Authors: Barry Maitland
WHEN THEY ARRIVED, BROCK
was already there, in jeans and sneakers, rubber gloves on his hands, carefully working his way round the room with Leon Desai and a couple of men from Scene of Crime. Brock was so engrossed that he didn’t notice her arrival, but Desai looked up immediately, and shot her an odd glance, relief or solidarity, it was hard to tell. He took a couple of paces towards her, and for a moment she thought he might have been going to put an arm around her, but Bren bustled in behind and Desai’s gesture faded.
There wasn’t a lot to see. Bettina’s living arrangements were the precise opposite of Stafford’s, a single room, almost devoid of furniture or belongings. In one corner a black duvet lay crumpled on a futon mattress. A built-in cupboard contained one rack of clothes on hangers, and half a dozen drawers.
“Did she really live here?” Kathy looked round the bare space. Two posters were taped to the wall, one a rock band, the other the tail of a whale over a dark ocean. It made Kathy’s flat seem cluttered.
“Sir.” One of the SOCOs held up a packet of condoms and a photograph he had found in a drawer beneath underwear. Zoë Bagnall’s face again, eyes closed, throat intact, the lighting and format as in the one Kathy had received from Stafford.
“Leon,” Brock said, “give Morris Munns a ring, would you? Ask him if he’d care to leave his nice soft bed and have a look at this for us.”
IN HIS DREAM, TOM
Gentle was in an ambulance, sirenhowling, speeding through deserted streets, on and on towards a hospital which they could not find. He woke up with a start and realized he was hearing the persistent bleat of the car alarm in his BMW.
He swore softly and slipped out of bed, leaving Muriel undisturbed. Dressing-gown, slippers, keys, he padded down the stairs. The dog was as oblivious to the nagging sound as his wife. He opened the back door, and saw that it was dawn, but a dawn dimmed by black, threatening clouds stretching from horizon to horizon. It was unexpectedly cold outside too, and the gravel drive was wet from recent rain. It was over at last, the summer. Thin summer dresses would give way to heavier skirts, sandals to boots, lifestyles would adjust.
There was no sign of anyone around the car. He aimed the remote at it and pressed the button, cutting off the noise and the flashing hazard lights. He turned back and nearly jumped out of his skin, finding himself face to face with a woman.
“Shit!” he said, and then recognized her. “What are you doing here?”
“Get in the car, Mr. Gentle,” Kathy said softly.
“What . . . Why the hell should I?”
“Just do as I tell you.” She spoke without emphasis, and turned to walk round to the passenger door. She was dressed oddly, in a man’s shirt and a pair of black trousers too big for her. And a gun in a holster on the belt, tucked up on her hip. He goggled at it in surprise, then fumbled the remote again to unlock the car.
They got in and closed the doors, and Kathy stared forward out of the windscreen for a moment before turning to face him. “Basil Hannaford killed Bettina tonight,” she said. “He blew her head off with a shotgun. Two barrels at five yards. It was like hitting her head with a huge sledge-hammer. He thought he was killing you.”
Gentle didn’t say anything. His soft, rather full lips shrivelled a little and his puppy-dog eyes widened.
“I wanted to tell you this myself, so that you would understand.”
“Understand what?” His throat was dry.
“I find it physically loathsome being so close to you,” Kathy went on, “knowing what you did. For a moment, while I was standing there waiting for you to come down, I remembered Angela, and I thought the best thing, really, would be to sit like this, beside you here, and put a bullet through your head, and just end it.
“We know what you did, you see, but I’m not sure how long it will take us to prove it. Our photographic expert says that the two pictures of Zoë Bagnall that Bettina had—before and after her throat was cut—had a small area near one corner which was out of focus. This would be due to a flaw in a lens, either in the camera that took the picture, or more likely in the enlarger that made the print. The same flaw is present in some of the pictures we found in your attic. But is a flaw like that unique? It’s not like a fingerprint. Maybe other lenses have the same flaw, those in the same batch as your enlarger lens, maybe all the ones the manufacturer made that year.
