Ring of Guilt (28 page)

I shook my head. ‘It's what I do. You know there's this fight or flight hormone? In my case, it only operates one way. Fight. Has as long as I remember. I thought the therapy had sorted it out. Sorted
me
out. But sometimes . . .' I'd better tell him another thing he wouldn't like. ‘Usually I turn my anger on myself. I self-harm. No, not with a razor. I don't cut myself. I hit myself. Hardly ever these days. So if I had a row with Griff, say, a really bad one, I wouldn't punch him – oh, never, ever – but I might black my own eye.'

He managed a smile. ‘So if we ever have a row, I must handcuff you first? For your sake, not mine?'

I kissed his cheek. ‘Exactly. Now, what am I supposed to do with all this lot before one of the Scenes of Crime Officers knocks something over?'

He shook his head. ‘Not you, Lina. Us. OK?'

Before I could say anything, one of the SOCOs reared up, like a polar bear clutching a pretty poor fish. ‘This your mobile? 'Cos someone's trying to leave you a message and she's run out of time twice.'

I grabbed it and pressed the call button. Only it wasn't. It was the conference button. So now everyone in the hall heard poor Mary Walker's tearful confession that she'd got terrible cystitis and couldn't leave the loo. I managed to switch the bloody thing off just as she was explaining – in detail – what had caused it. Too much information all round. Even I was blushing.

Harvey, on the other hand, laughed, but kindly, I thought. ‘Nice when the silver generation discovers the joys of sex all over again. For goodness' sake, Lina, don't be a prude.' He looked at me closely. ‘Griff's got a partner – how do you deal with that?'

‘I suppose,' I said slowly, ‘because they're very discreet. Sure, Aidan spends time with both of us, but Griff goes to his place pretty often, and I don't ask any questions. Any more than Griff asks about my sex life,' I added, hoping he'd get the message.

‘He might not ask, but he's mighty concerned,' he said. ‘Isn't he? Does he like
any
of your suitors?'

‘He quite likes Will.' It was only as I answered the question that I realized that he was saying something else. ‘Why should you think he doesn't like you?'

Freya Webb appeared before Harvey could reply. The trouble was, I was now trying to work out the answer for myself.

‘We're putting it about that your attacker is a loony making a random attack,' she said.

‘In those precise non-PC words?' Harvey asked, with a twinkle. ‘And are you saying it's the same loony as yesterday, or are the public to assume that Lina attracts loonies like blood attracts piranhas?'

‘We're just keeping our cards close to our chests. I came to ask two things: have you had any news of Mary Walker yet?'

‘Oh, the whole fair has had news of Mary Walker,' Harvey replied. ‘Cystitis. Cystitis brought about by an excess of sex, to be precise. Lina's phone was on conference.'

‘Shit! Oh, the poor woman.'

‘That'll cure her of messing around with a bloke when she should have been working,' I said, though I couldn't quite tell whether I was joking or not. At least the other two laughed. So I must have been. And then I thought of Harvey and me, and I'll swear the blush came up all the way from my navel. ‘What was the second question?' I asked.

‘What do you want to do about your stall? Dismantle the whole thing and go off home?'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. ‘Why? Surely we can move the stock? I came here to sell antiques, Freya, not go into victim mode.'

Perhaps people took pity on Tripp and Townend, now looking as if they were operating in some table-top sale. It could have been worse, as Harvey pointed out. we could have had our own personal boot fair out in the car park. Anyway, we sold more than enough to cover the event fees, and Harvey declared he was proud of me. At one point we had a mini-tiff, because he didn't want me to put his ruined coat through our insurance.

‘It's all a bit academic, anyway, isn't it?' he said at last. ‘It's tucked away in an evidence bag for the duration. And remember, Lina, my jacket is disposable. Your eyes aren't. So no more arguments.'

What on earth will you tell your wife?
No, I didn't let the words out, but they formed themselves in my head for no reason at all. That divvy thing? And they bumped round in there long enough to worry me. At last they settled down in a corner deep enough to be buried, but I didn't like the spiteful backward glance they gave as I left them to it.

