Hand In Glove Part 39

"It will. Don't worry."

"It's not too late to inform the police," put in Charlotte, pausing to study the other two's reactions and finding them to be exactly what she had expected. Ursula wanted her daughter free at any price and did not mind what risks Maurice had to run to bring that about.

While Maurice had his own reasons for resisting police involvement in the affair. "I'm not saying you should inform them. I'm just-"

"Sam's my daughter, not yours," snapped Ursula. "I've no intention of allowing PC Plod to wreck our chances of getting her back.

All they want is this b.l.o.o.d.y letter and we're going to give it to them.

Is that clearly understood?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Good."

With a parting glare, Ursula stalked from the room, leaving Maurice to fold the map shut and smile across at Charlotte. " ' My daughter.' Did you notice that, Charlie? Not ours."

"She's upset."

"Aren't we all? But I'm the one who'll be waiting at Walbury Hill tonight, with nothing but my father's last letter to his sister to buy Sam's freedom with."

"Which is why I mentioned the police. You said yourself the kidnappers might-"

"No! I have to handle this alone. There's no other way. Holding the letter back was a mistake. Now I have to make amends."

"But, Maurice-"

"Don't say any more, Charlie." He held up his hand to silence her.

"Not till Sam's back with us, safe and sound. Then you can say whatever you like."

The afternoon and evening seemed to pa.s.s with agonizing slowness, yet, when the time came for Maurice's departure, it felt to Charlotte as if it had crept up and taken them by surprise. Little more had been said since the telephone call. They had each kept their own counsel.

What Ursula and Maurice were really thinking Charlotte could not tell. For her own part, she was filled with neither hope nor dread, rather a fatalistic inability to foresee the future. What would be would H A N D I N G L O V E.

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be. Samantha might be back home by the early hours of Monday morning. Or they might hear she had walked into a police station somewhere later in the day. Or she might call them from a telephone box on a lonely road. Or- She watched from the unlit half-landing window as Maurice climbed into the Mercedes, its rear lights blurred and twin exhausts clouding in the misty air. The night was overcast and moonless. Up on the downs it would be dark as a velvet bag. She saw him take the envelope from his pocket and show Ursula the letter inside. There was no farewell kiss, merely a nod of mutual understanding. Though she knew he did not deserve it, Charlotte could not suppress a stab of sympathy for him. It seemed to her that, despite all he had done, Ursula might have spared him a word or gesture of encouragement.

But she did not. As he started the car and moved away, she turned and walked back into the house. Charlotte heard the front door close and realized she alone was watching as the white halo of the headlamps traced his progress along the drive. The brake lights flared suddenly red as he reached the end. Then he turned into Riversdale and vanished beyond the trees.

CHAPTER.

SIX.

They had not expected him back before one o'clock. It was not until two o'clock therefore that they became anxious enough to call him on his car telephone-only to find it had been switched off. By three both felt certain something was wrong and a nervous debate began about what they should do. Charlotte suggested contacting the police, but Ursula would not hear of it. Her own preference was for retracing Maurice's route at first light in case he had suffered a breakdown or been involved in an accident. Reluctantly, Charlotte agreed, even though she was sure he would already have been in touch with them in such an event. Whether Ursula shared her growing sense of foreboding she did not know. Nor did she care to ask.

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R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

They set off at half past five in Charlotte's car. The morning was grey and cool, the roads virtually empty. Charlotte could have wished they were busier. The noise and bustle of workbound humanity would have made their journey seem more normal. Their destination lay patiently in wait on the grey crest of the downs, while below, across the broad green Kennet valley, they approached along winding lanes through slumbering villages. Then the habitations fell away behind them as their ascent began between thorn-spattered banks and hangers of oak. And suddenly, true to the route Ursula had picked out on the map, they reached the crest and saw Maurice's car, parked at the far end of the lay-by where he had been told to wait, maroon and solitary against the pale expanse of chalk-smeared turf.

Charlotte pulled off the road and stopped. The Mercedes was thirty yards or so ahead of them, facing out across the valley, with the summit of Walbury Hill behind. And there was a man in the driving seat, leaning back against the head-rest, making no move to acknowledge their presence. Yet who could he be but Maurice? Glancing round at Ursula, Charlotte realized she too had seen the figure.

"Is it Maurice?" she whispered.

"It must be," Ursula replied.

