Written in Blood, page 34
‘We sat there ohh…God knows how long. I asked him if there was anything, anything at all I could do to put things right, even as I knew there couldn’t possibly be. Eventually he told me it was of no importance. His actual words were, “Who steals my life steals trash”. Then he asked me, begged me, to go away. But I couldn’t bring myself to. So, after a little while, he did. Quietly disengaged his hand and went upstairs. He looked so bloody lonely. And battered, as if he’d just climbed out of a boxing ring. Yet of the two of us he was the one with dignity. He’d had the courage to see my offer for the shoddy hypocrisy that it was and spit in its eye. I waited half an hour—by this time it had gone midnight—till it became plain that he was not going to come down, then put on my coat and left.’
‘Pulling the front door to?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re positive it was properly fastened?’
‘Positive. I made a point of slamming it loudly so Gerald would know I’d gone.’
‘Did you see anyone at all when you left the house?’
‘At that hour? In that weather?’
‘Just answer the question, Mr Jennings,’ said Troy.
‘No.’
‘Perhaps in a parked car?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Did you go upstairs during the course of the evening?’
‘No.’
‘What about any of the other rooms?’
‘No.’
‘The kitchen?’
‘Hell.’ He got up and poured some water, the glass clinking, trembling against the rim of the jug, then returned to his seat. ‘What is all this? What do you want me to say? I’ve told you the truth.’
‘You have told us two totally conflicting stories, Mr Jennings.’ Barnaby leaned forwards and once more rested his elbows on the edge of the table. His thick neck and wide shoulders blotted out all else from Jennings’ field of vision. ‘Why should we believe the second any more than the first?’
‘Oh God…’ Fatigue had made him apathetic. He opened his arms and turned his hands upwards in resigned disbelief. He reminded Barnaby of the cauliflower man in Causton market chanting, ‘You want my blood, lady? It’s yours.’
‘Think what you like. I’m finished.’
‘There are one or two more questions—’
‘Totally wacked. You’re flogging a dead horse here, Barnaby.’
‘Did you know that Hadleigh was married?’
‘Married?’ Bafflement and incredulity combined to revive Jennings’ energies somewhat. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘There’s a wedding photograph in his sitting room.’
‘I didn’t see that.’
‘Put away before you came.’
‘Must be a fake. A prop to flesh out the background. Where’s the lady supposed to be now?’
‘Dead of leukaemia.’
‘Very convenient.’
‘According to Mr Hadleigh, just before he moved to the village, which would be in 1982.’
‘That’s when I knew him.’
The chief inspector congratulated himself on his decision not to waste yet more man hours chasing up Hadleigh’s marriage certificate or details of Grace’s death. Jennings’ suggestion would also explain why the dead man found it easy to tell anyone and everyone about this supposedly deeply painful episode in his life.
Jennings continued, ‘I suppose that’s why the picture was concealed. Because I was in a position to give the lie to such a story.’
‘Presumably. The second point I’d like to clarify is rather more complicated. We’ve reason to believe that Hadleigh occasionally dressed as a woman. Appeared in public like this. Is that something you knew about?’
‘How extraordinary.’ But even as he spoke and gave a negative shake of the head Barnaby could see Jennings was preparing to qualify this response. ‘Although…I did talk to a friend once, an analyst, about Gerald—anonymously of course—and he asked me a similar question. Did I know if the respectable middle-class civil servant was the only fake persona this man had adopted? He said living a lie, to this extent and degree, imposed tremendous strain and often the people who were doing so needed desperately to escape. As returning to their true selves was psychologically dangerous they would create a third personality, usually quite different from the first two. Obviously this chap used fancier terminology, but that was about the gist of it.’
Barnaby nodded. This sounded, given that they were discussing behaviour most people would regard as completely abnormal, not an unreasonable proposition. Someone came in to remove the tea tray and ask if they needed any refills. Replying in the negative the chief inspector got up and crossed to the window, opening it a little, breathing in the cold night air. As if in response to this move Jennings rose as well, commenting on how late it was and asking for his overcoat.
