Damned by Logic (15 page)

Glover nodded. ‘There are only two names now in the frame and one's been inside for the past two years.'

‘The other?'

‘Gabby Ayling from up north, occasionally brought down south for a sharp job.'

Abbotts eased himself off the corner of Glover's desk. ‘Keep looking and speed things up.'

Glover was irritated by the order.

‘Has the wife's body been released for burial?' Abbotts turned back from the door as if the question had just occurred to him, although it was always his tactic to leave a final order for just before he left a room.

‘Not yet.'

‘Find out the form of burial and have someone at the service to note Ansell's reactions.'

He finally left and Glover got back to imparting his own orders further down the line.

PC Thorn stood in front of the sweets stand in the supermarket and stared at the boxes of truffles. Could any man understand women? The previous night, Carol might have been in an icebox.

‘Evenin', Mr Thorn.'

He turned to face Ed Stewart, a small time and mostly unsuccessful blagger. ‘What are you hoping to nick today?'

‘Don't be like that, Mr Thorn. I've got a sniff.'

‘Use a handkerchief.'

‘It's a good one.'

‘If it's only as good as the last one, see a different chemist.' He stepped aside to avoid being hit by a trolley.

‘Weren't my fault.' Stewart moved closer.

‘You've been eating garlic by the hundredweight.'

‘It's good for the health.'

‘Yours, maybe, but not mine.'

‘You want a handle for the Bracken Lane job?'

‘Well?' Thorn feigned indifference, not wanting to encourage Stewart to expect too much from him in return, particularly when the last piece of information had been barely more than useless.

‘It's worth a score.'

‘What's the next laugh?' Thorn picked up`a box of truffles, walked over to the nearest cash desk, at which an elderly couple were unloading their trolley.

Stewart intercepted him as he reached the outside door after buying the chocolates. ‘A fin, then, Mr Thorn.'

‘You think I've won the lottery?'

‘It's strong.'

‘So's the garlic.' He brought a five-pound note out of a pocket, gave the other time to note the colours, concealed it in the palm of his hand. He left the building, walked across the large car park to his Ford. Stewart followed him.

‘Gabby,' Stewart said, as Thorn pressed the key fob to unlock his car door.

‘He doesn't have a longer name?'

There was no answer. Thorn handed over the note.

‘Gabby Ayling.'

Thorn returned to the CID general room, entered in the informer's book the date, time, how much he'd paid Stewart and the information he'd been given. He went along to the detective sergeant's room. ‘I've been given a possible name for the twirler in the Ansell job. Cost a bit, but likely it's worth that, despite his bad information last time.'

‘Have you entered the details?' Frick wanted to be certain the rules had been observed before he learned the nature and possible value of the information.

‘Gabby Ayling, an electronics wizard from Scotland.'

Ansell was watching a film on television, the ending of which was, for once, not readily discernible, when the phone rang. He went into the hall.

‘It's Mary. We're just back and have heard the dreadful news about Eileen. We do wish there were some way in which we could help at so bitterly sad a time for you. She was so alive ...'

Her commiserations continued. He gave conventional responses for a while, then let his mind drift amongst memories until she said, ‘So I want you to come along.'

Something she said jerked his mind back to the present and made him aware he had not heard Mary's well-meant, but dull chatter. ‘I'm sorry but I couldn't quite catch that.'

‘You were struggling to understand why it had to happen. Can there ever be an answer? I was telling you I wanted you to come along to a small party. You're going to try to say “no”, but you must not cut yourself off from the world. You need to meet people, to let them help you take yourself out of yourself. Sadness feeds on itself.'

Had she recently been reading a women's magazine? ‘I'm afraid I'll be very poor company.' Ansell tried feebly to get out of the invitation. He couldn't think of anything worse than having to listen to her condolences and inane chatter – and to that of her no doubt similarly awful friends – for a whole party.

