Deadly Friends (25 page)

‘Did Susan think about having one?’

‘No.’

‘Did she investigate the possibility? Maybe take advice, or counselling?’

‘He wanted her to,’ she said. ‘But he would, wouldn’t he? He didn’t want the responsibilities of a child.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He took her somewhere. When she came back she was confused. They poisoned her brain with the devil’s works. She soon changed her mind when she was back with her family. The word of the Lord prevailed, but the price of salvation is eternal vigilance.’

I only know one quotation from the Bible. I learnt it from my dad. When I was little and he was a struggling PC he drove a motorbike and sidecar. It was his pride and joy. He took great delight in telling people that Moses rode a motorbike. It said so in the Bible. It said: ‘And the sound of his Triumph was heard throughout the land.’ He’d have loved talking to Mrs Crabtree.

‘This boyfriend,’ I said. ‘He took her somewhere, for advice about an abortion?’

‘Yes, but she was too strong for him, for she was filled with the Holy Spirit.’

‘But he knew all about abortions?’

‘Yes. He was a disciple of Satan. He did the devil’s work, here on Earth. The devil finds work for idle hands.’

‘What was he called?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think you do.’

‘I don’t know.’

I dimmed the lights and held the door open for her. Outside, after I’d pulled the door closed, I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. I could feel her bones, and her face was criss-crossed with fine lines.

‘Thank you for showing me Susan’s room,’ I said.

Downstairs, William was standing close up to the gas fire, warming his legs, even though it must have been eighty in there. He turned as we entered and sat down again.

I made a production of looking at my watch. ‘Is that the time?’ I said. ‘I’d better make a phone call, if you’ll excuse me.’ I went to the front door and lifted the latch so I didn’t lock myself out. I stood on the front step and spoke to the desk sergeant, telling him where I was and asking for a panda to come and stand by.

‘It’s still raining,’ I told them as I took my seat again. They didn’t comment. ‘Mrs Crabtree was telling me that Susan’s boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion,’ I said.

William shuffled and looked uncomfortable.

‘Do you approve of abortions, Mr Crabtree?’ I asked, watching him as I waited for an answer.

‘I … don’t know,’ he replied, eventually.

‘Do you know the boyfriend’s name?’

He shook his head.

‘I think you do.’

‘No.’

‘You were a soldier, I believe.’

He looked at me, startled by the change of tactic. ‘I was a conscript,’ he replied. ‘Called up. We all were.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Did you sign on?’

‘Only for three years.’

‘When was that?’

‘1950.’

‘And did you go abroad?’

‘Germany.’

‘That would have been quite an experience for a young man.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘You’d see all the devastation.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you carry a gun?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Did you carry a gun, Mr Crabtree?’

‘There were guns about. Sometimes we carried one. It was dangerous. We never knew what they were thinking.’

‘An Enfield thirty-eight?’

‘Possibly. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Mrs Crabtree repeated.

‘Yes, it was,’ I agreed. They were sitting with their
backs to the window, which meant that their faces were in shadow but I could see out into the street beyond them.

‘Losing a child,’ I began, ‘like you did. And a grandchild. It’s the saddest thing imaginable. You must have been about forty when Susan was born. You’d probably already accepted that you’d never be parents. Resigned yourselves to it. And then she came along – everything you’d always wanted. And, all those years later, little Davey, too – the grandchild you never expected to have. If someone took them away from you, caused their deaths, you’d want to kill that person, don’t you think?’

He crossed his feet and dug his fingers into the chair arm. She sniffed and pressed her interlocked hands into her lap. Neither spoke.

‘You knew all about the doctor she met at the squash club, didn’t you?’ I continued. ‘She’d come home, thrilled to pieces, and tell you all about him. When she fell pregnant you knew he must be the father. He took her to the clinic and she told you that she was thinking of having an abortion. Is that what happened?’

‘He was the devil’s disciple,’ Mrs Crabtree told us.

‘He tempted her with the forbidden fruit, then wanted her to resort to murder to avoid the wages of sin. He filled her head with ideas, but with the help of her loved ones the will of God prevailed.’

‘And when Susan died, you blamed him.’

‘Our Lord is a jealous Lord. “Vengeance is mine,” He said.’

