The Killing of Katie Steelstock (9 page)

“Come along, old man.”

“She was a bitch.”

“Take his other arm, Gerry. You can’t make scenes like this in church.”

“Leave me alone. I’m going. I wouldn’t want to stay here and listen to a lot of drip like that.”

Jonathan stalked to the door, shepherded by the churchwardens. When he reached it he swung around as though to say something else, but the Group Captain pushed him kindly but decisively through the door and followed him out. He said to Mariner, “I’ll look after him, George. You get back and stand by the rector. I thought he was going to pass out.”

Mariner went back into the now completely silent church. The rector was standing motionless in the pulpit gripping the rail in front of him, his face white. Mariner plodded back to his seat, his footsteps sounding loudly on the tiles of the floor. As he reached the pew the rector came to life. He said in a loud clear voice, “And now to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost we ascribe as is most justly due all might, majesty, dominion and power, now, henceforth and for ever more.” The liturgy of the Church of England swung back onto its course.

It was during the singing of the last hymn that the Group Captain returned and made his way back to his seat. In response to the raised eyebrow of his wife he mouthed at her, “Gone home.”

“Well,”
said Mr. Beaumorris to Mrs. Havelock, “what are we supposed to make of that?”

“Nothing we didn’t know already. Limbery is unbalanced. Some regulator inside him isn’t working.”

“Whatever he may have thought about Katie’s character and—um—disposition, church was hardly the appropriate place to voice it.”

“It wasn’t very tactful.”

“Although actually, strictly between you and me and with all deference to the feeling about
nil nisi bonum de mortuis,
it has to be admitted that there were times when our Katie did behave rather bitchily.”

“Isn’t it a crime, or a felony, or something?” said Mariner.

“Sacrilege? Yes. It’s still on the statute book,” said Vernon Vigors. “It’s usually breaking into churches and smashing or defiling the sacred ornaments, something like that. There were those ultra Protestants who used to smash up altars.”

“You don’t think that interrupting the sermon comes into the same category?”

“It’s a moot point,” said Vigors.

When Knott had asked Ian McCourt if he knew how to take a plaster cast, McCourt had said nothing but had simply nodded. One reason for this was that he was beginning to find Knott’s manner irritating and he felt that the less he said to him the better. The other reason was that he thought he did, in fact, know how to set about it.

The reason for his confidence was that he had recently read in an old copy of the
Police Journal
an article entitled ‘Traces of Footwear, Tires and Tools’ by Detective Constable Douglas Hamilton of the City of Glasgow Police.

He had the journal with him as he pored over the faint marks in the sandy patch between the end of Roseabel Tress’s garden and the first of the building plots. A car had been driven a few yards up the towpath and then backed onto this patch, but not very far. The prints had been made by a small portion of both rear tires, rather more by the off side than the near.

"An impression in moist firm earth can be reproduced without any preliminary treatment. But when impressions are found in loose earth or sand it is advisable to ‘fix’ the surface before pouring in the plaster, since without this the weight of the plaster will distort the formation of the loose surface.”

McCourt looked at the sand. It was totally dry and friable. The sharp edges of the tire marks had already started to smooth out. Clearly they would have to be “fixed.” What did Detective Constable Hamilton say about that?

“A solution of shellac in methylated spirits or a cellulose acetate solution may be used with excellent results. A very light coating only should be applied.”

Fine, thought McCourt. No doubt the Glasgow central police station was equipped with shellac, methylated spirits and acetate solution. But how was he supposed to find them in Hannington on a Sunday?

A shadow fell across the sand.

“Something troubling you, son?” said Knott.

McCourt scrambled to his feet. Knott stooped down and picked up the journal which had been open on the ground beside him. He studied it for a long moment and then said, “You ought to keep up to date in the techniques of your profession. You’re not married, are you?”

“No.”

“Got a girlfriend?”

“Well—”

“Or a mother or an aunt or a landlady. Someone who’ll lend you a hairspray?”

