Dead Beat (31 page)

Her knock was answered by a tall, thin, anxious-looking man in grey flannel trousers and a dark tweed sports jacket over his clerical collar and shirt who peered at her short-sightedly.

‘Can I help you, my dear?' he asked.

‘I think so,' Kate said, suddenly unsure of herself. ‘If you have a boy called Jimmy staying with you, I think you can help my brother.'

The vicar's response was no more than a sharp intake of breath but he opened the door wider and beckoned her in, glancing round the shadowy garden doubtfully before closing the door again. ‘My colleague asked me to keep Jimmy safe. I'm not sure—'

‘I'm not a threat to Jimmy,' Kate said, regaining her confidence slightly. ‘I think I need him kept safe too. I've met him before at St Peter's in Soho. I think he'll remember me.'

The vicar led her into a stuffy, overcrowded living room to one side of the front door where almost every surface was covered with books and papers, and waved her into a chair.

‘My name is Stephen Merryman,' he said and Kate wondered how a man's looks could so totally belie his name. ‘I only took the boy in as a favour to my colleague in Soho, because he said he was in danger. I have boys the same sort of age myself. They're at a school play tonight with my wife. I should have gone but I thought I shouldn't leave Jimmy alone, so we dropped them off and came back here. I had this odd phone call from David Hamilton telling me not to let Jimmy talk to anyone, not even the police. It all sounds very odd. Do sit down, Miss . . . ?'

‘O'Donnell,' Kate said. She sat down abruptly on a sagging armchair, feeling exhausted, and told the vicar the whole story of Jonathon Mason's death and her brother's arrest and remand for his murder. Merryman listened in silence – a good listener, Kate thought, as men of his profession often were. When she had finished, he gazed at her for a moment, his hands steepled underneath his chin.

‘I can see why you are so concerned,' he said. ‘Jimmy's in his room at the moment. Fortunately there's plenty of space in this rambling old place to take in waifs and strays occasionally. It's due to be sold off soon and something smaller built as a vicarage. I'll ask him if he'll agree to talk to you, my dear, in spite of what David Hamilton said. Though you must understand that if he doesn't want to I shall respect his wishes. He's a very frightened child, and he is only a child, although he insists he is sixteen. Stay here for a moment while I talk to him. I'll tell him about your brother and how he could possibly help.'

Kate waited impatiently downstairs for five minutes, her stomach knotted with anxiety, close to panic. Harry Barnard had suggested that he had a witness who could help her brother's case, but a homeless runaway, effectively living as a prostitute, which is what this lad seemed to be, did not seem the ideal person to stand up in a court of law and clear Tom's name. But when Stephen Merryman eventually returned with a skinny boy with haunted eyes close behind him she put on her warmest smile in greeting.

‘Hello, Jimmy,' she said. ‘I'm Kate. Do you remember me? I was at St Peter's a few days ago taking photographs. I'd be very, very grateful if you would help me and my brother out.'

The boy looked at her for a long time, as if debating with himself whether or not he could trust her. Finally he gave a faint nod and sat down. But in the end, there was not that much to tell, Kate discovered, when the boy had made himself comfortable on the sofa beside her and described what he had seen on the evening Jon Mason had been killed. But what he had to say he was quite sure about. He had seen two men coming away from the flat before he had summoned up the courage to go up the stairs himself. And neither of them, he said, had looked remotely like Tom O'Donnell. Kate leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes for a moment, almost speechless with relief.

‘We need you to tell people that in court,' she said faintly. ‘Otherwise my brother is going to be blamed for something he didn't do. Can you do that for me, Jimmy? It's very, very important.'

The boy shrugged bony shoulders. ‘If they promise not to send me back to the home,' he muttered. ‘I'll do nowt if they do that. There's a copper who said he'd see me all right. He knows all about it.'

‘Was that Sergeant Barnard?' Kate asked.

‘Aye, I think so. Hamish said he were all right.'

‘Hamish? Who's Hamish?' Kate felt confused.

