Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (44 page)

To wreak death might have been the primary motive, but the lust for spoliation was there as well. It gilded the lily, it iced the cake.

* * *

The garage at The Thatched House had contained twenty two-gallon cans of petrol and about half that number of gallon cans of paraffin. These cans had been lined up against

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the sides of the garage, most of them against the common wall with the house. The thatched roof extended across the garage as well as the house itself.

Nicholas Virson had an explanation. Trouble in the Middle East had prompted his mother to lay in a store. Which particular trouble he couldn't remember but the oil had been there for years, against a 'rainy day'.

The days, Wexford thought, hadn't been rainy enough. A long severe drought had preceded the drizzle of the past few days. Investigators had found little evidence in that garage, there was very little left. Something had ignited those cans, a simple fuse. The discovery of the stub of an ordinary household candle, near-miraculously rolled away and out under the doors, led them to believe this was a vital item in the arson. What the investigator had in mind wouldn't always work but in this case it had worked. Soak a piece of string not in petrol, but in paraffin, and insert one end in a can of paraffin. The single can of paraffin would be surrounded by cans of petrol. Tie the other end of the string round a candle halfway down, light the candle and two, three, four hours later . . .

The fire officer was badly burned but would recover. Joyce Virson was dead. Wexford had told the press they were treating it as murder. This was arson and murder.

"Who knew about that petrol, Mr Virson?"

"Our cleaner. The chap who comes to do the garden. I expect my mother told people, friends. I may have told people. I mean, for one thing,

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I remember a very good friend of mine who'd come over and was very low on juice. I put enough in his tank to get him home. Then there were the chaps who came to patch up the thatch, they went in there, used to have their sandwiches in there at lunchtime ..."

And a smoke, thought Wexford. "You'd better let us have some names."

While Anne Lennox was taking the names down Wexford thought about the interview he had just had with James Freeborn, the Deputy Chief Constable. How many more murders were they to expect before a perpetrator was found? Five people had died so far. It was more than a massacre, it was a hecatomb. Wexford knew better than to correct the Chief Constable, to say something sarcastic, for instance, about hoping there wouldn't be another ninety-five deaths. Instead, he asked for the incident room ,at Tancred to be maintained just till the end of the week and permission was reluctantly granted.

But no more guards on the girl. Wexford had to assure him that there had been none that week.

"Something like that could go on for years."

"I hope not, sir."

Nicholas Virson asked if they were finished with him, if he might go.

"Not yet, Mr Virson."

"I asked you yesterday, before we had much idea of the cause of this fire, where you were on Tuesday night. You were very distressed and I didn't press the question. I'm asking you again

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now. Where were you?"

Virson hesitated. At last he made that answer that is never true but nevertheless often given in these circumstances. "To be perfectly honest with you, I was just driving around."

Two of those phrases in conjunction. Do people ever 'just drive around'? Alone, by night, in early April? In their home countryside where there is nothing new to see and no beauty spots to discover and go back to see in daylight? On a holiday trip, perhaps, but in their own neighbourhood?

"Where did you drive?" he asked patiently.

Virson was no good at this. "I don't remember. Just around the lanes." He said hopefully, "It was a fine night."

"All right, Mr Virson, what time did you leave your mother and start out?"

"I can tell you that. Nine thirty. On the dot." He added, "I'm telling the truth."

"Where was your car?"

"Outside on the gravel, and my -- my mother's beside it. We never put them in the garage."

No, you couldn't get them in. There wasn't room. The garage was full of cans of fuel oil, waiting to go up when a flame reached them, running along a piece of string.

"And where did you go?"

"I've told you, I don't know, I just drove around. You know when I got back ..."

Three hours later. It looked nicely timed. "You drove around the countryside for three hours? In that time you could have got to

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Heathrow and back."

An attempt at a sad smile. "I didn't go to Heathrow."

