Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (12 page)

cture of the dead.

fHe made the mental adjustment that shifted from being a sensitive man with a man's

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feelings to a briskly functioning machine, an analysing eye, a printer-out of question marks In this avatar, he looked at the photographs. Tragic, appalling, monstrous as the scene in the dining room might be, there was nothing incongruous about it. This was how the women would have fallen if one of them had been sitting at the table facing the door, the other, opposite her, standing up and staring past her. The blood on the floor in the empty corner near the foot of the table was Daisy's blood.

He saw what he had seen that night. The bloody napkin on the floor and the blood dappled napkin in Davina Flory's hand, clutched by her dying, contracting fingers. Her face lying dipped in a plate of blood, and the dreadful ruined head. Naomi lay back in her chair as if in a swoon, her long hair trailed over the barred back of it and dipping nearly to touch the floor. Spangles of blood on the lampshades, the walls, black blotches on the carpet, dark spray spots on the bread in the basket, and the tablecloth dark where the blood had seeped in a dense smooth tide.

For the second time in this case -- and he was later to experience it again and again -- he had a perception of a prevailing order destroyed, of beauty outraged, of chaos come again. With no evidence for believing it, he thought he detected in this perpetrator a gleeful passion for destruction. But there was nothing incongruous in these photographs. Given the dreadful events, it was what he would expect. On the other hand, the pictures of Harvey Copeland, showing him

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spreadeagled on his back at the foot of the staircase, his feet towards the front hall and door, presented a problem. One perhaps which Daisy's testimony would solve.

If the men had come downstairs and met him coming up to look for them, why had he, when the gunman shot him, not fallen backwards down those stairs?

* * *

Four was the hour he had in mind, it was at four that he had been to see her yesterday, though today he had named no definite time. The traffic was light and he reached the hospital rather early. It was ten to four when he stepped out of the lift and walked along the corridor towards MacAlister Ward.

This time there was no Dr Leigh waiting to meet him. He had called Anne Lennox off her watch. There seemed to be no one about. Perhaps the staff were all having a quick breather (or choker) in the charge nurse's room. He came quietly to Daisy's room. Through the frosted glass panels he could see she had someone with her, a man in a chair on the left side of the bed. > A visitor. At least it wasn't Jason Sebright.

The pane of glass in the door clarified this asian's image for him. He was young, about twenty-six, biggish and thickset, and such was fiis appearance that Wexford could immediately Ipace him, or make a good guess at doing so. llDaisy's visitor belonged to the upper middle

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class, had been to a distinguished public school but probably not to a university, was 'something in the city' where he worked all his days with a computer and a phone. For this job he would be -- as Ken Harrison might have said -- finished before he was thirty, so he was coining in the maximum before that date. The clothes he wore were suitable for a man twice his age; navy blazer, dark-grey flannels, a white shirt and old school tie. The one concession he made to vague ideas of fashion and suitability was the wearing of his hair rather longer than that shirt and blazer required. It was fair curly hair and from the way it was combed and the way it curled round his ear lobes Wexford guessed he was vain about it.

As for Daisy, she sat up in bed, her eyes on her visitor, her expression inscrutable. She was not smiling, nor did she look particularly sad. It was impossible for him to tell if she had begun to recover from the shock she had received. The young man had brought flowers, a dozen red roses in bud, and these lay on the bedcover between him and her. Her right hand, the good hand, rested on their stems and on the pink and gold patterned paper in which they were wrapped.

Wexford waited for a few seconds, then tapped on the door, opened it and walked in.

The young man turned round, bestowing on Wexford precisely the stare he had expected. At certain schools, he had often thought, they teach them to look at you like that, with confidence, contempt, a degree of indignation,

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just as they teach them to talk with a plum in their mouths.

Daisy didn't smile. She managed to be polite and cordial without smiling, a rare feat. "Oh, hallo," she said. "Hi." Her voice today was subdued but measured, the edge of hysteria gone. "Nicholas, this is Inspector -- no, Chief Inspector Wexford. Air Wexford, this is Nicholas Virson, a friend of my family."

She said it calmly, without a flicker of hesitation, though she had no family left.

The two men nodded to each other. Wexford said, "Good afternoon." Virson only gave a second nod. In his idea of a hierarchy, his great Chain of Being, policemen had their low place.

"I hope you're feeling better."

Daisy looked down. "I'm OK."

"Do you feel well enough for us to have a talk? To go into things rather more deeply?"

"I must," she said. She stretched her neck, lifted her chin. "You said it all yesterday when you said we had to, we didn't have a choice."

He saw her close her fingers round the paper that wrapped the roses, saw her clutch the stems tightly, and had the strange notion she was doing it to make her hand bleed. But perhaps they were thornless.

"You'll have to go, Nicholas." Men with this

Christian name are almost always called by one

I of its diminutives, Nick or Nicky, but she called

I him Nicholas. "It was sweet of you to come.

1 adore the flowers," she said, squeezing their

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stems without looking at them.

Wexford had known Virson would say it or something like it, it was only a matter of time. "I say, I hope you aren't going to put Daisy through any sort of interrogation. I mean, at the end of the day what can she in fact tell you? What can she remember? She's a very confused lady, aren't you, lovey?"

"I'm not confused." She spoke in a calm low monotone, giving each word equal weight. "I'm not at all confused."

"Now she tells me." Virson managed a hearty laugh. He got up, stood there, suddenly seeming not quite sure of himself. Over his shoulder he threw at Wexford, "She may manage a description of the villain she did see, but she never even caught a glimpse of the vehicle."