‘He's a mate of mine,' the boy said, just as they all heard a thunderous knocking on the front door of the vicarage. Jimmy jumped out of his seat with a look of terror on his face, went to the window, pulled back the curtain a fraction and turned back into the room in panic.

‘It's him,' he said. ‘He's found me. I knew he would. You've got me here in a trap.'

‘Who?' Merryman asked, suddenly galvanized in a way which amazed Kate. ‘Who is it?'

‘The bloke I saw. The one at the flat. It's him. I swear to God it's him.'

Merryman took hold of Kate's arm and pushed her towards the terrified boy. ‘Get him out of the house at the back,' he said. ‘Don't come back till I call. I'll stall whoever it is until I can call the police and get help. Go, now. Don't waste any time.'

In a daze, Kate did as she was told but as soon as she had hustled Jimmy out of the kitchen door into the dark garden behind the house he wriggled free from her grasp and ran, disappearing into the trees in seconds and leaving her standing alone, horrified. For a moment she hesitated before deciding that if she could not find him no one else would. She turned and went slowly back into the house where she found Stephen Merryman in the hallway with a heavily built, red-faced man breathing heavily.

‘What do you mean, he's not here?' he said, his voice so threatening that Kate was afraid he was about to hit the vicar. She stepped forward, her heart thumping.

‘If you're looking for Jimmy Earnshaw, so am I,' she said firmly. ‘Mr Merryman asked me to wait until he came back from the school play with his wife and the other boys.' The more people became involved in this drama, she thought, the safer Jimmy Earnshaw might remain.

The man looming over Merryman turned towards her angrily. ‘You again!' Venables said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?'

‘Looking out for my brother,' Kate said, and she knew from the sudden flash of anger in the DCI's eyes that he understood how exactly she was proposing to do that.

‘You could go to the school to meet Jimmy,' Merryman suggested faintly.

‘What time are they due back?' Venables asked.

‘About nine thirty. I took them down there but they're getting a lift back with a friend.'

‘We'll wait,' Venables said, glancing at his watch.

Sergeant Harry Barnard had driven down the A3 towards Guildford with his foot hard down and scant regard for his own safety or that of anyone else on the notorious stretch of road where racing driver Mike Hawthorn had died a few years before. What David Hamilton had told him when he had eventually tracked him down to his study in the vicarage, sitting deflated at his desk doing nothing more constructive than staring out of his window at the police activity in the graveyard, had galvanized Barnard into action. DCI Venables, Rev Dave had said dully, had demanded to know where Jimmy Earnshaw was, insisting that he needed to interview him in connection not just with the death of Veronica Lucas, but other cases as well.

‘You told him?' Barnard had said, his mouth dry.

‘Of course I told him,' Hamilton said, looking surprised. ‘He's investigating a murder. In my churchyard.'

‘You'd better tell me then,' Barnard snapped. ‘There are things he needs to know before he starts on Jimmy.'

So Hamilton had written down the address of St Luke's vicarage in Guildford where his friend Stephen Merryman had agreed to look after Jimmy Earnshaw for the duration. ‘I think that young woman photographer has got hold of the address too,' he said wearily when he'd finished. ‘I left her here by herself earlier and it was on a piece of paper by the phone. She could easily have seen it.'

‘Jesus,' Barnard said, his stomach in a tight knot. ‘Sorry, vicar. Can we phone this Mr Merryman? I'll go down there, but I need a word now, if possible.'

Hamilton nodded and dialled a number on the phone on his desk, but he listened for a long time before putting the receiver down again. ‘No reply,' he said. ‘Which is odd. He's got a couple of boys of his own, so I shouldn't have thought he'd be out at this time of day.'

‘I'll catch up with DCI Venables,' Barnard snapped, getting to his feet and glancing at his watch. ‘Can you keep trying Mr Merryman and tell him I'm on my way to see him? Tell him to keep that boy away from anyone who turns up before I arrive, absolutely anyone, even the DCI himself. It's very important.'

