Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (31 page)

Burden followed her in. With no idea what to say, Wexford muttered something about having it all in hand, the police had it under control. Joyce Virson gave him a scathing glare, as well she might.

"I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough. I'm going to have to see what my son says about that."

From her it sounded like a threat. He watched her making heavy weather of turning the little car round and positioning it without -- just without -- scraping its nearside wing on the gateway

KGD21 313

post as she drove off. Daisy was in the hall with Burden, sitting in a high-backed, velvet cushioned chair with Queenie on her lap.

"Why do I care so much if he does kill me?" she was saying. "I don't understand myself. After all, I want to die. I've nothing to live for. Why did I scream and make all that fuss last night? I should have walked out there and gone up to him and said, Kill me, go on, kill me. Finish me off, like that horrible Ken says."

Wexford shrugged. He said with some taciturnity, "Don't mind me, will you? If you get done in I'll have to resign."

She didn't smile but made a sort of grimace. "Talking of resigning, what d'you think? It was that Brenda phoned her, Joyce, I mean. She phoned her up first thing this morning and told her I'd given them the sack and to make me keep them on. How about that? As if I was a child or a psychiatric case. That's how Joyce knew about last night. There's no way I'd have told her, interfering old bat."

"You must have other friends, Daisy. Isn't there someone else you could stay with for a little while? For a couple of weeks?"

"You'll have caught him in two weeks?"

"It's more than probable," Burden said stoutly.

"It makes no difference to me, anyway. I'm staying here. Karen or Anne can come if they like. Well, it's if you like, I suppose. But it's a waste of time, they needn't bother. I shan't be afraid any more. I want him to kill me. That'll be the best way out, to die."

314

She hung her head forward and buried her face in the cat's fur.

* * *

Tracing Andy Griffin's movements from the time he left his parents' house proved impossible. His usual drinking companions from the Slug and Lettuce knew nothing of any other address he might have, though Tony Smith spoke of a girlfriend 'up north'. That empty expression always came up in conversation concerning Andy. Now there was a girlfriend in that vague region, that never-never land.

"Kylie, she was called," said Tony.

"I reckon he made her up," Leslie Sedlar said with a sly grin. "He got her off the telly."

Until losing his job just over a year before, Andy had been a long-distance lorry driver for a company of brewers. His usual route had taken him from Myringham to various London outlets and to Carlisle and Whitehaven.

The brewers had few good words to say of Andy. They had in the past two or three years been enlightened as to the reality of sexual harassment. Andy spent little time in the office but on the few occasions he had been there he had made offensive remarks to a woman Marketing executive and had once taken hold pf her secretary from behind in an arm lock -^taid her neck. Status did little to deter Andy griffin, it was apparently enough that his quarry uld be female, e girlfriend seemed a myth. There was

315

no evidence of her and the Griffins denied her existence. Terry Griffin gave reluctant permission for a search of Andy's bedroom in Myringham. He and his wife were stunned by the death of their son and both looked as if they'd aged by ten years. They sought the remedy of television as others in their situation might look to sedatives or alcohol. Colours and movement, faces and violent action, flowed across the screen to provide a solace that needed only to be there, not to be absorbed or even comprehended.

The whitewashing of her son's reputation was now Margaret Griffin's only aim. It might have been said that this was the last best thing she could do for him. Accordingly, still watching the flowing images, she denied all knowledge of any girl. There had never been a girl in Andy's life. Taking hold of her husband's hand and gripping it tightly, she repeated this last phrase. She managed, in the way she repudiated Burden's suggestion, to make a girlfriend sound like a venereal disease, in a mother's eyes as disgraceful, as irresponsibly acquired and as potentially damaging.

"And you last saw him on Sunday morning, Mr Griffin?"

"Early morning. Andy was always up with the lark. About eight, it was. He made me a cup of tea." The man was dead and he had been a thug, a sexual menace, idle and stupid, but his father would continue pathetically to do for him this splendid public relations job. Even post mortem his mother would advertise the purity of his conduct and his father eulogise

316

over his punctual habits, his thoughtfulness and his altruism. "He said he was off up north," Terry Griffin said.

