Wolf to the Slaughter (23 page)

‘I’ve got nothing to tell you, Mr Burden,’ he said. ‘He didn’t leave no forwarding address and he’d paid up his next month’s rent in advance. There was three weeks to run.’

Burden took a book from the shelf and opened it in the middle, but his face did not change. ‘Tell me about Tuesday evening,’ he said.

‘Tell you what? There’s nothing to tell. Lin was in and out all afternoon. We wanted some bread and it’s early closing here on Tuesdays – not for us, we don’t close. She popped into Stowerton. The wife went to her whist drive around half seven and Lin was off somewhere – the launderette, that was it.’ He paused, looking virtuous. Drayton felt angry and bewildered. The anger was for the way Grover used her as a maid of all work. He could not account for the bewilderment unless it was because he could not understand her father’s lack of appreciation. ‘I never saw Ray all day,’ Grover said. ‘I was in bed, you see. You’d have thought he’d have looked in on me to say good-bye and thank me for all I’d done for him.’

‘Like what?’ Burden snapped, ‘Providing him with a lethal weapon, that sort of thing?’

‘I never gave him that knife. He had it when he first come.’

‘Go on.’

‘Go on with what, Mr Burden?’ Grover felt his back, gingerly probing the muscles. ‘I told you I never saw Ray after the Monday. The doctor came before the wife went out and said I was to stop in bed . . .’

‘Anyone else call? During the evening, I mean?’

‘Only that girl,’ Grover said.

Burden blew dust off the book he was holding and replaced it on the shelf. He came close to Grover and stood over him. ‘What girl? What happened?’

‘I was in bed, you see, and there was this banging on the shop door.’ The newsagent gave Wexford a sly yet sullen glance. ‘I thought it was you lot,’ he said. ‘It’s all very well the doctor saying not to get out of bed on any account, but what are you supposed to do when someone comes banging fit to break the door in?’ He winced, perhaps at the memory of an earlier and more acute pain. ‘One of his customers it was. I’d seen her about before. Tall, good-looking piece, bit older than my girl. You want to know what she looked like?’

‘Of course. We haven’t come here for social chitchat, Grover.’

Standing by the paperback stand, Drayton felt almost sick. Burden’s reprimand, far from disconcerting Grover, had provoked a sycophantic grin. His lips closed, he stretched them wide, half-closing one eye. This mockery of a smile seemed the ghost of Linda’s own. In act it was the begetter, and Drayton felt nausea rise in his throat.

‘Bit of all right she was,’ Grover said, again sketching his wink. ‘Kind of white skin and black hair with two curly bits coming over her cheeks.’ He seemed to reflect and he wetted his lips. ‘Got up in black trousers and a spotted fur coat. “What d’you mean banging like that?” I said. “Can’t you see we’ve closed?” “Where’s Ray?” she says. “If he’s in his room I’ll go up and root him out.” “You’ll do no such thing,” I said. “Anyway, he’s not there.” She looked proper put out at that so I asked her what she wanted him for. I don’t know whether she didn’t like me asking or whether she was thinking up some excuse. “I’m going to a party,” she says, “and I’m bloody late as it is and now my car radiator’s sprung a leak.” Mind you, I couldn’t see no car. Go up to his room, would you? I thought, and him going steady with my Linda.’

Drayton gave a small painful cough. It sounded like a groan in the silence which had fallen. Wexford looked at him and his eyes were cold.

Grover went on after a pause, ‘ “In that case you’d best take it to a garage,” I said, and then I come out on to the pavement in my dressing gown. There was this white sports job stuck in my sideway with a pool of water underneath it. “I daren’t drive it,” she said. “I’m scared it’ll blow up on me.” ’

‘Did she go away?’ Burden asked, discreetly jubilant.

‘I reckon she did, but I didn’t wait to see. I locked up again and went back to bed.’

‘And you heard nothing more?’

‘Nothing till the wife came in. I do remember thinking I hoped she’d got that white car of hers out on account of Lin not being able to get mine into the garage if it was there. But I dropped off to sleep and the next thing I knew was the wife getting into bed and saying Lin had come in half an hour before. D’you want to see his room now?’

