“George,” Sergeant Moon leaned over the table and spoke with intense gravity, “don’t let him do it. These are our people, and this is our case, and if the southerners get in on it the whole valley will go to ground. It’ll be border warfare all over again, I’m telling you. Get him to leave it to us!”
“The door, then, not the man?” said George.
“The door! And I’m staking my reputation!”
CHAPTER 4
« ^ »
ROBERTA Bracewell, Bobbie to her friends, opened the front door of her first-floor flat at No. 10 Clement Gardens, at the improbable hour of a quarter to eight on the Friday morning, and stared suspiciously at Dave Cressett across the threshold. Her fair hair was still in rollers, half-concealed beneath a chiffon scarf, and she had not yet put on her office face, but from the neck down she was immaculate in a grey worsted dress, sheer stockings and thick-heeled patent shoes.
“Mrs. Bracewell?”
“Oh!” she said blankly, seeing a stranger on the doorstep, and her eyes narrowed into hostility. “I thought it was the post. What a time to come calling, I must say.” She inched the door a little nearer closing in his face. “You’re not the press again, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. I tried to telephone you last night, but you weren’t answering, and they told me you went out to work, so I thought I’d better get it here before office hours. But maybe you aren’t going in to work—if not, I’m sorry I disturbed you so early.”
“I’m going in,” she said grimly. “I have to live. Nobody’s going to pay me big money for the story of my life with Gerry, that I know of—a couple of paras and a picture will be all, if they give me that much. And he didn’t leave me much but hire-purchase agreements.”
“He left you a car,” said Dave simply. “I’ve just driven it in from my place, where he brought it for repairs. It’s down in the street now, if you’ll tell me where you want it I’ll bring it in for you.” There were two wooden garages beside the broad drive of the converted Victorian house, but he had no way of knowing which was Bracewell’s. “The police have cleared it, everything’s in order.”
“The car!” she said, astonished. “Will you believe me, I never even thought about his car!” She looked again, and more intently, at Dave. Her face was regular and well-cut, but pale with the dingy city pallor, and her eyes were illusionless. “You’re from there?” she said. “The place where it happened?”
“Yes, that’s right. He had a bit of trouble with his steering, and left the car with me that day. I had it ready for him by evening, but he didn’t come for it. The police had to go over it, afterwards, but they’ve finished with it now, it’s all yours.”
“Well, well!” she said with the ghost of a laugh. “Something salvaged! Pity it had to be just a car, but even a car helps. I must owe you some money, then.” She set the door wide on a narrow white hall. “You’d better come in. I’ve got time enough, and I daresay you could do with a cup of coffee, starting out as early as all that.”
Dave stayed where he was. “I haven’t put in a bill. It wasn’t you who commissioned the job. That’s all right.”
Her eyes widened a little. She gave him a long, considering look, and then she smiled. “Come in, anyhow, and have the coffee. You’re not the press—and God knows I can’t be sure whether I want that lot to come in droves or stay away from me altogether—and you’re not the police—not that I can complain, they’ve been all right—what could they do about it? Still, somebody to talk to who isn’t either…”
So he went in. What else could he do? She closed the outer door behind them, and clumped along on her chunky heels to the small, primrose-coloured kitchen, all nylon net and blue and white earthenware on a plastic lace tablecloth. The flat was small, hesitant in style, confused in taste, as if she had composed it in hurried five-minute frenzies between the office and whatever her social life consisted of, and forgotten it all the rest of the time. Quite a bit of money had gone into it, but not much effort or thought, and it must surely have been coming to pieces in sheer discouragement long before Gerry Bracewell got himself murdered in some obscure cause in a far-distant village. Yet there were signs that this woman could have been a house-proud wife and mother if she had ever given herself the chance.
She swept her discarded apron from one of the two yellow plastic-upholstered chairs at the kitchen table to make a place for him, and poured him coffee, and then refilled her own cup and sat down opposite him at the table, spreading her arms on the cloth.
Abruptly but quietly she asked: “Did you see him?”
Dave did not even pretend to misunderstand her. “I found him.”
“I see!” She lowered her eyes. “Poor old Gerry,” she said after a moment, with resigned composure. “He was a bastard to me, but he didn’t deserve that. Maybe he wasn’t any more of a bastard to me than I was to him, when it comes down to it. How do I know? It just went sour, what does it matter now whose fault it was? I tell you, though, if we had it to do again we wouldn’t set about it the same way, I’d see to that. Not that there’s ever likely to be a second chance. I don’t even want any family now. Leave it, we said, we won’t get caught like some of the kids do, not even a year having fun and in come the brats and the bills, and most likely the debt-collectors, too. Not for us, thanks! We’ll both keep working, we said, get some capital, get things, enjoy life, plenty of time for settling down when we’ve had a fling. Trouble is, you get to like having a fling, and it goes on and on, and you don’t want to let go of it, and all of a sudden…” She let the hypothetical case slip away from her; her face tightened, staring stonily at her own situation. “All of a sudden you’re a widow, and he’s on a slab in a mortuary.”
“I’m sorry!” said Dave helplessly, both cold hands cupped round his mug of coffee, which if instant was at least hot. He didn’t know what else to say.
She darted him a brief, shrewd glance. “I know what you’re thinking: Her heart’s not broken, by a long chalk. And no more it is. What’s the use of pretending? We haven’t mattered much to each other for a long time. Having a fling got pretty boring together, he found himself other partners. It’s all right, the police know it all, it doesn’t mean a thing now, but I told them, anyhow. Sure we had rows, rows all the time. He went off for days when he felt like it, and there was always a girl behind it. Only last week we had a row again—how was I to know it was going to be the last one ever? There was this girl be used to know, a few years ago… she did feature articles for one of the magazines he used to do pictures for. They worked together a lot, around five or six years ago. She’d do interviews with people, or pieces about places, and he’d do the art work. And last week, after he was up there in your part of the world, suddenly he started looking for her again. He thought I didn’t know, but I did. He went to the magazine offices—I know because he came in with an old number from way back, and sat down with it and started thumbing through it as though he expected to find her telephone number, and then he swore and threw the thing across the room, because whatever it was he was looking for, he hadn’t found it. But when I went to pick it up he made good and sure he got there first. I saw the date, though, it was some time in 1964. They did a whole series together that year, I knew then there was something between them. Then he walked out, and didn’t come back until the Friday, and not a word to be got out of him, all he did all the weekend was turn out all his old pictures and slides, hunting for something. I might as well not have been here… I might as well have been dead.” The word shocked her into silence for a moment. She contemplated it bleakly, and accepted it: “And now he’s dead.”