Payment In Blood (32 page)

All this
, he thought wryly,
because I was so stupidly ignorant of what Helen meant in my life until it was too late
.

“You needn’t try to comfort me.” It was a woman’s faltering voice, coming from the far side of the bar, just out of the range of Lynley’s vision. “I haven’t come here on any but equal terms. You said, let’s talk truthfully. Well, let’s do! Unsparingly, truthfully, even shamelessly, then!”

“Jo—” David Sydeham responded.

“It’s no longer a secret that I love you. It never was. I loved you as long ago as the time I asked you to read the stone angel’s name with your fingers. Yes, it had begun that early, this affliction of love, and has never let go of me since. And that is my story—”

“Joanna, shut up. You’ve dropped at least ten lines!”

“I haven’t!”

Sydeham and Ellacourt’s words pounded their way into Lynley’s skull. He crossed the lobby, reached the bar, unceremoniously grabbed the script out of Sydeham’s hand, and without a word ran his eyes down the page to find Alma’s speech in
Summer and Smoke
. He didn’t use his spectacles, so the words were blurred. But legible enough. And absolutely indelible.

You needn’t try to comfort me. I haven’t come here on any but equal terms. You said, let’s talk truthfully. Well, let’s do! Unsparingly, truthfully, even shamelessly, then! It’s no longer a secret that I love you. It never was. I loved you as long ago as the time I asked you to read the stone angel’s name with your fingers. Yes, I remember the long afternoons of our childhood…

And yet, for a moment, Lynley had assumed Joanna Ellacourt had been speaking for herself, not using the words that Tennessee Williams had written. Just as young Constable Plater must have assumed when faced with Hannah Darrow’s suicide note fifteen years earlier in Porthill Green.

14

B
ECAUSE OF
a traffic snarl on the M11, he did not arrive in Porthill Green until after one o’clock, and by that time clouds humped along the horizon like enormous tufts of grey cotton wool. A storm was brewing. Wine’s the Plough was not yet locked for its midafternoon closing, but rather than go into the pub at once for his confrontation with John Darrow, Lynley crunched across the snow on the green to a call box that leaned precariously in the direction of the sea. He placed a call to Scotland Yard. It was only a matter of moments before he heard Sergeant Havers’ voice, and from the background noises of crockery and conversation, he guessed that she was taking the call from the officers’ mess.

“Bloody hell, what happened to you?” she demanded. And then amended the question truculently with, “Sir. Where
are
you? You’ve had a phone call from Inspector Macaskin. They’ve done the complete autopsy on both Sinclair and Gowan. Macaskin said to tell you they’ve fixed Sinclair’s time of death between two and a quarter past three. And, he said with a great deal of hemming and hawing that she hadn’t been interfered with. I suppose that was his genteel way of telling me that there was no evidence of forcible rape or sexual intercourse. He said that the forensic team aren’t through with everything they gathered from the room. He’ll phone again as soon as they have it all done.”

Lynley blessed Macaskin’s thoroughness and his self-assured willingness to be of help, unthreatened by the involvement of Scotland Yard.

“We’ve taken Stinhurst’s statement, and I’ve not been able to shake him into a single inconsistency about Saturday night at Westerbrae no matter how many times we’ve been through the story.” Havers snorted scornfully. “His solicitor’s just arrived—your typical old-boy, pinched-nostril type sent by the wife, no doubt, since his lordship hasn’t lowered himself to request the use of a telephone from the likes of me or Nkata. We’ve got him in one of the interrogation rooms, but unless someone comes up with a piece of hard evidence or a witness in double time, we’re in serious trouble. So where in God’s name have you taken yourself?”

“Porthill Green.” He cut off her protest with, “Listen to me. I’m not going to argue that Stinhurst isn’t involved in Joy’s death. But I’ll not leave this Darrow situation unresolved. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Joy Sinclair’s door was locked, Havers. So like it or not, our access route is still through Helen’s room.”

“But we’ve already agreed that Francesca Gerrard could well have given—”

“And Hannah Darrow’s suicide note was copied from a play.”

“A
play
? What play?”

Lynley looked across the green to the pub. Smoke curled from its chimney, like a snake against the sky. “I don’t know. But I expect John Darrow does. And I think he’s going to tell me.”

“Where is that going to get us, Inspector? And
what
am I supposed to do with his precious lordship while you jolly about the Fens?”

“Take him through everything once again. With his solicitor present, if he insists. You know the routine, Havers. Plan it out with Nkata. Vary the questions.”

“And then?”

“Then let him go for the day.”

