This Way Out (11 page)

It sounded watertight. Professional, as Packer had promised. Derek felt an unwilling admiration for the man. He was thankful that Packer had taken charge, and that he himself had been relegated to the role of burglar's accomplice.

Ordinarily, of course – in his former decent honourable life, Before Packer – Derek would never have given anyone the plans of his house. The Brickyard was his and Christine's sanctuary. He would have been appalled by the thought of an imminent burglary, not so much because of the loss it would entail – he was, after all, comprehensively insured – but because it would invade their privacy. Any suggestion that he would one day facilitate a break-in would have seemed to him outrageous beyond belief.

But their privacy had already been invaded, even before Packer. Their domestic life had been disrupted by Christine's mother. Having their house burgled was, it seemed to Derek, a small price to pay for a restoration of their former state.

What would happen to his mother-in-law in the process was something he tried not to think about. It was, thankfully, out of his hands.

He made no attempt to ease his conscience with a spurious justification for Enid Long's murder. Only a thoroughgoing bastard such as Packer would suggest that the end could possibly justify the means. It was precisely because Derek knew in his heart the enormity of what he was doing that he was now co-operating so willingly with Packer, offering up the plans of his home, and his possessions, as a form of expiation.

His sense of unreality persisted. There were dozens of people strolling past within a few feet of their bench, laughing and talking, carefree, but Derek felt as isolated from them as though he and Packer were still behind the windscreen of his car. He could see smiles and birds and flowers and sunlight, but he seemed unable to distinguish the voices or hear the birdsong or catch the scent of the hyacinths or feel the warmth of the sun.

At the same time he felt oddly distanced from himself. He watched and listened from somewhere above his head as he explained the sketch plans to Packer, and as he did so he mentally congratulated himself on the clarity of his exposition, and on the coolness with which the two of them were discussing the operation in a public place.

‘Any alarms?' asked Packer.

‘No, we're in a low-risk area. We're very security-conscious, though. The doors are solid, with bolts and chains and mortice locks. The windows are all of the sash type. The large ones have secondary double-glazing, and all the catches have locks on them. I go round last thing at night to check that everything's secure.'

‘What about when you go out for an evening? Do you check all the windows then?'

‘We hardly ever do go out, what with one thing and another. But as long as we weren't leaving the house empty, and I knew that all the downstairs windows were closed, I could overlook the fact that one of them wasn't locked.'

‘Which one?'

Derek pointed on the plan to a small room on the north side of the ground floor. ‘The pantry.'

‘How big is the window? If a burglar were to smash the glass, undo the catch and push up the sash, could he get through?'

‘A burglar your size, yes.'

Packer asked for details: of the fastening on the gate that led from the field path to the garden, of the ground between the gate and the house, of the composition of the paths round the house and the ground immediately below the pantry window; of the interior of the pantry, of the door handles, of the floor-covering of the passages, the hall, the stairs.

‘And when I'm in, what am I looking for? What have you got that would interest a burglar?'

‘The usual, I suppose.' Derek began to offer the items that he knew were prime targets because they were easily saleable, but Packer cut him short.

‘Have some sense! How d'you expect me to haul a video recorder and a hi-fi along the field path? I want the small stuff – silver, jewellery, pocket antiques.'

Derek took a rapid mental inventory. The family had acquired all kinds of decorative and collectable bits and pieces over the years, as every family does, but little of it was of any intrinsic value. The best things belonged to Christine, and for her their value was predominantly sentimental.

No, he wasn't going to have her deprived of them. It wouldn't be fair. Any personal loss must be his; and so he told Packer where he kept the two small silver cups he had won for athletics when he was at college, his gold cufflinks, the silver cigarette case that had belonged to his father, and the camera his children had given him on his fortieth birthday.

‘What else?' said Packer.

‘Isn't that enough?'

‘Not nearly enough to murder for.'

