Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (30 page)

"I don't know, I don't know. How can I tell? It might have been. I couldn't tell anything about him, he might have been young or not so young, he wasn't old. He looked big and strong. He seemed -- he seemed to know this place, though I don't know how I knew that, it's just that he seemed to know what he was tioing and where he was going. Oh, what will become of me, what will happen to me!" ti Wexford was saved from trying to find Sto answer by the entry into the room of JShe Harrisons. Though Ken Harrison was l**Uy dressed, his wife was in the kind of ent Wexford had heard, long ago, called a

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'housecoat', red velvet with whitish swansdown round the neck, the front open from the waist to show blue spotted pyjama legs. In time-honoured fashion, she was carrying a poker.

"What's going on?" said Harrison. "There's men everywhere. The place is bristling with cops. I said to Brenda, you know what this could be? This could be those villains come back to finish Daisy off."

"So we put some things on and came straight here. I wasn't walking, I made Ken get the car out. You're not safe here, I wouldn't count on being safe even inside a car."

"Mind you, we should have been here. I said it from the first, when we first heard there was going to be some policewoman stopping in the house. Why didn't they just get us? You don't want some bit of a girl, policewoman or no policewoman so-called. Johnny and us, we should have been called in, God knows there's bedrooms enough, but oh no, nobody suggested it, so I never said a word. If Johnny and us had been here and the word had gone round we was here, d'you reckon any of this would have happened? D'you reckon that gunman would have had the nerve to come back here with ideas of finishing her off? Not a ..."

Daisy cut him short. Wexford was astonished by what she did. She jumped up and said with cold clarity, "I'm giving you notice. You must be on some sort of notice and I don't know what it is, but a month's if possible. I want you out of here and the sooner the better. If I had my way, you'd be out tomorrow.3

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She was her grandmother's granddaughter all right. She stood with her head thrown back, confronting them contemptuously. And then, quickly, her voice broke and slurred. The brandy had done its work and now it was doing work of a different kind.

"Haven't you any feelings? Haven't you any care for me? Talking about finishing me off? I hate you! I hate you both! I want you out of my house, off my land, I'm going to take your cottage away from you ..."

Her cry disintegrated into a wail, a hysterical sobbing. The Harrisons stood dumbfounded, Brenda's mouth actually hanging open. Karen went up to Daisy and Wexford thought for a moment she was going to administer one of those slaps that are supposed to be the best remedy for hysteria. But instead she took Daisy in her arms and, with one hand on the dark head, brought it to rest against her own shoulder.

"Come, Daisy, I'm going to take you up to bed now. You'll be quite quite safe now."

Would she? Wexford wished he could have provided such a confident reassurance. Vine's eyes met his and the sedate sergeant performed the action most nearly possible to him of casting up the gaze. He moved his eyeballs a few loillirnetres to the north.

Ken Harrison said excitedly, "She's over ught, she's in a state, she didn't mean that.

e didn't mean that, did she?"

"Of course she didn't mean it, Ken, we're all ly here, we're part of the family. Of course

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'housecoat', red velvet with whitish swansdown round the neck, the front open from the waist to show blue spotted pyjama legs. In time-honoured fashion, she was carrying a poker.

"What's going on?" said Harrison. "There's men everywhere. The place is bristling with cops. I said to Brenda, you know what this could be? This could be those villains come back to finish Daisy off."

"So we put some things on and came straight here. I wasn't walking, I made Ken get the car out. You're not safe here, I wouldn't count on being safe even inside a car."

"Mind you, we should have been here. I said it from the first, when we first heard there was going to be some policewoman stopping in the house. Why didn't they just get us? You don't want some bit of a girl, policewoman or no policewoman so-called. Johnny and us, we should have been called in, God knows there's bedrooms enough, but oh no, nobody suggested it, so I never said a word. If Johnny and us had been here and the word had gone round we was here, d'you reckon any of this would have happened? D'you reckon that gunman would have had the nerve to come back here with ideas of finishing her off? Not a ..."

