This Way Out (20 page)

‘Final for tonight, that is,' said Sergeant Lloyd. She smiled at the younger Cartwrights, and Derek reluctantly introduced his family. Hands were shaken, but the detectives refused the offer of a drink.

‘We're giving a press and television conference later this evening,' explained the chief inspector, ‘and appealing for possible witnesses to come forward. Better steer clear of alcohol until that's over.'

‘Do you suspect anyone?' asked Lyn.

‘No, it's early days yet. But at least we've got a possible lead. Someone noticed a man with binoculars hanging about beside a parked car by the bridge on the Doddenham road, on the day before Mrs Long's death.'

Derek's mouth went dry.

‘Couldn't it have been a bird-watcher?' he said.

The sergeant turned her head. ‘Did you see him, too, Mr Cartwright?'

‘No, no. It's just that you said he had binoculars – and that's quite a well-known spot for bird-watching.'

‘First I've heard of it,' muttered Tim.

‘As it happens,' said Sergeant Lloyd, ‘the person who saw him thought he was a bird-watcher. Apparently he was wearing all the gear. But he's described as a small man, and he was looking towards the field path from which we think the murderer approached your house, so we'd very much like to talk to him.'

‘Or to anyone else who might have seen him, or who noticed his car,' said the chief inspector. ‘If he had no connection with the murder, we'd like to eliminate him from our enquiries.'

Derek took several deep breaths in an attempt to steady his heartbeat. The standard police phrase had an ominous ring to it, but there was no need to panic. Even if anyone could remember any details of the car, Packer had said that he had since changed the number plates. No one could possibly trace the man that way. Relax.

‘What we came to see you about, though, Mr Cartwright,' said the chief inspector, ‘is your dog.'

‘My dog?'

‘Yes, I'm afraid we've had no sightings from our patrol car. What I thought, though, since Mrs Cartwright is so concerned about him, is that we might give him a mention to the press. We do our best to keep reporters away from the family, as you know, but they've got a job to do and no doubt they'll be glad enough to use the lost dog story. If you'd like us to release it, that is?'

Derek swallowed, trying to moisten his mouth. ‘Er – yes. Yes, of course – please do.'

‘Thank you very much, Chief Inspector,' said Tim, standing squarely opposite his father. ‘We'll all be grateful if Sam can be found. What we don't understand – we were just saying this to Dad when you arrived – is how he ever came to be lost.'

‘I couldn't help it,' said Derek. ‘I didn't
want
to lose him.'

‘Nobody said you did,' argued his first-born, looking more patriarchal than ever. ‘But what bothers Mum – and us – is why on earth you took him all the way to the forest in the pouring rain.'

‘I told her: it wasn't raining when I set out.'

‘And you were wearing your office suit, so she said.'

‘I was going to visit a client.'

‘You don't have personal clients,' said Richard.

‘Not exactly a personal client – a bank manager, a useful contact.'

‘On a Saturday afternoon?' said Lyn.

‘Yes – just a social call, really. He'd invited me to visit him at his home, near Fodderstone.'

‘Fodderstone?' said Tim. ‘That's on the other side of the forest from Two Mile Bottom.'

‘Who said anything about Two Mile Bottom?'

‘You did,' said Lyn. ‘You told Mum that was where you lost Sam, at our old picnic place.'

Derek had forgotten. He glanced at the detectives, and saw that they were listening with undisguised interest. Sweat sprang out on his hairline, and he had to will himself not to wipe it away.

‘No, I didn't,' he said. ‘She must be confused. I told her I took Sam for a run there, before the rain started. It was later, on the way back from Fodderstone, that I let him out of the car and he went chasing off after a rabbit. It wasn't my fault –'

‘Could happen to anyone,' intervened the chief inspector, curtailing the family argument. He reached for the latch of the door. ‘Let's hope we can get the beagle back for you, with the help of a bit of publicity.'

‘Ah yes –' said the sergeant. ‘There's just one detail I forgot to ask you, Mr Cartwright. Was your dog wearing his collar when he ran off?'