‘People will understand. Come as you are. There'll be a small buffet. I promise you'll meet some charming people.'

He did not accept that some of her friends were ‘charming'; they admired wealth, despised mere money.

He thanked her for the invitation, said he would try to turn up. On his return to the sitting room, the film had finished, irritatingly leaving the ending to his imagination.

Ansell was woken early the next morning by the repeated ringing of the front door bell, backed up by heavy pounding on the door. He went into the corridor and along to the road-side window, opened that, shouted out, ‘What the hell are you up to?'

He then looked down onto the front garden below him. A police constable was standing there with Frick and Glover.

‘Please let us in, Mr Ansell,' Glover called out.

‘Why?'

‘We have a search warrant for this property. If you will do as I ask, it will save us all a lot of trouble.'

Their calm politeness made his anger sound absurd. He put on a dressing gown – silk, highly patterned, bought in Hong Kong for Eileen, dismissed by her as tasteless – went downstairs. He switched off the alarm system, unlocked, unbolted and opened the front door.

Glover entered, followed by Frick and the constable. ‘As I said, Mr Ansell, we have a search warrant for this house.' He held it out. ‘Do you wish to read it?'

‘To tear it up.'

‘Unavailing and unwise.'

‘What are you searching for?'

‘Seven uncut diamonds.'

He wondered why they couldn't understand that had they ever been in his possession, he would have used them to save Melanie's life.

‘We'll start upstairs.'

He watched them climb the stairs, enter the end bedroom. Standing in the hall, he heard the sounds of drawers being opened and closed, furniture being moved and returned to its original position.

Glover appeared on the landing. ‘One room appears to be used as an office and has a free-standing safe in it. I should like you to come up and open it for us.'

‘And if I tell you to go to hell?'

‘I would say you are too intelligent to need me to answer.'

He went upstairs and into the study/bedroom they were all standing in, dialled in the number to open the safe. ‘The only diamonds I have in here are very small and in the ring my wife was given when young, which she very seldom wore.'

‘You will allow us to make certain of that.'

‘Do you dig at the foot of rainbows?'

‘Only white ones.'

The search continued for the next couple of hours until Glover acknowledged it was completed.

‘Sorry to have disappointed you,' Ansell said sarcastically as he opened the front door to let the detectives out.

‘I don't expect to meet success at the beginning of a case,' Glover replied, his meaning clear to the angry Ansell.

F
rithton was still referred to as a market town, which suggested to those who did not know its present form that it was not very large. It had in the recent past been populated with a number of small shops run by their owners and selling goods and food of a quality now seldom seen in large stores, a weekly market at which cattle, sheep, chickens, rabbits dead and alive, game in season, and home-grown vegetables were auctioned, the Mothers' Union which ran a stall selling home-made jams and perhaps there would be a smaller stall run by a Bible society. In the past years, the town had almost doubled in size and most independent stores had vanished, as had the market.

DC Pascall parked behind a car which would soon have to be scrapped. Two young men, slouching their way along the pavement, noted him at the wheel of his car and after a quick comment from one of them, began to walk more quickly. He recognized the taller one with hair grown long and tied into a bun. Carter had broken into a country house, stolen a collection of silver and later, at a boot sale, tried to sell the silver to a constable in civvies who had printed out the list of the silver. Some were not born to succeed.

Pascall left the car, crossed the pavement to the front door of a terraced house which was in need of repainting and guttering repair. He knocked. The door was opened by a woman whose features marked a life of dreariness, whose clothes showed a lack of interest in her appearance. She looked past him, said nothing.

‘Is Gabby in?' he asked.

She shook her head. The tangle of black, greasy hair hardly stirred.

‘Where will I find him?'

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Come on, get the ideas working. You don't want us calling every half hour to find out if he's turned up, making the neighbours wonder who he's blagged this time.'

‘Them?' With the one word, she expressed her opinion of the neighbours.

‘Don't make it difficult for the two of you.'

