Fear in the Sunlight (31 page)

David stood on the old quayside, staring out across the estuary to the island. Alma walked down to speak to him, picking up snatches of conversation from the tables on the terrace, and wondered how he must feel as something so personal was made lurid and sensational by strangers who knew no better than to appropriate his tragedy as their own. He turned round as he heard her approach, but there was no sign of the hostility that she had expected. ‘I’m so sorry, David,’ she began, seeing little point in prefacing what she had come here to say.

He cut her off with a rueful smile. ‘There’s no need for you to apologise. He makes his own decisions.’

‘True, but that’s not what I meant. What happened to your father, everything that’s gone on this weekend – I can’t even begin to imagine how hurt you must be.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to.’ A flock of wildfowl took off from the sands, twisting and somersaulting in the breeze; when it settled again, the birds’ melancholy clamour rose in volume for a few seconds and then died away. She waited patiently for him to continue. ‘I can’t hate Turnbull for what he’s done, you know,’ he said eventually. ‘Is that wrong of me?’

Alma shrugged. ‘I don’t think there’s a right and a wrong way to feel. Your emotions are your own: don’t hold them up for judgement, by me or by anybody else.’

‘He was family. I suppose those loyalties are hard to forget.’

‘Bella was family too,’ Alma reminded him gently.

‘In name, yes, but Bella Hutton was never going to be anybody’s aunt. That sort of affection just wasn’t in her.’ His words were spoken as a fact rather than a criticism, but still he felt the need to qualify them. ‘Don’t get me wrong: Bella did what was best for me, even though it didn’t feel like that at the time. She opened more doors than I could ever have dreamt of knocking at, but she never did anything for me out of love‚ and she never
grew
to love me. We both knew that, and I accepted it.’

‘But sometimes you’d have traded the opportunities for the love.’

‘Yes. Bella was a star, though, and that life doesn’t leave much room for human failings, does it?’ Alma shook her head. ‘If she couldn’t fix something by throwing money at it, then it didn’t get fixed.’ The first trace of bitterness had entered his voice. ‘Do you have any idea how sickening it is to be grateful all the time? Now I’ll have to do it for the rest of my life.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘As soon as the cancer was diagnosed, she told me she was going to leave me a very rich man – so no matter what I achieve off my own bat, it will always be down to the start that Bella Hutton’s money gave me.’

‘Not necessarily. Whatever the situation was between you, there’s no doubt that she believed in you and wanted you to succeed. All right, so it wasn’t love – but it
was
respect, and she didn’t give that away easily either.’ He looked at her gratefully, and she held out her hand. ‘Good luck, David. Not that I think you’ll need it.’

Archie was on his way out of the hotel to fetch Bridget when he heard Marta call his name. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ she said. ‘I wanted to thank you.’

He smiled. ‘There’s nothing to thank me for. I was about the only person who
didn’t
offer you an alibi.’

‘Probably just as well: things are complicated enough. But I was talking about earlier. You weren’t even aware of what you were doing, but I saw how much you cared about Branwen Erley and everything that had happened to her, and it helped me more than you can ever know.’

‘It’s part of what I do, Marta. Perhaps the most important part.’

‘No. It’s part of who you are.’ She surprised him by taking his face in her hands and kissing him. ‘I’ve told Bridget she’s a lucky woman. Will you let her know we’re ready to leave? Someone from the hotel has found us a new battery.’

‘So Lydia said. I was just off to White Horses.’

‘Do you know where Josephine is?’

‘Looking for you.’ He nodded to the stairs and left them alone together.

‘We’re going in a minute,’ Marta said. She took Josephine’s hand and led her into the peace of the library. ‘I wanted to say goodbye properly. Far too much of today has been public, and I suppose you’ll be hidden away in Inverness for months on end now. God knows when I’ll see you again.’

‘Ronnie and Lettice are launching their autumn collection soon. I thought I might come down for that.’

‘But that’s in a couple of weeks’ time. Lydia was talking about it.’

‘I know when it is. And trains do run in August, even in Scotland.’ Marta smiled‚ and Josephine put a hand to her cheek. ‘I’m tired of running away, Marta. Let’s just see what happens.’

