Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (19 page)

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speculating as to the possibilities of this man's

* doppel-ganger being Davina Flory's first lover.

Wexford stood up and said he was leaving. He

asked Dora to come with him and said the others

could do as they pleased. Sheila said, "Please,

Pop," and Casey asked what in Christ's name

was the matter. To his chagrin, Sheila succeeded

in persuading Wexford to stay. He wished very

much he had stuck to his guns when the time

came to pay the bill. Casey refused to pay it.

ft A frightful scene ensued. Casey had consumed

*a great deal of brandy and though not drunk

lhad become reckless. He shouted and abused

J|he restaurant staff! Wexford had resolved that

come what might, even if the police should be

tsent for, he would not pay that bill. In the

%nd Sheila paid it. Stony-faced, Wexford sat

fby and let her. He said to Dora afterwards that

ithere must have been times in his life when he

>vtiUt more miserable but he couldn't remember

them.

tbThat night he had no sleep.

pounds ;$ ||;iS�.. * * *

~i;fer.

|pplie missing pane of glass in the dining-room l| window was patched over with a sheet of jjj^fllywood. It served its purpose of keeping out cold.

Pve taken it upon myself to send away for ie eight-ounce glass," Ken Harrison said Mnily to Burden. "Don't know how long sy'll take coming up with that. Months, I Idn't be surprised. These criminals, the

189

villains who do this sort of thing, they don't think of the trouble they cause to the little folk like you and me."

Burden didn't much like being numbered among the 'little folk', it made him feel (as he remarked to Wexford) like an elf, but he said nothing. They strolled towards the gardens at the rear, towards the pinetum. It was a fine sunny morning, cold and crisp, frost still silvering the grass and the box hedges. In the woods, among the dark leafless trees, the blackthorn was coming into flower, a white scattering on the network of dark twigs like sprinkled snow. Harrison had pruned the roses during the weekend, hard, nearly to the ground.

"We may be finished here for all I know," he said, "but you have to carry on, don't you? You have to carry on normal, that's what life's about."

"How about these Griffins, Mr Harrison? What can you tell me about them?"

"I'll tell you one thing. Terry Griffin helped himself to a young cedar out of here for a Christmas tree. Couple of years back, it was. I came on him digging it up. No one'll miss that, he said. I took it upon myself to tell Harvey -- Mr Copeland, that is."

"Was that the cause of your falling out with the Griffins, then?"

Harrison gave him a sidelong look, truculent and suspicious. "They never knew it was me told on them. Harvey said he'd discovered it himself, he made a point of not involving me."

They passed among the trees into the pinetum,

190

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where the sun penetrated only in streaks and bars of light between the low coniferous branches. It was cold. Underfoot the ground was dry and rather slippery, a carpet of pine needles.

Burden picked up a curiously shaped cone, as glossy-brown and pineapple-shaped as if it had been carved from wood by a master hand. He said, "D'you know if John Gabbitas is at home or if he's off in the woods somewhere?"

"He goes out by eight but he's down there about a quarter of a mile ahead, felling a dead larch. Can't you hear the saw?"

The whine of it, coming then, was the first Burden had heard. From the trees ahead came the harsh cry of a jay. "Then what was it you and the Griffins did quarrel about, Mr Harrison?" t "That's private," Harrison said gruffly. "A private matter between Brenda and me. She'd he finished if that got out, so I'm saying no ifeore."

#In a murder case," Burden said with the cNdeptive smooth mildness he had learned from ^Eexfbrd, "as I have already told your wife, there is no such thing as privacy for those involved in

enquiry."

f^We're not involved in any enquiry!" "I'm afraid you are. I'd like you to think ut this matter, Mr Harrison, and decide ther you'd like to tell us about it, or your would, or the two of you together. Whether M like to tell me or DS Vine and whether sto be here or at the police station, because Jre going to tell us and there'll be no two about it. See you later."

191

He walked off along the path through the pinetum, leaving Harrison standing and staring after him. Harrison called out something but Burden didn't hear what it was and he didn't look back. He rolled the fir cone between the palms of his hands like someone with a worry egg, and he found the feeling good. When he saw the Land Rover ahead and Gabbitas operating the chain saw, he put the fir cone into his pocket.

