Borrowed Time

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Bella took a deep swallow from the very large gin and tonic she’d just poured herself, lit another cigarette and crouched forward across the coffee-table between us. The central heating had already taken the edge off the chill, but Bella, whose preferred temperature was five degrees above most people’s, hadn’t even turned down the collar of her raincoat, let alone taken it off.

“You’ll say I mishandled it from the start,” she began. “You’ll say I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark or tried to solve the problem without forcing Keith to own up to what he’d done. Well, you can say what you damn well please. I was actually trying to spare everyone a lot of unnecessary suffering. I might even have succeeded if you’d been just a bit more-” She broke off and gave me a little head-shaking smile. “Sorry. Recriminations won’t get us anywhere, will they? And nor will being wise after the event. You remember coming to The Hurdles a few days after Paul had confessed to you? You remember Keith insisting Paul had made it all up? Well, I didn’t believe him any more than you did. But the following day, after Sarah had gone back to Bristol, Keith told me how he could be so sure. And then I did believe him.

“It seems Keith became convinced during the spring of nineteen ninety that Louise meant to leave him for Oscar Bantock. He accused her of having an affair with Bantock and she neither admitted it nor denied it. She said he had to make up his own mind about her fidelity. As for leaving him, she wouldn’t promise not to do that either. He’d always been a possessive husband. Sometimes an irrationally jealous one as well. I’ve seen that side of him myself. And ours was never exactly a love match. Whereas he really did love Louise. Too much for her peace of mind, I suppose. She wanted the freedom to do as she pleased. And if leaving Keith was what it took to find it, that’s what she was willing to do.

“I don’t blame her. In fact, I’m sorry never to have known her. She sounds like a woman after my own heart, though you probably think I’m flattering myself. But, reasonable or not, it was a dangerous line to take with Keith. He’d always suspected there was something going on between Louise and Howard Marsden, despite Louise telling him how unwelcome Howard’s attentions were. Perhaps he suspected it just because she told him. In his mind there were lots of other men she didn’t tell him about.”

“He can’t have believed that,” I put in. “The idea’s absurd.”

“How would you know?” Bella eyed me curiously for a moment, then said: “Anyway, jealousy is absurd. It’s also destructive when left to fester. The point is that Keith couldn’t prevent himself believing his own fantasies, couldn’t help interpreting every gesture of independence by Louise as an act of infidelity. To him, her interest in art had always seemed like perfect cover for an affair. Her friendship with Oscar Bantock was the last straw. Keith simply couldn’t bear the thought of Louise letting a man like Bantock touch her. As for the possibility of them running away together, well, that was too much for him to take.

“He’d probably have done nothing about it even so, except that he happened to know somebody who could have Bantock taken out of Louise’s life on a permanent basis. Keith never told me his name. Said it’d be safer for me not to know. Let’s call him Smith. About fifteen years ago, Keith treated Smith’s wife for infertility. Carried out some tricky operation that enabled the poor cow to have children. Smith’s one of those men who thinks life isn’t complete without a son and heir. He was very grateful to Keith. I mean, extremely grateful. Said if there was ever anything he could do for him, any favour, however small or large, Keith had only to ask. And Smith, behind the respectable lifestyle-big house in the suburbs, golf club membership and so on-was actually a full-time professional criminal. A crook. A gangster. One of those Mr. Big types you read about who never go to prison even when their capers go wrong. He never said that’s what he was, of course. But Keith had got the message clearly enough. So now he decided to contact Smith and call in the debt. By asking him to have Bantock killed.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, I wouldn’t think you’d need to dress things up for a man like Smith, would you? You just put it to him and he says, ‘Sure, no problem. Leave it to me.’ It’s the kind of thing he does, after all. Kill people. For money, usually. But in this case as a favour.”

“Good God.”

“The plan was to wait until Keith and Louise left for Biarritz after Sarah’s graduation, then take out poor old Oscar. That’s all Keith knew and all he wanted to know. Smith was to handle the details. Keith didn’t have to worry about a thing. But he should have worried. Because Smith was semi-retired by then. Spent most of his time at his villa in the Algarve.”

“The Algarve?”

