Faithful unto Death

Chapter Ten

The next morning Barnaby awoke with a vaguely depressed feeling that he could not shake off. It stuck with him all through his fruit-filled, fibre-rich, niacin-laced breakfast, any benefits from which were surely cancelled out by the long, self-fumigating crawl along the A412. He decided it would probably be quicker to jump out and swim to work in the Grand Union which was running along beside him.

It was partially the previous evening’s disagreement, of course. He did not regret refusing Cully another drink. Or sticking to his guns when she started playing up. But he hated it when they had even a minor tiff. However his daughter, though a champion flouncer, was, thank God, not a sulker. She had rung up before he’d gone to bed to say he was right, she was wrong, she loved him and not to forget her mother’s birthday.

Thinking of his wife reminded Barnaby that he had reluctantly promised to listen to a tape she had pressed upon him the other day. Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. He’d argued that he only liked the popular classics. Joyce had said this was a popular classic and it was high time he broadened his mind. Knowing the only occasion he would sit and listen to something all the way through was in his car, she had slipped the cassette in the appropriate slot and taped over the opening a blank postcard on which she had drawn a large ear.

Barnaby’s love of what he thought of as “musical music” went back a long way. As a little boy he would listen for hours with his father to heavy shellac records on a wind-up gramophone enclosed in a fumed oak cabinet. When the voices started to go all yawny and flat he would rush to turn the handle and speed them up so they would sing normally again. Sometimes, when the tips of the needles got all rough and scratchy, he was allowed to put a new one in.

A lot of the songs were performed by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Gems from The Merry Widow, The Fledermaus, The Gipsy Baron. All great stuff. Wonderful tunes the heart could waltz to. Barnaby sighed and dutifully pressed the Play button.

Joycey’s pupils seemed to want to perform the most extraordinary things. Occasionally Barnaby was at home when his wife was giving a lesson and, during any brief moments he was compelled to leave his study, could hardly believe his ears. It seemed incredible to him that people would actually pay good money to be taught how to squawk off key. No wonder the cat disappeared under the sofa.

The glorious voice of Kiri te Kanawa poured out of the car. The man in the vehicle creeping along parallel to his own stared. Barnaby turned the sound down and closed his window. Ever since the advent of that opera-loving cop on the telly, he had had moments of feeling self-conscious, as if caught out in some affectation when idling musically in a queue or at the traffic lights.

He was aware that this was nonsense. After all, no one knew he also was a Detective Chief Inspector in the CID. And even if they did, tant pis. If life could not occasionally imitate art, what was the world coming to?

Arriving at the station, he pulled into his private parking space and switched off his tape. Nice enough, but not a patch on the Easter Hymn from Rusticana.

The incident room was ominously quiet. All right, you could say it was barely eight o’clock. That the people manning it were just coming to the end of a long shift and that the great British public was too busy scraping the sleep out of its eyes to be on the blower feeding helpful information to its local nick. Even so, there was no escaping the sense that things were grinding slowly to a halt.

The Chief Inspector poured himself some coffee from the hot plate. It had been stewing for some time and was quite bitter.

The day dragged on. Barnaby, with little that was new to work on, recapped on the story so far. Read through all the Fawcett Green interviews, those at Penstemon and the Coalport and National and the one with Freddie Blakeley.

His mind was beginning to feel like a bowl of alphabet soup. One stir and certain letters floated up, a few would join briefly and seem to make some sort of sense before sinking once more to the bottom of the dish. Another stir would produce only disconnected gibberish.

Troy, an old hand at assessing the chief’s moods, was also an expert at being both present and absent at the same time. Positioned so that he was immediately available should old misery guts happen to look around for him or call out, he had also organised enough space between them to remove himself from the turbulent range of Barnaby’s bad temper.

He understood the reason, of course. Felt the same himself. There were times when you wanted to get hold of a case and shake it till its innards rattled. Shake it until the entire shape of it changed or until someone caught in the frame started to sing a completely different tune.

Like Sarah Lawson, for instance. Troy would have handled that interview the other day quite differently. Seemed to him the time to put pressure on someone was when they were at their most vulnerable. Now, even if they picked the woman up within the next twenty-four hours, she’d had over three days to sort herself and her story out. Go over and over it. Make it question-proof.

Mind you, having said that, it paid to be a bit cautious when dealing with a member of the middle class. You couldn’t really let yourself go as you might with a steaming pile of lowlife from the average tower block. They would sit there, the Lawsons of this world, looking as if they couldn’t afford a pot to piss in and all the while they were shagging the local MP. A wise man watched his back in these matters.

Sergeant Troy was a bit off women anyway at the moment. They were, it seemed to him, deceivers ever. Take Jacqui definitely non-Willing. What a teaser she’d turned out to be. An extremely spicy wrapper, no question (four chillies, Troy would have said, asked to grade that luscious exterior) but more of your three hundred cals a portion when it came to tasting time. One quick lager and lime in the Turk’s Head and she’d had to dash off to get her husband’s dinner. Seemed that if he didn’t have something hot on the table the minute he got in, there was no handling him. Troy said sourly he knew just how the man felt.

It was at this point in the sergeant’s irritable musings that the fax machine leapt into life. He went across, read the results and tore the paper off with some satisfaction. This would cheer the boss up.

“Something from Heathrow, sir.” He placed the fax on Barnaby’s blotter. “Bit of a breakthrough, wouldn’t you say?”

The gist of the matter was this. Someone working in the Left Luggage department and seeing the photographs of Alan Hollingsworth and Brenda Brockley pinned up in the office recognised the girl.

Gordon Collins had seen Brenda, on the evening of her death, standing just underneath the stairs in the section where cases were deposited. She had at no time joined the queue. At one point she had been reading a paper. Like Eden Lo, the Left Luggage clerk got the impression that Brenda was hiding from someone.

Inspector Fennimore had left unasked no question that Barnaby himself would have put. The Chief Inspector read on with increasing satisfaction not unmixed with gratitude that he would be spared a sweltering drive to Heathrow to talk to the man himself.

In spite of being asked to look and think and look again, Mr. Collins could not recall ever seeing Alan Hollingsworth either passing over his luggage or collecting it. He pointed out that three handlers were on duty at any given time and he may not have been the one to take the case in question or issue the ticket.

The other two men on the same shift were equally unable to help. Hundreds of passengers used the system every day. A customer would need to be really remarkable either in manner or appearance to stand out.

The excellent Inspector Fennimore had worked out the next step in the puzzle with admirable speed. Hollingsworth had gone to the Häagen-Dazs café, ordered a coffee he didn’t want and immediately walked away. So why buy the drink? Because he had been instructed to leave the ticket under the saucer.

Fennimore had shown the baggage handlers the Identikit portrait of the old lady and asked if any of them had seen her. Receiving a negative reply, he then wondered what the situation would be if she had presented herself at the counter and handed over Hollingsworth’s ticket.

All three men agreed that it was unlikely the item would be released without question. Normally this would be done, for there was nothing in the rule book to say that the party who handed in the luggage had to be the party who picked it up. But some dirty old transient?

So, wrote Inspector Fennimore, this meant surely that the old woman had merely taken the ticket for someone else. And take it she certainly did for Miss Lo cleared the cup away immediately after chasing her off and it had not been there then.

The fax’s concluding paragraph gave the date of the preliminary inquest on Brenda Brockley as Thursday week at Hounslow Civic Centre. It also offered continued assurances of assistance should Causton CID feel the need.

Barnaby pushed the letter aside. The upsurge of interest, the feeling that at last something was happening to move things further forward or show them at a new angle was fading fast. For what had they got now that they didn’t have before? Only the knowledge that the ransom money was not in the old biddy’s string bag, as previously supposed, but in some sort of container in the Left Luggage department.

