Wolf to the Slaughter (16 page)

‘Cawthorne’s?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘I saw him in it. I know it was him.’

‘Sure of the time?’

He had noticed she wore no watch on the slender wrist.

‘I’d just come from the launderette. I’d seen the clock.’

There was nothing more he could do. Perhaps it was all true. They had no body, no real evidence against Kirkpatrick after this. A fatherly impulse made him smile at her and say,

‘All right, Miss Grover, you can run along now. Mr Kirkpatrick ought to be grateful to you.’

For a moment he thought the shot had gone home, then he wasn’t sure. The look in her big grey eyes was hard to interpret. He thought it might be a relieved happiness, no doubt because he was terminating the interview. Her departure seemed to deprive the office of some of its brightness, although the sun still shone. Her scent remained, a perfume that was too old for her innocence.

‘That girl was got at,’ Burden said wrathfully.

‘You could be right there.’

‘We should never have let Kirkpatrick out of here yesterday afternoon.’

Wexford sighed. ‘What had we got to hold him on, Mike? Oh, I agree he probably thought up that alibi between yesterday afternoon and this morning. I daresay he went straight round to Grover’s when he left here. That girl wasn’t at ease.’

‘Show me a Grover who wouldn’t do anything for money,’ Burden said. ‘Like father, like daughter.’

‘Poor kid. Not much of a life for her, is it? Cooped up all day in that dirty little hole and carting the washing about in the evenings because her mother’s playing whist.’

Burden eyed him uneasily. The expression on his chief’s face was tolerant, almost tender, and it puzzled him. If he had known Wexford to be almost as uxorious a husband as himself, he might have believed . . . But, no, there were limits.

‘If he was outside Cawthorne’s, sir,’ he said, ‘and if he was there at half-past nine, he’s clear and we’re wasting our time with him. But if the girl’s lying and he did it, he could have disposed of Anita’s body practically anywhere between here and the Scottish border. She could be lying in a ditch anywhere you can name in half a dozen counties.’

‘And where the body is the weapon is, too.’

‘Or he could have gone home to a place he knew and dumped her in the thickest part of those pine woods in Cheriton Forest.’

‘But until we know more, Mike, searching for that body is impracticable, sheer waste of time.’

‘I wouldn’t mind having a go at Kirkpatrick over it,’ Burden said with sudden ferocity. ‘Having a go at him in his wife’s presence.’

‘No. We’ll give him a rest for a while. The king-size question is, did he bribe that girl?’ Wexford grinned sagely. ‘I’m hoping she may feel inclined to confide in Drayton.’

‘Attractive to the opposite sex, don’t you think? That sulky brooding look gets them every time.’ Wexford’s little glinting eyes were suddenly unkind. ‘Unless you fancy yourself in the role? Sorry, I forgot. Your wife wouldn’t like it. Martin and I aren’t exactly cut out to strut before a wanton ambling nymph . . .’

‘I’d better have a word with him, then.’

‘Not necessary. Unless I’m much mistaken, this is something we can safely leave to Nature.’

The lighter had been lying on the desk in the sun and when Wexford picked it up it felt warm to his hand. The tendrils and leaves of its vine design glowed softly. ‘Griswold’s been getting at me,’ he said. At the mention of the Chief Constable’s name Burden looked sour. According to him, this is not to be allowed to develop into a murder enquiry. Evidence inconclusive and so on. We can have a couple more days to scout around and that’s our lot.’

Burden said bitterly, ‘The whole place turned upside-down just to get Monkey Matthews another few months inside?’

‘The stain on the carpet was from the fruit of Ruby’s imagination, Anita Margolis is on holiday, the couple who staggered down the path were drunk and Kirkpatrick is simply afraid of his wife.’ Wexford paused, tossing the lighter up and down reflectively. ‘I quote the powers that be,’ he said.

‘Martin’s watching Kirkpatrick’s house,’ said Burden. ‘He hasn’t been to work today. Drayton’s still presumably hanging around that girl. Do I call them off, sir?’

‘What else is there for them to do? Things are slack enough otherwise. As for the other questions I’d like answered, Griswold isn’t interested and I can’t see our finding the answer to them in two days, anyway.’

Silently Burden put out his hand for the lighter and contemplated it, his narrow lips pursed. Then he said, ‘I’m wondering if they’re the same questions that are uppermost in my mind. Who gave her the lighter and was it sold around here? Who was the drunk outside Cawthorne’s, the man who spoke to Kirkpatrick?’

