Читать книгу A Violent End - Emma Page - Страница 10

Yellow Pages and the Wychford telephone directory be­tween them supplied the name P. A. Clayton, a manufac­turer of electronic components with a factory on the Wychford industrial estate and a private address on a mod­ern exclusive housing development on the western edge of town. As it was a Saturday morning the Chief directed Sergeant Lambert to drive straight to the private address.

A car was drawn up in the gravelled turning-circle by the front door; a medium-sized, cream-coloured saloon, a couple of years old.

Lambert’s ring at the bell was answered by Mrs Clayton, looking tense and flustered at the sight of them. She wore an apron over expensive, dowdy clothes, she glanced un­certainly from one to the other. An enticing, savoury smell of cooking drifted out from the kitchen quarters.

The Chief disclosed his identity and her expression grew even more anxious. He asked if the P. A. Clayton listed in the phone book was in fact Paul Clayton. She told him that he was.

‘You’re both acquainted with a Mr and Mrs Roscoe who act as foster parents for the local authority?’

She frowned. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘I wonder if we might speak to your husband?’

‘He’s not here,’ she told them. ‘He’s over in his office on the industrial estate. He always goes there on a Saturday morning to catch up on the paperwork.’ She fell silent for a moment and then burst out: ‘What do you want him for? What’s all this about?’

Her look of anxiety deepened as Kelsey studied her with­out speaking. At last he said, ‘We’re making general inquir­ies with reference to the death of a girl who was recently fostered by the Roscoes.’

Her mouth dropped open, she took a pace back. ‘Karen Boland?’ she asked. Her tone was agitated.

‘Yes, Karen Boland. Your husband’s name has been mentioned to us as someone who knew her. You will appreci­ate that we have to follow up every lead. We’d like to ask your husband a few questions.’

‘How did she die?’ She clasped her hands. ‘How did it happen?’

‘I think we’d better come inside,’ Kelsey said. She led the way in silence into the kitchen, turned to face them.

‘How did she die?’ she asked again. She appeared on the verge of tears. ‘When did it happen?’

‘There’ll be a post-mortem later today,’ Kelsey told her. ‘We’ll know more about it then.’

She grasped the back of a chair. ‘However she died it couldn’t have been anything to do with Paul. He never saw her after she left the Roscoes and went back to the children’s home. I’m certain of that, he gave me his sacred word he’d never see her again.’

Kelsey made no reply and she burst out again with increasing agitation: ‘It wasn’t Paul’s fault that he got mixed up with her, it was all her doing. That’s the kind of girl she was, sly, deceitful, absolutely no good–that’s why she was taken into care in the first place. She’d been in the same kind of trouble before, only much worse, over in Okeshot. Mrs Roscoe told me about it after the business with Paul, I never knew a word about it before. I’d never have let her set foot in the house if I’d had the faintest idea.’

Her face had taken on a deep rosy tinge, her eyes looked glassy bright. ‘Mrs Roscoe told me after Karen left that she was glad to see the back of her, she’d never liked the way she looked at Mr Roscoe.’ She grasped the chair so hard that it swung back on its legs, almost toppling over. Without pausing in her flow she jerked the chair back into position. ‘Any man, any man at all, I don’t care who he is, or how good a husband he is, can be led astray if a girl’s determined enough.’ Her voice brimmed over with vehemence and animus.

Still Kelsey said nothing. ‘She wasn’t under age,’ Mrs Clayton continued in a rush, by now half sobbing. ‘You can’t pin that on Paul. She was turned sixteen back in the spring. I know that for a fact.’

She broke off suddenly, she looked disconcerted by his silence. She made a strong, visible effort to take a grip on herself. The colour remained unabated in her flaming cheeks. ‘Of course it’s a terrible thing to have happened,’ she said in a voice she strove to keep level. ‘A young girl to die like that, all her life ahead of her.’

‘Like what?’ Kelsey asked.

She gave him a blank stare.

‘To die like what?’ he repeated.

She glanced uncertainly from one to the other. ‘You said there’s going to be a post-mortem.’ Thought raced behind her eyes. ‘That always means something’s wrong. And you wouldn’t be making inquiries if she’d died a natural death. Something bad must have happened to her.’

She appeared to have regained some command of herself. She put a hand up to her face, smoothed her hair. She drew a long, sighing breath and glanced up at the wall clock. She seemed all at once to return to her surroundings, an awareness of the day, the hour, the next chore.

‘I must go,’ she said in a lighter, more everyday voice, with a touch of conventional social apology. She removed her apron. ‘I have to pick my daughter up from her dance class, I mustn’t be late. And my son’s at the sports centre, I have to pick him up too.’