“Get that acknowledged, would you? Include our thanks.”

“Right, sir.” Troy, dismayed at the quick return to surly withdrawal, added. “After that I thought I’d take a break. Grab a bite in the canteen. You coming?” This last sentence was prompted by the sight of Barnaby unhooking his jacket from the hat stand.

“No. I’m off to the bar.”

Troy stared then glanced, as he thought surreptitiously, at the clock. It was barely twelve thirty.

“Got a problem with that, have you, Sergeant?”

“Of course not, sir.” Not what you’d actually call a problem. Admitted, he had never known it happen before, the gaffer taking a drink in the middle of a shift; still, he supposed there had to be a first time for everything.

But he felt uncomfortable as he picked up the letter from Heathrow and set about organising the reply.

As things turned out, Barnaby only had a half of mild and a cheese and tomato farmhouse bap. A farmhouse bap was indistinguishable from the common or garden bap but for a smattering of white flour on the top and an extra penny on the price.

It was while chewing away at this uninspiring slab of tasteless stodge that the perfect solution to the problem of what to do with this completely unproductive lunch hour presented itself. He would go and buy Joyce’s perfume.

The slip of paper with the address of the nearest stockist was in his wallet, as were some credit cards. He also carried his cheque book. Barnaby drove to Uxbridge, filled up with petrol, took the A4007 and got into the city centre about thirty minutes later.

Policewoman Titheridge, who had chased up the details, had thoughtfully asked for the precise position of the shop and the Chief Inspector was glad of it for La Parfumerie was in a tiny cobbled street behind a Norman church. He could have been wandering around for hours searching.

It was a lovely little place, the interior a glittering octagon of mirrored walls which multiplied again and again the crystal bottles and cellophane-wrapped and beribboned boxes that lined the shelves.

A pretty woman with a cloud of dark hair wearing a pink cotton wraparound overall smiled at Barnaby and asked if she could help him. He said he was looking for some Joy.

“The perfume, sir? Or the eau de toilette?”

“Oh, perfume. It’s for a special occasion.”

“We’re out of the one ounce size.” She took down a glistening gold and white box striped with red. “But we have this which is the two ounce. Or the fifteen millilitre.”

This second box was very much smaller. Almost minuscule, it seemed to Barnaby. Not much to offer the wife of your bosom on the occasion of her big five oh.

“I’ll have the first one.”

“Thank you.” The girl smiled at him and started to wrap the larger box first in fuchsia tissue paper and then in a sheet of shining metallic gold. She tied it up with wide satin ribbon, making several lavish bows. Then she reached under the counter, produced a velvet rose slightly deeper than the colour of her overall and wound the stem round the ribbon.

“That looks lovely,” said Barnaby who had unfolded his cheque book and uncapped his fountain pen while all this was going on. “Now, what’s the damage?”

She described precisely the extent of the damage then said, “Oh dear, you’ve dropped your pen.”

“Yes.” Barnaby bent down and retrieved it off the floor. The sudden movement made him dizzy. But not nearly as dizzy as he felt already. “Four ...” He realised he was croaking and cleared his throat. “Four ... ?”

“Four hundred and seventeen pounds and eleven pence, please, sir.” She watched as his pen jerked around, pecking at the paper eventually, almost, one would have said, against its will, inscribing the correct words and figures. “Someone’s a very lucky girl.”

It struck Barnaby then that she thought the gift was for his doxie. A furtive, guilt-absolving donation to some tucked-away mistress in a service flat.

“The perfume is for my wife. Her fiftieth birthday’s coming up. I wanted to get her something really special.”

“Goodness.” She blinked, plainly at a loss. “Have you been married long?”

“Thirty years.”

“Thirty ... ?” Not even the excuse of a newly revived lust then. “Well, all I can say is, she must have made you very happy.”

“Happiness,” said Barnaby, picking up his box and turning to leave, “is not the word for it.”

“That looks a bit of all right,” suggested Sergeant Troy as his boss put the conspicuously decorated box in his desk side cupboard.

Barnaby gave a noncommittal grunt. Normally he would have simply left such a thing in the car. After all, the vehicle was locked and standing on a police station forecourt. But the value of the perfume had made him extra cautious. He gave a final squint at it as he closed the cupboard door. The gift wrapping already appeared to him both garish and tawdry.

“I’ve got two birthdays coming up next week,” volunteered Troy. “Maureen and my mum.”

“What are you getting them?”

“Maure wants that beauty book by Joan Collins. I said to her, ‘Maureen, if everybody could get to look like Joan Collins simply by reading a book, Joan Collins wouldn’t be worth shit.’ ”

“That must have gone down well.”

“The old lady’s a doddle.” This had always been the case. Mrs. Troy was invariably overwhelmed by the smallest kindness demonstrated by her children. Or anyone else, come to that. Self-esteem was not her strong suit.

This year Troy planned to give her the video of Martin Chuzzlewit. He had missed at least half the episodes and it would give him a chance to catch up. The sergeant liked a good costume drama. Lace-up boots, frilly bonnets, powdered wigs. And that was only the horses.

Troy waited for an appreciative laugh for this sally in vain. The boss appeared distracted and remained so for the rest of the afternoon.

In the incident room all the leg men were back from Blackthorn College in time for the five-thirty briefing. The good news was that each staff member, as well as the students, had to carry an identity card complete with photograph. Only one had been needed from Sarah Lawson’s strip of four and the rest, still on file in the office, had been willingly handed over. The bad news was that there was no more good news.

Each member of her class had been interviewed but could tell the police nothing apart from the fact that their tutor kept herself to herself. During the class’s tea break she usually stayed in the studio. It was felt that, though encouraging and plainly interested in their efforts, Sarah remained very detached.

About Simone the group’s opinion was also united. A pleasure to look at, she had also been very popular. Friendly and always ready for a chat though not talking much about herself at all. Often she would laugh or whisper in class which could be a bit distracting. Sometimes Miss Lawson would give her a telling off. Everyone was sorry when she stopped coming.

The administration department and the rest of the staff were likewise unhelpful. Taking only one mid-afternoon session a week, Sarah never made use of the senior common room. Asked to describe her last telephone call in more detail, the woman who took it said the accident which was keeping Sarah away for the rest of the term was a fall from a stepladder. She had a badly strained arm and displaced shoulder. No, she had not sounded unusually distressed. Just her usual rather dry, sardonic self.

“Wonderful,” said Barnaby when all this came to an end. “Nothing minus nothing. Which leaves us with?”

The room, infected by his pessimism and recognising the question as purely rhetorical, remained silent. Eventually Sergeant Brierley offered a consoling observation.

“At least we have Lawson’s picture now. Get that circulated, someone’s bound to catch sight of her somewhere.”

“Like they did Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“All due respects, sir, Mrs. Hollingsworth was being deliberately concealed.”

Barnaby’s expression did not lighten. It was now past six and no overtime in the offing. Indeed the next shift, with little to check out, follow up or run a search on would definitely be overmanned.

Everybody started to collect their gear. Barnaby’s telephone rang; his own line. He had been waiting for a call from Heathrow Forensic. They had been examining Hollingsworth’s car hoping to find proof positive that it was the one responsible for Brenda Brockley’s death. But it was not Heathrow Forensic.

Barnaby turned his back on the others, mumbled something, left the room. In the corridor he pressed the elevator button for the next floor up.

Troy, who had followed him out at a respectful distance, knew what that meant. So he didn’t go home with the others but stayed behind, hovering near the lift doors, pretending to study the notice-board. Just in case the chief wanted to let off steam when he came down. Talk things over. Maybe go for a quick drink.