Now why had he said that? Was it simply that he needed something to say to fill up the time while he considered attempting a kiss? Daisy lifted her face to him, something Wexford hadn't expected, and Virson, bending down quickly, put his lips to her cheek. The kiss stimulated him to use an endearment. 'Is there anything I can do for you, darling?" 'There is one thing," she said. "On your way out could you find a vase and put these flowers in it?"

This, evidently, was not at all what Virson had meant. He had no option but to agree.

"You'll find one in a place they call the sluice. I don't know where it is, down to the left somewhere. The poor nurses are always so busy."

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"] �

Virson went off, carrying out the roses he had carried in.

Today Daisy had a hospital gown on that fastened with tapes down the back. It covered and enclosed her left arm with the bandages and the sling. The IV line was still there. She followed his eyes.

"It's easier for putting drugs into you. That's why they keep it there. It's coming off today. I'm not ill any more."

"And you're not confused?" He was quoting her.

"Not in the least." She spoke for a moment like someone much older. "I have been thinking about it," she said. "People tell me not to think of it but I have to. What else is there? I knew I'd have to tell you everything as best I could so I've been thinking about it to get things straight. Didn't some writer say violent death wonderfully concentrates the mind?"

He was surprised but he didn't show it. "Samuel Johnson, but it was knowing one was going to be hanged on the morrow."

She smiled a little, a very little, narrowly "You're not much like my idea of a policeman."

"I daresay you haven't met many." He thought suddenly, she looks like Sheila. She looks like my own daughter. Oh, she was dark and Sheila was fair but it wasn't those things, whatever people said, that made one person look like another. It was similarity of feature, facial shape. It made him a bit cross when they said Sheila was like him because they had the same hair. Or had, before his went grey and half of it fell out.

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Sheila was beautiful. Daisy was beautiful and her features were like Sheila's. She was looking at him with a sadness close to despair. "You said you'd been thinking about it, Daisy. Tell me what you thought."

She nodded, her expression unchanging. She reached for the glass of something on the bedside cabinet -- lemon squash, barley water -- and drank a little. "I'll tell you what happened, everything I remember. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, please."

"You must interrupt me if something isn't clear. You'll do that, won't you?"

Her tone, suddenly, was that of someone used to telling servants, and not only servants, what she wanted, and having them obey. She was habituated, he thought, to telling one to come and he cometh, another to go and he goeth and a third, do this and he doeth it. Wexford suppressed a smile. "Of course." "It's hard to know how far back to begin. Davina used to say that when she was writing a book. How far back to begin? You could start at what you thought was the beginning and then you'd realise it began long long before that. But here, in this case -- shall I start with the afternoon?"

He nodded.

"I'd been to school. I'm a day student at Crelands. As a matter of fact, I'd love to have boarded but Davina wouldn't let me." She seemed to recollect something, perhaps only that her grandmother was dead. De mortal's

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. . . "Well, it would have been silly really.

* Crelands is only the other side of Myfleet, as I expect you know."

He knew. This was also the alma mater of Sebright, apparently. A minor public school, it nevertheless belonged in the Headmasters' Conference, as Eton and Harrow did. The fees were similar to theirs. Exclusively a boys' school from its founding by Albert the Good in 1856, it had opened its doors to girls some seven or eight years ago.

"Afternoon school stops at four. I got home at four thirty."

"Someone fetched you by car?"

She gave him a glance, genuinely puzzled. "I drove myself."

The great British car revolution had not passed him by, but he could still recall very clearly the days when a three- or four-car family ifras something he thought of as an American anomaly, when a great many women couldn't tbive, when few people possessed a car until they were married. His own mother would have stared in astonishment, suspected mockery, if asked if she could drive. His mild surprise Wasn't lost on Daisy.

"Davina gave me my car for my birthday when

1 was seventeen. I passed my test next day. It

||;|^as a great relief, I can tell you, not having to

*HJepend on one of them or be driven by Ken. ^ell, as I was saying, I got home by four thirty id went to my place. You've probably seen place. That's what I call it. It used to be ibles. I garage my car there and there's this

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room that's mine, that's private."

"Daisy, I've a confession to make. We're using your place as an incident room. It seemed the most convenient. We do have to be there. Someone should have asked you and I'm very sorry we overlooked it."

"You mean there are lots of policemen and computers and desks and a -- a blackboard?" She must have seen something like it on television. "You're sort of investigating the case from there?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Oh, don't be afraid. I don't mind. Why should I mind? Be my guest. I don't mind anything any more." She looked away, wrinkled up her face a little, said in the same cool tone, "Why would I care about a little thing like that when I've nothing to live for?"

"Daisy ..." he began.

"No, don't say it, please. Don't say I'm young and I've all my life before me and this will pass. Don't tell me time is a great healer and this time next year I'll have put it all in the past. Don't."

Someone had been saying those things to her. A doctor? Some psychologist on the hospital staff? Nicholas Virson?

"All right I won't. Tell me what happened after you got home."

She waited a little, drew in her breath. "I've got my own phone, I expect you've noticed. I expect you're using it. Brenda phoned to ask if I'd like tea and then she brought it. Tea and biscuits. I was reading, I get a lot of prep.

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^V levels for me in May -- or it was to have * been."

He didn't comment.

"I'm no intellectual. Davina thought I was because I'm -- well, quite bright. She couldn't bear to think I might take after my mother. Sorry, you won't want to hear about that. It doesn't matter any more, anyway.

"Davina expected us to change for dinner. Not dress exactly but change. My -- my mother came home in her car. She works in a crafts gallery -- well, she's a partner in a crafts gallery

**-- with a woman called Joanne Garland. The gallery's called Garlands. I expect you think that's yucky but it's the woman's name so I suppose it's OK. She came home in her car. I think Davina and Harvey were home till afternoon but I don't know. Brenda would know.