Murder... Now and Then (5 page)

The problem was that they did have this tendency to see sex and love as one entity. The partings were almost always amicable, but for some reason they involved leaving the office as well as ending the affair. So he was often left in the lurch. A more sensible man might have thought of employing a grey-haired spinster to overcome this disability, but no one had ever accused Max of being sensible. Besides, he would rather enjoy enlivening the social life of a grey-haired spinster, he suspected. But he employed the likely looking ones, and was rarely disappointed. And even when he was, he still lost them to bigger companies who could pay much more than he could. One way or another, keeping staff wasn't easy.

He had, of course, followed the signs for the wrong A something-or-other, and had finally given up trying to find the motorway in favour of actually getting home. He was only now confident that he was at least heading towards London. And he didn't switch on the radio, because he saw the girl.

She stood by the road, the horizontal sleet flying into her face, her head uncovered, holding out a hopeful thumb to the traffic that thundered past her. Max would normally have thundered past too; picking up hitchhikers of either sex was not something he normally did. But she looked very young … he turned his head as he passed, and sighed. He couldn't just abandon her to her fate.

He signalled left and slowed to a stop, looking over his shoulder. She hadn't seen him stop; he still had time to change his mind. But if she was as young as she looked, she could be in danger. If he drove on, anything could happen to her. At least if he picked her up, he wouldn't be reading about her in the papers.

There was no traffic behind him; he put the car in reverse, and shot backwards towards her, then stopped, still a little way in front of her, so that she would make the decision. He watched in the driving mirror as without hesitation she ran towards the car, the big leather bag over her shoulder making it awkward for her to move. He leant across and unlocked the passenger door.

The bag was thrown on to the back seat. ‘Thanks,' she said.

He drove on for a few moments without speaking; neither did she.

‘You know,' he said eventually, ‘hitching isn't a very sensible way to get about.'

He felt rather than saw her shrug as he kept his eyes on the road ahead. She could be anybody, Max, he told himself. For all you know she'll whip out a knife and steal your wallet. He sneaked a look at her. Her hair was dripping on to her face; she looked cold and tired and miserable. He turned the heater on full.

‘Where are you going?' he asked.

‘Wherever you're going.'

He ran a calming hand over his chin. Max, Max. What have you done? You've picked up a runaway. He had to make a decision, now. Take her with him, or throw her out now. He looked at the weather, and looked again at her. He couldn't. ‘Am I going to find myself in trouble for picking you up?' he asked.

‘No,' she said.

‘But for all I know you could be an absconder from an approved school.'

‘I'm not. Where
are
you going?'

‘London,' he said.

‘Fine.'

‘Camberwell.'

‘Fine.'

Max sighed. ‘It's not really fine, is it?' he asked. ‘I mean – where are you going to go when you get there?'

A shrug.

‘
Are
you running away?' he asked.

‘How do you mean ‘‘running away''?'

The weather grew worse on the exposed road, and Max slowed down. ‘ I suppose,' he said, ‘ that I mean have you left wherever you have just been without telling anyone you were going?'

She thought about that for a moment. ‘Don't you ever leave wherever you've been without telling anyone you're going?' she asked.

It was Max's turn to think about his move. ‘I think,' he said slowly and truthfully, ‘that I only do it if I don't intend to be away for more than a few minutes.'

‘Then I'm running away.'

He smiled, despite the dread forming deep within his soul that he had made a pretty dumb move when he had stopped for her. ‘What from?' he asked.

A shrug.

He saw a roadside café in the distance, and glanced at her. She might have been on the run for days. She might need some food. But the longer she had been missing, the more likely it was that someone was looking for her. If the police stopped them – what would she say? She might say he'd abducted her, anything. Oh, what the hell. He'd got her now; he was responsible for her. ‘Are you hungry?' he asked.

‘No.'

Well, he didn't have to risk that. That was something. ‘Do you want music?' he asked. ‘There's a radio.'

‘No.'

