Cast in Order of Disappearance (20 page)

Sweat trickled down his sides in spite of the cold. His clothes were heavy and awkward. Still the road seemed to stretch onwards endlessly, darkness replacing darkness, as he staggered forward. Occasionally a car would pass, fix him like a moth in its headlights, and then vanish.

Eventually he was at the top of the slope that led down to the little towns of Streatley and Goring, separated, like their respective counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, by the River Thames. Revived by the proximity of his goal, Charles hurried painfully onwards along the road to the familiar white gates. It occurred to him that being on foot was probably an advantage; a car drawing up on the gravel would be heard from the house. And in his position he needed advantages.

He opened one gate slowly, trying not to let it scrape on the gravel. Then he moved round on to the flower-bed at the side of the path, to muffle his footsteps. The house looked quiet and the same, except for a strange car parked by the front door. Again, as on the previous occasion, there was a chink of light from Marius Steen's bedroom. Was it possible that Charles' previous luck could be repeated and he'd find the door to the utility room open? Keeping to the lawn, he crept silently to the back of the garage. Moved in close to the door, and felt for the handle.

He closed his eyes, uttered a silent prayer and turned the knob. For a moment the door seemed firm, but then, blissfully, it gave.

He sidled into the utility room, treading with remembered caution, and reached for the light switch. The room had been tidied since his last visit. All the tins and boxes were neatly on their shelves, and, thank God, the torch was still in its place. He took it and started to put into action a plan that had half-formed in his mind during the run from the stranded Cortina.

He locked the door by which he had entered and put the key in his pocket. Then he turned his attention to the door that opened into the garage. There was no lock on that one. For a moment he stood, defeated, but then, memory working overtime, he moved into the garage, opened the door of the Rolls, and shone his torch over the dashboard. With a small grim smile of satisfaction, he went back to the utility room and looked at the power switches. He closed his eyes and memorised their positions. Then one by one, with a series of quick movements, he switched them all off. He scurried into the safety of the great car.

There was a murmur of voices from the room above, then the slow sound of people feeling their way downstairs and towards the garage. The faint glow of a match shone through the door from the house. Charles shrank into the deep upholstery of the Rolls' front seat.

There were two voices, a deep slow one, and a higher London whine. Jem and Eric, as he'd thought. They went into the utility room. Charles heard the scrape of a match, then a muttered curse. With another prayer, he turned the key in the ignition of the Rolls. It started immediately. He found first gear and eased the great machine slowly forward until it hit the utility room door, closed it, and pinned it fast. Then he pulled on the hand-brake and leapt out.

The hammering of Jem and Eric followed him, as he rushed upstairs with the torch to Marius Steen's bedroom. As he entered it, one of the prisoners found the switches, and the lights came on again.

The scene which they revealed was an ugly one. On the bed, Jacqui lay unconscious. She was on a sheet, naked with her legs spread apart. Another sheet was crumpled over her thighs. On either side of her, blinking in the sudden light, were Nigel Steen and Dr Lefeuvre. Laid out on a cloth on a stool were a row of bright instruments. A scalpel gleamed in the doctor's long freckled hand.

Nigel was the first to speak. ‘Charles Paris . . . You are taking a very great risk.'

‘Nothing to some of the risks you've taken, Steen.'

There was a silence. Nobody moved. Then came the sound of renewed battering from downstairs. Dr Lefeuvre dropped his scalpel with the other instruments, gathered them up in the cloth and put them in his bag. ‘I'm leaving, Steen.'

Panic flashed into Nigel's face. ‘You can't do that. I need your help.'

‘No, Steen. Get out of this one on your own.'

‘You've got to help me.'

‘No.'

‘You did the other things for me.'

‘Not for you. For money.'

‘I'll tell the police what you've done.'

‘I think that unlikely. It might involve too much explanation of your own activities. Anyway, I will have left the country by then. I'd planned to go back to Australia when I'd made enough. And, thanks to you' —he tapped the case—‘that time's come.'

‘But—'

‘Goodbye, Steen.' Dr Lefeuvre left the room. Neither Charles nor Nigel spoke as they heard his footsteps on the stairs, the slam of the front door, the gates being opened, and his car departing in a scurry of gravel.

