Trial by Fire (7 page)

For these, he suspended judgement and never got it back. What man? I'll tell you that, too. I'm almost grown up, and I've been so worried. And Superintendent Bailey, knowing the full extent of Helen's Branston acquaintance, recognizing the name of Antony Sumner, had confined himself to telling Helen he was likely to be very late indeed. Don't stay awake for me, darling; we'll try to do something interesting tomorrow. Hearing a gurgle of suggestive laughter in her voice, keeping out of his own the yearning to be home.

Now, at midnight, Helen in bed, shocked by the mean imperative sound of the miniature phone by the side of it, wondering if the owners of this ghastly house used to phone their offices from it at dawn, thinking they probably did — then wide awake when she heard not Bailey's apologetic tones, but the shrill, hysterical voice of Christine Summerfield.

`Helen, you bitch, you knew, you must have known. Why did you let me think it would be all right? How could you let me go home? How could you say nothing? What a fool I feel, never mind the rest. Why did you do that?'

`Do what? Calm down, Chris. I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

Whatever's the matter? Chris, don't cry. What's the matter? Come on, pet, tell me. I'm in the dark. Please tell me. I honestly don't know.'

The sobbing on the other end of the line dropped an octave, subsided into furious gulps. Then Christine summoned up fury in words, stopped, started, ended in a voice of drab sadness. 'Oh, maybe you didn't. I don't know. I don't know anything. I don't know why the hell I'm talking to you at all. I only know that your bloody man, your bloody paramour of a bloody copper, your bloody bandit of a fascist pig, has just come here and very politely removed Antony to the comfort of Waltham Police Station for assistance with his inquiries into a murder. That woman Antony met. She's dead. The married mistress I told you about so trustingly because I was worried. The one who gave him the scratches. Now who the fuck told Bailey?'

Ì don't know,' said Helen firmly, 'but it wasn't me. I might have told him if I'd had the chance, but I haven't seen him. Calm down.'

The sobbing subsided. 'Oh, God, Helen, you're the last person I should ask, but what should I do? What the fucking hell should I do?'

`Get him a lawyer,' said Helen crisply. 'I'll give you the number of the only one I know who lives in Branston. He's as good as any. Call him and then go to the station, wait for him, and ask him to see Antony; take anything you think he might need. And just be there. Got that?'

`Yes,' said Christine, doubtful and weary. 'Give me the number.' Then, as an afterthought, product of emotion: 'I hate you both.'

Helen ground her teeth, resigned herself to a sleepless night. She had just catapulted one pompous and obstructive solicitor into the middle of Bailey's investigation, an act of dubious assistance to him, something that was bound to slow him down. She had instructed Christine how best to make a nuisance of herself because she believed that the legal rights of all people were sacrosanct, whatever they might have done. She had also acted in the interests of a friendship that had become precious to her and that had been mutilated, probably beyond repair, by this evening's work.

Bailey would not have sprung Antony Sumner from the house of a lover in the middle of the evening had he not believed there was something important to ask him. Whatever the outcome of the interrogation, her acquaintance with Christine Summerfield was unlikely to recover. She would also have to see how far Bailey's tolerance in civil liberties extended when it was she who had prescribed them in the full knowledge that Sumner might be too shocked to find out for himself. 'Damn your eyes, Geoffrey Bailey. Damn your eyes. Poor Christine.' She was speaking to herself, surprised to find the anger.

It had just begun to occur to her — foolish not to have seen it before — that she and Geoffrey might not always agree. She found the thought a strange and lonely spectre, found in herself the desire to push him away alongside the desire to embrace him. For once, she wasn't eager for him to come home.

Such speed, such graceless speed in the wake of a slow-discovered death. Facing Antony Sumner in the detention room of an ugly police station six miles from home, midnight, himself tired but composed while the man opposite was pregnant with information, twitching with nerves, and pasty grey with anxiety, Bailey knew the familiar sense of defeat that whirred behind his eyes whenever discovery was imminent and early. So there's the truth.

How banal, how utterly expected, and how soon.