The flock of rooks rose as one from the trees and trailed across the sky in loose formation, a shifting, shimmering storm cloud of blue-black. The birds circled the Bell Tower, then descended in rapid, oblique flight, twisting and turning with their wings half closed, and Hitchcock – packing his bags at the Watch House – walked out onto the balcony, mesmerised by their numbers. They had performed the ritual at exactly the same time the night before‚ and, for a moment, the noise was deafening; the familiar, harsh caw of the flock was punctuated every now and then by one or two birds with a higher-pitched call, and their emphasis suggested to him so many emotions: anger, pleasure, affection, alarm. Everything but regret, and for that he envied them.

Behind him, he heard his wife’s footsteps and felt her hand rest gently on his shoulder. ‘The car’s waiting, Hitch. Are you ready to leave?’

He turned round, careful not to let his eyes stray to the ground where the telltale signs of his folly refused to be washed away. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m ready.’ Alma smiled and took his hand, and they walked together to the door.

Rhiannon stood in the shadows on the landing, hanging back in case Gwyneth was forced to allow the visitor into the house. After a few minutes, she heard the front door close and saw the policeman’s image recede through the dusty stained glass over its frame. She waited, peering through the balusters as Gwyneth walked back across the faded hall rug to the stairs, her figure oddly foreshortened by the angle. She seemed to take an age to climb to the top, as if the effort of greeting the world had been too much, and, when she spoke, her voice was low and hesitant – whether from exhaustion or disbelief, Rhiannon could not say. ‘It’s over,’ she whispered, leaning back against the doorframe. ‘We’re safe.’

Penrose stared down at the prison photograph of David Franks and remembered Josephine’s doubts about him. He should have listened more carefully, although that was true of many things that she had told him during their relationship. At least most of the others only affected him personally; this, he thought, glancing again at the charge sheet, would have been the time to take more notice.

Franks had actually changed very little in the intervening years, but the starkness of the black-and-white image and the absence of that ready smile made him look entirely different. Penrose had seen enough ordinary-looking murderers in his time to know that there was no such thing as the face of a killer, but he guessed that most Americans glancing at their newspaper over the breakfast table would have no trouble in believing that this was a guilty man: there was a blankness in his eyes that suggested a withdrawal from reality and a complete lack of empathy with the world around him – both vital ingredients in the decision to take a life. He picked up Franks’s statement again and continued reading, intrigued by the document’s tone; perhaps they did things differently across the pond, but these words had an intimacy about them which bore no resemblance to any confession he had ever read.

‘That day was significant for us both, I think, because it showed Gwyneth what I might be capable of. She watched Taran so closely over those last few months, sensitive to any trouble and more protective than ever – always knowing, though, that the danger wasn’t in the cellar or the water or the woods but somewhere far less obvious, somewhere hidden away inside. I watched him, too, whenever I was with them. It was clear to me that my fate would always be tied to his. I would flourish as he faded, my life would begin when his
ended, and I felt an overwhelming affection for him because of it – a reverence, almost, which I bore with a strange mixture of resentment and gratitude.

‘I suppose it’s too easy to read meaning into coincidence, but I killed Taran a year to the day after she had watched me kill the dog. I woke him early, while the rest of the house was still sleeping, and helped him to put his clothes on. There was no problem in persuading him to come with me: I was the brother he could never have‚ and he trusted me. That sounds shocking, I suppose, but does it really make what I did any worse? Ask yourself this: if we have to die – and I’ve thought about this a great deal recently, for obvious reasons – isn’t it better to do so at the hands of someone we love? To him, this was just another adventure, like many we had had before and – for all he knew – many which were still to come.

‘The estuary was black and secretive, as it always is in the half-light of the early morning. I walked down to the quayside, the child in my arms, and told him to lie quietly in the bottom of the boat. It was all part of the game to him‚ and he snuggled down as good as gold, using my coat as a blanket against the chilliness of the day. The shoreline was deathly quiet. I dampened the rowlocks to stop them squeaking and we set off, past the island and across to the other side, the oars leaving hollows in the water. At the landing stage by the house I let him help me secure the boat, then carried him on my shoulders across the road and up the garden path, he laughing and pulling my hair, his feet small and vulnerable in my hands. The house had been closed up for three years or more by then. Everything about it spoke of neglect, and it sat still and mistrustful in the silence, like an unpopular child wary of sudden attention. We let ourselves in through the kitchen door‚ and I swung him down onto the floor. He ran off into the house – his family home and
birthright, although he would never know it – and I hesitated, aware that if I followed him there was no going back. Even then, I might have changed my mind, but he turned to me and beckoned, and his eagerness seemed to be a strange kind of blessing.