"Then why hasn't he seen us?"

"Perhaps he's asleep. Sound the horn."

Charlotte obeyed, but the only reaction came from a sheep beyond the nearby fence, who looked up in surprise. The occupant of the Mercedes did not stir. Ursula leant across and pushed the horn herself three more times, but still there was no response.

"Something's wrong."

"Shall we go and see?"

"No."

"What?" Charlotte looked at Ursula and saw a frozen expression of horror on her face. "What's the matter?"

"You go, Charlie. Please. I don't think I can . . . Please go and see if he's all right."

The imploring note in her voice left Charlotte no choice. "Very well," she said. Then, hurrying lest her nerves fail her too, she un-buckled her seat-belt and climbed out.

The world beyond the confines of the car was silent but no longer still. A breeze ruffled her hair and set hanks of wool waving on the fence-wire. The faded heads in a patch of thistle between her and the Mercedes seemed to beckon. And she followed, up the flint-strewn H A N D I N G L O V E.

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slope, across the swell of the down that seemed, at this alt.i.tude and hour, like the curve of the Earth beneath her feet.

She did not look back at Ursula or down into the valley, but trained her eyes forward, fixing them on the interior of the Mercedes and the dark shape of its occupant as, with every step, clarity threatened to break upon her vision.

It was Maurice. She recognized his check trousers and bottle-green sweater. But she could not make out his face, obscured from her by shadow and the oblique angle at which he had set his seat.

She began to divert from the path, tracing a semicircular route round the bonnet of the car. As she did so, the windscreen reflected the cloudy sky back at her as a white sheet. Only when she was on the other side of the car could she gain a clear view of Maurice and only then by closing to within a few yards.

Suddenly the shadows resolved themselves and the reflections fell away. Suddenly the truth was before her, hideous and unambiguous.

Maurice was dead, his throat slit wide in a collar of congealed blood.

He was held in a reclining position by his seat-belt, with his head bent back and his mouth open, his eyes staring up at the roof of the car, his right arm hanging straight down, his left snagged on the gear-stick. All this Charlotte saw in a single glance. Another showed her the dark stains down his chest and across the dashboard and windscreen. While a third, as she stepped closer, revealed that his mouth, though open, was not empty. Some object was lodged between his teeth, forcing them apart.

She leaned for support against the wing of the car, breathless and trembling, wondering if she would scream or vomit. She must prevent Ursula seeing this, at all events prepare her for the reality of it.

She must remain in control of herself and her actions. She must not disintegrate.

There was a conscious effort involved in raising her eyes to look once more. She reminded herself that nothing must be touched or disturbed. Yet surely she could render her brother one service to which the dead are always ent.i.tled. His sightless eyes should be closed. And she should close them now, before Ursula ran to join her or her hands shook too much to obey her. She opened the door, looking away as she did so and listening for a second to the song of a sky-lark on the wind. Then, taking a gulp of air, she leaned into the car and pressed his eyelids shut with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand, shuddering as the icy coldness of his flesh communicated 242 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

itself to her. And then, with his face no more than a foot from her own, she saw what was wedged in his mouth. It was a roll of freshly minted banknotes.

CHAPTER.

SEVEN.

For the rest of that day, Charlotte felt she was at one remove from reality, viewing events through an invisible screen equipped to filter out the extremes of sensation. The grief and horror she would have expected to experience were somehow blunted and held at bay, though whether permanently or not she had no way of knowing. She began to suspect her mind had no room for such emotions while there were more urgent issues to be addressed and wondered if, when she was alone and at rest, they would suddenly overwhelm her. If, that is, she ever was alone and at rest again.

The nearest she came to solitude was the interval that elapsed after she had forced herself to dial 999 on Maurice's car telephone.

Standing on the ridge above the Kennet valley with their backs turned against the spectacle of what they had found, she and Ursula said little as the early morning slowly advanced. Indeed, only when the first wail of an approaching siren drifted up from below did Ursula remark: "I suppose we'll have to tell them everything."

"I think we'd better, don't you?" Charlotte replied.

"I don't know what I think. Except that I hope to G.o.d they let Sam go."

Charlotte said nothing, though she thought even then it was a frail hope. Maurice had not given the kidnappers what they wanted.

