing it checked to see if Rosie was in it. There was a Rosemary Smith amongst the ‘S’s, at an address in Sussex. He thought about it for a moment, and felt it must be her. But if it wasn’t her, well, that was Miss Marks’s bad luck.

A rummage through a handbag produced seven pounds and a bit of loose change. He stuffed that in his pockets, then turned off the light and went down to collect the things he wanted to take. Two minutes later he was leaving the way he had come in, taking care to lock the door behind him.

Seth was halfway to London before it dawned on him that once the news of this murder got out, Miss Marks would guess he was responsible. His stomach heaved, and he just had time to pull over on to the side of the road and lean out of the window before he was violently sick. He sat there at the roadside in the dark for some fifteen minutes, trembling with fear. What was he going to do? One side of his brain told him that Miss Marks was crooked enough to be persuaded to keep quiet, but the other said he couldn’t count on it. If he didn’t take her Rosie’s address, she’d be mad and come looking for him again; if he took it to her and got the rest of the money, she’d know for sure that he’d been there.

He had no choice but to kill her too.

It was then that he realized his clothes were splattered with blood. Fortunately he had a pair of overalls in the back of the van, so he got out and put them on, wiping his shoes with a clump of grass before continuing his journey.

He was very tired by the time he reached the outskirts of London and the sky was growing light. He didn’t dare delay getting to Camden Town but he was so very scared. He had no way of knowing if Miss Marks lived alone. There was no time to check her out, as he had Miss Pemberton.

Driving slowly down Harmood Street he saw that 13A was a basement flat and he felt a certain relief. It would have been much more difficult if she’d lived in a couple of rooms upstairs. He parked around the corner, and after copying Rosie’s address from Miss Pemberton’s address book on to a scrap of paper, he took a heavy claw hammer from a tool-bag in the back of the van, tucked it into his belt, then buttoned his overalls up over it.

Seth rang the bell on the basement door. It was nearly six now and people were coming down the street on their way to work. He stood back in case anyone should glance down into the basement area and see him. It stank of dustbins and cats’ pee. It wasn’t the kind of place he would have expected a nurse to live in.

‘Who is it?’ she called out through the locked door.

Seth looked up towards the street nervously. He hoped there was no one within earshot. ‘It’s Seth,’ he called back. ‘Sorry to call so early, but I’ve got what you wanted.’

The door opened but she had the chain on, and Seth could only see half of her face.

‘I told you to write,’ she said in an irritable voice.

Seth took a deep breath. ‘I know, but I’ve got to go up north to work today and I’ll be gone for weeks. I thought you were in a hurry for it.’

She hesitated. Seth wished he could see her clearly. ‘You can wait till I get back if you like,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders and turning as if about to walk away. ‘But I had to come this way and I thought you’d want it.’

‘You’d better come in, then,’ she said, and closing the door she took off the chain.

Seth smiled with all the charm he could muster as she reopened the door. ‘What a task you set me,’ he said, stepping over the threshold before she could change her mind. ‘That Miss Pemberton was like my old schoolteacher, a real dragon.’

Freda was only half awake, but even so she was alert enough to realize she must be careful with this young man. He would want the rest of his money, and she wondered how she was going to get it out of its hiding place without him seeing how much she had.