She's Leaving Home (19 page)

An elderly woman in pearls and twinset had placed a teapot with three china cups and saucers on Manville’s desk. “Will you pour, or shall I?” he asked Tozer.

“Oh no. You go ahead,” said Tozer.

“Julia Sullivan, on the other hand, is the love of my life. Always was. Me and half of the county. I was her father’s solicitor. Lovely man. Very good bridge player. Dead now, of course. Aneurism on the golf course. Lucky fellow. Best way to go. Sugar?”

“Loads, please,” said Tozer.

“Good girl. I can’t play golf anymore, unfortunately. Buggered up my back. Agony.”

He poured the tea into the delicate china cups and handed them around.

“Spendthrift, you say?” said Breen. “They were heavily overdrawn at the bank.”

Manville sat back down in a leather-studded chair and rocked it back and forwards.

“Let me tell you something in absolute confidence,” he said, like a man who enjoyed sharing others’ secrets. “In the summer he marched in and asked me for the deeds for Fonthill. ‘What for?’ says I. Of course, I knew. He was planning to mortgage the place to raise some money. So I told him the deeds were in both of their names and I couldn’t just hand them over without Julia’s permission. I’d made sure of that when they bought that stupid house. With her money, I might add. Should have seen the look on his fat face. A delight.”

“Did she give permission?”

“I doubt he even told her, frankly. He always did things behind her back. He was terrified that he’d disappoint her.” He picked up the small teacup and lifted it, little finger crooked.

“What did he want the money for?”

“Oh, it’s been a long, steady slide. He owes money left, right and center. I saw him in town the other day. Brand-new car. Some idiot had lent him some more, I expect. Well, they won’t be getting it back now, will they? I shouldn’t laugh. Poor Julia. It makes me sad to think of it. So is it true she shot him, then?”

“We don’t know.”

“Awful, really. Can’t say I blame her. Still, it’ll be hard on her, I suppose.”

“Why have you got all those handcuffs?” said Tozer, pointing to the wall.

There was a mahogany wall cabinet mounted on the wall. In it were about a dozen pairs of handcuffs, mounted in four rows of three, some brass, some iron, some chrome, all different shapes and sizes, each with a delicate label beneath them.

“I’m a collector, my dear,” said Manville.

“Of handcuffs?”

“He told us he was in London on business a few days before his daughter was killed,” said Breen. “Do you have any idea what that would have been about?”

“No, no idea at all, I’m afraid. Are you interested in handcuffs, my dear?”

“Only professionally.”

“I have several from the 1800s. All in working order. You can try them out if you like.”

“No thank you, sir,” said Tozer.

Manville smiled. “They’re wasted up there in the cabinet. They’d look lovely on you, I’m sure.”

“No, really, I’m fine, thank you.”

While they were talking, Breen had taken out the photographs of Morwenna standing in her tree house. He pushed them across the table towards Manville.

“Yes. There she is. Poor Morwenna too. An unfortunate girl. Her father’s looks instead of her mother’s. And his temper too. And dead now.”

“Do you recognize where that photo was taken?”

“That would be The Last Resort.”

“What?”

“That’s what Julia called it,” said the solicitor. “The Last Resort. It was just a glorified summerhouse, really. Beautiful spot up on Dartmoor. It was a kind of artistic commune. Wild parties. Orgies, I expect. She holed up in there with all these bohemians and beat poets. I visited her there sometimes. She was very refreshing, a very poetic person, if you understand me. And then that bore Sullivan came along and elbowed in and the moment they were married he insisted they move into somewhere grander off in Cornwall. He was an arse. He never understood her.”

“She sold it?”

“No, no. She refused. Good for her. But she had to rent it out because they needed the money.”

Afterwards in the car, Tozer said, “What a sicko. All those handcuffs. What do you think he does with them?”

“He just collects them, I suppose.”

“He’s kinky, if you ask me,” she said.

Compared with Cornwall, Devon seemed almost comically green. The lumpy hills and neatly trimmed hedgerows. The prettiness left him ill at ease.

“Was your dad OK after this morning?” asked Breen.

Tozer nodded. “He said he was checking some cows for mastitis, but I think he was finding some reason that he didn’t have to talk to me. I swear he used to talk all the time when we were kids.” She chewed on her sandwich some more. “Sometimes I find myself wondering if he’d be hurt as bad if it was me that was dead. I’m not sure he would. Alex was his favorite, see?”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she said. “It’s always like that, really, isn’t it? There are always favorites.”

“I don’t know. I was an only child.”

“This the right one?” said Tozer.

Breen looked at the yellow notepaper in front of him that the lawyer had given them. “According to the map.”

“Funny-looking place.” Tozer peered at it through the trees.

The Last Resort turned out to be tucked away from the road. A chocolate-box wooden house, green and white paint peeling. It sat on the bank above the lane, hidden by trees. They had parked the Morris on the edge of the narrow lane, close enough to the hedge to let other vehicles pass, but only just.

“We should have told Sergeant Block we were coming out here,” said Breen.

