The Chief Inspector's Daughter (19 page)

‘But I
am
telling the truth!' Gifford's forefinger had become insufficient, and he wiped his sweating face with the back of his hand. ‘You can search as much as you like, but you won't find anything. And my claim isn't unsupported, anyway. I – as a matter of fact, I've been to see that film several times. Every Sunday evening for the past four weeks. The girl at the box office recognizes me. She said to me last night, “Hallo, you again?” The bitch.'

Quantrill had felt increasingly sure that he had the right man, but now for the first time he wavered. ‘She recognizes you – out of all those customers?'

Gifford held his head up, and his ears blazed through his hair. ‘I do tend to be recognizable,' he said, half arrogant, half sour. ‘Why don't you ask her?'

‘You could have gone in, and slipped out again after the film started,' argued Quantrill with diminishing confidence.

‘But I didn't. I left at the end of the film, just after ten. And as I passed the box office she said, “Cheerio, see you again next week.”' His jaw tightened at the memory. ‘God, if I could get her alone just for five minutes—'

His lips were drawn back from his sharp teeth, his eyes had a sadistic glitter. For a moment, sober as he was, Gifford looked as vicious as he had looked at Jasmine Woods's party.

Quantrill leaned forward. ‘Yes, Roddy?' he said softly. ‘If you could get her alone, what would you do?'

Gifford turned his head slowly to look at the Chief Inspector. He blinked, and began to relax: his eyes faded, his facial muscles slackened. Then he sighed, and made a wry confession.

‘Nothing at all,' he said. ‘That's my trouble. I can think of a lot of things I'd like to do to them, but I've never had the courage. I never do anything, except write and dream. That's been my trouble all my life.'

Chief Inspector Quantrill swore, and thumped the wall of his office with the side of his fist.

‘I thought I had him, Martin – I really thought I had him. Almost as soon as I heard that Jasmine Woods had been murdered. I thought that Gifford was likely. And now he reckons he can prove that he spent the whole of yesterday evening in Yarchester, watching a sexy film … there ought to be a law against it.'

‘You'll check his story, of course.'

‘
You'll
do that,' retorted Quantrill. ‘As long as you're a sergeant, checking's your job.' He looked at his watch, and that did nothing to improve his temper. The watch had been a Christmas surprise from his wife; an unusually expensive gift, because they had always been accustomed to exchange modest and predictable presents. Without either of his daughters at home to do his shopping for him, and knowing that Molly had a childish love of unwrapping things, he had last Christmas resorted to asking Patsy Hopkins to buy and gift-wrap a fancy bottle of bath oil and a pretty box of chocolates. To receive in return, instead of the expected socks and cigars, a watch that must have cost Molly at least a month's pay from her part-time job was an acute embarrassment.

He was even more embarrassed when Molly reminded him that it was only right that he should have a good present, because he had that autumn bought her the sheepskin coat she had wanted for years …

He had thanked her profusely, of course. Difficult to explain that he'd bought the coat only to salve his conscience after falling in love with another woman. And now he felt obliged to wear the watch always, and it was a damned nuisance. Molly had ordered it from a mail-order catalogue, and had chosen one of the latest digital models; fine, except that Quantrill was one of those people for whom the measurement of time is visual. The figures on the watch meant nothing to him until he had converted them mentally on to a conventional face, just like that on his perfectly good old watch which Peter – who really coveted the digital one – had now inherited prematurely.

He did a quick conversion – at least the figures on his new watch were on permanent display, and he didn't need to press a button to see the time – and found that 23.48 was just after a quarter to midnight.

‘No point in trying to check Gifford's story now – you'd better send someone to do that in the morning, but I haven't any hope that he was lying. So whoever did the murder is still loose – and Alison is still missing. Have you tried the bus depot?'

‘Yes. There are only three buses out of Breckham Market after eight on weekday evenings, two to Yarchester and one to Saintsbury. I've got someone checking with the drivers at the other end; one report's negative, and I'm still waiting for the other two. I've tried the taxi firm, but their drivers didn't pick her up. I've also sent a man to visit the all-night cafés on the main London road, in case she went there to hitch a lift.'