She was ga-ga. Stark, staring ga-ga. Outside, a car horn peep-peeped and I saw a panda’s blue lights slide past above the privet hedge. I turned to William. Maybe he was capable of rational thought.

‘You wanted him dead, didn’t you?’ I said.

He shrugged and stared at the carpet.

‘And one day, you remembered the gun. Where was it? Hidden up in the loft, or somewhere, wrapped in grease-proof paper? Whenever we have a guns amnesty it’s amazing how many old soldiers bring in weapons that they forgot to hand back when they were demobbed. Do you know what I think, William?’ I didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I think you found the doctor’s name and address in Susan’s diary, when you went through her things. And then the hatred for him began to fester in your minds. Both of you. The strange thing is, I think it’s perfectly understandable. In your shoes, I’d have wanted the same thing. What did you do? Go round, with the gun? But he lived in a block of flats and you didn’t know how to get in, did you? So you left a Magic Plastic catalogue in his mailbox, with a note saying that you’d call back. Couldn’t you do it, that first time? And what did you think when he ordered a mini-bin from you? Is this about how it happened, Mr Crabtree?’

He nodded, slowly and deliberately, without taking his eyes from the carpet.

‘But then Christmas came, with all its images of
children, and the feelings became unbearable. Christmas Eve was the first anniversary of Susan’s and Davey’s deaths. You went back again, didn’t you? You said you were the man from Magic Plastic, and he let you in. This time you made him lie on the carpet and you shot him through the head. Am I right – is that how you did it?’

His wife reached across and took his hand. ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’ she said, ‘for theirs is the Kingdom of God.’

He looked up at me and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘What did you do with the gun, William?’ I demanded.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.

‘He threw it in the canal.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes, I threw it in the canal.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Off the bottom bridge.’

That shouldn’t be too difficult to find, I thought. I turned to her. ‘Could you get your coats and shoes, Mrs Crabtree,’ I said. ‘I think you’d both better come down to the station.’ She struggled to her feet and went to fetch them.

We stood in the hallway and I held her coat while she helped him with his. She fussed around him, checking his buttons and fastening his belt. He thrust his hands
deep into the pockets as she placed hers on his cheeks and kissed him.

‘Don’t worry, Treasure,’ she whispered to him. ‘Be brave. Mother’s coming with you.’

As soon as she was inside her own coat I asked where the key was. She retrieved it from a hook beside the door and handed it to me.

‘Right, let’s go,’ I said. I locked the door behind us and took William by the arm, guiding him up the garden path, Mrs Crabtree leading the way. The panda was parked near my car. When the driver saw us emerge he drove slowly towards the Crabtrees’ gate.

Mr Crabtree wrenched his arm from mine as the car stopped. I turned as the gun fired and saw the side of his head blossom like a chrysanthemum and felt the warm wetness of him on my face. He was falling through a scarlet mist. I threw my arms around him but I was off-balance and he dragged me down to the ground. Mine was the embrace that held him in his death throes, but he was already beyond comforting.

The two PCs came running, but there was nothing anyone could do. I took the waterproof coat off and spread it over William’s body, the army-issue Enfield revolver still grasped in his hand as his blood spread out across the wet concrete. Mrs Crabtree stood there, rain pouring down her face, spouting her mantras, until she was led away.

‘It’s come,’ Sparky informed me as I returned from the morning meeting, a week and a half after we’d brought Mrs Crabtree in. He followed me into my office and retrieved a brown Home Office envelope from my
in-tray
.

‘Right,’ I said, hanging my jacket on its hook. ‘Better ask Nigel and Maggie to join us.’

Sparky poked his head out of the door and shouted: ‘You and you. Boss says to get your arses in here, toot sweet.’

Maggie arrived first. ‘Nigel’s on the phone,’ she told us.

‘It looks like the results of the DNA tests have arrived from Wetherton,’ I explained, showing her the envelope. ‘What do they say?’

‘I haven’t looked yet. Sit down.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ she said, pulling a chair from under my table and turning it round. ‘I wasn’t in from the beginning. The Crabtrees were under the impression that Dr Jordan was the father of the baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Jordan wanted Susan to have an abortion?’

