A Willing Victim (38 page)

Ballard looked up at the white building across the road. Box-shaped, with a square, pillared porch, on top of which were two poorly executed stone lions, it had a green pantiled roof on which, painted in large white capital letters in order to be visible from far off, were the words ‘Car Park’. Milling around in the road in front, bewildered at stepping into the chaos of someone else’s life from the safety of their morning coffee, were the guests. Most of them were of a similar age to the beefy woman, who now stood slightly to one side of him. She was looking down at him with her lips pursed, her disbelief even more obvious than the man’s.

Over to the left, the bonnet of the Velox was concertinaed against the corner of the hotel, steam hissing from the broken radiator. The front wheel Ballard could see was buckled inwards at a crazy angle, the headlamp smashed and hanging to one side like a detached silver eyeball, and the windscreen completely gone. A humped shape bowed over the steering wheel told him that Ananda was still in there, and he struggled to get to his feet, batting away the hands that reached out to restrain him. Weaving slightly, he approached the car, pushing away two other men in aprons who tried to intercept him, but as he got to within a few feet, the driver’s door swung open and, as if detaching
itself by its own agency, clattered onto the oil-stained tarmac. Ananda, hair falling over her face, stockings laddered, coat open, staggered out and performed a strange half pirouette before sinking to her knees in the road. Despite her obvious state of shock, the movement seemed to Ballard to be self-conscious and knowing – like the flourish of a dancer at the end of a performance. For a moment, her head was thrown back, and he saw the fragments of the shattered windscreen glinting in her forehead, and a tracery of blood on her cheek and neck. Then she collapsed onto her back and lay still, clothes twisted about her thighs and legs splayed so that Ballard caught a glimpse of one stocking-top and the darkness beyond. Behind her, in the car, the front seats and the footwell were covered in glass. She turned her head and stared at them as if she’d left something – part of herself, perhaps – inside the car.

He approached hesitantly, hearing agitated murmurs behind him, aware of people backing away, and knelt down beside her head. Her eyes, which had been closed, now opened wide and stared straight at him, engulfing him in a brown velvet gaze. Her smile seemed – no, it actually
was
– sexual, inviting. For God’s sake, said a disgusted inner voice in Ballard’s ear, the woman’s hurt. Stop it. Then he saw her lips part and pucker and, for an appalled split-second, he thought she was blowing him a kiss but instead she said, ‘Oh, it’s
you
.’

Hearing a tentative knock on the door, Stratton tiptoed across Michael’s room, opened it a fraction, and sidled into the corridor. Miss Kirkland was standing there, eyes lowered. Putting a finger to his lips and miming sleep with his hands palms together against his cheek, he motioned her to follow him onto the landing.

‘We had a telephone call from the police station. They’d like you to call them at once.’

‘I see.’ Stratton glanced over the banisters at the hall below and saw Mr Roth sitting in an armchair by the chimney breast. No one else was present and he was staring into the fire. Stratton, who had a good view of three-quarters of his face, saw that his features were settled in a broad, expressionless mask. Wondering what – or possibly who – was hiding behind it, he said, ‘I’ll need to talk to Roth, too, afterwards. Did the ambulance come for Miss Banting?’

‘Yes, they’ve gone. Miss Mills is with her.’

‘Good. Then,’ he added, ‘you’d better find PC Briggs and tell him to station himself outside Michael’s door and not to move until I tell him otherwise.’

Miss Kirkland nodded meekly.

‘Where’s the telephone?’

‘Downstairs, in the office.’

‘Right. If you’d take me … And you need to make it clear to Briggs that no one – and I
do mean
no one – is to disturb Michael.’

‘… a pity about your car, sir,’ said Parsons, evenly. ‘We’re sending a truck to tow it back.’

‘Never mind that,’ snapped Stratton. ‘What about DI Ballard? Was he hurt?’

‘Just bumps and bruises as far as we know, sir. There was a doctor present – one of the hotel guests, apparently – and he was able to confirm that there was nothing serious.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘He was very lucky, by the sound of things. The chap who telephoned us said it was a miracle neither of them was killed – Mrs Milburn’s car ran straight into a wall. They’ve taken them both to hospital, so we’ll have a report soon, I daresay.’

‘How bad is she? Do you know?’

