A Death to Remember (28 page)

‘
She died, Michael. In the end, she died.’

He
looked beyond me and filled his glass as his eyes fell. He gulped it down. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose she had to die.’

‘B
ut...’ I said. ‘...the money you made from drugs, the money from Val – all poured into Tony’s business, and
this
business...’ I waved my hand embracingly. ‘Surely, with all this...’

His
mouth twisted. ‘But in the end, it wasn’t money. It all grew from Colin Rampton’s death. Too many people knew, or were finding out. I couldn’t keep up with it. I’m drowning in it. That’s the truth, Cliff. Drowning.’

It
seemed to me he was asking for sympathy. From
me
? I shifted uneasily in the chair. ‘We have the statement Peters made.’

‘
That too?’ He raised his eyebrows. He seemed unconcerned. ‘Have you told anything of this to Val?’

‘
You know I haven’t had time.’

‘
Then perhaps you will.’

‘
As a favour?’

‘
I’d find it too difficult. She doesn’t know about the drugs.’

I
levered myself to my feet, rubbed my hands on my hips, and looked round. There seemed nothing more to say. I nodded and went to the door, and paused.

‘
This partner you mentioned?’ I asked. ‘Am I to know his name?’

He
smiled bleakly. ‘Perhaps I’ll write it down for you.’

‘B
ill Porter will want to know his name.’

‘
Porter knows it.’

As
I opened the door he raised his glass to me. I closed the door gently behind me.

I
walked away rapidly, but from the far side of the square I stopped and looked back, just in time to see his light go out. I turned away quickly and went to collect Nicola’s car. I drove directly to the hospital. An ambulance raced past me, going the other way.

They
told me that Nicola was asleep, under sedation. At my concern, they said it wasn’t serious, but I knew something about head injuries. No, they assured me, no skull fracture. Simply keeping her under observation, and she’d probably be out in a couple of days.

I
drove to Woodstock Heights to see my ex-wife, stopping at the first call box to ring Aunt Peg and have a word with Marsha, who by that time was in a fair panic. Aunt Peg had been worried, but was calm enough. Marsha had to be dissuaded from dashing round to the hospital. I told both of them I’d be in touch.

Val
had the front door open before I’d got out of the car. She peered into the darkness of the drive.

‘
Michael?’

‘
It’s me, Val. Cliff.’

I
walked up to her. She clutched at my arm. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘
Quite recently.’

She
stood firm and tense. The porch light above her head cut hollows into her cheeks and shadowed her eyes.

‘
May I come in, Val?’

She
seemed to jerk awake, but her mind wasn’t completely engaged. She backed away, then turned, walking with uncertainty into the house. I was on her heels. When she stopped in the living room doorway and turned, I nearly fell over her. From behind the settee, Laddie came out suspiciously. He didn’t even raise his tail for me. They can sense atmosphere.

‘
I don’t think he’ll be coming back, Val.’

She
stared into my eyes. Even in the small period since I’d last seen her, the flesh seemed to have fallen from her face. Her lips were thin and cold and bloodless, teeth showing as though the upper lip had stuck to them. I put a hand to her shoulder gently and led her across to the settee, where she stood firmly, as though to sit down would be to concede a weakness.

‘
What do you mean?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you come here?’

Setting
an example, I took the easy chair and leaned forward, knees apart, arms resting on my legs. I held the silence long enough, until she slowly lowered herself to the cushions, but she’d read my mind and her legs would no longer support her.

‘
He was at his office, Val.’

‘
Why there?’

‘
I believe he expected me to go to him there.’

She
touched her forehead briefly, and shook her head. ‘Talk sense, Cliff, please.’

‘
When I left, he had his window wide open.’

She
gave a tiny moan and pressed her fingers to her lips. But her voice was quite firm when she spoke. ‘I don’t believe what you’re trying to say.’

‘
It’s all over, you see. The police now have George Peters’ statement, and I know all about what happened. About George’s death, Tessa’s death, perhaps Arthur Pitt’s death, but I couldn’t prove it. And all of it arose out of the original death of Colin Rampton. Even the attack on me. After all, I must have
known
by that time, though I probably hadn’t made sense out of it. But the intention wasn’t just to get the statement from me, it was to make a good job of it and finish me off. I wasn’t intended to recover, because then I might have denied that George Peters had signed that withdrawal.’

I
had been talking on, deliberately giving her time to recover, using a dull, matter-of-fact tone. She was taking deep breaths, and eventually her eyes moved away from me. She had absorbed it, taken it in, and accepted.

‘
Would you like a drink?’ she asked.

‘
Thank you, but not now.’

‘
Then you don’t mind if I do?’

‘
Don’t you think you’ve...’

She
was on her feet, her voice a whiplash. ‘Don’t dictate to me, Cliff. You never could, so don’t try to start now.’

I
smiled up into her face until she turned away with a sharp exclamation of anger. She went across the room. I didn’t follow her with my eyes, but listened to the agitated rattle of glass and bottle. Laddie put a damp nose on to my knee. She returned, carrying a glass of amber liquid that looked like straight scotch, and sat deliberately, straightening her skirt primly as though I was a stranger to her legs. She was calm and contained again.

‘
And Michael admitted all this?’

‘
I didn’t take a statement – but yes.’

‘
If that’s a poor attempt at sarcasm...’

