It was after ten on Friday morning by the time the Chief managed to get away from the station, bound once more for Furzebank Cottage. They were three-quarters of a mile or so from the cottage turning when Kelsey noticed a shop a short distance ahead on the other side of the road.
‘Pull up,’ he instructed Sergeant Lambert. The car slid to a halt opposite the shop, a little general store. They got out and crossed over.
The shop was empty. At the sound of the doorbell a woman came out from the living quarters, a middle-aged woman with a good-natured face and cheerful smile, a friendly manner.
The Chief told her who he was and asked if she knew the Lorimers of Furzebank Cottage, if they were customers.
She answered at once in an amiable, garrulous flow, happy to be of assistance. Yes, she knew the Lorimers, they did come into the shop. ‘She buys bits of grocery,’ she added, ‘and he gets his cigarettes here. They haven’t been here long. Very quiet folk, not very chatty. Mrs Lorimer moved in first. Her husband had been abroad, on some job, he came home about a month ago.’ A look of concern suddenly flashed across her face. ‘I hope they’re not in any kind of trouble? I wouldn’t like to think that.’
‘No, not as far as we know,’ Kelsey assured her. ‘We’re making general inquiries about a case we’re working on. We have to ask all kinds of questions about all kinds of folk.’ He grimaced. ‘Ninety-five per cent of it’s a total waste of time but it’s all got to be done, all part of the job.’
‘Yes, I see.’ She appeared vaguely reassured.
‘You may be able to help us.’
‘Yes, of course, any way I can.’
‘I’d like you to think back and see if you can tell us the last time either of the Lorimers called in here at the shop.’
She frowned in concentration. ‘Mrs Lorimer was in here yesterday afternoon, and Mr Lorimer came in on Sunday morning–I particularly remember that.’ She looked up at him. ‘I open later on a Sunday. He came in just after I’d unlocked the door, wanting cigarettes. I made a joke about him waiting on the doorstep.’
‘And the time before that when either of them called in?’
She put a hand up to her face. ‘It was Mrs Lorimer who came in before that, as far as I recall, for some cigarettes for her husband–she doesn’t smoke. Now when was that? It was one evening, I know that because it was dark. I went out into the kitchen to attend to something, and then I heard the shop doorbell go and I came back in here.’ She closed her eyes in thought. ‘I think it must have been the Friday, a week ago today.’ She opened her eyes, gave a decisive nod. ‘Yes, I believe it was the Friday, that was the evening Robin went out to play with the group, they had a booking. Robin’s my son. He’s still at school but he and some of the other lads got together and formed a group. Robin plays the guitar.’ She moved her head. ‘That’s probably why I went through into the kitchen, to make sure he’d eaten a proper meal before he went out.’
She stopped abruptly. ‘But then again it could have been the day before when Mrs Lorimer called in, the Thursday. I know I made a steak and kidney pudding for supper on the Thursday, that could have been why I went through to the kitchen, to make sure the pudding hadn’t boiled dry.’ She clasped her hands. ‘It could even have been the Wednesday–I don’t have any half-closing day during the week. I made a cake on Wednesday afternoon, I might have gone into the kitchen to take a look at that.’ She gave an apologetic laugh. ‘I’m getting into a proper muddle. The more I try to puzzle it out, the worse it gets.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kelsey said soothingly. ‘I can see you’re doing your best.’
‘I’ve got so many things on my mind these days–my husband died eighteen months ago and I’m running it all on my own now. You’d never credit how much there is to see to in a business, even one as small as this.’
‘What time was it, when Mrs Lorimer called–whatever day of the week it was?’
‘That I can tell you,’ she was delighted to be able to answer with certainty. ‘It was around five or a quarter past, it had just about got dark.’
‘Was Mrs Lorimer on her own or was her husband with her?’
‘As far as I know she was on her own. I didn’t see her husband and she didn’t mention him. If he was with her then he must have been waiting outside. He certainly didn’t come into the shop.’