‘Not sure, sir. There may be injuries, but she was conscious. She’s been charged with the attempted murder of the boy, but apparently she didn’t respond.’

‘There’s someone with her, is there? Apart from Ballard, I mean?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Parsons sounded reproachful. ‘A police guard.’

‘Well, let’s hope he’s a bit more efficient than Briggs was,’ said Stratton. ‘I’ve got a couple more things to do here, and then I’ll be straight down to see her. Adlard can take me in the car. Send that policewoman back here, will you? I’m concerned about the boy, and I don’t see Briggs being a lot of use … Oh, and we’ve another job for you, Parsons. Can you find out if there’s a William or Billy Milburn – or possibly Carroll – buried in the churchyard at Hasketon? He’d be about ten months old.’

‘Right you are, sir.’

Stratton put the telephone back on its hooks and let out a long, ragged breath of relief, then went down the corridor to see if Roth was still in the hall.

He was. In fact, he did not appear to have changed position at all in the last few minutes. He was attended by Miss Kirkland, who sat beside him, her hands demurely folded on her now clean tweed skirt.

‘How is the boy?’ Roth’s tone, kindly but remote, suggested that he might have been enquiring after a distant relative or a missing cat.

‘Still asleep, I hope.’ Stratton turned to Miss Kirkland. ‘You fetched PC Briggs, did you, and told him what I said?’

‘Yes. He’s up there now.’

Stratton acknowledged this with a curt nod, and turned his attention back to Roth. ‘You may like to know,’ he said, savagely, ‘that DI Ballard managed to catch up with Ananda. Her attempts to evade him resulted in her crashing Mr Tynan’s car, and she’s been taken to hospital.’

‘Do you know her condition?’ asked Roth. The impassive, leonine mask was still in place but Stratton thought that the man’s face looked greyer now, with a rubbery quality, as though it might be possible, by touching the flesh, to mould it into something other than it was. ‘Not as yet,’ he said. ‘Apparently she was conscious, but it’s very likely she’s been injured.’

Roth’s sunken eyes did not change their expression, but his mouth curved upwards, prompted, Stratton thought, by some inner joke. ‘Conscious,’ he repeated quietly, nodding his head in approval. ‘That’s good.’

‘I should like to speak to you alone.’

Miss Kirkland looked as though she were about to say something, but Roth said sharply, ‘Leave us.’ Stratton took the vacated seat, and both men sat in silence as she crossed the hall and stepped through the vestibule doors, shutting them behind her with a snap. Roth did not speak but stared after her, cloudy-eyed and mouth slightly agape. In spite of the prominent belly, his body had the slack, shrunken look of a deflating balloon.

‘I know that Ananda came here to see you early this morning.’

‘I imagine Miss Kirkland told you that,’ said Roth, his eyes still fixed on the doors. He gave a half smile. ‘I thought she might.’

‘You didn’t see fit to tell me yourself?’

‘No,’ said Roth, judiciously. ‘Not then.’

‘But you knew Miss Kirkland was listening when you spoke to Ananda?’

‘Yes. What has she told you?’

‘I’m not here to answer questions. I want to hear what you have to say.’

Roth uttered a long sigh, like a child resigned to having to recount a series of events it considers wholly unimportant and has half forgotten. ‘Ananda told me about the boy.’

‘Which boy?’

‘The boy who died.’

‘What did she say about him?’

‘She explained the circumstances of his … adoption, shall we say – which of course I knew, thanks to you.’ Roth inclined his head graciously. ‘She then told me that he had died several weeks later.’

‘And you believed her?’

‘You may think it surprising,’ Roth wagged his head at Stratton, ‘but yes, I did.’

‘You believed her when she said she had no idea she was pregnant until Billy died?’

‘I see Miss Kirkland did tell you everything. Yes, I did. Stranger things have happened, Inspector.’

‘Yes,’ said Stratton shortly. ‘And most of them seem to be connected with this place. What else did she tell you?’

‘What else?’ Roth raised his eyebrows. ‘There was nothing else to tell.’

‘She didn’t mention the deaths of Jeremy Lloyd or Rosemary Aylett?’

Roth looked at him enquiringly, and then his glance flicked momentarily towards the doors. ‘No,’ he said, simply. ‘She did not.’