No other interpretation of what had happened seemed sustainable. As to the kidnappers' next step, she was confused but pessimistic. If they were prepared to murder once, they would certainly be prepared to murder again. But she did not propose to point this out to Ursula. If she believed in the possibility of Samantha's early release, so much the better.

The police, when they arrived, were models of efficiency and H A N D I N G L O V E.

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solicitude. Charlotte and Ursula were whisked away to Newbury Police Station, where a pixie-faced detective constable, Valerie Finch, took their preliminary statements. Ursula was anxious to stress that her daughter's safety was now her only concern and became impatient with the methodical nature of their questioning, but Charlotte knew it could not be otherwise. Then the officer in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector Golding, returned from the scene and persuaded them to repeat everything for his benefit. Though eager to express his sympathy, he had a sceptical air guaranteed to rile Ursula, in whom anger turned rapidly to hysteria. At this, Golding decided they should be driven back to Swans' Meadow, accompanied by Finch and a lugubrious detective sergeant called Barrett. There, he a.s.sured them, they would be kept fully informed of developments.

Ursula seemed somewhat calmer once she was home, not least because she was within earshot of the telephone, which she continued to think might ring at any moment, bringing news of Samantha.

Finch encouraged her to talk about Sam, which she did to nervous excess, while Barrett made innumerable cups of tea and coffee. Eventually, in the middle of the afternoon, Golding arrived with his superior, Detective Superintendent Miller, and a squad of technicians, who began making intricate modifications to the telephone in order to monitor incoming calls. Barrett supervised this operation, while Miller and Golding, with Finch sitting in, questioned Ursula and Charlotte in the lounge.

Miller's involvement seemed to mark a change of gear in the police's approach to the case. He was a large rumpled red-faced man in his late forties, with huge hands and a fog-horn voice, disinclined to waste time on niceties. He had clearly emerged from a rougher mould than the well-mannered and smooth-tongued Golding. On several occasions Charlotte detected a frisson of mutual resentment between the two, though for the most part they functioned adequately as a partners.h.i.+p.

"Why didn't you contact us as soon as you knew your daughter had been kidnapped?" was Miller's unceremonious introduction of a point Charlotte had been expecting to hear raised all day.

"Because my husband was confident he could deal with the matter on his own," Ursula replied. "He insisted we should keep it secret."

"Delay greatly complicates the gathering of evidence," said Golding. "Your neighbours may have seen something the day your 244 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

daughter was seized. But they've already had the best part of a week in which to forget."

"I'm sure we all appreciate it was a terrible mistake," said Charlotte. "My brother believed he was acting in Sam's best interests.

So did we."

"Of course," murmured Golding.

"What I want to know," said Ursula, "is what you're going to do now."

Miller's face darkened for a moment. Then he said: "Your husband's murder will be reported, but there'll be a media black-out where the kidnap's concerned. After that it's a question of waiting for them to contact you again. When and if they do-"

"But if they don't?"

Miller said nothing. His expression implied that the problem, if it eventuated, was not of his making. Golding spoke for him. "If the kidnappers don't have what they want, Mrs Abberley, they'll be in touch. They're bound to be."

"You're sure money wasn't demanded?" asked Miller.

"If only it had been," said Ursula. "At least there'd have been no doubt about our ability to pay. Whereas supplying what they wanted . . ."

"A set of correspondence between the poet Tristram Abberley and his sister," said Golding hesitantly. "I do have that right, don't I?"

"Yes. You do."

"Chief Inspector Golding reckons himself something of an expert on poetry," said Miller, with the hint of a sneer. "The only rhyme I know is crime and time."

"Tristram Abberley was a distinguised poet," said Golding, refusing, it seemed, to be provoked. "But I don't entirely understand why this correspondence should have been so . . . valuable." He leafed through his notes. "Are you seriously saying it proves his sister was responsible for his work?"

"We are," said Charlotte.

"Incredible."

"Also irrelevant," said Miller. "I'm sure you ladies don't expect us to believe that's what lies behind all this."

"No," said Charlotte. "The letter Maurice took with him last night referred to another doc.u.ment which he didn't have. He was afraid-and I think now he was right to be-that it was what they were really after."

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"Not money?"

"I've told you, Superintendent," snapped Ursula. "Money wasn't the issue."

"Then how do you explain the wad of twenty quid notes stuff-"

Miller paused for a moment and softened his tone. "We found five thousand pounds on your husband's body, Mrs Abberley. What are we to make of it?"