Asking For Trouble (32 page)
I fell over the last wall and landed amongst the bushes just at the moment Ganesh threw the gun out of the kitchen window. Then he climbed out. All the coppers jumped him.
They had him pinned to the ground and I was convinced he’d suffocate under all that lot. They kept shouting things like, ‘All right, sunshine, don’t offer any resistance!’ while I was still yelling that the man they wanted was inside the house under a lump of ceiling, unconscious. Although, for all I knew, he was coming round by now and would make his escape while all the attention was fixed on poor old Ganesh.
I tried to pull them off him, howling, ‘You’ve got the wrong man, you idiots!’ till I was hoarse. So they arrested me too and marched us both off to the station.
It was bedlam down there. They took our fingerprints. This gave me a definite feeling of
déjà vu
. I told them, they needn’t bother to take mine, they already had mine, in connection with the murder enquiry at that house.
That really put the cat among the pigeons. They got so excited I thought they’d have a collective fit. I think they thought they’d got a gang of urban terrorists.
Eventually, Inspector Janice turned up in jeans and a baggy sweater, with matching bags under her eyes, and rescued us.
I was really pleased to see her.
I jumped up, shouting, ‘Did they find him? Did they find Nick Bryant? They didn’t let him get away, did they?’
‘No, Fran, they didn’t let him get away,’ she said soothingly. ‘They searched the place and he was just coming round. He didn’t give any trouble.’
I collapsed back on my chair. ‘Thank God for that! So it’s all over.’
‘Now, I wouldn’t want you to run away with that idea,’ she said coolly. ‘You’ve got an awful lot of explaining to do – to
me
!
‘He’s been telling us everything,’ Janice said.
It was two days since ‘The Siege of Jubilee Street’ as the newspapers were calling it. Janice had calmed down considerably and even Parry had smiled at me as I’d arrived today and said, ‘Hullo, it’s Annie Oakley!’ I was still so relieved, just to be alive, that I let him get away with that.
Ganesh and I were sitting in Morgan’s office. We’d been offered tea straight away this time and some rather boring biscuits.
They were all being particularly nice to Ganesh because of the mistake they’d made. They had been dropping hints about a bravery award and all the swelling and bruises were clearing up.
Another bonus was that he could do no wrong in his family’s eyes now. He was a hero. For the time being, anyway.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ I told the inspector. ‘I was so convinced Jamie or Lundy killed her and either of them could have come after me. I shone the torch at the intruder, fully expecting, in fact, prepared, to see either of them. I had hazy plans how I’d deal with the situation. When I saw Nick, I just froze like an idiot. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I must still be dreaming. Most ridiculous of all, I still believed he liked me, as if that meant he wouldn’t harm me! Huh! He loved Terry and he murdered her! What kind of a nutter is he anyway? He seemed so normal, too, down there on his farm. Sort of reassuring.’
‘I told you you didn’t know anything about the country,’ said Ganesh, radiating smugness and glee. If we hadn’t been in Janice’s office, I’d have thrown something at him. He had been saying ‘I told you so’ in a dozen or more different ways, ever since the police had picked up Nick and released us.
All I could do for the moment was challenge him with, ‘You met Nick yourself. If he struck you as a killer, you kept very quiet about it! You thought the same as me. He was fine.’
‘I didn’t think anything. I didn’t make any judgement. You did. You decided he was Mr Nice Guy. And he wasn’t.’
The tone of proceedings was becoming acrimonious and Janice hastened to break it up.
‘Bryant isn’t Mr Nice Guy but he isn’t a regular villain, either. It’s rather sad. He keeps insisting he loved Theresa. But it wasn’t really love so much as obsession. He was truly obsessed with her.’
‘You mean,’ I said, ‘he’s a headcase.’
‘Strong emotions’, said Janice, sounding like an Agony Aunt, ‘make people behave in unlooked-for ways.’ She looked knowing and a bit glazed about the eyes at the same time. I supposed she knew what she was talking about, being a policewoman. But I also suspected she read those paperback romances in her spare time. ‘He insists’, she went on, ‘that he didn’t intend to kill her. But they argued and he had a sort of black-out. He doesn’t remember what he did, but when he came out of it, she was lying on the floor. He thought she was dead. He decided, in a panic, to make it look like suicide. He rigged up the – well, you know what. His head was in a whirl, in a crazy state.’