‘I’m afraid there is no question of you returning home tonight, Mr Jennings.’
Jennings stared in amazement. ‘You’re keeping me here?’
‘That is the case, sir, yes.’
‘But you can’t do that. You have to charge me or let me go.’
‘Easy to see you don’t write crime stories, Mr Jennings,’ said Sergeant Troy. He grinned as he took down his black leathers. Middle-class outrage when the forces of law and order had occasion to tweak aside the velvet glove never failed to entertain. ‘We can hold you for up to thirty-six hours. And apply for an extension if necessary. This is a serious, arrestable offence we’re talking about.’
Jennings sank back on to his hard shell of a chair. He appeared numb with shock and was mumbling something that Troy did not quite get. He asked for clarification and was far from surprised when it came.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Jennings. ‘I want to see my solicitor.’
Chapter Seven
Hunting in Full Steel
It was the start of a new week and the weather had changed completely. Warmer, with a mizzle of rain. A sly day, as they say in Suffolk. When Troy entered the office Barnaby was on the phone. The sergeant saw immediately what was going on. The chief’s expression was one he recognised, blank, self-controlled, constraining with some force the response he thought appropriate to the occasion.
‘I am aware of that, sir…
‘Yes, I shall be talking to him again this morning…
‘It’s hard to say at this stage…
‘I’m afraid not…
‘Naturally I will…
‘I have already done so…
‘I’m sure we all hope…
‘No. At least nothing I’d care to put on the table…
‘I am pursuing—’
Troy heard the crash as the interrogator slammed the phone down right across the room. Barnaby replaced his own receiver without any visible signs of irritation.
‘Being leaned on from the top, chief?’
‘The head lama himself.’
‘Spit in your eye don’t they? Llamas?’
Barnaby did not reply. He had picked up a pencil and was doodling on a large note pad.
‘Jennings’ solicitor, is it?’
‘Just earning his hundred fifty an hour.’
‘They got it sussed—lawyers,’ said Troy, unbuttoning a cream trench coat of martial cut embellished with epaulettes, buckles, a belt of highly polished leather and pockets so wide and deep they could well have contained reinforcements from the US cavalry.
‘Whoever loses they win. Crafty buggers.’ He shook out the coat and placed it on a hanger, smoothing the fabric out and fastening the buttons.
‘You’re wasted here, sergeant. You should have been a valet.’
‘Load of rear gunners. I suppose it’s pressing trousers all day.’
‘Well, when you’ve finished faffing about, I’m in dire need of a caffeine shot.’
‘I’m as good as gone,’ said Troy, who was indeed already opening the door. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’
‘Not right now.’
Barnaby was pleased with himself for not feeling peckish. Perhaps his stomach was adapting. Shrinking to accommodate the modest input that was now its daily portion. Of course, it could be that it was still only half an hour from breakfast time.
The kitten had, as usual, been present and making a nuisance of itself. After a polished performance of naked greed and winsome precocity it had climbed on to Barnaby’s knee, displayed its bottom, sat down and massaged his trousers with its claws. All this to the sound of excessive purring.
‘Why is it always me?’ A cross demand to the room at large.
‘He knows you don’t like him,’ replied Joyce.
‘Dim then, as well as hoggish.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’
This morning, perhaps recalling his previous manhandling over the marmalade, Kilmowski contented himself with simply looking at Barnaby’s breakfast plate, looking at Barnaby, sighing a lot, yawning and turning round and round. Eventually, waiting till his wife’s back was turned, Barnaby gave the kitten a small piece of bacon. Followed by a bit of rind for its cheek.
Joyce said: ‘Why don’t you just put him on the floor?’
The coffee arrived. Troy backed into the room with a tray holding a large Kit Kat and two cups and saucers. He put one of these on the desk before metaphorically licking a finger and holding it to the wind.