‘Was she on foot or did she come by car?’
She searched her memory but without success. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I can’t remember hearing the car.’ She tried to think of some more positive assistance she might offer. ‘I can ask Robin when he comes in from school this evening. He might remember something.’
‘Was he in here when Mrs Lorimer came in? Did he see her? Or speak to her?’
She shook her head with regret. ‘I’m afraid not. But I’ll ask him all the same.’
‘I hope the good lady’s books are in a better state than her memory,’ the Chief said to Lambert as they went back to the car.
Five minutes later Sergeant Lambert turned the car in through the tumbledown gateway of Furzebank Cottage. Enid Lorimer answered the door to them. She was drying her hands on a towel. She wore a neat nylon overall; her abundant nut-brown hair was covered in a silky scarf, tied round her head like a turban. She looked out at them in silence, with a composed, neutral air.
Kelsey apologized for disturbing her when she was busy. He asked if they might come in; there were a few points he would like to raise with her and her husband.
In reply she gave a nod. She took them into the living-room, asked them to sit down. She didn’t offer any refreshment. ‘I’ll tell my husband,’ she said. ‘He’s in the garden.’
She was gone several minutes. She came back into the room alone and seated herself on the sofa without a word. She looked calm and unflustered. Kelsey heard sounds coming from the kitchen quarters and after a further interval Lorimer came into the room. He was dressed in old gardening clothes but he had changed his shoes and washed his hands before joining them. Without any word of greeting, barely a passing glance, he went across and sat down on the sofa beside his wife.
The Chief plunged straight in, asking what Lorimer’s financial position had been at the time of his release from prison, what Enid’s financial position had been before Karen Boland’s death, what her position could now be expected to be. He allowed no vague, hazy answers, no generalizations, no fudging or shifting ground. He forced Enid to spell out every detail of her new and immeasurably improved position, the difficulties and strictures of the immediate past. Inch by inch he compelled Lorimer to disclose his almost total lack of funds, the absence of any reasonable expectation of finding a suitable, well-paid job. Husband and wife both behaved as if every question held traps, hidden or overt; they took their time about answering even the most straightforward query.
The Chief then switched abruptly to the visit they had claimed to make to Fairdeal on the Friday of Karen’s death. He took them once again through their movements that day but they didn’t vary their story in the slightest. He asked how often they visited the supermarket. After a slight pause Enid told him they went once a week, on a Friday. He asked if they had ever gone on any other day of the week. This time there was a considerable pause before she answered: No, never. He asked if they always went in the afternoon. An even longer silence followed. Finally Enid told him: Yes, they always went after lunch.
‘Today is Friday,’ Kelsey observed.
For once he didn’t have to wait for a reply. It came swiftly, from Lorimer.
‘We’re not going over there this week. My wife doesn’t feel up to it.’
‘The shirt and sweater you say you bought at Fairdeal.’ Kelsey produced the garments, each in its official plastic envelope. ‘Do you still maintain that you bought them on the afternoon of Friday, November 13th?’
They both agreed: Yes, that was when they had bought them.
Kelsey asked how they had spotted the garments.
‘They were on special offer,’ Enid replied without hesitation.
‘How were they displayed?’
‘In baskets along the aisles.’
‘These particular lots–were there a great many shirts and sweaters, a fair number, or just a few?’
Lorimer slid a glance at his wife as if a danger signal flashed in his brain. Sergeant Lambert saw that she was aware of the glance but she didn’t return it. She looked calmly across at the Chief. Working out all the implications of the question? Lambert wondered. Or merely taking her time, showing the Chief–and her husband–that whatever we throw at her, she isn’t going to be needled or panicked.
‘There were just a few sweaters,’ she said at last with a judicial air. ‘Not more than nine or ten, various colours and sizes. There were rather more shirts, a couple of dozen, maybe.’
