The Windermere Witness (11 page)

‘Your car is outside, is it?’

‘I told you, it’s the shop van – I was in it when Mr Baxter was shot.’

‘On your own?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you feel all right to drive?’

She sighed. ‘Completely.’

Still neither of them moved. The man was so totally unlike any police detective she had seen on TV that she found herself with no means of assessing him. He was in no way attractive physically, apart from the steady brown eyes and understanding manner. He seemed intelligent, confident, authoritative, but also vulnerable to stress. She could imagine him manifesting bad temper – shouting at underlings, grabbing young offenders by their clothes – but not losing control of his own emotions. This man would not weep for a murder victim, or a child crushed on a motorway, she concluded. He would get angry and super-efficient.

‘How come you’ve got so much time for me?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be out there finding the murderer?’

‘I think he’ll have gone by now.’

It was a joke, a deadpan let’s-see-how-long-before-
you-get
-it joke. She laughed with genuine merriment, before stopping abruptly, with a sense that it was wrong, when a man had just been killed.

‘But you’re right, of course,’ he added. ‘I’m telling myself that you are the prime witness, so far; that you have more to tell me than you might realise and that there has to be a way I can harness your usefulness.’

‘Oh.’ She shrank from him slightly. ‘I don’t think I like the sound of that very much.’

‘Pity,’ he smiled. ‘But at least it’s nice to know I can make you laugh.’

‘But we shouldn’t. Oh, God – that poor girl, the morning after her wedding. As if yesterday wasn’t bad enough. Her brother
and
her father, both killed. It’s an absolute
nightmare for her. Has somebody gone to tell her? And the wife?’

‘You know about his wife?’

‘Only what they told me last night. Everything seems very amicable between all his women. Eleanor, Markie’s mother, and this new one. I suppose there might have been others, along the way, as well. It’s another world, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘It is for me. My parents have been married for forty-three years. I don’t think there’s ever been a hint of another person disturbing things for them.’

‘But most of us are not so lucky, are we?’

‘No,’ she said resentfully.

He got up then, and with a little flourish of his hand indicated that the interview was over. ‘Thank you,’ he said formally. ‘I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time. I’m afraid I can’t promise that this is the end of it. When the forensics people have done their bit, not to mention ballistics as well, we might need to walk you through it. You
and
young Ben, probably. Funny that there was nobody else about. The season isn’t over yet.’

‘I imagine he waited for a quiet moment.’

He looked at her with a new expression, the two of them positioned awkwardly by the door. His look felt rather like respect. ‘I imagine he did,’ he nodded. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Except …’ she felt momentarily foolish, ‘he’d have to seize the moment when Mr Baxter was standing in the right spot, wouldn’t he? So it was probably more luck than anything.’

‘Mr Baxter didn’t see you – is that right?’

‘I don’t think he did. I was sitting in the van, watching out for him. I should have been standing by the hotel entrance, I know. It was just … I would have felt conspicuous. If I’d been there, he might still be alive.’ It was the first time she had allowed herself to think events through in any detail, and certainly the first pang of guilt to strike her.

‘Don’t get into that,’ he advised, opening the door for her. ‘It’s unprofitable, to say the least.’

‘But … his family. They’ll blame me, won’t they?’

‘I doubt it. There’s a difference between being involved and being to blame.’

‘Yes. Involved,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘I suppose that’s what I am. And yet I never met any of these people before. They don’t care about me – even the ones who know my name. Most of them have no idea who I am.’

‘They will soon,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m surprised your ears aren’t burning already. One more thing, before you go. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention the gun to anybody. I know there are plenty of people around who’ll spread the story, but we prefer to keep details quiet, as far as possible.’

They parted in the hotel’s hallway, Moxon giving her his card and promising they would meet again.

‘Involved,’ she murmured to herself, as she started her car. Should she be afraid, excited, angry – or what? Suddenly she wanted her father, and his calm, old-fashioned take on things. She wanted to hold him close, because hadn’t she just learnt that fathers could be killed, leaving a gaping hole in the lives of their children?

Ben’s mother met him on the doorstep with an expression of blank bewilderment. ‘I thought you were just going round to see Jack,’ she said. ‘The meat’s gone all dry now.’ She looked around him. ‘Are you by yourself?’