"No, I don't suppose you did." If the man wouldn't tell him he would have to guess. He looked at the sheet of paper on which Anne had written the names and addresses of those people who knew about the petrol cache: Joyce Virson's close personal friends, Nicholas Virson's friend who ran out of 'juice', their gardner, their cleaner ... "I think you've made a mistake here, Mr Virson. Mrs Mew works at Tancred House."

"Oh, yes. She works for us -- er, me, as well. Two mornings a week." He seemed relieved at the change of enquiry. "That's how she came to help out at Tancred. My mother recommended her."

"I see."

"I swear by my life and all I hold sacred," Virson said passionately, "I had nothing to do with any of this."

"I don't know what you hold sacred, Mr Virson," Wexford said mildly, "but I doubt if it's relevant in this case." He had heard the like of this often before, respectable men as well as villains swearing on their children's heads and as they hoped for heaven in a life to come. "Let me know where I can find you, won't you?"

Burden came up to him after Nicholas Virson had gone. "I went home that way too, you know, Reg. The place was in total darkness at eleven fifteen."

'No candle flame glimmering through the

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chinks in the garage door?"

"The aim wasn't to kill Mrs Virson, was it? I mean, our perpetrator's quite ruthless, he wouldn't care if he killed her or not, but she was incidental, she wasn't his primary quarry?"

"No, I don't think she was."

"I'm going to get lunch. D'you want some? Today it's Thai or steak and kidney pie."

"You sound like the lowest form of TV commercial."

Wexford went outside with him and joined the short queue. From here only the end of the house was visible, the high wall and windows of the east wing. The shape of Brenda Harrison could be dimly seen behind one of these, rubbing at the glass with a duster. Wexford held out his plate for a wedge of pie with mashed potatoes and stir-fry. When he looked up again Brenda had disappeared from the window and Daisy had taken her place.

Daisy was not, of course, polishing the glass, but standing with her hands hanging by her sides. She seemed to be gazing into the distance, into woods and forest and far blue horizon, and to him her expression, as far as he could see, was ineffably sad. She was a figure of loneliness, standing there, and it brought him no surprise to see her put up her hands and cover her face before she turned away.

His head lifted, Burden too had seen. For a moment he said nothing but took his plate of the rather brightly coloured scented food and a can of Coke with the glass upturned over it. Back

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in the stables. Burden said laconically, "He was after her, wasn't he?"

'Daisy?"

'He's always been after her from the first. When he rigged that fire it was Daisy he was after, not Joyce Virson. He thought Daisy would be there. You told me the Virsons had been here to persuade her to come to them on Tuesday night, dinner and stay the night."

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'Yes, but she refused. She was adamant."

'I know. And we know she didn't go there. But our perpetrator didn't. He knew the Virsons had tried to persuade her and knew too that they went back in the afternoon to renew their attempt. Something must have happened to make him certain Daisy would be spending the night at The Thatched House."

"Not Virson then? He knew she wouldn't be there. You keep saying, 'he', Mike. Must it be a 'he'?"

"It's something one takes for granted. Perhaps one shouldn't."

"Perhaps one should take nothing for granted."

"Bib Mew worked for the Virsons as well as up here. She knew about the petrol in the garage."

"She listens outside doors," said Wexford, "and perhaps hears only imperfectly what is said on the other side of them. She was here on the evening of 11 March. A lot of the -- shall we say manoeuvres? -- of that night depend on her evidence. She's not very bright but she's sharp enough to live alone and hold down two jobs."

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"She looks like a man. Sharon Fraser said the people who left the bank were all men, but if one of them had been Bib Mew, would she know this wasn't a man?"

"One of the men in the bank stood in the queue with a handful of green banknotes. Since the pound went we don't have green notes in this country. Which country does? Exclusively green banknotes?"

"The United States," said Burden.

"Yes. Those notes were dollars. Martin was killed on 13 May. Thanny Hogarth is an American who may well have had dollars in his possession when he came here, but he didn't arrive in this country until June. How about Preston Littlebury? Vine tells us he does most of his transactions in dollars."

