Hung Out to Die Page 11

  “Ah! The rumour’s true, then?”

  “What rumour?” she asked blandly.

  “That you and my mother connived to get them both into the same room at the same time, and – hey presto, they stayed together!”

  Beyond looking at him and smiling, she said nothing. Anything she learned, or was told in confidence, stayed that way. It was a trait that Desmond admired, despite it infuriatingly cutting him off from an amazing stream of inside political gossip.

  “Oh oh! Don’t look now – but guess who’s slithering across the grass towards you!”

  “Desmond!” she replied, choking back a laugh. “From the description, it must be your bête noires, Maisie and Duncan! But they really are very loyal and valuable, so I suggest you piss off before you upset them!”

  He was actually pondering staying and asking them how their friend Marcus was getting on, but then he suddenly saw his real quarry.

  “Ah! There’s the Wilsons!” he said, spying John and Harriet Wilson crossing the lawn. “And they’re headed this way!” he added gleefully. “Obviously they also want to worship at the feet of our local goddess,” he continued, smiling. He felt fairly secure knowing there were too many close by for her to risk a clout across his head, an assault which she had been prone to carry out when they were children, and for which she had never entirely lost the taste.

  “They must have just got back,” he added. Though out of Desmond’s reach, they had been interviewed by Calderwood and Bulmer before being allowed to fly out of the country on separate jobs, the police having also confirmed the legitimacy of both their journeys.

  “Hey guys, long-time no see,” he said, avoiding Jemma’s eye as he used the casual style affected by both Wilsons. Obligatory kisses were exchanged – by John to Desmond as well. The broadcaster had been a fan of man-to-man manly kissing from when he’d seen foreign men do it. The clincher for him was when he’d seen the royals were at it too.

  “Awesome to see you both!” John said, stepping back from the kisses, which had left both the friends feeling slightly sick. A love of garlic and raw onion, allied to loose, rubbery lips resembling a collapsed sphincter, did that to people.

  “Yes, it’s been ages,” responded Desmond, “I’m trying to think how long,” he continued immediately, determined to get some quick payment for the lips.

  “Oh darlings! Sorry, have to dash! The boss is summoning me!” said Jemma in laughing apology as she responded to Carolyn’s gesture to join her group of well-heeled potential contributors, causing the Asburys to alter course with a sharp right turn.

  “Yes, a bad business, that,” murmured Desmond into the short silence following Jemma’s departure. “The murder, I mean,” he added as they both didn’t respond.

  “Yes, yes, very,” muttered John; looking as uncomfortable as Harriet.

  “Oh look! There’s...Patricia!” Harriet almost yelped, looking over his shoulder and pointing vaguely towards a rose-covered arbour.

  “We’ve been trying to catch her for an age!” John said in explanation as they both hurried off. Looking rather like too frightened rabbits, Desmond mused thoughtfully, watching their retreating figures as they hurried towards what, to him, looked like a very empty space.

  *

  Across the Green, the festive air of the Dower House was entirely lacking as Calderwood sat with Bulmer, morosely discussing where they were, which wasn’t anywhere much.

  “We seem to be getting nowhere fast,” muttered Calderwood, in a rare moment of pessimism. They had just completed a detailed review of the case with all the officers working on it. They had gone through every statement, every movement of everyone who could possibly be a suspect in either case. All the medical evidence had been painstakingly reviewed. Every fact that they knew was fact had been looked at again; they had even sifted through every theory or suspicion they could conjure up, however outlandish. All produced the same result – nothing.

  In the ten days since the Wentworth murder, everybody interviewed in connection with Debra Addison’s death had been re-interviewed, regardless of any known London link. That a second death had occurred in Beldon Magna, albeit of a person with strong links to the capital, meant that they’d intensified their focus on everyone local, however unlikely their involvement seemed – and still nothing new came to light. They were dispiritedly aware that, despite nothing of use being turned up by the intensive process, they would have to go through everything yet again.

  “And Bellamy’s apparently still too ill to speak to us – according to his private doctor, of course,” remarked Calderwood with unusual bitterness. “Though, to be frank, he’s virtually off our radar now. Let’s face it, being on a life support machine at the time of the Wentworth murder does tend to knock him down the list of suspects!”