John Gabbitas was dressed in the protective clothing, blade-repellent trousers, gloves and boots, mask and goggles, which sensible younger woodsmen put on before using a chain saw. After the hurricane of 1987 surgical wards of the local hospitals. Burden recalled, had been populated by amateur tree-fellers with self-amputations of feet and hands. Daisy's description of the gunman, now on tape, returned to him. She had described the mask he wore as 'like a woodsman's'. When he saw Burden, Gabbitas switched off the saw and came over. He lowered his visor and pushed up the mask and goggles.

"We're still interested in anyone you might have seen when you were coming home last Tuesday,."

"I've told you I didn't see anyone."

Burden sat down on a log, patted the smooth dry area of bark beside him. Gabbitas came reluctantly to sit there. He listened, his expression mildly indignant, while Burden told him of Joanne Garland's visit.

"I didn't see her, I don't know her. I mean,

192

I didn't pass any car or see any car. Why don't I* you ask Aer?"

I "We can't find her. She's missing." He said, though it was unusual for him to announce moves to possible suspects, "In fact, we start searching these woods today." He looked hard at Gabbitas. "For her body."

"I came home at twenty past eight," Gabbitas said doggedly. "I can't prove it because I was alone, I didn't see anyone. I came along the Pomfret Monachorum road and I didn't pass a car or meet a car. There were no cars outside Tancred House and no car at the side of it or outside the kitchens. I know that, I'm telling you the truth."

Burden thought, I find it hard to believe

that coming at that time you didn't see both

c cars. That you saw neither, I find impossible

s to believe. You're lying and your only motive

| for lying must be a very serious one indeed. But

t Joanne Garland's car was in her garage. Had she

If come in some other vehicle and if so, where was

'f'i ...

iff-it? Could she have come in a taxi? jfl "What did you do before you came here?" The question seemed to surprise Gabbitas. 'Why do you ask?"

'It's the kind of question," Burden said Impatiently, "that does get asked in a murder enquiry. For instance, how did you come to

this job?"

iGabbitas back-tracked. Having considered for long silent moment, he reverted to Burden's query. "I've got a degree in forestry. I told I do a bit of teaching. The hurricane, as

193

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they call it, the storm of 1987, that got me started really. As a result of that there was more work than all the woodsmen in the county could handle. I even made a bit of money, for a change. I was working near Midhurst." He looked up, slyly, it seemed to Burden. "At that place, as a matter of fact, where I was the evening this business happened."

"Where you were coppicing and no one saw you."

Gabbitas made an impatient gesture. He used his hands a lot to express his feelings. "I told you, mine is a lonely job. You haven't got people keeping an eye on you all the time. Last winter, I mean the winter before last, the major part of the work there was coming to an end and I saw this job advertised."

"What, in a magazine? In the local rag?"

"In The Times" said Gabbitas, with a little smile. "Davina Flory interviewed me herself. She gave me a copy of her tree book but I can't say I actually read it." He moved his hands again. "It was the house which attracted me."

He said it quickly, for all the world, thought Burden, as if to forestall being asked if the attraction had been the girl.

"And now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get this tree down before it falls down and does a lot of unnecessary damage."

Burden made his way back through the woods and the pinetum, this time crossing the garden and making for the wide gravelled area beyond which the stables were. Wexford's car was there, two police vans and DS Vine's Vauxhall as well

194

as his own car. He went inside.

Wexford he found in an uncharacteristic attitude, confronting and gazing at a computer screen. Gerry Hinde's computer screen. The Chief Inspector looked up and Burden was shocked by his face, by that grey look, those surely new ageing lines, something like misery in his eyes. It was as if Wexford were, for a brief moment, out of control of his face, but then he seemed to make some inner adjustment and his expression returned to normal, or nearly so. Hinde sat at the computer keyboard, having summoned on to the screen a long, and to Burden impenetrable, list.

