“I think ‘imprisonment’ is rather a strong word,” said Arnold feebly.
“Strong maybe, but it’s accurate.” She turned back to Rowley. “What on earth did you think hiding the boy away was going to achieve?”
“I hoped it would keep him safe until the police found out who really killed the girl.”
“Wouldn’t it have helped the police more if they could have talked to Nathan? So that he could tell them what he saw that night, and help them to sort out a timetable of events?”
“I didn’t want him to get into the hands of the police. Our fine boys in blue don’t have a great track record when it comes to – ”
And he was off again on his hobby horse. Carole couldn’t stand any more of this tired old leftie agenda. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You were deliberately perverting the course of justice. And I would imagine you’ll be looking at a hefty prison sentence for what you’ve done.”
From his expression of dismay, this was clearly a possibility Rowley Locke had not considered. Like most control freaks, he was quickly vulnerable when threatened.
“I assume you’ve heard from the police in Littlehampton?” She addressed this question to the boy’s father.
“Yes, they told me they were holding Nathan. He’s ‘helping them with their enquiries’. Eithne and I are going to visit him this evening.”
That would be an interesting encounter to witness. What do parents say to a son who knows that they’ve connived in having him imprisoned for three weeks? But that wasn’t Carole’s business. She moved on. “Presumably you both know that Nathan didn’t commit the murder?”
The look Arnold referred to his brother suggested that at least one of them wasn’t entirely convinced on the subject.
“Well, he didn’t,” Carole continued. “As I’m sure the police will find out in the course of their enquiries.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. The British police only want to get a conviction and they – ”
“Oh, shut up, Rowley!” Carole was surprised by her own vehemence. So was its recipient. But she went on in similarly forceful vein. “Listen, your ill-considered actions have wasted a lot of time. They’ve wasted police time, and they’ve certainly wasted time for me and my friend Jude.” In the magnificence of her flow neither man thought to question exactly what right she and Jude had to be involved in the investigation. “What I suggest you do now, to make some kind of amends, is to tell me anything you know that might have a bearing on the case. Anything that you may have been holding back.”
Rowley Locke looked genuinely at a loss. “I haven’t been holding anything back. When I heard about Kyra Bartos’s death, my only thought was that Nathan would immediately become a suspect. And that I had to get him to a place of safety.” Again he avoided Carole’s eyes. “I don’t know anything else about the murder.”
“When I first came to see you, you told me that Eithne had met Kyra Bartos briefly in the street, but neither of you had. Is that still true?”
Rowley looked perplexed. “Well, of course it’s still true. The girl was already dead when we met you.”
“Yes. What I’m asking, though, is this. At the time you said you hadn’t met Kyra. Has your recollection maybe changed since then?”
“Are you accusing us of lying?”
“After what you said about Nathan’s whereabouts over the past three weeks, don’t you think I might have some justification?”
“Actually,” said Arnold quietly, “I was lying.”
The announcement came as much of a shock to his brother as it did to Carole. They both looked at him in amazement as he went on, “I did meet Kyra one evening a few weeks before she died. Eithne and I had gone out to a concert in Brighton. The Monteverdi Vespers, as it happened. Anyway, I had a bit of a stomach upset. My stomach has always been my Achilles heel…” He confided this mixed metaphor to Carole as though it would be of vital interest to her. “So I went back to Marine Villas and found Kyra there with Nathan: Of course, I didn’t mind his being there with the girl – Eithne and I have always made it clear that we have no old–fashioned moral scruples about that kind of thing – but I was a little upset that he’d done it without asking us. You know, choosing an evening when he thought we’d be out…it was all a bit underhand and hole-in-the-corner, if you know what I mean…”
Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and will you please get on with it, Carole thought.
“Anyway, when I found Nathan and the girl together that evening…” Arnold’s pale features reddened, “…I must confess I was rather upset by what they were doing.”
“Do you mean they were having sex?”
“Oh, good heavens, no!” He dismissed the suggestion almost contemptuously. “That would have been fine. Eithne and I wouldn’t have had any problems about that. We’ve always brought up Diggo and Fimby to believe that sex is a perfectly natural and healthy act between two consenting – ”
“Then what were they doing that you objected to?” demanded Carole, who had had quite enough of this spelling-out of right-on liberal credentials.
“Oh. Oh, well…they’d…” Arnold looked across at his elder brother, as though afraid of his reaction to the forthcoming revelation. “They’d got out our box of the Wheal Quest.” He turned back to Carole. “The Wheal Quest is a kind of family – ”
“I know exactly what the Wheal Quest is, thank you.”
“What were they doing with it?” asked Rowley, suddenly alert.
“They’d got the game spread out on the floor, and I think Nathan must have been explaining to Kyra how it worked, and…and she was laughing at it.”
An expression of pale fury crossed his brother’s face. “Laughing at it?”
“Yes. And I think they must have been drinking, because the girl went on, saying how silly it was, and she even got Nathan to agree with her.”
Rowley snorted with anger at this betrayal.
“And I remember thinking…” Arnold went on quietly, “this girl is not good for Nathan. She’s a disruptive influence. She’s trying to drive a wedge between him and his family. This relationship must be stopped.”
Carole had heard that cold intensity in a voice only the previous day. And when she looked at Arnold, she could see burning in his eyes the same demented logic that had driven Mopsa.
Thirty-Three
Though in his eighties, Jiri Bartos was still an impressive man. Well over six foot and hardly stooping at all, he towered over Jude as he rose to shake her hand. There was still a full head of hair, white and cut to about an inch’s length all over. His face was the shape of a shield, concave beneath high cheekbones, and his eyes were still piercingly blue. In the Grenstons’ sitting room he seemed too large an exhibit, amidst the array of awards and the tables littered with tiny objets d’art.
While Wally made the introductions, Mim fluttered around over her tea tray, on which lay an unbelievable array of Victoria sponge, fairy cakes, tiny eclairs, coconut kisses and other fancies that Jude remembered from her childhood. There were even some slices of chequered Battenberg, which her father had always called ‘stained-glass window cake’.
But Jiri Bartos did not appear interested in the spread of goodies. As soon as he sat down, he took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of his pocket.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” said Mim, “but we don’t smoke in the house.”
“I do,” he replied, lighting up. His voice was deep, like the creaking of old timber, and heavily accented.
“It isn’t nice when we are eating food,” Mim protested.
“I will not eat food.”
“But I’ve prepared all this – ”