  “He could have had an accomplice, of course,” suggested Bulmer hopefully.

  “Oh yes, which is why he’s still on the list at all!” responded Calderwood. “Stuff it,” he said abruptly. “Let’s have a break, Colin. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink!” he added, suddenly wishing to get out of the incident room, even for a few minutes.

  “That’s an offer I’m not going to turn down!” laughed Bulmer. He was equally keen to leave a room, where, every time they looked up, the dead faces of two people looked sightlessly down at them, as though in silent condemnation of their lack of progress.

  Emerging into the reception area of the pub to go through to the bar, they were met by a crowd of people waiting to book in for the night. Fortunately, the clerk on duty – Elias Hobson’s granddaughter – was both professional and pleasant, so the wait for those in the queue wasn’t too prolonged.

  “Our usual please,” said Calderwood, squeezing through the throng to get to the bar. “A busy night!” he added.

  “Yes, indeed,” smiled Gwilym happily. “Most of them have been before, but we have a few new ones – refugees from one of the farms. Apparently they’d stayed there recently and found it too noisy for them. Spooky they called it; things going bump in the night, apparently!” he added as he handed them their drinks. “Have this one on the house – you look as though you both need it,” he said, looking at their tired faces.

  *

  “So they seem to have hit a brick wall from what you say,” observed Desmond later.

  “I think so. It wasn’t what they said, they’re too cagey for that. It was their body language and the odd remark,” responded Gwilym, who’d come back briefly to Eleanor’s before returning to the pub for the evening shift. “I couldn’t spend too much time with them though,” he added.

  “Gwil!” remonstrated Desmond, horrified that a chance for some inside information had been, in his view, squandered.

  “Sorry, but we were extra busy,” grinned Gwilym, knowing how his dereliction would piss off his gossip-hungry partner, and went on to explain why.

  Somewhat mollified, Desmond let it drop, and, once Gwilym had gone back over to the pub, settled down to some work. But something was niggling him and, infuriatingly, he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Whatever ‘it’ was, it wouldn’t leave him in peace, so, after an hour wasted fruitlessly trying to focus on some rather important business decisions, he gave up in exasperation.

  On the rare occasions that this sort of mental logjam had happened before, he’d found that just relaxing, preferably with a large drink, usually brought whatever it was to the surface, and thus nearer to a solution. So, with the house quiet with his mother at a Flower Club Committee meeting, he firmly put Huffny in her basket. Then, ensuring that there were two firmly shut doors between them, he settled back to let his mind drift in the weightless limbo where he often found solutions. After a few seconds blankness, he found his mind drifting back, once again, to the night of his mother’s party. Though surprised, he was content to let his sub-conscious guide him, despite feeling he’d already recalled everything he could. Even a few seconds further, might, he realised, be crucial, so he sat quietly in the flickerin
g firelight, letting his mind float freely. Again, he was, with relative ease, able to recall much of what he’d seen up to Jemma’s catching his attention. He now needed to take it forward, if he could, even further, to the point of the now dead woman’s brash intrusion into their conversation. Her spiky presence had obviously so disoriented him, albeit for a few seconds only, that his usual acute perception was thrown out of kilter. He persevered though, prompted now by something telling how important whatever he may recall could actually be.

  After a few minutes, he almost stopped, having convinced himself that he’d recalled everything he could from that night. Slowly, however, vague and disturbing fragments of information began to coalesce deep in his mind – and began to give him a picture that he couldn’t access, let alone understand. Some instinct now told him, however, that one last attempt at recall was vital. Whatever picture the scattered pieces might give, though, he knew the hidden memories, whatever they were, had been triggered by something more recent, maddeningly, however, he couldn’t put his finger on just what it was.

  Curbing his impatience, he slowly took his mind back to the point when Jemma joined him. Suddenly, he then found a remarkable number of pieces slowly start to become clearer, though still only vaguely and disconnectedly. Frustrated, he began to again wonder again if he was wasting his time. Then, at last, the scattered, floating fragments started to settle.

