Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“What did you find?”

“Nothing. He’s not there. But it doesn’t look as if he’s gone for long. Anxious to contact him, are you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Heard about his father-in-law?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I have. That’s why I’m in Bristol. To offer Sarah my condolences.”

“You mean she’s still here? I should have thought she’d be in Portugal by now, trying to find out what happened. I wouldn’t mind knowing myself.”

“An accident, I believe.” Grateful for the excuse he’d unwittingly supplied me with, I added: “But you’re probably right. Sarah must already be on her way to Portugal. Stupid of me to expect to find her at home, really. I only came on here in case-”

“She was with Bryant? Not very likely, is it?”

“Probably not.” Irritated by his habit of interrupting me, I made an attempt to put him on the defensive. “And why are you looking for Paul, Inspector?”

“Because Naylor’s release on bail seems to have coincided with a crop of fatal accidents. And coincidences make me twitchy. I just wanted to make sure Bryant hadn’t met with one.”

“I don’t follow. Sir Keith’s death hardly constitutes a crop.”

“No. But there’s been another since then.” He paused, relishing, it seemed, the chance to study my expression while I waited for him to continue. “Vincent Cassidy’s surfaced. Literally. In the Thames, night before last. Dead as most of the fish.”

I could have told him all I knew then. And perhaps I should have done. But I was determined to find Sarah and demand an explanation from her before I carried tales about her to the police. “An accident, you say?”

“It’s what the coroner will probably say. No fixed abode. Plenty of drink and drugs in the bloodstream. Sounds a simple case of drowning, doesn’t it? He could have got the head wound hitting a bridge pier on the way in. Naylor was still in custody at the time, so we can’t go accusing him of anything. I expect we’ll have to settle for accidental death. Same as Sir Keith.”

“And this happened on Tuesday?”

“Monday, more likely. The pathologist reckons he’d been in the water about twenty-four hours.” Monday was the day Cassidy had phoned me. He’d sounded desperate. And now it seemed he’d had good reason to be. Smith and Brown were covering their tracks-with merciless efficiency. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh… no reason.”

“I generally find there’s a reason for everything.”

“Do you? Tell me, Inspector, you are absolutely certain Paul Bryant murdered Oscar Bantock and Louise Paxton, aren’t you?”

“We’d hardly have let Naylor go if we weren’t, would we, sir?” He looked at me scornfully. “And you wouldn’t have changed your statement if you had any doubts.”

“But what convinced you ?”

“The accumulation of detailed knowledge. As you once pointed out, we always keep a few things back. And Bryant knew what a lot of them were.”

“Such as?”

“I can’t go into that.”

“Just give me one example. I know about the diary. There must have been more.”

“Of course there was, sir.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, all right,” he said impatiently. “Bryant knew what Lady Paxton was wearing. I mean every single garment. He described them accurately. Colour, fabric, the lot. Now how could he-unless he really did watch her take them off?”

“I suppose he couldn’t.” But my mind was already pursuing a different answer. Louise’s clothes would have been returned to her family at some point. Sarah would probably have looked after that. She’d have wanted to spare Rowena and her father the task. So, she’d have known exactly what her mother had been wearing.

“Then there was his description of Bantock’s face after he’d killed him,” said Joyce, warming to his theme. “‘Smeared in multi-coloured flakes of paint.’ Well, that’s just how it was. It’s what Jones said-the postman who found him. ‘Like it was covered in hundreds and thousands.’ But it was never mentioned in court.”

“Surely Jones might have talked about it subsequently.”

“Of course. We thought of that. We had Jones in to take a look at Bryant. He’d never set eyes on him before in his life.”

“I see.” And so I did. I saw precisely how it could have been managed. Jones had never met Paul. But he might have met Sarah. And she might have persuaded him to reminisce about the scene at Whistler’s Cot. But Joyce wouldn’t have asked him if she had. The idea would never have crossed his mind.

“Besides, those meetings with Lady Paxton he listed-complete with dates, times and places. There were too many to fake. Far too many. And every single one checked out.”

“Did it?” Sarah had been ideally placed to supply dates, times and places, of course. Even corroborate some of them herself. And she’d have realized they could risk inventing a few incidents that a living person would know to be untrue-so long as that person was sure to be disbelieved. “Not every one, surely. I thought Sir Keith denied having the row with Lady Paxton Paul claims to have overheard in Biarritz.”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Joyce said with a cynical smile. He looked round. The door to number thirteen was closed now and a bedraggled figure I took to be his sergeant was sheltering from the rain beneath the first-floor bay. “OK, Mike. Go back to the car. I’ll join you there.” The sergeant nodded and hurried away.

“Where do you think Paul’s gone, Inspector?”

Joyce shrugged. “Christmas shopping, for all I know. He’s free to go wherever he likes. Until Naylor’s been acquitted. The neighbour’s going to ask him to phone me as soon as he gets back, though. Just to put my mind at rest.”

“They said on television Naylor’s appeal wouldn’t come to court until March.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a long time to wait.”

“For Bryant, you mean?” Joyce glanced over his shoulder at the empty rain-streaked windows of number thirteen. “Oh, he’ll sit it out patiently enough, I reckon.” Then his brow creased into a frown. “That’s not what’s worrying me.”

“What is, then?”

He shook his head. “To be frank, Mr. Timariot, I’m not quite sure. There’s something wrong here. But I can’t for the life of me work out what it is.”

Why had they done it? The question circled giddily in my mind as I ran back to Queen Square, jumped into the car and started for Clifton. Why should they have wanted to do it? It made no sense. Yet clearly, to them, it did. They’d planned this. They’d plotted and prepared it. Every step of the way. But I had no more inkling than Joyce of what they were trying to achieve.

I was already pursuing them, though. Whereas he didn’t even know they’d fled. At Caledonia Place, I let myself in without bothering to try the bell again and went straight up to the second-floor flat.

Then nothing. As I closed the door behind me, only the motionless air of unventilated normality revealed itself. The flat was clean and tidy. But there was clearly nobody at home. I moved slowly from room to room, half-expecting something to happen, some meaning or significance to spring out at me from Sarah’s domestic orderliness. But it didn’t. Her pictures were still on the walls. Her saucepans still hung in line on the hooks above the kitchen worktop. Her coats and dresses still filled the wardrobes. She could have walked in at any moment and it would have seemed no different from all the other times she’d walked in at the end of a working day.

Except she wasn’t going to. The certainty grew as the silence encroached. She wasn’t coming back. Wherever she’d gone-why ever she’d gone there-retreat wasn’t possible. I stood in the lounge, staring at the photograph of her and Rowena with their mother that was still in its place on the mantelpiece between the carriage clock and the china rabbit. Louise’s gaze seemed to be directed at me now, not some indefinable point beyond the camera. It hadn’t changed, of course. But I had. She’d invented the stranger on Hergest Ridge for Sophie’s benefit, because she’d known Sophie would believe a fictitious affair more readily than the truth. What must she have thought, then, when she met me there? What must have gone through her mind?