Caroline Graham - A Place Of Safety

Troy clumsily attempted comfort. ‘You’ll meet someone else, Tanya.’

‘What?’ She gazed at him blankly.

‘You’re young. Pretty—’

‘You stupid fuck.’ She drew away from them then, staring from one to the other with fastidious contempt. ‘Terry wasn’t my boy friend. He was my brother.’

They would have solved the crime anyway in a couple of days as things turned out. When the prints in Tanya’s room in Stepney turned out to be a perfect match with the ones in the Old Rectory attic.

Or when Barnaby remembered that Vivienne Calthrop had described Carlotta as far too short to be a model so how come she had to duck her head not to bang it on the Old Rectory door frame? Or when the bicycle on which Jackson had ridden back from Causton was found propped against the wall of Fainlight’s garage under half a dozen others. And the money, still in the saddle bag. The rucksack and clothes were never found. Received opinion in the incident room had it that Jackson had buried them under the other rubbish in the Fainlights’ wheelie-bin the day before it was emptied.

Valentine Fainlight, when questioned further, admitted that he had shown Jackson round the house and garden on one occasion when his sister was out. And that the man could have taken the garden key away while he was looking elsewhere but what the hell did it matter now anyway and, Jesus, when in hell were they going to leave him alone?

‘So how do you see it being worked, chief?’ asked Sergeant Troy as he and Barnaby walked away from the ravishing glass construction for the last time.

‘Presumably he biked over that back field, through the gate into the garden, down the side of the house and into the garage. Then he could duck down behind the Alvis, change clothes and hide his stuff to be sorted later.’

‘What d’you think he’ll get, Fainlight?’

‘Depends. Murder’s a serious charge.’

‘It was an accident. You heard what he said to his sister.’

‘I also heard him say he was blind with jealousy. He knew the man, Troy. They had a relationship. Which means murder is a possibility. The Met were right to charge him.’

‘But he was allowed bail.’ Troy was getting quite worked up. ‘That must mean something.’

‘It means he’s not regarded as a danger to the public. Not that he hasn’t committed any crime.’

‘So he might be found guilty?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Whether anti-homosexual bias can be weeded out in the jury. How impressed they are by Fainlight’s standing as a well-known author. How appalled they are when Jackson’s record is read out. How they respond to Tanya Walker’s testimony, which will be hostile to say the least.’

Tanya’s interview had concluded with her description of the fight that led to her brother’s death. According to her, Valentine had burst in, attacked Terry, dragged him over the landing and forced him back through the stair rail. Afraid for her own life, she had run away down the fire escape.

‘The Crown have a witness as well, chief. DS Bennet.’

‘He only saw Jackson fall. She can say what led up to it.’

‘And lie.’

‘Probably. The girl’s heart is broken, she’ll want revenge. And who could prove perjury?’

‘Do for his books, this, won’t it?’

‘As he writes for children, I would say so.’

Barnaby had been shocked at Fainlight’s appearance. He looked like a zombie. In his eyes the death of all life and hope. There was not even the colour of despair. His frame, now much less stocky, folded in on itself with utter weariness. He seemed inches shorter, pounds lighter.

Barnaby didn’t envy Louise. He was sure she could tough it out, nurse Fainlight through his dark night of the soul. She had the love and the patience and, certainly at present, the energy. Everything about her had shone. Her eyes, her skin and hair. Her cheeks were rosy, not with the usual skilfully applied cosmetics but with health and happiness.

And she had time on her side. The man who had caused her brother so much agony no longer existed. At least in the flesh. But in Fainlight’s heart - that was something else. And in his mind, where all troubles start and end, what of that? Eaten up by guilt and loneliness, starved of the only company his unhappy soul craved, how would he survive, in or out of prison?

‘If only,’ murmured Barnaby to himself. ‘Sometimes I think they’re the saddest words in the English language.’

‘I’d say pointless more,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘You would,’ replied the chief inspector. He was used to his sergeant’s phlegmatic attitude and occasionally even welcomed it as a sensible corrective to his own rather free-ranging imagination.

‘What’s done’s done,’ pursued Troy. Then, just to make sure there had been no misunderstanding, ‘Junna regret ay reean.’

They were making their way now across the Green, passing the village sign with its robustly priapic badger, stooks of wheat, cricket bats and lime-green chrysanthemum.

Barnaby noticed several pale furry dogs hurling themselves about in a transport of delight, happily too far away to make even the most brief exchange of courtesies with their owner feasible. A small terrier attempted to join in, not making too bad a fist of it. The owners of the dogs walked arm in arm, heads close together, talking.

‘Look who’s over there,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘I’ve seen who’s over there,’ replied the chief inspector, quickening his step. ‘Thanks very much.’

A few moments later they came to the river. Barnaby stopped by the low bridge to look into the swiftly flowing water. He wondered how it had looked in the moonlight on the night Tanya ran away. There must have been a moon for Charlie Leathers to see the faces of the two women as they swayed on the bridge locked together in a struggle which ended with an almighty splash. And he thought what he saw was for real, as we all do. Who questions the evidence of their own eyes?

‘I was thinking, sir. That Tanya—’

‘Poor lass,’ said Barnaby, somewhat to his own surprise.

‘Exactly,’ Troy responded eagerly. ‘If anyone needed a friend—’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘There wouldn’t be anything in it—’

‘Yes there would. Eventually.’

‘But what’ll happen to her?’

‘She’ll survive,’ said Barnaby, with a confidence he didn’t really feel. ‘After all, she managed to fool us.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Not drowning, Troy, but waving.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Never mind.’

Troy bit back a tsk of irritation. It was always happening, this sort of thing. The chief’d say something a little bit difficult, a bit obscure. Some quote or other from something nobody in their right mind had ever heard of. Then, when he tried for an explanation, he was brushed off.

Fair enough, you might say. But then don’t go on at this person for not knowing about opera and theatre and heavy music and books and stuff. Troy had looked up Philistine in Talisa Leanne’s dictionary when he had got home the other night and was not best pleased. Was it any wonder he was ‘a person deficient in liberal culture’ when every time he asked a question some know-all not a stone’s throw away was for ever shutting him up.

‘How about some lunch in the Red Lion?’

‘Sounds good, chief.’

‘What do you fancy? My treat.’

‘Pie and chips’d be nice. And some of that raspberry Pavlova.’

‘Excellent,’ said Barnaby as they strode across the forecourt. ‘That should keep you on your toes.’

As things turned out, Louise did not personally nurse her brother back to health. When Valentine returned to Fainlights, it was simply for the few days it took to organise the packing of his clothes, computer and personal files, and a few books. He planned to rent somewhere in London until the trial which he was told would probably not be for several months.