Daisy cut him short. Wexford was astonished by what she did. She jumped up and said with cold clarity, "I'm giving you notice. You must be on some sort of notice and I don't know what it is, but a month's if possible. I want you out of here and the sooner the better. If I had my way, you'd be out tomorrow.3

306

�>

She was her grandmother's granddaughter all right. She stood with her head thrown back, confronting them contemptuously. And then, quickly, her voice broke and slurred. The brandy had done its work and now it was doing work of a different kind.

"Haven't you any feelings? Haven't you any care for me? Talking about finishing me off? I hate you! I hate you both! I want you out of my house, off my land, I'm going to take your cottage away from you ..."

Her cry disintegrated into a wail, a hysterical sobbing. The Harrisons stood dumbfounded, Brenda's mouth actually hanging open. Karen went up to Daisy and Wexford thought for a moment she was going to administer one of those slaps that are supposed to be the best remedy for hysteria. But instead she took Daisy in her arms and, with one hand on the dark head, brought it to rest against her own shoulder.

"Come, Daisy, I'm going to take you up to bed now. You'll be quite quite safe now." \-. Would she? Wexford wished he could have provided such a confident reassurance. Vine's eyes met his and the sedate sergeant performed the action most nearly possible to him of casting up the gaze. He moved his eyeballs a few Ittillimetres to the north. jJltrJCen Harrison said excitedly, "She's over ught, she's in a state, she didn't mean that. pie didn't mean that, did she?"

"Of course she didn't mean it, Ken, we're all y here, we're part of the family. Of course

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she didn't mean it -- did she?"

"I think you'd better go home, Mrs Harrison," said Wexford. "Both of you should go home." He rejected saying that things would seem different in the morning, though,they undoubtedly would. "Get on home and get some sleep."

"Where's Johnny?" said Brenda. "That's what I'd like to know. If we could hear those men, and they were making enough racket to wake the dead, why didn't Johnny hear them? Why's he laying low? That's what I'd like to know." She went on with venom, "Can't even be bothered to come up here and see what's going on. If you ask me, if someone's going to get the push it should be him, lazy devil. What's he got to lay low about?"

"He slept through it." Wexford couldn't resist adding, "He's young."

* * *

Karen Malahyde, twenty-three years old, far from fitting Ken Harrison's image of a 'policewoman', that now derogatory and disused term, was a black belt who taught a judo class. Wexford knew that if she had encountered the Tancred intruder on the previous night and that man had either been unarmed or slow on the draw, she would have been capable of rendering him harmless very rapidly. Once she had described how she went alone everywhere fearlessly at night, having proved herself by throwing a mugger the width of a street.

But was she an adequate bodyguard for Daisy

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on her own? Were Anne or Rosemary adequate? He must persuade Daisy to leave the house. Not exactly to go into hiding but certainly to go some distance and hole up with friends. Still, he confessed to himself and later to Burden that this was a development he hadn't expected. He had supplied a 'minder' for Daisy but only to be on the safe side. That one of those men, the gunman necessarily if the other, the unseen, had been Andy Griffin, should in fact come back to 'get her', was the stuff of dreams, of fiction, of wild imaginings. It did not happen.

"It did," said Burden. "She's not safe here and she ought to go. I don't see how it's going to make much difference if we move the Harrison's and Gabbitas into the house. There were four people in the house that first time, remember? That didn't deter him."

The white tablecloth with the glass on it and the silver. The food on the heated trolley. The curtains cosily drawn against the March night. The first course finished, the soup, Naomi Jones serving the fish, the sole bonne femme, and when everyone has a plate, as everyone begins to eat, the sounds from overhead, the noises Davina Flory says are made by the cat Queenie fcn the rampage.

But Harvey Copeland goes to look, handsome Harvey who looked like Paul Newman and had been a 'wow on campus', that his elderly wife fead married for love and sex. Silence outside, tio car, no footsteps, only a distant commotion

erhead.

Harvey has gone upstairs and come down

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again or has never reached upstairs, but turned at the foot as the gunman comes out of the passage . . .