‘The man’s a maniac,’ I said firmly. ‘He just went around killing people who got in his way. He killed poor Squib. I suppose no one thinks Squib matters, but I do. I suppose you didn’t see any sign of Squib’s dog?’ I added without much hope.
Janice denied indignantly that they were not treating Squib’s death as equally important and added that they’d found a dead dog in bushes near the body. She said she was sorry. She looked sorry as she said it and I suspected that she was more upset by the death of the dog than by Squib’s death.
But she insisted again that I mustn’t think they were giving Squib’s murder anything less than full attention. ‘It was a cold-blooded business,’ she said. ‘Bryant had no excuse of passion that time and he’d have killed you in the same calculated way.’
‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘I know.’
‘Once he killed the girl,’ Ganesh said unexpectedly, ‘he was on the slippery slope. Couldn’t stop. Had to keep on killing.’
‘It all might have been avoided,’ Janice mused, ‘if only Theresa could have confided in someone, asked for some help in dealing with the problem of Bryant’s obsession. Something might have been done about it to stop it right there, at the beginning. But I suppose she felt her grandfather and great-aunt were too elderly and frail to be bothered with it. And she didn’t like or trust her cousin, Jamie Monkton. So she kept it to herself. She was already unhappy at home for other reasons, mostly connected with that will, as you rightly surmised, Francesca. Ariadne Cameron had named Theresa as sole beneficiary and expected her to behave as someone who was going to inherit a fortune and a thriving business. Alastair Monkton had the sentimental view that old gentlemen have of their grandchildren. He didn’t want to hear about anything nasty. Jamie Monkton was stalking round the place, glowering because he’d been cut out of the will, despite the fact that he was doing all the work and had virtually saved the stud from bankruptcy. She hardly needed Bryant, half crazy with jealousy, lurking about the lanes waiting for her. She’d run away before and she did it again. Lord knows, who could blame her?’ Janice concluded in heartfelt tones.
Neither of us could quarrel with that. I wasn’t surprised she’d left. It only surprised me she’d gone back a couple of times before making the final break.
There was a long silence. Ganesh stared out of the window. I sat looking at the floor. Janice Morgan looked at me.
‘We do realise, Francesca,’ she said, ‘that we would never have got to Bryant if it hadn’t been for you. But you took a terrible risk, and you nearly came to grief.’
She was looking quite human and I decided she wasn’t such a bad sort. But she had that pussy-cat bow blouse on again. When she’d turned up in the early hours to rescue Gan and me, she’d worn jeans and looked normal. Now she looked like an early version of the Iron Lady again.
I felt I ought to put her right on one thing. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But, as you said, you wouldn’t have got him if I hadn’t gone down there and found him . . . and got him worried enough to follow me to London. So the risk was worth it, I reckon.’
‘I don’t!’ said Ganesh. ‘I think it was daft. I always thought it was daft, from the beginning. I kept telling you so.’
‘Listen to Mr Patel another time, will you?’ Janice asked me.
Ganesh beamed at her.
But I’d got used to making my own decisions and I think she knew that.
Ganesh and I went back to the Astara to see Alastair and Ariadne.
It was strange returning there. The whole place looked so familiar this time, unlike when I’d first arrived there, out of the blue. I realise now I must have seemed to them rather like one of those evacuee kids from the East End who were pitched out into the villages during the Second World War. They’d welcomed me in much as they’d have done to the wartime children.
But familiarity didn’t completely wipe away the awkwardness. I spotted Kelly in the yard. She gave me a despairing look and disappeared into the stables. Her world had ended with Nick’s arrest. She probably still loved him and was indulging in some dream of his coming out of jail ready to recognise her devotion and let her help him rebuild his life. She was wasting her time.
