Fate Worse Than Death (10 page)

The vexatious thing about so many men was that they didn't know when to give up. Phil hadn't a ghost of a chance with Mrs Yardley, but he was too vain to see it. Despite the number of times she'd snubbed him, he always preened himself and tried to chat her up when she came into the pub.

Male arrogance, concluded Lois crossly as she wiped the bar counter, was every bit as infuriating as social arrogance. Once men had set their sights on something – or someone – there seemed no way of convincing them that it was out of their reach.

Her captor re-entered Sandra's prison carrying a small bowl in blue and white willow-patterned earthenware. She pressed her hands flat on the table, trying to keep her trembling body upright. The combination of heat and nervous strain had exhausted her.

‘I – I didn't think you'd come back,' she whispered.

He told her that he had brought what she wanted. He reminded her that he had promised to look after her.

He stood there holding out the bowl, and smiled at her. Sandra pushed herself away from the table and moved towards him without being conscious of movement, banging her shin against the chair but feeling no pain.

She was still trembling, but she no longer worried about the physical difficulty of making good her escape. She was beyond rational thought. Her brain had switched off, leaving only instinct. The whole of her attention was concentrated on the weapon he was offering her, the blue and white bowl and its nauseatingly yellow contents.

She reached out her right hand. Smiling still, he gave her the bowl. As she took it, feeling its weight and the snug fit of the base in the palm of her hand, her nerves calmed and she sensed for a moment an extraordinary detachment. There was just such a bowl at home, and when she was a child her mother had taught her a verse about it. Even in the gloom of her prison, Sandra could pick out the details of the pattern with perfect clarity: the swallows, the Chinese temple, the bridge with three men – or was it four?

She raised her eyes to look dispassionately at her captor's face, judging angle and distance. Her pulse quickened, her mouth fell open as she breathed more deeply. Realizing what she intended, his expression started to change, but the change acted as a split-second trigger to her adrenalin supply. Before he could move she flung the bowl, heard his spluttering shout and glimpsed the viscous mess that covered his face. Then she tugged open the door and stumbled out, gasping, into the hottest August day for half a century. And ran, or tried to run; and screamed for help, or tried to.

‘You're a detective? You mean you're what the Americans call a private eye? How very amusing.'

‘No,' said Tait, nettled but taking care not to show it. Casual self-assurance, that was the only attitude that would impress a woman like Annabel Yardley. ‘I'm a police officer – a detective inspector in the regional crime squad.'

The hooded dark-blue eyes widened with genuine interest. ‘But how riveting! You mean you investigate murders, and rapes and so on?'

‘Frequently. We're called in by the county police forces to handle their difficult cases.' It was not entirely true; the squad's primary job was to gather information about professional criminals engaged in organized crimes that extended beyond individual county boundaries, and most of the cases concerned burglary or breaking and entering. But crimes against the person were always more fascinating to the civilian mind, and Tait was out to fascinate.

He had already discovered that, whatever Annabel Yardley's relationship with her husband, she felt perfectly free to encourage other men. The only problem as far as Tait was concerned was that she appeared to be outrageously choosy. She had quizzed him about his background, and had then made it clear that the combination of Framlingham College and the University of Sussex was amusing rather than socially acceptable. She had also made it clear that she found him no more than mildly attractive.

But Tait had too much masculine pride to abandon hope. Annabel Yardley presented a challenge that he couldn't resist. She was, he guessed, easily bored; meeting a detective was obviously a new experience for her, and he intended to exploit the interest he had aroused. He would have to work fast, though, because he could spare her only this one week of his leave.

‘Another drink?' he suggested. ‘While I tell you about an intriguing murder I investigated last year?'

She handed him her empty glass. ‘Thank you, but I really have to dash. You must tell me some other time.'

She unhitched her horse from the garden fence she had temporarily commandeered, ignoring the housebound elderly resident who was glaring at her from behind a windowbox of geraniums. Her animal had passed the time by chewing absently at a rambling white Alberic Barbier rose. It had however deposited a pile of steaming knobs of high-grade organic fertilizer immediately outside the garden gate, by way of compensation.