She nodded. “That’s right. Southern Portugal. Well, it seems Smith’s contacts weren’t as numerous-or as reliable-as they had been. But he hadn’t wanted to disappoint Keith, so he contracted the job out to somebody more active-let’s call him Brown-who sub-contracted it to a man called Vince Cassidy. Remember him? He was a prosecution witness at Naylor’s trial.”

“I remember.” Bella could have no idea just how memorable Cassidy was to me. Instantly, I wished I hadn’t refused to listen to him when I’d had the chance.

“Cassidy took the job, but at the last moment got Naylor to do it for him. Brown would never willingly have used Naylor, apparently. He had a reputation for carelessness. And for mixing business with pleasure if women were involved. But women weren’t involved. Or weren’t supposed to be. The trouble was Louise chose the same weekend to walk out on Keith as Naylor chose to raid a few houses in Herefordshire, adding Bantock’s murder onto the list. The prosecution got it right. Louise must have walked in on Naylor just after he throttled Oscar. And Naylor must have decided he couldn’t afford to let her live.”

“He’d have had no idea who originally commissioned the murder, would he?” I asked, picking up the thread of Bella’s reasoning. “Or why?”

“Exactly. To his warped mind, she must have seemed like an unexpected bonus. So he raped her-and then he strangled her.”

“When did Keith find out?”

“When he got back to Biarritz from his conference in Madrid. He found Louise had gone, leaving a note for him. It didn’t say she’d dashed back to England on impulse to buy one of Bantock’s paintings, as he claimed later. It said she’d left him for good. And it also said she hadn’t left him for anybody, least of all Oscar Bantock. She’d simply had enough of his possessive ways and meant to start a new life on her own. Then, almost immediately, Keith heard the news of her death and realized what must have happened. By setting out to do everything in his power to keep her, he’d only succeeded in destroying her.”

“What did he do?”

“He was horrified, gripped by guilt as well as grief. And frightened into the bargain. He had to think quickly. He had to decide what he was going to do before he went back to England. Tell the police everything, with no guarantee they’d ever catch Louise’s murderer but an absolute guarantee he’d be charged with conspiracy to bring her murder about. Or suppress his part in the whole ghastly business and strike a deal with Smith to have the culprit brought to book. Not a difficult choice, really, was it? Keith excused himself on the grounds that his confession would only increase Sarah and Rowena’s suffering and deny them his help and support in coming to terms with their mother’s violent death. A handy piece of reasoning from his point of view, but I suppose we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

I said nothing, some vestigial reluctance to speak ill of the dead reining in my tongue.

“Keith contacted Smith straightaway. Smith had met Louise a few times and was almost as horrified as Keith by what had happened. He flew up from Faro to meet Keith at Bordeaux. Then they flew on to England together, agreeing a strategy on the way. The man who’d raped and murdered Louise would be made to answer for it, but their connection with the crime would be kept out of it. Not difficult, since Naylor didn’t know who’d hired Cassidy and Cassidy didn’t know who’d hired Brown. While Keith went to comfort his daughters and pose as the baffled and bereaved husband, Smith went to sort things out with Brown. Brown hauled in Cassidy and told him he had to inform on Naylor to make up for using him in the first place and take his chances if Naylor told the police he’d put him up to it. Once Naylor was charged and put away, Brown would pull a few strings to supply another witness in case Cassidy botched it up.”

“You mean Bledlow?”

“Presumably. Though, as it turned out, Naylor never named Cassidy as an accomplice because he decided to plead not guilty. A risky thing to do, since it committed him to portraying Louise as a scarlet woman. Distasteful stuff, which probably added a few years onto his sentence. But at least Keith could console himself he’d been properly punished. As for his indirect responsibility for Louise’s death, he tried to put that out of his mind completely. And he didn’t do a bad job, because I never had the slightest suspicion. His grief seemed genuine to me, which it was of course, and uncomplicated-which it wasn’t.

“I know you think I set out to marry him for his money. But there was more to it than that. I couldn’t just hang around here after Hugh’s death. I needed a complete change of scene. Well, Keith gave me that. And he gave me a lot of fun too. As I did him. At least at first. But Louise just wouldn’t go away. His memory of her, sharpened by guilt. And the mystery of how she’d died, sustained by Naylor’s refusal to admit killing her. Then there was Henley Bantock and his bloody book. That started them all sniffing around, didn’t it? The scandalmongers and mischief-makers. Nick Seymour and his ego-trip of a TV programme. Which you helped him out with. Along with the Marsden bitch.”