Frowning slightly, Burden came out of his dark corner and stood under the light that hung above the counter. He glanced down the passage towards the side door that led to the alley. For a moment Drayton thought he had seen someone coming, Linda herself perhaps, and he braced himself to face the shock of her entrance, but Burden turned back to the newsagent and said:

‘Where did he do this car servicing of his?’

‘In my spare garage,’ Grover said. ‘I’ve got the two, you see. My own car’s in one and the other used to be let, but I lost my tenant and when young Ray said he wanted it I let him have it.’ He nodded smugly. Perhaps this was the favour, or one of the favours, for which he had claimed Anstey’s gratitude. ‘I only charged him five bob a week extra. Mind you, he had plenty of customers. Been doing the same thing at his old digs, if you ask me.’

‘I’d like to see both garages,’ Burden said. ‘Keys?’

‘The wife’s got them.’ Grover went into the passage and took an old overcoat down from a wall hook. ‘Or may be Lin has. I don’t know, I haven’t had the car out for best part of a fortnight, my back’s been so bad.’ He got into the coat with difficulty, screwing up his face.

‘Keys, Drayton,’ Wexford said laconically.

Half-way up the stairs, Drayton met Mrs Grover coming down. She looked at him incuriously and would have passed him, he thought, without a word.

‘Can you let me have your garage keys, Mrs Grover?’ he asked. Linda must have told her who and what he was.

‘In the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Lin left them on the table.’ She peered at him short-sightedly. Her eyes were as grey as her daughter’s, but passionless, and if they had ever held tears they had long been wept away. ‘I’m right in thinking you’re her young fellow, aren’t I?’ Who he was, Drayton thought, but not what he was. ‘She said you and her’d want the car tonight.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t let her dad know, that’s all.’

‘I’ll go up, then.’

Mrs Grover nodded indifferently. Drayton watched her go down the stairs and leave by the side door. The kitchen door was open and he went in. Out of her parent’s presence, his sickness went, but his heart was beating painfully. The keys lay on the table, one for each garage and one ignition key, and they were attached to a ring with a leather fob. Beside them was a pile of unfolded, unironed linen, and at the sight of it he felt a return of that bewilderment he had experienced in the shop. The keys were in his pocket and he had reached the head of the stairs when a door facing him opened and Linda came out.

For the first time he saw her hair hanging loose, curtaining her shoulders in a pale bright veil. She smiled at him softly and shyly but all the coquetry was gone.

‘You’re early,’ she said as she had said that day when he had come to take her to Wexford. ‘I’m not ready.’ It came to him suddenly that she, like her mother, had no idea why he was there or that others of his calling were down below in the shop. Perhaps she need not know and the knowledge of what probably lay in one of those garages be kept from her a little longer. ‘Wait for me,’ she said. ‘Wait in the shop. I won’t be long.’

‘I’ll come back later,’ he said. He thought he could go back to them without touching her, but he could neither move nor take his eyes from the spell of the tiny wavering smile and the golden cloak of hair.

‘Mark,’ she said and her voice was breathless. She came towards him trembling. ‘Mark, you’ll help me out of – out of all this, won’t you?’ The linen on the table, the shop, the chores. He nodded, committing himself to what? To a yet unconsidered rescue? To marriage? ‘You do love me, then?’

For once the question was not a signal for evasion and ultimate departure. That she should love him and want his love was to confer upon him an honour and to offer him a privilege. He took her in his arms and held her to him, touching her hair with his lips. ‘I love you,’ he said. He had used the forbidden verb and his only sensation was a breathless humble longing to give and give to the utmost of his capacity.

‘I’d do anything for you,’ he said. Then he let her go and he ran down the stairs.

Faded green paint was peeling from the garage doors. From their roof gutters water streamed out of a cracked drainpipe and made a scummy pool around the dustbins. Drayton let himself into the alley by the side door. His hands were shaking because of what had passed upstairs and because here, a few yards from where Grover and the policemen stood, he had first kissed her. He raised his hood against the drizzle and handed the keys to Wexford.

‘You took your time about it.’

‘We had to look for them,’ Drayton muttered. Whether it was that ‘we’ or the badly-told lie that gave rise to that chilly glance Drayton did not know. He went over to the dustbins and began shoving them out of the way.