Jamie wasn’t there. He’d gone to Germany, it seemed, to see some horses bred at the stud, compete in some competition or other. I couldn’t help wondering whether he, now, would be Ariadne’s heir. It seemed to me she hadn’t much choice. But it wasn’t one of the things we discussed.
They told us that Penny Bryant was selling the farm. I felt sorry for Penny. I wished I could go and see her but obviously it was better I didn’t. Both Alastair and Ariadne expressed concern at the danger I’d been in. Alastair said he felt responsible, since he’d come to see me in London and set me on the murderer’s trail, as he put it.
I assured him he wasn’t responsible, which was what he wanted to hear. He made an excuse to get me alone and handed over an envelope.
‘As agreed,’ he said.
I didn’t want to take it, but beggars can’t be choosers. I needed the money and I considered that I’d earned it.
Before we drove home we did make one more visit, Ganesh and I. We went down to the churchyard where Terry was buried. I felt I had to go. I wanted to tell her it was all right now. But perhaps she knew.
It was very pretty down there, the trees and nicely cut grass. A brand new white headstone had replaced the lopsided wooden cross and fresh flowers had been put in a marble vase. It felt calm and I thought she was at peace and probably glad it had all been sorted out. I didn’t feel I owed her anything any more. In a way, I felt I knew her better now and liked her better . . . and if she still cared anything about me wherever she was now, she felt the same way about me. We were friends now, at last.
Ganesh has this idea about reincarnation and says Terry is somewhere else in the world in another body, probably a baby which has just been born somewhere. But I’m not keen on that idea. I like to know who I am.
I’m me, Fran Varady.
Oh, and I ran into Declan and did he hear from
me
!
Alastair says he thinks he knows of a flat I can rent. It’s a basement flat in a house belonging to a retired lady librarian he knows in NW1. That sounds very upmarket to me. I’d like to talk to someone about books. As soon as I get any money to spare, I’m going to replace all Nev’s which he gave me and got torn up by those wretched kids.
Ganesh is indulging in a monumental sulk because I’m talking of moving away.
‘You won’t like it, up north,’ he said, as if I was headed for Hadrian’s Wall, not NW1. ‘They won’t be friendly, like we are, round here.’
‘Who is?’ I retorted. ‘Edna in the churchyard? Or the kids who did over my flat?’
‘You know what I mean,’ he said. ‘At least everyone round here is skint. It sort of binds people together, having nothing.’
‘Rubbish!’ I told him firmly. ‘It just makes them all better at nicking what anyone else does have.’
‘You’ll see,’ he said smugly. And just to finish it off he added, ‘And you won’t be able to walk down to the river and look across at the Crystal City, as we do now.’
I told him, I wasn’t leaving him behind, only getting a better address than the derelict flat Euan had found for me to replace the other one. Euan-speak described it as ‘short-term accommodation’ but it was just like the last. In the adjacent tower block, in fact. I’d had it with Euan’s bright ideas. The pipes in the new place had started rattling all night long and I knew – I just
knew
– there were mice. They’d eaten a hole in my packet of cornflakes.
‘So, it has to be better. Either of us would only have to get on a bus if we wanted to visit.’
‘Better?’ he snarled at me. ‘What’s better about it? I’ve been up there, you know, and seen them all poncing around. Have you seen the prices they charge for greens and fruit up there? Four times what Dad and I charge here.’
I pointed out that their shop was under the axe and why didn’t they all think of moving too, to a classier area where people would have more money. ‘You’d double your takings and your dad could do his speciality foods, the way he’s always talked of doing.’
Ganesh said sourly, ‘You may be getting somewhere at a cheap rent. We wouldn’t.’
I gave up arguing with him about it because when he gets in a mood like that, the only thing to do is leave him until he comes round. He does eventually but he likes to take his time.
All in all, there’s going to have to be something pretty horrendously wrong with lady librarian’s flat to stop me taking it. Besides, I’ve got this idea. I didn’t do so badly as a detective and I might start up in business. Nothing big, just small personal inquiries, because I haven’t the organisation. I’ve only got Ganesh and his van (when he gets over his mood).
When he does – get over it – I’ll tell him about my idea.
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