She could have done with someone teaching her to say please and thank you wherever she had spent her time until now. Max drove on into worsening conditions, his back beginning to ache. How had he managed to get himself into this? All the other drivers ahead of him had driven on, sensible fellows that they were. They hadn't been daft enough to pick her up. Oh, but what if? She was too young to have been left on the side of the road. Max couldn't have lived with himself if he'd driven on and then read that something awful had happened to her.

He entertained gloomy visions of what he might well find himself reading next morning. ‘Police are anxious to interview the driver of a car seen …' He glanced at her.

She was asleep. Her hair was drying out now; it was much fairer than he had thought. She was very pretty; beautiful, really. The heater had sucked all the air out of the car, which was now filled with the smell of her damp clothes. But he left it turned up high. She looked about six years old, asleep like that.

Oh, God. That was a point. How old was she? If she was a minor, he really ought not to be assisting her flight. He wasn't what you'd call an expert on adolescent females; he could give you a reasonably accurate assessment on women between twenty-five and forty, but she was in her teens, and that was as close as he could get. Maybe he should take her home. Valerie would be better at this sort of thing than he was. But somehow the thought of arriving home with a runaway teenager in tow filled him with even more dread than the thought of being suspected of abduction. The sensible thing to do was to take her straight to the police, wasn't it? That's what he would do.

But he looked at her again. If she had wanted to go to the police, she would have done. She was bright enough. She had trusted him enough to go to sleep – he couldn't do that to her. It might even be the police she was running from. He'd be an accessory then, to whatever she had done. At the very least he would get done for harbouring a fugitive from justice.

A petrol station; he glanced at the fuel gauge and signalled, pulling in at the pump as smoothly as he could. The last thing he needed would be to run out of petrol. She didn't stir. An attendant came, startling Max, who had just got used to serving himself with petrol. He resisted the temptation to drive away again, and wound down the window. ‘ Fill the tank, please,' he said.

The attendant smiled indulgently at the sleeping figure. ‘Someone's had a busy day,' he said, unhooking the nozzle. ‘ Your daughter, is it?'

‘Yes,' Max heard his own voice say.

Her eyes shot open. Max smiled nervously at her. Please God, make her keep her mouth shut. I was being a Good Samaritan. I wasn't passing by on the other side. Please, please, make her keep her mouth shut.

The cap was screwed back on, and he paid the attendant, remembering to tip him, but not too much. He didn't want anyone to have any reason at all to remember him, to give his description to the police, and he tried not to look as though he was sweating with apprehension as he fired the engine, and drove out of the lights of the garage, back on to the dark road.

‘Why did you say I was your daughter?' she asked, right on cue.

‘What was I supposed to say? No, it's not my daughter, it's a kid I picked up in Buckinghamshire?'

‘I'm not a pick-up. And I'm not a kid. And it wasn't Buckinghamshire. It was Hertfordshire.'

‘I meant picked up as in gave a lift to. How old are you, anyway?'

‘I was sixteen last week.'

‘Sure,' muttered Max.

‘It's the truth! Do you want to see my birth certificate?'

Could it be the truth? Could it be that God was smiling on him for his good deed, and hadn't really sent him a thirteen-year-old compulsive liar who was going to land him in prison for years? Of course it wasn't the truth. Max sighed heavily. ‘Look,' he said. ‘I can't just drop you off in the middle of London. I think I should take you to the police.'

‘No,' she said, with something like panic, and made as if to open the door of the moving car.

‘All right all right! he shouted. ‘Forget the police.'

She relaxed a little. ‘So you'll just let me out when we get there?' she said.

‘No,' he said.

‘Why not?'

‘Because even if you
were
sixteen last week, which I very much doubt London is a big city, with big city vices.'

‘I'll go to an hotel.'

‘Hotels cost money.'

‘I've got money.'

Max looked at her. ‘ Oh, yes?'

‘Yes! Do you want to see it, too?'

‘No,' he said. ‘And I don't think I want to know how you came by it, either.' Probably by robbing Good Samaritans, he thought, as his day of reckoning neared, and city landmarks began to appear, lit up against the dark sky. ‘ What sort of hotel?' he asked.