Wexford, recalling Daisy Flory's sentiments, would have liked someone in whom he could freely confide. Dora was in this matter unsympathetic. He would dearly have liked someone he could talk to of Sheila's avowal sthat he, her father, was prejudiced against tAugustine Casey and determined to hate him. That she was so in love with Casey as to be able to say, strange as it might sound, as to be discovering what that meant for the first time. That if it came to a choice -- and this was the fp^worst thing -- she would 'cleave' (her curious ^Biblical word) to Casey and turn her back on |her parents.

All this, expressed tete-a-tete while out on an appy walk, Casey being in bed recovering from the brandy, had cut him to the heart. As aisy might put it. If there was any comfort to found it was in the knowledge that Sheila d the offer of a role she couldn't forgo and

195

Casey was off to Nevada.

His wretchedness showed in his face, he knew that, and he did his best to wipe it away. Burden saw the effort he made.

"They've started searching the woods, Reg."

Wexford moved away. "It's a big area. Can we rope in some of the locals to help?"

"It's only missing kids they're interested in. They won't turn out for adult corpses for love or money."

'And we're offering neither," said Wexford.

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1 * E'S away," Margaret Griffin said. Away where?'

He's a grown-up man, isn't he? I don't ask him where he's going and when he's coming home, all that. He may live at home but he's a grown man, he can do as he likes."

At mid-morning the Griffins had been drinking coffee and watching television. No jeoffee was offered to Burden and Barry Vine. Barry said to - Burden afterwards that /Terry and Margaret Griffin looked much solder than they were, elderly already, set into a routine, which was apparent if not j explicit, of television-watching, shopping, small Itegular meals, togetherness in solitude and early ^bedtimes. They answered Burden's questions swith resigned truculence that threatened, at any ifeoment, to yield to paranoia. "Does Andy often go away?" She was a small round white-haired woman j|jwt:h bulging blue eyes. "He's nothing to keep here, has he? I mean, he's not going get work, is he? Not with another two Mndred laid off at Myringham Electrics last ek."

f Is he an electrician?"

Turn his hand to anything, will Andy," said Griffin, "if he gets the chance. He's not of your unskilled workers, you know. He's

197

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been PA to a very important businessman, has Andy."

"An American gentleman. He placed implicit trust in Andy. Used to go backwards and forwards abroad and he left everything in Andy's hands."'

"Andy had the run of his house, had his keys, let to drive his car, the lot."

Taking this with more than a grain of salt, Burden said, "Does he go away looking for work, then?"

"I told you, I don't know and I don't ask."

Barry said, "I think you should know, Mr Griffin, that though you told us Andy went out at six last Tuesday, according to the friends he said he was with, no one saw him that evening. He didn't do the round of the pubs with them and he didn't meet them in the Chinese restaurant."

"What friends he said he was with? He never told us no friends he was with. He went to other pubs, didn't he?"

"That remains to be seen, Mr Griffin," said Burden. "Andy must know the Tancred estate very well. Spent his childhood there, did he?"

"I don't know about 'estate'," said Mrs Griffin. "'Estate's' a lot of houses, isn't it? There's only the two houses there and that great place where they live. Lived, I should say."

Demesne, Burden thought. How would it be if he had said that instead? A lifetime of police work had taught him never to explain if he could avoid it. "The woods, the grounds, Andy knows them well?"

198

"Of course he does. He was a little kid of four when we first went there and that girl, that granddaughter, was a baby. Now you'd think it'd have been normal for them to play together, wouldn't you? Andy would have liked that, he used to say, 'Why can't I have a little sister, Mum?' and I had to say, 'God isn't going to send us any more babies, lovely', but let her play with him? Oh, no, he wasn't good enough, not for little Miss Precious. There was only the two children there and they wasn't allowed to play together."

"And him calling himself a Labour MP," said lerry Griffin. He gave a low hoot of laughter. "No wonder they kicked him out at the last election."

: "So Andy never went in the house?" "I wouldn't say that." Margaret Griffin was suddenly huffy. "I wouldn't say that at all. TOiy d'you say that? He'd come with me | sometimes when I went to help out. They had a housekeeper woman living next door oa her own before those Harrisons came but she couldn't do the lot, not when they had |teipany. Andy'd come with me then, go all �ler the house with me, whatever they said.