Devices and Desires (44 page)

“This is private enough. The locals can recognize the police when they see them. Of course, if you want me to make a formal statement or were thinking of arresting me, I’d prefer the police station. I like to keep my house and my boat uncontaminated.” He added: “I mean, uncontaminated by disagreeable sensations.”

Oliphant said stolidly: “Why do you suppose we would want to arrest you? Arrest you for what exactly?” He added: “Sir,” and made the word sound like a threat.

Rickards felt a spurt of irritation. It was like the man not to miss an easy opening, but this childish preliminary sparring would hardly smooth the interrogation. Lessingham looked at Oliphant, seriously considering whether the question needed a reply.

“God knows. I suppose you could think of something if you put your minds to it.” Then, seeming to realize for the first time that they were having to stand, he got up. “All right, better come on board.”

Rickards wasn’t a sailor, but it seemed to him that the boat, all wood, was old. The cabin, which they had to crouch low to enter, had a narrow mahogany table down the whole length
and a bench on either side. Lessingham seated himself opposite them, and they regarded each other across two feet of polished wood, their faces so close that Rickards felt he could smell his companions, a masculine amalgam of sweat, warm wool, beer and Oliphant’s aftershave, as if all three were claustrophobically caged animals. It could hardly have been a more unsuitable place in which to conduct an interview, and he wondered whether Adam Dalgliesh would have engineered things better and despised himself for the thought. He was aware of Oliphant’s great bulk beside him, their thighs touching, Oliphant’s unnaturally warm, and had to resist an impulse to edge farther away.

He said: “Is this your boat, sir? The one you were sailing last Sunday night?”

“Not sailing, Chief Inspector, for much of the time; there wasn’t enough wind. But, yes, this is my boat and this is the one I was on last Sunday.”

“You seem to have damaged the hull. There’s a long fresh-looking scratch on the starboard side.”

“Clever of you to notice. I scraped the water tower offshore from the power station. Careless of me. I’ve sailed these waters often enough. If you’d come a couple of hours later it would have been repainted.”

“And do you still say that you were never at any time within sight of the beach where Miss Robarts took her last swim?”

“You asked me that question when you saw me on Monday. It depends what you mean by ‘in sight of.’ I could have seen the beach through my binoculars if I’d happened to look, but I can confirm that I never got to within half a mile of it and that I didn’t land. Since I could hardly murder her without landing, that seems to me conclusive. But I don’t suppose you’ve come all this way just to hear me repeat my alibi.”

Reaching down with difficulty, Oliphant dragged his grip onto the seat beside him, took out a pair of Bumble trainers and placed them on the table neatly, side-by-side. Rickards watched Lessingham’s face. He controlled himself immediately but he hadn’t been able to disguise the shock of recognition in the eyes, the tensing of the muscles around the mouth. The pair of trainers, pristine, new, grey and white, with the small bumblebee on each heel, seemed to dominate the cabin. Having placed them there, Oliphant ignored them.

He said: “But you were south of the water towers at the power station. The scratch is on the starboard side. You must have been travelling north, sir, when you got that scrape.”

“I turned for home when I was about fifty yards beyond the towers. I’d planned to make the power station the limit of the journey.”

Rickards said: “These trainers, sir, have you seen a pair like these?”

“Of course. They’re Bumbles. Not everyone can afford them, but most people have seen them.”

“Have you seen them worn by anyone who worked at Larksoken?”

“Yes, Toby Gledhill had a pair. After he killed himself, his parents asked me if I’d clear out his clothes. There weren’t very many. Toby travelled light, but I suppose there were a couple of suits, the usual trousers and jackets and half a dozen pairs of shoes. The trainers were among them. Actually, they were almost new. He bought them about ten days before he died. He only wore them once.”

“And what did you do with them, sir?”

“I bundled up all the clothes and took them to the Old Rectory for the next church jumble sale. The Copleys have a small room at the back of the house where people can leave
their junk. From time to time Dr. Mair puts a notice on the notice board asking people to donate anything they don’t want. It’s part of the policy of being part of the community, all one happy family on the headland. We may not always go to church but we show goodwill by bestowing on the righteous our cast-off clothes.”

“When did you take Mr. Gledhill’s clothes to the Old Rectory?”

“I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was a fortnight after he died. Just before the weekend, I think. Probably on Friday, twenty-sixth August. Mrs. Dennison may remember. I doubt whether it’s worth asking Mrs. Copley, although I did see her.”