Wexford opened his desk drawer and took out his
Weekend Telegraph
. ‘Remember this bit?’ he asked. ‘About her breaking off her engagement to Richard Fairfax? I’ll bet it was him. Mrs Cawthorne said he left the party around eleven and Cawthorne said he dumped a brandy glass on one of his diesel pumps.’

‘Sounds like a poet,’ Burden said gloomily.

‘Now, then, remember what I said about Goering.’ Wexford grinned at the inspector’s discomfiture. ‘According to Kirkpatrick he was spouting Omar Khayyám. I used to be hot on old Khayyám myself. I wonder what he said?

‘ “I often wonder what the vintners buy.

One half so precious as the goods they sell?”

‘Or may be he scattered and slayed with his enchanted sword.’ Burden took this last seriously. ‘He can’t have done that,’ he said. ‘He got to Cawthorne’s at eight and he didn’t leave till eleven.’

‘I know. I was fooling. Anyway, Griswold says no hunting up of fresh suspects without a positive lead. That’s my directive and I have to abide by it.’

‘Still, I don’t suppose there’d be any objection if I went to enquire at a few jewellers, would there? We’d have a positive lead if anyone remembered selling it to Kirkpatrick or even Margolis himself, come to that.’ Burden pocketed the lighter. Wexford’s face had a dreamy look, preoccupied but not discouraging, so he said briskly, ‘Early closing today. I’d better get cracking before all the shops shut.’

Left alone, the Chief Inspector sat searching his mind for a peculiarly significant couplet. When he found it, he chuckled.

‘What lamp has destiny to guide

Her little children stumbling in the dark?’

There ought to be an answer. It came to him at last but it was not inspiring. ‘A blind understanding, Heaven replied,’ he said aloud to the glass sculpture. Something like that was what they needed, he thought.

Kirkpatrick was leaning against the bonnet of his car which he had parked on the forecourt of the Olive and Dove, watching the entrance to Grover’s shop. Ever since breakfast time Detective Sergeant Martin had been keeping his house and his gaudy car under observation. Mrs Kirkpatrick had gone shopping with the children and just as Martin, from his vantage point under the perimeter trees of Cheriton Forest, was beginning to abandon hope, the salesman had emerged and driven off towards Kingsmarkham. Following him had been easy. The car was a quarry even an intervening bus and hostile traffic lights, changing to red at the wrong moment, could not protect for long.

It was a warm morning, the air soft and faintly scented with the promise of summer. A delicate haze hung over Kingsmarkham which the sun tinted a positive gold. Someone came out from the florist’s to put a box of stiff purple tulips on the display bench.

Kirkpatrick had begun to polish the lenses of a pair of sunglasses on the lapel of his sports jacket. Then he strolled to the pavement edge. Martin crossed the road before him, mingling with the shoppers. Instead of making directly for the newsagent’s, Kirkpatrick hesitated outside the flower shop, looking at wet velvety violets, hyacinths in pots, at daffodils, cheap now because they were abundant. His eyes went to the alley wall no sun ever reached, but he turned away quickly and hurried into the York Street turning. Martin took perhaps fifteen seconds to make up his mind. He was only a step from Grover’s. The bell rang as he opened the door.

‘Yes?’ Linda Grover came in from the door at the back.

Blinking his eyes to accustom himself to the dimness, Martin said vaguely, ‘Just looking.’ He knew her by hearsay but he was sure she didn’t know him. ‘I want a birthday card,’ he said. She shrugged indifferently and picked up a magazine. Martin wandered into the depths of the shop. Each time the bell tinkled he glanced up from the card stand. A man came in to buy cigars, a woman with a pekingese which snuffled among the boxes on the floor. Its owner passed the card stand to browse among the dog-eared books in Grover’s lending library. Martin blessed her arrival. One person dawdling in the shadows was suspicious, two unremarkable. He hoped she would take a long time choosing her book. The dog stuck its face up his trouser leg and touched bare flesh with a wet nose.

They were the only customers when, five minutes later, Alan Kirkpatrick entered the shop with a red and gold wrapped parcel under his arm.