But his presence was not required. Half an hour later Barnaby stormed out of the lift, his face black as thunder, dived into the incident room, seized his briefcase and left via the stairs without even noticing the presence of his faithful sidekick.

Sergeant Troy had never come across the phrase “darkest before the dawn” or surely would have added it to his well-worn list of aphorisms. Like most hoary old sayings, it only applied to some of the people some of the time but Barnaby would have gone to sleep a good deal happier that miserable Wednesday if he had known just how soon it was going to apply to him.

What happened was this. When Troy got home, his deeply loathed cousin Colin, girl friend Miranda and Maureen were sitting under the B&Q umbrella in the backyard drinking champagne. Talisa-Leanne was flinging around a Mickey Mouse drinking cup half full of Buck’s Fizz.

Torn between the pleasurable novelty of a bibulous homecoming and resentment at Col’s “great surprise” (he and Miranda had just got engaged), Troy sat down with the intention of making serious inroads into the Asda non-vintage.

Conversation dawdled. The four really had nothing in common. Troy was tired, Maureen distracted by the toddler, Colin and Miranda were simply doing the rounds as people with wonderful tidings to impart have always delighted in doing.

“How’s work then, Gav?” inquired Colin. “Still making the streets safe for muggers and pushers?”

Maureen laughed.

Miranda said,“Colin.”

“Looking for someone who taught at your place actually,” said Troy to Miranda. “Crafts department. Wednesday afternoon.”

“I wouldn’t know them then. I’m full-time Business Studies.”

“Sarah Lawson?”

Miranda shook her head. “Disappeared, has she?”

“That’s right. Three—no, four days ago.”

“What do you do now?” asked Miranda. “I mean, how do you set about finding someone?”

“Don’t encourage him, sweetheart,” said Colin.

“It’s interesting though.”

“Yeah. Like watching paint dry.”

“Don’t do that, Talisa-Leanne!” yelled Maureen.

“Whaaahhh ...”

“Pass me that cloth, Gav.”

“Well,” said Troy, passing the J cloth, “we circulate a photograph, if we have one. Ask the press and public to help. Talk to people who knew her. Perhaps run a check on estate agents and letting agencies in case she’s renting a hidy-hole somewhere. If it’s a really big fish, some absconding financier or suchlike, we inform the sea and airports.” It sounded quite exciting, put like that. Very different from the dreary foot-slogging actuality.

Miranda said something inaudible under Talisa-Leanne’s righteously indignant bawling.

“Give her back her mug,” instructed Sergeant Troy.

“And have it thrown over everybody?”

“She’s only three.”

Tight-lipped, Maureen returned the mug and sponged the orange juice off her skirt. It was always the same. She’s only one, she’s only two, she’s only three. Maureen could see handsome young men thronging the doorstep only to be told Talisa-Leanne couldn’t come out to play because she was only twenty-one.

“Sorry, I missed that,” said Troy to Miranda.

“I said, have you tried the college accommodation bureau?”

“Didn’t know they had one.”

“They find bedsits and digs for students. And sometimes flats if people want to share.”

“Is that a separate department?”

“No. They work from the main office.”

And so, the very next morning, Sergeant Troy left home an hour early—absolutely no hardship there—and burned up the M40 on his way to High Wycombe.

He had no expectations of success. In fact, as he waited at the counter in the main office having shown his card and stated his business, he began to think what a waste of time coming here had been. Because if Sarah Lawson had disappeared on impulse, and then only because of the visit from himself and the chief, she would hardly have a room all sorted out and waiting.

Automatically Troy gave the women in the office the once-over. All middle-aged with hips like, well like a hippo’s. A motherly one smiled at him. Troy smiled back but ruefully, trying to get across that much as he appreciated the come-on, he wasn’t in the toy boy market.

The woman, who had simply felt sorry for a man who was plainly desperate for a good square meal, said something to her colleague and they both burst out laughing.

Troy did not notice. His gaze was fixed on the girl who had been sorting out his inquiry. She was returning to the counter. And she had a card in her hand.

He told himself not to get excited. It might simply be an ordinary record card. The girl would say: Is this the Miss Lawson you mean? Bay Tree Cottage, Fawcett Green? I’m afraid we only have the one address for her. And that would be the end of that.

“We did have a request for accommodation from Miss Lawson. Just over a month ago. Her cousin was coming on a visit from America. She was looking for a studio flat.”

“Did you find something?” Troy was amazed at the way the words came out. Deep and crisp and even—just like the carol. His skin might be creeping and crawling with excessive and rapid temperature changes and the back of his neck prickling like a thousand copulating porcupines, but the voice—you couldn’t fault it.

“Yes, we did. A small one-bedroomed place in Flavell Street, High Wycombe. There wasn’t a phone but she didn’t seem to mind.”

“Could I?”

“Be my guest.”

This girl, the most beautiful, Troy was beginning to realise, that he had ever seen in his entire life, handed over a Biro and a notepad. He wrote the address down. Then, unable to offer what she deserved, the moon and stars, the world, the universe and everything he simply thanked her and left.

Shortly after this a great shout was heard outside the administration department windows. Everyone rushed over. A few yards away in the car park they saw the thin, redhaired, good-looking man who had just been inquiring about accommodation.

As they watched, he shouted again, raised high two clenched fists and jumped into the air.

The flat at 13 Flavell Street was situated in a busy but decidedly scruffy area, directly over the Sunbeam Washeteria. The launderette was one of a small terrace containing four trading places. The others were a halal combined butcher and greengrocer, a branch of Joe Coral and a Homeless Settlement Charity shop.

It might be thought that someone wishing to hide another person or conceal their own whereabouts might do well to choose an isolated area many miles from what is called, for the sake of a better word, civilisation. Barnaby did not go along with this. Like the man who suggested that the best place to hide a book is in a library, he believed the best place to hide a human being was in a crowd.

There was nowhere to park and, rather than draw attention to their presence by stopping on a double yellow line, Troy drove around until he found a large empty space reserved for the clients of Fenn Barker, Sols, Commisioner for Oaths, and pulled in there.

Today the weather had broken. The two men made their way back to Flavell Street under a sky thundering with darkness; clouds clashed and rumbled over their heads. They were passing a hairdressing and massage parlour, the Cut and Come Again Salon, when the first drops of rain fell. These were so heavy that little puffs of dust bounced up where they hit the paving slabs.

The only access to the flat above the launderette was up a dirty iron staircase. Troy kicked aside some orange boxes, old cabbage stalks and rotting fruit and started to climb. He knocked sharply on the door of number thirteen then brought his face close to the single window and tried to peer through. But the yellowish-grey net curtains, rigid with age and grime, were impenetrable. While waiting for a response, he passed the time reflecting, with a pleasure so intense it was almost painful, on his recent triumph.

While driving to the station Troy had naturally anticipated over and over again the moment when he would hand over his slip of paper bearing the information, obtained entirely on his own initiative (he had already forgotten all about Miranda), that would reshape the whole landscape of the case.

First he pictured keeping quiet for a while then lobbing the information casually into the pool at the nine o’clock briefing. Then he thought he might write it up on the board and see how long before somebody noticed. Or should he casually put a note on the chief’s desk? This might be of some use, sir.

In the end, of course, he did none of these things. Just walked extremely briskly from the parking lot to CID reception; gathered speed during lap two along the main corridor and erupted into the incident room shouting, “Hey! Hey! Guess what?”

Joe Cool he would never be. But for a man whose soul yearned above all else for praise and admiration, the response to the news he carried left a glow that was with him still.