“Why?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“This is 1968, sir. There aren’t any ‘supposed to’s’ left.”

“That’s not true.”

“What’s the chances we find anything up there, anyway?”

The gate to the footpath that led up to it was not locked; the path was choked with fallen leaves.

“Do you think there’s anybody in?”

“Doesn’t really look like it.”

The chalet’s faded curtains were closed. Breen went to the front door and knocked, then called, “Hello?”

Nobody answered. He walked round the wooden building. There was a fresh log pile stacked against the back wall in readiness for winter. Lying on an unruly lawn, a fallen tree trunk had been carved into the shape of a Picasso-ish reclining nude, arms stretched above her head.

“No sign of anyone,” said Tozer, face pressed up against a windowpane.

At the rear of the house, a series of water butts gathered rain from the roof, green mold streaking down their sides.

“Well, it was worth a try, I suppose,” said Tozer. “What now?”

“I don’t know.”

“We could go for a drive on the moors. See if we can find somewhere to have a bit of lunch.”

A jar full of paintbrushes stood on a bench, filled with more rainwater.

“Well? What else is there to do? It’s not like the Constabulary want us poking our nose into any of this anyway.”

From the back of the house, a pathway led into the woods. Breen was in his brogues. He wished he’d brought a pair of Wellingtons from Tozer’s collection.

“Where are you going?”

“Just looking around.”

The path was narrow and led to a small stream that cascaded down the hillside. It was dammed. Someone had built a small pool into the surface of the hill, collecting the brown water off the moor. Dark leaves rotted below the surface.

“I expect she used to swim naked here. What do you think?”

She had followed him down the path.

“I imagine her as being the kind of woman who swims naked,” said Tozer.

The path continued up the hill.

“Nobody would see you here,” she continued. “You could pretty much do as you please. All them orgies that solicitor was talking about, probably.”

Breen followed the path up past the stream, skidding on the rocks and mud in his leather soles. The place was dank and rotten underfoot.

“Oh, wow. There are little sculptures here,” said Tozer. “Did you see them? They’re a bit overgrown.”

Breen was walking up the pathway, about twenty yards away now, in the thick woods. The light filtered down through autumn trees. Something caught his eye among the bracken and bramble that lined the narrow path. Leaning down, he picked up a piece of rubbish that someone seemed to have dropped by the pathway. He unfolded it carefully and held it up to the light.

“Tozer?” he whispered.

She was too far away. “Oh, Lord. Naked people. Little statues of nudie people dancing.”

“Shh.”

“Nobody’s got bosoms that big. Not even Jayne Mansfield.”

“Tozer. Quiet,” he hissed.

“What?”

He held up the piece of rubbish and waved it at her.

Through the branches, she looked at him, puzzled. “Wait there,” she said, starting to crash through the undergrowth towards him.

He held his finger up to his mouth but it didn’t lessen the noise she made tramping through the undergrowth.

“What is it?” she asked when she was next to him.

He held up the wrapper.

“So?”

He pulled out his notebook awkwardly and thumbed through it, then opened the page. “See?” he said. He held the page book towards her.

“I can’t really read that.”

“Rich Tea biscuits,” he said.

Abruptly, she burst out laughing, loudly enough to startle a magpie that flapped up into the tree canopy. “I’m sorry,” she said.

The shot was not loud, but it felt like it was close. A muffled pop that could have come from yards away.

Tozer’s laughter stopped dead. She dropped down onto her hands and knees and crawled to the tree behind which Breen was sheltering.

“It might just have been someone hunting pigeons,” she whispered.

“It might.”

They were pressed against each other. Breen was conscious of the bony warmth of her, her short breaths. After a minute, she said, “How long are we going to stay here?”

Breen said nothing.

“What if we go back to the car and find a phone? Then call up the Devon and Cornwalls?”

“Like you said, it might just have been someone hunting pigeons.”

“Or rabbits.”

“Right.”

“Want me to go?”

He shook his head, then peered out from the tree. “You reckon it came from over there?”

She nodded. He stood up. “Hello?”

No answer.

“Hello?” he called again.

The usual sound of the woodland had reasserted itself. A two-note birdsong. They had heard nobody moving, nobody running away.

He moved forward; the crack of a stick underneath his foot almost made him throw himself to the ground. “Is there someone there?”

Nobody answered; nobody moved.

“What was that, then?” Tozer finally said. “I could have sworn that gun was close.”

Gaining confidence, they spread out, peering behind the larger trees, into thickets of bramble. The woods were a long strip of land, maybe thirty yards wide, that stretched around the contour of the hillside. Breen saw small, strange, brightly colored fungi, orange tentacles forcing their way through the leaves, big blobby pale lumps, small bright red upturned cups. There were small piles of droppings, and the half-eaten carcass of a wood pigeon. The rich smell of rot. But no sign of another person; not even a sign of footprints or broken branches. The biscuit wrapper must have just been a coincidence.

“That was weird,” said Tozer.