‘Before we open the doors,’ Wexford said, ‘there’s one little point I’d like cleared up.’ Although it was not cold, Grover had begun to rub his hands and stamp his feet. He gave the Chief Inspector a sour disgruntled look. ‘Inspector Burden was about to ask you what time Miss Margolis, the girl with the white car, called on you. He was about to ask, but something else came up.’

‘Let me refresh your memory,’ Burden said quickly. ‘Between seven thirty and eight, wasn’t it? More like half past seven.’

The hunched shivering figure galvanised into sudden life.

‘Half seven?’ Grover said incredulously. ‘You’re joking. I told you the wife and Lin came in just after. Half seven, my foot. It was all of ten.’

‘She was dead at ten!’ Burden said desperately and he turned to appeal to Wexford who, bland and urbane, stood apparently lost in thought. ‘She was dead! You’re wrong, you mistook the time.’

‘Let us open the doors,’ said Wexford.

Drayton unlocked the first garage and it was empty. On the concrete floor was a black patch where oil had once been.

‘This the one Anstey used?’

Grover nodded, viewing the deserted place suspiciously. ‘There’s only my car in the other one.’

‘We’ll look, just the same.’

The door stuck and Drayton had to put his shoulder to it. When the catch gave, Burden switched on his torch and the beam fell on an olive-green Mini.

It was Wexford who opened the unlocked boot and revealed two suitcases and a canvas bag of tools. Muttering, Grover prodded the bag until Burden removed his hand roughly. Through the rear window something could be seen lying on the passenger seat, a stiff bundle, one arm in a raincoat sleeve outflung, black hair from which the gloss had gone.

Wexford eased his bulky body between the side of the car and the garage wall. He pressed his thumb to the handle and opened the door as widely as he could in that confined space. His mouth set, for he could feel a fresh onset of nausea, Drayton followed him to stare over the Chief Inspector’s shoulder.

The body which was sprawled before them had a blackened stain of dried blood across the breast of the raincoat and there was blood on the hilt and the blade of the knife someone had placed in its lap. Once this corpse had been young and beautiful – the waxen features had a comeliness and a symmetry about them even in death – but it had never been a woman.

‘Anstey,’ said Wexford succinctly.

A dark trickle had flowed from one corner of the dead man’s mouth. Drayton put his handkerchief up to his face and stumbled out of the garage.

She had come from the side door and her hair was still loose, moving now in the faint wind. Her arms were bare and on them and on her face gooseflesh had arisen white and rough, like a disease. Incredible that that mouth had once smiled and kissed.

When he saw her Drayton stopped. In the wind and the rain a death’s head was confronting him, a skull staring through stretched skin, and it was much more horrifying than what he had just seen in the car. She parted the lips that had smiled for him and been his fetish and gave a scream of terror.

‘You were going to save me! You loved me, you’d do anything for me . . . You were going to save me!’ He put out his arms, not to enclose her but to ward her off. ‘I went with you because you said you’d save me!’ she screamed, and flinging herself upon him, tore at his cheeks with the bitten nails that could not wound. Something cold struck his chin. It was the silver chain that Anstey had stolen from his wife.

When Burden pulled her away and held her while she kicked and sobbed, Drayton stood with his eyes closed. He could sort out nothing from her cries and the harsh tumult of words, only that she had never loved him. It was a revelation more unspeakable than the other and it cut into his ears like a knife slitting membrane. He turned from the watching eyes, the man’s stern, the girl’s unbearable, stumbled from the alley into the backyard and was sick against the wall.

She was waiting in Wexford’s office. Two minutes before, down in the foyer, he had been warned of her presence, so he was able to repress natural astonishment and approach her with the aplomb of a Stanley.

‘Miss Margolis, I presume?’

She must have been home. After arriving from wherever she had been, she must have called at the cottage to collect the ocelot coat. It was slung across her shoulders over a puce and peacock trouser suit. He noted her tan and the bronze glaze a hotter sun than that of Sussex had given to her dark hair.

‘Rupert said you thought I was dead,’ she said. ‘But he does tend to be unsure of things. I thought I ought to come and clarify.’ She sat on the edge of his desk, pushing papers out of her way. He felt like a guest in his own office and he would not have been surprised if she had asked him in just this imperiously gracious tone to sit down.