‘You lot don't know nothing. He dropped three days ago.'

‘He died?'

She slammed the door shut.

He returned to the car, cursed the lack of information which had caused him by his manner to appear to show contempt for her loss.

Back at the station, he reported to Frick. ‘Saw his old woman and she says he died.'

Frick stared through the window at the summer weather – dull, grey cloud. ‘It's beginning to smell like a dead-end case.'

Ansell phoned Mary three times to say he was sorry, he could not face a party; each time, the line was engaged. In a mood of self-pity and self-sacrifice, he went.

Maltone Lodge was on the edge of Frithton and beyond the garden were green fields and distant woodland. Mary sometimes decried the size of both house and garden to assure her listener that she was an ardent ‘green' and would have preferred to live in a smaller property which would need much less energy. Neither she nor her husband would actually have contemplated leaving.

To another female, it was obvious that her dress had cost a small fortune, to those who recognized good jewellery, her diamond necklace, more of a fortune. To lessen the burden of having to arrange a ‘small' party, she had engaged the services of caterers who provided food, drink, cutlery, crockery, glasses and staff. Had the ground not been so sodden, there would have been a marquee on the lawn and guests would have eaten and drunk while enjoying the soft sounds of falling water from the highly formal fountain imported from the seventeenth-century chateau in the Loire Valley. As it was, the centre of the party was the large hall, notable for the painting by Rubens (or so the nameplate claimed) and at the far end two knights in full armour.

‘There you are!' Mary said, as Ansell entered.

‘I am.' He tried to smile, not wanting to appear too discourteous.

‘I was beginning to think you weren't coming.'

‘You expect me to believe you've missed my absence?'

‘Still the same, despite what's ... I feel so sorry for you, David.'

‘Thanks.' He knew he needed to accept her sympathy with more warmth and politeness; she meant well after all.

‘You'll know most of the people here, or at least some of them, but I decided you had to meet someone who'd bring you some cheer, some light into your life. So come and meet her.'

‘I'd rather ...'

‘She's the daughter of old friends of ours. A little bit feisty, but very much alive. There she is, in the red dress with her back to us. She's with those boring people, the Fentons, who can only talk about themselves. She'll be very glad to be moved on – it's surprising she hasn't done so of her own accord. Follow me.'

They eased their way between the many guests until she came to a stop by the Fentons. ‘Sorry, Janet, but I must break you up. Belinda, I want you to meet my dear old friend, David.'

Belinda turned. Her surprise was as obvious as Ansell's.

‘You know each other?' Mary asked, disappointed that it seemed the introduction was unnecessary.

‘In a way,' Ansell answered.

‘Neither of you has anything to drink.' She beckoned to a waiter. ‘Tell him what you'd like. I must go and have a word with Julie.' She hurried away.

Ansell broke the silence. ‘Time for the cliché apt for this sort of situation, more than just like “It's a small world”.'

Belinda said nothing.

The waiter asked them what they would like to drink. They both chose champagne.

Conversation, after the waiter hurried away, was hesitant and sparse.

‘Have you known Mary and Bart a long time?' Ansell asked.

‘My parents are old friends of theirs.'

‘Your parents are here?'

‘On holiday.'

‘Somewhere in Europe?'

‘America.'

‘Are they enjoying it?'

‘Yes.'

The waiter returned, handed each of them a well-filled flute.

Ansell raised his glass. ‘Am I allowed to drink to your health?'

‘I'm sorry, but I'm finding the situation beyond my horizon.' Belinda admitted with a wry smile.

He drank, tried to find something more to say which would salvage their chance meeting. ‘Have you been in the police long?'

‘A few years.'

‘Do you enjoy the work?'

‘Most of the time.'

He drained his glass. A waiter, with a bottle of Dom Pérignon wrapped in a serviette, noted this and, having checked that Belinda had drunk very little, refilled Ansell's glass, and then moved on.