The Gropes (12 page)

‘There is that,’ said her aunt. ‘Men my age have been difficult to come by since the War. I suppose they got themselves killed and since my Harold died, I haven’t the energy or the looks to go and find another one. Besides, I couldn’t give birth to anything at my age and we need a girl into the bargain.’

‘That’s what I thought, which is another reason I brought him here. We’re going to get married and have children and he can work on the farm. Nobody’s going to find us now that I’ve changed his name and I’m sick and tired of being a virtual virgin. I could be a human vibrator for that masturbating Albert, and if he doesn’t masturbate, I don’t want to catch Aids or syphilis from the sluts he sleeps with, which I’m certain he does. I want a really active young fellow who’s healthy.’

‘Where is he now?’ Myrtle asked.

‘Sleeping off all that filthy alcohol Albert filled him up with yesterday.’

‘And this Albert is your former husband? Are you sure he doesn’t know where you’ve gone?’

‘Absolutely. You don’t think I ever told him I’m a Grope? I’m not as daft as all that. In any case my mother, my late mother that is, didn’t give her name as Grope on the marriage certificate. She said she was a Miss Lyle and produced her best friend’s birth certificate.’

Belinda paused for breath and briefly wondered how Albert bloody Ponson was getting on before picking up where she left off in describing how she’d finally come home.

Had Albert been able to read Belinda’s mind he’d have replied that she was insane to suppose he was getting on at all. He’d spent the past few hours blaming his brother-in-law for having a nervous breakdown in the first place (even though he now understood why Horace had tried to kill his idiot son), cursing his sister for dumping the wretched boy on him, wondering whether Belinda really had been kidnapped and, of course, freezing. It might be summer but being a British one it had rained and Albert had been unable to find anywhere more waterproof than the shrub under which he had originally hidden. He was prevented from seeking shelter in his wrecked bungalow by the presence of a police inspector in a raincoat who was
guarding the back of the ruined bungalow. Inside, the discoveries made by the three detectives investigating the incident made things look even worse for the missing Albert. They had found blood on the carpet in the sitting room and some more in the kitchen. Finally, in the garage, where in searching for the Aston Martin Albert’s makeshift bandage had come off, there was apparent proof that a terrible crime must have been committed. As Albert soaked in the garden the detectives stood in the relative warmth of the sitting room and discussed these findings together with the absence of Belinda Ponson and Esmond Wiley.

‘No bloody wonder he didn’t want the garage door pulled down. I’d say the murders had to have been done here. Of course he could have killed them in that fucking do-it-yourself slaughterhouse and dragged their bodies down here to the house and driven them off somewhere in his car that’s gone missing,’ one of them was heard to say.

‘He’d have had to use something to carry each body in. He couldn’t have got them down here any other way without leaving a massive trail of blood.’

‘True enough,’ said another, ‘But what could he use? It would have to be water- and blood-proof.’

‘You’ve obviously never been down to Ponson’s slaughterhouse and seen what it’s like. Go on. You can have my torch. Charlie’s got a flashlight. Actually, I’d take that and check the plastic sheets and bags. You’ll get a better impression.’

‘All right, I will,’ said the third detective and strode across the garden and the field confidently. He returned a different man.

‘Dear God! I thought you were joking when you said it was a slaughterhouse. This swine Ponson is undoubtedly a murderer. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t any fresh blood down there. It’s all dried out.’

The other two detective constables had to agree.

‘I’ve never seen anything so horrible in my life. And to have a sign that it’s a do-it-yourself slaughterhouse and then another that says “KILL & EAT YOUR OWN”. The bastards.’

The other two kept quiet. They’d known Albert was the local crook and known that he encouraged farmers to slaughter their own beasts at a far cheaper cost than butchers charged. Not that that was a crime, nor that it mattered in the greater scheme of things. He’d always been a crook who if there was any justice ought to spend a good few years behind bars. But this was way over the top. The acres of encrusted blood at the slaughterhouse and the absence of his wife and the young fellow suggested that something truly appalling had happened to them.