‘What do you want, Paris? Money?' said Nigel Steen suddenly.

‘No.'

‘I could give you a lot. I'll pay for silence.'

‘And then set your thugs on me the first time my back's turned. No, thank you.'

‘Then what do you want?'

‘Just to talk. See if what I think is correct—until the police come.'

‘I see. Come through here.'

Nigel Steen led Charles, with what was meant to be a lordly gesture, into the study next door. He sat behind the desk and offered the older man a plush leather seat. ‘Well now,' in deliberately even tones, ‘what is all this about the police? Shouldn't I be calling them to get you, as a common house-breaker?'

‘You could try, but I think they'd find your case more interesting.'

‘Do you? Why? What are you accusing me of? The inquest has already proved I didn't murder my father.'

‘I know. That's not what I am accusing you of.'

Nigel's face went pale. ‘What are you accusing me of then?'

‘I'll tell you. Stop me if I'm wrong. This is the story as I see it. On Saturday 1st December, your father Marius Steen went to the party on stage at the King's Theatre to celebrate the one thousandth performance of
Sex of One and Half a Dozen of the Other
. He enjoyed the party, danced, drank and generally had a whale of a time.

‘The following day, Sunday 2nd December, your father, because of his exertions, suffered a second heart attack, and died. You, with a shrewd sense of your own advantage, realised that you were now liable to pay one hell of a lot of estate duty on your father's gift to you because of his inconvenient death; but that if he had died a fortnight later it would be six and not five years since the property was made over to you. If you could maintain the illusion that your father was still alive for another fortnight you would be saving—say the property was worth one million—about £240,000. A quarter of a million pounds has been the motive for far worse crimes than the one you contemplated.

‘Obviously you needed help. And it was to hand. Dear Dr Lefeuvre, who had already arranged at least one abortion for you, was always susceptible to bribery, or, if not that, to blackmail. All he had to do was to come round when you called and sign the death certificate with all particulars correct. Except the date.

‘Now there was a problem, of course. The police might want to see the body; the undertaker certainly would. How to preserve it? Why not the good old deep-freeze? Keep the old man in there, get him out in good time to defrost, maybe even put him in a hot bath to remove any traces of his preservation. And there you are.

‘So, late on the Sunday night, with your father's body propped up in the Rolls, you drive to Streatley, move a few boxes out of the deep-freeze and put your father in. On the Monday, after making one mistake by phoning the
Evening Standard
—and I can sympathise with your reasons for that mistake; after all, it was a heaven-sent opportunity to assert your father's continued existence—anyway, after that you get a train back to London . . . I'm guessing there, but it's not important.

‘So it was all set up, and your father's known habit of shutting himself up with his scripts made the deception all the easier. The only fly in the ointment was Jacqui. If she kept on trying to contact your father, it could be awkward. Still, she was on her own, and not very brave. A little intimidation should keep her quiet. An anonymous letter, and, when that didn't work, Jem and Eric doing her flat over. Easy.

‘On the Thursday you return to Streatley, to maintain the myth of your father's continuing business interests; and perhaps to check a few details with Dr Lefeuvre. Or even to put the pressure on him, maybe?

‘Then on the Saturday, something rattles you. You lose your nerve, drive down to Streatley in secret, change the tape in your father's Ansaphone, prepare the body and move your whole schedule forward a week. That, I must confess, is the bit I don't understand. By doing that you made the whole crime worthless. You were losing money. No doubt you had your reasons.

‘But when the new will came to light, you were liable to lose even more money. So, seeing the flaw in its hastily drawn up provisions, you started your vendetta against Jacqui's child, a vendetta that Dr Lefeuvre was about to complete when I arrived. No doubt, before that you used the cruder talents of Jem and Eric. Certainly, when you realised my connection with the case at Bloomwater, they were the bully-boys you turned on to me.

‘Well, I think that sums up most of my conclusions. How am I doing?'

