A Willing Victim (21 page)

‘How?’

Mrs Curtin looked at her daughter blankly. ‘How?’

‘Well, the birth certificate would have had Rosemary’s name on it, wouldn’t it? Not hers. And if she couldn’t show that Billy was her child, I don’t see how she could have taken him out of the country.’

‘She said that the baby’s name could be put on her passport.’

‘But surely that would still involve proving that he was her baby?’ Mrs Allardyce looked at Ballard for confirmation of this.

‘But if your sister thought that Billy was in Lincott,’ said Ballard, ‘perhaps he never went to America at all.’

‘I just don’t know,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘It did cross my mind at
the time, the business over the passport, but I’ve never had one, you see, so I don’t know anything about it. I remember Mrs Carroll saying there were ways round these things … I suppose we should have gone into it a bit more, but she was very persuasive, and Bert insisted. Rosemary didn’t feel she had any choice, and Mrs Carroll said she’d keep in touch, let her know how Billy was doing …’ Mrs Curtin’s voice cracked. ‘When you think back, what you’d have done different … Last night, when Rosemary didn’t come back, I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it, how I should have done something so that Ernie – my husband – would agree to us keeping Billy, but I don’t see how I could have … It was a terrible time. The war did dreadful things to families, Mr Ballard. All those poor children …’ Engulfed by the memory, it took a moment before she emerged, reminding Ballard again of a diver in a pool, shaking her head and wiping her eyes with the hankie, which was now wadded into a tight, soggy ball. Wordlessly, Jennifer Allardyce fumbled in her handbag and handed over a clean linen square.

‘Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Curtin blew her nose.

‘Did you hear from Mrs Carroll again?’ asked Ballard.

‘Never. Not a word. And when Rosemary did start trying to find Billy again …’ She turned to her daughter. ‘That was after your Uncle Bert died, dear.’

‘You never said anything.’

‘No, dear.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Jennifer Allardyce looked affronted once more, and Ballard, who could imagine exactly why Mrs Curtin hadn’t told her, said quickly, ‘And she traced him to Lincott, did she?’

‘She thought she had. She’d never forgotten him, you see, and I was the only one she could talk to. I tried to talk her out of it – I mean, Billy was too young to remember her, and if Mrs Carroll hadn’t told him anything … But she was adamant. She said, “I’m
going to find him if it’s the last thing I do.” And it was, wasn’t it? The last thing … and we don’t even know if she saw Billy, or if it was Billy at all …’

Jennifer Allardyce patted Mrs Curtin on the back and stared balefully at Ballard while her mother wiped her eyes. Ballard’s mind was racing – beautiful, well-dressed, persuasive, and the boy was at Lincott – it seemed crazy, but with Mary/Ananda’s record, anything was possible … But then, why would she want another child when she had just – to all intents and purposes – given her own away? ‘Can you tell me,’ he asked, ‘exactly how you went about tracing Billy?’

‘Well,’ said Muriel Curtin, ‘I didn’t see how she’d be able to find him if he was in America. We had a copy of his birth certificate, but where do you start? Rosemary contacted the American Embassy, and they put us onto the forces people, but they told us there was no record from that time of anyone called Carroll who’d married an Englishwoman, so we were stuck. I told her it wasn’t meant to be, but she wouldn’t let up. She wouldn’t talk about anything else – nothing mattered but finding Billy. Then, about a week ago, she showed me a letter she’d had – I remember there wasn’t a date, but she said she’d got it the day before – and it said that her son was living in Lincott. There was a photograph, too, a boy, very handsome – Rosemary was certain it was Billy. We had a row about that as well, because I said I didn’t see how she could be sure, because he didn’t look like her – not that she wasn’t attractive, of course, but he was fair. Fair hair, and Rosemary was dark.’

‘What about the father?’ asked Ballard.

‘Patrick – that was his name, Patrick Brennan – he had fair hair. Sandy, I suppose you’d call it. Rosemary did have a couple of photographs of the two of them, but she got rid of them before Bert came back, and I haven’t got any, so … I only met him a couple of times, and … He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but I can’t
really remember exactly what he looked like. Tall, well-built … Yes, quite a smasher in his way. I do remember thinking he was a lot better-looking than Bert.’

Mrs Allardyce stared at her mother, apparently astonished by this nod towards carnality, and Ballard, careful not to let his excitement show, asked, ‘Who was the letter from?’