Quantrill's eyebrows knotted with anxiety. He knew what so easily might happen to girls who hung about transport cafés late at night, trying to hitch lifts. Even if a sadistic murderer wasn't out searching for his daughter, she could find herself cabbed-up with some hulking lorry driver who was looking for a quick lay.

‘I'll have to go home soon to see how Molly is. She was going to telephone my other daughter and one or two relations Alison might have gone to … but she'd have sent a message through for me if there had been any news.' He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling tired and baffled. A constable came in with the drink he had been sent to get from the machine in the bottom corridor, and Quantrill sat down heavily at his desk and reached for the beaker. The liquid was grey, which meant tea; coffee would have been brown, tomato soup orange. They all tasted much the same, warm, wet and powdery.

He took a dispirited swallow. ‘It's not just that I'm anxious about Alison,' he said, ‘though God knows I am, even though I keep telling myself not to exaggerate. But I felt so sure that she'd be able to tell us enough about Jasmine Woods's private life to lead us to the murderer – and now we're working blind again.'

‘Not quite. There's the ex-husband, don't forget: Robert John Potter, who lived in Chelmsford at the time of the divorce. He could have moved away, of course, but the Essex police have found me three R.J. Potters living in the area. I'll go down there first thing, and see if I can find him. All right, sir?'

Quantrill nodded, glancing through a report that had been left on his desk. A lucky constable had been sent on an extended pub crawl, following the route that Paul Pardoe alleged he had taken between Newmarket and Yarchester the previous evening. Each landlord had been able to confirm that Pardoe had called, and had sat alone with a drink and a Sunday newspaper, but no one could be positive about the timing of his visits. One of the pubs, the Rose and Thorn at Dodmansford which he had visited somewhere between eight and nine o'clock, was only a fifteen-minute drive from Thirling.

The Chief Inspector passed the report to his sergeant. ‘Pardoe had the opportunity, then,' he said. ‘So did George Hussey, so did Gilbert Smith – all right, so did Jonathan Elliott. Let's hope that by tomorrow forensic will have found something definite for us to work on. That's the trouble with murder, it's mostly done by amateurs. Criminal records and informers are no use to us at all. No word from Yarchester about Smith, I suppose?'

‘He seems to have covered his tracks pretty well, but the drug squad boys are still busy. I had another look at Jasmine's address book, by the way, but there are a hell of a lot of names in it, and no indication of priorities. And she was too discreet to keep private letters, unfortunately, so it'll take us a long time to work through the book looking for lovers.'

Quantrill scratched his unshaven chin. ‘It's Alison we need to help us,' he said. ‘She's the one person who knows enough about Jasmine Woods to give us a lead.' He leaned back to swallow the last of the contents of his beaker, and then suddenly sat up, crushing the waxed cardboard in his large square hands.

‘Hold hard – there was another girl I met at the party. She arrived just as I was leaving, so you wouldn't have seen her. Jasmine Woods's former secretary – she'd worked at Yeoman's for a couple of years, so she could probably tell us as much as Alison. More, perhaps. A pretty girl, Anne somebody. She'd just got engaged to a farmer, and she was showing him off. She said he lived somewhere in Norfolk, and that she was staying with him and his parents until the wedding. His name was—'

The Chief Inspector screwed up his face in an effort of memory, but his brains had furred over with weariness. ‘—damned if I can remember. I can see the man well enough: prosperous young famer, big and going bald early. Completely bowled over by the girl, though I wouldn't have said she was the country type. Anyway, I'll get them traced and go and have a word with her tomorrow, while you find the ex-husband. I don't know what you intend to do in the meantime, but I'm going to get some sleep.'

Chance, he knew, would be a fine thing; but then, Molly had had a distressing day and it would be unreasonable to hope that she would not be waiting for him. As soon as he opened the door she came hurrying, dressing-gowned in quilted nylon but not yet curlered.

‘Did you get the right man?' she asked. ‘Have you caught the murderer?'