Burden sighed, and suppressed his sigh.

"On that bike," said the dead man's mother. "I always hated that bike and I was right. Look what's happened."

From some curious emotional need, she was beginning the metamorphosis of her son's murder into death in a road accident.

"He said he'd give us a ring. He always said that, we didn't have to ask."

"We never had to ask," his wife said wearily.

Burden put in gently, "But he didn't in fact phone, did he?"

"No, he never did. And that worried me, knowing he was on that bike."

Margaret Griffin held on to her husband's hand, drawing it into her lap. Burden went down the passage to the bedroom where Davidson and Rosemary Mountjoy were searching. The stack of pornography an exploration of Andy's clothes cupboard had revealed didn't surprise him. Andy would have known that his mother's discretion where he was concerned would have kept herself and her vacuum cleaner honourably away from the inside of that cupboard. 3"Andy Griffin had not been a correspondent, V�r had he been attracted by the printed word. 1Rie magazines relied on photographs solely for Sfifect and the briefest of crudely titillating ons. His girlfriend, if she had existed, had er written to him and if she had given him 'holograph of herself he had not kept it.

317

The only discovery they made of real interest was in a paper bag in the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers. This was ninety-six American dollar bills in various denominations, tens, fives and singles.

The Griffins insisted they knew nothing about this money. Margaret Griffin looked at the notes as if they were phenomenal, currency from some remote culture perhaps, a find from an archaeological dig. She turned them over, peering, her grief temporarily forgotten.

It was Terry who put the question she perhaps thought asking would make her look foolish. "Is it money? Could you use it to buy things?"

"You could in the United States," Burden said. He corrected himself. "You could use it almost anywhere, I daresay. Here in this country and in Europe. Shops would take it. Anyway, you could take it to a bank and change it into sterling." He put it more simply. "Into -- well, pounds."

"Why didn't Andy spend it then?"

Burden balked at the idea of asking them about the rope but he had to ask. In the event, to his relief, neither of them seemed to make the awful connection. They knew the means by which their son had died but the word 'rope' did not immediately conjure for them the notion of hanging. No, they possessed no rope and they were sure Andy had not. Terry Griffin harked back to the money, the haul of dollars. Once the idea of it was planted in his mind, it seemed to take precedence over everything.

'Those notes you said could be changed into

318

�'

pounds, they belonged to Andy?"

"They were in his room."

"Then they'll be ours, won't they? It'll be like compensation."

"Oh, Terry," said his wife.

He ignored her. "How much d'you reckon they're worth?"

"Forty to fifty pounds."

Terry Griffin considered. "When can we have them?" he said.

319

1HE answered the phone himself. "Gunner Jones." Or that was what Burden thought he said. He might have said 'Gunnar Jones'. Gunnar was a Swedish name but such as might possibly be held by an Englishman if, say, his mother had been a Swede. Burden had been at school with someone called Lars who had seemed as English as himself, so why not Gunnar? Or else he had said 'Gunner' and it was a nickname he'd got through having been in the Royal Artillery.

�

"I'd like to come and see you, Mr Jones. Would later on today be convenient? Say six?

JJ

"You can come when you like. I'll be here.

He didn't ask why or mention Tancred or his daughter. It was slightly disconcerting. Burden didn't want a wasted journey.

"You are Miss Davina Jones's father?"

"So her mother told me. We have to believe the ladies in these matters, don't we?"

Burden wasn't getting himself involved with that one. He said he'd see G. G. Jones at six. 'Gunner' -- on an impulse he looked it up in the dictionary from which Wexford was never parted for long and found it could also be another name for a gunsmith. A gunsmith"?

Wexford's phone call was to Edinburgh.

Macsamphire was such an odd name, though

320

8

unmistakably Scots, that he had counted on the single one in the Edinburgh telephone directory being Davina Flory's friend, and he was right.

"Kingsmarkham Police? What help can I possibly be to you?"

