Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs (30 page)

“What did they look like?”

“Chubby woman with blonde hair, big fat chap with a beard. Needless to say, Will didn’t tell them anything.”

A shadow of despair engulfed Carole.

Brian Helling tugged on the rope. “Better get you back in your little niche, hadn’t we? I’ve got to be off.”

“When will you be coming back?” asked Carole, trying to make it sound like the most casual question in the world.

He let out a dry chuckle. “Oh, I don’t think I should tell you that. It’d spoil the fun.”

“So what is going to be the fun for you? Killing me? Watching me die?”

“I suppose so, yes. But,” he said rather primly, “it’s not just random cruelty. There’s a practical side as well. Writers need experience. There are some things you can’t make up. You have to live through them. All my other books were rejected, not because they weren’t horrifying enough, but because they weren’t authentic enough. They lacked that little bit extra that can only be given by firsthand experience.”

“And you didn’t get that first-hand experience when you set fire to Heron Cottage?”

“No.” He spoke with genuine regret and a frightening objectivity. “I wasn’t able to watch my mother die. Pity, I’d been looking forward to that for a long time.”

“So she couldn’t give you the authentic material you were looking for?”

“No.”

“So…you couldn’t get what you wanted when you killed your mother…Whereas I, on the other hand, can go to my death with the great satisfaction of knowing I’ve helped you, for the first time in your life, to write a publishable book?”

He didn’t like the scorn in her voice. He lashed out and slapped her face hard, hissing, “Yes.”

“Well, don’t bother putting me back in that smelly cave. Why don’t you just kill me with your knife?” Carole demanded defiantly. “Get it over with. Watch me die here and now. Sit with your notebook and describe every last twitch of my body. I’m sure that would add the necessary ‘authenticity’ to your precious book.”

“Oh no,” said Brian Helling, with an icicle of a smile. “That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t fit. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I have to watch someone die in the Prison of Fort Pittsburgh.”

“Why?”

His face clouded with painful memories. But the only explanation he could give was, “I have to do it.”

He tugged on the rope, again with unnecessary harshness. “Come on, it’ll be dark soon. Time to settle you in for the night, Carole. Though in fact what we’re talking about is nights and days, and more nights and days…You won’t be coming out of there again.”

“But you’ll be coming in to watch me?”

“I must make sure my
Diary of Decay
is authentic.”

“Well, may I at least have another pee before—”

“No!”

This time the tug on the rope was so hard that Carole fell to the ground. Brian Helling dragged her upright and pushed her towards the undergrowth-hidden entrance to the cave.

When she tried to resist, he hit her hard around the head. He had lost the restraint that previously curbed his violence. He was very dangerous.

Cowed, Carole could do nothing but what he wanted. She dropped to her knees and then rolled sideways into the rank darkness.

She could still feel the tension on the rope, and waited for him to follow her in and truss her up again. He’d tie her legs, and shackle her once again to the tree root. And that was the position in which she would stay, for the rest of her life. Which wouldn’t be very long.

Then one day perhaps another walker, wandering off the beaten track across the Downs, would stumble on her catacomb. And another set of female bones would be found to feed the mills of gossip and conjecture that ground endlessly in the village of Weldisham.

Carole Seddon had often thought her life was unimportant. Never till that moment had it felt so essential. She dreamed of being back in a hot bath at High Tor, and she knew how unlikely that dream was ever to be realized.

She lay on the slimy floor, breathing the chill, dank air, waiting for her murderer to come into the cave after her.

There was a moment of stillness, then a shout, and a yank on the rope that almost pulled her arms from their sockets. She was aware of herself screaming.

S
uddenly, mercifully, the rope was released.

There were sounds of confusion, shouting, possibly fighting, from outside. Then the entrance to the cave was once again darkened by a human body.

And Carole heard the most welcome sound of her life. It was the anxious voice of Ted Crisp asking, “Are you all right, Carole? I’ll kill the bastard if he’s hurt you.”

She felt Ted’s strong arms helping her out and, once she was upright, fell into them. His body felt huge and wonderfully solid.