  He was startled, but suddenly half-knew what he was looking for, and that knowledge seemed to break the blockage in his mind. He began to see the room as it was during his and Jemma’s conversation. Then, and he hardly dared breathe, he started to see the room as it had been immediately prior to Debra’s crashing into his conversation with Jemma. Slowly, faces and actions that he’d been unable to see in his earlier sessions began, almost hesitantly, to drift into his mind. All he’d recalled before stood the test of his re-visiting the events – with one major, indeed crucial difference – his recall continued a few vital seconds longer. And what he saw stunned him.

  Out of the gently swirling mists, another face slowly appeared and solidified. It was someone whom Desmond had by now almost expected, but strongly hoped he’d been wrong. He now suddenly saw a face at the very moment the expression on it changed. A face he’d seen laughing and smiling in his previous exercise was suddenly, briefly, transformed, first into total shock, and then by a disfiguring, all-consuming hatred. And the catalyst was…

  “Dear God!” he mouthed quietly. The transformation took place just as the newly arrived Debra’s strident tones rattled round the crowded room. He quickly re-ran everything in his head to check he wasn’t mistaken. He doubted, though, that he was. The technique had proved too reliable over the years for him to seriously believe it would let him down now.

  “Dear God!” he said again, as he came to the end of his review, and he knew beyond doubt that, at last, his memory had taken him to a crucial piece of the tragic jigsaw. Now, the other, previously only half-noticed, fragments of conversations, over-heard or half-heard, also came floating back up to his conscious mind. As they did so, he realised that they’d been among the unconscious prompts which had led him to this one last attempt.

  Deciding against phoning Gwilym, he opted to walk across the Green. Grabbing jacket and keys, he moved quickly, opened the front door – and stopped dead in his tracks.

  The person whose face he’d seen change from laughter and morph into a hate-filled mask was now standing in front of him – and that person was holding a gun pointed right at his stomach.

  Chapter 17

  “Hello, Desmond,” Louise said. “I see by your face that you’ve put it all together, or at least enough to lead you to me. I thought you would soon, and then when I heard...” She trailed off and nodded slowly. “Yes, I thought you would, so let me fill you in on any bits you don’t know, before...” This said quietly with just the merest glance at the gun. Desmond’s imagination too easily filled in what was not being said, and he wished it hadn’t. With a last agonised glance across at the brightly lit windows of the Rose & Sceptre – so near, so safe, yet so unobtainable – he turned and lead his unexpected, and very much unwanted, visitor back into the house.

  In the passageway, he tripped on the worn carpet in front of the side sitting room.

  “Do be careful, Desmond! Perhaps, for your continued well-being, you should know that I’m an expert shot,” Louise murmured, in the same unnerving, icily calm voice.

  “Good Lord! Are you?” So startled was he by the claim, that he forgot to be afraid, for a moment or two anyway. “I didn’t know that!”

  “There’s a great deal you don’t know about me, Desmond; a great deal. Though, to be fair, you know a considerable amount more than most. Yes, a considerable amount more. What put you onto me? Did I make an obvious slip-up? I didn’t think I had. I thought I’d been so careful. Well, Desmond? Tell me. I’d really, really like to know,” she said, waving the gun meaningfully towards him.

  Besides having little option, Desmond very much wanted to keep his unwelcome caller talking, so, slowly and quietly, he listed the four small pieces of information that had pointed him towards her.

  “And that was all?” Louise asked with quiet disbelief. “Those four tiny bits were enough for you to be so sure that I was the one who’d done... what I did?” The cool, bordering on cold, look that was beamed at him did little to help Desmond feel at all certain that he’d survive the next few minutes. “What a clever man you are. And what an astute brain lurks behind that amiable, bland exterior, those rather plump features,” she added, to Desmond’s intense irritation, despite the dangerous situation. “Mind you,” the voice now changing to an unnervingly jocular tone, “that’s not true any more, is it? All those walks with little what’s-her-name have really worked! You’ve lost weight, you look younger!”

  Despite himself, Desmond now felt absurdly flattered. At least I’ll be a good-looking corpse, he thought with brief black humour.

  “No, not quite all,” he said after a moment, once he judged that he couldn’t extend the short silence much further. He paused briefly again, ostensibly gathering his thoughts.