Now, as he rapped hard on the shabby door for a second time, Barnaby wandered along the balcony, peering in through the windows of the other three flatlets. Only the furthest from number thirteen seemed to be in use as a normal domestic habitat. The one over the bookie’s was crammed with packs of stationery, catering-size drums of instant tea and coffee and towers of polystyrene cups wrapped in polythene. The third was completely empty.

Troy crouched down, lifted the scarred aluminium flap of the letter box and peered in. No sign of human life. “No one here, chief.”

Troy was disappointed. He had plotted quite a different scenario. Sarah Lawson would appear, then, distraught with amazement and alarm at being discovered, try to make a run for it. Alternatively she’d attempt to shut the door in their faces. In either case Sergeant Troy would have no problem bringing her to heel.

“Not to worry.” Barnaby was resting his elbows on the waist-high brick wall and enjoying the sensation of rain upon his face. “She’ll be back.” He had not waited that morning to organise a search warrant. Apprehending the woman was what mattered. This place and Bay Tree Cottage could be gone over tomorrow, the next day, any time. “There’s a kebab house across the way. Let’s get some coffee. We can keep an eye on the flat from there.”

But as things turned out, their drinks were left untasted for they had barely sat down when they saw their quarry making her way aimlessly along the pavement on the far side of the road.

Barnaby said, “Get the car.”

The interview room in the basement of the CID building was windowless but brightly lit by two long fluorescent strips. The walls were white perforated plasterboard, the chairs had tweedy seats and padded arms and the table was pale grey. Functional but hardly sinister. Nothing there, you might say, apart from the location of course, to inspire discomfort let alone despair.

But Sarah Lawson, from the moment she had been brought in, exhibited symptoms of the deepest unease. Barnaby could see it was the room that was at fault rather than her situation for, until she entered it, her demeanour had been quite different.

When he had blocked her way outside Joe Coral’s, repeating her name and saying he wanted to talk to her, she had stared hard at him as if he was some mysterious stranger. Eventually she said, flatly, “Oh, it’s you.”

Barnaby knew then that he had got it wrong. Realised that, whatever the reason she had left Bay Tree Cottage in such a hurry, her departure had not been prompted by a visit from the police. This threw him somewhat and he had still not quite recovered his balance.

Not that Sarah Lawson had been happy to accompany them to the station. She had asked if it would take long and why they could not just talk where they were now. As she climbed reluctantly into the car, she was still staring up and down the street and continued to gaze out of first one window then the other until they were well away from the centre of the town.

As she was plainly looking out for someone, Barnaby said they would be happy to wait if she wanted to leave a note at the flat. He did not add that they would insist on knowing the contents of any such communication. But the offer was declined.

Sarah had politely accepted the tea which had been brought to the interview room but left it untasted. The questioning had been going on for half an hour. She slumped, blank-faced, in her chair, showing a lack of interest in the whole proceedings so deep and total that Troy thought they might as well be tossing the questions down the well in Bay Tree’s back garden.

Her appearance, mildly unkempt when they had last seen her, had deteriorated to a marked degree. She wore the same saxe blue dress which was now none too clean and still damp from when they had all stood together in the rain. She was thinner. Her dull hair had become matted and was lying over her shoulders in heavy hanks. The skin on her face seemed looser and more coarse and, although there was a small but efficient fan on the table, her forehead was beaded with sweat. She plucked at the neck of her dress with thin fingers, pulling it away from her throat as if it was constricting her breathing. She spoke then for only the third time since they had entered the room.

“Can we talk somewhere else, please? I can’t ... this place ... it’s choking me.”

“I’m afraid there’s nowhere else available at the moment.”

This was not true. And Barnaby, having finally discovered a weak spot in a previously mute suspect, now prepared to exploit this for all it was worth.

“Once the formality of our interview is concluded, Miss Lawson, we can go and talk in my office.” He added, “It’s on the fifth floor.”

She said nothing but her eyes, her whole face lightened.

The Chief Inspector wondered if she was seriously claustrophobic. If so, he would have to play this very carefully. A clever brief could get great mileage out of an interview conducted under that sort of psychological stress.

“As I said earlier, Miss Lawson, you are allowed to have a solicitor present if—”

“I don’t know any.”

“A duty solicitor is provided by the courts.”

“Why would I want such a thing?” Then, receiving no reply, “Can’t we just get on?”

“By all means. First I’d like to recap on our earlier interview. There seems to be some discrepancy in the matter of dates. You told us you went to see Castrato on the evening of Monday the tenth of June. In, fact, the last showing of this film was on the previous Saturday.”

“Oh. In that case it must have been then. Or earlier in the week perhaps. What does it matter?” She sounded not only as if she genuinely did not know why it should matter but that she did not care.

“Do you remember what you actually were doing?”

“Loafing around in the garden, I suppose.”

Barnaby, taking a softly, softly line, did not press the matter. Did not point out that Gray Patterson had called “around eightish” to find both Sarah and her car missing. The time for that sort of punch would come during round two. He moved on to the subject of Alan Hollingsworth’s demise, inquiring first how well she knew the man.

“You asked me that before.”

“Refresh my memory, Miss Lawson.”

“I didn’t know him at all.”

“Then I would have thought your reaction to his death rather inappropriate.”

“When you said it was suspicious I was shocked. Violence introduced suddenly into a conversation can have that effect. Perhaps I’m over-sensitive.”

That could be true. Barnaby recalled how distressed she had been at the news that Hollingsworth had physically ill-treated his wife.

“When Mrs. Hollingsworth asked you round for tea on the Thursday she disappeared, did she give any reason for choosing that particular day?”

“Not really.”

“Perhaps it was the only occasion you were available?”

“No. I’m free every afternoon except Wednesday.”

“Why do you think she asked you at the same time that she’d made a hair appointment?”

“I should think she just forgot. Simone was a bit on the dizzy side.”

“And that same evening, Miss Lawson,” continued Barnaby. “What did you do then?”

“What I always do. Read a bit, listen to music, potter in the garden.”

“So that wasn’t the night you saw the movie?” suggested Sergeant Troy.

“Oh, well, I suppose it could have been. I really ...”

“Don’t remember?”

“Look, will this take much longer?” During the last few minutes her breathing had changed. It was now so rapid and shallow she seemed to be almost panting. Barnaby asked if she would like some water but she declined. “I’ll be all right once I’m outside.”

“I’d like to ask you next about the flat at High Wycombe,” said the Chief Inspector. “I understand you told the college you wanted it for a cousin who was coming over from the States.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And is that the truth?”

Her eyes roved constantly around the concrete cube. Searched every corner, raked the floor and ceiling. She seemed to shrink into herself as if for protection. As if the room was not inanimate but a physical threat.

“Miss Lawson? Is that the truth?”

“Why would I make something like that up?”

“Could you give me the details then, please?”

“What do you mean, details?”

“We mean,” said Sergeant Troy, “your cousin’s name, address and telephone number.”

“He ... travels. Moves around a lot. Usually I wait for him to contact me.”

Barnaby inserted a pause into the conversation; a long one during which he made plain his disbelief. Quite honestly he was surprised at such pitiful transparency. She must surely have had time to work out something more credible than a mythical relative from America.

Troy, taking his cue from the boss, merely leaned against the wall and sighed, shaking his head. Though enjoying himself he was, like Barnaby, somewhat disappointed at the lack of invention on offer. After all, what was the point of being creative if you couldn’t make up a really good story?

“So you’ll be keeping on the flat till you hear from your cousin?”

“Yes.” For some reason this question, answered only in a whisper, brought Sarah to the brink of tears.

Barnaby waited, not for her to recover but because he was unsure just how and where to press on this plainly weak point. The fact that it had been revealed only by a lie didn’t help. In the end he said, “You were looking for someone when we met earlier today.”

“No.”