‘There was no name, just “A Well Wisher” written at the bottom. And it didn’t say Billy’s name, either, just “your son who was born in the war”. It wasn’t nasty or anything, but because it wasn’t signed I said it might just be somebody making trouble – although I don’t see who’d want to, not after all this time.’

‘Where was it posted?’

‘London, she said. I never saw the envelope.’

‘And she took the letter with her, did she?’

‘Yes, and the photograph. She had them with her when she left, in her bag.’ Mrs Curtin frowned. ‘You must have seen them. I mean, isn’t that why you … why you’re here?’

‘We didn’t find a bag, only a library card in her pocket with her name on it.’

‘They must have taken it, then. Whoever shot her must have stolen it … D’you think that’s why she was killed? To rob her? She didn’t have … I mean, she wasn’t rich. She was just … just Rosemary.’ Mrs Curtin stared at Ballard with hurt, baffled eyes.

‘We don’t know yet,’ said Ballard, gently. ‘But we’ll find out. What you’ve told me is very helpful.’

‘Why did she have to go like that, on her own?’ wailed Mrs Curtin. ‘I’d told her I’d go with her – and I would have done – only I thought we ought to make some enquiries first. I know Lincott’s only a small place, and the letter mentioned a school there. Odd name – the Foundation.’

‘The Foundation?’ echoed Ballard, not quite believing his ears.

‘That’s right. I suppose it must be one of those progressive places you hear about. I told her she couldn’t just walk in and
say “that’s my child”, but she was too excited to listen. I said to her, what about Mr and Mrs Carroll? They weren’t mentioned in the letter, it was just “If you want to find your son, I know where he is.” She accused me of not wanting to help her. Said I was like Bert and Ernie and I just wanted to forget all about it. “Blow you, I’ll go by myself,” she said. Then she left.’

Ballard and Carter left Jennifer Allardyce bossing her mother into a coat and hunting out a photograph of her aunt to pin up in the Lincott village post office, and went down the road to Rosemary Aylett’s house. As he let them in through the kitchen door with keys given by Mrs Curtin, Ballard wasn’t sure what, if anything, he was expecting to find, but, telling Carter to search upstairs, he went into the sitting room to have a look round. Despite the dilapidated state of the garden – obviously Bert’s department, thought Ballard – the house was clean and neat, the fresh dust only just beginning to settle. Specks, he thought, of Rosemary Aylett’s skin – all that remained of her, in the corners of the rooms, beneath the bed, on the tops of curtain rails and doors … all that was left. A book bound in green cloth, the page – 73 – neatly marked with a hand-embroidered strip, lay on the occasional table beside an armchair. Ballard glanced at the spine:
Cotillion
, by Georgette Heyer. A slight, almost imperceptible indentation on the antimacassar where her head had been as she’d sat dreaming of a reunion with Billy …

Ballard made a cursory search of the room and, returning to the kitchen, looked in cupboards and opened drawers, but found nothing unusual. One plate was slotted into the drying rack above
the sink and, on the wooden drainer, placed in a line, were one cup, one saucer, one knife and one fork.

Carter appeared at his elbow. ‘Come and look up here, sir. There’s nothing in the lady’s bedroom, but – well, you’ll see.’

Ballard followed him up the stairs and across the cramped landing seeing, as he passed, a bedroom – Rosemary’s, judging by the pink eiderdown and the scent bottle and powder puff glimpsed on the fussy dressing table – and a gleaming bathroom. Carter stopped in front of the first of two doors adjacent to it. ‘In here, sir.’

Ballard caught his breath as Carter swung the door open. Inside, pristine and crammed with things so brand-new that they almost glittered, was the perfect bedroom for a twelve-year-old boy. Boxed Airfix kits, Escalado, bagatelle, a football, a pile of I-Spy books and adventure stories, Dinky toys in their boxes, with a Supermarine Swift jet fighter and a Gloster Javelin as well as a number of cars and lorries, and a Hornby Dublo locomotive, also in its box. A Davy Crockett cap hung from a hook on the back of the door, over a boy’s tartan dressing gown. Ballard stared round the room in amazement. ‘She’s thought of everything,’ he said. He pulled open the topmost drawer in the chest of drawers and saw new flannelette pyjamas, neatly folded, alongside socks and underwear. There were more clothes in the wardrobe – trousers, blazer, raincoat … even cricket whites.

Carter picked up a copy of an
Eagle
annual, its cover showing a picture of Dan Dare, Chief Pilot of the Interplanet Space Fleet, with his manly jaw and curiously shaped black eyebrows. ‘Trains, spacemen, cowboys … it’s everything a boy could want,’ he said, looking round. He tapped the annual. ‘This year’s, too. Everything bought pretty recently, I’d say.’