Again, I held my tongue. There seemed no point reminding Bella that I’d been taken for a ride by Seymour. She knew, anyway. Pretending she didn’t was merely an attempt to forestall some of the condemnation she’d earned.

“Rowena committed suicide because of the doubts about her mother Seymour planted in her mind with all his prying and probing. But Paul must have blamed himself for her death and decided he deserved to be punished for it. Why else would he confess to a crime he hadn’t committed? He’s obviously unhinged. I suppose his attack on you was the first sign of that. And his confession was the second. How he convinced the police it was true-how he put together his story without making some vital slip-is quite simply beyond me. He must be extremely clever as well as seriously insane.

“Keith didn’t think he would convince the police. He was sure they’d find some flaw in his account. But what if they didn’t? What if somehow, by some uncanny fluke, Paul was believed? Keith said he’d have no choice. Weak and frightened as he was, he’d own up rather than let Naylor walk free. I could see he meant it. And that meant I might find myself married to a known murderer, with everybody suspecting I’d gone along with his attempt to cheat justice. Can you blame me for doing everything in my power to prevent that happening?”

“No. But I can blame you for setting about it the way you did.”

“Yes, well…” She gave a faintly contrite toss of the head. “It stood to reason there had to be a weak spot in Paul’s story. It was a lie, after all. And lies are never perfect. But I didn’t trust the police to search it out. And I wasn’t prepared to wait while they tried. I reckoned the sooner we put a stop to Paul’s madness the better. Since Keith forbade me to take a hand myself, I had to persuade somebody to do it for me, somebody intelligent and reliable who might be willing to help me out for old times’ sake.”

“Old times’ sake? Come off it, Bella. Thanks to the Bushranger row, you had me over a barrel. And you never let me forget it.”

“Does it make you feel better if I say I’m sorry?”

“Not much.”

“Well I am, anyway. Especially since it was all for nothing. He’d covered his tracks well, hadn’t he? So well you became even more convinced than when you started that there were none to follow. What’s worse, you began to chase clues I’d have preferred you to leave alone. Naturally, I didn’t want you to go after Cassidy. There was a faint chance you might learn the truth that way. By the end, when you finally threw in the towel, I was almost grateful. At least it made up my mind for me. If Paul’s story was watertight, the chances were Keith would be forced to confess. Well, I had to be out of it before then, so I capitalized my assets as best I could-Adrian was a real help there with his money-no-object determination to get the better of you-and told Keith I couldn’t live with a man who was capable of commissioning a murder. He took it more calmly than I’d have expected. I suppose he thought divorce would be the least of his problems if it came to the crunch.

“There was still a chance it wouldn’t come to the crunch, of course. But once the police had said they were satisfied Paul was telling the truth, that chance dwindled to virtually nothing. When I last spoke to Keith, about a fortnight ago, he was clinging to the hope that Paul might lose his nerve and withdraw his confession. I never thought he would, though. He’d already gone too far by then to turn back.”

“Couldn’t you have tried to talk him out of it? If you could have convinced him you were absolutely certain he was lying-”

“How could I have done, without telling him why I was certain?” Bella frowned thoughtfully. “Besides, it had crossed my mind by then that Paul might have suspected the truth for some time. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? He might have confessed in order to smoke Keith out.” She sighed. “If so, it’s rebounded on both of them, hasn’t it?”

“When did Keith hear Naylor was going to be released?”

“I don’t know exactly. My guess would be a couple of days before the papers broke the news. His solicitor was keeping him in touch. The rest is guesswork on my part too. I think Keith went to Portugal in order to warn Smith he was about to blow the whistle on all of them. And I think Smith decided to stop him. I suppose he felt he didn’t have much choice. It was either that or face the prospect of extradition on a conspiracy to murder charge. So he took Keith for a one-way trip along the coast.”

“Will you tell the Portuguese police any of this?”

