No Place of Safety (14 page)

But when they called on her, they found that the bird had flown.

‘My wife? Oh, I'm afraid you've missed her. She made an early start to go on a surprise visit to her mother.'

Randolph Ingram was of medium height, but seemed taller by reason of his distinguished appearance – broad, courtly, but with an ironic smile that played on his lips even when giving out such mundane information. They had noticed when they flashed their identification at him that there was a contrast between his respectable exterior – he was a bursar at Leeds' second university, they had discovered in advance – and the relishing sparkle in his eyes. Then again, Charlie thought, perhaps the information he had just given them was not entirely mundane: possibly he had taken care to insert the fact that the visit Alicia was paying to her mother was a ‘surprise' one.

‘Mr Ingram,' Oddie began, ‘your wife was warned – '

He shrugged this aside, still imperturbably urbane.

‘Oh, Alicia takes very badly to warnings and prohibitions. They seem to act as challenges. There was a time when I could always get her to do what I wanted by telling her to do the opposite. It was the same with Emily Brontë, I'm told. Unfortunately Alicia has at least got wise to that one over the years.'

‘It's a serious matter, Mr Ingram, to disobey police orders in this way.'

‘Well, that's something you'd best take up with Alicia. She is her own mistress, as I expect you will have guessed.'

‘What precisely is her interest in the refuge for the homeless at Portland Terrace, Mr Ingram?' Charlie asked.
Randolph Ingram stood relaxed and elegant against his own doorpost.

‘Ah well, it's an issue, you see. Alicia's very political at the moment – she's going all out to get the Conservative nomination for the Bramsey ward. The refuge is an issue, something she can work up indignation about in the party.'

‘I see . . . There's nothing personal in it?'

He shrugged.

‘Personal? Not as far as I'm aware. Things aren't going well for the Tories at the moment. If she doesn't have an issue it's very unlikely the seat will stay Conservative. The buzz at the moment in local Conservative circles is that Alicia will get the nomination, which does surprise me a little.'

‘Oh?'

‘The last thing most people want at the moment is a BMW.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘BMW. Bossy middle-class woman. Hardly the flavour of the post-Thatcher decade. Look how people react to Virginia Bottomley. My guess is that they want to give her the nomination, let her lose the seat, and that will put paid to her political aspirations for good.'

‘Very Machiavellian,' Oddie commented.

‘All politicians are, even at the grass-roots level.'

‘You know your wife went to the Centre last night?'

‘Did she? No, she didn't actually tell me. Though I knew something was up.'

‘Oh? How?'

‘I know my wife. And she made this sudden decision to visit her mother and sister, though she's largely washed her hands of them in recent years.'

‘I see. And you've no idea of any connection between your wife and anyone at the Centre?'

‘None whatsoever. It seems unlikely. Alicia usually only cultivates people who matter.'

‘Could you tell me the address of your wife's mother and sister?'

‘Of course. Clematis Cottage, Hartridge, Lincolnshire. It's a tiny village, and you can't miss the cottage if you recognize
clematis. In that, as in many other respects, Alicia's mother has overdone things.'

 • • • 

When the policemen had said their thanks and farewells, Randolph Ingram closed the door and went to collect together his papers and briefcase for work, the ironic smile playing more openly on his lips. The policemen must have thought him remarkably loose-tongued – though really there must be many people who would enjoy being similarly honest about their wives or husbands. Alicia had been his main source of amusement for years. He had come to the conclusion some time ago that, if she should die, he would miss her but not regret her. The same would be true if she were to disappear for a long prison sentence.

But that wasn't really on the cards, was it? Ruthless as Alicia was in going for what she wanted, Randolph could not see his wife as a murderess. Though in recent months he had begun to see her as someone he had had enough of, the possibility of being shot of her in
that
way was not one he had ever considered.

Yet she
was
ruthless, she was entirely without principle . . .

 • • • 

In the car, on the way back to police headquarters at Millgarth, Oddie said: ‘He wasn't holding much back, was he?'

‘Dobbing her right in,' said Charlie, nodding. ‘And pleased with himself for doing it.'

‘I suppose the
why
doesn't concern us. The state of the Ingram marriage can't have anything to do with the case. The question is, what do we do about his wife?'

‘Going just by the voice, she has a talking-down-to-dim-five-year-olds quality that riles me,' said Charlie.

‘But of course we couldn't possibly accept your being riled as a reason for acting nasty, could we? On the other hand, I don't like people who are warned to be available for questioning, then deliberately take off. And this was
not
a long-planned family visit, you notice.'

‘As her husband took care to point out,' Charlie said.

‘Why has she gone down to visit her long-neglected
mother and sister, when presumably she has plenty of other friends or contacts around the country she could go off visiting?' asked Oddie.

‘Because of something that happened at the Centre last night?' suggested Charlie. He thought for a bit, and then said: ‘Lincolnshire isn't the end of the earth.'

 • • • 

It was plain sailing to decide that Charlie should go: Mike Oddie had no liking for long car journeys, whether on business or pleasure. He was also itching to get down to talking to the young people at the refuge.

‘Including Alan Coughlan and Katy Bourne,' he said. ‘You've never found out how he made contact with them, have you?'

‘No – except I think it must have been out of the blue.'

‘Pretty devastating at that age, psychologically speaking, finding you have a father you didn't know about. And in Alan's case a father who replaces a father he did know about. We have to remember that both of them were in number twenty-four at the time of the attack. They're very much in the frame.'