“Waiting then?”

“You’re mistaken.”

“Very well.” There was no point in wasting time trying to prove the unprovable. “Let’s talk about your accident now, shall we, Miss Lawson?”

“What acc—” She stopped herself just too late.

“Quite,” said Barnaby, and waited.

“I needed a break from teaching. To be honest I was simply tired but I didn’t think the college would rate that very highly as an excuse.”

“Is your health poor then?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“No, why?”

“I wouldn’t have said three hours teaching once a week was especially exhausting.”

“Perhaps you’ve been going in for extramural activities?” Troy’s polite tone did not conceal the offence in the words. Nor was it meant to. “Private lessons like.”

“Look.” She had turned her attention now to the table top, brushing a little ridge of dust backwards and forwards with the index finger of her left hand. “You said ... you ...”

Barnaby leaned forward, experiencing some concern. She was opening and closing her mouth quickly, like a fish gasping for breath. He was about to offer her some water again when she began repeating herself.

“Said. You said. We could go upstairs. To the fifth floor.”

“After the interview.”

“I can’t breathe in here.”

“Sergeant. Open the door.”

Reluctantly Troy did so. He didn’t hold with pandering to the whims of the incarcerated. They had enough of their-own way as it was what with the entire Social Services and half the legal profession on their side.

“You don’t understand, it’s not lack of air.” Troy closed the door. “But there’s no daylight.”

“Just one or two more questions.”

“I’m sorry. I have to get out!”

“We won’t be long.”

“I need to go to the lavatory.”

“Right.” Though this had plainly been a spur-of-the-moment improvisation, Barnaby could not refuse. “Find someone, would you, Gavin?” He timed the tape and switched off.

When the policewoman arrived, the Chief Inspector beckoned her over and said, “It might be an idea to take another officer with you.”

“You don’t think Lawson’s going to do a runner surely?” asked Sergeant Troy when the women had left.

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

Though the toilets were only a short distance away, it was ten minutes before voices were heard in the corridor, arguing and persuading. Eventually Sarah Lawson was half coaxed and half dragged back inside the interview room.

“Sorry we’ve been so long, sir. It was all a bit troublesome.”

“I’m trying to be patient, Miss Lawson,” said Barnaby when Sarah was once more sitting down. “But you’re making things very difficult.”

“I’m sor—”

“The more you cooperate with us, the sooner all this will be over and done with. Which is what we both want, right?”

Sarah nodded. The break, far from doing her good, seemed to have made matters worse. She was shaking in every limb and her lips trembled.

“I’ll ask you now about your relationship with Gray Patterson. Are you friends or lovers?”

“Friends.”

“Close friends?”

“Not at all. The relationship is very casual.”

“Have you conspired with him in any way to bring about the kidnap and consequent ransom of Simone Hollingsworth?”

“No!”

“Has he ever discussed such a possibility with you?”

“Never.”

“Has he talked about revenge? Ways of getting his own back after Hollingsworth swindled him?”

“No.”

“When you met, what did you talk about?”

“Nothing. Day-to-day trivia.”

“How well did you know Alan Hollingsworth?”

“What?” She stared at him, mesmerised and bewildered.

“The question was,” snapped Troy, “how—”

“You’ve asked me that! I’ve answered that! What are you trying to do?” She jumped up, her cheeks blazing. She shook her head in anguish and the damp pleats of hair fell against first one and then the other of her sunken cheeks. “Why are you dragging it out like this?”

“All right, Miss Lawson, calm yourself. One final question and that’s it.” For now. “What were you doing on the night Hollingsworth died?”

“I’ve told you. I was at home.”

“Gray Patterson called at Bay Tree Cottage at eight p.m. Neither you nor your car were anywhere to be seen.”

That stopped her. Stone cold in her tracks. And her mental state was such that she could not gather her wits even to the degree necessary for the simplest response.

“I shall be obtaining a warrant shortly to search the flat at Flavell Street. And also your house at Fawcett Green. It would help us if you would hand over the keys, otherwise I’m afraid it’s a forced entry which can mean quite a lot of mess.”

She did not reply but pushed her bag across the table. Made from Liberty’s peacock fabric, it was floppy and un-lined with a drawstring neck.

After Troy had made a statement to the effect that the suspect had now willingly surrendered her handbag and its contents, the tape was once more timed and switched off.

Then, to Sarah Lawson’s loud and continuing distress, she was told she would be further detained at least until the results of the search were available.

This meant a cell. There was only one with bars and it was occupied. Barnaby had a word with the duty sergeant. He explained the extreme stress his suspect was suffering and that her psychological condition could only deteriorate should she be put in a room with no window. At this, the inhabitant of the first cell was transferred.

Once Sarah Lawson was installed, the duty sergeant wondered if it would be wise to remove her belt and shoe laces. Also, bearing in mind that a remand prisoner had managed to hang herself earlier this year with a bra ...

The Chief Inspector weighed the possibility of attempted self-damage against the added distress caused by the forcible removal of his suspect’s clothing and decided against such a step. However, he did ask that the usual four times an hour surveillance should be increased to a check every five minutes. Ignoring the disbelieving and resentful glances spreading around an understaffed and overworked front office, he also suggested that a doctor should have a look at the prisoner.

After obtaining a warrant and while waiting for his car to be brought round, Barnaby went back to the cell block. He let the door flap of number three down and looked in.

The cell window was way above the sightline even of someone as tall as Sarah Lawson. So she had climbed on to the rim of the toilet and seized the bars to pull herself level. The tips of her toes rested on the porcelain and her face was turned towards the sky. A golden rectangle of sunlight fell across her eyes like a blindfold.

No one took the slightest notice of Barnaby and Troy as they climbed the iron staircase once again. Or even when they put on some latex gloves, produced a set of keys and let themselves into the Flavell Street apartment taking a dustbin, which proved to be empty, from the balcony in with them.

The first thing that hit their nostrils was the smell of stale fat—in the air, in the curtains and carpets and, no doubt, the furniture as well. Decades of greasy fry-ups. Troy felt around for a light switch.

They were standing in a narrow hall with three doors off, the cheap, hollow type filled with wadding and varnished light brown. One opened on to a bathroom—cracked green and black tiles and an old, once white bath. The second revealed a scruffy kitchen—a couple of odd, freestanding cupboards, a stained Formica table, two plastic chairs, one with the seat slashed, and an extremely grotty fridge. Barnaby poked distastefully at some chipped pots and pans in the sink. He unlocked the back door. Another set of iron steps, this time leading down into a deserted little back alley bordered by a row of garages.

He was locking up again when Sergeant Troy called loudly, “Guy! Quick, in here!”

Barnaby lumbered away into the sitting-cum-bedroom. Troy was standing in the centre of a hideous black and yellow carpet staring at the wall.

“Aahhh,” cried the Chief Inspector.

“Geronimo, yes?”

“Too right,” agreed Barnaby. Longing to demonstrate the passionate satisfaction consuming him but a bit heavy for anything more taxing than a saunter round the room, he slammed his right fist into the palm of his left hand and said, more loudly, “Too bloody right.”

Though the paper on the wall was deeply unattractive and none too clean, both men devoured the pattern of narrow ribbon stripes and sentimental puppies as if it was the latest from the brush of Michaelangelo.

“OK, that’s enough gloating. Now, where’s the camera?”

“Shouldn’t be difficult.” Sergeant Troy, bringer of good fortune and turner of tides, swaggered. “Place is no bigger than a flea’s bumhole.”

They both started to look. It didn’t take long. Troy pulled out the furniture—one armchair covered in rusty red nylon fabric and a well-snagged mustard tweed Put-U-Up. While he checked down behind the cushions and opened out the single bed, Barnaby went through the dressing table’s drawers and the wardrobe which took no time at all as they were both empty but for two sheets, a pillow and a couple of blankets.