‘I killed him in the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs where the first sunlight of a new day catches the corner of the rug. He struggled, and it was a shock to me to find so much strength in a tiny boy. As I held him down, my hands around his throat, my knee in his stomach, pressing him to the floor, I thought about what Gwyneth had suffered to bring him into the world, and I confess – I can say this to you now, certain that the knowledge will never reach her – the memory made me crueller than I needed to be. His death wasn’t kind or peaceful. It wasn’t mercifully quick. He was a clumsy child, forever hurting himself, but the marks on his face that day were of my making‚ and there were others that were harder to see. By the time I had finished with him, the hall was bathed in sunlight. I cried – violent, choking sobs, wracking my whole body long after his was still. I have no idea now how long we stayed there. The only other memory I have of that morning is the look on my father’s face as I docked the boat back at the quayside. In that one moment, he seemed to see everything that I would become. Perhaps it was my imagination; you would call it the product of a guilty conscience, I suppose. Either way, I was never entirely sure‚ and very soon it ceased to matter.

‘I wonder – if Henry Draycott had understood what he was setting in motion when he raped his wife, would he have stopped himself? Knowing what I know now, I doubt it. There is no such thing as self-control in moments like that. I was there the very first time he crossed the line, and I remember it clearly. I used to go to the house whenever I could, slipping happily into the role of the child Gwyneth believed she would never have. (There
will come a time, I know, when everyone says I was incapable of real affection. That isn’t true. For some reason – don’t ask me why – it’s important to me that you
know
it isn’t true.) It was a hot, thundery afternoon, oppressive like that Saturday in Portmeirion. I was supposed to have gone back across the water‚ but I didn’t want to be caught in a storm so I crept back inside to wait until it had passed. They were in his study, and I watched them from the hallway through the narrow crack in the door – the archetypal voyeur, innocent until that first shameful flicker of interest, then complicit in the violence by the very act of witnessing it. I suppose you could say it was the first film I ever saw.

‘Even a weak man can become powerful, and that was Uncle Henry’s legacy – what you want, you take. Money. Sex. Influence. Love, too, in a funny sort of way. Think about that before you wipe his slate clean, before you start to feel sorry for him. He had Gwyneth against the wall‚ and she was screaming at him to stop, threatening him with what would happen if he didn’t, but he was beyond all reason. It wasn’t about sexual satisfaction. Rape rarely is, although few people understand that. It’s about anger. Something switches in you‚ and the rage pours out‚ and you want to knock them off their pedestal. Some fight back, some try to talk you out of it but you don’t hear a word they say and the more they plead, the more you want to hurt them. When they’re scared, you can do anything you want‚ and the exhilaration is addictive. I knew I’d be caught eventually; I knew my freedom was short-lived, but still I went on, as if some force inside were controlling me, something stronger than I was. I could never fight it. In that sense, I have so much in common with Gwyneth’s little boy.

‘But I’m straying from the point. What interests you most is that weekend and why I killed three people in Portmeirion. Every ugly thing we do has a reason, you say, and you’re
right – but sometimes that reason
is
simply ugliness. If it would help you to understand, I could say that I killed Bella for her money; I killed her because she forced me to leave somewhere I loved, because I was tired of her meddling in my life, because she had finally realised that you can’t keep someone out of trouble if they carry it with them; I could admit that she had begun to see a darkness in me which horrified her, but to which she refused to turn a blind eye; that she had set out on a path which would lead her to an earlier truth, that she was old, that she was dying, that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time; I could tell you that I needed to make Henry Draycott pay for a crime that went unpunished and it was easy to frame him for Bella because everyone knew they were enemies. If I wanted to, I could offer you a different reason for every single time I stuck the knife into her body‚ and all of them would be true – but it wouldn’t be
the
truth. I killed Bella Hutton – I killed them all, in fact – because I wanted to.

‘I return to that place in my mind, you know: I’m there at the end of each day when the last shaft of sunlight disappears and a brooding quiet falls over the cemetery. The image fades more quickly now, no match for this concrete-and-steel cubicle or for the babble of voices along the row, endlessly shouting and bickering because talk is all they have. It’s nearly five o’clock, and soon one of them will be gone. Further down the corridor, bolts are slid back against steel, a key is thrust into a lock and a gate swings open. The man they have come to fetch is three cells down. He can say goodbye to the rest of us or go straight to the room where he’ll spend his last night, and he chooses the latter. He can’t face our pity. He wants it to be done‚ and I don’t blame him.

