Caroline Graham - A Place Of Safety

‘I fell down and as I was getting up I heard her cry, Terry, Terry, don’t. And I saw his face and I’ve never been so frightened in my life. I thought, he’s going to kill me. So I started to fight back, I couldn’t help it, and we were on the landing when he ...’

Louise gently rested her hand on his arm. A fragile comfort but he cringed as if battered. ‘Val, it was an accident—’

‘It was my fault!’

‘They’ve got to understand that. You can’t spend the rest of your life in prison.’

‘I don’t care where I spend the rest of my life. I just hope to God it’s bloody short.’ He fell silent for a moment then said, ‘The joke is, Lou, the bloody tragic joke is I would have died for him .’

In the adjoining room, Troy drained his cup of lukewarm tea and Barnaby peered inside his third sandwich (rather fatty ham, pale pink tomato and salad cream) and put it back on the plate. Troy was just stacking both cups and saucers on the tray when Fainlight started to speak again. Barnaby grabbed his sergeant’s arm and hissed for quiet.

‘The odd thing was I’d seen her before, this girl.’

‘Really?’ Louise sounded incredulous. ‘How could you have?’

‘At the Old Rectory. It was Carlotta.’

‘But ... that’s wonderful, Val! Everyone thought she’d drowned. I must tell Ann—’ And then she stopped, remembering.

‘Her hair was different, a funny orange colour, and cut all short and spiky. But it was Carlotta all right.’

In the end they caught her quite quickly. Barnaby had feared she would go to earth, change her appearance again and simply vanish into the city’s underworld. If not London then Birmingham or Manchester or Edinburgh. And with no photograph to circulate, the chances of picking her up were practically nil.

But, to cover every exit, both of the names she had been using were flashed to all air and sea ports and rail terminals to the Continent. She was spotted by the Eurostar departure point at Waterloo, travelling under a name that Barnaby immediately recognised. The name by which she had first introduced herself, Tanya Walker.

A sorrier sight, thought Barnaby as she was brought into the interview room, he had rarely seen. When he was a constable on the beat he had sometimes had to answer calls from department stores who had found a toddler that had become separated from its mother. The same bewildered panic in her eyes, the same wailing loss. What was it about that vicious bastard Jackson that could bring this girl and Fainlight likewise to their knees in sorrow?

The tape was running. And, unlike the interview two days earlier, this time there was no difficulty extracting information. She answered all his questions unhesitatingly, without ever a pause to reflect, in a flat, colourless voice. She did not care. She had nothing left to lose. And thank God she did, thought the chief inspector, for with Jackson dead, how else would he have unravelled the tangled mess that had been jamming up his thought processes for the past two weeks.

Though Barnaby had had several hours to prepare for this interview, there was more than one aspect to the case and he had not quite decided which to broach first. He turned them over in his mind in reverse order of importance. First came the least interesting - the girl’s relationship with Jackson. She was plainly in love with him, he had had power over her, she would do anything to please him - the old, old story. Then her version of what had happened in Lomax Road. Third, the background to her connection to Carlotta Ryan, the girl who had lived in the room next door. Finally her exact role in the elaborate intrigue at the Old Rectory which had culminated in the murder of Charlie Leathers. Though this last was by far the most interesting and important, Barnaby perversely chose to begin with the third.

‘Tell me about Carlotta, Tanya.’

‘I told you about her. When you come to the flat.’

‘What happened to her?’

She looked vacantly at him.

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Course she’s still alive. What you on about?’

‘Then where is she?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Having the time of her bloody life, I should think. Halfway round the world on a cruise ship.’

‘And how did that come about?’

‘An ad in that stage paper. She auditioned about ten days before she was due to go down the Rectory. They offered her the job, topless dancing. A year’s contract. She jumped at it.’ Tanya looked across at Sergeant Troy and for the first time showed a spark of animation. She said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’

Troy did not respond. It would not have been appropriate but also he didn’t want to. He remembered his first meeting with this girl and how touched he had been by her appearance and larky chatter and the sad fact that she did not know who her dad was. Probably just another lie. He tightened his lips against the chance of a smile, unaware of how sanctimonious it made him look.

‘So whose idea was it that you go to the Lawrences instead?’ asked Barnaby, pleased that at least he knew now why the flat had been cleaned out. ‘Yours or hers?’

‘Terry’s. He liked the thought of being able to keep an eye on me. Mind you, he’d get up the Smoke when he could. He was here when you turned up. Hiding in the bedroom.’

Barnaby cursed silently for a moment. But his voice was even as he said, ‘So you knew him before?’

‘For ever. On and off.’

‘Must have been mostly off,’ said Sergeant Troy. ‘All the time he’s been banged up.’

‘Yeah, mostly.’ Tanya looked across at Troy then with grave contempt. Troy flushed with resentment and thought she’d got a bloody cheek. Even so, he was the first to look away.

‘But you pretended otherwise?’ said Barnaby.

‘S’right. He didn’t want the connection to show.’

‘Because of the grand plan?’

‘Partly. But also it’s his nature to conceal things. It was the only way he ever felt safe.’

‘So how was it supposed to work?’

‘It was brilliant. We had two plans, one for day, one for after dark, depending on when Mrs L took off. I lifted some jewellery, old-fashioned stuff she were keen on.’

‘It belonged to her mother.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

Barnaby held out his hand. ‘You wouldn’t happen ...?’

Tanya hesitated.

‘Come on, Tanya. You’ve admitted taking them. Giving them back will look good on your sheet.’

Tanya opened her bag and put the earrings in Barnaby’s hand. They looked very small. Small but beautiful.

‘Now you’re going to flog ’em, ain’tcha?’

‘That’s right,’ said Sergeant Troy.

Barnaby asked what happened next.

‘When she come to my room about it I went mad, tearing up stuff and screaming me life was over. Then I ran away. We knew she’d come after me ’cause she was like that.’

‘Concerned,’ suggested Barnaby.

‘It worked perfect. If it hadn’t, Terry’d got plenty other ideas up his sleeve.’

‘She thought she’d pushed you in,’ said Barnaby. ‘She was frantic.’

‘That was the point ,’ Tanya explained patiently. ‘She ain’t going to pay up if I’d jumped, is she?’

‘Why should she pay up at all?’ snapped Sergeant Troy.

‘Because she can afford it. Because she’s got a bloody great house and somebody to clean it for her and somebody else to do the fucking garden. And because she’s never done a stroke of work in her life!’

‘I take it you didn’t like her,’ said Barnaby.

‘Ohh ...’ Tanya sighed. ‘She weren’t too bad. It were holy Joe I couldn’t stand. Always touching you. Accidentally on purpose - know what I mean? Hands like damp dishcloths.’