Devices and Desires (45 page)

Rickards said: “You’ve been remarkably frank in suggesting a motive for yourself. But you haven’t given us a single piece of concrete evidence to support your allegation that Hilary Robarts was in any way responsible for Toby Gledhill’s death.”

Lessingham looked straight into his eyes and seemed to be considering; then he said: “I’ve gone so far, I may as well tell you the rest. He spoke to me when he passed me on his way to death. He said, ‘Tell Hilary she doesn’t have to worry any more. I’ve made my choice.’ The next time I saw him he was climbing the fuelling machine. He balanced on it for a second, then dived down on top of the reactor. He meant me to see him die, and I saw him die.”

Oliphant said: “A symbolic sacrifice.”

“To the terrifying god of nuclear fission? I thought one of you might say that, Sergeant. That was the vulgar reaction. It’s altogether too crude and histrionic. All he wanted, for God’s sake, was the quickest way to break his neck.” He paused, seemed to consider, then went on: “Suicide is an extraordinary phenomenon. The result is irrevocable. Extinction. The end of all choice. But the precipitating action often seems so commonplace. A minor setback, momentary depression, the state of the weather, even a poor dinner. Would Toby have died if he’d spent the previous night with me instead of alone? If he was alone.”

“Are you saying that he wasn’t?”

“There was no evidence either way, and now there will never be. But, then, the inquest was remarkable for the lack of evidence about anything. There were three witnesses, myself and two others, to the way he died. No one was near him, no one could have pushed him, it couldn’t have been an accident. There was no evidence from me or anyone else about his state
of mind. You could say that it was a scientifically conducted inquest. It stuck to the facts.”

Oliphant said quietly: “And where do you think he spent the night before he died?”

“With her.”

“On what evidence?”

“None that would stand up in a court. Only that I rang him three times between nine and midnight and he didn’t reply.”

“And you didn’t tell that to the police or the coroner?”

“On the contrary. I was asked when I’d last seen him. That was in the canteen on the day before he died. I mentioned my telephone call, but no one regarded it as important. Why should they? What did it prove? He could have been out walking. He could have decided not to answer the phone. There was no mystery about how he died. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get out of here and on with cleaning that bloody engine.”

They walked in silence back to the car. Rickards said: “Arrogant bastard, isn’t he? He made his view brutally plain. No point in trying to explain anything to the police. He can’t say why without being offensive. You bet he can’t. We’re too thick, ignorant and insensitive to understand that a research scientist isn’t necessarily an unimaginative technocrat, that you can be sorry a woman is dead without necessarily wishing her alive again and that a sexually attractive boy might actually be prepared to go to bed with either sex.”

Oliphant said: “He could have done it if he used the engine at full power. He’d have had to come ashore north of where she bathed and kept to the tide line, or we’d have seen his footprints. It was a thorough search, sir, at least a mile north and south. We identified Mr. Dalgliesh’s prints, but otherwise the upper beach was clean.”

“Oh yes, he’d have kept pretty clear of the killing ground. But he could have beached the inflatable dinghy on shingle without much problem. There are stretches which are practically all pebbled, or with narrow strips of sand which he could leap over.”

“What about the old beach defences, the hunks of concrete? It would be difficult to come close to shore anywhere north within easy walking distance without risking the boat.”

“He has risked the boat recently, hasn’t he? There’s this scrape along the bow. He can’t prove that he made it on the water towers. Cool about it, too, wasn’t he? Calmly admitted that if we’d been an hour later he’d have repaired it. Not that repainting would have done him much good; the evidence would still be there. All right, so he manages to manoeuvre the boat as close in shore as he can—say, a hundred yards north of where she was found—makes his way along the shingle and into the trees and waits quietly in their shadow. Or he could have loaded the folding bicycle into the dinghy and landed at a safer distance. He couldn’t cycle along the beach at high tide, but he’d have been safe enough on the coast road if he cycled without a light. He gets back to the boat and berths her again at Blakeney, just catching the high tide. No trouble about the knife or the shoes: he drops them overboard. We’ll get the boat examined, with his consent, of course, and I want a single-handed chap to make that journey. If we’ve got an experienced sailor among our chaps, use him. If not, get someone local and accompany him. We’ve got to time it to the minute. And we’d better make enquiries of the crab fishermen down Cromer way. Someone may have been out that night and seen his boat.”