"Mrs Macsamphire, I believe Miss Flory and Mr Copeland with Mrs Jones and Daisy all stayed with you last August when they came up for the Edinburgh Festival?"

"Oh, no, whatever can have given you that idea? Davina very much disliked staying in private houses. They all stayed in a hotel, and then when Naomi was taken ill, she had a really severe flu, I suggested she be moved here. So dreadful being ill in an hotel, don't you think, even a grand one like the Caledonian? But Naomi wouldn't, afraid of giving it to me, I expect. Davina and Harvey were in and out, of course, and we all went to a good many of the shows together. I don't think I saw poor Naomi at all."

"Miss Flory was taking part in the Book Fair herself, I believe?"

"That's so. She gave a talk on the difficulties which arise in the writing of autobiography and she also took part in a writer's panel. The subject was something about the practicalities of writers being versatile -- that is, writing fiction as well as travel and essays and so on. I attended the teeture and the panel and both were really most teteresting ..."

Wexford managed to cut her short. "Daisy was with you as well?" *". Her laugh was musical and rather girlish. "Oh,

321

I don't think Daisy was much interested in all that. As a matter of fact, she'd promised her grandmother she'd come to the lecture but I don't believe she turned up. She's such a sweet unaffected girl, though, you'd forgive her anything."

This was the kind of thing Wexford wanted to hear from her -- or he could persuade himself he wanted to hear it.

"Of course, she had this young man of hers there with her. I only saw him once and that was on their last day, the Saturday. I waved to them across the street."

'Nicholas Virson," said Wexford.

'That's right. Davina did mentioned the name Nicholas."

"He was at the funeral."

"Oh, was he? I was rather upset at the funeral. I don't remember. Was that all you wanted to ask me?"

"I haven't begun to ask you what I really want, Mrs Macsamphire. It's to do me a favour." Was it? Or to exact from him a great sacrifice? "Daisy should be away from here for various reasons I needn't go into. I want to ask if you'd invite her to stay with you. Just for a week -- " He hesitated " -- or two. Would you ask her?"

'Oh, but she wouldn't come!"

'Why not? I'm sure she likes you. I'm sure she would like to be with someone she could talk to about her grandmother. Edinburgh is a beautiful and interesting city. Now, what's the weather like?"

Again that pretty giggle. "I'm afraid it's

322

�i

W

�i

�i

pouring. But of course I'll ask Daisy; I'd love to have her, it's just that I never thought of asking her myself."

* * *

The drawbacks of the system sometimes seemed to outweigh the points in favour of setting up an incident room on site. Among the advantages were that you could see with your own eyes who came calling. Not a Virson vehicle this morning, drawn up between the pond and the front door, not one of the Tancred cars, but a small Fiat Wexford couldn't immediately place. He had seen it before but whose was it?

This time he was to be granted no timely opening of the door and egress of the visitor. There was nothing of course to stop him pulling the sugarstick bellpull, gaining admittance and making a third at whatever tete-a-tete was in progress. He disliked the idea. He mustn't take over her life, rob her of all privacy, her right to be solitary and free.

Queenie, the Persian, sat on the coping of the pool, looking into the mirror-like surface of the water. A lifted paw briefly distracted its attention. The cat contemplated the underside of fat grey pads, as if deciding on the paw's fitness as a fishing implement, then tucked both paws under its chest, folded itself into the sphinx position and resumed its staring at the water and

Wexford walked back past the stables, round

e house and on to the terrace. He had a vague

323

feeling of trespassing, but she knew they were there, she wanted them there. While he was here she was protected, she was safe. He looked up at the back of the house and saw for the first time that the Georgianisation had not reached so far. This was much the way it had been in the seventeeth century, the half-timbering exposed, the top windows mullioned.

Had Davina built the conservatory? Before Listed Building consent was needed? He thought he disapproved, without knowing enough about architecture to have a firm opinion. Daisy was in there. He caught sight of her get up from where she had been sitting. Her back was to him and he quickly left the terrace before she had seen him. Her companion was invisible.