Physical elation gradually draining away, the Chief Inspector inspected the kitchen cupboards. They held a few storage jars and tins with nothing in them, some tea bags and a carton of milk. That was it.

“One toothbrush.” Troy came in from the bathroom. “One towel, one bit of soap. The Ritz it ain’t.”

“Well,” they wandered back next door, “it was only needed as a place to hide Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

“And use her as a punch bag.”

“As you say.” Barnaby stared morosely at the capering canines. He was remembering Aubrey Marine’s comment on the wallpaper when they had first seen the ransom pictures: “It was everywhere, that,” declared Aubrey, “a few years ago.” A sharp defence could make persuasive headway on such popularity.

“Cheer up, guv. It’ll be at her cottage—the camera.”

Barnaby did not reply. He stood quietly, regarding the plain bevelled mirror on the wall opposite the window, and wondered if Simone had been dragged in front of it to see the results of her captor’s handiwork. He thought about constraints and how they had been managed. Had Simone been tied to one of the kitchen chairs? Or drugged? Or simply promised more violence if she made any move to draw attention to herself and her plight? He remembered how her hair had been wrenched out and her mouth bloodied. Threatened with another helping of the same, who wouldn’t keep quiet?

He was surprised the room retained no sense of any of this. He remembered crossing the Bridge of Sighs once in Venice and the very fabric seemed to groan in sad recollection of the prisoners’ tears.

“There’s two of them in this, isn’t there, guv?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Patterson?”

“I don’t think so. I believe Sarah Lawson’s working with someone entirely unknown to us. Which is why, if she decides to keep schtum, we’re going to be in real trouble.”

“What about Simone? Do you think she’s still around?”

“I doubt it. Hollingsworth’s gone, which means no more money. Alive and able to identify them, she’s a continuing threat. My guess is they’ve already got rid of her.”

“Christ.”

“Well.” Barnaby turned briskly towards the poky little hall. “No point in hanging around. We’ll get Aubrey’s little lot over and see what they can dig up.”

“With a bit of luck, Patterson’s fingerprints.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Before returning to the station they talked briefly to the owner of the Asian greengrocery who gave them the disappointing news that number ten, the only other flat in the terrace that was occupied, was owned by his uncle, Rajni Patel. And that Mr. Patel had flown to Bangladesh a month previously to join the family celebrations on the birth of his first male grandchild.

Asked if he had seen anyone entering or leaving number thirteen, the available Mr. Patel described only Sarah Lawson, whom he referred to as a thin, wild woman.

So it would be back to more foot-slogging and photo-flashing and persistent questioning up and down Flavell Street and nearabouts. Which meant there would be no reason at all for the Chief Super to cut Barnaby’s team by half, as he had threatened to do the previous evening. So in that respect, at least, life was definitely looking up.

Fawcett Green had also caught the rain. A certain amount of dampness still marked the ground in St. Chad’s Lane and clung to the grass borders. The air was fragrant with the scent of newly washed leaves and flowers. Sergeant Troy pulled in off the road and parked on the spot previously occupied by Sarah Lawson’s Dinky toy.

“I thought the home guard was supposed to be keeping an eye on this place,” said Troy.

Poor Perrot. He had been staunch and true but, like all human beings, occasionally needed a rest and something to eat. Give or take an hour here or there, he’d been hanging around Bay Tree Cottage for nearly two days. It was just his bad luck that, after a lengthy early-morning shift, he should have popped home for a quick shower and a bowl of Coco Pops.

Barnaby and Troy had donned their gloves and were standing on the front steps when the decelerating cough of the Honda’s engine preceded his return. A picture of dismayed disbelieving guilt, the policeman hurriedly lifted his bike on its stand and ran towards the broken gate.

“Chief Inspector—”

“Ah, Constable. Nice of you to drop by.”

And that was that as far as Perrot was concerned. As he told Trixie later, “Something snapped and everything went red.” Driven by the injustice of the remark and convinced by now that he was done for anyway, Perrot threw himself into his swan song.

“Actually I haven’t just dropped by, sir. I have just dropped back. I have stayed close to this house and its immediate environs for the last forty-eight hours as per your instructions. I have hardly slept and I have eaten on the hoof. I was not able to attend the Infant Cyclists’ Time Trials yesterday as I have done every year since I moved to this posting. Likewise the Old Reliables Bowls Tournament. My wife and children have hardly seen me since this case began. I have tried to carry out my duties to the very best of my ability and all I’ve had is sneering remarks and cruel comments. It’s ... it’s not right.”

Silence, open-mouthed and thick as treacle, followed this intemperate outburst. Then Troy walked slowly over to Constable Perrot, squared his shoulders, thrust out his chin and said, “You give the DCI any more lip, Poll, and I’ll squeeze your cods till your eyes bubble.”

“Don’t call me Poll.” Perrot spoke up boldly though his lips were stiff with misery and fear. “I don’t like it.”

“Who the fuck do you—”

“All right, Gavin. That’ll do.” Barnaby stood on the doorstep regarding Constable Perrot. Now that all restraint had been removed and his bolt was shot, the policeman stood silently quaking. His face was white going on grey; his eyes were ringed darkly with exhaustion. Asked for a comparison from the animal kingdom, Barnaby would have suggested a panda on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “There’s no need for any further surveillance here, Perrot. We’ll be keeping Sarah Lawson at the station for the present. Better go home and get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“And I should think twice before you give a senior officer the benefit of your private opinions in future.”

“I will, Chief Inspector. Thank you very much.”

“You let him off light, guv.”

“Poor sod,” Barnaby turned the key in the Yale. “Out of his league, out of his depth, desperate to please. All he wants is a kind word.”

“He’s in the wrong bloody job then,” said Sergeant Troy.

Remembering how withdrawn and subdued and lacking in energy Sarah Lawson had been during their previous interview at Bay Tree Cottage, Barnaby was surprised at how plainly the house reflected her absence. It seemed to have shrunk. It had a collected air of seclusion, a quietness that also seemed somewhat sterile. He was put in mind of a rarely visited museum.

Even Troy sensed it. He stood awkwardly on the glowing, shabby rugs and finally said, “Where should we start, do you think?”

“I’ll look in here. You take next door.”

Sergeant Troy, remembering the dirty plates, sighed. He braced himself to check the sink first and get it over with. One plate was already wearing a greenish grey fur collar.

He pulled out all the drawers including those in a battered Welsh dresser. Wooden spoons, old but hand-carved, all sorts of cooking pots and utensils in different styles and colours, bowls and dishes painted all over with flowers and fish and stars and suchlike. A proper junk shop. Troy recalled his mum’s kitchen which was Diary of an Edwardian Lady throughout, including the tea towels. That’d open Sarah Lawson’s eyes all right.

Barnaby, for reasons that he could not quite determine, was reluctant to get going. This was unlike him. Rooting determinedly through other people’s most private possessions was all in a day’s work. He tried to disentangle his thoughts but to no avail and eventually wiped the wretched image of an incarcerated Sarah Lawson from his mind and simply began.

He started on a little writing table with a brass rail littered with used cheque books, bills and sheaves of loose paper, most of which were covered with sketches. He was hoping to find something personal; a note or letter, perhaps a photograph, but he was out of luck. Nothing was concealed in any of the books nor inside the covers of the vinyl records which Sarah still seemed to prefer to tapes or compact discs. Perhaps she couldn’t afford a CD player. This theory led Barnaby into wondering about his suspect’s financial affairs. Just how poor was Sarah Lawson?