‘Yeah, but they’re coming to question me in a bit. I have to have you or Dad with me. I
was
just going to see Jack. I did go to see him, and was coming home. I was passing the Old England when this bloke was shot. Coincidence.’

‘But he might have shot
you
,’ she wailed. ‘How close were you?’

‘I don’t know. Not very. I heard the shot and saw the man fall. That’s it. End of.’

‘It’s not, though, is it? Wasn’t there anybody else there?’

‘A woman. She’s a florist. She knows the man. She’s cool.’

‘Well, come and have your lunch. I’ve tried to keep it nice for you.’

‘Did you go ahead without me?’

‘Ben – it’s half past two. They were hungry.’

‘Half two? It can’t be.’ He stared at her.

‘Well it is. You’re in shock, love. Time does funny things. But listen – I’ve got a project I absolutely have to get finished. And Dad’s got a mountain of marking, as usual. Do you think Wilf would count as a responsible adult, or whatever it is they need? He’s nearly twenty. Would you mind?’

He sifted the churning emotions that this gave rise to: disappointment, abandonment, relief, resignation. ‘No, that’ll be fine, I guess. They already know I haven’t got much to tell them. It probably won’t take long.’

‘So, have your lunch, and this evening we’ll do the birthday stuff. What did Jack give you?’

‘Computer game,’ he shrugged as if it was obvious.

His brother Wilf emerged from the big square room at the back of the house that they called ‘the playroom’. He was gaunt from his inability to swallow for over a week, and the sporadic aches and pains his illness had caused. The worst was over, apart from a constricted throat, and he was intending to return to work in another day or so. ‘What’s all this then?’ he asked. ‘Got yourself involved in a shooting? Doesn’t look as if you were damaged.’

‘Wilf – the police are going to be here soon, to interview him. Will you sit in with him? I’ve got that Gibson job. It’s already late, and if I don’t—’

‘Okay, I get it,’ he interrupted. ‘We were lucky to see you at all today.’

‘Not at all. It’s Ben’s birthday. That takes precedence. It’s just—’ she forced an anguished grin and spread her hands.

The brothers looked at each other with exaggeratedly raised eyebrows. For as long as they could remember, their mother had been distracted by the demands of her work – most of which she did at home. She boasted to her friends that she was a stay-at-home mother – no childminders or day nurseries for
her
offspring. In reality, she left them to watch out for each other and disappeared for the greater part of every day into the converted attic, where her architect’s business was conducted, doing remarkably well as it happened.

‘Good old Gibson, I say,’ croaked Wilf. ‘If he pays for a car for me, I’ll gladly do all I can to make it easy for you.’

‘It’s not the car – it’s the damned insurance,’ said his mother.

Ben heard the conversation as if through ear mufflers. Something was happening in his head, a sort of aural fog that made him think he might be ill. ‘Um …’ he said. ‘Can I go and sit somewhere?’

‘Good God, the boy’s going to faint,’ said Wilf. ‘Quick!’

‘They shouldn’t have let him come home by himself,’ tutted their mother, as they took him between them into the dining room. ‘It was irresponsible.’

‘Where exactly did this happen?’ Wilf asked.

‘Outside the Old England, apparently.’

‘Five minutes’ walk, then. They probably thought he could manage that.’

‘I
did
manage it,’ protested Ben. ‘I’m all right again now. It was just a thing … I might be hungry, actually.’

‘Did you have any breakfast?’

He shook his head.

‘Anything at Jack’s?’

‘Cup of tea.’

Briskly, she sat him down at the big table and fetched a plate of roast pork and all the trimmings from the kitchen. ‘Eat,’ she ordered, and he obeyed with ready enthusiasm. Wilf picked at some crackling, chewing it thoroughly and forcing it down his sore throat. ‘It’s definitely better,’ he reported.

The brothers, left on their own, were both unsure of what to say to each other. Ben wanted to tell his story and Wilf wanted to hear it, but the knowledge that a police interview was pending seemed to constrain them. It was too large an event to gossip over, and without their mother they were hesitant to start something that could lead into darker waters than they felt equal to. ‘What was the computer game?’ Wilf asked.