One phone call began it: my wife has been missing since this date; she is dark, forty, not in the habit of straying from home, and has never before stayed away. Amanda Scott, quietly excited, had whispered this could be the one, not another potential victim in sight, all of the others missing either fourteen years old or eighty, always the extremes who run away from home. The postmortem notes sat in the folder on his desk, smelling of the postmortem room, reminding him for no reason at all of the mature but childish voice of that man's daughter, so calm beside Papa's distress, pulling a sleeve like a discreet tart on a corner, but, oh, so beautiful.

Mr Bailey, sir — a hint of respect in the 'sir', responsive to the wide smile he always bestowed on girl children — about that body in Bluebell Wood: it won't be, couldn't be my mother, of course it couldn't, but she went there, you see; she was always going there. How did you know? An expressive shrug. Never mind how I know, I just know, OK? Mother had a boyfriend. It worried me. Don't tell my father, but she did. Antony Sumner, my teacher. They both went to Bluebell Wood. Well, they used to, anyway. I thought I would tell you.

Slender but convincing, this information, like the child herself. It was enough to provoke Bailey himself rather than a substitute to knock first at the door of Antony Sumner's house, then at the door of Christine Summerfield. He was apologetic but persistent. Ì'm so sorry for disturbing you.' Then, joking: 'You can sue the commissioner for my behaviour, but may I speak to Mr Sumner? He may, just may, be able to help us. So sorry to intrude on your Saturday evening,' Bailey was ready to back away after two or three questions, abandoning hope of that as soon as his purpose was diffidently explained.

Not a murder inquiry at the moment, of course, simply a search for a missing woman, but the man's face was white, old scratch marks to forehead, cheeks lurid, and he was trembling, trying not to weep. It was uncomfortable the way such signs of guilt, accompanied by the look of horror on the face of the innocent friend, afflicted Bailey so, like a sudden flush of fever, making him wish he could have pressed Antony back into the arms of the woman who was, after all, Helen's friend, and told him it had all been a mistake.

Instead, he invited him into a car. It's not an arrest, you understand, but will you accompany me? Antony nodding, stroking the woman's head, casting a backward look into that inviting room of hers while Bailey detected on him the incriminating, rancid smell of fear and knew that behind that distinctive scent there were words that would justify the fear.

Detention room, transit room, not quite the same as an interview room, but almost. A room where a witness was detained, usually pending removal to a cell but still with the illusion of liberty, exaggerated by Bailey's habit of leaving the door ajar. From the other end of the corridor he could hear the tidy sounds of Amanda Scott working at her ancient typewriter, tapping out on its reluctant keys a prepared statement for Mr Blundell: 'My wife's dental surgery is at 5, Cross Street, Waltham. I give authority for that surgery to produce to the police any records appertaining to my wife . . . ' Amanda would use words such as

'appertaining'; she tended to use the long where the short would do.

Proud proof of literacy, Bailey thought with a touch of impatience, while this literary animal across the ugly desk from himself, less disciplined than she, but better acquainted with a dictionary, used short, sharp words and expressed himself with ease.

Antony was vainly attempting to regard his polite interrogator as an ape, could not reconcile this urbane manner with his own view on police brutality, had resigned himself to providing explanations. There was nothing else he could do, whatever the advice otherwise: he was desperate to explain and be, in part at least, forgiven.

Bailey struggled with dislike for Antony Sumner's handsome face, dislike mixed with pity for his misery, a dangerous and subversive combination.

Caution the man: advise him of his legal rights. Fetch Amanda to make notes, and start the tape. Let us continue after all these interruptions, please. We were doing so well before.

`Mrs Blundell? I knew her because her daughter had been at my school. She asked me to give extra English lessons to Evelyn with a view to taking exams early, some such thing. I was skint as usual, so I agreed. Went on for a year. I started having an affair with Mrs Blundell. Why? I don't know why: I was lonely and bored, she was nine years older; it was flattering at first, me with the rich capitalist wifey. We went out for drinks last summer, lay on a blanket sometimes in Bluebell Wood, sometimes at my place. She liked my place, she said, shades of Bohemia.

Liked poetry, mad about sex.

Anyway, I had to cool it last spring. It was never that much fun, and then I met Christine, finished everything else. But it dragged on, you know, and she frightened me with all her intensity. Yes, we did meet at The Crown; her husband, you see, wouldn't be seen dead in there. Oh, God, what a thing to say, and yes, we were there the other night . . .'