Red and gold were the trade colours of Joy Jewels. Scarlet carpet covered the floor, gilt
papier mâché
torsos stood about on red plinths, each figure as many-armed as some oriental goddess. Pointed, attenuated fingers were hung with glittering ropes of rhinestone. Schitz and quartz and other gems that were perhaps no more than skilfully cut glass made prisms which caught and refracted the flickering sunlight. On the counter lay a roll of wrapping paper, bright red patterned with gold leaves. The assistant was putting away his scissors when Burden came in and held up the lighter between them.

‘We don’t sell lighters. Anyway, I doubt if anyone around here would stock a thing like that.’

Burden nodded. He had received the same answer at four other jewellers’ already.

‘It’s a work of art,’ the assistant said, and he smiled as people will when shown something beautiful and rare. ‘Eight or nine years ago it might have come from this very place.’

Eight or nine years ago Anita Margolis had been little more than a child. ‘How come?’ Burden asked without much interest.

‘Before we took over from Scatcherd’s. They were said to be the best jeweller’s between London and Brighton. Old Mr Scatcherd still lives overhead. If you wanted to talk to him . . .’

‘Too long ago, I’m afraid,’ Burden cut in. ‘It’d be a waste of my time and his.’ Much too long. It was April and at Christmas Anita Margolis had been lighting her cigarettes with matches.

He walked up York Street under the plane trees. The misty sun shone on their dappled grey and yellow bark and their tiny new leaves made an answering shadow pattern on the pavement. The first thing he noticed when he came into the High Street was Kirkpatrick’s car outside the Olive and Dove. If Martin had lost him . . . But, no. There was the sergeant’s own Ford nudging the end of the yellow band. Burden paused on the Kingsbrook Bridge, idling his time away watching the swans, a cob and a pen wedded to each other and to their river. The brown water rippled on gently over round mottled stones. Burden waited.

The girl’s face became sullen when she saw Kirkpatrick. She looked him up and down and closed her magazine, keeping her place childishly with one finger poked between the pages.

‘Yes?’

‘I was passing,’ Kirkpatrick said awkwardly. ‘I thought I’d come in and thank you.’

Martin selected a birthday card. He assumed a whimsical, faintly sentimental expression so that the woman with the pekingese might suppose he was admiring the verse it contained.

‘This is for you, a token of my gratitude.’ Kirkpatrick slid his parcel between the newspapers and the chocolate bar tray.

‘I don’t want your presents,’ the girl said stonily. ‘I didn’t do anything. I really saw you.’ Her big grey eyes were frightened. Kirkpatrick leaned towards her, his brown curls almost touching her own fair head.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said insinuatingly, ‘you saw me, but the point is . . .’

She interrupted him sharply, ‘It’s all over, it’s done with. They won’t come bothering me any more.’

‘Won’t you even look inside the box?’

She turned away, her head hanging like a spring flower on a delicate stalk. Kirkpatrick took off the red and gold wrapping, the tissue paper and from a box padded with pink cotton wool, produced a string of glittering beads. They were little sharp metallic stones in rainbow colours. Rhinestones, Martin thought.

‘Give it to your wife,’ the girl said. She felt at the neck of her sweater until something silvery trickled over her thin fingers. ‘I don’t want it. I’ve got real jewellery.’

Kirkpatrick’s mouth tightened. He stuffed the necklace into one pocket, the mass of crumpled paper into the other. When he had gone, banging the shop door behind him, Martin went up to the girl, the birthday card in his hand.

She read the legend. ‘ “My darling Granny”?’ she said derisively and he supposed she was looking at his greying hair. ‘Are you sure it’s this one you want?’ He nodded and paid his ninepence. Her eyes followed him and when he looked back she was smiling a little closed-lip smile. On the bridge he encountered Burden.

‘What’s this, then?’ said the inspector, eyeing the card with the same mockery. Drayton, he thought reluctantly, would have been more subtle. He stared down at the river bed and the stone arch reflected in brown and amber, while Martin told him what he had heard.

‘Offered her a necklace,’ Martin said. ‘Showy sort of thing wrapped up in red and gold paper.’

‘I wonder,’ Burden said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if he always shops at Joy Jewels, if he bought a lighter there years and years ago when it was Scatcherd’s . . .’

‘Had it engraved recently for this girl?’

‘Could be.’ Burden watched Kirkpatrick seated at the wheel of his car. Presently he got out and entered the saloon bar of the Olive and Dove. ‘There goes your man,’ he said to Martin, ‘drowning his sorrows. You never know, when he’s screwed up his courage he may come offering his trinkets to the Chief Inspector. He certainly won’t give them to his wife.’