For answer, Ben pulled it from his pocket with an ironic grin. ‘Just what I need if I’m to be a police witness,’ he said. ‘It’s all about catching crims using forensics.’

Wilf laughed. ‘That gunman should have waited till you were out of the way. You’ll not rest till they’ve caught him, if I know you. Right up your street.’

‘It never occurred to me until now. The real thing’s a bit different. Nothing like a game. A woman screamed, real screaming. They threw a rug over him.’

‘
Him?
Not
her?
’

Ben giggled. But despite the light moment, he could see that Wilf’s imagination was incapable of sharing the experience. Always a prosaic character, his ambitions as a chef lay in technique rather than creativity. Other people could construct the menu – his skill lay in the mixing and searing, knowing the precise moment to turn down the heat, and always producing impeccable sauces and gravies
without a hint of a lump. Wilf’s mashed potato had been legendary since he was fourteen.

The police arrived five minutes later, and were formally escorted into the living room, where a young sibling had to be ejected from watching TV. It was not DI Moxon, but a detective sergeant and female constable. They gave Wilf a dubious examination, having been instructed to ensure a responsible parent was present.

‘I’m an adult. They’re both busy, I’m afraid,’ Wilf explained.

‘Are they here in the house?’

‘Upstairs,’ he nodded.

‘Well, then, we must have one of them in here,’ said the sergeant firmly. ‘This is important.’

Ben groaned quietly. ‘Can’t we just get on with it?’ he pleaded. ‘I never saw anything that’ll help, anyway. I’ve said it all already, when it first happened. This is a bit silly, if you ask me.’

The sergeant bristled alarmingly. He was in his late twenties, recently promoted, Ben suspected, and terrified of getting something wrong. With his natural inclination to imagine himself into the other person’s shoes, Ben understood that here was a man who would make any simple thing as complicated as he possibly could. He would talk in jargon and dwell on small irrelevancies. ‘Silly?’ he repeated furiously. ‘We’re investigating a
murder
.
Two
murders, to be exact.’

Wilf held his ground. ‘My mother asked me to sit with Ben. I promise you, I’m quite capable of doing the job. Unless you propose to charge him with homicide, I really do think I can cope.’

‘He’ll be fine, Keith,’ said the constable patiently. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Sergeant Keith reluctantly subsided, a tape recorder was produced, and questions posed. Ben described the scene in as much detail as he could, but was unable to indicate a direction for the gunshot. ‘It just sort of echoed around the streets,’ he said helplessly. ‘It wasn’t very loud.’

‘And were there any other people at all in sight?’

‘Not one. It’s usually quiet down there, anyway.’

‘What about the woman in the van? Mrs Brown?’

‘I didn’t see her until afterwards.’

‘Do you go there regularly?’

‘Not really. My mate Jack lives just along the street from the hotel. I go and see him sometimes.’

‘And did you know the deceased? Mr George Baxter?’

‘Not at all. Never heard of him. At least – not before yesterday. I heard what happened at the wedding, last night on the news.’

The questions rambled on, and Ben was careful to stay focused. He had no intention of offering any guesses or assumptions. But it struck him that it was a very inefficient interview; a real waste of time. The man had been shot. Somewhere there would be traces left by the firing of the gun, the gun itself. They should be concentrating on angles and distances and searching every building that overlooked the front of the Old England Hotel. Asking repetitive questions of a passer-by was ridiculous. But it cost him nothing, and at the end left him feeling superior, excited and purposeful. He was
involved,
the same as the florist lady was.