It was still just light at the foot of the chalk cliff. Carole took in Nick, holding a tyre iron, guarding the Land Rover to prevent Brian Helling’s escape by that route. Beside him was a sight almost as welcome as led Crisp—Jude.

But Jude was looking upwards with fear in her eyes and there was shouting from above them.

Carole, still holding Ted Crisp’s hand, moved backwards to see what was going on at the top of the cliff.

Brian Helling had scurried up a narrow diagonal ridge across the chalk face. An escape route from Fort Pittsburgh that they’d found in their childhood games. But, at the top of the cliff, knowing the way Brian would come, stood Lennie Baylis.

The sergeant was much heavier in build than his opponent, who looked effete and slightly ridiculous in his trademark beret and black coat. The leather was scored with white chalk marks where Brian had scrambled against the cliff.

They faced each other for a moment in silence, then Brian Helling’s escape was cut short as Lennie Baylis’s heavy body slammed into him. For a moment it looked as though the lighter man had lost his balance and would fall back down the chalk. But somehow he managed to grab hold of his assailant and, watched with appalled fascination by the four below, the two bodies grappled together on the cliff top, re-creating a long-remembered childhood conflict.

There was a sound like a gasp and, gradually, the bodies separated. As in slow motion, one slipped away from the other. Then, gathering momentum, the body slithered down the face of the cliff, leaving a livid smear of red on the discoloured chalk.

At the top, with bloodied knife in hand and an expression of triumph on his face, stood Brian Helling.

J
ude had rung the police on her mobile. Brian Helling offered no resistance when Ted Crisp tied him up with the orange nylon rope. The murder of Lennie Baylis seemed to have calmed him down, perhaps provided a resolution to emotions that had tortured him throughout his life.

The police arrived in a convoy of Range Rovers. They were very solicitous, and a female officer looked after Carole. Respectful of the state she was in, they kept their questioning to a minimum and, once reassured that Brian Helling hadn’t touched her sexually and that she really did feel all right, allowed her to fulfil her fantasy of ending up that night in a hot bath back at High Tor.

There would be more questions later, but, they implied, not until Carole felt ready to answer them.

Jude went back with Carole, but neither felt like talking. Carole promised Jude she’d ring through if she woke in the night feeling bad, but she didn’t think it’d happen. The emotions of the previous twenty-four hours had left her so drained she didn’t feel anything, except extraordinarily tired. She could sleep for a week.

§

The police were back to Carole earlier than she’d expected. The very next morning, in fact. But her visitors weren’t from the teams investigating the three Weldisham murders. They comprised an assistant chief constable, resplendent in his uniform, and a female detective constable in designer plain clothes.

They were polite, but went straight to the purpose of their visit. “Mrs Seddon,” said the assistant chief constable, “we’re here in connection with the late Detective Sergeant Baylis.”

“Yes. It must be dreadful for his family.”

“Of course.” He dismissed the family with a perfunctory wave of his hand. “I need to understand, Mrs Seddon, how much you knew about Detective Sergeant Baylis.”

“Not a lot. I met him first a few weeks back. He was called out to Weldisham when I reported my discovery of the bones in South Welling Barn.”

“And you saw him after that occasion?”

“Yes, once or twice. He encouraged me to let him know how my thoughts were going about the…well, I suppose I have to call it the ‘case’. He seemed very concerned that I should keep him up to date with anything I’d observed round the village.”

“Didn’t you think that was odd?”

“Well, I suppose a bit…He did seem to take a very personal interest in the case.”

A look passed between the assistant chief constable and his sergeant. It seemed to confirm some conjecture that they’d shared before the meeting.

“Did Detective Sergeant Baylis say anything to you about drugs, Mrs Seddon?”

Some instinctive caution made Carole decide to forget the conversation that she had overheard at Fort Pittsburgh. “Well…He did say that Brian Helling had got involved with drugs…that Brian owed a lot of money to some men in Brighton.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

Her answer seemed to satisfy the assistant chief constable. “Mrs Seddon, I must request your complete confidentiality in this matter. Please don’t talk about it to anyone, least of all the press. The fact is that Detective Sergeant Baylis had been under internal police investigation for some time…”

“About drugs?”