Breen wondered if they had imagined it. Or maybe it was some strange trick of the local air currents that had made a distant hunter’s shot seem closer than it was; maybe the air really was thicker in Devon.

“I’m hungry,” said Tozer. “Can we get some lunch?”

They started to retrace theirs steps back towards the pool and the small chalet.

“I thought she’d be here,” said Breen.

“The locals are probably right. She’s long gone. We should go. It’s starting to rain, I think. I just felt a raindrop.”

They walked back, past the chalet to the car. The key was stiff in the lock, and Tozer spent some time struggling with the door. When she opened it and leaned across the seats to open Breen’s door, he noticed some color in her hair.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“Where?”

“On your head,” he said, getting in beside her.

She touched the top of her head and brought her fingers down; there was a small smear of redness.

“Here,” he said, pulling her head towards him. There was a little spot of blood in her hair, but no sign of any wound.

“What the…?”

Breen was out of the door, running back up the narrow path past the pond. By the time she caught up with him, back in the woods, he was staring upwards. Twenty feet above their heads was a small tree house, built around the trunk of a tall beech tree.

“My God.”

There were planks across the bottom of the structure. Something dark had made an oval stain on the wood. Slowly, drop by drop, it fell to the ground.

B
reen stamped his feet in the cold to try and get his muscles back under his control.

“They’ll be here soon,” said Tozer, looking up at the tree.

“They’ll be here soon,” Breen shouted, hoping whoever was in the tree house could still hear.

Walking towards the edge of the woods to try and get a better view of the tree house, they found the Jaguar covered in a green tarpaulin. She had driven it up a muddy track and left it at the side of the field. Breen lifted the tarpaulin; the front driver side light was smashed.

“You think she shot herself when she heard us?”

He nodded. “I think so. She pulled the ladder up after herself so no one could see she was up there.”

“She’s almost certainly dead, sir.”

Breen had nothing to say.

Tozer stamped her feet to keep warm. “So, what do you reckon? Major Sullivan goes up to London, has some sort of argument with his daughter. Ends up killing her. When we come down here and tell Julia Sullivan her daughter’s dead, she figures out he’s killed her, takes a shotgun and shoots him and runs away here, because it’s a place she used to live with her daughter. Then she shoots herself?”

Breen’s neck was aching from looking up at the tree house. “It’s possible.”

“You think it was hearing me, seeing us, that made her do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“God. Everything we do is wrong, isn’t it?”

Breen didn’t answer. The view from here was no better. He walked back into the woods. The blood at the base of the tree house looked black in the dimming light.

Sergeant Block stood below, collar turned up. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”

It was almost dark by the time a fire engine had arrived with ladders. The blood had stopped falling a long time ago. On the uneven ground the firemen were trying to wedge chocks under the base of a long ladder to make it steady enough to reach the tree house.

Tozer had fetched a tartan rug from the boot of the Morris Oxford. It was covered in dog hair, but she’d placed it round Breen’s shoulders to try and stop him shivering.

“Why didn’t you tell me you thought she was here?” said Block.

Breen pulled the blanket tighter round him. “You know, I wish I had. Then it would have been you here, instead of us.”

“You didn’t tell us you were coming down to interview the Sullivans. You turn up there and one of them ends up dead. You didn’t tell us you knew where Julia Sullivan was hiding and now she’s probably dead as well.”

“I didn’t know for sure she was here.”

“You obviously had an idea.”

“She’d still have shot herself the moment she saw you coming.”

Block spat onto the leaves on the ground. “Maybe I wouldn’t have just blundered in without knowing if she was here or not in the first place. If it is her.”

“Move please, gents,” said a fireman, carrying a long coil of rope to the ladder.

They stood back a little way. The fireman slung the rope over his shoulder and began to climb the ladder. It was dark now and another fireman trained a strong torch up to help him see. In the beam of light, the blood on the timbers shone red. At the top of the ladder, the fireman spent what seemed like minutes tying the top rungs to the tree. Breen trod impatiently below. Eventually the man switched on his own torch and put his head up into the trapdoor.

He shone the torch down, dazzling them. “It’s a woman,” he called.

“I should take a look,” said Breen.

“You can read my report. I’ll send you a copy. Now get out of here.”

Breen shook his head. “I should see the scene.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Block. “Get out of here, the pair of you.”

They stood a while longer, while the firemen tied pulleys to the tree so they could begin to lower the body down, before Breen turned his back and walked to the car, Tozer following behind.

“Tosspot,” said Tozer, turning on the engine. “Block.”

She switched on the interior light and leaned across to Breen’s seat, her body across his, and pulled down the sun visor. She tried to peer at the top of her head in the vanity mirror. “Is there blood there? I can’t see.”

She flattened her dark hair down onto her head and stretched her eyes upwards, but could see nothing.

“I want a bath.” She released the clutch and the car lurched forward. “I feel like Lady Macbeth.”

The car shot down the small lanes.

Breen sat, hand gripping the side of the seat. “He was right, though. We made a mess of it and because of that she’s dead.”