Charlie accepted this judgement, though he didn't much like it. His trip down to Hartridge was uneventful, and its freedom from the usual motorway irritations and delays meant that he could think through his approach in the forthcoming encounter. He wished he had thought to press Randolph Ingram on whether his wife had announced her intention to visit her mother before he had phoned to tell her he would want to question her. His own impression was that the home visit was not instantaneously improvised but was an existing intention – though certainly not an unchangeable intention that ruled out an interview with him. Was it, then, a decision made
after
the visit to the refuge and
before
his phone call? If so, it seemed almost inevitable that the decision was connected with her visit to the refuge.

Hartridge was indeed a tiny village of about fifteen houses, one of them a converted pub. No pub, no shop, no bus service as far as Charlie could see. Rural life could only be sustained there these days by constant recourse to the motor car.
Clematis Cottage was indeed obvious. Charlie wasn't hot on botanical niceties, but he trained sometimes in Golden Acre Park, where there was an avenue of various strains of clematis – mostly dead, but enough living to tell him what they looked like. The front and sides of one of the cottages was ablaze with pink, puce and purple flowers, with a particularly large and threatening mauve-and-white striped variety which seemed to stare the visitor in the face and dare him to call it ugly.

There was a small garage beside the cottage, with an old car inside it and another car, a brick-coloured Volvo, in the drive leading to it. Charlie drew his own car up in the road outside the front door, and left the windows open. The front garden of the cottage was a mere handkerchief, and the windows of the cottage were open. He heard quite distinctly an old woman's voice – raised because she was going deaf and thought everybody else was. The tone was determined rather than querulous – a strong, individual voice.

‘No, Alicia, no, no, no. You come down here once in a blue moon, and when you do you want to boss us all around, tell us how to run our lives, and stick your finger in every pie going. You can't even make up your mind what you want. Last night it was one thing, today it's another – '

Charlie heard Mrs Ingram's voice breaking in, but though it was by now familiar – a note or two too high for comfort, with its maddeningly precise articulation – the only word he could distinguish was ‘misunderstanding'.

‘Alicia, I may be nearly blind and slightly deaf, but I am not a fool, and I won't be talked to as if I were one. I understood perfectly what you said on the phone last night. Carol and I talked it over – not that we needed to – and – '

But she was interrupted by a cry, a shriek, something that sounded somewhere between a human in pain and a sardonic tropical bird. Charlie closed his window and, as the cry was repeated, sped through the gate and up to the front door.

The ring silenced the weird, unearthly sound. There was total silence for a few seconds inside. It was Alicia who
opened the door. Charlie recognized the voice, even from her ‘Yes?'

‘Mrs Ingram? DC Peace, of the Leeds police.'

She barely looked at his ID but stared at him with an outraged expression on her face.

‘You're a policeman?'

It was not said with incredulity, but with distaste.

‘Yes, that's right. I spoke to you last night, and warned you we had to talk to you.'

‘This is too ridiculous! You expect me to disrupt my carefully arranged schedule for a silly matter like a fracas at a hostel for the homeless. I told you last night I had no intention of doing so. Trouble among people like that must be a daily occurrence.'

‘Mrs Ingram, if you do not allow me to interview you for as long as I think necessary, I am authorized to arrest you and take you back to Leeds. I don't think that would do your political prospects any good, do you? Now, may I come in?'

Alicia thought, none too quickly, then grudgingly stood aside.

A door from the tiny hallway led into the main room of the cottage. Three people were sitting there: an old woman with brown wrinkled skin and wild grey hair, peering with avid curiosity in his direction; a heavy, younger woman, her face already lined with worry; and in a wheelchair a fair-haired boy of about twelve, his head permanently twisted sideways and upwards, his mouth open. As Charlie entered he uttered another of those cries.

‘Who is it, Alicia?'

‘A policeman, Mother. It's just a little matter he wants a word with me about.'

‘A policeman from Spalding, or a policeman from Leeds?'

‘I'm from Leeds, Mrs – ' said Charlie.

‘Mrs Boulting. And these are Carol and Jeremy. From Leeds? Then it can hardly be a little matter, can it? Why can't you be a better liar, Alicia? Practice doesn't make even moderately competent in your case . . . You're black, aren't you, Mr Policeman?'

‘DC Peace. That's right, I'm black.'

‘Ahhh! How ex
ci
ting we used to find black men in my young days!'

‘Mother!'

‘Oh, but we did, Alicia. There was that jazz trumpeter at the Savoy, Jerry “Hot” Sylvester. Sheer bliss in
every
way! Then the black servicemen here in Lincolnshire, over from America for the duration of the war. Absolute darlings. Do women still find black men exciting, Mr Peace?'

‘Some do, Mrs Boulting. Some definitely do.'

‘I'm so glad. It's always good to find some things that don't change.' The unearthly cry came again from the direction of the wheelchair. Charlie felt that discomfiting mixture of compassion and unease that many feel in the presence of mental sickness. Alicia's sister went over and put her hands comfortingly on the boy's shoulders. The boy relaxed at once. ‘Is it time for his walk in the garden?' the old woman asked.

‘More than time,' said her daughter. She looked at her sister reproachfully. ‘He's been upset by all the aggravation.'

‘Carol, if you would only see sense – '

‘Well, Alicia,' said their mother, struggling to her feet and aiming herself by sense rather than sight for the kitchen and the back door, ‘we'll leave you to your chat with the nice policeman. We'd love to stay and hear what you've been doing, but I don't suppose that we'd be welcome. Come along, Jeremy: it's time for your turn around the garden.'