She went into the hall and took down a camelhair jacket from a peg. She slipped it on, tied a light blue, flowered headscarf under her chin and picked up a pair of gloves. Apart from the rosy flush still staining her cheeks she seemed perfectly in control.

Sergeant Lambert followed the Chief to the front door. ‘We’ll get along out of your way, then,’ Kelsey told Mrs Clayton. She gave a little hostessy nod and stepped aside for them to leave. She followed them out and closed the door.

She walked towards the cream-coloured car and stood beside it, watching with a detached, courteous air as the two men got into their own vehicle. She raised a hand in a gesture of farewell as Lambert drove off, then she got into her car and switched on the engine. Kelsey glanced back and saw the vehicle slip into motion after a conspicuously jerky start.

The Roscoes’ house was not far away but in a neighbourhood markedly less fashionable. A modern detached house a good deal smaller than the Claytons’, the paintwork fresh and gleaming, the windows sparkling in the sunlight, the small front garden smartly disciplined, the little lawn closely shorn, every last weed extirpated from regimented flower­beds still dutifully bright with carefully staked chrysan­themums, pompom dahlias.

Sergeant Lambert pressed the bell once, twice, three times, but there was no reply. No sign of life inside the house, or–when he walked round–in the back garden.

‘Might be out shopping,’ Kelsey guessed. ‘We’ll get along to the industrial estate, we can try again here after we’ve seen Clayton.’

The electronics factory was on the other side of town and it was several minutes later when Lambert turned the car in through the gates. The place was silent. A handy­man armed with a bucket and washleather was cleaning windows. He came over as the two men got out of the car.

‘Mr Clayton’s in his office in the annexe,’ he told them. He gestured over at a small building. Kelsey walked briskly across and rapped on the door.

As soon as he laid eyes on Clayton he knew him for the man in the snapshot hidden away in Karen’s bedroom. He was dressed in casual clothes. He looked poised and alert, with an energetic, highly-charged air.

Kelsey introduced himself and asked if they might go inside. Clayton took them into his office and pulled forward chairs. His manner was calm and cooperative.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked when they were all seated, Clayton facing them across the desk.

The Chief came straight to the point; he asked him if he knew a girl named Karen Boland.

Clayton sat very still. The pleasant expression left his eyes, his look was cold and armoured.

‘I did know her,’ he answered after a pause. ‘I haven’t seen her for some time.’

‘When did you last see her?’

This time there was no pause. ‘I haven’t seen her since she left the Roscoes–her foster parents–and went back to the children’s home. That was several months ago. May I ask what all this is about?’

Kelsey threw it at him without preamble. ‘Karen Boland is dead.’

Clayton jerked back in his seat but recovered at once. ‘May I ask how she died?’

‘We’ll know more about that later today.’

All at once the colour drained from Clayton’s face. He put a hand up to his forehead, leaned forward and rested his elbow on the desk.

‘Do you mind if I have a drink?’ he asked in an unsteady voice. ‘It’s been rather a shock.’ He stood up and went across to a wall cupboard, took out a bottle of whisky and a glass. He glanced back at the two men with a gesture of invitation but Kelsey gave a brief headshake.

Clayton poured himself a stiff whisky and drank half of it down in quick gulps.

‘How well did you know Karen?’ Kelsey asked when Clayton showed no disposition to resume his seat. Clayton took another swallow, topped up his glass and went back to the desk. The colour had begun to return to his cheeks.

‘I expect you know all about the business of Karen leaving the Roscoes?’ he said as he sat down again. His voice was once more firm, confident. He set down his glass with an air of challenge.

‘We’ve heard something,’ Kelsey acknowledged. ‘We’d like to hear your side of it.’

‘It was nothing.’ Clayton made a dismissive gesture. ‘A silly flirtation, quite harmless. It meant nothing at all.’ He took another drink. ‘Mrs Roscoe’s a very strong church-woman, on the puritanical side. She and my wife got together, tried to make a lot more out of it than there was, they blew it up out of all proportion–you know what women can be when they get the bit between their teeth.’ His tone invited understanding, the fellow-feeling of the badgered male. ‘They wouldn’t be satisfied till they’d driven the poor kid out.’

‘Did you have any contact with Karen after she went to Overmead, to live with her cousin, Mrs Wilmot?’ Kelsey asked.

‘None whatever. I gave my word to my wife that I wouldn’t see Karen again, and I kept my word.’ He moved his hand. ‘Not that I had any wish to see her again. I was only too glad to forget the whole thing.’

‘Where were you yesterday afternoon and evening?’

He answered readily. He had spent the day in a large town some fifty miles to the west of Wychford. ‘There’s been a trade exhibition on there this last week, it finished yesterday. I’ve got several customers over that way, so I decided to make a day of it. I called in here first, to see if there was anything important in the post.’ He had visited his customers during the morning, taken one of them out to lunch, spent the afternoon at the exhibition.