The atmosphere didn’t seem to be all that bad. Not when you took into account the recent bollocking from the chief super. These were notorious. Poisonous bloody things, likened, by one recipient, to having your head forced down a blocked-up toilet.
Yet here was the DCI, barely minutes after the affray, swigging his drink and doodling with his pencil as if it had never happened. You had to admire him.
Troy, silently doing just that, wondered what was on the note pad. Barnaby was working with close, tiny strokes as if filling something in. Probably plants. Or leaves. The chief was good at that. Nature drawing. He said it helped him concentrate.
Troy unwrapped his chocolate, ran his thumbnail down the silver paper, snapped the biscuit in half. Then, munching, he eased his way around Barnaby’s desk for a quick shufty.
He hadn’t been far out. Primroses. Beautifully done, just like in a book. Tiny flowers softly shaded with grey, leaves with all the bumps on. Even dangly roots, thready and slightly tangled.
Troy felt envious. I wish I could do something like that, he thought. Paint or play music or write a story. Admitted, he could paralyse club cronies with a well-told joke. And his karaoke ‘Delilah’ at the Christmas party had been described as shit-hot. But it wasn’t quite the same.
Seeing the chief’s cup empty he tidied it away, saying, ‘You come to any decision about Jennings yet, sir? Whether he’s still in the frame?’
‘I doubt it. We’re checking out the story he told about Hadleigh’s antecedents. If Conor Neilson had been leading the sort of life described he’d almost certainly be known to the Garda.’
‘Plus it’s an uncommon name.’
‘Not over there it isn’t. And this stuff from forensic is not encouraging.’ He indicated several glossy photographs and closely typed back-up sheets. ‘Jennings’ prints are in the sitting room, on various pieces of crockery, the ashtray and the front door. Nothing upstairs—’
‘There wouldn’t be. The murderer wore gloves.’
‘Don’t interrupt!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Then there’s the problem of his shoes. No fibres from the stair or bedroom carpet. No blood or other substances. No skin particles. They’re absolutely clean. And you know as well as I do you can’t do a job like the one we’re looking at and take nothing from the scene. They’re working on his suit at the moment but I can’t say I have high hopes.’
‘Bit of a blind alley, then?’
Barnaby shrugged and put down his pencil. Troy had been quite wrong in thinking that the chief superintendent’s sarcastic volley had been easily put aside. Though years of practice and a reasonably equable temperament enabled Barnaby to maintain an imperturbable facade he was, in fact, not unperturbed at all but experiencing the beginnings of a dark depression. A grey dried-upness of the mind.
The reason for this was not unknown to him. He had been indulging in the very thing against which his warnings to others had always been so stringent. Ever since the interview with St John—which meant virtually from the outset—his perception of the case had been subtly narrowing. Whilst giving lip service to this or that possibility he had, gradually, become convinced that it was with Jennings alone that the solution lay.
Either Max had killed Hadleigh and run away or he possessed some knowledge that would provide the key that could unlock the mystery. In any event Jennings’ capture and the conclusion of the case had, in Barnaby’s imagination, become so powerfully intertwined that he was now finding it extremely difficult to accept the fact that the first was quickly seeming to have little or no bearing whatsoever on the second. Which left him precisely where?
Well, once he had accepted that Jennings was telling the truth, there were three options. The first, that Hadleigh had been murdered by a passing opportunist who had then left with a suitcase full of women’s clothing but without a Rolex watch worth thousands seemed barely credible.
The second was that he had been killed by someone known to him either in his feminine persona or casually as a homosexual partner. Remembering Jennings’ description of the dead man’s view of sex as an itch to be scratched in degrading places with degrading people this idea was depressing in the extreme. It meant they could be looking at someone who’d known Hadleigh for five minutes, maybe followed him home from some impersonal encounter, sussed the set-up and returned at a later date to see what was in it for him.