Halfway through the afternoon he insisted on getting us some food. Almost as he left the room, my phone went. This time I made sure I was pressing the right button. Good job, too.

‘Someone's got it in for you all right, eh, doll.'

‘Any idea who?'

‘Me if you try and crack anyone's skull. Bloody hell, talk about a street-fighter. I'm on to it, doll. Till I tell you different, watch your back. Don't trust no one.'

‘That's a big help, Titus,' I told the dead phone. Had it been him who'd stopped me braining Domestos Man? Whoops. Had it been
he
?

Although our route home took us pretty near Bossingham Hall, Harvey didn't seem keen to go. In fact, he looked almost relieved when I got a call from Freya asking if I wanted an update. It meant going to Maidstone nick, but at least that didn't seem so bad with Harvey to hold my hand. This time he didn't argue about leaving the van unattended. Either he was reassured by a nice big CCTV camera that would peer at it every time it did a scan, or he thought my insurance would cover the van contents if it got nicked – after all, he'd bought hardly anything until the last ten minutes, when he'd alighted on a pretty Chinese famille rose plate without any help from me. There was a visible crack in it: I had the feeling that any time now I'd be asked to fix it.

I'd found nothing to buy the whole sale. Where my divvying gift had gone I'd no idea. Perhaps it thought that anyone who was prepared to kill someone just for squirting bleach at her didn't deserve any profitable treats.

‘He's not talking,' Freya declared, by way of greeting. ‘And he's not on our system, as far as we can tell. In fact, one of the lads has a theory that he's not a UK national.'

‘You mean not talking at all? Not just saying
No comment
to everything?'

‘I mean exactly that. He won't speak to us, or to the duty solicitor. Schtum. Zipped. Whatever. Of course, the fact that we've got him in custody, with lots of our people as witnesses, plus the CCTV footage, means we can charge him. There's even his DNA all over the bottle. His and absolutely no one else's,' she added looking me in the eye.

‘You've probably got me on CCTV,' I added, ‘threatening him with a brass candlestick.'

‘So long as it was only a threat, Lina, we won't talk about that, if you don't mind.'

‘What you can tell me,' I said, ‘is who stopped me.'

‘No, we can't. Not at the moment.'

For
can't
, read
won't.
Surely it wasn't Morris? It must be! My heart sang. Yes, that's right.
Sang.
Not
sank
. Though I suppose it would have been
sunk
, really. What would he make of Harvey? And what would he make of Harvey and me, not the Will of whom Griff had boasted?

To take my mind off it all, I said, ‘I don't suppose anyone managed to check if the Broad-Ticemans had a tea bowl sitting under a spotlight? I think it was in a room near the dining room, where I was shown the damaged epergne.'

She shook her head. ‘Apparently they're away on holiday.'

‘I believe they left some staff to keep an eye on things. Couldn't someone check? I could, so long I was with you, couldn't I?'

‘In your dreams, Lina. Give me a quick sketch map of where it should be and I'll get someone on to it. Tomorrow. It hasn't quite the same priority, I have to admit, as finding Mason.'

A quick look at her face confirmed the worst. ‘Poor Dilly. And it was all my fault.'

‘No it wasn't,' Harvey said. ‘It was her killer's. His and his alone.'

‘If I hadn't wanted to keep my hands so lily-white pure! If I'd made more effort . . .'

‘Lina,' Harvey said very firmly, ‘you made the effort. You got her the cash. You put it in her hand. Apart from tailing her to the loo, and everywhere else she went, what could you have done? You might even have had your throat cut or your brains knocked out or whatever.'

For a terrible moment I'd been afraid he'd reveal how she'd been killed and betray himself as the killer. Where had that come from? I really was worrying myself this afternoon.

‘You know what,' I said, now horrifying myself by starting to cry, ‘I just want to go home.'

What I meant was I wanted an evening's cosseting from Griff – reading a play aloud, perhaps, or watching the DVD of a play or movie he thought I should know. I didn't mean a polite evening with the three of us, all minding our manners and using the correct cutlery.