And lurking on the very edge of his memory was
something wordless and mysterious that he could not recapture. There had been a
sense
, a peculiar silence, in the second before the gunshot. He had been thinking about his new game, and the three episodes of
Bones
he had watched back-to-back last night, so that when a man was killed right in front of him, it had taken a while for him to grasp that this was actually happening, in real time. The same thing that people said about the Twin Towers collapsing. You assumed, at first, that you were in a movie. But had he somehow seen something, without knowing what it was, just before the gun was fired? He thought his head had been up, his gaze directed in a roughly easterly direction, away from the lake. He could remember seeing buildings, trees, overhead wires – nothing the least bit unusual. No flash of sunlight on gunmetal; no warning click as the safety catch was released. Had there been a pair of eyes on him, calculating that he was no threat, still twenty or thirty yards from the target? Almost certainly there had. He had been, by a fluke, the only person on the street at that moment. He had been about to cross over, away from the hotel, up the slope to his home in Helm Road. He had already checked for traffic, despite the absence of any engine noise. And perhaps he had seen something then? He
should
have seen something. He wished he had, so that now he could be a proper witness. But he hadn’t. Whatever sly little atom of perception might have entered his head, it was too faint a trace ever to be recovered.

At much the same time as Ben was being questioned, Simmy was explaining the day’s events to her parents, as concisely as she could. They had heard nothing about it,
secure in their own preoccupations, nearly a mile away. A new booking had been telephoned through, and Angie was bustling about with pillowcases and checking her stock of fresh breakfast eggs. ‘Four of them – two couples,’ she said. ‘They want to stay three nights.’

When Simmy managed to tell her story, Angie and Russell were both silenced. They exchanged looks of concern, frozen in place as the implications slowly became evident. ‘Those poor people,’ Simmy’s father managed, after a minute or so. ‘It’s beyond imagining what they must be feeling.’

‘Somebody murdered the boy and his father?’ Angie repeated. ‘Why in the world would they? And you
talked
to them both,’ she accused Simmy.

‘I’m involved,’ she said. ‘No getting away from it.’

And in confirmation, there came a knocking on the door that brooked no denial. Angie went to answer it, coming back with Eleanor Baxter at her shoulder. ‘She wants you,’ she told her daughter.

‘You’ve got to come,’ Eleanor ordered Simmy. ‘Now. They all want to talk to you.’

‘Who?’

‘Bridget. Peter. Glenn. All of them. They’re still at Storrs until tomorrow morning. They want to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and they think you might be able to help.’

‘I can’t. How can I?’ She was pleading, first with Eleanor, and then with her father, who was standing in the kitchen doorway holding the Sunday paper.

‘I don’t know. They want to meet you, anyway. After last night, you see. I told them you were at my place last night, and you were seeing George again today.’

‘You can understand it, pet,’ said her father.

Simmy shook her head. ‘Not really. I can’t
tell
them anything. I have no idea what’s going on.’

‘You might, though – without realising it,’ Eleanor insisted. Her eyes were tragic, her skin blotchy with no make-up.

‘Where’s Lucy?’ asked Simmy, instinctively. The little girl was the only member of this ramshackle family she could truly say she cared about.

‘Never mind Lucy. Please come with me. We’d all appreciate it.’

‘Did you get any lunch?’ Angie put in.

‘What?’ Simmy looked at the clock on the hall wall. It said ten past three. ‘No, just a cup of coffee. It doesn’t matter.’

‘We can have sandwiches or something at Storrs,’ said Eleanor impatiently. ‘Not that anybody’s likely to feel much like eating.’ The bags under her eyes seem to sag even further. ‘Somebody killed
George
!’ she burst out. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Simmy helplessly. ‘I really do not know.’

She went with Eleanor because to resist would have taken more energy than she possessed. She was still numb, her mental processes sluggish. The prospect of a large group of Baxters and others, all questioning her and trying to discover the special knowledge they seemed to think she carried, was daunting. They might be suspicious of her, since she had been so close to George when he died. They might shout and threaten. Even Eleanor might well feel no desire to protect her. She shrank into the car seat
and let herself be carried along. She supposed she should be impressed by the woman at her side, and her ability to function so soon after hearing what had happened to her one-time husband.

‘Poor Bridget,’ Eleanor muttered. ‘She’s the one who’s lost the most. I don’t know whether she’ll ever properly get over it. She’s only eighteen, poor girl.’

Simmy said nothing, knowing that
getting over it
was a forlorn hope for most people finding themselves suddenly bereaved of someone they had taken for granted. Like her own baby, she thought with a sick pang.

The road down to the hotel was dappled with golden afternoon light, glimpses of the lake the same consoling little treat they always were.