The length and breadth—not to mention the expense—of setting up the sort of open-ended investigation required should this be so meant it had virtually no chance of being undertaken. The case would remain a matter of record and permanently unsolved unless, and it could be years later, some sharp-eyed operative had their memory jogged and spotted a significant-looking connection or heard an echo. Sometimes it happened.
Option three, you worked further on what you’d already got, which was massively less complicated. If the door-to-door results were anything to go by, Hadleigh had remained aloof from village matters, received no visitors and mixed socially only with members of the Writers Circle, one of whom was in fruitless love with him. Barnaby scribbled their names beneath his primroses.
Brian Clapton. He could be further leaned on, which procedure would no doubt bring about some pathetic smutty little confession involving after-dark peepshows and furtive onanism.
Of Rex St John’s innocence Barnaby was convinced. His story of Hadleigh’s visit was confirmed by Jennings’ revelations regarding their past connection. And St John’s distress and remorse—intensifying daily, if Mrs Lyddiard was to be believed—was surely further verification. And he was an old man. Pretty fragile to have delivered that series of immensely forceful blows.
Although fully aware of the dangers of allowing sympathy for any particular personality to cloud his judgement, Barnaby was still inclined to view both Sue Clapton and her friend Amy as completely uninvolved.
Honoria Lyddiard was something else. Physically more than competent to carry out the attack she was also psychologically capable, having the conviction, common to all fanatics, that their every thought, speech and action stemmed directly from some fundamental holy writ. Once a necessity for punishment had been established her sense of duty would allow her to inflict it without a qualm. But this crime—Hadleigh’s mashed-up skull was suddenly, vividly present—was not some cool affair of obligation. This was red-hot rage, way out of control.
Which left him with Laura Hutton who believed herself to have been betrayed. A motive there all right. One as old as time. Barnaby recalled his two interviews with her; the anguished wails of pain and tears of sorrow. Could this flood of misery have been partially instigated by remorse? He decided to talk to her again. As far as he knew she was still unaware of Hadleigh’s homosexuality and that her supposed rival did not really exist. These two revelations, if delivered in the right way at the right time in unfriendly, unfamiliar environs, could well bring about a genuine result. For it would surely take a much harder nut than Mrs Hutton to remain impervious in the face of the knowledge that she had committed a spectacularly gruesome murder for nothing.
Barnaby’s attention was caught by a strange scraping sound as Troy cleared his throat preparatory to speech.
‘Either cough, speak or sing, sergeant. I really don’t mind which. That sounds like someone swinging on a rusty bog chain.’
‘Just that it’s twenty-five to, sir.’
‘I’ve got eyes.’
Troy opened the door and a murmurous buzz from the incident room filled the corridor. Barnaby heard it without enthusiasm. Thirty men and women awaiting instruction. Inspector Meredith would be present: sharp-eyed, snake-hipped, snake-headed, with his painted-on black hair and golden origins. Listening. Falsely respectful, offering ideas with mock tentativeness. Biding his time. Youth and high-riding ambition on his side.
‘Right,’ said the chief inspector. He picked up the SOCO file, dropped the pencil in his frog mug and got heavily to his feet. ‘Let’s go and pool our ignorance.’
Brian was still in a state of shock. His hands and feet, even his skin, felt numb. He had a throbbing pain behind his eyes that came and went with the force of a blow, as if his skull was being rhythmically struck. Getting out of the car, propelling himself, zombie-like, to the staff cloakroom where he now stood, he realised he had no recollection of driving to school at all.
He had been like this, more or less, since the photographs arrived. Since Sue had gone upstairs to find unwanted socks and he had torn the envelope half across in his eagerness to get at the contents.
At first, impossible as it might seem given the appallingly explicit clarity of the pictures, Brian had not understood quite what was going on. For just a microsecond he had stared at Edie’s face, which peered fearfully back at him over someone’s bare shoulder, without recognition. Her eyes were wide and staring and her teeth sank into her bottom lip as if to trap a cry. Brian, even while feeling touched that she should have sent him a likeness of herself, could not help feeling slightly disturbed at the dramatic intensity of the pose.