The Chief Inspector was well aware that middle-and working-class ideas of what constituted poverty were very different. True, she had no television set but Barnaby suspected this was from ideological reasons rather than lack of money. She must have some sort of private income, though. At the most, three hours’ teaching would bring in sixty or seventy pounds. Who could live on this, pay their council tax and bills (in her case electricity, phone, Calor gas), and run a car?

Plainly, from the state of the house, she had no spare money to chuck about. But Barnaby could not believe she would have got involved in something as alarming and dangerous as the abduction and wrongful ill-treatment of another human being for the sake of a few thousand quid to do up Bay Tree Cottage.

“Look at this, guv.” Troy, going through the last stack of books by the window, held a study of Picasso open at a page showing a portrait of Dora Maar.

“Mmm.” Barnaby waited to hear that the drawings from Talisa-Leanne’s playgroup made more sense and you didn’t have to know anything about art to know what was crap.

“Look.” Troy came over and sat down on the old sofa. “She’s got a red eye looking one way, a green eye the other and a yellow face.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” said Barnaby, stealing the great line without a qualm.

“What do you think he’s getting at?”

“Search me.”

“I mean,” he gestured angrily at the shelves of books, the music and stained glass, the beaten-up pile of clay on the marble slab, “what’s it for, all this?”

“Supposed to make life more bearable.”

“Give me a good shag and a double Scotch any day.”

“Upstairs.” And, when they were on the tiny landing, “You take the bath and loo.”

There was just one bedroom which ran the length of the house and had windows at both ends. These had unlined curtains made from faded velvet patches hanging from thin metal rods. Barnaby glanced out of the window facing the lane and noticed a group of three women on the other side of the road staring at the house. When they saw him they immediately turned their backs and started to chat among themselves but he had no doubt that the news of his own and Sergeant Troy’s presence (and Sarah’s continuing absence) would be zinging along the village hotline in no time.

He turned his attention to the room which was as austere as the one downstairs was rich and colourful. The divan had a cover made from crushed velvet the colour of moleskins. A raffia stool by the bed held a flat dish full of beautifully marked stones, a paperback novel by Barbara Trapido and a jar of honey.

The bare walls had been painted white then washed in a soft, powdery blue but so thinly that the original colour showed through giving them an almost luminous glow. A very delicate scent in the air could be traced to a bunch of white violets in an egg cup placed on an old linen chest. The room was crowded with sunshine.

Barnaby put the egg cup carefully on the bare wooden floor and lifted the lid. As he did so, Troy came in.

“Dead basic in there, guv. One of them old-fashioned baths—ball and claw foot.”

“Is that right?” Barnaby took out some unironed shirts and blouses and a long skirt patterned with wild irises.

“They’re in again now. You can pay a fortune for something your granny used to scrub the old man down in.”

“Well, you know what they say ...” An embroidered jerkin, a three-quarter length coat with a sheen like hammered bronze, some boots made of patterned skin and fastened with six tiny silver buckles, a frayed straw hat. “What goes round ...”

“You never know what to chuck away these—” Troy broke off. Though the DCI was facing the other way, there was that about the quality of Barnaby’s attention—a sudden rigidity in the spine, an abnormally still line to the shoulders—that reminded Troy of a Jack Russell at a rabbit hole.

“You’ve found something.” It was not a question.

Barnaby sighed then and raised his head and looked around the room. A room which, when he first entered it, had seemed so full of quiet innocence.

“Yes, I have,” he said and held up his left hand. “I’ve found the camera.”

The next interview with Sarah Lawson took place, as he had assured her it would, in Barnaby’s own office.

He had charged Sarah in her cell on suspicion of kidnap and obtaining money by ransom and repeated the caution twice until he was sure she understood the importance of what he was saying. She seemed quite dazed and the duty sergeant explained that the doctor had left two tranquillisers at the desk which the prisoner had taken “docile as a lamb.” Offered food, it had been refused.

Barnaby also urged, given the seriousness of the offence, the importance of having a legal representative present. Until this was sorted, he made notes and reviewed the case so far, attempting to pare away the dross of rumour, suspicion and supposition and leave bare only incontrovertible facts. He had just completed this when Troy came in with the suspect and John Starkey.

There is a general feeling abroad that altruism is a highly perishable commodity and that solicitors only offer legal aid if they can’t get enough of the other stuff to keep the practice going. Though this was not always the case, it certainly was with Starkey. If he had been very sharp or the sort to sail close to the wind, Sarah might have been better off. But he was idle, nearly always ill-prepared in court and, as he usually had the sort of clients whose apathy and lack of expectation matched his own, complaints against him were rare.

Some investigating officers might have been glad to have a suspect under interrogation so poorly protected but DCI Barnaby was not of their number. Sergeant Troy, on the other hand, thought it evened things up somewhat. It seemed to him the chief had already given enough ground letting Lawson dictate where the present interview should be held.

Starkey, who wore a white-shirt which was far from pristine and had a faint whiff of Newcastle Brown about his person, already seemed to have drifted into a light trance. Barnaby started the tape, gave precise details of the present set-up and began.

“Let me explain, Miss Lawson, what has led to the present charge being made against you.”

He described the search of the flat in Flavell Street and Bay Tree Cottage and what had been found there. He did not point out that, until forensic reports had been completed, the evidence was merely circumstantial. That was Starkey’s responsibility. A fact which appeared to have completely passed him by.

Barnaby then turned over three enlargements of the ransom pictures and placed them one at a time and in order of harrowingness in front of Sarah, describing his actions for the tape.

If he had had the slightest doubt that she was involved in the kidnap of Simone Hollingsworth it would have been extinguished by her response. It was immediately plain that she had seen all of the photographs before. There was a bitter twist to her mouth as she placed them in a neat pile. Barnaby could not help noticing that the final picture was on top and that she was regarding it with apparent indifference. Such callousness provoked in him a harsh response.

“Were these taken at number thirteen Flavell Street?”

“You don’t have to answer that, Mrs. Lawton.”

“For heaven’s sake, Starkey. Can’t you even get your client’s name right?”

“What?” The solicitor bent his head and rustled his papers. His bald spot shone greasily under the fluorescent strip. “Oh, I do beg your pardon.”

“I’ll repeat the question. Miss Lawson, were the photographs I have just shown you taken at number thirteen Flavell Street?”

“Yes, they were.”

“With the camera that I discovered in a wooden chest in the bedroom of Bay Tree Cottage?”

“Yes.”

Troy, who hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath since the question had first been put, now let it go. A lengthy, jubilant exhalation. In one day—no, tell a lie, half a day—they had moved from floundering in a desert of ignorance getting practically nowhere to being home and dry.

He turned to glance at the chief—they were sitting side by side—expecting to see the same triumphant flush on those brawny, slab-like cheeks that he could feel warming his own. But Barnaby’s profile was motionless. Cold and judgementally grave. A chill seemed to emanate from the large frame so close to his own and Troy then began to chill out in his turn. Though not an imaginative man, he began to comprehend in a more sharply focused, fresh and vivid manner how cruel were the actions to which Sarah Lawson had just confessed.

John Starkey also seemed to be waking up to the fact that his client was in the process of laying herself open to a very long jail sentence. He began to close the stable door.

“You know you’re allowed to remain silent—”

“Miss Lawson is fully aware of that fact,” said Sergeant Troy. “She has been properly cautioned. Twice.”

“Well, um, Sarah, I advise you not to say anything else for the—”

“What does it matter?” She drew one long, shuddering breath. “What does anything matter? It’s all over now.”

Barnaby stared at Sarah across the desk. She was sitting very still, her head bowed, her face expressionless. She looked even more haggard than when they had first talked. Her skin was as thin and fine as tissue paper and the bones at the base of her neck stuck out like sharp little wings.

