A Woman Unknown (29 page)

‘Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs Shackleton. I’ll be very quick and you know she trusts me. If she’s there I’ll ask her to come back with me.’

‘On the motorbike?’

‘I thought I’d take the motor.’

‘Stick to the Clyno, Mr Sykes. I’ve borrowed Dad’s Morris and I want to be sparing of it.’

‘What’s the matter with the Jowett?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

He would not be long, Sykes told her. He should be back by the time she had finished breakfast.

As he rode, Sykes fleshed out his theories. Anthony Hartigan planned to take his sister back with him to New York. There, she would be safely out of the way of saying what really happened in the hotel room. Hartigan claimed he did nothing more than join Runcie for a drink. Sykes did not believe him.

Hartigan could have told Deirdre to lie low, and meet him in Southampton. Perhaps he would send her on ahead, on a different sailing.

Sykes’s theory went entirely against that of Marcus Charles who had put Hartigan in the clear. But Sykes knew well enough that the chief inspector wanted Hartigan out of the country, back where he came from, with a clean bill of health, so that the American authorities would have no cause to refuse him entry. The last thing
Scotland Yard wanted was a clever English-born Irishman returning home after a course in New York gang warfare and criminal ways.

On Norman View, Sykes found the door key, under a stone by the roses. He let himself in. Somewhere there would be a clue, something that had been missed. He started in the cellar, where two traps held dead rodents.

Finding nothing of consequence in the cellar or the downstairs rooms, Sykes went upstairs. He opened the bedroom drawers and looked under the lining. He checked under the mattresses, turned back the rugs, lifted the jug and bowl on the washstand.

Mrs Shackleton had said Deirdre had taken some clothes, but some were left behind, including a winter coat. Why take an old black coat to New York when she might be dressed in furs?

He sat down on her bed, and thought where she may have gone. And then he heard a sound downstairs.

Sykes froze. How would he explain being here to some next of kin, or a workmate of Fitzpatrick’s, or Deirdre herself?

All was quiet. He waited. After another few moments, he slowly descended the stairs.

No one.

A square white envelope lay on the mat. He had heard the click of the letterbox.

The letter was addressed to Cyril Fitzpatrick, in neat, childlike, writing.

It was from her.

Sykes told himself that his hands did not tremble as he picked it up. It was the envelope that fluttered of its own accord. He felt a wave of relief. She was alive. He should
not open it, of course. The postmark was York, and the date, not one bit smudged, was yesterday, a late collection. He should not open a dead man’s letter.

Sykes took a knife from the kitchen drawer. He slit the envelope. It was a short note, without endearments.

Sykes read it again. One line in particular puzzled him. I am going to the North Sea and you will hear. What did she mean? This did not sound like the note of a woman about to flee the country. Unless North Sea meant just that, that she was leaving the country with no sense of geography. She would not leave for America via the North Sea.

He put the note in his pocket, left the house, and replaced the key, no further on than when he had arrived. Intending to show the note to Mrs Shackleton, before handing it in for entry in the murder log, he rode back to Headingley.

Mrs Shackleton was not alone. Rosie was waiting with her. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, drinking Camp coffee.

Sykes passed Deirdre’s note to Mrs Shackleton who raised an eyebrow. Sykes knew he should not have gone haring off on his own.

‘Where were you?’ Rosie asked. ‘Alfred’s son cycled across from Chapeltown with a message. He said to tell you it was for Paul Sheridan and you’d understand. Paul Sheridan has to speak to his solicitor. That’s the message.’

‘I know what it’s about,’ Sykes said. ‘It’s work.’ He shot a quick glance at Mrs Shackleton, hoping for moral support. She appeared to be totally engrossed, reading the label on the Camp Coffee bottle.

Rosie had a right to be put out. He had hardly been home for more than a couple of hours since this business started.

‘What’s it all about, Jim?’

Sykes took a deep breath. ‘It’s to do with acting as a special constable. I adopted a nom-de-plume. It’s all hush-hush, Rosie, but I might have to go to Scarborough. We’ll go back home now and I’ll pick up my shaving gear.’

‘Why? Are you stopping the night there?’

Two hours later, Sykes was on the train. His small valise in the luggage rack contained hairbrush, comb, shaving gear and a clean shirt.

When the train pulled into York, he hardly dared look about the platform in case he saw Deirdre Fitzpatrick.

Everything fitted. He was to meet the woman in the Peasholm café. She would be slim, in her twenties, wearing a green hat, and carrying a copy of
The Lady
. He imagined her dark hair, spilling down from her hat as it
had when he looked at her through opera glasses when she sat in the stalls at the Grand Theatre.

When he alighted at Scarborough station, Sykes risked glancing at the other passengers, to see if Deirdre was among them. She was not. Suitcase in one hand,
The Times
in the other, he set off walking the mile or so to the café on the corner of Peasholm Gap and the Promenade.