‘Mr Roth, I am already considering charging you – and Mr Tynan, and Miss Kirkland – with obstructing the police by withholding information. There have been two murders – possibly more – and you need to tell me the truth. I am going to ask you again if Mrs Milburn said anything about the deaths of either Lloyd or Mrs Aylett, and I would advise you to think very carefully before you reply.’

‘There is nothing to think about.’

‘So you stand by what you’ve said, do you?’

‘I stand by what I’ve said because it’s the truth.’

‘In that case, perhaps you’d care to tell me what happened after Mrs Milburn told you about Billy’s death.’

‘I have a duty to the students, Inspector, and especially to Michael. I told her to leave and not to come back. She left soon afterwards.’

‘Did she threaten you or Michael in any way?’

‘No.’

‘But she came back this morning and tried to kill him.’

‘Yes.’ Roth gave a deep sigh. ‘Ananda was not in her right mind when she came to see me. She was confused, overwhelmed by distress and anger. Men turn their anger outwards, Inspector. They lash out at others. Women turn it upon themselves … or upon their children, who they perceive as being a part of themselves.’

Stratton nodded, remembering a case the previous year of a subnormal woman, persecuted by her neighbours, who claimed she’d killed her two children because she couldn’t afford to feed them. When he’d gone to her house, he’d found kitchen cupboards packed solid with every kind of food imaginable. And there’d been others like her, too … ‘If you knew that,’ he said, ‘surely you knew that she might come back?’

Roth bowed his head. ‘There, I’m afraid, I was at fault. I should have anticipated it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Because I had told her not to come back. I had said that she wasn’t to attempt to see Michael again.’

Christ All-fucking-Mighty, thought Stratton. The man actually believed he was infallible.

As if reading his thoughts, Roth said, ‘For a man like me, the temptation is egotism. On this occasion, I succumbed to it. For many of my students, the temptation takes an inverted form – masochism. I don’t mean in its grossest, physical form, but the desire to purge or discipline themselves, seen in a false light. But both these temptations lead us away from the truth …’

Stratton was about to tell Roth that he didn’t have time to listen to him talking in riddles when the man leant forward as far as his stomach would allow and placed a hand on his sleeve. He gave a surprisingly kindly smile, although the hooked nose and wide mouth caused Stratton’s imagination, for a second, to superimpose on him the face of Mr Punch, trickster in cap and bells. ‘As a child, I had strange episodes. The best way of describing them is as a downpour inside my head. It didn’t hurt at the time, but afterwards the pain could become severe and I was compelled to lie quite still …’ Wondering what was coming next – a revelation, perhaps, or possibly an attempt at exoneration, or at least explanation – Stratton nodded encouragingly.

‘After a while,’ said Roth, ‘these episodes stopped. Many years went by without one – until the end of the war, in fact. I was in Berlin. People have told me that things were bad here, but …’ Clownish mouth turned down at the corners, Roth shook his head. ‘It was terrible. Barricades in the streets, old trams turned over and railway carriages filled with rubble, destroyed tanks, wreckage and smashed houses … There were child soldiers wandering about in uniforms made for men and people living
in cellars that stank with excrement, with no light, only coming out to scavenge for food like rats. I saw a dead horse in the street once. People crowding round it with their knives, sawing the meat off it. When I touched it, it was still warm …’ He was talking to himself now, apparently unconscious of Stratton’s presence. ‘Hundreds of people committed suicide. They were afraid of what the Russians would do to them. There’d have been more suicides if people had had gas. They’d have put their heads in the ovens … There were corpses wrapped in newspaper, buried in gardens and parks. Had to do it at night to avoid the soldiers. The Russians were looting, raping women …’

Roth stopped and stared down at his feet. Stratton remembered that Dr Thorley of the Psychical Research Society had said that Roth claimed to be from Russia, but it didn’t sound as if he’d been a soldier. In any case, Stratton thought, unless he was a lot younger than he looked, he’d have been in his fifties then, too old for active service, so perhaps he’d been an official of some sort. If Jewish, he surely would have been in a camp, although, if this were the case, he’d have been bloody lucky to survive, especially if they’d known he was epileptic, which was certainly what the ‘episodes’ he’d described sounded like. If Roth
were
a survivor, Stratton supposed he could have got back to Berlin afterwards – assuming (here, he remembered, with horrible clarity, the newsreels of Belsen he’d seen at the end of the war) that he was in any condition to go anywhere …