Having scraped a sizeable amount of dried bloodstains off the bungalow floor and photographed the bloody handprints on the garage walls, they’d found an unused towel and mopped the fresh gore up with it. They searched the ruins again and added the spent
bullets and the vomit-stained rug to the evidence before returning to the police station.

Under the dripping shrub Albert caught snatches of the detectives’ conversation and was horrified. He had built the DIY slaughterhouse to make enough money to fool the tax authorities and instead he had provided the police with awful suspicion. He hadn’t foreseen the implications of the signage with its suggestion that he was a murdering cannibal. In fact, he had only recently removed an advert with the same invitation from the local paper when the vicar complained, but now that his wife and that stupid Esmond had disappeared the police would soon learn about it. Talk about the ‘the fat being in the fire’.

To make matters worse still, the place was swilling with animal blood and if, as they were sure to do, they tried to detect human DNA samples, they would find it impossible to distinguish them from the gallons of pig and cattle gore that had accumulated over the years on the floor.

As Albert lay in the garden shivering with cold and wet he began to share the detective’s belief that he’d spend a good few years behind bars, though for a crime he hadn’t committed. Having come to this dire conclusion he waited until that damned policeman who’d been guarding the remains of the bungalow finally dozed off in a chair in the wreckage of the lounge. Once Albert was satisfied he was properly asleep, he crawled out of the shrubbery and
tiptoed down the street towards the second-hand car lot. He’d get one of the less popular and conspicuous but fast and reliable cars and get the hell out of the area.

All the time he wondered where Belinda and Esmond were. Perhaps they were still at the hospital and Esmond was having his stomach washed out. In which case he’d better go down there himself …

On second and third thoughts, he didn’t think this such a good idea. They might think he’d set out to get rid of the lout by way of alcohol poisoning and hold him on suspicion. Or they might take one look at the state he was in and simply call the police.

In the end, Albert decided it would be safer to stick with his first impulse and get the hell away from the area. He fetched the keys for a Honda and presently was driving at 100mph down towards Southend. Once he got there he would book into a bed and breakfast and not some smart hotel where they’d ask to carry his luggage and why he was so wet. No, he’d find somewhere cheap and modest where no questions would be asked. He’d pay cash too.

It was then that Albert remembered he had no cash on him and that his fortune was in the safe under the carpet in the bedroom. And just as he realised this, a police car with lights flashing forced him to brake and pull over to the side of the road.

An hour later he’d been breathalysed and was in police custody charged with driving over the alcohol
and speed limits at 120mph in an unlicensed vehicle with faulty brakes and worn tyres.

‘You’ll come up before the district judge in the morning,’ he was told, ‘for dangerous driving and drunk too. Think yourself lucky. You could have killed yourself, and a lot of other people into the bargain.’

The officer was wrong. Next morning Albert was in a police van and being driven back to Essexford to be questioned by the superintendent who was now convinced that both Albert Ponson and his sister were psychopathic criminals.

Vera Wiley, who had been sedated in A & E, had recovered completely by the time the superintendent arrived at the hospital. She sat up in bed and demanded her clothes. The superintendent told the doctor to move the bed into a private room and the doctor was only too happy to oblige. The other patients in the ward cheered. They were sick to death of Mrs Wiley screaming she wanted her darling love child Esmond back.

‘Who is Esmond? Is he your husband?’ asked the superintendent who had just been rung up by the Home Secretary’s top assistant calling to tell him that the job of the police of whatever rank was to arrest criminals and not to destroy houses. He rang off before the superintendent could answer.

‘He told me, “You can leave that to al-Qaeda,”’ the superintendent told Vera.

‘You mean my brother. He’s not called Kyder. His name is Albert Ponson. Where’s he got to? I left Esmond with him and he’s supposed to be protecting him from my husband who tried to murder him.’

‘What a pity he didn’t succeed,’ murmured the superintendent, thoroughly sick of the lot of them, and then immediately regretted it. Vera leapt out of bed and hurled her full weight on him. As his chair fell back onto the floor he landed on his back and slashed his head on the edge of the bedside cupboard. A doctor and two nurses carried him on a stretcher to have ten stitches in Accident and Emergency.