How long had all this taken? Thirty seconds? Two minutes? And in those two minutes what was going on in the dining room? They were calmly eating their fish in Harvey's absence? Or simply waiting for him, talking about the cat, the way the cat ran up the back stairs and down the front every night. Then the shot and Naomi getting to her feet, Daisy getting to her feet, starting for the door. Davina remained where she was, seated at the table. Why? Why would she do that? Fear? Simple fear holding her fast to the spot?

The door flies open and the gunman enters and the shots are fired and the tablecloth is no longer white but scarlet, dyed by a dense stain that was to spread across nearly the whole of it "

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"I'll talk to her in a minute," Wexford said. "Of course I can't force her to leave if she doesn't want to. Come with me, will you? We'll both have a go."

"She may be very anxious to go by now. Morning makes all the difference."

Yes, but it doesn't make that kind of difference, thought Wexford. The light of day makes you less afraid, not more. Sunshine and the morning make you dismiss last night's terrors as exaggerated. Light is practical and dark is occult.

They went outside, crossed the yard and came slowly round the side of the house, the

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west wing. He had not used those words to himself metaphorically. The sun shone with a hard strong light where the moon had shed a pale glow. The sky was a deep blue without cloud. It might have been June, for the air felt mild as if the chill had been lifted for an assured stretch of months.

"He came round the back here, then," Burden said. "What was he trying to do, find a way in? An open window downstairs? It wasn't a cold night."

time."

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"There were no open windows downstairs. All the doors were locked. Unlike that previous

It was a bit funny, wasn't it, pattering round the house so that two people inside could plainly hear you? With all the windows closed, they could still hear? You disguise yourself in a hood but you don't mind making a hell of a racket while you're looking for a way in."

Wexfbrd said thoughtfully, "I wonder if the truth is he didn't mind if he was heard or seen? If he believed Daisy was alone and he meant to kill her, so what if she did see him?"

"In that case, why wear a mask?"

"True."

An unfamiliar car was parked a few yards from the front door. That door opened as they approached the car and Joyce Virson came out with Daisy behind her. Airs Virson was in a fur eoat, the kind of garment neither favoured nor fashionable, that the Oxfam shop baulked at ftad the church sales couldn't sell, unmistakably

ade from the pelts of many foxes.

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Never had Wexford seen Daisy so punkish. There was something defiant about her gear, the black tights and lace-up boots, black sweatshirt with something white printed on it, the scuffed black leather motorbike jacket. Her face was a mask of misery but her hair, heavily gelled, stuck out in spikes all over her head like a forest of burnt tree stumps. She seemed to be making a statement -- perhaps only that this was Daisy contra mundum.

She looked at him, she looked at Burden, in silence. It took Joyce Virson a moment or two to recall who this was. A big toothy smile transfigured her as she came up to Wexford with both hands outstretched.

"Oh, Mr Wexford, how are you? I'm so pleased to see you. You're just the man to persuade this child to come back with me. I mean, she can't stay here on her own, can she? I was so utterly horrified when I heard what happened here last night, I came straight over. She should never have been allowed to leave us."

Wexford wondered how she had heard. Not through Daisy, he was sure.

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand the way things are allowed to be these days. When I was eighteen I wouldn't have been permitted to stay anywhere on my own, let alone in a great lonely house like this one. You can't tell me things have changed for the better. I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned the old days were the best."

Stony-faced, Daisy watched her through half this speech, then turned aside to fix her eyes

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on the cat which, perhaps seldom permitted to escape from the front of the house, was sitting on the stone coping of the pool, watching the white and red fish. The fish swam in concentric circles and the cat watched.

"Do say something to her, Mr Wexford. Persuade her. Use your authority. You can't tell me there's no way of bringing pressure to bear on a child." Mis Virson was rapidly forgetting that persuasion necessarily must include elements of niceness and perhaps flattery if it is to succeed. Her voice rose. "It's so stupid and downright foolhardy! What does she think she's playing at?"

The cat dipped a paw into the pool, found an element different from what it expected and shook water drops from its pads. Daisy bent down and lifted it up in her arms. She said, "Goodbye, Joyce," and with an edge of irony, not lost on Wexford, "Thank you so much for coming." She stalked into the house with her fluffy armful, but left the door open.