“This is only a detail, of course. The real reason we know what you did is the pattern of events itself. Without you it makes no
sense. It’s too coincidental. With you it comes, finally, into focus. But that wouldn’t necessarily make an argument in court. We would have to rely on the forensic evidence, the flaw in the lens.
“You’re wondering, aren’t you, if I would try to stop you, if you were to run back into the house at this point, upstairs to your darkroom, and pull out that lens and smash it to pieces?”
Gentle was motionless, his back clammy with sweat against his pyjama top, although he felt icy cold.
“I don’t mind if you do, because it would be the action of a guilty person. But, as I said, I don’t think it will make much difference either way. In the end, I would guess you would be in the clear after three months, six months, even if it got to court.
“And by that time Hannaford would be free too. Oh yes, I think he would. Who could blame him for being driven to do that to the killer of his daughter? I know several journalists who will make a hero of him. And what would be the point of keeping him in jail if the court decided that Bettina acted alone?
“But he would know the truth.
“I saw the look on his face after he saw what he’d done to Bettina. He was elated. He had avenged Angela. I daresay you can imagine what will go through his head when he realizes that he didn’t, not really. I was thinking about that as I drove over here. He’s shown us what he’s capable of. And he’s surprisingly resourceful. He managed to tail me for two weeks without me knowing. I don’t care on your account, but I worry about your wife. I think Hannaford might start with her, to try to make you suffer the way he suffered.
“I wanted to tell you all this, because I couldn’t stand the thought of you listening to the news this morning about Hannaford and Bettina, and thinking that it was over, and that you were in the clear. I wanted you to understand what the rest of your life was going to be like.”
Kathy stopped and took a deep breath. The dawn had got no
brighter, the heavy clouds suffocating the light. Ahead of them a car appeared on the lane leading to the house, headlights on. It came to a stop at the garden gate and waited.
“They’ve come to dig up your garden, Tom, and pull your house apart. It’s purely a formality. They’re angry because they can’t find Zoë Bagnall.”
They sat in silence for several minutes, and then he said softly, “What do you want me to do?”
She let the silence hang. Then, “I want you to give me the other photographs,” she said. “The ones we didn’t find last time.”
“
JANICE USED TO GET
on the train at London Bridge.” Gentle seemed remarkably relaxed, now that they were back at the Orpington station, the decision made. To Kathy it seemed as if he must feel no guilt, but Brock, later, suggested that guilt, the enjoyment of guilt, was his guiding principle, all his pleasures guilty ones.
“I noticed her because she looked so much like my sister.” He smirked. “The same superior look, as if travelling in a rush-hour train was really beneath her. I noticed which part of the platform she always stood at, and I’d try to pick the compartment that would stop opposite her when we got to London Bridge. After a couple of times I got it right and she got in, and I gave her a smile and a look, you know, like what a trial this was, having to put up with all the riff-raff. But I never really had a chance to talk to her, because she got off at St. John’s, where the train was still full.
“So I tried a different approach. I travelled in a different part of the train, and got off at St. John’s myself, and followed her home, just to see what the set-up was. I found she lived in an old house, divided into flats—well, you’ve probably seen it. No? Well, when you go there, you’ll see that she had the basement flat. The point was, the rear garden was heavily overgrown, terraced down to the
back of the house, and was accessed from a lane. I found I could get into the garden, and sit in one of the bushes there and look down into her flat, completely unobserved. So I decided I wouldn’t try to speak to her any more. Instead I’d make her one of my ‘sleeping beauties.’ ”
He grinned mischievously. “That’s the name I give the girls I snap without them knowing, without ever speaking to them. Well, it worked a treat. The basement was fairly dark, so she’d put the lights on, even in summer, and with a fast film I could get quite reasonable pictures with the telephoto lens.
“The third or fourth time, she had a visitor, another woman—Bettina. Janice fussed round her, very pleased to see her. She gave her a glass of wine, and they sat together on the sofa, and then Janice took an office file, quite thick, out of the shoulder bag she took to work, and showed it to the other woman. From the way she did it, offering it, then pulling it away, I could see she was teasing her. Bettina went along with it for a bit, then grabbed it and started to look inside. While she did this, Janice began stroking her and nuzzling her, and it was clear what she was after.”