When he saw her, he must put her at her ease, tell her not to be afraid, gain her confidence. He would explain that she must come back to Leeds with him, and answer a few questions. He tried to imagine her state of mind, having lived six years in a marriage where she did not share a room, never mind a bed, and something told him that it was not because Fitzpatrick snored. The compositor could read upside down and inside out; he worshipped his Roman Catholic God and virgins, but not his own good-looking wife. Sykes would have to tell her that Fitzpatrick was dead. She was free. The man must have something put by, an insurance policy. Deirdre would be her own woman. When would he tell her, now, or later?

There it was, the café on the corner.

Sykes checked his watch. Three minutes to go. Would she be early, late, or on time? With a minute to go, he entered the café, chose a table and sat down, laying his copy of
The Times
on the table.

The waitress delivered a tray of tea to people seated by the window. She returned to the counter. I’ll wait, Sykes thought, and order when Deirdre comes. He had begun to call her Deirdre now, no longer Mrs Fitzpatrick.

At a minute past three, the clapper clanged as the door
opened. A tall slender woman in green entered, carrying a bulky tapestry bag and a copy of
The Lady
.

She crossed to his table, glanced at the newspaper, and said cheerfully, ‘Hello. It’s Mr Sheridan isn’t it?’

Her long blonde fringe reached her narrow painted eyebrows.

On Friday night, Marcus arrived at my front door just as I was opening it to go out.

‘Marcus, what a surprise!’

‘Sorry.’ He looked subdued. ‘I shouldn’t have turned up out of the blue. Just needed to stop for a while and clear my head.’

I noticed his car and driver, parked in the street.

‘So are you giving yourself an hour or two’s rest and recreation?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Come round to the Chemic with me, if you don’t mind having a drink with your special constable, Mr Sykes.’

He hesitated. I half expected that he would resist fraternising with the troops. He caught my look and laughed. ‘Why not?’

‘The air will do you good. Tell the driver it’s on Johnston Street.’

If I needed confirmation from Marcus that he is never off duty, it came as we rounded the corner, into Headingley Lane. He asked me if I have ever been on one
of Lord Fotheringham’s shoots. When I admitted that I had, years ago, he was full of questions about the guns, who I know and what I know.

In the Chemic, the four of us claimed a corner of the snug, Rosie and me on the bench by the wall, Sykes and Marcus on buffets. We played a couple of good-natured games of dominoes, against the background banter of darts players, before giving up seats to the regulars, a knot of pipe-smoking, snuff-taking old fellows who take the dominoes a lot more seriously than we do.

We moved to a table vacated by a group of young chaps who like to crawl pub to pub and were setting off for the White Rose.

In spite of winning at dominoes, Sykes was down in the mouth. It pleased me that Marcus took the trouble to reassure Sykes. Yes, he had failed to find his quarry in Scarborough. But he did give the lie to a certain gentleman’s claim that he never would supply a co-respondent. The solicitor had some difficult questions to answer.

I felt sorry for Rosie who had cottoned on that her husband had been to Scarborough on a wild-goose chase, but knew no details. She sipped her port. ‘I hope you got some sand between your toes, Jim.’

Sykes stubbed his cigarette into the full ashtray. ‘The tide was in.’

‘Well don’t tell the kids you went, or they’ll be asking for their stick of rock.’

Marcus hailed the waiter and ordered one more round as the landlord called last orders.

Rosie suddenly said, ‘I do read the papers. I can guess what you’re all not saying.’

Sykes gave her a warning nudge. ‘Not the time or place, love.’

There was an awkward lull in the conversation. I obligingly changed the subject and talked about
HMS Pinafore
.

The landlord called, Time gentlemen please, and we finished our drinks. Marcus glanced at his watch. I guessed he would not be laying his head on a pillow anytime soon.

To calls of goodnight, we left the pub. Sykes and Rosie set off up Johnston Street. Marcus’s driver had returned, and was parked outside.

Marcus said, ‘Get in, Kate. We’ll give you a ride home.’

But it was a pleasant evening, and I wanted some air after the fug of the pub. ‘I’m going to walk.’

The streets were filling up as the pubs emptied. Walking among whistling, singing merrymakers might help my brain function. Something was niggling at me, something I had missed, and I could not quite bring the thought into focus. It was to do with Mrs Hartigan’s funeral.

Marcus was not to be put off. ‘I’ll walk with you.’

He spoke to the driver, and then took my arm. ‘The driver will follow us round. I wanted a word with you.’

‘I thought so. You didn’t expect Rosie to come along tonight?’

He laughed. ‘No. I imagined it would be just you and Sykes. Shows what I know about how normal people spend their Friday nights.’

‘She’d be discreet.’

‘I’m sure. But there are things I can’t say.’

‘But what can you say to me? Or did you just come for the dominoes?’

Marcus slowed his pace. ‘The solicitor, Lansbury, that was a good piece of work, Kate. I left him in a room at CID HQ, telling him I’d be back to continue questioning him. He admits that he supplied co-respondents for the Barnard and Runcie divorce cases. He could hardly wriggle out of that when presented with Sykes’s evidence. But he denies knowing the whereabouts of Deirdre Fitzpatrick.’

‘What is his attitude, to being found out?’

‘He tried to bluff a little at first, but underneath he is afraid. It’s left me wondering whether someone else had found out what he does and was blackmailing him.’