Damned by Logic (21 page)

She said nothing.

‘I've a confession to make ...'

‘Better not!' she answered quickly, her heart beating.

He continued regardless, determined to get it off his chest. ‘With you having listened to me being questioned, learning I'd been targeted by a prostitute because she had judged me so bloody weak I'd do what she wanted, I felt and feel small enough, I could walk under an ant. I daren't think what kind of man you must now reckon me to be.'

‘I'll tell you. Someone who made a fool of himself, but that doesn't make him any different from a hell of a lot of others; someone betrayed by circumstances, not character. Your home life hadn't been happy, had it?'

‘No.'

‘Would you have responded to Melanie if it had been?'

‘She would not have chosen me.'

‘You're not answering the question.'

‘I should like to think I would not have done, but ...'

‘You are honest enough to admit doubt.'

‘When one meets someone who recalls one's juvenile, erotic fantasies ...'

‘Imagination becomes dangerous.'

‘Deadly ... Belinda, I asked Eileen what she had done with Georgie because I was desperate to get him to Melanie to save her. I didn't have to threaten Eileen to make her answer, she rejoiced in telling me she'd burned the ape. She was so exultant that I had to believe her, as desperate as I was not to. I never thought she could have been viciously lying and had put him in the bank. I didn't realize how much Eileen had begun to want to hurt me ... Our marriage soon became unhappy after our wedding, but I thought we'd learned how to live together.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to leave the subject?'

‘I want you to understand how things were, that she regarded intimacy as an unnecessary necessity ...'

‘Intimate details are best kept intimate'

‘I'm trying to explain why I was so easily hoodwinked by Melanie.'

‘David, unfortunately I remain a police officer. Tell me in detail why your marriage was unhappy, that Melanie had offered what you so missed, it must become more likely that you did threaten your wife when you were so desperate to know where the ape was in order to save Melanie.'

‘You are going to report what I have just been saying?'

‘Having been forbidden to have any communication with you, that would be to admit I was in your house, drinking coffee, eating biscuits.'

‘Then whether or not I've dropped myself into the shit depends on where your loyalties lie and you're not certain what is the answer?'

She stood. ‘I must go.' She hurried into the hall and by the time he reached her there, she had opened the front door and stepped outside. He watched her walk to her car, parked in front of the garage, climb into it and drive away.

He returned inside, sat. Sometimes, innocence seemed to become a weakness.

The front-door bell rang. He swore. Babs, come to reproach him for turning down her invitation and, in her inimitable style, leaving him even more defeated than when she had arrived. There was a second, prolonged ring. He returned to the hall, opened the door.

‘Is your twelve bore loaded?' Belinda asked.

Surprise delayed his reply. ‘Not even unholstered.'

‘Hand guns are holstered, shot guns are cased. Am I allowed in again?'

He stepped back to let her enter.

‘I had to come back because ... I feared you could believe I'd entrapped you and would rush to pass on to the sarge or the DI what you told me. You were right. My loyalties have become divided and made me all confused ... But I would not have passed on what you said about your private life.'

‘It was contemptible of me to believe you might.' He thought she was going to speak again, but she did not. ‘I've just poured myself another drink. Will you have a refill?'

‘The liquid pipe of peace?'

She went into the sitting room, he into the kitchen. When he joined her, she was seated, her short, red skirt across her knees. Her head was turned so that she was partially in profile and he noted her chin was slightly too pronounced for her other features, an indication of her stubbornness, her readiness to face what she considered to be wrong or unjust.

‘David, will you trust me?' she said, as he handed her a glass.

‘Do you need the assurance?'

‘I want to hear it because it means much to me.'

‘I trust you, full stop.'

She was hardly the perfect police officer, she thought bitterly, accepting that her loyalty to the force was not absolute. ‘Did you put the ape in your strongbox in the bank?'

‘No.'

‘How could it have got there?'

‘Eileen.'

‘She told you she had burned it, knowing or guessing what that would mean to you. Did she have a very vindictive nature?'

He drank. ‘Difficult to answer. She was quick to find fault, blame, criticize, but I never did or said anything to have caused her to hate me.'

‘You underestimate how a wife can feel when she believes her husband has had an affair. She saw it as a rejection of herself.'

There was a silence.

‘Did you ever closely examine the ape?'

‘No.'

‘There are several cuts in the fabric of the body. If one disbelieves you, the assumption is you used a knife to try to learn if there was something solid inside. If one believes you, since she did not know about the diamonds, there is only one explanation for the cuts.'

‘You're saying she “attacked” Georgie?'

‘A childish gesture but adults under deep emotional stress often display them.'

‘I have denied I was in any way responsible for Eileen's death; I never once struck her, I never once threatened her. But, as it must have done, my affair with Melanie so emotionally hurt her, that I provoked her into falsely saying she'd burned Georgie. That makes me in part responsible for her death as well as Melanie's.'

‘You may have started the sequence of events, your wife had completed it when she told you she had burned the ape.'

‘If I'd never allowed myself to become tied up with Melanie ...'

‘Ifs never alter anything. What might eventually help you to accept the past is if the man or men who broke into this house that night are identified, tried and convicted. Victims can often accept their tragedy has been brought to an end when those who were guilty are convicted.'

‘What chance of that is there when everyone but you thinks no one broke in, but that I tried to make it seem they had in order to cover myself?'

‘They believe you guilty; I believe you innocent. There has to be someone out there to identify. Did your wife give any indication of someone who was threatening her?'

‘No.'

‘Previously had she ever said she had cause to worry?'

‘No.'

‘Was there anyone on the
Helios
apart from the bar steward who could have noticed you were unusually friendly with Melanie?'