Suddenly angry, not with Packer but with himself, Derek sprang to his feet and strode away from the people and the flowerbeds towards the Abbey ruins. How could he have been so thoughtless as to support the plan for a burglary!

He had been in favour simply because he hadn't, until now, considered what a real burglary would entail. Worse, he hadn't taken into account the effect it would have on his wife.

He wasn't closely acquainted with anyone who had ever been burgled, but he had of course read about it, and seen the
Crimewatch
programmes. And Packer was right. An opportunist burglar who was so wound up as to kill anyone who disturbed him would ransack the house, not search considerately for a few insignificent items. But if the burglary were to be made realistic, Christine would be horrified by the violation of their home.

How could he do this to her, poor girl, after all she had been through? Slowing his pace, he stared bleakly at some fragments of monastic stonework that poked out of the grass like ancient fangs and molars. God, what a mess he was making of his attempts to help the wife he loved …

He turned on Packer as the smaller man caught him up. ‘I won't have Christine upset, she's suffered enough. Don't you bloody
dare
take her treasures and wreck our home!'

Packer eyed him coldly. ‘You're talking like a sentimental fool. If I don't do a proper job, the police'll be suspicious.'

‘I don't see why.' Calmer after his outburst, Derek was thinking on his feet again. ‘You want to leave the impression that you were disturbed on the job, right? That somebody called out from upstairs … So why couldn't that have happened before you had time to get very far? If you start by searching the hall cupboard –'

‘Hall cupboards aren't worth searching.'

‘This one will be, I guarantee. And there's another thing: the police aren't to know that you're on foot, are they? You've no need to pull the living-room apart because there's about two thousand quid's-worth of video and audio equipment in there, all immediately get-at-able. If you shift it out into the hall, the police'll assume you were intending to load it in a vehicle. That should convince them – and confuse them as well.'

Packer thought for a moment or two, then nodded. ‘Not a bad idea. Anyway, I don't want to stay in the house any longer than I have to, so pulling it apart would be a waste of time. All right, I'll leave most of it untouched.'

Derek felt so relieved that he found himself thanking the man.

They walked on. ‘What time does the old woman go to bed?' said Packer.

As if watching from a distance, Derek saw the two of them pass between a double row of cherry trees, treading on a path carpeted brownish-white by fallen blossom. He heard his calm reply: ‘She usually goes up to her room about ten, then watches television in bed.'

‘But if you and your wife are out, is she likely to stay up until you come home?'

‘I really don't know. We haven't ever left her alone in the house for a whole evening.'

‘Then it's time you did. Try to persuade her to go upstairs as usual. It'll be simpler if she's in bed.'

Derek's stomach lurched, bringing him back to reality. He stood still. This was it. He could no longer ignore the purpose of the operation.

‘How—' Something seemed to be rising in his throat, thickening his voice. ‘How are you going to … to do it?'

Packer was looking at him with mild interest. ‘How did
you
do it?' he said. ‘In your dreams, I mean.'

‘By str –'

Derek turned abruptly away. Coincidentally, perhaps, he hadn't had one of his terrible dream-struggles to squeeze the breath out of Enid since his first meeting with Packer. Now, the recollection of his dream – of his hands frantically kneading that nightmare throat, pliable, putty-like – brought a resurgence of panic.

His stomach contracted again, and his knees felt weak. He clutched at the varnished trunk of a cherry tree to steady himself. Screwing up his eyes in his efforts to control the nausea, he found that he could now visualize his mother-in-law's throat as it was in actuality, as he'd seen it on his visit to her bedroom. The remembrance of her slack, withered, trembling flesh, so vulnerably exposed by the lacy plunge-neck of her nightgown, filled him with compassion. How could he bring himself to conspire to kill poor old Enid?

But then the image faded, to be replaced by one that was far more vivid and painful and urgent: by Christine's desirable body, and her surgically mutilated breast.

His moment of weakness passed. He swallowed hard, spat the bitter taste out of his mouth, and rejoined Packer.

‘I dreamed I was suffocating the old woman,' he said.