The Chief made another of his swift changes of tack. ‘I understand,’ he said to Enid, ‘that you called in at the local shop, the little general store on the main road, at around five-fifteen last Friday evening, to buy cigarettes for your husband.’
She looked surprised. ‘Then you understand wrong,’ she retorted with spirit. ‘I didn’t call in at the shop at all last Friday, I’d no reason to. We bought what we wanted at Fairdeal.’ She thought back. ‘I did call at the shop the previous evening, Thursday, and I did buy Victor some cigarettes then. That could be what the woman remembers. I went along to post some letters–there’s a box in the wall beside the shop. I wanted to catch the last post and that’s collected around five-thirty, so it would have been about five-fifteen by the time I got there. It was just getting dark when I left here. Victor was still out in the garden, clearing up. I told him I was going to the post, I asked him if he wanted any cigarettes. He said I could get him a packet, just the one packet as we’d be going to Fairdeal next day.’ She moved a hand. ‘He stocks up at Fairdeal. Cigarettes are cheaper there.’
‘Did he go with you to the shop?’
She answered with an air of manifest patience. ‘No, I went by myself. I left him clearing up in the garden. By the time I got back he’d finished and gone into the house.’
‘Did you go by car?’
‘No, I walked. It was a fine evening.’
Kelsey glanced at Lorimer. ‘Did you phone the Cannonbridge College of Further Education at lunchtime last Friday?’
‘No, I did not,’ Lorimer answered with vigour. ‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Ostensibly to try to speak to Karen. In reality to find out from the office what time her last class would finish.’
Lorimer uttered another vigorous disclaimer. The Chief transferred his gaze to Enid.
‘Did you phone the college at twenty minutes to six on Friday evening?’ She began to shake her head in silence but the Chief went on. ‘Did you speak to Karen? Persuade her to meet you in the car park at six o’clock? Did you assure her you were on your own? All you wanted was to talk to her.’ Enid said nothing but continued to shake her head.
The Chief glanced from one to the other. ‘Did the two of you drive into Cannonbridge last Friday evening?’
They maintained with energy that they had not.
All at once Lorimer’s air of tightly-lidded control evaporated. He leaned forward. ‘You’re disappointed,’ he taunted Kelsey. ‘You’d give anything to be able to pin it on me.’ His voice was charged with resentment, bitterness, fury, triumph. ‘I’ve done time, so I must be guilty of any crime that’s going begging, never mind what it is. I’m handy, I’ll do, no need to look any further.’
Enid placed a quelling hand on his arm and he subsided abruptly. The Chief sat for some moments regarding the two of them. At last he observed in a detached tone, ‘I notice neither of you has asked me about the findings of the post-mortem.’ They both sat very still. ‘We have the results now,’ the Chief added in the same detached tone.
There was another, longer silence, then Enid asked in a low, tremulous voice, ‘What do the results tell you?’ Almost, Sergeant Lambert thought, as if compelled to speak against her better judgement.
The Chief began to describe in deliberate, harrowing detail the nature of the attack on Karen Boland, the injuries from which she had died, sparing nothing, omitting nothing. If he was trying to provoke a reaction in either of them he was markedly successful as far as Enid was concerned. Lorimer sat throughout with his head lowered, silent and motionless, but long before Kelsey had finished Enid showed signs of distress. She moved in her seat, put both hands up to her face, began to utter whimpering sounds. By the time the Chief reached the end of his chilling recital she was sobbing openly.
‘I’ll get her some water,’ Lorimer told the Chief. He went into the kitchen, returning with a glass. Enid took it shakily from him. He stood over her as she drank, looking down at her with angry solicitude. She handed the glass back to him and lay back with her head on the arm of the sofa, her feet up on the seat. She closed her eyes, she seemed ready to sink into oblivion. Lorimer bent over her, slipped a cushion behind her head.
