A Fall from Grace (22 page)

He trailed way. The interviewer asked, “I suppose there were rumors? People are always inclined to look for something discreditable, or something in his private life, when someone suddenly chucks in a good job.”

“Yes . . . There was talk about a mix-up of X-rays. One person's and another person's getting misplaced, so that one of them was operated on for cancer of the esophagus when there was no cancer there. No one seemed quite clear as to whether it was the specialist who had mixed things up when he viewed them, or whether the technician had done it when he put them out. There was talk about Chris taking the rap even when it was unclear whether or not it was his fault. The technician was a young man with a family. He later left the hospital, but that may have been entirely unconnected . . . Nobody really knew anything.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Oh, about three years. Run up to Christmas. I'd say it was probably November 2003.”

And there the tape ended.

There was a note from Oddie in an envelope stuck to the tape:

I think this will bear a lot of looking into, if we can only find a way into the whole business. The phoners-round have made a lot of contacts which could lead to others. They've put in a fair number of (wo)man hours. It's going to cost you, son.

Charlie felt oddly moved by that “son.” It was true that since his move north, Oddie had been a sort of father to him—better than some fathers, who pressure their sons into being duplicates of themselves. And certainly better than Charlie's actual father, who remained shrouded in mists of mystery so impenetrable that he suspected his mother had no memory of him at all.

* * *

For both the Peaces the next day was devoted to business. Felicity went into Halifax to talk to the solicitor who (she had found in a note stuck to her father's desk) had acted for Rupert Coggenhoe since he'd left the West Country. Mr. Donnithorne of Bottinge and Partners received her courteously, offered enormous sympathy, which as usual Felicity did not know how to accept, and then confirmed to her that the bulk of her father's estate was to pass to her—this seemed to be the bungalow plus bank accounts, investments and a pension fund, amounting in all to around two hundred thousand pounds, plus whatever the bungalow fetched. Very nice, especially since it was in addition to the substantial sum invested in their house. There
were only two other bequests: one was of twenty thousand pounds to the United Kingdom Independence Party; the other was of ten thousand pounds to Anne Michaels. The solicitor told her that the latter was a codicil which had replaced one of a similar sum to Kylie Catchpole from Coombe Barton. It had been made five days before his death. They agreed that Anne, or the Michaels, need not be informed of this till the cause of death was established.

But it was the other bequest that, when Felicity left the office and began the walk home, loomed largest, with an almost symbolic importance. She had had no idea that her father felt strongly about Europe, and resented what he saw as its takeover of the United Kingdom, its eating away at English independence. She had always seen such fears as the preserve of cranks and right-wing fanatics, but had had no reason to lump her father with them. The UKIP setup was the sort of group that faded even faster than it flourished, and she was willing to bet that in two years' time it would be reduced to an office in a back room in Budleigh Salterton. This was one of the few interests or opinions that she had ever known her father to hold that was independent of himself and his interests. She wondered whether she should balance the bequest by the gift of a similar sum to the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-Europe of the political parties. Probably she wouldn't get around to it. But there was no denying that the bequest illustrated vividly the great gulf that there was between father and daughter, even though they had been living in the same village for a couple of months.

The bequest to Anne Michaels was less puzzling. Felicity had no doubt about the motive: Anne had been told about it, and it had been designed to attach her still closer to her benefactor, as Rupert probably saw himself. But he was in reality giving her nothing: the bequest was no more than a promissory note, the payment of which was painless because posthumous.

When Felicity got back home she got straight on to Carmel Postgate's mother.

“Mrs. Postgate? It's Felicity Peace here—you remember, I came—”

“Oh dear, Mrs. Peace. I've been meaning to ring you about what Carmel said. I mean, that sort of thing is horrible, and it's not something she's been taught at home. Such a lovely little girl too . . .”

“Oh, don't mention it. It's probably something she's picked up from that little gang.”

“Do you think so? I hadn't thought of that.”

“Well, if you object to newcomers in a village, the chances are you will object to immigrants to a country, won't you? Mrs. Postgate, are you alone?”

“Alone in the house? Yes, Jim's at work and Carmel's at school.”

“I wanted to ask you something, and I didn't want Carmel to overhear your side of the conversation.”

“Oh? This sounds mysterious.”

“Normally it wouldn't be, but Charlie has to be very careful at the moment. He's naturally very interested in my father's death, but as a policeman he definitely can't be involved.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Postgate, sounding as if she didn't. “Do you mean that you want what we say to be in confidence? I will say I'm not a talker. Carmel takes after her grandmother, not me. If you say you want me to keep quiet about something, nothing will be said.”

“That is what I want. Now, when I was round at your house we talked—Carmel and I—about Anne Michaels. There's not much doubt she was the leader of this little group of children.”

“Oh, no. I'm quite sure it was her. Carmel was always talking about her—‘Anne this and Anne that'—until I could have screamed. She's shut up about her recently, which isn't like Carmel at all, but I'm grateful for it.”

“Interesting. Now, when I saw the group in action there seemed to be two older girls leading it. Is there any other girl who Carmel has been talking about a lot?”

There was a substantial pause.

“I suppose the one she talked about
second most,
as you might say, was Rachel Pickles. Not all the time, like Anne, but she came into it quite often. And she's a girl of about Anne's age, whereas the other ones she talked about off and on were more Carmel's age—eleven or twelve. Do you know Rachel?”

“Not at all.”

“They live somewhere up there near your father. Either Forsythia Avenue or Luddenden Avenue. They're nice people, the Pickles. But then the Michaels are nice too. No side about them, which is more than you can say about Anne. It makes you think. It's worrying.”

