Caroline Graham - A Place Of Safety

‘So where did you get out of the river?’

‘Same place I got in. Terry had floated an old tyre days before. Tied with a rope to a hook under the bridge. I grabbed it, hung on till she’d run away then climbed out.’

I knew about the tyre. Barnaby flashed back to the river-bank search report. A patch of scrub - crisp packets, a pushchair frame, an old tyre. Used as a swing, the description had said, because it still had the rope round it. And I passed on that. Perhaps Joyce was right. Maybe it was time to pack it in.

‘Then where did you go?’ Sergeant Troy was picturing her, despite himself, cold, shivering and soaking wet in the late dark.

‘Nipped back to the house. Hid in the garden till Terry come home. Spent the night in his flat. Next day hitched to Causton and took a train to the Smoke.’

Barnaby controlled his breathing, kept the rising anger in its place. Put aside his thoughts on hours, days even, of wasted time (not least his own), shifting seas of paper detailing useless interviews regarding the night in question, extensive inquiries with wide-ranging health and police authorities about a possible drowning. In short, a massive waste of desperately stretched police resources.

‘So what went wrong?’ asked Sergeant Troy. He had noted the savage set of the chief’s mouth and the angry flush on his cheeks and felt the next question might be better coming from him.

‘That cross-eyed git, Charlie Leathers. He’s what went wrong. Terry’d done his blackmail letter, addressed to her, marked Personal. I posted it, first class, main office in Causton. Being that close you nearly always get twenty-four-hour delivery. He watches for the van then makes up some excuse to get into the house to see she’s got it all right.’

‘How was he supposed to know that?’ asked Sergeant Troy.

‘Do me a favour,’ said Tanya. ‘She ain’t going to be tripping around singin’ oh what a perfect day, I wanna spend it with you, with that burning a hole in her pocket, is she?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Barnaby. He was thinking of Ann Lawrence. Kind, ineffectual, innocent. Going quietly about her daily business. Opening her post.

‘Anyway, she’d got it all right. He found her half dead with fright and the letter on the floor. Trouble is, it weren’t his letter. It had stuck-on writing just the same but there was less words. And arranged different. You can imagine how he felt.’

‘Must have been quite a blow,’ said Barnaby.

‘Yeah. But he’s at his best, Terry, with his back against the wall. So, figuring a blackmail letter means payment, he watches her all the time. He thought she’d probably have to deliver at night and that’s what happened. So he tails her, planning to pick up the money hisself. After all, we’re the ones who earned it. But it weren’t his intention to kill nobody .’

Barnaby, tempted to say, ‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ restrained the impulse. He would do nothing to interfere with this, so far, wonderfully simple unravelling.

‘But Charlie got there first. He was actually taking the money when Terry spotted him.’

‘Some people,’ muttered Sergeant Troy.

‘Just as well Terry happened to have a length of wire in his pocket,’ said Barnaby.

‘You gotta carry something for protection in this dee and ay,’ Tanya explained, less patient by now. Her attitude seemed to be that Barnaby, of all people, should appreciate what a wicked world was out there. ‘And just as well he did, the way things went.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Charlie drew a knife on him. They had a terrible struggle.’

The two policemen looked at each other. Both remembered the orderly neatness of the murder scene.

‘So it was definitely self-defence.’ Tanya, having noticed and read the look, became quite vehement.

‘And what about the dog?’ asked Sergeant Troy. ‘Was that “self-defence”?’

‘What you on about? What dog?’

Barnaby put his hand quickly on his sergeant’s arm to stop any passionate denunciation of Jackson’s cruelty to the animal. The last thing he wanted was an emotional diversion.

‘So what happened to Terry’s letter, Tanya?’

‘It come the next day. He caught the mail van, offered to take the post up to the house and got it back. Then he sent another, by hand this time, like Charlie, asking for five.’

‘And no doubt it would have been more the third time?’

‘Why not? Terry reckoned that place must have been worth a quarter of a million. Anyway, he said we should give her a breather - a false sense of security, like. Maybe for a month. We was going to Paris for a few days. He’d got the five grand—’

‘And you’ve got it now, Tanya. Right?’

‘No. He never brought it with him.’

‘You expect us to believe that?’ said Troy.

‘It’s true. He hid it ’cause he thought you might be round the flat with a warrant. Then he couldn’t pick it up ’cause that filthy poof was spying on him. With binoculars.’

Barnaby thought that certainly tied in with what Bennet had later told him about Fainlight. The money was probably stashed with the clothes in the rucksack. Find that and you’d copped the jackpot.

‘Do you know how he came by the second lot of money?’ Sergeant Troy attempted ironic patience but, as always, failed to pull it off. Even to himself he sounded merely peevish.

‘Same as the first time. How many ways are there to collect a drop?’

‘Try following the victim, crashing her head down on the bonnet of a car and just taking it.’

Tanya stared at Barnaby who had spoken, then at Sergeant Troy and back to Barnaby again.

‘You tricky bastards. You wouldn’t tell such lies if he was here to defend himself. She left it in Carter’s Wood just like the first time.’

‘Mrs Lawrence didn’t leave any money anywhere. She’d decided not to pay and was returning it to the bank.’

‘Yeah, well, that might be what she says—’

‘She isn’t saying anything,’ said Troy. ‘She’s been in intensive care for the last three days. It’s not even certain that she’ll recover.’

Barnaby looked across the table at the girl. She had begun to look pitifully uncertain and his gaze was not unsympathetic.

‘He did have a record of violence, Tanya.’

‘No he didn’t.’ She immediately contradicted herself. ‘There was reasons.’

‘For a knife attack on—’

‘He never done that. Terry was the youngest, he took the blame so he could belong. The actual guy would’ve got life. On the streets you gotta be accepted. If you’re not, you’re finished.’

Troy wanted to ask about the old man left in the gutter but was strangely reluctant. The fact was he was fighting sympathetic feelings himself. Not for Jackson, never that, but for her. She was visibly distressed now and was struggling not to cry. Barnaby had no such qualms.

‘There was another incident. An old man—’

‘Billy Wiseman. He was lucky.’

‘ Lucky? ’

‘I know people - he’d never have got up again.’

‘What do you mean, Tanya?’

‘I were ten when they fostered me, him and his wife. What he done - I couldn’t even say it in words. Over and over. Sometimes in the middle of the night I’d wake up and he’d be ... Then, when I were fourteen, I were down by Limehouse Walk with Terry. I just started talking and it all came out. He never said nothing. But his face was terrible.’ Tanya gave a single cry then. A wild sound, like a frightened bird.

Barnaby said, ‘I’m sorry.’

And Troy thought, Christ, I’ve had enough of this.

‘I hadn’t seen him for ages. He’d been in two or three places, then Barnardo’s. I’d been moved about - once we lost touch entirely. Not knowing where each other was. And that was the worst. Like everything in the world closing down at once.’ Tears poured down like rain. ‘He was the only person who ever loved me.’