Oliphant said: “Obliging of him, sir, to hand us his motive on a plate.”

“So obliging that I can’t help wondering whether it isn’t a smoke screen for something he didn’t tell us.”

But as Rickards fastened his seat belt another possibility occurred to him. Lessingham had said nothing about his relationship with Toby Gledhill until he had been questioned about the Bumble trainers. He must know—how could he fail to?—that these linked the murder even more strongly to the headlanders and, in particular, to the Old Rectory. Was his new openness with the police less a compulsion to confide than a deliberate ploy to divert suspicion from another suspect? And if so, which of the suspects, Rickards wondered, was most likely to evoke this eccentric act of chivalry?

On Thursday morning Dalgliesh drove to Lydsett to shop at the village store. His aunt had shopped locally for most of her main provisions and he continued the practice, partly, he knew, to assuage a nagging guilt about having a second home, however temporary. The villagers did not on the whole resent weekenders, despite the fact that their cottages remained empty for most of the year and their contribution to village life was minimal, but preferred them not to arrive with their car boots loaded with provisions from Harrods or Fortnum and Mason.

And patronizing the Brysons in their corner shop entailed no particular sacrifice. It was an unpretentious village store with a clanging bell on the door which, as the sepia photographs of the Victorian village showed, had hardly altered externally in the last 120 years. Inside, however, the last four years had seen more changes than in the whole of its history. Whether because of the growth of holiday homes or the more sophisticated tastes of the villagers, it now offered fresh pasta, a variety of French as well as English cheeses, the more expensive brands of jams, marmalade and mustard and
a well-stocked delicatessen, while a notice proclaimed that fresh croissants were delivered daily.

As he drew up in the side street, Dalgliesh had to manoeuvre past an old and heavily built bicycle with a large wicker basket which was propped against the kerb, and as he entered he saw that Ryan Blaney was just completing his purchases. Mrs. Bryson was ringing up and bagging three large brown loaves, packets of sugar, cartons of milk and an assortment of tins. Blaney gave Dalgliesh a glance from his bloodshot eyes, a curt nod, and was gone. He was still without his van, thought Dalgliesh, watching him load his basket with the contents of one carrier and hang the other two on the handlebars. Mrs. Bryson turned on Dalgliesh her welcoming smile but did not comment. She was too prudent a shopkeeper to get a reputation as a gossip or to become too openly involved in local controversies, but it seemed to Dalgliesh that the air was heavy with her unspoken sympathy for Blaney, and, as a policeman, he felt obscurely that she held him partly responsible, although he was unsure precisely why and for what. Rickards or his men must have questioned the villagers about the headlanders, Ryan Blaney in particular. Perhaps they had been less than tactful.

Five minutes later he stopped to open the gate barring entry to the headland. On the other side a tramp was sitting on the bank which separated the narrow road from the reed-enclosed dike. He was bearded and wearing a checked tweed cap beneath which two neat plaits of strong grey hair bound with a rubber band fell almost to his shoulders. He was eating an apple, slicing it with a short-handled knife and throwing the sections into his mouth. His long legs, clad in thick corduroy trousers, were stretched out widely in front of him, almost as if he were deliberately displaying a pair of black, white and grey
trainers, their obvious newness in stark contrast to the rest of his clothes. Dalgliesh closed the gate, then walked over to him and looked down into a pair of bright and intelligent eyes set in a drawn and weatherbeaten face. If this was a tramp, the keenness of that first glance, his air of confident self-sufficiency and the cleanliness of his white rather delicate hands made him an unusual one. But he was surely too encumbered to be a casual hiker. His khaki coat looked like army surplus and was bound with a wide leather belt from which was suspended by string an enamel mug, a small saucepan and a frying pan. A small but tightly packed backpack lay on the verge beside him.

Dalgliesh said: “Good morning. I’m sorry if I seem impertinent, but where did you get those shoes?”

The voice that answered him was educated, a little pedantic, a voice, he thought, that might have once belonged to a schoolmaster.

