A Willing Victim (24 page)

‘Where?’

‘Tynan’s. He rang the station. I told him you were on your way – got a message from On High – and we’d come over when you arrived. I did wonder if it mightn’t be a good idea to get them both down to the station, but I thought we might get a better idea of things if we saw them on home ground – his home ground,
anyway … Look, do you want to come up here first? I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea or something.’

‘What if she scarpers?’

‘Tynan was adamant she wouldn’t. I told him I’d hold him responsible if she did. Also …’ Ballard sounded sheepish, ‘I promised I’d read the nipper a story before bed.’

‘Fair enough.’ Stratton fished his notebook and pencil out of his coat pocket. ‘Won’t take me a minute to get organised here. What’s the address?’

Stratton followed Ballard’s instructions and ended up crawling down a narrow lane, his headlamps illuminating the thin rain falling on the shabby, spiky leftovers of hedges and bushes that were no more than straggles of dead sticks. Apart from a church next door, Ballard’s cottage seemed isolated. Stratton found himself wondering what historical anomaly or human stubbornness had resulted in the place of worship being a good quarter of a mile from the heart of the village it served.

There wasn’t enough light to get much impression of the place, but Stratton noted the beds laid out on either side of the path in the front garden, the overhang of a thatched roof and crisscross leading on the windows. Pauline Ballard answered the door, minus the uniform but otherwise very much how he remembered her – pink and white and strapping, looking, even in her thirties, every inch the sort of girl who’d be jolly useful on a sports field or tennis court. Now, she threw the door wide. ‘Ben’s upstairs reading to Katy, but he won’t be long. I’ve got the kettle on.’

‘Thanks.’

Pauline helped him off with his coat. ‘You won’t mind sitting in the kitchen, will you?’

‘Not at all. Nice place you’ve got here.’

‘Not too quaint, I hope.’

‘Nothing wrong with a few roses round the door. Mind if I pull up a chair?’

‘Please …’

It was disconcertingly intimate, Stratton thought, to see inside the home of someone you worked with. He’d been invited to Ballard’s wedding and Katy’s christening, but, other than that, he had only ever seen him – and Pauline, too, in the days when she was Policewoman Gaines – in the context of work. Catching a glimpse of an upright piano through the door of what was, presumably, the sitting room, he decided it must be she who played, as his former sergeant had never given any indication of being musical. Bit late to ask now, he thought, imagining Pauline, buxom on the piano stool, entertaining Ballard of an evening.

‘How’s country life suiting you?’ he asked, as she busied herself with the tea things. ‘Must be a bit different from Putney.’

‘It’s been wonderful for Katy. She’s ever so much better now, with the fresh air, and she’s getting on well at school.’

Remembering what Ballard had said about it taking a long time to be accepted in the community and Pauline desperately wanting a second child, Stratton didn’t press the issue of whether or not
she
liked country life, but said, ‘I must say, I’m glad of a bit of fresh air, too. Don’t seem to get out of London much these days.’

‘Ben said you grew up on a farm.’ Pauline placed a cup and saucer on the table in front of him. ‘Sugar?’

‘No, thanks. My brother runs the place now. Farming’s changed a good bit, mind you, since I was a boy …’

Ballard appeared several minutes later, a brightly coloured storybook tucked under his arm. ‘Sorry about that. Katy’s just about asleep,’ he added to Pauline.

‘I’d better go and kiss her goodnight, then. Leave you in peace.’

‘Thanks, love.’

Ballard looked somehow softer than usual, Stratton thought, recalling the rare occasions on which he’d been at home at the right time to read to his own children, his words dropping into the special silence that surrounded them as they drifted off, sealing themselves into sleep, before returning downstairs afterwards to a cup of tea with Jenny.

Extricating himself from this thought – and all the thoughts that, if unchecked, would be bound to follow it, he said, ‘What did Tynan say?’

‘He’s a cool customer. You’d have thought he was inviting me to a garden party or something. Said she was staying with him for a few days.’

‘Did he say where she’d been for the last four days?’

‘Went to London, apparently.’ Ballard rolled his eyes. ‘Wanted to get her hair done.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘I’m not.’

‘For Christ’s sake …’

‘Odd, isn’t it, that the rest of them at the Foundation are busy at all hours with this great programme of theirs, and she just comes and goes as she pleases.’

