Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Parnell. Despite washing his hands after being fingerprinted, his fingers still retained some of the blackness of the ink.

‘You could do better,’ said the lawyer.

‘What?’

‘An investigative technique – a courtroom technique – to catch people out is to make them lose their temper – speak without thinking. Which I’ve warned you about. You lost your temper back there.’

‘Why are they trying to catch me out – trick me!’ exploded Parnell.

‘You’re doing it again.’

‘Barry! Help me!’ How many times had he made that plea?

‘That’s what I’m trying to do. You heard what they said – a lot of things aren’t making up any sort of picture. Until it does, they’ve got to poke sticks into every bee’s nest. You’re not doing yourself any favours, snapping back. So stop it. Don’t take every question as a personal attack or accusation.’

‘That’s what it sounds like,’ said Parnell, petulantly.

‘That’s what it’s supposed to sound like. I just told you that, for Christ’s sake!’ The lawyer’s voice softened. ‘We’re getting close now. You sure you’re all right?’

Parnell did not immediately respond, recognizing the twisting, narrow roads, realizing – shocked – that he hadn’t properly until now fixed in his mind the precise location of the crash. He knew now, before they got to the fatal turn, what lay beyond. Suddenly there it was – the crumpled, supposedly protective barrier over which she’d been forced, the impact marks running almost its entire length, the final collapsed edge where the vehicle had mounted and then gone over the end, oil marks as black as death. And then they were past.

‘Oh fuck!’ said Parnell, in a breathless rush, not aware until that moment that he had actually been holding his breath, not knowing what he was going to confront.

‘OK?’

‘I think we should have gone the other way. Can you imagine…?’

‘No!’ stopped Jackson. ‘I don’t want you trying to imagine it, either. Leave it. Leave it if you can. You’ve got things to do – things to concentrate upon.’

‘You think they did it purposely, brought us this way?’

‘Maybe. Don’t let it get to you.’

‘How the fuck can I avoid that?’

‘By not letting it get to you.’

‘Don’t you start double-talking, like everyone else!’

‘That’s not double-talking. That’s straight-talking. You ready? We’re almost at the house.’

‘I hope I’m ready.’

‘So do I.’

The Bethesda cottage was secured by yellow police tape and there was an obvious police black and white parked outside, the driver and observer competing for boredom-of-the-year awards.

As they assembled from the two cars, Parnell said: ‘I thought Metro DC were off limits?’

‘They are,’ said Dingley. ‘They’re just here, by court order, to stop anyone who isn’t authorized going near the place.’

‘That’s going to piss them off.’

‘It can’t piss them off any more than they already are.’

‘So, how do you know they’re doing their job?’ demanded Jackson.

‘We got temporary – but inconspicuous – CCTV in every room. And external, in every direction. And a tap on the telephone.’

‘You didn’t tell us that,’ complained Jackson.

‘I’ve got all the court orders,’ said Pullinger.

‘We should have been told!’ insisted the other lawyer.

‘The house isn’t your jurisdiction,’ said Pullinger.

‘Ed, it’s our co-operation you’re asking for. You’re not doing a lot to encourage it,’ warned Jackson.

The three FBI men began to move off towards the house but Jackson didn’t move, keeping Parnell with him. Softly he said: ‘You want to go through with it?’

‘Don’t you think I should?’

‘I don’t think we should look as if we’re accepting it.’

‘Your call,’ said Parnell.

The others had stopped, about ten yards away. Pullinger shouted: ‘Is there a problem?’

‘We can’t hear you,’ Jackson yelled back.

There was a hesitation before the three men walked back. Pullinger said: ‘I asked if there was a problem?’

‘Yes,’ said Jackson. ‘We going to operate on level ground or we going to fuck about?’

‘You want me to say sorry?’ asked Pullinger.

‘I want you to do it right, like we’re doing it right.’

‘You’ve made your point. I’ve taken it,’ said Pullinger. ‘Shall we go on inside?’

Jackson held them for another moment or two before moving towards the house, bringing the rest with him. It was Dingley who opened the door, standing back for Parnell to go in first. The last time – when? he thought, unable to remember – had been with Rebecca, hurrying in ahead of him, carrying the lightest of the grocery shopping, him the packhorse behind, she talking as she always talked, butterflying from point to point, never properly, fully, finishing what she was saying before fluttering to something else, queen of her own castle, self-proclaimed queen of his, dropping the bags, gesturing where she wanted him to drop his, turning on lights, music, opening windows, hurrying him back to the car for what they hadn’t been able to bring in the first time. No, he thought suddenly, moving through the living room into the kitchen. Rebecca hadn’t been neat and tidy. Organized, certainly, written-out shopping lists for stores and markets listed in convenient order, but not like this, not as if the house had been made ready, prepared, for a prospective buyer. In quick recollection he looked into the double sink, then the empty dishwasher and finally to the coffee pot, opening it to confirm the filter chamber was clean.

‘What?’ asked Benton.

‘On the Sunday morning, when Rebecca came to pick me up,’ remembered Parnell. ‘I asked her if she wanted coffee, because I was just making some. She said she’d already had some. And juice. There’s no cups or glasses…’

‘And the coffee pot’s empty and clean,’ Dingley accepted.

Parnell led the way into the den, dominated by the television and music system and saw the regimented books and the orderly magazine arrangement and then up to the bedrooms – the bedroom he and Rebecca had occupied and loved in and partially discovered each other in first – and made himself look around it and open and close drawers, although he didn’t know now what for, and then he looked around the other two bedrooms, knowing even less what he was supposed to find out of place – or, rather, wrongly in place, before he retreated downstairs.

‘Well?’ demanded Dingley.

‘It’s an impression,’ said Parnell. ‘That’s all it can be.’

‘That’s all we’re asking for.’

‘No,’ said Parnell. ‘It’s not right. Doesn’t feel right. That’s all I can say. This doesn’t look, feel, like the house that Rebecca left that Sunday morning to pick me up…’ He stopped, at another recollection. ‘That’s why the coffee pot’s wrong… no cup in the washer. She was late, said we had a drive to get where we were going – she wouldn’t tell me where we were going – in time. It was in time to get a table, for lunch, although she wouldn’t tell me that, either. If she was late, in a hurry, she wouldn’t have cleared away, would she?’

‘Not unless she was particularly fastidious,’ said Benton.

‘Rebecca wasn’t particularly fastidious,’ said Parnell.

‘Then no, she wouldn’t.’ agreed Dingley.

‘Where’s this all got us?’ demanded Jackson.

‘We don’t know, not yet,’ said Pullinger. ‘We’re looking forward to something we can understand that does get us somewhere.’

Once more it was pointlessly too late for Parnell to drive out to McLean. He telephoned from the apartment that he would be in the following morning before going out again to shop uninterestedly for essentials, bread and milk and packaged meals he could heat in seconds in the microwave. He also, just as uninterestedly, bought three litre-sized bottles of screw-topped red wine, which he thought was as much as he could carry. On his way back to the apartment he saw one man whom he thought might be watching him, but there wasn’t any longer a stomach lurch. Before he reached him the downtown bus arrived and the man got on it.