  “Desmond, don’t think I’m stupid. Stop playing for time. Eleanor isn’t due back for an hour or more. And,” she went on coldly, “should she return before we’ve finished, well, she can join us in our little chat. But I doubt you’d want that, would you? I thought not.” She smiled, the look on Desmond’s face being answer enough. “So, to avoid that...risk, let’s get on, shall we?”

  Desmond did so, telling his caller about the moment he saw a face change into its mask of shock and hatred.

  “Ah, yes. The delightful lady did have a somewhat distinctive voice – and always so loud. Oh! Isn’t it lovely to talk of her in the past tense?” Louise suddenly, unnervingly, giggled. “Yes, my reaction. A pity, I thought I’d hidden it much better. But yes, it stunned me and brought it all back; all the pain; all the hate...”

  Desmond suddenly asked, “Who helped you?”

  At the look of surprise on her face, he continued. “Someone must have! You can’t have done...what you did, and where you did it, without help.”

  “You don’t think so? I hate to prove the great detective wrong, but I did do it all entirely on my own – twice, in fact. It’s quite amazing what one can achieve when one is full of fury. Even more so, when those you intend duping underestimate you, and are filled with greed when...certain things, certain, shall we say, opportunities, are dangled before their greedy, lustful eyes.” His captor’s eyes took on a faraway look, but a slight movement by Desmond brought them focusing sharply back into the here and now, of which Desmond was, unfortunately, part.

  “You see, quite apart from anything else, this,” she gestured at the gun held loosely but expertly, “is a powerful persuader.”

  “It’s very old - where’d you get it?” asked Desmond with genuine curiosity.

  “Oh, it’s been in the family for ages, a sort of heirloom, you might say.
”

  “One of your father’s, you mean?”

  “Don’t be such a bloody chauvinist, Desmond, I’d expect better of you, all things considered. No, it was my mother’s. Yes, my mother’s,” she repeated, in response to Desmond’s look of surprise. “She was something important in the war, parachuted into occupied France a few times, I gather. I once asked her why, with all the obvious and horrible risks, she’d kept doing it. All she said was ‘I had to, Darling. When you see wickedness and injustice, and can do something about it, even the tiniest bit, you have to act, or else you yourself become a bit diminished, less of a person’. I always remembered that. That’s why I think she’d understand why I’ve done …what I’ve done. I hope so.” She suddenly hunched up and looking much smaller on the large settee opposite Desmond. Then, gathering herself together with a painfully obvious effort, she continued. “Yes, when you have a gun pointed at you, and the person doing the pointing makes it very clear how much they’d like to use it, it’s amazing what people will do, as you yourself have just proved.”

  “The difference being I don’t think you want to kill me,” remarked Desmond, with what he hoped was a confident tone..

  “Don’t I? I wouldn’t risk too much on that, Desmond, I really wouldn’t. Anyway, which would you like first – the ‘why’ or the ‘how’? Bearing in mind we may not have time for both,” she added matter-of-factly.

  “The ‘why’, I think,” Desmond responded with what he hoped was a voice filled with quiet dignity rather than with the shakes of acute fear. “I know you knew her – and hated her so much that you wanted to kill her – before she moved here. This thing started a long time ago, didn’t it?”

  He was rewarded with a nod. “Let’s do things in order, shall we? Yes, that’s best.” After a short pause, as though to make sure that every thought was in its right place, she began. “Yes, you are right. I knew her before she came to the village. It all began ten years ago. I knew Robert Wentworth too. They were both responsible for the death of a very good man. Someone I loved very much – my father.” This was breathed so quietly that Desmond had to strain to hear what was being said. “And yes, you were right on that one too: he was a clergyman, the vicar of a country parish. It was very similar to here, in many ways. He was a lovely, lovely man, but completely unworldly. He believed in the innate goodness of man. Ironic, really, in the light of what happened to him. Despite years of evidence to the contrary, he carried that belief, until his sweet, innocent world collided with the putrid one of Debra Addison and Robert Wentworth.” Her face changed into the image Desmond had recalled only minutes before and became a mask of hatred. “His beliefs didn’t survive that collision, and neither did he.” Then, the hatred disappeared, and tears trickled down the ravaged face. Desmond was debating about lunging for the gun, but thought better of it as he saw the eyes re-focus, become hard again.