‘Er –'

‘You told Mum he was wearing it,' said Tim sternly. ‘A tartan collar,' he explained to the sergeant.

She raised one eyebrow at Derek, seeking confirmation.

‘Yes,' he said, by now slightly desperate. ‘I'd forgotten.' Then he turned on his children, his patience snapping: ‘Good grief, d'you think I'm a computer? Do you imagine I've got total recall? If you'd been through what I went through last night –'

From the corner of his eye he saw the detectives leave the room. God, what a fright that had been! But they didn't suspect anything, surely? No, of course they didn't. There was no reason why they should.

It was just that
interested
look of theirs that he couldn't get out of his mind. Had they noticed the give-away sweat on his forehead? What were they saying about him? Had it occurred to them that there might be something significant about the dog's disappearance on the very day of Enid's murder? Because once they made that connection –

‘Derek Cartwright', said Sergeant Lloyd as she sat in the Chief Inspector's car and fastened her seat belt, ‘is a very worried man. What do you make of this dog incident, Douglas? What's he covering up?'

Quantrill snorted, half-disapproving, half-amused.

‘What I think,' he said, ‘is that Cartwright took the chance of making a Saturday afternoon visit to a secret girlfriend, with dog-walking as an excuse. Now the animal's lost, what's putting him in a muck sweat is that his family is just about to find him out.'

Derek would have preferred to avoid his children the following morning, but they insisted on making a search for Sam before they left and they needed him as a guide. They also needed to use his car, because Tim's pick-up truck wasn't big enough for the four of them.

The Sierra was in its usual place at the front of the Brickyard, under the old cart shed where Derek had left it on Saturday evening when he returned from the forest. Now, though, it was blocked in by police vehicles. The very young constable who had escorted him round the house the previous day hurried out with an apology, and began to clear their way.

Derek stood alone in the yard, blinking dazedly in the sunshine after another dream-disturbed night. His damaged hand felt easier, but Tim had commandeered his car keys. The constable moved a police Rover, judged that there was now enough room for Tim to reverse and turn the Sierra, and beckoned him out of the shed.

What was happening, there on Derek's own property, seemed to him totally unreal. He felt choked with worry; less – at the moment – on account of Packer's crime than on account of the unexpected and wholly unfounded charges his children had levelled at him last night.

Since he had no way of disproving what they thought, except by telling the truth about what he had done on Saturday, he had said nothing. As a result, his children despised him for being unfaithful to their sick mother. And if Christine had come to the same conclusion – which would account for her withdrawal from him – then the basis of their marriage had already been destroyed. God, what a mess everything had turned out to be … And all he'd ever intended was to make life easier for Christine because he loved her.

‘You've got some nasty scratches on your bodywork, Mr Cartwright,' observed the very young constable as he signalled Tim to stop reversing the car. ‘Recent, too.'

He bent to examine the driver's door and Derek joined him, not really caring about the scratches but feeling that he ought to show an interest. Tim lowered the window, and stuck out his bearded head for an alternative view; Lyn and Richard walked up from the gateway to see what was happening.

The slate-blue car was badly in need of a wash. Its Saturday journey through the wet countryside had left it sprayed with mud. And there, on the driver's door, in paw-prints and scrabbles and long raking scratches, some of which went right through to the metal, was clear evidence that Sam had frantically objected to being abandoned.

Derek heard himself gulp.

The constable, thank God, seemed not to think the marks suspicious. He took a good look at them, and agreed with Derek's gabbled improvisation: yes, the dog might well have returned to the car while his master was searching for him, tried to get in, and then rushed away again when he heard himself being called from elsewhere.

Tim and Richard and Lyn glanced their disbelief at each other, and then stared at their father with hostility. But at least they said nothing in front of the policeman.

They told Derek exactly what they thought of him as they drove to the forest but he stuck to his story, hoping fervently that the beagle would be found and that some at least of the family pressure would be taken off him. But when all four of them had called and searched for an hour or more, hurrying up and down grassy rides and blundering through thickets in vain, it became clear that Sam was irretrievably lost.