Although he looked tired, Griff probably wasn't as exhausted as either of us. But he took his role as chaperone very seriously indeed. He allowed us five minutes to say a nice kissy goodnight, and then started moving round in a way that said very clearly he wanted us out of the hallway so he could use the stairs.

Eventually Harvey took the hint. ‘I'll see you tomorrow morning. After breakfast,' he said, with a little jerk of his head in Griff's direction. ‘And then I suppose we beard your father in his den.'

Perhaps it was time to do a little bearding on my own account. I marched back into the living room. ‘Griff,' I said, my heart breaking at the hardness of my voice, ‘we have to talk. You have to talk. You have to tell me why you don't like Harvey. And, more importantly, you have to tell me why your so-called mate Douggie hates you enough to try to ruin you by attacking me.'

‘I
t was something you said to me,' I said, allowing him a teaspoonful of brandy to swirl in a pretty Victorian balloon, as I sat him down in his favourite chair. I found I deserved another glass of wine and sat on mine. ‘That anyone attacking me attacked you. I'm wondering if it's the other way round. And the only people I can think of are X, Douggie and Aidan. Aidan and I are never going to be best mates, but I respect him far too much to pop him on my list of suspects, which leaves X and Douggie. If you didn't pay enough booze money, X could kill you with a kitchen knife before dawn, so I don't think he'd need to be subtle. But Douggie and you go way back, and he put the police on to us. Not something you'd do to someone you liked.'

Griff's colour was returning. But he didn't speak, just nodding to encourage me.

‘The police option didn't work, did it? So he needed an alternative. I would bet today's takings he knows the Broad-Ticemans. He's the sort of man who'd naturally delegate – wouldn't soil his hands with dirty work. And he's probably university educated – he'd know about DNA traces and stuff. And maybe, just maybe, he didn't want to have my name on a card in the British Museum.' And I did, very much indeed.

He bit his lip. I'd never seen him so frail and vulnerable. ‘I never thought . . . I'm not a man to bear grudges. And you'd have thought that Douggie, since he's risen so far in the world, way above our good selves, would have had the grace to forgive and forget. It was way back in the days that being gay was illegal, my love. I was trying to pretend to be straight, as were so many like me. I flirted a great deal with the prettiest women in town, but obviously – let's just say, I wasn't the marrying sort. But one young lady I dallied with – I'm sorry to use such dated terms, but that was how we thought of women in those days – was supposed to be young Douggie's property. She wore his ring, after all. But she was a freer spirit than he, and preferred her jewellery to be more recent in origin than his choice. More recent and from Bond Street. I was certainly not offering a ring, but she saw an actor with a little money as a more attractive proposition than the underpaid and academic Douggie. Actually, she saw a lot of men as more attractive than Douggie. Somehow he'd got himself engaged to someone your generation would assuredly call a slag. You could say I did him a service.'

‘And did you tell him that?'

‘Possibly. In the heat of the moment. But he went on to marry – someone else – and I came out. And I assumed we were all adults. What I wonder, however, is if he thought you were my blood granddaughter. Which would, all these years later, have brought into question the plea of homosexuality I offered him in mitigation.'

‘You actually told him you were gay? Wasn't that a bit of a risk?'

‘A few years, a very few years, earlier it might have been. But by then we were well into the Sixties, and the 1967 Act was in sight. But to hold such a grudge . . . I can't imagine anyone doing so.'

‘So would you rather blame X? I've always worried that you didn't pay him enough.'

‘My love, X can't read or write. And with all the cheap booze he sinks I don't think he's well enough to make the sort of plans that have circled round you. I'd rather blame Arthur Habgood. Unless he really is your grandfather.'

‘Harvey says when he can't get his way, he's vengeful. He may well have his knife into someone else by now. Hey, vengeful's a good word. I wonder where that popped up from. He doesn't move in the Broad-Ticeman sort of circle, and I bet Douggie does. And with their art exporting activities, the B-Ts would know all sorts of folk who didn't speak much English and would accept a dirty job as part of an immigration scam.'

He held up his hands. At least they weren't shaking any more. His eyes were as shrewd as ever. ‘What's this about people who don't speak much English? And would do dirty jobs?'