Tait watched Annabel Yardley swing herself into the saddle. ‘I like your gelding,' he said, hoping to sound knowledgeable.

She looked at him. ‘Do you ride?'

‘Not since I was a boy.' He had no intention of making a fool of himself in front of her. A horse was an unreliable beast, and uncomfortably tall: a long way up and – if it threw you – a hell of a long way down.

‘I haven't time for riding now,' he went on. ‘I spend every spare moment flying. I have a private pilot's licence, and a two-seater Cessna. I keep it hangared on Horkey airfield, and I'm hoping to notch up a few flying hours while I'm here.'

‘Really?'
It was a very different ‘really' from the one she had used on the landlord's wife. She looked at Martin Tait with renewed interest.

‘Would you like to come for a flight?'

‘I don't see why not …' She gathered up the reins and smiled at him in a way that concealed the cold sore at the corner of her mouth. ‘Yes, that might be amusing. Call me on the telephone and we'll arrange something.' She pressed her calves against the horse and it began to walk, flicking Tait with its tail as it went.

‘Tomorrow morning?' he called after her.

‘I don't know
when
. Ring me.'

‘But what's your number?' he cried, running to catch up.

She turned in the saddle and looked him over. The early evening sun was in his eyes and he squinted up at her, suddenly conscious that there was sweat on his upper lip and that flies were buzzing round his head.

‘I thought you were a
detective
,' she mocked him. Then she leaned forward in the saddle and the horse broke into a canter, bearing her off with a clatter down the empty village street.

She had made him feel like a stable lad. All the more reason, then, for him to prove that he wasn't.

Sandra Websdell had been penned so long in the gloom that the sun struck her like a physical blow. Its heat hurt her head, its light dazzled her eyes. She tried to run, but she could manage only a drunken stagger. She tried to scream for help, but all that emerged was rasping breath.

He was coming after her. She could hear the thump of his feet on the sun-hardened earth. She tried to spurt through the burning kaleidoscope that surrounded her, but she tripped and fell. And once she was down she stayed down, her remaining strength seeming to ebb away from her into the dusty grass.

Ants immediately swarmed over her skin, and the effort of brushing them away was beyond her. But at least her vision cleared. Lying with her cheek against the ground, her nostrils filled with the peppery smell of dry earth, she opened her eyes and observed with complete detachment the differing green-ness of each blade of grass, and the tiny, separate, coloured grains of which the dust was composed. She could see more ants, scurrying through their grass forest; a red ladybird with six black spots, swaying on a grass stem; a small brown butterfly, taking to the air …

She raised her head a little, following the flight of the butterfly, and saw a wider world. Against the blue of the sky was an apple tree with apples on, and just beyond the tree was a fence. Beyond the fence, something was moving. No, not just something, someone. Someone passing by, on foot, on a horse, on a bicycle –

She tried to push herself into a sitting position and call for help, but a dark shadow fell across her, blocking the sun. Her captor, his face and shirt smeared with the mess she had thrown, was gazing down at her.

‘No use trying to run away,' he told her. ‘I need you too much to let you go.'

She found a voice to plead with him. ‘Please – oh
please
.'

He bent as if to lift her in his arms. He stank of stress and sweat, and his hands were slimy from wiping the mess out of his eyes.

She began to scream. He slapped his open hand across her mouth. She looked up at him, and what she saw in his face reduced her voice to a whimper.

First she said,
‘No no no.'

Then she said nothing.

‘Sorry I've been so long, I – oh, sorry.'

Martin Tait had talked his way into the sitting-room before he realized that his aunt was listening seriously to music. Con stood at the open window gazing towards the lime trees that surrounded the Green, their upper branches golden in the last of the light from the evening sun. She was listening to a small battery-operated cassette player, concentrating so intently on soaring strings, harp and voices that if she heard her nephew she took no notice.