‘
Far from it. I’m only putting on record that there’s no proof, nothing in writing. He spoke at length, and I listened. He was using me to wash out his conscience. Nothing in writing, though he did say he’d write down the name of his partner.’

She
stared at me over the glass. Her eyes reflected the amber. They were big, and filled with pain. ‘Partner?’ she whispered.

‘
Didn’t you know he was into drugs, Val?’

‘
That’s a lie!’ she shouted. ‘Michael would never take...’

‘
I didn’t say take. Into drugs, in a small way. Trafficking. Pushing. Call it what you like. For money, Val. Money.’

‘
Damn you!’ she spat, and she threw the dregs of the glass at me.

I
fished out a handkerchief and wiped my face. It would have been an insult to her. She underlined it.

‘
Why should he?’ she cried, her voice breaking with her anger. ‘He had mine. He knew that. Why...’

‘
I think it started before you were married, Val. Easy now. Listen, please, and think. He was desperate for money, and I suppose, when you get into that sort of thing, it’s not easy to back out of it.’ And also, he would strive to be free of Val’s money, but I didn’t say that.

She
searched my face, wondering whether I was trying to be kind, then she gave an exclamation of rejection. ‘Not Michael.’

‘
Very well. If you say so, not Michael. It’s not vastly important.’

‘
It is to me.’

‘
The treasured memory?’

‘
God-damn you, Cliff! That blasted sarcasm again.’

‘
No. I assure you.’ I shook my head. ‘Sorry – I suppose it was. But you’d naturally be annoyed that he hadn’t turned to you.’

‘
Anything!’ she cried. ‘Anything he asked, he could have had.’

‘
Or taken,’ I murmured.

‘
What?’

‘
Anything he couldn’t have, he killed for it.’

‘
That’s a filthy thing to say.’

‘
One crushed skull, Val, one, two, three murders, possibly four, and tonight, nearly another.’

She
showed her teeth. ‘He admitted to all that?’

‘
Not...exactly. Colin Rampton, now. Killed with a BMW 525, gently pushing Rampton’s car off its jacks. I know exactly how it was done. Your car was due in for some work to be done on it. Something about pulling to the right when braking. It was due in at the garage at 5.30, and Rampton died at 5.20. That was the time it was actually delivered. Michael delivered it.’

I
paused. She made no comment, for a moment stared into her glass, saw it was empty, then jumped up to refill it. I waited patiently until she was sitting opposite to me again.

‘B
ut there’s something out of phase with that reconstruction,’ I said. ‘I mean, you can imagine Michael using your BMW that day, intending to drive it in the same evening and leave it. Think about it, though. How would he have got home? Taxi? Seems very cumbersome. And to arrange for you to drive in with the Rover to pick him up...well, that would be stupid. Much easier all round for you to drive the BMW in and leave it, and have Michael pick you up there, on his way home from his office. Don’t you think?’

‘
Your brain
was
affected!’ she said thinly. ‘I think you’d better leave, Cliff.’

‘
There’s more.’

‘
More nonsense?’

‘
I don’t think so. It would be natural for you to drive round the rear, in the circumstances I’ve just told you, cut your engine and lights, and walk through to the foreman’s office with the car keys. A BMW is quiet. You need not have been noticed – not noticed, even, when you walked through the repair bay, the noise they sometimes make. And there you’d see Colin Rampton, lying dangerously with his car sump inches from his chest and a ton of car above him. You had perhaps met Rampton in Michael’s office, and what Michael’s said suggests you’d have known Rampton had been blackmailing him. No reason why you shouldn’t, because he’d have had to tell you about the fraud.’

I
paused, waiting, but she said nothing. I smiled at her. ‘So you went back to the car, started it again, and gently shoved Rampton’s car off its jacks.’

‘
This is pure fantasy!’ she cried, waving her glass wildly.

‘B
ut is it, Val? Remember we’re alone, and there’s no scrap of proof. What would you do next? I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d back out and drive away, and bring the car back the next morning. Yes...I can see that that was what probably happened. That was how Tessa Clayton came to be suspicious. This is the original murder I’m talking about, Val. The murder that sparked it all off. Your murder.’

She
stared at me sightlessly. I waited, but she seemed not to be with me.

‘
Val?’

There
was nothing of her lips now visible. She parted them with an effort, and spoke with quiet dignity.

‘
It was an act of love.’

I
glanced down at my hands. ‘I see.’ Looked up. ‘As the others were. Michael’s reciprocal offering to you.’

‘
Why do you have to degrade every emotional act, Cliff! You’re completely insensitive.’

‘
Degrade?’ I looked beyond her head. ‘I suppose I am.’ I reached forward to prevent her response. ‘Maybe I had all the emotion knocked out of me, that night, but try as I may I can’t feel sorry for him. Did George really have to die, just because he’d seen Rampton killed? Did Tessa have to be blasted to death because of her petty bit of blackmailing? I suppose you know he loved her, Val? No? Don’t shake your head like that – you’re rejecting it, not denying it. But he loved her, yet all the same he killed her. An act of love. But by that time love didn’t enter into anything. Everything was for himself. In the end, it was all a desperate attempt to cover up.’

I
got to my feet. ‘But as I say, no proof. Nobody will be coming for you, Val. You’re safe.’

‘
Cliff...’

I
looked down at Laddie. ‘I wish I had time to take him a walk.’