“So you handed them over to Mrs. Dennison?”

“That’s right. Actually, the back door of the rectory is usually kept open during daylight hours and people can walk in and drop anything they want to leave. But I thought on this occasion that it would be better to hand the things over formally. I wasn’t entirely sure they’d be welcome. Some people are superstitious about buying the clothes of the recently dead. And it seemed, well, inappropriate just to drop them.”

“What happened at the Old Rectory?”

“Nothing very much. Mrs. Dennison opened the door and showed me into the drawing room. Mrs. Copley was there and I explained why I had called. She produced the usual meaningless platitudes about Toby’s death, and Mrs. Dennison asked me if I would like tea. I declined and I followed her through the hall to the room at the back where they store the jumble. There’s a large tea chest there which holds the shoes. The pairs are just tied by the laces and thrown in. I had Toby’s clothes in a suitcase, and Mrs. Dennison and I unpacked it together. She said that the suits were really too good for the jumble sale and asked if I’d mind if she sold them separately,
provided, of course, the money went to church funds. She thought she might get a better price. I had a feeling that she was wondering whether Mr. Copley might not use one of the jackets. I said she could do what she liked with them.”

“And what happened to the trainers? Were they put into the tea chest with the rest of the shoes?”

“Yes, but in a plastic bag. Mrs. Dennison said they were in too good a condition to be thrown in with the others and get dirty. She went off and returned with the bag. She seemed to be uncertain what to do with the suits, so I said I’d leave the suitcase. It was Toby’s after all. It could be sold at the jumble sale with the rest of the things. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, jumble to jumble. I was glad to see the end of it.”

Rickards said: “I read about Dr. Gledhill’s suicide, of course. It must have been particularly distressing for you, who actually saw it happen. He was described as a young man of brilliant promise.”

“He was a creative scientist. Mair will confirm that, if you’re interested one way or the other. Of course, all good science is creative, whatever the humanities try to tell you, but there are scientists who have this special vision, genius as opposed to talent, inspiration as well as the necessary patient conscientiousness. Someone, I forget who, described it rather well. Most of us edge forward, painfully advancing, yard by yard; they parachute behind enemy lines. He was young, only twenty-four. He could have become anything.”

Rickards thought, Anything or nothing, like most of these young geniuses. Early death usually conferred a brief vicarious immortality. He’d never known a young DCI, accidentally killed, who wasn’t at once proclaimed a potential Chief Constable. He asked: “What exactly was he doing at the power station, what was his job?”

“Working with Mair on his PWR safety studies. Briefly, it’s to do with the behaviour of the core in abnormal conditions. Toby never discussed it with me, probably because he knew I couldn’t understand the complicated computer codes. I’m just a poor bloody engineer. Mair is due to publish the study before he leaves for his rumoured new job, no doubt under both their names and with a suitable acknowledgement to his collaborator. All that will last of Toby is his name under Mair’s on a scientific paper.”

He sounded utterly weary and, looking towards the open door, made a half-movement as if to get up, out of the claustrophobic little cabin and into the air. Then he said, his eyes still on the door: “It’s no use trying to explain Toby to you, you wouldn’t understand. It would be a waste of your time and mine.”

“You seem very sure of that, Mr. Lessingham.”

“I am sure, very sure. I can’t explain why without being offensive. So why don’t we keep it simple, stick to the facts. Look, he was an exceptional person. He was clever, he was kind, he was beautiful. If you find one of these qualities in a human being, you’re lucky; if you find all three, then you get someone rather special. I was in love with him. He knew, because I told him. He wasn’t in love with me and he wasn’t gay. Not that it’s any business of yours. I’m telling you because it was a fact and you’re supposed to deal in facts, and because if you’re determined to be interested in Toby you may as well get him right. And there’s another reason. You’re obviously grubbing about for all the dirt you can find. I’d rather you had facts from me than rumours from other people.”

Rickards said: “So you didn’t have a sexual relationship.”

Suddenly the air was rent with a wild screeching and there was a beating of white wings against the porthole. Outside someone must be feeding the seagulls.

Lessingham started up as if the sound were alien to him. Then he collapsed back in his seat and said with more weariness than anger: “What the
hell
has that to do with Hilary Robarts’s murder?”