Gentle grinned, a naughty boy enjoying the full attention of his audience, and raised a glass of water from the table in front of him. A feeble ray of autumnal sunlight had crept across the ceiling of the interview room from the high-level windows.
“Janice was getting a bit carried away. She was trying to make Bettina put the papers down, and Bettina didn’t look as if she was enjoying it one bit. Eventually she said something to Janice, who nodded and let her go. Bettina left the room, and Janice sat waiting for her, looking pretty pleased with herself. A couple of minutes later Bettina returned, Janice lifted her face up to her, as if for a kiss, and Bettina bent over her, wrapped something—her tights it looked like—around her throat and then hung on for grim life until Janice had stopped thrashing around.”
He blew through pursed lips, a small percussive sound to
emphasize the raised eyebrows which said, “Well, how about that, chaps!” Brock stared impassively back at him. “She killed Janice?”
“She was bloody strong for a girl, I could tell that. She pulled Janice half out of the seat, and she held her there with the tights around her throat until she stopped struggling. Then she let go, and Janice just crumpled down, like a sack of potatoes.
“I was stunned, as you could imagine. I mean, sometimes when I’m taking my pictures I get a glimpse into people’s private lives, but never anything like this! I’d got it all on film, the whole bloody lot. I was just hoping my grip had been steady enough. I watched while Bettina cleaned up. She was very cool. She wiped everything, put away the wine glass she’d had, arranged Janice in the chair as if she was asleep, and found a plastic carrier bag for the file of papers Janice had brought for her. She also took some money from Janice’s purse. As she was getting ready to go I nipped out to the lane, back down to the street, just in time to see her come out of the house. Then I followed her, back to St. John’s station, up to London Bridge, then the tube, northbound as far as Kings Cross, then the Piccadilly line north to Wood Green, where she lived.”
“She lived in Wood Green, did she?”
“At that time, yes. I can find you the address if you want.”
“Thanks.”
A model of co-operation.
“I discovered her name too, from the label on her front door. Well, I went home, in a bit of a daze. I wasn’t sure what to do. I certainly didn’t want to put myself in the situation of having to explain what I’d been doing in that garden. I decided not to do anything until I’d seen how the photographs came out. Well, as you saw, they came out pretty well.”
“Yes,” Brock nodded. “Remarkable.”
“Thanks.” Gentle smiled, modestly pleased with himself. “I thought I should send them to the police or something, but I
didn’t want them tracing them to me, and anyway . . . the longer I looked at the pictures . . . ”
“What?”
“I don’t know, Janice looked so incredibly like Nora—my sister. Seeing her being throttled like that . . . I mean, it was shocking, but . . . I didn’t really see why I should spoil it, by turning Bettina in.”
“Sorry,” Brock broke in. “I didn’t quite follow that. You’re saying that you liked the idea of someone strangling your sister? You wanted to help the person who did it?”
Gentle shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Not exactly. No, that’s not important. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. You’d better take that out of the record. I just thought . . . it was an accident me being there. I was just a chance observer. Why should I get involved?”
Brock didn’t pursue the change of tack. “Go on then.”
“After some time, several weeks it was, I thought I might contact Bettina. Just to talk to her.”
“To blackmail her?”
“Oh no!” Gentle was shocked. “Nothing like that! I just felt . . . this thing had happened, and I’d seen it, and . . . I wanted her to know.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me again. What were you hoping to gain?”
“Not gain. Not exactly
gain.
” He raised his eyes to the ceiling, trying to find a way to put it, an artist trying to explain to a philistine that if you can’t
feel
it, how can I possibly explain it to you?
“You’ve seen those photographs, Chief Inspector. We see much worse, much more violent images every time we go to the cinema, or switch on the TV. These weren’t as good, actually, in terms of clarity, photographic quality. But the fact that they were recording something
real
, not pretend! That makes them so incredibly
compelling, doesn’t it? That woman in the picture really is on the point of dying! My God, that makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
The more Brock looked bemused and uncomprehending, the more agitated Gentle became.