Kelsey got to his feet. Lorimer glanced up at the Chief as the two policemen moved to the door. ‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ he flung after them in a tone of simmering ferocity. ‘I hope you feel you’ve done a good morning’s work.’
‘That teacher,’ Kelsey said to Lambert as they left the house, ‘the one Karen confided in, over in Okeshot. ‘We’ll pop over to the school this afternoon. See if we can get a word with her.’
The school Karen had attended in Okeshot was a church-endowed mixed secondary school, operating for many years now inside the State system. Small, compared with State schools, with a good local reputation, adhering strongly to old traditions.
The woman who had been Karen’s form teacher was a grey-haired, motherly-looking woman, plump and amiable. She had heard of Karen’s death only on the previous day, was still shocked and horrified.
The Chief took her through the circumstances in which Karen had confided in her about Lorimer. Her account tallied closely with what the Okeshot police had told him. He then asked more general questions, about Karen’s earlier behaviour in school, what friends she had made, any contacts the teacher might have had with either of the Lorimers.
‘Karen was in my form only during the last year she was with us,’ the teacher explained. ‘But I knew her to some extent from the time she came into the school at the age of eleven–I teach Art to the lower forms, I knew her through that. She had no particular gift for Art though she always did her best, she was a conscientious girl. I thought her work very inhibited. I tried to get her to loosen up, open out, express herself more freely, but I didn’t have much success. She always turned out conventional, stilted work, careful and accurate, but no individuality, no freshness.’
From early on she had felt a degree of concern about Karen, the girl had seemed so quiet and controlled. She had made it her business to find out something of her family background. When she discovered the way in which Karen’s mother had died, the fact that her father was seriously ill, that he had recently remarried, she no longer found it surprising that the girl was so quiet and bottled up. ‘Then her father died, during her first year here, before she’d had any real chance to settle down. She seemed to get over his death reasonably well.’
Karen’s stepmother had attended various school functions. ‘I spoke to her often, though never at any length. I thought her a disciplined, conscientious, serious-minded woman. She seemed to do her best to look after Karen.’ But on the occasions when she had seen the two of them together she had never observed any signs of deep affection, no real closeness, no warmth.
She made a little face. ‘Then her stepmother married again, after Karen had moved up into my form. I knew Lorimer slightly, from using the public library.’ She had quite liked Lorimer, had always found him helpful and obliging, with a pleasant manner. ‘I thought the marriage had every chance of being successful. I was pleased for Karen. I thought it would be good for her to have a third person in the household, someone used to young folk, who’d take an interest in her schoolwork, be a second father to her.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘It only goes to show how wrong you can be.’
After the marriage Lorimer often came along to school functions with his wife. ‘He spoke to me several times about Karen’s work and general attitudes,’ the teacher said. ‘He’d noticed, for instance, that Karen wasn’t interested in any kind of sport, he wondered how that might be improved. And he mentioned that she didn’t seem to have any hobbies. I thought he took a genuine interest in her. I thought everything was working out well for the three of them.’
Had she been astounded when Karen spoke out against Lorimer?
She looked thoughtful. ‘Yes and no. My first reaction was tremendous surprise, and shock. Then a moment later I began to think: Yes, he is always so very interested in Karen. I began to wonder if maybe that was why he’d married her stepmother.’
Kelsey asked if she knew of any particular friends Karen had made at the school.
She gave a reflective shake of her head. ‘She wasn’t one to make friends. She didn’t join any of the school clubs or societies.’ She pondered. ‘There was one girl, in the same class, they sat together. I suppose Karen was as friendly with her as with anyone. Becky Ayliffe, the girl was called, she was by way of being a bit of an outsider. A coloured girl, big and strapping, about as different in looks from Karen as you can imagine.