‘For God's sake look after Mum,' said Lyn, by way of farewell. Every bit as beautiful as Christine had been at the same age, she was spitting hostility at him: ‘Stop being so bloody selfish, Dad. Try to think about her needs, for a change.'

Derek flinched, but said nothing. What was the point? Too many angry things had been said already, and no one now believed the truths he told. He stood outside Mrs Collins's house, watching as Tim drove off in the Sierra, taking Lyn and Richard to catch their respective trains. Christine went with them, venturing out for the first time since her mother's death. He would have liked to wave to her, but she didn't look back.

Hungry at last, he went to the village shop and bought bread rolls, cheese and fruit. The owner and the other customers stopped talking immediately he went in, but Derek was indifferent to the embarrassed silence, the lowered eyes and the covert glances. Enid's murder was in the past; it was his future with his wife that he was concerned about.

As he ate his food in Sylvia Collins's garden, Val the policewoman joined him to report that her colleagues had just finished their work at the Brickyard. They would be moving out that afternoon, and she herself would be leaving too; no doubt, she said, to the Cartwrights' – not to mention Mrs Collins's – relief. There was just the formality of Derek's statement about finding the body to be gone through, if he wouldn't mind accompanying her to Breckham Market police station. When he'd finished his lunch, of course.

There was nothing difficult or alarming about making the statement. The police were so very much easier to deal with than his children. He didn't see either of the detectives but all the uniformed officers were considerate, even about his loss of the dog; having checked that Sam had not yet been found, they discussed with him their press release for the next day's local paper.

By the time Val drove him back to Wyveling, Christine had returned. Thankfully, though, Tim had taken his truck and gone. Val collected her toothbrush and sleeping-bag, said her thanks to Mrs Collins, shook him and Christine by the hand and told them that she'd stay in touch. She handed Christine a card with the telephone number of the police station: ‘If there's anything you want to know, or if you just want to talk, don't hesitate to give me a ring.'

Then Derek and his wife were alone together.

They sat on a wooden bench beside Sylvia Collins's goldfish pond, Derek at one end, Christine at the other. She stared straight ahead, her face so pale and the skin round her eyes so bruised-looking that he was afraid she was ill.

‘Are you in pain, my love?' he asked, stretching his good hand tentatively towards her. She shook her head. He left his outstretched hand resting hopefully on the bench for a few moments, then cleared his throat and shifted himself to a less suppliant position.

‘The police are moving out of the Brickyard this afternoon,' he said. ‘It'll be good to have our own home back. Not to move into, I mean,' he added hastily, observing Christine's shudder, ‘but it'll give us a chance to sort ourselves out, won't it? Change our clothes, sit in our own garden.'

‘I can't go back there,' she said in a remote voice. ‘Not to live, ever.'

‘Of course you can't, Chrissie, I know that. I never expected you to. We'll decide what to do when we've had a chance to draw breath, but what you need first is to get away for a bit. We'll have a holiday, shall we?'

‘No thank you, Derek.' She still wouldn't look at him, let alone call him by his affectionate name, or touch him.

‘Would you like to go to Southwold, then? To your mo— To the flat?'

‘No.'

Derek didn't know what to say next. After a few moments Christine said, ‘I shall go away on my own, as soon as I feel able to drive. I'm still too shaky for that at the moment. I'll go and stay with Trish.'

‘Who?'

‘Trish Wilson. We were at school together, we write every Christmas. She and her husband have a farm in Derbyshire, and I can rent one of the barns they've turned into holiday cottages.'

‘Derbyshire? But that's much too far away! Why don't we rent a cottage nearer Cambridge, so that we can share it – or at least so that I can be with you for as long as possible at weekends.'

‘No. I'd rather be alone.'

A silence fell between them; lengthened, deepened. It seemed particularly cruel that the natural world should be burgeoning into new life all around them – birds bustling in the greening hedges, toads croaking and splashing in the pond – just at the time when their married life was juddering to a stop.