“Every now and then,” said Roseabel Tress, “I do take a little sleeping pill. It’s not my regular habit, you understand. They’re fairly mild, not what you’d describe as knockout drops. Helen Mariner put me onto them. She gets them from her doctor. So you see, I shouldn’t be a very effective witness. But it’s true, yes. I did hear a car.”

“About what time might that have been?” said McCourt.

“Let me think. We got away from the dance before half past eleven and came straight back here in Constantia Havelock’s car. She asked me in for a cup of tea. Then there was that business about Roney and Sim—”

“I heard about that.”

“I don’t suppose I was more than twenty minutes in their house. When I got back I went straight to bed.”

“Then it would have been soon after midnight when you heard the car.”

“That’s right. Five or ten minutes after.”

“Was it coming, or going?”

“Oh, going. I’m sure of that. It would have been parked on the path, I imagine. I heard it start up. And I heard it drive off, down the avenue. I—yes, that’s right. I heard it drive away.”

McCourt’s ear picked up the change of tone in her voice, the note of panic, and looking down saw that her hands, which had been lying loosely in her lap, were now clasped so tightly that her knuckles were white and the bones at the back were standing out.

He said, “What is it, Miss Tress? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. I was stupid.” Her self-possession was coming back slowly. “I just remembered something. It was rather unpleasant. I hardly know how to explain it.”

“Try.”

“It was just that . . . well, the fact is that I’m a seventh child of seven. All my life I’ve known that I have these powers. I read a most interesting article about them the other day. I understand that they are now known as extrasensory perception. There’s quite a scientific basis for them.”

The word “scientific” seemed to reassure her. She looked at McCourt to see how he was taking it. He smiled and said, “Science is explaining a lot of things we used to call miraculous. What exactly was it that you felt when you heard the car driving away?”

“Evil, Sergeant. Naked evil.”

“Yes, I heard it go,” said Mrs. Havelock, “a little after midnight. That would be right.”

“Could you tell from the noise it made what sort of car it was?”

“I’m afraid all cars sound the same to me. If one of the boys had heard it, they’d probably be able to tell you. But they sleep at the back.”

McCourt opened his briefcase and produced a torn scrap of grey flannel. He said, “This was found on the barbed wire of the field by Cavey’s cottage.”

“And I can tell you
exactly
where it came from,” said Mrs. Havelock. She opened her sewing basket and produced a pair of boy’s flannel shorts. “You can match it up if you like.”

“Aye, that’s where it came from, no doubt,” said McCourt. “Which of them was it?”

“Sim. He’s the nine-year-old. Roney’s eleven. They’re as bad as each other. Beyond parental control, Sergeant. They need a father’s hand.”

“I’ll have a word with them in a moment. There are just the one or two things I’d like to clear up first. You all drove home between twenty and half past eleven?”

“About then.”

“Which way did you come?”

“Straight down the street and turned right into the avenue.”

“Did you pass anyone?”

“No one at all. I’m pretty sure of that. You could ask Roseabel Tress.”

“I have,” said McCourt. “She agrees with you. She doesn’t remember passing anyone. Tell me, Mrs. Havelock, what did you think of Katie?”

“That’s a fast ball.”

“A fast ball?” said McCourt, with the hesitation of someone who had been educated in a school which regarded cricket as a game played by southerners to fill in the awkward gap between two football seasons. “You mean it was an unfair question? I’m sorry.”

“Not unfair. Unexpected. What
did
I think about her? It’s a difficult question. She was two quite different people, of course. When she was here she liked to play the simple home-loving girl who went out with the boy next door – or one of the two or three boys next door – lived with Mum and went to church on Sundays.”

“You said play?”

“Oh, I think so. After all, that was the character she put over in her television appearances. She can’t really have been as simple as that. If she had been, she’d never have got where she did. I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes in television, but I should imagine it’s one of the toughest rat races there are. And working in London’s not the same as working down here.”

“When I was in London,” said McCourt, “everything seemed to go twice as fast and sound twice as loud as it does in the country. I’d like to have a word with the boys.”

“With me here?”

“Certainly. I don’t want to frighten them.”