He looked up at Nigel Steen. The man's face was white and mean and he was pointing an automatic pistol at Charles' chest. But he still tried to maintain some shreds of panache. ‘Very good,' he said slowly. ‘How did you know about the boxes in the freezer?'

‘Ah, I must confess I have been in this house before. Just before your dramatic “discovery” of your father's corpse, I . . . er . . . fell over the boxes. They were heavy and had the words “Do not refreeze” written on them, but I didn't immediately realise the significance of that. Sorry. I was a bit slow on the uptake.'

‘I see. Well, since I am going to kill you anyway—an intruder in my house, I met you, drew my gun; you attacked me and in the ensuing fight the gun went off, unfortunately killing you—I—'

‘If that's as successful as your other crimes, I think I'm fairly safe.'

‘Quiet!' Nigel waved the gun. ‘Let me fill in the details. One thing you were wrong about is the extent of my crime. The things you describe could be classed as fraud and harassment maybe, but in fact there is a murder involved.'

‘Yes, I know.' Steen looked at him open-mouthed, robbed of the drama of his pronouncement, as Charles continued, ‘Bill Sweet's murder.'

‘Whose?'

‘Bill Sweet, the man who was found shot dead at Theale.'

‘Oh, was that his name? I didn't know.'

‘You mean you didn't know his connection with your father?'

‘No. Was there one?'

‘What happened, Steen?'

‘We came off the M4 and suddenly there was this maniac in the middle of the road, flagging us down. I swerved to avoid him and hit his silly little car. I tried to drive on, but he came at me with some story of having run out of petrol. Then he looked in the car, saw my father crumpled up and started to speak. I panicked and shot him. I went through his pockets—for some reason they were full of dirty pictures. I took them and his wallet and threw the lot, with the gun, into the river.'

‘Why his wallet?'

‘To disguise his identity. I don't know. I panicked. I wanted to forget all about him—pretend it hadn't happened.'

‘And that's why you haven't moved the Rolls since that night. You even left your father's keys in it. You seem to do rather a lot of panicking, don't you? Not a very impressive criminal.'

‘If my plan had worked, it would have been a master-stroke. To save a quarter of a million—that's the sort of thing my father used to do.' The envy in his voice was almost pathetic.

‘But you could never do what your father did, could you, Nigel? Business, women, even crime. You just never made it.' Nigel Steen's knuckles whitened around the gun and Charles uttered another silent prayer. He seemed to be getting very religious all of a sudden. ‘Because you never had the guts to carry anything through,' he continued. ‘Why didn't you carry this one through?'

‘Because of you, you little sod.' Nigel spat the words out.

‘Me?'

‘Yes, you and your bloody Detective-Sergeant McWhirter business. When you rang up that Saturday and checked the registration of the Rolls, I thought the police were on to the Theale murder.'

‘Good Lord.' Charles had completely forgotten about the first entrance of McWhirter. It came back to him vaguely. And that had actually ruined Nigel's crime. Charles could have chosen any excuse for the phone call and it was pure chance that he had lighted on the meaningless ‘number plate racket'! ‘So that's what made you drive down in the Datsun, and move the plan forward, and lose a quarter of a million pounds?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good Lord.' Charles was absolutely flabbergasted, but he hadn't really got time to analyse his reactions. Nigel was still pointing a rather businesslike gun at him. ‘Nigel, I'd put that thing away. The police are coming. You stand a chance as things stand at the minute. They need never find out about Sweet's murder. Just get you on the other charges.'

‘I don't believe you, Paris. You're bluffing. There aren't any police coming.'

‘There are.' Charles prayed that he was speaking the truth. ‘Joanne Menzies is getting them.'

‘So, she was involved with you. The bitch.'

‘I think you'd better hand that gun over, Nigel.' Charles rose to his feet.

‘Don't move! I'll shoot you !' Nigel held the gun away from him, as if he was afraid of the bang it would make. Charles felt himself sweating.

He tried desperately to control his voice. ‘No, Nigel, you won't shoot me. This is cold blood, Nigel. Something you've got to think about. Not like shooting Sweet in a moment of blind panic. Not like doing it by remote control, having Jem set up a trip-wire. This is you committing a crime, Nigel.'