‘I can only think of the man who shared the cabin. He remarked on it more than once.'

‘What was his name?'

‘I only remember him as “Call me Bert”. He couldn't have had anything to do with what's happened.'

Never judge by appearance, she almost said, then silently asked herself, What in the hell am I doing when I accept his innocence? ‘What was your cabin number?'

‘Two six six.'

‘Did he see the ape?'

‘He was in the cabin when I packed it before going ashore and returning home.'

‘Have you any idea where he lives?'

‘None whatsoever.'

‘When you were in Oxford the night your wife died, did you phone her?'

‘I told one of your lot I didn't and he regarded that as highly suspicious.'

‘A misunderstanding. Did you drive to Oxford?'

‘Yes..'

‘And parked at the hotel?'

‘Yes, underground.'

‘Was there a security man on watch?'

‘No. There's the kind of automatic barrier one sees in public car parks – it needs a ticket issued by the hotel.'

‘Is there a chance you may have kept that?'

‘No.'

‘So there's no way of proving you were there at the pertinent time unless someone saw you around – perhaps at the bar.'

‘What are the odds of anyone remembering me when I can't remember anyone?'

‘Poor.'

‘Is that the end of your “one” question?'

‘Yes, so I'll be on my way.'

‘Would a rough supper tempt you to stay awhile?'

‘How rough?'

‘Lamb chops and trimmings. But no guarantee how things will turn out.'

‘With your lack of knowing what goes on in the kitchen, I think tough might be an alternative description to rough. I'll don the apron.'

B
elinda dialled. The connection was made and she was told to press one for this, two for that, three for something else.

Eventually, the ‘Four Seasons' ceased. ‘Rex Cruising Company. Can I help you?'

‘Constable Draper, county police. I want to speak to someone about the passenger list of the
Helios
when—'

She was interrupted. ‘You need Reservations.'

The ‘Four Seasons' recommenced. Would she have to wait until Spring returned?

‘Sarah Jones, speaking. You want to make a reservation? Please state the company's reference number for the cruise you wish to sail on and what type of berth you require.'

Belinda explained she required information concerning a passenger who had sailed on the
Helios
in June.

‘You should have dialled nine.'

She expected to be put through to the correct destination, wasn't. She pressed nine, spoke to a man.

‘We do not provide such information without a reason which we consider valid.'

She identified herself. ‘This is an important police matter.'

‘Very well. Will you kindly repeat your request?'

She did so.

‘If you will give me your phone number, I'll ring back as soon as I have the answer.'

At four in the afternoon, Belinda was given a name and an address: Albert Crowhurst, Fontuna, Church Road, East Endley.

She phoned divisional HQ in East Endley, spoke to Sergeant Pace.

‘This kind of job can take time,' Pace said.

A standard complaint which was easily countered. ‘As did a recent request from your lot. The guv'nor would be grateful for your help as this is priority.'

‘It always is when it's another force.'

She spoke sweetly and Sergeant Pace said in a more friendly tone they would do as asked.

She replaced the receiver. It was probably a forlorn hope that Crowhurst could offer any useful information, but it had given Ansell a boost to know someone was trying to support him when she had told him what she intended to do.

Ansell just managed to catch the seven o'clock train whereas he normally made the earlier one and gained a seat; he had left the office later than usual because he was finding work difficult, his mind constantly asking questions it could not answer. Initially, he had to stand next to a man who disconcertingly spoke to himself in a low murmur. Ansell stared through the window at the London suburbs, streets of look-alike, architecturally barren houses. However dull the lives of those who lived in them, they were to be envied; the husbands would not be suspected of killing their wives, of being indirectly responsible for the horrific murder of a woman. Would Belinda be able to help him prove his innocence? Only she could because only she believed him. Why did she? Because she had an inbuilt distrust of settled judgements, responded to an instinctive belief not readily explainable?

The train slowed, came to a halt and, seen through a line of trees and beyond a road, was a large billboard on which was a colourful advertisement for a cream which smoothed facial skin, banished wrinkles, held age at bay. He had composed that last claim. Did anyone really believe it, had belief in advertising survived the plethora of advertisements?

The train drew into its first stop and many passengers got out on to the refurbished platform. He found a window seat, facing the direction of travel. Just before they cleared the city, he saw a section of the circling outside wall of a prison. How long before he saw that wall from the inside?

The drive to Bracken Lane was short and when life had been more structured, he had often walked to and from the station, but walking quickened the mind which increased imagination. He arrived at number thirty-four. A house which had been empty all day and so gained shadows all of its very own. On his return from work, Eileen had usually found reason to complain about something, but her presence had kept those shadows at bay.

He poured himself a drink, switched on the television, watched but noted little. Was there the chance he could escape suspicion before that became guilt? It was a proud boast that British justice was as good as that in any other country, yet occasionally an innocent person was unjustly convicted because innocence could never be a guarantee.

His mind wandered. What kind of a man was this Peter bloke Belinda had told him about? Belinda had spoken about his attempts to control and regulate her life and the breakup of their relationship without noticeable emotion. Had that relationship become as stilled as his own marriage; had its break-up left her emotionally battered, unable to understand how or why she had entered into it, very wary of any future one or even rejecting the possibility? Had she also suffered from such a lack of human emotion and affection as to render her childlike and naïve in all further attempts at relationships and so prone to the likes of Melanie Caine? Perhaps they deserved each other; perhaps they needed each other?

Detective Constable Younger – the name still provided stupid comments at work – knocked on the door of the terraced house. A child began to shout, another, to scream. The door was opened by a woman whose appearance was that of dull exhaustion. ‘Mrs Crowhurst?' he asked.