“Inspector—”

“You know as well as I that we have nothing substantial on him at the moment. Perhaps destruction of evidence in the burning of the scripts. But absolutely nothing else save the fact that his brother was a Soviet spy twenty-five years ago and he himself obstructed justice in Geoffrey’s death. I hardly think it’s productive to our case to arrest Stinhurst for that now. And you can’t believe his solicitor isn’t going to insist that we either charge him or release him to his family.”

“We may get something more from the forensic team in Strathclyde,” she argued.

“We may. And when that occurs, we’ll pick him up again. For now, we’ve done all we can. Is that clear?”

He heard the exasperation that edged her reply. “And what will you have me do when I send Stinhurst toddling on his way?”

“Go to my office. Shut the door. Don’t see anyone. Wait to hear from me.”

“And if Webberly wants a report on our progress?”

“Tell him to rot,” Lynley replied, “right after you tell him we’re wise to Special Branch and MI5’s involvement in the case.”

He could hear Havers’ smile—in spite of herself—across the telephone line. “A pleasure, sir. As I’ve always said, when the ship is sinking, one may as well bash a few holes in the bow.”

W
HEN
L
YNLEY
asked for a ploughman’s lunch and a pint of Guinness, John Darrow looked as if he would much rather refuse the business. However, the presence of three dour-looking men at the bar and an elderly woman dozing over gin and bitters by the crackling fire seemed to discourage him from doing so. Therefore, within five minutes, Lynley was occupying one of the tables near the window, tucking into a large plate of Stilton and Cheddar, pickled onions, and crusty bread.

He ate calmly enough, not bothered by the curiosity evidenced in the ill-hushed questions of the other customers. Local farmers, no doubt, they would soon be off to see to the rest of their day’s work, leaving John Darrow with no choice but to face another interview that he appeared to be doing his best to avoid.

Indeed, Darrow had become decidedly congenial towards the men at the bar within moments of Lynley’s arrival, as if an unaccustomed infusion of bonhomie into his behaviour would encourage them to linger long after they would otherwise have departed. They were talking of sports at the moment, a loud conversation about Newcastle football that was interrupted when the pub door opened and a young boy—perhaps sixteen years old—hurried in from the cold.

Lynley had seen him coming from the direction of Mildenhall, on an ancient motorbike whose predominant colour was mud. Wearing heavy work boots, blue jeans, and an antique leather jacket—all stained liberally with what appeared to be grease—the boy had parked in front of the pub and had spent several minutes across the street, admiring Lynley’s car and running his hand along the sleek line of its roof. He had the sturdy build of John Darrow, but his colouring was as light as his mother’s had been.

“Whose boat?” he called out cheerfully as he entered.

“Mine,” Lynley replied.

The boy sauntered over, tossing fair hair off his forehead in that self-conscious way of the young. “Dead nice, that.” He gazed out the window longingly. “Set you back a few quid.”

“
And
continues to do so. It guzzles petrol as if I were the sole support of British Petroleum. Most of the time, frankly, I think about taking on your mode of transportation.”

“Sorry?”

Lynley nodded towards the street. “Your motorbike.”

“Oh that!” The boy laughed. “Quite a piece, that. Got in a smash with it last week and it didn’t even take a dent. Not that you’d notice if it had. It’s so old that—”

“You’ve chores to do, Teddy,” John Darrow interrupted sharply. “See to them.”

While his words effectively ended the conversation between his son and the London policeman, they also served to remind the others of the time. The farmers dropped coins and notes onto the bar, the old woman by the fire gave a loud snort and awoke, and within moments only Lynley and John Darrow were left in the pub. The muted sound of rock and roll and a banging of cupboards in the flat above them spoke of Teddy seeing to his chores.

“He’s not in school,” Lynley noted.

Darrow shook his head. “He’s finished. Like his mum in that. Didn’t hold much with books.”

“Your wife didn’t read?”

“Hannah? Girl never opened a book that I saw. Didn’t even own one.”

Lynley felt in his pocket for his cigarettes, lit one thoughtfully, opened the file on Hannah Darrow’s death. He removed her suicide note. “That’s odd, then, isn’t it? Where do you suppose she copied this from?”

Darrow pressed his lips together as he recognised the paper Lynley had shown him once before. “I’ve nothing more to say on’t.”