“Certainly not,” she replied, arching her eyebrows at me. “There’d be no point. I don’t know who Smith is. Or Brown, come to that. I haven’t a shred of evidence. And now Keith’s dead, I’m unlikely to get any. I shan’t be looking anyway. These people are dangerous, Robin. They stick at nothing. I won’t be making any waves. It wouldn’t be wise-or healthy. And you’d do well to follow my example. Just tell Sarah her father’s dead, make sure she’s all right and leave it at that. As for Paul, he’s made his bed-of-nails and must lie on it. What he does now is up to him. What I shall do is my duty as Keith’s widow. That and nothing more.”

Bella had always possessed the ability to disarm me with her breathtaking combination of frankness and duplicity. Somehow, despite admitting to deceit and downright callousness, she’d almost managed to convince me she deserved my pity for becoming caught up in all this. She might even have succeeded, but for one awkward fact. I knew-and she knew I knew-that she’d willingly have colluded in her husband’s evasion of justice if I’d been able to pick a hole in Paul’s mesh of lies for her.

But for the moment there were more important things to consider. There was the stinging realization that Naylor had been guilty all along. And there was the bewildering discovery that Paul’s confession had been false in every detail.

“I left several messages on Sarah’s answering machine,” said Bella. “But she hasn’t phoned back. So, either she’s too sick to pick the damn thing up, which I doubt, or she’s off playing hooky somewhere. Maybe Rodney knows where she is. Or a neighbour. Either way, I can’t hang around to find out. You do see that, don’t you?”

“Oh yes. I see it.”

“I even tried phoning Paul, but he wasn’t answering either. I suppose he’ll have to be told eventually. How do you think he’ll react? I mean, if he really did suspect Keith, he’ll also suspect his death wasn’t an accident, won’t he?”

“Perhaps you want me to break the news to him as well.”

“No, no.” Bella frowned at me, immune in her current mood to sarcasm. “The police would think it very odd if we contacted him before they did. As far as they’re concerned we still believe he murdered Louise. It’s best if they think we’re not even on speaking terms with him. Surely you can appreciate that.”

“Of course. Stupid of me.”

Her frown darkened, but she decided not to pursue the point. “I happen to have a set of keys to Sarah’s flat. They belonged to Rowena originally. Keith left them at The Hurdles. Use them if all else fails.” She fished two keys on a ring from her handbag and plonked them on the table in front of me. “One’s for the street door. The other’s for the flat itself.” I stared down at them, but made no move to pick them up. “You are listening to me, aren’t you, Robin?”

“Intently.”

“Much the best thing for her to do is simply to sit by the phone and wait for some news. I shall arrange for the body to be flown home as soon as possible, though Christmas could complicate matters, I suppose. What a time for this to happen.” She clicked her tongue, apparently in irritation at her late husband’s lack of consideration. Perhaps she thought he should have waited until the holidays were over before getting himself thrown off a Portuguese cliff. “The Consulate have booked me into a hotel in Portimão. The Globo. I’ll leave you the number. Get Sarah to call me there as soon as she can. Or she can call the Consulate direct if she prefers. Either way, get her to make contact.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’m relying on you to. Handle Sarah as delicately as you can. She’s strong. But whether she’s strong enough for this…” She glanced at her watch. “I ought to go home and pack. I’m booked on a horribly early flight.” She rose to her feet and looked down at me, suspicion tainting her concern. “Are you all right?”

I stared up at her, too confused by the blizzard of consequences her revelations had whipped up in my mind to conceal my distaste for the motives she’d so blithely admitted. “What do you think?” I asked, daring her to define how I ought to react to what she’d said.

“I don’t have time for this,” she snapped, letting anger get the better of her candour. “I’ve told you everything I know. And I’ve apologized for misleading you. What more can I say?”

“Why did you tell me everything?”

“Because I thought you had a right to know the truth. And because I thought I could rely on you to give Sarah the support she’ll need once you’d understood the seriousness of the situation.”

“You can. But I wonder if you understand the seriousness of the situation.”

“Of course I do.”

“I’m not sure. You’ve known Paul to be lying for the past three months. But you’ve done nothing about it. Now Louise’s killer’s been set free. And your husband’s been murdered. Some might hold you to blame for that.”

“Rubbish. Nobody can prove I knew anything.”