Derek wanted Enid's death to be made as merciful as possible, not only for her own sake but for his wife's. The death of her mother was bound to come as a shock to Christine, however thankful she might privately be. The least he could do for her in the circumstances was to lessen the shock as much as he could.

He explained to Packer that he was anxious for there to be no sign of violence. ‘I don't want her shot, or stabbed.'

‘Guns make too much noise,' said Packer, ‘and knives make too much mess. Anyway, I don't possess either.'

‘I'd prefer you to use a pillow,' said Derek. ‘It'll be kindest for her, and simplest for you.'

Packer promised to bear it in mind. Then he laughed.

‘As a matter of fact, I've never killed anyone before. All that time in the Army, and I never had a chance to put my training to the test! P'rhaps, when it comes to the point, I shan't have the guts. P'rhaps tomorrow, when you and your wife get home after your evening out, you'll find the old woman still alive and kicking.'

‘Tomorrow?'

Derek was shaken. Tomorrow was much too soon. He wanted to stammer out protests and excuses, but he forced himself to stay outwardly calm. There was, after all, a lot to be said for getting the operation over and done with.

‘Any reason why not?' said Packer. ‘Have you made any other arrangement?'

‘No –'

‘Then tomorrow, Saturday. Two good reasons. First, there'll be a moon, so I'll be able to travel fast along the field path. Second, according to a poster in the window of the Five Bells, ‘Saturday night is music night, eight'til late.' That must mean they've got an extension until eleven-thirty or twelve and there'll be strangers about. I can park outside the pub between ten forty-five and eleven-thirty and never be noticed. Good, eh?' Packer grinned: ‘It says on the poster, RABBIT PIE. D'you suppose that's the name of the group, or the menu?'

They had begun to walk back the way they had come. Derek put one foot in front of the other, feeling as numbed as when he had followed the man into the Abbey gardens.

‘I don't see how Christine and I can stay out that late, especially at such short notice. The Five Bells fills up with drunken yobs on Saturday nights, I wouldn't dream of taking her there. And we don't belong to any clubs –'

‘Don't worry. I told you, I've got it all arranged. The important thing is for you to establish your alibi, so I've provisionally booked a table for two in your name for dinner tomorrow night at the Angel, here in Saintsbury. You'll find it pricey, but I hear the food's very good. I'll ring them later today to confirm.

‘I've booked your table for nine o'clock. It'll probably be at least ten-thirty by the time you've finished eating, and then you can sit for another hour over coffee and liqueurs. By the time you've driven back to Wyveling it'll be well after midnight. And if you get done by the traffic cops on the way home for driving under the influence, so much the better for your alibi! Any questions?'

Derek could think of nothing at all. He felt as though his mind had been anaesthetized. He walked to his car, and opened the door.

‘Easy, eh?' said Packer encouragingly. He grinned: ‘Dead easy, I'd say. There's just one important thing for you to remember: before you go out,
make sure you leave the pantry window unlocked
. After that, all you have to do is relax and enjoy yourselves. All right?'

Derek nodded. He started to get into the driving seat but Packer moved even faster, slamming the door on his shin and trapping his leg against the sill.

‘Christ'
,' Derek gasped. ‘What d'you think you're
doing
?'

‘Making sure I've got your attention,' said Packer grimly. He eased the pressure a little. ‘I said, “All right?” and I want to hear your answer. I'm doing all this in
your
interest, remember. If you let me down –'

Grimacing with pain, Derek promised to carry out the man's instructions. Packer let go of the door. Derek retrieved his leg, rubbed it gingerly, closed the door and fastened his seat belt. He was feeling sick again. He longed to get home; but on the other hand he couldn't imagine how he was going to face Christine. Or her mother.

A peremptory rap came on the window. Derek wound it down and Packer's curly head and sharp tooth appeared. ‘Nearly forgot: have you got a dog?'

‘Yes, an old beagle.'

‘You'll have to take it out with you, then.'