‘One day soon, of course, it won’t be the other man. I try not to think of the wheel that will seal the chamber door or the straps on my wrists or the pungent smell of peach blossom as
the fumes invade my body, and I hold on to the peace and the darkness of home. They elude me more often now, those images, but they’re still there. They’ll always be there.’

Penrose put the sheaf of papers down, disturbed by the insight into Franks’s mind, and tried to concentrate on the facts. Detective Doyle was right: the confession to three murders at Portmeirion could not have been more clearly stated, although the only victim actually mentioned by name was Bella Hutton. If Franks had really found a way of killing Leyton Turnbull – Penrose still found it hard to think of Turnbull as Henry Draycott – would his arrogance allow him to be discreet about it? Wouldn’t he want to explain how perfectly his plan had been executed? Unless, of course, he was protecting an accomplice: perhaps someone else had been waiting in the Bell Tower to push Turnbull to his death while Franks remained safely visible on the terrace. If so, there was no doubt in Penrose’s mind that Franks would delight in taking the truth to his grave.

The other possibility was a third body at Portmeirion that had never been discovered. Was that the twisted purpose of this confession? To taunt the authorities with an unsolved crime? As far as Penrose could see, the only person unaccounted for that weekend was Hitchcock’s nun, who seemed to have left her hotel without checking out – but that was no reason to suppose she was dead. He could try to establish what had happened to Joan Sidney, although it would probably be a wild goose chase: he didn’t suppose for a moment that a porn star used her real name.

He skimmed through the document again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then looked through the box that Doyle had left him and took out the other film reel. It was unlabelled, and he began to thread it onto the projector, swearing under his breath at the awkwardness of the process. He managed it at last, but before he had a chance to start the machine, there was a knock at the door. ‘Devlin – that was quick. Is there something I should know about our American friend?’

‘He doesn’t exist, sir.’

Penrose glared at him, as if it were the sergeant’s fault that the phrase made no sense. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There
is
no Detective Tom Doyle with the Los Angeles Police Department, and there never has been. I spoke to someone called Larry Hunter – that’s his number – but he didn’t know the name‚ and he didn’t recognise the description I gave him of the man who was here.’

‘Get on to the Adelphi and . . .’

‘I’ve already done it, sir. Tom Doyle checked out this morning. He arrived late last night, made no calls, took no meals and spoke to no one – as far as they know. He paid his bill in cash.’

‘Shit. Didn’t they take any personal details from him when he booked in?’

‘Oh yes. He gave an LA home address and a telephone number.’

‘And?’ Penrose asked, his heart sinking.

‘It’s a poodle parlour.’

‘So what the hell is all this about?’ Bewildered, he looked down at the materials on his desk – and then it dawned on him. ‘How could I have been so bloody stupid?’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘I should have known the minute Doyle mentioned Hitchcock that this was all some sort of elaborate joke. Well, he’s not getting away with it this time. I don’t care how famous he is.’

He reached for the telephone, but Devlin stopped him. ‘It’s not a joke, sir. The LAPD might not have heard of a Detective Tom Doyle, but someone called David Franks
is
on death row for murder. Hunter’s sending the files over so you can look at the case in detail, but in the meantime he’s given me an overview.’

‘Go on.’

‘Franks was arrested earlier this year and charged with the murders of twelve women in various cities across America and Canada. The earliest case dates from 1940, and he struck at the rate of roughly one a year. It took a while for the murders to be linked because they were in so many different states, but the women were all killed in the same way – raped, beaten and strangled. It was the papers who dubbed them the cemetery murders. That’s where the bodies were dumped each time – in the city’s cemeteries. They were left overnight, usually tied up and blindfolded, and laid out on one of the most elaborate memorials.’

‘Like a sacrifice,’ Penrose said quietly, remembering Bella Hutton’s body. ‘Who were the victims?’

‘All of them were hookers,’ Devlin said, and the American slang – repeated verbatim from his informant – jarred with his English accent. ‘After Franks was arrested, it emerged that he had been a major player in the porn industry – serious stag films, all very explicit and a lot of them violent. He made a fortune from it, apparently. Most of the victims have been identified as women he used in the films.’