‘Any.'

He pulled the car up as soon as he could, turning to face her. ‘Do you know London at all?' he asked.

‘Not really.'

He closed his eyes. ‘ Right,' he said. ‘Well – London has got every conceivable kind of hotel. From ones that cost more a night than I earn in a week to ones that Al Capone would think twice about entering. Now – I know one that's clean and pleasant, and not terribly expensive.'

Her eyes narrowed a little. ‘All right,' she said, her voice full of suspicion. ‘It'll do.'

He pulled out, and began making his way through the late-evening traffic, sparse now; he made good progress through the wet streets, on some of which still hung the tattered, sodden remains of the Silver Jubilee bunting. ‘ But even a not very expensive hotel is expensive if you don't have much money,' he said.

‘I've got enough money,' she said.

Thank God, he thought as he finally saw the hotel, in a terraced row of similar hotels, most of which he would not have recommended. But this one was all right. Max parked on double yellow lines in a side street, and got out of the car to be met with an accusing look over the roof as he straightened up.

‘What are you getting out for?' she asked.

‘Because you may or may not be sixteen,' said Max, ‘but you look about thirteen. And I don't think that they will feel entirely happy about giving you a room without an evidently adult person sanctioning your request.'

She looked at him for a long moment. ‘And what relationship are we going to be this time?' she asked. ‘Uncle and niece?'

Max leant over the roof of the car, despite its clammy dampness. ‘Have you any idea how lucky you are?' he asked. ‘You could have been picked up by someone who raped and murdered you. But you weren't. You were picked up by me. I was already hours late getting home, and I'm being best man at someone's wedding tomorrow morning – back out in the sticks somewhere. I have to go into the office before I leave, so I have to be up very early. Notwithstanding all of that, I stopped and gave you a lift because I couldn't bear to think of what might happen if I didn't. I brought you here in one piece, and I've found you somewhere that's clean and comfortable and respectable to spend the night. I would now like to give myself the peace of mind of knowing that you've actually booked in to it, and you're not going to sleep on a park bench.'

‘And all you want is to come in with me?' she asked, her voice still suspicious.

‘My dear girl, I don't want to come in with you at all! I want to go home and go to bed. With my wife. Who will by now think that I have been involved in a multiple pile up. But I don't think you'll get very far on your own. Try, by all means.' He made as if to get back in the car.

‘All right,' she conceded. ‘You can come in with me.'

‘Good,' he said. ‘And now perhaps I've earned the right to know your name?'

She hesitated.

‘Your
nom de guerre
, at least,' he said.

‘Catherine Barnes,' she told him. ‘It's my real name,' she added grudgingly.

‘Max Scott.' He smiled. ‘That's my real name, too,' he said.

They shook hands over the roof of the car, and for the first time, she smiled at him.

Detective Sergeant Lloyd looked through the binoculars from his vantage point on the ship-like balcony of the thirties cinema turned bingo hall. A residential area, quiet and peaceful on this cold, wet London night, lay directly below. But it had cars cruising at all hours of the day and night, according to the residents, who were tired of picking their way through the French letters as they took the short cut across the waste ground to the tube station.

Ten thirty. Normal people were just thinking of leaving the pub. Some would go home to bed, some would carry on drinking at nightclubs, and some would indeed go cruising the streets looking for some action. All of these activities seemed preferable to freezing to death while directing Operation Kerbcrawl.

A couple of girls appeared, strolling up and down the damp pavement, leaning against the wall, occasionally chatting to one another. Their breath, like his, steamed in the night air. Unlike him, they were not wearing two pullovers and an overcoat and scarf. Kids, both of them, half naked, and half frozen.

He thought of Linda, then. Three years old, and cheeky with it. How did you know where they would end up? These girls had been three years old, once. And not all that long ago by the look of it. They didn't all come from stereotypically deprived backgrounds. Some of them simply fetched up in London, homeless, jobless, shiftless. They could see no easier, no quicker, or perhaps simply no other way of making money.