It was fifteen minutes since he and Hamish had watched the DCI getting into his car and Barnard had persuaded Hamish Macdonald to stay out of sight in the Farringdon encampment until he came to fetch him. He had raced back to his own car and set off, weaving his way impatiently through the early evening traffic, over Westminster Bridge and through Wandsworth and Roehampton until he could let the new, more powerful engine of the latest Capri rip on the Kingston bypass. Guildford was at least an hour away from Soho and he had no hope that he could catch up with Venables. His only chance, he thought, was that his warning to Merryman would get through and delay Venables long enough to prevent him picking the boy up on some pretext, in which case he doubted that anyone would ever see Jimmy Earnshaw again. And if Kate O'Donnell blundered into that situation he did not give much for her chances either. He was surprised at how afraid any threat to Kate made him.

He had stopped briefly in Guildford High Street to ask directions, his much-thumbed
A-Z
of no use this far out of London, and drove more slowly up a hill leading out of town again and into a tree-lined road with a church at the far end and beside it another Victorian vicarage, not unlike the one he had just left in Soho. To his relief, he saw Venables' car parked outside and lights on in the tall downstairs windows of the house. As far as he knew, Venables had come alone, just as he had left St Peter's, but he wanted to take no chances. Very cautious now, he tried the front door but found it locked, so skirted around the side of the house to the back where the rear door opened to his pressure and he slipped inside. Apart from the slight rattle from an ancient-looking refrigerator in one corner of the kitchen, the house seemed to be completely silent and completely normal, washing up neatly stacked in the sink and the savoury smell of what must have been the family's evening meal still in the air.

Barnard moved silently across the room, opening the door to the rest of the house as gently as he could, freezing as the latch clicked slightly, but to no obvious effect. For a home with two sons and an extra boy in his teens as a visitor, the place was uncannily quiet, he thought. He stood looking into the hallway, listening, and from there eventually picked up a faint rumble of voices not far away. He inched along the hall until he located the door behind which a conversation was going on, one voice faint and apparently calm, the other – and as Barnard got closer he recognized DCI Ted Venables' unmistakable growl – growing louder and more impatient. Putting his ear against the solid wood panelling, Barnard listened.

‘This is nonsense. I need a statement from that boy and I need it now, Reverend,' Venables said, his voice rising. ‘I'll go down to the school and find him.'

‘And I have told you, Chief Inspector, you only have to wait until my wife brings the three lads back. Surely another half hour's wait won't do any harm?' The vicar's voice remained low but even through an inch of solid oak Barnard could hear the determination in it and he guessed that David Hamilton had succeeded in warning his friend to keep Jimmy away from anyone who came calling, even the police. Then to his surprise he heard a third voice which he also recognized.

‘I'll come with you,' Kate O'Donnell said. ‘I need to talk to Jimmy Earnshaw too. I know he can clear Tom.'

It was, Barnard thought, probably the worst intervention she could have made and he suddenly stiffened as he realized Venables' patience had snapped and he heard a sound he recognized only too well. He flung open the door in time to see the DCI aiming a second violent blow at the man sitting cowering in a chair by the fire.

‘I don't believe either of you, you're playing for time,' Venables yelled before realizing that Barnard was behind him. The sergeant was in time to catch his arm and spin him away from the horrified vicar before his fist connected with Merryman's bruised face for a second time. Venables' own face contorted with rage as he faced Barnard. He pulled his arm out of his grasp with a curse and backed towards the door.

‘Are you all right, sir?' Barnard asked the vicar, who nodded slightly, obviously in complete shock as Kate put a protective arm round his thin shoulders. Barnard turned to Venables. ‘I think you and I need a word, guv. In private.' He led the way out of the room into the hall. ‘It's over, Ted,' he said as he stood face-to-face with Venables, who was now red in the face and panting heavily, as if he had run a distance. ‘Georgie Robertson told me most of it when I spoke to him a while back, and there's another eye witness who saw the two of you at the church before the murder of that harmless old biddy. I assume you thought she knew where the boy was, but she didn't have a clue. You were wasting your time with her and she died for it.'

‘What's this rubbish?' Venables snarled. ‘I killed no one. I'll have you out of the force on your ear for this—'