Pauline Rowson - In for the Kill

‘Do you think Steven killed her?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’ And that, I could see, was eating her up. ‘He was always so jealous, so possessive.

It suffocated me. He was even worse after the Gulf War. It wasn’t his fault. He started to drink.’

‘Scarlett, Scarlett,’ came a plaintive wailing.

‘Where are you? Why has everyone left me?

Where’s Teddy.’

Scarlett brushed against me as she went to Ruby. I felt something stir inside me that was more than sexual attraction.

‘The bombs they frighten me. Do they frighten you?’ Ruby said.

‘Sometimes.’ Scarlett turned to me. ‘These days she lives so much in the past that she hardly knows who I am. Sometimes she asks me when her real daughter is coming back.’

‘Can’t you get help?’

‘You mean put her in a home,’ she rounded on me again, her eyes blazing.

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ I said wearily. ‘Look, I think it’s best if you say nothing about the photograph. They might not even know that it’s missing.’

Scarlett said, ‘There’s something else I think you should know. Deeta was on your houseboat before you came back.’

‘I know. She found the door open and discovered the place had been ransacked.’

‘I mean she was inside for a long time before you showed up.’

‘How long?’ I asked, suddenly suspicious.

‘About half an hour, forty minutes.’

‘Are you sure?’ I was struck by the thought that maybe she had ransacked the place. But why would she do that? What could she have been looking for? Had someone told her I could possibly have three million pounds? Was that why she had been so willing? Had she been after my money, rather than my body? Deeta had made a play for me from the start. Deeta had been in Brading church when the aeroplane had buzzed me. Did she have any connection with what had happened to me?

Scarlett said, ‘I thought you might also like to know that her hotel room was trashed.’

Was it indeed! Had her killer thought she’d discovered something on my houseboat and had taken it back to her hotel? What though? Did this have anything to do with Andover? Was I wasting time thinking this? It didn’t feel like it.

If Gus wasn’t the link between Andover’s three victims then who and what was? Deeta was a link between me and Steven Trentham, and Steven with my past. Steven could fly an aeroplane and Scarlett said he was possessive and possibly even unbalanced. I had seen that and could still feel his punch on my chin. I had ruled Steven out, but could I? I thought it was about time I had a word with Percy.

CHAPTER 13

I found Percy on the beach. His forlorn little figure was staring out to sea. We were alone except for a woman walking her West Highland terrier the other side of the long thin pier that stretched out to sea, on the end of which was the lifeboat station.

‘Do you want a tea or coffee?’ I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the café to my right.

‘No thanks. Let’s sit up the top there.’

We climbed the slope up to the small car park by the toilets and Royal National Lifeboat Institution shop. On the bank of grass to the left of it were a handful of seats. We took the second one of the benches facing seaward. Percy had lost some of his sparkle and his breathing was a little laboured. He looked off-colour, a dejected figure now rather than a comical one. I suddenly realised he was an old man.

It was mid morning and low tide. The sea washed gently onto the sand, and across the Solent in a distance haze I could just make out the shores of Hayling Island. It looked like summer but there was a fresh wind that reminded me it was still only April. A small fishing boat was chugging steadily towards Sandown Bay. I thought of Westnam and the person who might discover his sea-worn body.

The crabs and sea life would have made a meal of him and it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.

‘It’s a sad world,’ the old man said quietly and wearily, echoing my thoughts. ‘And the more I see of it the sadder it gets. She was such a lovely girl.’

‘It must have been terrible for you to find her.’

‘It was, though I’ve seen worse in the war.’ He glanced at me. ‘I’ve seen things that would make your stomach heave and your legs turn to jelly and I weren’t nothing but a boy then. Seeing her lying in a heap on the beach brought it all back to me. I thought I’d forgotten it, but I hadn’t. I suppose you just push it away and get on with life, well leastways that was what we used to do in them days. Now it’s all counselling. Don’t do no good if you ask me. It hasn’t helped our Steven much. Poor Scarlett had a terrible time of it; no wonder she couldn’t stick it. I don’t blame her for wanting shot of him. But he seems to be getting himself together now. He’s been back with me for ten years and buying that plane a few years ago has given him something else to think about. Doesn’t do to brood on things.’

‘He told me that he and Deeta were very close.’

The old man eyed me sadly. ‘Wishful thinking on Steven’s part. She were no more interested in him than she were in me. Oh, I liked to fool meself just like our Steven did, I mean a pretty girl like her hanging on your every word, looking at you with those big blue eyes, bound to go to your heart and loins. Though the loins bit is beyond me now, more’s the pity.’ He smiled and I saw something of the old Percy bouncing back.

I was glad.

‘She was writing a book about the war, I believe.’

Percy nodded. ‘Yes. She wanted to know what part I played in it. Told her I was a boy runner.

She was very interested in the radar station at Ventnor. Did you know it was the only radar station to be destroyed in the war?’

I did. I’d heard the story so many times I could recite it backwards. I needed to get Percy talking about Steven but I could see there would be no hurrying him.

Percy continued, ‘I saw the pylons go up in 1938, you know. It must have been about the same time your granddad built that folly of his.’

I remembered seeing a diary for 1938 amongst my mother’s possessions. Is that what Deeta wanted if she had been the person to have searched my houseboat. But what significance could it have? I recalled her gentle questioning of me in between our lovemaking. She had asked me about my mother’s childhood during the war and I had thought nothing of it. In fact, I couldn’t tell her much, my mother had rarely spoken of it. Was that diary from 1938 still on the houseboat? Though what connection it might have had with Andover, or Steven come to that, I couldn’t even guess.

Percy continued, ‘Your granddad knew a war was coming. Most of us thought he was a bit eccentric. Chamberlain said there was peace. But Edward Hardley was right in the end. Of course we didn’t know the reason for the pylons then, it was all hush hush. By 1939 there were these great big tall steel masts and wooden towers on the Downs. The radar station was bombed in 1940, along with Portsmouth Dockyard. The Spitfires went up. You should have seen them.’

Percy’s eyes were shining at the excitement of the memory. ‘They shot the hell out of them Germans, but the bombs still got through. I was running for the firemen, taking buckets of water up there, but it were like pissing on an inferno.

Bloody useless.’

His eyes swivelled to his right. He couldn’t see St Boniface Down above Ventnor from here, not physically but in his mind I knew he could.

Time to bring him back on track.

‘About Steven, has he –’

‘It was completely destroyed, you know. We were lucky though. Only one soldier got hurt.

Deeta was really interested in the radar station and curious about your grandfather. She wanted to look inside the folly. She asked Steven about that many a time. She was disappointed you’d sold the house. I often wondered why she was so interested.’