On the way home he had called on another customer. ‘I drove home from there. It was around seven-fifteen when I got in. I spent the rest of the evening in my workshop–it’s in the garden, out of the way of the children. I was in the workshop till around eleven, then I went back into the house and went to bed.’

‘Do you often spend the evening in your workshop?’

‘I spend most evenings there. I’ve done it all my life, ever since I was a lad.’ He grinned. ‘It was a draughty little garden shed in those days, I can afford something better now. I had it built specially. There’s no phone in there, no interruptions. I’m always tinkering at something, always getting fresh ideas. I had several ideas yesterday after the exhibition, that kind of thing always sets my brain going. You can’t stop it, you have to go along with it. If you don’t tackle them right away they’re all gone by next morning.’ He grinned again. ‘You could be kissing goodbye to a winner.’

Kelsey asked what vehicle he had used yesterday.

‘The one I normally use. I drove here in it this morn­ing.’

‘We’d like to take a look at it.’

‘By all means.’ He took them out through a side door. The car was parked nearby on a hard standing–the car in the snapshot, Kelsey saw at once. A small, economical runabout, dark green, three or four years old. ‘It’s all I need for calling on customers,’ Clayton said. ‘Easy on gas, nippy in traffic, no trouble to park.’

The car had been freshly washed, thoroughly cleaned inside and out, polished to a high gleam. ‘That’s been done by the handyman,’ Clayton said in answer to Kelsey’s question. ‘He always does it on a Saturday morning.’ He offered no objection when Kelsey asked if he could speak to the man.

The Chief walked round to the other side of the factory where the handyman was busy on his windows. His manner was straightforward and cooperative. He didn’t hesitate in his answers, but neither did he appear to be repeating something recently rehearsed; he showed no curiosity.

Yes, he always cleaned all the vehicles thoroughly on a Saturday morning, he always did them first thing, before he made a start on the sweeping out, the windows, the routine maintenance jobs. No, he had received no particular instruc­tions this morning regarding Mr Clayton’s car.

Kelsey went back to where Clayton and Sergeant Lambert stood waiting and all three of them returned to Clayton’s office and sat down again. Clayton now wore a passive, unresisting air, as if resigned to whatever might be going forward.

‘May I see your hands?’ the Chief asked him.

He held out his hands without demur, turning them over for the Chief’s inspection. Well cared for, no marks, no scratches or abrasions.

‘Did you wear gloves yesterday when you drove your car?’ Kelsey asked.

‘Yes. I’ve got them here.’ Clayton pulled open a drawer in his desk and took them out. Tan leather, with a knitted trim; good quality, almost new. No stains, no rips or tears, the knitted trim undamaged.

‘What clothes did you wear yesterday afternoon?’ Kelsey asked.

‘A business suit. And a car coat.’

‘We’d like to take a look at them.’

‘Yes, certainly. They’re at home, of course.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s time I was getting off there anyway.’

They followed his car back to the house. It was empty and silent. ‘I expect my wife’s picking up the children,’ Clayton said as he closed the front door behind them. The Chief didn’t inform him that they had already called at the house and spoken to his wife.

Clayton took them upstairs to a dressing room and showed them a car coat of green-grey tweed, a dark grey business suit, a pair of black leather Oxford shoes. Kelsey examined them all. Everything of good quality, newish, clean and undamaged.

‘And the other garments you wore yesterday?’ he asked. ‘Shirt, underwear, socks.’

Clayton gave him a startled glance. ‘They may still be in the laundry basket where I put them to be washed,’ he said after a moment. ‘The basket’s down in the utility room.’ He turned to the door but Kelsey raised a hand.

‘While we’re up here we’ll take a look at the rest of your clothes.’ Clayton stood watching in expressionless silence as the two men went through the contents of the wardrobe, the chest, cupboards.

When they had finished he took them downstairs again, into a very well-equipped utility room. But the laundry basket was empty. ‘I expect my wife did the washing this morning.’ Clayton waved a hand. ‘She’s a fussy house­keeper.’

‘What time did you leave the house this morning to go to the office?’ Kelsey asked him.

‘Eight o’clock, near enough.’

‘What time did you arrive?’

‘Ten past, quarter past, I suppose. I didn’t look at my watch.’

‘Did anyone see you arrive?’

‘Not that I know of. The handyman doesn’t come till eight-thirty.’

Kelsey gazed at him. Easy enough this morning to drive off a few miles in any direction, with Friday’s clothes bundled into a plastic rubbish bag in the boot of his car, dump the bag on a refuse tip or in a waste skip, no one any the wiser.