‘Bloody odd,’ said Stratton. ‘I don’t know about you, but for all Roth’s speechifying about how the place isn’t a prison, he struck me as someone who’s pretty intent on controlling people’s lives … and she seems to do pretty much as she likes.’

‘I suppose that’s because of Michael. Gives her special status.’ Ballard gave him a meaningful look.

‘Quite. Mother of the Deity, and all that. So she didn’t go back to the Foundation, but went straight from London to Tynan’s place?’

‘That’s what he said. I had a word with PC Briggs. He’s been doing the bodyguarding at the Foundation, along with another chap called Jackson. The guv’nor brought them in from Sudbury.
Briggs is on the day shift, so I asked him if there’d been a sighting of Mary/Ananda – he’s seen the photograph – and he said there hadn’t. I got him to check up, but apparently no one’s seen her since she went off. We made a search of her room this morning, too – didn’t find anything significant. Precious little there at all, in fact. Briggs and Jackson are pretty fed up, by the way – said the place was creepy and they’d be bloody glad when the job was over. They’re both from round here, so I suppose they must have grown up with all the ghost stories.’

‘The power of suggestion,’ said Stratton. ‘Much like everything else about the place …’

‘I take it,’ said Ballard, with an expression of the utmost seriousness, ‘that you don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘No. Not the sort that go bump in the night, at any rate.’ Stratton finished his tea and stood up. ‘We all set, then?’

‘Yes. And I think it may be better,’ Ballard said this casually and apparently spontaneously, but Stratton had a feeling he’d thought about it, ‘if – on this occasion – you do the talking. Parsons has made enquiries at US Airbase HQ about a serviceman called Carroll, and they’re going to ring back when – or if, I suppose – they turn up anything. And I’m having copies made of the photograph of Mrs Aylett for a house-to-house around Lincott – Mrs Curtin seems to think she came here by bus, so somebody might have seen her getting off it – but we haven’t started yet, and I haven’t released the name, so I’d say Mary/ Ananda might be in for a bit of a shock.’

‘You’re not going to be …’ Mary/Ananda gave Stratton an up-from-under look, accompanied by a slight suggestion of trembling lower lip, ‘unkind to me, are you?’

From the moment he’d seen her making her way towards him down Tynan’s grand staircase, high-heeled, made-up, the curves and planes of her body swaying gently in a tight sweater and skirt, making him think of a darker version of Rita Hayworth in that film where she sang in a nightclub, Stratton had felt the woman’s presence as sharply as air on a naked nerve. He could see now what Ballard had meant when he’d said it was like being seventeen again. Mary/Ananda, even at forty-odd, and with her obvious awareness of the drama she was creating, all the lip-biting and the eyelash-batting, was, quite simply, sexual dynamite, and any man who did not react to her must be made of stone.

He and Ballard were sitting opposite her on over-stuffed armchairs in one of Tynan’s grandly furnished rooms, complete with a display of flintlock pistols and elaborate Moorish-looking swords, several cabinets with displays of silver-framed photographs on top and, benevolently presiding over it all from his corner, a large and smiling bronze Buddha. Tynan had wanted to remain
while they conducted the interview. Fussing proprietorially over Mary/Ananda, he’d only consented to leave once she had assured him, for perhaps the tenth time, that she’d be fine. Stratton had been unable to work out, from their exchanges, whether he was worried that she might be bullied, or concerned that she might talk out of turn.

‘No,’ said Stratton, heavily. ‘We’re not going to be unkind, but we do need to ask you some questions.’

Mary/Ananda’s enormous, limpid eyes widened. ‘Mr Tynan said … you were looking for me. He said you put my picture in the papers.’ She sounded gratified by this.

‘Yes, we did.’

‘I didn’t see it.’

Despite all the glamour stuff, there was something childlike – although definitely not childish – about her, thought Stratton, but whether it was real or put on, he couldn’t tell. ‘You must have been hiding yourself away, if you were in London,’ he said, ‘because nobody seems to have seen you.’

‘I didn’t go out much,’ she said. ‘I was staying with a friend.’

‘But I understand you went out to get your hair done.’

‘Oh, no …’ She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘The friend I was staying with – she used to own hair salons. She did it for me at home. Do you like it?’

Ignoring this, Stratton said, ‘And what’s the name of this friend?’

‘Mrs Astley. She lives in Wimbledon.’

‘Where, exactly?’

Mary/Ananda produced an address book from her handbag and handed it over. ‘You’ll find it under “B” for Bettina.’