‘I agree,’ said Ballard. ‘She must have been sure, mustn’t she?’

Carter looked up from a brightly drawn strip of Dan Dare bravely facing down the evil Mekon with its heavy lidded eyes
and enormous green cranium. ‘She wanted him so badly,’ he said. ‘That’s why she believed he was in Lincott.’

‘Did you look in the room next door?’

‘Not yet, sir.’ Carter relinquished the annual with, Ballard thought, some reluctance.

The next room, which was tiny, contained nothing except a gleaming and obviously new Raleigh bike. ‘Blimey,’ said Carter, standing at Ballard’s shoulder. ‘I’d have killed for one of those.’

‘Me, too,’ said Ballard. ‘She was set on making it up to him, wasn’t she?’

‘I’d say so, sir.’

‘I’m betting,’ said Ballard, ‘that Mrs Curtin didn’t know anything about this.’

He was right. Muriel Curtin and her daughter stared at the Aladdin’s cave in astonishment. ‘I had no idea,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘None at all.’

‘How could she afford it, Mum? All this stuff must have cost a fortune.’

Mrs Curtin took a step into the room, her fingers quivering over the lid of a giant Meccano set. ‘Bert left her a little,’ she said, quietly. ‘And I know she used to keep back a bit from the housekeeping. Never said what it was for, though.’ Turning to Ballard, she added, ‘My sister was always a good manager. She’d have made sure Bert never went short.’ She reached over and picked up a cricket bat, turning it over in her hands, stroking the wood. ‘Poor Rosemary. All her plans, all this …’ Her damp-eyed gaze travelled round the room, seeing, Ballard thought, her sister’s imaginings – the handsome boy, clattering up the stairs after a day’s school or play, happy, sturdy, vigorous, hungry for his tea – ‘All this
belief
. All this
hope
.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Curtin looked down at the waxy, blue-white face, then turned her head away. ‘That’s Rosemary.’

‘Thank you.’ Ballard led Mrs Curtin out of the mortuary’s viewing room and back to her now very subdued daughter. Earlier, while they were waiting for Trickett’s assistants to lay out the body, the pathologist had taken him aside. ‘Not much more to report, really,’ he had said, clearly unhappy not to be able to make some pronouncement of infallible wisdom in the manner of his celebrated mentor Spilsbury. ‘She’s in her forties, and she’s given birth to a child, and I stand by what I said about the timing. As I said, there was no muzzle impression on the neck, but I’ve examined the marks round the entry wound – the effect of the gases – and the weapon was definitely fired from no more than two inches away. I’ve had a report from the ballistics chap – the bullet is a .32, marks matching the cartridge case, and there were six right-hand grooves of the Browning type. Weapon turned up yet?’

Ballard shook his head. ‘Neither has Mrs Aylett’s handbag, assuming she had one … So … going back to what you were saying, she must have been aware of her assailant?’

‘I’d say so. I suppose he could have hidden behind a tree to
shoot her as she came past if he’d known she was going to be there, but she’d have been so close she must have known he was there. Unless she was deaf, I suppose, but even then …’

Ballard took Mrs Curtin to the Ipswich police station to make a formal statement. They went through everything again over a cup of tea, a kindly policewoman taking notes, while Mrs Allardyce waited outside. Muriel Curtin’s brave, jerky smile and solemn eagerness to cooperate made him want to put his arm round her. Rosemary, she told him, could hear perfectly well and always carried her handbag with her. ‘It’s the same as mine,’ she said, holding up solid-looking brown crocodile bag with slightly sloping sides and a gold clasp. We bought them at the same time, a year or so ago. In Ipswich. We went to the pictures afterwards …’ She blinked, obviously remembering a happy occasion. ‘We saw
The Runaway Bus
. Rosemary always liked Frankie Howerd.’

‘How would she have got to Lincott? Did she have a car?’

Mrs Curtin shook her head. ‘She’d have taken the bus. Unless she’d accepted a lift from somebody, and they …’ She tailed off, a smiling motorist turning into a gun-toting maniac in her head. ‘But,’ she added, firmly, ‘Rosemary
wouldn’t
have accepted a lift. Not unless she knew the person. And what I don’t understand is why she was in the woods in the first place.’

‘Did she like walking?’

‘Not particularly. I mean, I’ve never known her just take herself off for a walk. Was it near the school?’