Felicity agreed it was worrying. Then she reinforced her plea for confidentiality and rang off. She went straight to the telephone directory and found a Pickles, K. and W., at Luddenden Avenue, number twenty-five.

That afternoon, after she had fetched Carola from the nursery, she left the car in Walsh Street and they went for a walk, Carola wondering aloud why they needed to walk when she'd tired herself out at school (as she always called it). Number twenty-five was on the corner of Forsythia Street, with a good view up to Rupert Coggenhoe's bungalow. It was a nice area, toward the top of Slepton Edge, with excellent views. Most of the houses in Luddenden Avenue were early twentieth century, almost all stone, while Forsythia Avenue was brick interwar semis and bungalows, with some more recent houses at the upper end. Several properties were on the market, because house buying had peaked and dipped, as it has a habit of doing. Felicity's eyes could dwell on the far end of the street, beyond which could be seen the rough path across scrub that led to the quarry. Along that path Rupert Coggenhoe had presumably begun his walk two Sundays before last. Was it just a walk to brush away the cobwebs, or a walk with a purpose, perhaps a meeting? She turned around quickly and made her way home.

* * *

Charlie's first chore of the morning was going to Blackett and Podmore, the estate agents in the center of Slepton Edge. He and Felicity had talked it over and decided there was no harm in signaling to young
Mr. Podmore (the man with whom they'd had dealings in the buying of the two houses) that 23 Forsythia Avenue, a highly desirable bungalow residence, as he doubtless remembered, suitable for a couple unencumbered with family (“That means ‘Seen the last of the little blood-suckers at last' ” said Charlie) was shortly to be coming on the market again.

“We're getting in early,” Charlie had said reluctantly. “Just the sort of thing I've been criticizing Chris for.”

“The situation is quite different,” said Felicity. “Chris has to think of the look of the thing, since he relies on the reactions of the electorate to anything he does. We don't. In fact, putting the house on the market is a way of saying, ‘Sentiment doesn't come into it where me and my dad are concerned.' It's a piece of commendable honesty.”

“Hmmm. Very commendable. And it'll be nice to have a large part of the mortgage on this house paid off, won't it? But I think we'll have to make it unofficial and a bit off the record at first. I am a policeman. People don't like us doing slightly dodgy things.”

So Charlie was on his way to signal that the property was shortly to come on to the market, and that it would suit him and Felicity very well if it could be sold without all the vulgar business of misleading ads in the local property supplements or placards placed in the garden.

The door he pushed at Blackett and Podmore's was pulled on the other side by Ben Costello, and he nearly fell on his face.

“Hello, er, Ben,” Charlie said, going back into the
street. “Are you Ben at the moment, or are you Inspector Costello? It's all getting quite confusing.”

“Oh, we're in Civvy Street at the moment, aren't we? I'm Ben and you're Charlie. All palsy-walsy till I call you into the station for a beating up.”

He grinned a steely grin.

“That'll be the day. If you haven't learned in Halifax that beatings-up are strictly for drunks and down-and-outs ‘resisting arrest,' you really are living in the dark ages of policing . . . Seriously, any advances on the medical front yet?”

Costello spread out his hands.

“I'll come and talk to Felicity if we get anything definite. At the moment all we have is a light bruise high on the shoulder that could have been caused by ‘human agency,' but equally could be the result of a bump against a rock or shrub on the way down. That's the trouble with this case: it's too indefinite. All the experts hedge their bets. That means that even if it was murder we'd have a hell of a job putting a case together.”

“I see your point. Well, thanks for telling me.”

“Oh, I'm always willing to share information—when I'm talking to someone I can trust. I can trust you, can't I? You have been a good boy, so far as I can tell. That's what I hear.”

“Oh, I'm always a good boy. Ask Felicity.”

“As if she'd know!” said Costello. “By the way, you're not moving, are you? Not going back to Leeds?”

Charlie looked mystified, and Costello nodded toward the door of Blackett and Podmore.

“Oh no. No question of it. I've never wanted to live close to work. What policeman would? No, I'm just going to make preliminary noises about putting the ancestral bungalow on the market.”

“The Forsythia Avenue one? Well, you're not letting the grass grow under your feet, are you?”

Charlie felt nettled.

“Why should we?”

“Why indeed? And it'll make a hefty dent in the monthly mortgage payments, won't it? I must keep my eye on you and Felicity. If ever I knew a strong motive for murder it's present-day house prices, and the average mortgage!”

And he smiled his choppers-of-steel smile again and strolled off. I hate sarky policemen, thought Charlie. Then he remembered that his reputation was of being precisely that himself. He resolved to keep his sarcasm and cynicism to himself a bit more in the future. This was a resolution forgotten long before he arrived into work in Leeds.

“What gives with your Ben Costello?” he asked Harridance later in the day, on the phone about something else. “Either he doesn't like me, or aggression is his second name.”

“He prefers women,” said Harridance. “And there are little ones to prove it. Men bring out the macho in him. Anyway, all you new inspectors have something to prove.”

Only I'm a sight more relaxed about it than that twitchy thug Costello, thought Charlie. I only hope that's being noticed by the powers that be.

Two days later, on Charlie's day off, he and Felicity were shopping in the Halifax Sainsbury's, resisting Carola's demands for a variety of soft drinks and sweets that would spell rot to her teeth. Somehow it seemed as if sweet things managed to make an appearance everywhere except the meat refrigerator and the household cleansing section. It was when they were about to exhaust the grocery section and enter the “anything you might conceivably fancy” section that Charlie heard a voice from the makeup aisle.