Apportionment of Blame

APPORTIONMENT
OF BLAME

APPORTIONMENT
OF BLAME

KEITH REDFERN

Apportionment of Blame

THAMES RIVER PRESS
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC)
Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press (
www.anthempress.com
)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by
THAMES RIVER PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road
London SE1 8HA

www.thamesriverpress.com

© Keith Redfern 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary
and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78308-218-6

This title is also available as an eBook

Acknowledgements

M
y
thanks to Thames River Press for accepting my novel for publication and for their advice and assistance.

I am indebted to Felicity Collier for information on the adoption service and the process by which children may trace their birth mothers.

My editor, Angela Abid, did a wonderful job and made some very valuable suggestions. Thanks Angela.

Another friend from France (where this novel was written), Iain Wodehouse-Easton, provided invaluable insights into the process of publishing and helped encourage me through the submission process.

And to Rosemary, my wife, who has been and remains my chief source of encouragement and support, all my love.

Chapter 1

I
could
still make out the shape of neighbouring rooftops in the failing light. I considered putting on the lamp, but realised I could see outside more clearly without it. Anyway, it felt more atmospheric in the gathering gloom and it would do no harm to keep the electric bill as low as possible.

Stretching out my legs, I pushed against the desk and sent myself and the swivel chair pirouetting across the office. I was now sufficiently skilled at this manoeuvre to reach the filing cabinet with one deft scoot on the carpet; well, all right, vinyl.

Where was Joyce? She should have been here ages ago.

I looked at my watch once again. How long was it since I called her? Long enough for her to have caught a train to London and taken the tube to my office. Even allowing for the vagaries of the Circle Line, two and a half hours should have been plenty.

I began to rub the ends of my fingers roughly through my hair in an attempt to massage some wakefulness into my skull. It didn't work.

It was four thirty and almost dark. The day had been as busy and unrewarding as usual; then the note arrived.

A messenger in a black crash helmet thumped up the stairs to bring it.

“You Greg Mason?”

“Yes.”

“This is for you.”

And then he was gone.

The message said: ‘IF YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW SHE DIED, LOOK UNDER THE BENCH BELOW THE FRIENDS MAGN OLIA'. It was all in capital letters cut from newsprint. But what could it mean?

Clearly it referred to Helen, no one else had died. But how did anyone know I was looking into her death?

And what bench, and what about that friend's magnolia? It didn't make any sense.

As soon as I had told Joyce, she said she would come up and join me.

“We can work this out together,” she had said. “Two heads are better than one.”

Certainly this head wasn't making much progress.

I looked round the office, but saw no inspiration there, just a stack of shelves above the filing cabinet, all empty; a cane chair and a desk that had looked perfect in the shop, but now seemed to fill the room.

All the walls were bare - about like my brain at the moment -but at least the white emulsion was still reflecting some light from outside, what little there was.

I tried to persuade myself that this was what detective work was all about; that I was the famous investigator, waiting to solve another case of international mystery and intrigue. Greg Mason, the good guy, the clean living idealist, struggling to fight injustice in an unjust world.

Who was I kidding? I was twenty-five, in a cheap, cramped room above an Indian restaurant, waiting for something to happen. Or, more precisely, waiting for someone to arrive.

I looked at my watch again and felt pretty useless, just standing there, waiting.

My eyes caught the first signs of a star in the darkening sky and I spent several minutes trying to work out in which direction I was looking and which star it was, before I realised it was an aircraft coming straight towards me. Some detective.

The sound of a car, moving very fast and getting nearer, pulled me out of both my reverie and my chair and I went to the window, my gaze aimed along the street. As the car reached my building I thought I heard a door slam and more out of curiosity than anything, I craned further forward to look down in front of the ground floor.

My first thought was to be glad I had not turned on the light. My second thought froze my stare. A body lay, bent like a horseshoe, against a concrete lamp standard.

I didn't want to look, yet I couldn't avert my eyes and the stare remained fixed till I couldn't really see at all.

My mind was telling me this sort of thing doesn't happen. My mind was lying.

As the focus returned to my eyes I suddenly realised who I was looking at. I'm not sure how I knew. I suppose it could have been her clothes, but some sort of instinct in me was certain; gut-wretchingly certain, and I didn't want to be. My immediate reaction was to go down and check, but something stopped me.