‘Well, no, it wasn't the man I thought. But the one we really want to interview is somewhere in Yarchester – his motor bike was found abandoned there this morning, so there's no need to worry about him as far as Alison's concerned.'

‘But are you sure she didn't go to Yarchester? Have you found out where she went?'

‘Not so far,' said her husband, trying to make it sound like good news, ‘but Martin Tait's got the enquiries organized, and the station sergeant will let me know as soon as any information comes through. Did you manage to speak to Jennifer?'

Molly nodded, her face wretched. ‘Jennifer was on duty, that's why I couldn't get through to her earlier. She hadn't seen or heard anything of Alison, but of course she'll ring back as soon as she does.
If
she does. The same goes for everybody else I've rung – everybody, even old Aunt Enid in Frinton …' She gave her husband a watery smile of apology. ‘Oh, Douggie, I'm afraid we're going to have a huge'phone bill.'

Quantrill himself rarely used the telephone for social purposes and was given to grumbling over the number and length of his wife's calls, forgetting how much time she had to spend alone because of his job. He was touched and slightly ashamed that, at a time like this, she should feel it necessary to apologize.

He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘That's all right, my dear,' he said gruffly. ‘That's what the telephone's for – I'm only sorry that I had to go off and leave you. Have you been to bed?'

‘I couldn't, I was too jumpy.' She looked up at him with beseeching eyes. ‘You are staying now, aren't you? You haven't got to go out again tonight?'

He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat before taking away his arm. ‘There's nothing useful I can do at the moment. I'm simply waiting for information of one sort or another, and I can just as well do that here with you. I need to be off early in the morning, if not before, so I thought I'd have a bath and a shave now.'

‘Would you like me to get you something to eat?'

‘No thanks, I had supper.' Molly would hardly approve of his illicit intake of fatty potato chips, and so he made for the stairs before she could ask him to elaborate. ‘You go to bed,' he said over his shoulder, ‘you've got a telephone there, so there's no point in sitting up.'

Molly was not in bed when he emerged from the bathroom, but she came upstairs almost immediately carrying a tray of tea. Quantrill had been thinking, in the bath, in terms of sneaking downstairs to quench his thirst with a can of beer, and then tiptoeing to bed for a few hours' sleep, but his wife was obviously in need of his company. He kicked off his slippers, got in beside her and took the cup she offered. She looked more relaxed now; so relieved by his presence that he hadn't the heart to point out that it was after one o'clock in the morning and he'd had a hard day.

‘What's this?' he teased her, watching her open a packet of his favourite gingernuts. ‘You know you hate crumbs in bed – and besides, I thought I was supposed to be off biscuits.'

She looked slightly sheepish. ‘It won't hurt you, just this once.' Then she stared at him anxiously over the rim of her cup. ‘What do you honestly think, Douggie? Where would Alison have gone? Will she be all right?'

He said everything he could think of to reassure her, drinking tea and absent-mindedly munching half a packet of biscuits while he explained why it was totally unlikely that their daughter would be of any interest to whoever had murdered Jasmine Woods. Murderers, he explained to his wife patiently, were very rarely monsters. Most of the time they turned out to be perfectly ordinary men and women who had lived perfectly ordinary and blameless lives until something temporarily unbalanced them. The chances were that Jasmine Woods's murderer was now in bed at home, sick with guilt and horror over what he had done. The last thing he would want to do would be to add to his wretchedness by harming anyone else.

It sounded so convincing in his own ears that Quantrill might have believed it himself, if it were not for the way this murderer had used his victim.

‘But if Alison's all right, why doesn't she get in touch?' objected Molly. ‘It's not like her to be so inconsiderate – she's always been more thoughtful than Jennifer in that way, she'd know perfectly well how worried we are. She needn't tell us where she is, as long as she just lets us know that she's all right … if she
is
all right …'

She began to weep. Quantrill put the tea tray on the floor, hitched himself closer and put his arm round her. ‘Of course Alison's all right. Of course she is. It's only natural that she was upset, but I'm sure she's safe and well somewhere.'