‘Not quite. According to the counsellor at the clinic he just took her along to explain the options. She listened to them and at first she appeared quite keen to have a termination, but then changed her mind. The counsellor detected that she was under a great deal of pressure from her parents to let the pregnancy take its course.’ I sliced the envelope open with the glass dagger
I use as a paper knife. It was a present from the team after an earlier murder enquiry.

‘And after it was born the depression set in.’

‘It looks like it. She blamed them, they blamed the doctor. Sometimes, it helps if we can put the responsibility on someone else instead of accepting it ourselves.’

‘And the Magic Plastic Killer was created.’

‘Yep.’

Nigel came in. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

‘Did she put the gun in her husband’s coat pocket?’ Maggie asked.

‘It looks like it. She said something about coming with him, but I don’t know what she meant.’

‘Will she stand trial?’

‘Mrs Crabtree? I doubt it. She’s been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She’ll spend the rest of her days preaching to her fellow inmates. No doubt they’ll hang on to her every word.’ I thought about it for a second, then continued: ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? If there is a God speaking to her, putting the words into her mouth, you’d think he’d give her the right quotations, wouldn’t you?’

Sparky said: ‘You know what they say: When we talk to God it’s called praying. When he talks to us, it’s called schizophrenia.’

‘I’ll say Amen to that.’ I unfolded the letter from Wetherton. ‘Let’s see what we have here.’ There was a silence as I scanned it. ‘Tests were conducted …’ I read
out, ‘at the request of handsome but self-effacing DI Priest of …’

‘Get on with it!’ Sparky urged.

‘Right. Blah blah blah. Here we are – “Conclusions. Examination of the band patterns shows that there is no obvious kinship between the two samples. In answer to the specific question posed, we can categorically state that the donor of sample CP1 is not the child of the donor of sample CP2.” That’s it. The doctor wasn’t little Davey’s dad.’ Nigel extended his hand and I gave him the letter.

‘So who was?’ Maggie asked.

‘Big Davey? Whoever he is.’

‘Are we going to find him?’

‘To tell him his ex-girlfriend and their baby are dead? What’s the point?’

Sparky said: ‘So the doc was just being kind to her.’ ‘It looks like it,’ I replied.

‘Every way we’ve turned, every avenue we’ve followed, he’s come up smelling of roses. He was a decent bloke, all along.’

‘You’re right. He was a bit of a lad, but why not? Everybody who knew him liked him. He had plenty of friends. Some of them just happened to be a bit dodgy.’

‘Who needs enemies?’

Nigel placed the letter on my desk. ‘So it was all a waste of time,’ he stated.

‘’Fraid so.’

‘All that … all that grief was for nothing.’

‘Yep,’ I agreed. ‘All for nothing.’ And I’ve still got the scars to prove it.

I never wrote that letter to personnel saying that I wanted out, and the one from pay section is still unopened. Darryl Buxton appeared before a crown court judge last month and pleaded guilty to a charge of rape. He’ll be sentenced in a few weeks. The daffodils outside the court looked magnificent.

When we tried to tell Herbert Mathews the good news we discovered that he’d been admitted to a hospice, and he died shortly afterwards. Maggie and I went to the funeral. His old station was represented by a young WPC who’d never met him. They sent a wreath, everybody else made a donation to Cancer Research. On the way Maggie told me that Janet Saunders had applied for a job as a school dinner lady, which would give her a good chance of regaining custody of little Dilly. She’d decided that life was still worth living, and was putting it back together.

I opened the letter that Annabelle sent me, even though I’d asked her not to write. She said she had to. There was no address, it just said London in the top right-hand corner. I was glad she hadn’t put an address. It was the best testimonial I’ve ever received; when I’d finished it I couldn’t understand why she’d ever left me. I slowly tore it into a hundred and twenty-eight pieces, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Her house is empty, with a For Sale sign standing in the garden. I think about her, now and again. Wonder where she is, what she’s doing, if she’s happy. I hope she is. I don’t dwell in the past, but sometimes a memory of her takes me by surprise. All sorts of things can trigger it off, but music is the worst. Some of my CDs I doubt if I’ll ever play again, but it can be anything: Barber’s Adagio for Strings; the Archers’ signature tune; when it rains; when it doesn’t.