"Have you seen Barry's report yet? Littlebury deals in antiques, that's correct, and he imports them from eastern Europe. But his main source of income at the present time is from the sale of East German army uniforms. He was a little shy of admitting it but Barry got it out of him. Apparently, there's a terrific market for that sort of memorabilia here, tin hats, belts, camouflage."

"But not guns?"

"Not guns, so far as we know. Barry also says that Littlebury has no bank account here. He has no account with that bank."

"Neither do I," Wexford retorted, "but I've got my famous Transcend card. I can use any branch of any bank I like. Besides, the man in the queue with the notes was there simply to

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change those notes into sterling, wasn't he?"

"I've never seen this Littlebury but from what I hear of him he's not the sort to pick up a gun and make off with it. I'll tell you what, Reg, it was Andy Griffin in that queue, with the dollars Littlebury paid him in."

"Then why did he never change them? Why did we find them in his parents' house?"

"Because he never reached the head of the queue. Hocking and Bishop came in and Martin was killed. Andy picked up the gun and made off with it. He took it to sell it and he did sell it. That was what he blackmailed the purchaser about, possession of the incriminating gun.

"He never changed those dollar bills. He took them home and hid them in that drawer. Because he had a -- well, a sort of superstitious fear of being seen with them after what had happened. One day maybe he'd change them but not now, not yet. He'd get far more for that gun than ninety-six dollars, anyway."

Wexford said slowly, "I believe you're right."

* * *

The kind, hospitable gesture would have been an offer to put Nicholas Virson up. Perhaps Daisy had made the offer and it had been declined. On the same grounds as Virson's refusal to stay the night once before?

Now, though, things were surely different. The man had nowhere to go. But in Daisy's sky this star was setting, no matter how brightly it had once shone, when it had occasioned that

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wonder and that adoring gaze. Thanny Hogarth had displaced it. What are you when the moon doth rise?

It was normal behaviour for someone of her age. She was eighteen. But a tragedy had happened, Nicholas Virson's mother was dead, his house had burned down. Daisy must have offered hospitality and her offer, simply because of the existence of Thanny Hogarth, had been spurned.

Until he found somewhere more permanent, Nicholas Virson had taken a room at the Olive and Dove. Wexford found him in the bar. Where he had acquired the dark suit he wore Wexford couldn't guess. He looked sombre and lonely and much older than when they had first met at the infirmary, a sad man who had lost everything. As Wexford approached he was lighting a cigarette and it was to this act that he made reference.

"I gave up eight months ago. I was on holiday with Mother in Corfu. It seemed a good time, no stress and all that. It's a funny thing, when I said nothing would make me start again, I couldn't have foreseen this. I've been through twenty today already."

"I want to talk to you about Tuesday night again, Mr Virson."

"For God's sake, must you?"

"I'm not going to ask you, I'm going to tell you. All you have to do is confirm or deny. I don't think you'll deny it. You were at Tancred House."

The unhappy blue eyes flickered. Virson took

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a long draw on his cigarette, like a smoker who has rolled up something stronger than tobacco. After a hesitation he made the classic reply of those he would have denned as of the criminal classes. "What if I was?"

At least it wasn't, "I might have been."

"Far from 'driving around', you drove straight up there. The house was empty. Daisy was out and no police officer was there. But you knew all that, you knew how it would be. I don't know where you parked your car. There are plenty of places where it would be hidden from those coming in up the main drive or along the byroad.

"You waited. It must have been cold and boring but you waited. I don't know when they came in, Daisy and young Hogarth, or how they came. In his van or her car -- one of her cars. But they came at last and you saw them." .

Virson murmured into his drink, "Just before twelve."

"Ah."

He was muttering now, sullenly. "She came back just before midnight. There was a young chap with long hair driving." He lifted his head. "He was driving Davina's car."

"It's Daisy's now," said Wexford.

"It isn't right!" He hammered with his fist on the table and the barman looked round.