“You do, I’m afraid.” Lynley joined the man at the bar, Hannah’s note in his hand. “Because she was murdered, Mr. Darrow, and I think you’ve known that for fifteen years. Frankly, up until this morning, I was certain you’d done the murdering yourself. Now I’m not so sure. But I have no intention of leaving today until you tell me the truth. Joy Sinclair died because she came too close to understanding what happened to your wife. So if you think her death is going to be swept aside because you’d rather not talk about what happened in this village in 1973, I suggest you reconsider. Or we can all go into Mildenhall and chat with Chief Constable Plater. The three of us. You and Teddy and I. For if you won’t cooperate, I’ve no doubt your son has some pertinent memory of his mother.”

“You leave the lad out of it! He’s nothing to do with this! He’s never known! He
can’t
know!”

“Know what?” Lynley asked. The publican played with the porcelain pulls on the ale and the lager, but his face was wary. Lynley continued. “Listen to me, Darrow. I don’t know what happened. But a sixteen-year-old boy—just like your son—was brutally murdered because he came too close to a killer. The same killer—I swear it, I feel it—who murdered your wife. And I
know
she was murdered. So for God’s sake, help me before someone else dies.”

Darrow stared at him dully. “A boy, you say?”

Lynley heard rather than saw the initial crumbling of Darrow’s defences. He pressed the advantage mercilessly. “A boy called Gowan Kilbride. All he wanted in life was to go to London to be another James Bond. A boy’s dream, wasn’t it? But he died on the steps of a scullery in Scotland, with his face and chest scalded like cooked meat and a butcher knife in his back. And if the killer comes here next, wondering how much Joy Sinclair managed to learn from you…How in God’s name will you protect your son’s life or your own from a man or woman you don’t even know!”

Darrow openly struggled with the weight of what Lynley was asking him to do: to go back into the past, to resurrect, to relive. This, in the hope that he and his son might be secure from a killer who had touched their lives with devastating cruelty so many years ago.

His tongue flicked across his dry lips. “It was a man.”

D
ARROW LOCKED
the pub door, and they moved to a table by the fire. He brought an unopened bottle of Old Bushmill’s with him, twisted off the seal, and poured himself a tumbler. For at least a minute, he drank without speaking, fortifying himself for what he would ultimately have to say.

“You followed Hannah when she left the flat that night,” Lynley guessed.

Darrow wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. “Aye. She was to help me and one of the local lasses in the pub, so I’d gone upstairs to fetch her, and I found a note on the kitchen table. Only, wasn’t the same note as you’ve there in the file. Was one telling me she was leaving. Going with some fancy nob to London. To be in a play.”

Lynley felt a stirring of affirmation and with it a nascent vindication that told him that, in spite of everything he had heard from St. James and Helen, Barbara Havers and Stinhurst, his instincts had not led him wrong after all. “That’s all the note said?”

Darrow shook his head darkly and looked down into his glass. The whisky gave off a heady smell of malt. “No. She took me to task…as a man. And did a bit of comparing so I’d know for certain what she’d been up to and what’d made her decide to leave. She wanted a
real
man, she said, one who knew how to love a woman proper, please a woman in bed. I’d never pleased her, she said. Never. But this bloke…She described how he did it to her so, she said, if I ever fancied having a woman in the future, I’d know how to do it right, for once. Like she was doing me a favour.”

“How did you know where to find her?”

“Saw her. When I read the note, I went to the window. She must’ve only just left a minute or two before I went up to the flat because I saw her down at the edge of the village, carrying a big case, setting off on the path to the canal that runs through Mildenhall Fen.”

“Did you think of the mill at once?”

“I thought of nothing but getting my hands on the bloody little bitch and beating her silly. But after a moment, I thought how much tastier it would be to follow her, catch her with him, and have at them both. So I kept my distance.”

“She didn’t see you following her?”

“It was dark. I kept to the far edge of the path where the growth is thickest. She turned round two or three times. I thought she knew I was there. But she just kept walking. She got a bit ahead of me where there’s a bend in the canal, so I missed the turn to the mill and kept going for…perhaps three hundred yards. When I finally saw I’d lost her, I figured where she must be heading—there was little else out there—so I doubled back quick and made my way along the track to the mill. Her case was lying some thirty yards down the way.”

“She’d gone on without it?”

“It was dead heavy. I thought she’d gone on to the mill to have that bloke come back for it. So I decided to wait and have at him right there on the path. Then I’d go on and see to her in the mill.” Darrow poured himself another drink and shoved the bottle towards Lynley, who demurred. “But no one came back for the case,” he went on. “I waited some five minutes. Then I crept up along the path to have a better look. Hadn’t got as far as the clearing when this bloke come out of the mill at a run. He tore round the side. I heard a car start and take off. That was it.”