‘But they were pursuing him and he was frightened?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Funny nobody else seems to know about this,’ said Troy. ‘Not even his wife.’
‘That sour old bitch?’ Jackson laughed. ‘All he dreamt about, poor old Charlie, was buttered crumpet. Know what I mean?’
‘Or his cronies in the Red Lion.’
Jackson shrugged.
‘I think you made it all up.’
‘Thinking’s free.’
‘Was he familiar with your background, Terry?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘I’m starting from scratch here. I told you.’
‘That must be nice. Wipe out the past, just like that.’
‘Yeah.’ Jackson looked wary, not sure he liked the way the conversation was going. He painted on an ingratiating smile. His incisors, so sharply pointed they could have been filed, twinkled and gleamed.
‘Not what you’d call a tasty past, is it?’ continued Barnaby.
‘I’ve done my time.’
‘You’ve done little else. Juvenile courts from day one. Thieving, lying, runner for the big boys. Look-out for dealers and pushers. Actual and grievous bodily harm, beating up a pensioner and leaving him more dead than alive. A stabbing—’
‘I were egged on. There were a whole crowd of us.’
‘You held the knife.’
‘So? Everybody deserves a second chance.’
It wasn’t a whine, just a simple statement of fact. Barnaby wondered if the pensioner might have liked a second chance. Or the guy left lying in the gutter with a punctured lung. He said, ‘If you got what you deserved, Jackson, the world might be a sweeter smelling place.’
Downstairs the flat door opened and closed. Barnaby, watching Terry Jackson, marvelled at what happened next. A strong and heartless man was transformed, before his very eyes, into a persecuted, hunted creature driven by cruel fate to the very end of its despairing tether. All the steel dissolved from his muscular frame which had now become so soft and boneless it could no longer support him. His legs buckled. He crouched on the floor hugging his knees to his chest, hiding his face.
‘What on earth is happening here, Jax?’
The boy (yes, boy, for so he had become) slowly lifted his head and gazed with great agitation at the Reverend Lawrence. Both policemen stared in disbelief at the pale and fearful countenance, the troubled eyes now swimming with moisture, the shaking, tremulous mouth.
‘They just pushed in and started on me, Lionel. I ain’t done nothing.’
‘I know that, Jax. It’s all right.’
‘I promised you I’d never let you down.’
Lionel Lawrence turned and faced Barnaby. He looked severe and disappointed, giving the impression that if anyone had let him down it was Her Majesty’s Police Inspectorate.
‘Why are you persecuting this young man?’
‘There’s no question of persecution, sir. We are simply pursuing our inquiries into the death of Mr Leathers.’
‘I’d’ve thought,’ suggested Sergeant Troy, ‘you’d want that thoroughly gone into. Him being your employee, so to speak.’
‘This is my property. If you need to speak to Jax again, you call at the Rectory first. I shall come over here with you. There’ll be no more bullying. He has that right.’
‘Actually, he doesn’t.’ Barnaby nodded angrily to his sergeant who put away his notebook and got up to leave. The chief inspector followed, glancing back just once.
Lionel Lawrence was bending over, helping Jackson to his feet. Jackson was clinging to the older man’s arm for support. His tear-stained face glowed with pious gratitude as if he had received a blessing.
Barnaby, nauseated, slammed the door and hurried down the stairs.
‘Gay as a bent banana, that old geezer.’ Sergeant Troy strode towards the car, giving vent to his feelings by kicking furiously at the gravel.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What, then? What’s he doing it for?’
What was Lionel Lawrence doing it for? Barnaby let the question occupy his mind as Troy churned up the drive and zoomed into the main road.
Unlike many of his colleagues, the chief inspector did not automatically lump all ‘do-gooders’ together and despise the lot. He had met very many, both professional and amateur, during his long career as a policeman and grown to recognise the different types and the many different angles from which they approached the business. There were always quite a few who denied they had any angle at all. And many more who were extremely muddled as to what their angle actually was.
Many were in it for the power it gave them, the opportunity to forge relationships where they would always be in charge. These were the sort of people whose personality and talents made it highly unlikely that, in the normal run of things, they would ever have authority over anything more charismatic than the office cat. With them, compassion was merely a mask for condescension.
This same rationale applied to the socially inept. Usually without stable, happy relationships in their own lives, these emotional inadequates would start off with the huge advantage of being able to call the psychological shots. Frequently for the first time in their lives someone needed them.
Then there were those romantically drawn to what they saw as the glamour of violence. Never, in reality, having been on the receiving end, these people sometimes excitedly took up prison visiting. With a warder always close by they could spend quality time with what they believed would be some of the wildest and most dangerous specimens of humanity. Barnaby had once had dealings with a Quaker visitor, a pacifist, who preferred to befriend only murderers. When this paradox was drawn to his attention, he saw nothing odd in it at all.
One could add to this the early retired with woolly, undirected feelings of altruism and the small number of comfortably off who still had a social conscience. Then one was left with the few, the very few remarkable human beings who, without a single string attached, simply loved their fellow man. Barnaby had met many who saw themselves in this role. In actual fact, in over thirty years, he had come across two.
So, where did that leave Lionel Lawrence? The chief inspector decided to find out more about the man. For instance, did the Lawrences have children? If the answer was no, this might be the reason he so consistently offered sanctuary to the young. (Didn’t someone mention a girl who had run away?) Had he always been in the Church? Was this his first marriage? If so, how did he live before it took place? And did this warm bath of unreasoned sentiment he was presently wallowing in ever splash over to console the plain, the middle-aged or elderly of either sex? And if not, why not?
The DCI’s attention was rudely catapulted back to the present when Sergeant Troy honked furiously and jerked his head towards a man with a red setter. Both were patiently waiting to cross the road and did so with understandable speed while Troy, still seething at the repulsive tableau he had just witnessed, violently revved the engine.
As the policemen left the village, they passed Evadne Pleat’s Morris Minor coupé just turning into Tall Trees Lane. She trundled inch by inch down the narrow space, crushing thistles and nettles and getting various sticky bits and assorted fungi attached to the wheels. She tried not to think about reversing back up.
Many would think it the height of foolishness to have driven down in the first place but Evadne had a precious cargo that could not safely be otherwise transported. Hetty Leathers and Candy were in the back. Hetty held the dog in her arms. She could not bear the thought of shutting her away in a box or basket after what she had suffered. And carrying her down the lane, however carefully, would still involve the risk of stumbling, maybe even falling, and dropping her precious burden.
Evadne parked directly outside the cottage and Hetty passed over the key. When the front door was unlocked she climbed out very, very carefully.