The chief inspector took over when several policemen had managed to force Vera back into bed and put handcuffs on her ankles.

‘Try leaping out of bed with them on and you’ll break your blasted legs,’ she was told.

Vera lay back on the pillow weeping. ‘I want to know what my brother Albert has done with Esmond. My husband tried to kill him. I’ve told you that before.’

‘You mean he tried to kill Mr Ponson. Why did he want to do that?’

‘Because he said there were three of him.’

‘Three of him? Your husband has a twin brother? I mean, he has two twin brothers, like he’s a triplet, is that what you’re telling me? How do you know who’s making love to you if that’s the case?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ screamed Vera.

‘That makes two of us. Oh, of course, your husband tried to kill three bloody Ponsons. Well, I can’t say I blame him. One Al is crooked enough.’

Vera stared at him dementedly.

‘I didn’t say that. You’re putting words in my mouth,’ Vera whimpered, wishing he could put some sensible ones in.

The chief inspector did his best to clear his mind and then started again.

‘Just tell me who tried to kill two people. That’s all I want to find out.’

‘Horace did.’

‘And Horace is your husband?’

‘Of course he is. We’ve been married for twenty years.’

‘OK. I’ve got that. So now he’s gone down with some illness and you say he tried to kill Esmond. And Esmond is your only son?’

‘Yes. He tried to stab him with the carving knife.’

The chief inspector came up with what he thought was a reasonable question.

‘And was Esmond his real son? I mean, you hadn’t been having it off with another man and got a bun in the oven from this other bloke?’

The expression was not one Vera knew.

‘How could I have? I was cooking supper at the time.’

‘I mean, had you been having a love affair with a man who wasn’t your husband and got pregnant when he ejaculated?’

‘When he what?’ asked Vera, whose romantic reading had limited her vocabulary.

‘When he came his load.’

‘Load? What do you mean?’

‘All right, let’s just say making love.’

‘But if we were he’d have had to be there. Not that we were.’

‘Oh never mind. What I am trying to ascertain is why your husband tried to stab your son. That’s all. He must have had a reason.’

‘He said it was because Esmond was exactly like him.’

‘I should have thought that would have reassured him you weren’t having an affair with another man,’ the chief inspector said.

‘But I’ve told you, I’m not like that. I’ve always been completely faithful.’

The chief inspector could well believe it. Even a sex maniac wouldn’t have been attracted to Mrs Wiley. Her husband must be utterly hideous himself. On this note he stopped the interview and went to see how the superintendent was getting on. He wasn’t. The stitches hadn’t taken and were having to be redone.

‘It’s bloody hell. Much more of this and I’ll go off my rocker too.’

‘Makes two of us. This is the weirdest case I’ve ever tried to understand.’

Horace was not enjoying his voyage much either. A storm had blown up once they were away from England and the Thames and nowhere near Holland. In short, the tramp steamer was living up to its reputation and wallowing about in the North Sea in a way that certainly alarmed Horace Wiley. One moment waves were breaking over her bows and then, when the wind changed, she was taking on water first from the port side and then from the starboard so that Horace who had taken to his grubby cabin was tossed about until he was violently sick. Of course, there was no washbasin in the steamer so he staggered about in search of a bathroom without any luck and finally vomited over the side while clinging desperately to
the ship’s rusty guardrails and getting soaked. Below him the tramp seemed not to be making any progress and looking briefly aft he could see no wake, which suggested the engine and with it the propellers had stopped. Had he known anything about ships he would have realised the reason for the ship’s wallowing and constant change of direction. And he’d certainly have been more alarmed. Being sick, almost literally, to death, he searched for a bucket and took it down to his cabin to puke into. He wished now he had chosen to come by air. At least if the plane crashed death came quickly. But that had been impossible. He’d have had to produce his passport and the money in his suitcases would most likely have been found.

When the engine started up again and the ship began to move forward into relatively still water, he finally fell asleep.