“Yes. Baylis used to be based in Brighton and there were allegations that he…got rather more friendly than he should with certain club owners…That he from time to time turned a blind eye to deals that…As I say, these were only allegations, which were in the process of being investigated when he died…”

“Yesterday.”

“Precisely. Now what will happen to that investigation in these new circumstances…Well, who can say at this point? Obviously, if the investigation is wound up, that will save Sergeant Baylis’s family a good deal of suffering…”

Might also save you a good deal of adverse publicity, thought Carole.

“As yet, as I say, no decisions have been taken about the inquiry, but, because of its sensitive nature, I hope I can rely on your…absolute discretion.”

“Of course.” Carole’s cases were solved. She had no interest in the unsavoury past deeds of the late Detective Sergeant Baylis.

One thing she did wonder, though…Had Lennie Baylis been tempted to supplement his income so that he could one day afford a property in Weldisham? Was he another wistful local boy, like Harry Grant, who wanted to demonstrate his success by moving back into the village where he had grown up?

“Thank you very much, Mrs Seddon. We appreciate your cooperation. Now there’s someone else we have to see nearby…What was the address, Sergeant?”

A rustle of papers consulted. “Woodside Cottage.”

“It’s right next door.”

So Jude was going to get the same request to keep her mouth shut.

T
he news that Graham Forbes had had a second stroke came to Jude via Gillie Lutteridge. As soon as she heard, she told Carole and they agreed she should ring his wife.

On the phone Irene Forbes sounded as poised and serene as ever. She gracefully accepted Carole’s commiserations and hopes for her husband’s speedy recovery. Graham was in a private hospital in Chichester. There hadn’t been much change in his condition since the second stroke, but the consultant was optimistic about his chances for at least a partial recovery.

Irene was taken aback and seemed poised to say no when Carole asked if she could go to the hospital to visit. “I would like to go with my friend Jude.”

“Jude…”

“The blonde woman who—”

“Yes. I know who you mean.” There was a silence, during which perhaps Irene Forbes was reliving her conversation with Jude. “Very well, you’d better visit him. But go on your own. Graham hasn’t met Jude. He can’t cope with anyone new at the moment. Go before three o’clock today. I will be going to the hospital at three. He will be busy then.”

§

It was not easy to hear what Graham Forbes said. The stroke had pulled his face sideways, like a poster misapplied to a wall. Saliva dripped from the useless edge of his mouth.

But if Carole concentrated, she could understand him.

His thin body looked too long for the hospital bed in which it was coiled. He’d been prepared for her arrival, however. Presumably Irene had rung through and told him the visitor was on her way. Even in his debilitated state, Graham Forbes managed a courteous greeting.

Then he gasped out the words, “Have you come to ask me if I’m sorry? Do you want me to say I regret what I did?”

“No,” said Carole.

“Just as well. Because I’ll never say it. I can’t say what I don’t mean. I had twenty-eight years of misery married to Sheila, thirteen years of bliss living with Irene. I’m afraid, for me, those facts answer all the moral arguments.”

“‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

His thin shoulders managed a shrug. “That one too. Even in the days when I went along with the observances of organized religion, I never believed any of it. We have to make our own moral values, according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There’s no absolute right or wrong. And we’re only here once.” There was a cough that could have been a chuckle. “Not that I’m here for a lot longer.”

“Can you just…would you mind…for my personal satisfaction…telling me if what I’ve worked out about what happened is actually right?”

“Oh, Carole, you been playing amateur detectives, have you?”

“Well…”

“All right, you spell out how you think the master criminal wove his evil schemes, and I’ll tell you where you go wrong.”

So Carole did as she was told. Occasionally, Graham Forbes nodded, though she couldn’t tell whether it was in appreciation of her cleverness or his own.

When she got to the events of Thursday 15 October, the night of the Great Storm, he couldn’t help himself from taking up the narrative. “I remember how miserable I’d been that evening, stuck in the house with a woman I had hated through most of our marriage, knowing that—if I didn’t put my plan into action—in a few days I’d be back in KL and I’d see Irene again, and I wouldn’t be bringing what I’d promised her.”