Perhaps whoever got Joyce was waiting for me, too. What could she possibly have done to have caused this? We'd only just started this investigation.

I was suddenly scared. Scared of what might happen to me. Scared of what I would have to tell Joyce's parents. Why wouldn't she listen to me and let me work alone?

I had to think. I should have thought before, but who could have expected anything like this? Staying in the office wouldn't do any good, but nothing would do Joyce any good, now. Oh God! What should I do?

Whoever had dumped Joyce was probably waiting just round the corner, waiting for curiosity to draw me out. They must have known I'd heard them. They probably intended that I should. No real detective would walk out into a possible trap, but I had to know for sure who it was and I couldn't leave Joyce just lying there, so I decided.

Leaving the office door open an inch, I was soon down the two flights. My soft, black shoes made no sound, and when I reached the outer door I stopped and opened it slowly and
carefully. I couldn't see anything obvious to worry about, but I knew how many windows there were in that street. There could be someone behind any one of them, or peering round one of the buildings, and if they were looking for me, I would make a sitting target under that street lamp.

There was a shallow, covered area between door and pavement and I eased myself out and stood, side on to the road, my back against one wall.

I strained my eyes to see, but detected no movement, so I repeated the procedure on the other side edging my back against the doorway. Still nothing.

So, in for a penny, I crouched low and launched myself across to the street lamp and then stopped, eyes closed, expecting something violent to happen, but nothing did; nothing at all. It seemed unnaturally quiet.

Staying close to the ground I shuffled round to look at the face. It was Joyce all right and she was breathing, but harshly and she had a tape stretched across her mouth. Well thank God - at least she was alive. “Joyce,” I half whispered and half shouted.

“Joyce. Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

What a stupid question. Yes, of course she's all right. She makes a habit of lying curved around street lamps in the early hours of darkness.

There was a note, safety-pinned to her coat. I tore it off, screwed it up in my hand and pushed it into my pocket.

Crouching down next to her I felt her forehead - it seemed warm. I wanted to pick her up, but recalled all the advice I had heard about not moving people too soon in case there were broken bones. So I felt along her arms and legs. They felt relaxed and I could detect no strange shapes or twists as might have been expected if something was broken.

“Mmmm....mmmm?” Joyce tried to speak.

I was so surprised, I jumped forward from my crouch and banged my head against the lamp standard. As I rubbed the bruise, I could see Joyce beginning to unravel herself.

She felt around the tape and gingerly began to peel it off.

“What exactly were you doing?” were her first words.

“What do you mean, what was I doing? I was trying to find out if you are all right. What did you think? That I thought this was the ideal place for a furtive grope?”

“No. Of course not, stupid.” She tried to smile and failed. At least the attempt took some tension out of the situation, but not much.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I'm all right,” she said unconvincingly.

Then, as if realising exactly how she really felt, she said: “Well I will be when my head clears.” I took her by the arm and helped her to her feet. “What happened to you? Where have you been? Can you walk?”

My questions came pouring out.

“I think so. And I'm not sure what happened.”

“Come on then. Let's get back inside out of sight, before someone starts asking questions.”

I helped her across the pavement and into the doorway, very relieved that apparently no one had seen us.

Back in the office, Joyce lowered herself into the chair - my chair, but I just stood and looked down at her, feeling rather helpless.

“So what happened?”

“I did what the note said,” Joyce said.

“What?”

“And I went to the right place.”

“What place? What are you talking about?”

“Just a minute.” She was rubbing her hands across her face where the tape had been and I could see that she was trembling.

“Would you like a drink?” Useless question.

“What have you got?” She looked up.

“Coffee. But it's real,” saying this to justify the inadequacies of my office provisions. Philip Marlowe would have produced a bottle of Bourbon and two shot glasses from his filing cabinet.

I fiddled about with the kettle and a little steel cafetière, putting in two hefty spoonfuls of ground Colombian.

Eventually I turned, leaving the kettle to boil.

“Now, if you are up to this, what place did you go to? Where have you been? You didn't say you knew where to look.”

“I didn't know until I was on the train. Just as I was dozing off, it hit me. Right across the road from Euston Station is Friends House. I used to see it when I was going back to school after weekends at home.”