“No. But they can go a long way to proving I did, can’t they? Thanks to the enquiries you got me to make on your behalf. Which I suppose you could deny asking me to make. If it suited your purpose.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” But smiling as she spoke gave the game away. We both knew she would do it-if she thought she had to. Was this, then, why she’d chosen to enlighten me? So I’d be in no doubt how much I stood to lose along with her? So I’d refrain from telling Sarah the truth for fear she’d blame me, not Bella, for trying to suppress it? “Just find Sarah for me, Robin,” Bella concluded in her most mellifluous tone. “Then fly away from all this. And count yourself lucky you can.”

Bella probably read into my subdued farewell a reluctant agreement to do what she’d more or less instructed me to do: break the news to Sarah of her father’s death without challenging the official view that it was a tragic accident; leave Paul well alone; and view subsequent developments, whatever they might be, from a safe distance.

But that was her way, not mine. And no amount of pressure, whether subtle or overt, was going to force me to follow it. There was something she’d overlooked, something she’d never have been capable of understanding. The truth was shocking and appalling. Of course it was. But it was also immensely uplifting. Because suddenly Louise Paxton was free of all suspicion. She hadn’t led Naylor on. She hadn’t been having a secret affair with anyone. Her “perfect stranger” had been an invention, designed to deflect Sophie’s curiosity. Or else some kind of joke at Sophie’s expense. Either way, Louise had met nobody on Hergest Ridge until the day she’d met me there. And that was the day she’d died. She was an innocent victim. Not only of a brutal rapist, but of a jealous husband, a treacherous friend and a self-serving pack of doubters and deceivers.

After Bella had gone, I lay on the dust-sheeted sofa in the sitting-room, an alarm-clock stationed on the floor beside me. It was set to go off at half past five. If I was on the road by six, I could be in Clifton by eight. Not that I expected to need an alarm to wake me. Tired though I was, sleep seemed a remote contingency. Fear and elation stalked my thoughts, stretching my weary nerves. I felt if I could only rest and reflect on what Bella had told me, the answer would emerge, as logical as it was obvious. What was the final link in the chain connecting Sir Keith Paxton’s hidden jealousy with Paul Bryant’s manufactured guilt? What purpose could be served by setting a murderer free?

I did fall asleep, of course, though not for much more than an hour. But that was time enough to dream of Louise. She was waiting to meet me as I walked along Offa’s Dyke. The sun was setting behind her and I couldn’t see her face clearly. She was standing a few yards beyond an artist’s easel, set up directly in my path, with a canvas ready for use on its frame. But the canvas was blank, save for the tentative pencilled outline of a figure that seemed to dissolve as I approached. I tried to speak, but couldn’t seem to. I knew I had to warn her of something, but what it was I couldn’t remember. Then she turned and walked away down the slope. I ran after her, but the gap between us only widened. There was a line of trees at the foot of the slope. I sensed I had to overtake her before she reached them in order to avert a catastrophe. But there was nothing I could do to stop her. She entered the trees without looking back. And vanished from my sight.

Then the alarm was buzzing angrily close to my ear. With a jolt, I sat up and stabbed at its button until silence returned. The trees were still visible to my mind’s eye, the patch of shadow she’d stepped into still tantalizingly close. But as the ghostly shapes of the shrouded furniture emerged from the darkness around me, the trees slipped away, until only the faintest trace of a memory-the lightest breath of a breeze between their leaves-remained.

A blank canvas. Ready to picture the future she’d never lived to shape. Like her diary. An empty space that would never be filled. “Can we really change anything, do you think?” I could remember the words, but couldn’t re-create the voice. There seemed to be nothing I- Then it came to me, so suddenly and forcefully it was as if somebody had struck me in the face. The diary. Of course. If Paul was lying, then every detail of his obsessive pursuit of Louise was also a lie. Even his meeting with her in the Covent Garden café. It hadn’t happened. Yet Sarah had shown me the proof that it had happened. In her mother’s own handwriting. Thursday April 5: Atascadero, 3.30. A forged entry? Or a clever manipulation of a genuine one? Either way, Paul couldn’t have had access to Louise’s diary without- “Sarah.” I spoke her name aloud as I rose from the sofa and headed for the door.