“You are not, I hope, about to claim ownership. I shall regret it if our acquaintanceship, although no doubt destined to be brief, should begin with a dispute about property.”

“No, they’re not mine. I was wondering how long they’ve been yours.”

The man finished his apple. He threw the core over his shoulder into the ditch, cleaned the blade of his clasp-knife on the grass and pushed it with care deep into his pocket. He said: “May I ask if this enquiry arrives from—forgive me—an inordinate and reprehensible curiosity, an unnatural suspicion of a fellow mortal or a desire to purchase a similar pair for yourself. If the last, I am afraid I am unable to help you.”

“None of these things. But the enquiry is important. I’m not being either presumptuous or suspicious.”

“Nor, sir, are you being particularly candid or explicit. My name, incidentally, is Jonah.”

“Mine is Adam Dalgliesh.”

“Then, Adam Dalgliesh, give me one good reason why I should answer your question and you shall have an answer.”

Dalgliesh paused for a moment. There was, he supposed, a theoretical possibility that here before him was the murderer of Hilary Robarts, but he did not for a moment believe it. Rickards had telephoned him the previous evening to inform him that the Bumbles were no longer in the jumble chest, obviously feeling that he owed Dalgliesh this brief report. But that did not mean that the tramp had taken them, nor did it prove that the two pairs were the same. He said: “On Sunday night a girl was strangled here on the beach. If you recently found, or were given, those shoes, or were wearing them on the headland last Sunday, the police will need to know. They have found a distinct footprint. It is important to identify it if only to eliminate the wearer from their enquiries.”

“Well, that at least is explicit. You talk like a policeman. I should be sorry to hear that you are one.”

“This isn’t my case. But I am a policeman, and I know that the local CID are looking for a pair of Bumble trainers.”

“And these, I take it, are Bumble trainers. I had thought of them as shoes.”

“They don’t have a label except under the tongue. That’s the firm’s sales gimmick. Bumbles are supposed to be recognizable without a blatant display of the name. But if these are Bumbles, there will be a yellow bee on each heel.”

Jonah didn’t reply, but with a sudden vigorous movement swung both feet into the air, held them for a couple of seconds, then dropped them again.

Neither spoke for a few moments; then Jonah said: “You are telling me that I now have on my feet the shoes of a murderer?”

“Possibly, but only possibly, these are the shoes he was wearing when the girl was killed. You see their importance?”

“I shall no doubt be made to see it, by you or another of your kind.”

“Have you heard of the Norfolk Whistler?”

“Is it a bird?”

“A mass murderer.”

“And these shoes are his?”

“He’s dead. This latest killing was made to look as if he were responsible. Are you telling me you haven’t even heard of him?”

“I sometimes see a newspaper when I need paper for other, more earthy purposes. There are plenty to pick up from the waste bins. I seldom read them. They reinforce my conviction that the world is not for me. I seem to have missed your murdering Whistler.” He paused, then added: “What now am I expected to do? I take it that I am in your hands.”

Dalgliesh said: “As I said, it isn’t my case. I’m from the Metropolitan Police. But if you wouldn’t mind coming home with me, I could telephone the officer in charge. It isn’t far. I live in Larksoken Mill, on the headland. And if you care to exchange these trainers for a pair of my shoes, it seems the least I can offer. We’re about the same height. There should be a pair to fit you.”

Jonah got to his feet with surprising agility. As they walked to the car Dalgliesh said: “I’ve really no right to question you, but satisfy my curiosity. How did you come by them?”

“They were bestowed on me—inadvertently, I might say—sometime on Sunday night. I had arrived on the headland after dark and made my way to my usual night shelter in these parts. It’s the half-buried concrete bunker near the cliff. A ‘pillbox,’ I think it’s called. I expect you know it.”

“I know it. Not a particularly salubrious place to spend the night, I should have thought.”

“I have known better, certainly. But it has the advantage of privacy. The headland is off the usual route for fellow wayfarers. I usually visit once a year and stay for a day or two. The pillbox is completely weatherproof, and as the slit window faces the sea I can light a small fire without fear of discovery. I push the rubbish to one side and ignore it. It is a policy I would recommend to you.”