‘Becky’s left school now. She was several months older than Karen, she left school last summer. She wasn’t as clever academically as Karen but she was a hard worker. One thing she was good at was Art, I thought she had a real gift for it. I had the impression the friendship, such as it was, was more on Karen’s side than Becky’s. Becky always seemed just to tolerate Karen. Becky came from a pretty rough part of town. We don’t get many pupils from that area but Becky’s mother was very anxious she should come to us. The mother’s a very decent sort of woman, a strong churchwoman, very keen Becky should make something of her life. I never saw any sign of a father. I gather he took himself off years ago.’
She tilted her head. ‘Looking back on it, I suppose that could have been one of the things that drew Karen towards her, the fact that Becky didn’t have a father. Karen could have felt they were in the same boat. And Becky didn’t have any brothers or sisters, either, another point in common.’ She had no idea if the two girls had kept in touch after Karen had been taken into care.
Kelsey asked if she could give him Becky’s address. ‘I can give you her home address, here in Okeshot,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t think you’ll find her there. The last I heard of her, she’d been accepted for a training course.’ She didn’t know the details but she had an idea it had taken Becky over to the other side of the county. ‘You could call round and get her address from her mother,’ she suggested.
And that was what they attempted to do, but without success. Becky’s home address turned out to be the end house in a crumbling terrace of flaking, pockmarked brick, the district every bit as seedy and run-down as the teacher had intimated. There was little sign of life about the streets, the area seemed sunk into afternoon somnolence.
The Ayliffe dwelling stood out from its fellows by virtue of bright, clean curtains, fresh paintwork, glittering windows. Sergeant Lambert pressed the doorbell and went on pressing it, but no one answered. He tried next door, with no better result. At the third house he caught the whisk of a curtain at an upstairs window as he approached, but repeated rings brought no one to the door.
As he worked his way in this fashion to the seventh dwelling the Chief strolled along to join him. No reply at the seventh house, either. Not a neighbourhood, apparently, where folk were disposed to open the door to any kind of authority figure, debt-collector, council official, employee of the gas or electricity board. Or maybe they could recognize a policeman when they saw him walking up the street, however discreetly dressed, however harmless and unthreatening his posture and expression.
Lambert had by now got the bit between his teeth. He marched doggedly up to the eighth–and last–door and jammed his thumb on the bell.
This time he was in luck. He could hear a slow, shuffling sound from within. The door opened a fraction to disclose a wrinkled segment of face, a pale, watery eye, a few straggling wisps of white hair.
By now Lambert had almost forgotten what he was doing here at all, why he was ringing all these bells. After a second or two he recalled his mission and inquired about the lady in the end house, Mrs Ayliffe. When might she be expected home? Or perhaps he might be directed to her place of work?
The door began to inch inexorably towards closure. An ancient, croaking voice–male or female, Lambert was at a loss to decide–informed him that the owner knew nothing about anyone and, furthermore, had no wish to know. The door clicked shut.
Lambert acknowledged defeat. He rejoined the Chief with the look of a man who knows when enough is enough.
The Chief had no difficulty in recognizing the look, it was one he had worn himself more times than he’d had hot dinners. I don’t suppose it matters, he told himself with a resigned shrug, I doubt if we’d have got anything from Becky Ayliffe–but an instant later he brusquely dismissed that easy, treacherous notion. If there was one lesson to be learned in the force, to be learned and relearned, slowly and painfully, over and over and over again, it was this: there was no possible way of knowing which tiny, apparently insignificant detail among a myriad details, related or random, might turn out to be the one to point the way out of the labyrinth.
The Ayliffe house might be on the phone; if not, a constable could be despatched from the Okeshot station to call round during the evening, and, if necessary, to call again and again over the weekend. One way or another they would in the end get Becky’s present address; sooner or later, with or without any fruitful result, they would talk to her.
Six o’clock in the evening found the Chief sitting at his desk over yet another cup of coffee, yet another canteen sandwich, mulling over the results of the investigation so far.