He sat down and waited quietly for the piece to finish. It was not his kind of music at all – too smooth, too choral, too full-bodied. Martin liked music to be modern and inventive, jazz for preference. The music that his aunt was listening to was solemn, even liturgical; yes, he could hear words in ecclesiastical Latin, ‘Pie Jesu' and ‘sempiternam requiem'. Not what he wanted to listen to on a summer evening just when his social life was moving into top gear.

He wouldn't have thought the music would have any appeal for Aunt Con, either. When, in her younger days, he'd heard her singing as she went about the house, it had usually been something jolly from Gilbert and Sullivan. As for religion, she was – like all the Taits – plain Church of England and an infrequent attender.

And yet, obliged as a matter of courtesy to keep quiet and listen, Martin found himself acknowledging that the music of her choice had its own beauty. The high pure voice of the boy soloist was strangely moving in its expression of innocent faith. It made him feel sad: dissatisfied with his rootless life, aware for the first time of the fact that he had already lived for more than a quarter of a century, and that he was not immortal.

He thought of his newly acquired sampler, another expression of infant piety. And then he thought of the girl he had wanted the sampler for, because he knew she would love it. She would love this music, too.

But his sentimental affair with Alison was over. ‘
Now in the heat of youthful blood
,' the sampler said. Right: now in the heat of youthful blood he was going to make the most of whatever opportunities came his way, and he couldn't ask for a more attractive opportunity than Annabel Yardley.

So where did Aunt Con keep her telephone directory?

The music faded and died. His aunt didn't move; didn't even know he was there. He slipped out quietly, and came in again talking.

‘Sorry I've been so long. The landlord of the Flintknappers was out and his wife knew nothing about your brandy, but she eventually found me a bottle. I hope it's the one you wanted.'

Con expelled her breath in a long sigh, then turned away from the window. ‘Thank you, I'm sure it will do,' she said in a sad, strained voice. She switched off the player. ‘I've been listening to music.'

‘So I heard. What was it?'

‘The Fauré
Requiem
.'

‘Of course,' said Martin, who hated to admit complete ignorance of anything.

‘It's one of the most sublime pieces of music I know,' she went on dreamily. ‘So reassuringly confident of the prospect of eternal rest …'

The prospect of eternal rest held no attraction for Martin at all, but it seemed unkind to break his aunt's mood by changing the subject. ‘May I?' He took the cassette out of the recorder and looked at the label. ‘Ah, the choir of St John's College, Cambridge – yes, it's a beautiful performance.'

‘Isn't it?' Con gave her thin shoulders a shake and resumed the artificially bright voice she had used for most of the day. ‘I belonged to an amateur choir when I lived in Ipswich, and we did the Fauré just before I left – awfully well, too, though I sez it. But a female soprano had to sing the treble solo, and a boy's voice is so much more moving. That's why I love this recording. If you'd like to play it – or any of my other tapes or records, of course – do help yourself.'

He thanked her, and settled for the immediate use of the telephone directory. Con switched on a table lamp, poured two glasses of sherry and took hers into the kitchen. There she found that Martin had brought back from the pub not only the cognac and lager she had sent him for, but a bottle of her favourite Amontillado sherry as well.

Enjoying the sensation of generosity, he refused payment for any of the drinks: ‘A thank-you-for-having-me present,' he insisted.

‘That's jolly nice of you, Martin. You shouldn't've, but thank you.' Con began to break eggs into a bowl; despite – no, because of – Marjorie's strictures, she intended to cook something for her nephew. The dratted boy was leaning against the kitchen dresser watching her, as he invariably did when she was trying to concentrate on cookery, but even so she thought she might be able to produce some edible scrambled egg.

‘Actually,' she continued, ‘there is something I'd be awfully glad if you'd do for me while you're here.'

‘Anything at all, Aunt Con.' Martin inserted a finger between two pages of the directory he was holding, and prepared to combine gallantry with patience. He always felt obliged to keep his aunt company when she was working in the kitchen because he knew that she liked having him there to chat to.