“I sometimes wish,” said Mrs. Havelock, “that I’d found some way of doing it.”

Roney and Sim were waiting outside the door. They bounded in looking excited and important but not at all apprehensive.

“Well, now,” said McCourt, “what were you up to on Friday night?”

Roney told him. McCourt had found that boys usually made good witnesses. They stuck to the facts. He said, “This question of timing is becoming rather important. When exactly did you leave the dance?”

“When we saw Mum driving off. That’s why we ran. We wanted to get back ahead of her. We might have done, only old Cavey shouted at us and Sim got caught up in that barbed wire. After that we went more slowly.”

“In that case,” said McCourt, “you must have been walking down the towpath at around twenty-five to twelve.”

“That’s right,” said Roney. He shot a look at Sim, who was bouncing gently up and down on the edge of his chair, looking like a kettle coming to the boil. He opened his mouth to say something but Roney cut him off with the firmness of two years’ seniority. He said, “From what we read in the papers, she must have been dead by then, wouldn’t you say?”

In his Saturday evening briefing, Knott had given out the presumed time of death. It had been done quite deliberately, weighing advantage against disadvantage.

“It seems possible,” said McCourt cautiously.

“Then,” said Roney, “she must have been lying there on the grass when we went past.”

Sim could contain himself no longer. He said, “We might have met the murderer coming away.”

The two boys looked at each other with an equal mixture of horror and excitement.

“It’s lucky you didn’t,” said McCourt.

When he had gone Mrs. Havelock said, “What are you two keeping back?”

“We’re not keeping anything back, are we, Sim?”

Sim said, “No. Honestly we’re not, Mum.”

Mrs. Havelock looked at her sons. She was thinking, in about two years’ time I shall have to start treating Roney as though he was grown up. It wasn’t too bad with Michael. He was pretty reasonable. Roney’s different.

The two boys stared solemnly back at her. In the end she said, “If there
is
anything else, it must be told. This isn’t a game.”

“I can’t tell you a great deal,” said Tony Windle, “because I was almost the last away from the hall. Old Cavey came in looking like death and started clearing people out and I asked him what was bothering him and . . . well . . . he told me.”

“Can you remember what he said?”

“Not the exact words. But I do remember I was surprised.”

“Why?”

Tony thought about it. Then he said, “He didn’t wrap it up at all. It was something like ‘She’s dead. Someone smashed her head in.’ As if he was talking about someone he didn’t really know.”

“But he did know her?”

“Of course he knew her. Everyone knew Katie. He’d taught her to punt when she was eight and picked her out of the river when she fell in.”

“And everyone loved her.”

“Is that a question,” said Tony coolly, “or a statement?”

“I suppose it was a sort of question.”

“When she was a little girl with a snub nose and pigtails, certainly everyone loved her. Everyone loves little girls. When she grew up, naturally things got a bit more complicated. Either you loved her, or you liked her, or you didn’t care one way or the other.”

“And which category did you fall into?”

“Something between two and three. I think we both regarded each other, in a different sort of way, as an asset. If I took Katie to a function, I could be sure that everyone else there was envying me. That was the plus as far as I was concerned. From her point of view, I was a useful attendant-cum-door-opener-cum-chauffeur. With a kiss last thing instead of a tip.”

“And nothing more?”

“I regret to say, Sergeant, nothing more. Just a convenience. Give you an example. I’d have been expected to pick her up in my car and take her to that dance on Friday night. Despite the fact that she was within walking distance of the hall, and if she hadn’t wanted to walk, her own car was parked in the stableyard outside her flat. But it would have been a bore to have got in and started up the engine. Much better to rely on good old Tony.”

“But she
did
take her own car.”

“Only because mine was out of action, being minus its distributor head. And there wasn’t really much time to ask anyone else.”

“You’re making her out to be rather a heartless sort of girl.”

“All girls are heartless,” said Tony, with the accumulated wisdom of twenty-five years. Then he corrected himself. “Heartless is the wrong word. Katie had a heart buried deep down. Given the right sort of man, she’d have gone overboard like any other girl. I wasn’t the right type, that was all.”