There had been no useful response to radio and press appeals, asking for any sighting near Overmead Wood at the relevant time. Nor had anyone come forward with fresh information about seeing Karen in the college car park; no one had noticed her in conversation, getting into a vehicle, or being driven away.
As he ploughed through the reports, the files, the Chief suddenly remembered that they hadn’t yet made any contact with Desmond Hallam, absent from Hawthorn Lodge since shortly after the murder. He picked up the phone and rang the lodge but there was no reply. He rang the Overmead postmistress but she knew of no signs of life at the lodge over the past few days, nor had she had any kind of communication from Hallam or his aunt.
Kelsey then rang the college principal and was told no, Hallam had not yet returned to the college, nor had there been any further message from him. Kelsey replaced the receiver and wrote a note, explaining nothing, merely asking Hallam to contact him at the station as soon as he got home. He sent a constable off to push the note in through the front door of Hawthorn Lodge.
When the door had closed behind the constable the Chief sat contemplating with acute distaste the mountains of paperwork requiring his attention. He felt drained after a week of unremitting effort, flat, stale, despondent, bogged down in a quagmire of detail, all momentum lost.
He knew of old it was useless to attempt to struggle on in this frame of mind. The remedy was to turn his back on it all, get off home, eat a decent meal for a change, take his mind off the case, get an early night. Nothing like a good, solid, eight hours’ sleep for restoring energy and lifting spirits.
In the event his good resolutions fell away somewhat. The decent meal turned into a couple of tins picked up in the neighbourhood store–he couldn’t even be bothered to buy one of the excellent ready meals in the freezer cabinet, for that would have meant reading the instructions, heating up the stuff, paying attention to the timing, and he was well beyond all that, exhausted and ravenous.
He despatched the contents of the tins cold, just as they were, standing at the kitchen sink spooning them out, gulping them down. He well knew how dearly he would pay for it later but he had his indigestion tablets at the ready. He was never without them, he bought them several packets at a time, in case by any horrid chance he might suddenly find himself without them, in the middle of the night, perhaps, all shops closed.
He finished off his repast with a cup of milk, downed ice-cold from the fridge in a few shuddering swallows. No washing-up to bother about. He went into the living-room and switched on the television, selecting a lively, popular quiz show. He dropped into a chair and stared at the screen, hoping for distraction. He felt like death warmed up, he had to struggle against a dull headache that aspirins wouldn’t shift. Try as he might, his mind kept slipping away from the jolly cavortings, the engineered comradeliness and gaiety, back to scenes and faces from the case.
He switched channels, with no better result, switched again. After an hour or two he abandoned the effort and took himself off to bed. He fell at once into an uneasy, troubled sleep in which he wandered ceaselessly about in an unknown town, couldn’t remember where he was staying or what he was doing there, encountered only hostile or indifferent strangers.
When he finally surfaced again to full consciousness he switched on his bedside lamp to discover it wasn’t yet three-thirty. He threw back the bedclothes and pulled on a dressing-gown. He went along to the kitchen, thankful to be released from the disturbing disorientation of the dreams. He set a pan of milk on the stove, paced about the room as he waited for it to heat.
Down on the road the local community midwife drove by, on her way home from delivering yet another Cannonbridge citizen, red-faced and bawling, into the dark November morning. As she went by she glanced up at the light, the shadow moving, up and down, up and down, behind the blind, and thought, by no means for the first time: The Chief Inspector’s at it again.
Shortly after eight he was sitting slumped at his desk, unrefreshed and irritable, the remains of the headache still with him. Before him the phone shrilled. He stretched out a hand and picked up the receiver. It was a call put through from the desk: Desmond Hallam on the phone.
Hallam and his aunt had got back late last night, had found the Chief Inspector’s note. No, he had no idea why the police should wish to see him. No, he had spoken to no one in the village. He sounded completely baffled.
The Chief’s weary, deflated mood fell away, vanished utterly. He felt wide awake and cheerful, briskly energetic. The whole bag of tricks was bursting open again.