Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

She was crushed by the betrayal. If Doreen concealed her own name, could anything she said be trusted? The story about her father and his horrible death could be pure fabrication, as could the stuff about the Tormarton Seax.

Soon after, the doorbell rang.

Her first thought was that Doreen must have come back. No one else knew who was staying here. That would be it: she had just discovered she’d mislaid the receipts and she was back in a panic.

She called out, ‘Coming,’ and hastily scooped up the bits of paper and put them in her own pocket, hoisted herself up and on to the crutches and picked her way across the floor to the hall.

There was no second ring. She knows I’m slow, she thought. She unfastened the door and opened it the few inches the safety chain allowed.

A mistake.

A metal-cutter closed on the safety-chain and severed it. The door swung open, practically knocking her down, and Smiling Face walked into the flat and slammed the door closed.

She gripped the crutches, terrified.

‘Move,’ he ordered, pointing to the armchair.

She hobbled across the room. She was turning to make the awkward manoeuvre of lowering herself when he grabbed one of the crutches away and pushed her in the chest, slamming her into the chair. He kicked the other crutch out of her reach.

As if she were no longer there, he walked through and checked the kitchen and the bedroom. Satisfied, he sat opposite her, resting a brown paper carrier on his knees. He was in a suede jacket, white sweater and black jeans.

In a shaky voice she asked him what he wanted.

‘You don’t know?’ It was an educated voice, no more comforting for that. His mouth curved in that crocodile smile. ‘Come now, Miss Gladstone, you’re not stupid. You know you’ve got to be dealt with, and it needn’t hurt. You swallow the sleeping tablets I give you, helped down with excellent cognac, which I also happen to have in my bag, and you don’t wake up. It’s the civilised way to go, and it works.’

‘You want to kill me?’

‘Not at all.’ The smile widened. ‘I want you to commit suicide.’ From the carrier he produced some cheap plastic gloves, the sort garages provide free at the pumps, and put them on. ‘Oh, and so that no one is in any doubt, I’ll fix a new safety-chain before I leave, reassuring anyone with a suspicious mind that you must have been alone here.’

Rose had not listened to any of it.

He took out and placed on the low table between them a silver flask and a brown bottle full of prescription capsules. ‘Fifteen should do it. Twenty will make certain.’

Terrified as she was, her brain went into overdrive. This man would snuff out her life unless she found some way of outwitting him.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘What have I done, that you want to kill me?’

He unscrewed the bottle and tipped some capsules on to the table. ‘Take a few.’

If anything Doreen had said could be believed, the man was a treasure-hunter. She knew nothing else about him, so she would have to gamble on its being true.

She said, ‘It’s revenge, isn’t it?’

‘For what?’

She held his glance and began to unfold a story worthy of Scheherazade. ‘Because you didn’t find the necklace and the other things that belong to my family.’

He gazed at her blankly, unconvinced. ‘Just what are you wittering on about?’

‘Certain objects my father dug up years ago.’

His brown eyes were giving away more than he intended. ‘You’re bluffing. There’s no record of anything being found there after 1943.’

He was a circling vulture.

‘There wouldn’t be,’ Rose said, trying to sound calm, ‘because Dad didn’t report it. He didn’t want some coroner declaring them as treasure-trove and belonging to the nation. My grandfather made that mistake with his find.’

‘Nice try,’ he said, getting up. ‘I don’t buy it. I’ll fetch you a glass from the kitchen.’

Elaborating wildly, she called out, ‘I’ve tried on the necklace. Dad re-strung the gold beads and the garnets himself. The original string rotted in the soil.’

Smiling Face was silent for some time.

When he returned from the kitchen he was holding a tumbler. ‘It isn’t the right shape for a decent cognac, but it will have to do. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You don’t remember a damned thing about your father, let alone any gold objects, so swallow these and give us both a break.’ He took the cap off the flask and poured some brandy.

Her brain grappled with the complexities. In this poker game her life was the stake and the cards had been dealt to her by Doreen, an impostor. In spite of the denials, the man had appeared at first to be interested. She had no choice but to play on as if she held a winning hand.

‘Don’t you want to know why I came down here to visit my father?’ Without giving him time to respond she answered her own question. ‘Dad invited me to collect the hoard, as he called it. He wrote to say it would be safer with me. People had visited him, wanting to excavate. If he agreed, he said, they’d find nothing and there was a danger they would turn nasty. He felt vulnerable, being elderly. He was afraid they would break into the house.’ While she was speaking, her eyes read every muscle movement across his face. She was encouraged to add, ‘He said the coins would bring me a steady income sold in small amounts and to different collectors.’

The mention of coins drew a better result than the necklace had. His grin lost a little of its upward curve. ‘What coins?’

‘The ones he dug up.’

‘You mean old coins?’

‘I don’t know how old they are. Silver and gold mostly. They must have been in a pot originally, because they were mingled with tiny fragments of clay.’

His facade was crumbling, even if he tried to sound sceptical. ‘And where are these fabulous coins kept now? In a bank vault?’

‘No. He wouldn’t trust a bank. They’re in the farmhouse.’

‘Oh, yes? Where precisely?’

If she named a hiding-place, he wouldn’t be able to resist checking. He might disbelieve her, but he was too committed to let any chance slip by, however remote. The challenge was to keep him interested without telling him enough to let him believe he could go alone. ‘He didn’t tell me exactly where.’

He was contemptuous. ‘Convenient.’

‘But there can’t be more than four or five places they could be. I knew the farmhouse as a child.’

‘Now you’re lying through your teeth,’ he said. ‘It’s common knowledge that your memory is gone. You know sweet FA about what happened when you were a kid.’

Rose harangued him with the force of Joan of Arc in front of her accusers. ‘Wrong. It came back a couple of nights ago. I woke up in the small hours and remembered who I am and everything about me.’A huge claim that she would find impossible to justify if put to the test, but how much did Smiling Face know of her life? She started talking at the rhythm of a sewing machine, stitching together a patchwork of what Doreen had told her and what sprang to mind. ‘I’m twenty-eight, and I live in Hounslow and I work in a bookshop. My parents separated when I was very young and I’ve seen very little of my father since. I came down from London the other day at his request and when I got to the farmhouse I found him dead, shot through the head. The rest you know.’

He reached for the brandy and drank some, caught in indecision.

‘If you like,’ she offered in a more measured tone, squeezing her hands between her knees to stop them trembling, ‘we could go to the farmhouse and find the hoard. You can have the coins and all the other things except the necklace.’ Trying to do a deal over the non-existent necklace was an inspiration. ‘Dad always promised me the necklace.’