Copying it down, Stratton said, ‘Wimbledon’s not exactly out of the way. Surely you must have known we were looking for you?’

‘No.’ The eyes widened again, the expression one of total candour. ‘But Mr Tynan explained about poor Jeremy.’

‘You knew him well, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t think anyone knew him well. He was terribly clever, you see. Intellectual. But …’ she sighed. ‘I don’t think he was ever very happy.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, Mr Roth always said he thought too much. His ego … Think-think-think-think …’ She made little circular motions with her hands. ‘Interfering.’

‘Mr Roth thought Mr Lloyd was interfering with his work?’

‘Oh, no!’ Again, the tinkling laugh, this time coupled with the wide-eyed candid thing. Stratton had a strong impression that that she was checking herself, as in an invisible mirror, to gauge the effect she was having. ‘That wouldn’t be possible. The truth cannot be affected by anything. It is …’ she paused, frowning slightly as if trying to remember something, then said, ‘immutable.’

‘Mr Roth’s words, I take it?’

Mary/Ananda nodded. ‘He puts things so well. Much better than I could.’

‘And what did you think about Mr Lloyd?’

‘Oh, I agreed with Mr Roth.’

Stratton and Ballard exchanged glances. Here we go again, he thought, remembering the other students and the sheer impossibility of getting them to deviate from the Foundation’s ‘party line’, until she suddenly giggled and said, ‘I thought he was a bit … you know. Homosexy.’

Taking this to mean that she’d been unable to twist the man round her little finger, Stratton said, ‘When did you first meet Mr Lloyd?’

Mary/Ananda looked surprised. ‘At the Foundation.’

‘You didn’t know him before?’

She screwed up her face in puzzlement. ‘No, of course not.’

The ‘funny look’ was, Stratton felt, genuine. The woman was
too aware of herself for it to be otherwise. ‘Where were you when Mr Lloyd was killed?’

‘Mr Tynan said it happened the evening we went to the cinema in Ipswich.’

‘And what did you do after that?’

‘We came back here.’

‘So you spent the night here, did you?’

‘Yes, in Michael’s room. Really, Inspector …’ another little laugh, clearly meant to indicate that his inference was absurd, ‘I don’t know what you must be thinking of us.’

‘Michael has a room here, does he?’

‘He stays here sometimes, yes.’

That would appeal to Tynan’s vanity, Stratton thought. Exclusive access to the Boy Wonder. Perhaps he was thinking of writing a book along the lines of
Seven Years in Tibet
about his time as guide and companion to the young Maitreya. But Roth had said Mary/Ananda had returned to the Foundation after seeing the film, hadn’t he? Which meant that he either hadn’t known, or hadn’t wanted to admit that he knew, that something different had happened. It certainly explained why none of the students had seen her that night, but why – assuming that Roth did know she’d come here – hadn’t he said so? Aloud, he said, ‘And Mr Tynan’s staff will be able to confirm this, will they?’

‘Of course.’ Yet another laugh. ‘I wasn’t creeping up and down the back stairs like a thief in the night, Inspector.’

‘It’s important that you take this seriously, Mrs Milburn.’

‘I am, Inspector. Really, I am.’

‘Are you aware,’ asked Stratton, ‘that the body of a woman was found on the fifth of November in the woods about half a mile from here?’

‘Yes, Mr Tynan told me.’

‘Did he tell you that she’d been shot?’

‘Yes, poor thing. But …’ Mary/Ananda nibbled her lower lip,
looking bewildered, ‘I don’t know anything about it. I was in London.’

‘We believe,’ said Stratton, ‘that you knew the dead woman. Her name was Rosemary Aylett.’

Mary/Ananda blinked at Stratton several times, into a deep silence that seemed to seal itself around the three of them like an airlock, shutting out the murmurs of the house. She looked from Stratton to Ballard and back again, several times. Trying to tell which of us will be more sympathetic, thought Stratton, gazing stonily back at her. He made sure he kept his eyes only on her face, although he was almost preternaturally aware of the rest of her body as it made small, agitated movements, offering itself – breasts, hips, legs – for his attention.

‘I don’t.’ Mary/Ananda looked as if she were about to cry. ‘I wish I could remember her, but I really can’t. It doesn’t seem much to ask, does it, when someone’s dead, but I’m afraid … I’m so bad with names, and … Well, everything, really. Was it someone who came to the Foundation?’