At 7:25 P.M., the man was again consulting his wrist-watch when a black-tied waiter asked if they would like a further drink while they waited.
Though expensive, the cocktail they had each been drinking was, in the young woman’s judgment, “absolutely yummy” — Cognac, Kümmel, Fraise Liqueur, topped with chilled champagne — and she nodded. Might just as well be happy about something.
“Same again,” said Frank Harrison. “Ailish cocktails.” And when the waiter was gone: “Where the hell’s he got to? I’ve not got all bloody evening.”
“You’ve got to get back tonight, Dad?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. Seven-fifteen is seven-fifteen!”
“His hearing’s not getting any better, you know. He probably thought you said seven-fifty.”
“Who’s ever ordered a dinner for seven-fifty, for Christ’s sake?”
For the moment Sarah said nothing further, looking around her and enjoying the regal dignity of the restaurant. And in truth her father’s tetchy impatience with Simon was not wholly displeasing to her. There had ever been a closer bond between herself and her father than with her mother; and, in turn, a very much closer bond between Simon and his mother than with his father. But such things were not spoken of freely in families; and it was better that way. Quite why she had always felt possessive about her father, she could not explain well even to herself. But she remembered clearly when she’d first been conscious of it: when she had crept silently downstairs late one night with a party in full swing below; and when, unseen herself, she’d watched her father kissing a young woman in the kitchen. She had cried herself to sleep that night. Only six, she’d been, but she could have murdered the woman. Disbelief? Shock? Outrage? All three mixed together, like a cocktail... like a cocktail topped up with a little chilled jealousy.
Simon appeared at 7:48. Like his father, not looking particularly in love with life.
“You’re both early?” he ventured, as he took his seat. “Seven-fifty, wasn’t it?”
“Forget it!” His father passed over a menu.
“I could do with a drink first, Dad.”
“Just read the question-paper!”
Simon looked down at the succulent-sounding selections: To Start... To Continue... Dessert... Beverages — and felt a little happier, until Harrison père, brusquely ruling out starters, called over the waiter and put in their order for the main courses: Guinea Fowl; Calves’ Liver; Steak (medium). “And a bottle of some decent Claret.”
“Just one?” queried Simon. “Three of us?”
“Sarah’s driving.”
“Aren’t you driving, Dad?” asked Sarah.
“ I don’t really need my daughter to tell me what I can drink, thank you very much.”
Sarah put down her menu and stood up slowly. “Excuse me a minute! I’m just off to...”
But before making her way to the Ladies’ Powder Room, Sarah Harrison stopped at Reception.
“Can I ring one of your guests from here?”
“Of course.” The young girl smiled. “Just ring the room number.” She pointed to the phone at the side of the desk.
“The name’s Harrison — F. Harrison.”
The receptionist tapped a few keys and looked at her video-screen.
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Can you just give me the room number?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that. It’s strict company policy—”
“I’m his daughter, for God’s sake!”
“Just a minute!” The girl moved away and the phone on the desk sprang to life when she returned: “All yours.”
Sarah picked up the phone and listened, wondering what on earth she was going to say. But she needn’t have bothered.
“Hellóho.” It was a female, husky, transatlantic voice.
Sarah put down the phone, a sudden glint of fury in her eyes.
She returned to the table to find father and brother, heads close together, in what seemed a significant conversation. But there the exchanges stopped — whether because of her own return or the contemporaneous arrival of the main courses, Sarah was uncertain.
Thereafter the food was appreciatively consumed, the few transmensal exchanges wholly mundane and perfunctory, the bottle of Claret rapidly going and going and soon wholly gone.
“Another bottle, Dad?” suggested Simon.
“No!”
“I came on the bus — I’m going back on the bus.”
“But Dad’s got to drive back to London, remember? Anyway I thought we were all supposed to keep sober tonight. Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“It was, yes. Just keep your voice down, will you? And read this. Simon’s already seen it. Pretty quick off the mark, some of these local reporters.”
Sarah looked down at the copy of the Oxford Mail passed across to her, the lower half of the back page folded over to show the latest news column:
Chapter forty-seven
Different things can add up in different ways whilst reaching an identical solution, just as “eleven plus two” forms an anagram of “twelve plus one.”
A wealth of police personnel and well-targeted inquiries had borne swift if, here and there, unexpected evidence — evidence which Sergeant Lewis (alone in his office late that Monday evening) was able to shift and to categorize at his own pace. Thus far, the facts, and the glosses on the facts, formulated themselves as follows in Lewis’s mind:
First. The shiny orange-red Stanley knife had been purchased, together with other items, from a hardware shop in Burford on the Saturday of the previous week (receipt unearthed in Barron’s Expenses File). Barron could still have been a murderer — of course, he could! — but quite certainly not with the knife he’d used that same morning as he stood almost atop the topmost section of the ladder and twisted the blade into the rotting, unresisting sill of the dormer window in Sheep Street.
Second. The stains on the overalls Barron had been wearing that morning had quite certainly not been human blood; but almost certainly smears of paint patented under the brand name Cremosin, two-pint tins of which were found in Barron’s garage, a space now used exclusively for building and decorating materials.
Third. On the morning of the Friday when Flynn and Repp had been murdered, Barron had left home around his usual time to spend some of the morning in Thame, where two properties were inviting tenders for renovation, for which Barron had been keen to submit his own estimates. Necessarily, of course, this evidence had been taken from Barron’s wife, Linda; and yet (already) a dated parking ticket for four hours that morning (South Oxon DC, Cattle Market) had been found in Barron’s van — evidence, if anything, to substantiate the claim that the builder had paid for a fairly extensive stay in the center of Thame on July 24.
Fourth. There appeared, as yet, no evidence whatever that Barron had received any monies from anywhere to match the payments so regularly stashed into the balances of both Flynn and Repp. In short, if Barron had been the third man — if he had duly received his own share of the spoils for the conspiracy of silence — there was no sign of it, so far.
They were not in any way decisive, these findings and non-findings. The trouble was they all seemed to be pointing in the same direction.
Or were they?
For example (thought Lewis), it was surely to be expected that Barron would have got rid of the murder weapon and bought himself a new knife if in fact he had used the former for the murders.