Then there was coughing and spluttering, pause for cigarette before continuing. Bailey noticed sadly the crushed packet of Gauloises taken from the top pocket damp with sweat, remembered Bowles's pathetic offering: two Gauloise stubs and a half-full packet apparently abandoned on one side of the clearing. He leaned across and lit the wavering end of a crooked cigarette for his prisoner, listened with his face straight inside the lines of his skin.

`We walked from The Crown over the field and into the far side of the wood — been that way before, very overgrown. A little clearing, don't quite know where. She was frantic, terrible. She loved me, she said; I was her life. She loved me more than anyone or anything.

What about your husband, your daughter? I kept saying, but she only screamed, "There's no one else but you, no one; neither of them care for me." But they do, I kept saying, of course they do. She would tell her husband all about us, then tell Christine all I had never told Christine. She and I would run away. It was madness, all of it. She was full of ideas, places, prospects, showing me money in her handbag, escape routes, all realistic, convincing plans to Yvonne, who'd never had to earn a crust, but not to me. I didn't want to say, "Don't be so bloody stupid; nobody escapes that easy even if I loved you back, which I bloody well don't, never really have. Just a bit of fun that has got out of hand. “I couldn't say, "I think you're a silly cow." I gave her a cigarette to calm her. She pulled on it twice, threw it away, didn't like them, really.

Started all over again.

Ì was sick, turned away a few steps, smoked my own. Christ, I thought, this is terrible, worse than I expected. I wanted to go home. Then she began to cry. I kept my back turned, hoping she'd stop, until I heard a series of movements, frantic movements. I couldn't believe it: she was tearing her clothes off. She always wore quality clothes — dull, smooth, expensive lines — and she was tearing them off as if they were poisonous, screaming between sobs. "You wanted me once; want me again. I'll show you how much you need me, more than that tart of yours."

I dropped my cigarette, I remember, when she launched herself at me half naked, bare bosomed, skirt slipping down. She was trying to kiss me. I kept turning my face away, I don't know how many times, holding her off, disgusted. I felt I was fighting an amorous sow, and after a while she began to stop. She was quiet for a minute. Then she spat at me, as if she had suddenly understood. She let go of me, and I turned to face her. She was spitting fury, lashed out and raked her nails down my face, reaching for my eyes, taking me by surprise.

It hurt like hell: I could feel blood on my face and I was very angry indeed. Can't quite remember what I did, but I know I hit her then, pulled back my arm, hit her with all my strength and sent her reeling to the ground, watched her lying there, weeping and moaning, exhausted by all that rage and hurt, while I kept feeling the blood on my face. Yes, I might have hit her with the stick; I can't remember. All right, then, with the stick, but only once.'

Antony raised his eyes to the ceiling as if looking for inspiration in the fluorescent light, clearly embarrassed, but determined not to weaken his flow by voicing the apologies in his mind. There are elements of the actor in you, Bailey considered. Even now you half enjoy the telling of the story, you who so enjoy making others record their thoughts, maybe you are only pausing for effect. I can see you wooing this poor matron with all the power of poetry, unable to face her passion when she responded.

'What happened next, Mr Sumner?' A soft reminder. Bailey believed they were either near the end of the story or closer than ever to falsehood.

Ì just stood there. Then I knelt down beside her, patted her. I told her I was sorry, but she should have listened, should have listened before. We had never been real, she and I, and it had always had to end. Go home, I told her, go home now, but she simply stayed as she was, absolutely inert apart from the crying, determined to be helpless. I was confused, irritated, if you want the truth. I could have — No, no, I didn't mean that.'

`Could have killed her, were you going to say?' said Bailey mildly.

`No, no, I didn't mean that at all.' Antony was angry at so obvious a ploy, Bailey angrier for the interruption. He had known far longer than he could remember how empty a gesture of intent was the threat or even the desire to kill, how different from the doing, how frequently relieved in the mere screaming of it. He had shouted these threats himself as a child to his mother, and he remembered more clearly how, in the depths of love for his wife, he had wished her death years before.