“Possibly nothing at all, in which case the information will be kept private. But at this stage it’s for me to decide what may or may not be relevant.”

“We spent one night together two weeks before he died. As I said, he was kind. It was the first and the last time.”

“Is that generally known?”

“We didn’t broadcast it over local radio or write to the local paper or put up a notice in the staff canteen. Of course it wasn’t generally known, why the hell should it be?”

“Would it have mattered if it had been? Would either of you have cared?”

“Yes, I would, we both would. I would care in the way you would care if your sex life was sniggered about in public. Of course we would have cared. After he died, it ceased to matter as far as I was concerned. There’s this to be said for the death of a friend: it frees you from so much you thought was important.”

Frees you for what? thought Rickards. For murder, that iconoclastic act of protest and defiance, that single step across an unmarked, undefended frontier which, once taken, sets a man apart forever from the rest of his kind? But he decided to defer the obvious question.

Instead he asked: “What sort of family had he?” The question sounded innocuous and banal, as if they were casually discussing a common acquaintance.

“He had a father and a mother. That sort of family. What other sort is there?”

But Rickards had resolved on patience. It was not a ploy that came easily to him, but he could recognize pain when its
taut and naked sinews were thrust so close to his face. He said mildly: “I mean, what sort of background did he come from? Had he brothers or sisters?”

“His father is a country parson. His mother is a country parson’s wife. He was an only child. His death nearly destroyed them. If we could have made it look like an accident, we would have. If lying could have helped, I would have lied. Why the hell didn’t he drown himself? That way there would at least have been room for doubt. Is that what you meant by background?”

“It’s helping to fill in the picture.” He paused and then, almost casually, asked the seminal question. “Did Hilary Robarts know that you and Tobias Gledhill had spent a night together?”

“Whatever possible relevance …? All right, it’s your job to do the scavenging. I know the system. You trawl up everything you can get your nets to and then throw away what you don’t want. In the process you learn a lot of secrets you’ve no particular right to know and cause a lot of pain. Do you enjoy that? Is that what gives you your kicks?”

“Just answer the question, sir.”

“Yes, Hilary knew. She found out by one of those coincidences which seem a one-in-a-million chance when they happen but which aren’t really so remarkable or unusual in real life. She drove past my house when Toby and I were leaving just after seven-thirty in the morning. She had taken a day’s leave, apparently, and must have left home early to drive off somewhere. It’s no use asking me where, because I don’t know. I suppose, like most other people, she has friends she visits from time to time. I mean, someone somewhere must have liked her.”

“Did she ever speak about the encounter, to you or to anyone else you know?”

“She didn’t make it public property. I think she regarded it as too valuable a piece of information to cast before the swine.
She liked power, and this was certainly power of a kind. As she drove past, she slowed down almost to walking pace and stared straight into my eyes. I can remember that look: amusement, changing to contempt, then triumph. We understood each other all right. But she never subsequently spoke a word to me.”

“Did she talk about it to Mr. Gledhill?”

“Oh yes, she spoke to Toby all right. That’s the reason he killed himself.”

“How do you know that she spoke to him? Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“You’re suggesting that she blackmailed him?”

“I’m suggesting that he was unhappy, muddled, uncertain about every aspect of his life, his research, his future, his sexuality. I know that she attracted him sexually. He wanted her. She was one of those dominant, physically powerful women who do attract sensitive men like Toby. I think she knew that and she used it. I don’t know when she got hold of him or what she said to him, but I’m bloody sure that he’d be alive now if it weren’t for Hilary Robarts. And if you think that gives me a motive for her murder, you’re damned right. But I didn’t kill her and, that being so, you won’t find any evidence that I did. Part of me, a very small part, is actually sorry that she’s dead. I didn’t like her and I don’t think she was a happy woman, or even a particularly useful one. But she was healthy and intelligent and she was young. Death ought to be for the old, the sick and the tired. What I feel is a touch of
lacrimae rerum
. Even the death of an enemy diminishes us, apparently, or so, in certain moods, it seems. But that doesn’t mean I’d want her alive again. But it’s possible I’m prejudiced, perhaps even unjust. When Toby was happy, no one was more joyous. When he was miserable, he went down into his private hell. Perhaps she could reach him there, could help him. I know I couldn’t.
It’s difficult to comfort a friend when you suspect that he sees it as a ploy to get him into your bed.”