“Where is Mrs. Hollingsworth now, Sarah?”

“Don’t know.” It was little more than a whisper.

“Is she still alive?”

“I ... I doubt it.”

“When did you last see her?”

“On Thursday. I went over—”

“Hold on, which Thursday are we talking about?”

“The day she disappeared.” Her voice became crowded with agitation. “If only she’d done exactly what we said, none of this would have happened!”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can’t?” asked Sergeant Troy. “Or won’t?”

She did not reply and Barnaby did not press the point. The vital thing was to keep the information coming, not dam up the stream for the sake of a single detail. They’d fish it out sooner or later.

“I think you’d better tell me about this from the beginning, Sarah.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Well, how the whole thing was set up, for instance. And why.”

“We were desperate for money. My ... friend—”

“You mean your lover?” said Troy nastily. The middle classes could be so mealy-mouthed.

“He’s being pursued in the courts by his ex-wife. Been forced to sell the house and, because she found a really sharp lawyer and there are two children, he got next to nothing. I would have been happy for us to just live at the cottage, we’d have managed, but he’s used to ... well, finer things.

“Then one day—this was before she had started my classes—Simone invited me round for coffee. She was always asking people to the house, looking for company. I must have been miles away and said yes without thinking. It was like spending time with a silly child in a toy shop. She ran around chattering away, showing off all her ghastly clothes and make-up. Then she produced this jewel box and flashed the contents about. There was a diamond engagement ring that apparently had set Alan back sixty thousand pounds. It was just so ...”

“Gross?” Troy had a quick fantasy of pretty, goldenhaired Simone prancing innocently about her bedroom showing off her trinkets.

“I told—” She stopped suddenly, glancing across at Barnaby. “Sorry, it’s not that I don’t want to carry on. But it’s difficult.”

“Look. You’re going to be talking about this man for some considerable time and on more than one occasion. It’ll be simpler all round if you make up some sort of name for him.”

“That seems ... Oh, well,” she shrugged, “why not? Tim then.”

“Right. You told Tim about Simone’s collection of jewellery?”

“Not in the way you’ve made it sound.”

“Leading the witness.” John Starkey briefly broke the surface of his subterranean doze.

“It was in passing. During general conversation. We were simply catching up on what we’d been doing since the last time we met. When I described the scene at Nightingales Tim said, ‘A fool and her knick-knacks are soon parted,’ and laughed. Nothing more was said about it at the time. Then, a few weeks later, Simone started coming to my classes.

“I didn’t tell you the truth about our journeys to and from the college. They weren’t straightforward. The very first time she attended, Tim met us as we left the building. Didn’t tell me he was going to, just turned up. She was smitten by him straightaway. People were. It wasn’t just that he was very attractive. He had a gift, an air about him that made you think he was on his way to a really wonderful party and that all you had to do was stretch out your hand and he’d take you along.”

“A useful accomplishment,” said Barnaby.

“You make it sound calculating. It wasn’t like that.”

It sounded exactly like that to Sergeant Troy. He thought, of all the tricks a con artist could draw on, this sounded like one of the neatest. The guy sounded like the Pied Piper in Talisa-Leanne’s picture book. Except that he was one of the rats.

“We went for some coffee and stayed so long I only just got Simone home in time. All she could talk about in the car was Tim. Just one meeting and he had her in the palm of his hand. I was very upset of course. I rang him that night.”

“Where does he live?”

“I’m not prepared to tell you that.”

“All right. What happened next?”

“He said he had a wonderful plan, the answer to all our troubles. We would be able to buy a house—he mentioned Ireland—and live together. No money worries. The thought of it—to be able to sculpt and paint all day. And, in the evening, to be with him. It seemed too good to be true.”

“And did he tell you what this plan was?”

“Not then. He just said that, at the beginning, it would involve Simone and, however things looked, I was to trust him.” Her eyes brimmed with tears, some of which splashed down on to her cheeks. She brushed the moisture away with the back of her hand and wiped it thoughtlessly on her skirt. “The next week Simone asked if we could go in an hour earlier than usual as she was having lunch with Tim. I could see that she didn’t expect me to be present. After class we all went for coffee again and she was all over him. This routine happened every Wednesday until, as you know, Alan stopped her coming. But by then she was hopelessly in love with Tim who had no trouble at all persuading—”

“Hang on, hang on,” said Barnaby. “I don’t want the fast track Reader’s Digest version. I want it unexpurgated and a step at a time. First, at what point did Tim tell you what he was actually planning?”

“When he asked me to sort out a flat. It’s cheaper, going through the college. Also, though this didn’t strike me till later, he didn’t want to do the rounds of estate agents and get his face known. The idea was that Simone would ‘disappear’ and then ransom demands would be made. She was sure Alan would do anything to get her back and, as things turned out, she was right. I’ve never seen anyone so excited. She was like a captive bird watching someone coming to open the cage door. Of course she believed that she and Tim, after they’d got as much as they could from her husband, would be going away together.

“As fellow conspirator I was naturally privy to it all. She was for ever popping into the cottage going on about how exciting it was, plotting and planning. Discussing the latest twist or turn.”

“You say ‘plotting and planning,’ ” said the Chief Inspector, “but from what you say all the plotting seems to have been done by other people. What was left for Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“Oh, nonsensical dramatic flourishes. She decided when she was running away that it would be fun to be disguised. So she put a wig and some dark glasses in her handbag. That sort of thing. And wore an outfit with a little reversible coat which she could turn inside out.”

“I see.” No wonder Simone had been so long in the Ladies at Bobby’s department store. Barnaby tried not dwell on the wasted man hours checking on the sale in Causton of pink jackets.

“Didn’t you find that a problem, Miss Lawson?” asked Troy. “Listening to her burbling on while all the time the shakedown was for you and your fancy man.”

“It’s not as if her feelings were deeply involved. She was a silly, spoiled woman and very shallow. And I assumed once we’d got enough money, she would simply be returned to her husband who would be so overjoyed to have her back he’d spoil her twice as much.”

“But something went wrong?”

“Yes, from the very beginning. She was supposed to take the two thirty market bus to Causton and the four o’clock from there to High Wycombe. Tim, who had already moved into the flat, was meeting her at the bus station. But, I suppose unable to wait to begin her ‘great adventure’ as she kept calling it, she caught the twelve thirty instead and took a taxi to the flat.

“It was so like her that we should have anticipated it. Anyway, knowing there might not be another chance of being alone together perhaps for some weeks, Tim and I had taken advantage of this last opportunity and gone to bed. The street door wasn’t locked and she just walked in on us.”

“Holy Moses,” said Sergeant Troy.

“Simone was devastated. She stood staring for a minute then tried to run away. Tim grabbed her, told me to clear out and bundled her into the kitchen. I got dressed and left straightaway.”

“So what on earth was the point of then turning up at Nightingales in the afternoon?”

“For the same reason that Simone didn’t cancel her hair appointment. We wanted to put the idea in people’s heads that she had definitely expected to be back home at that time. In other words, that she was not absent of her own free will. I thought, as I had no idea what was happening back at High Wycombe, I’d better just carry on.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Lawson, I really don’t see the rationale behind all that. What on earth did it matter what people in the village thought?”

“I suppose we saw it as a check against the idea of collusion, just in case the news of the kidnap somehow got out.”

“Which did actually happen.”

“Yes. Alan did everything we asked. Except burn the photographs.”

“What about the jewellery?” asked Barnaby. “There’s a necklace missing as well as the engagement ring. I’d have thought that would indicate collusion all right.”

“That was entirely Simone’s doing. We had no idea she was bringing them.”

“A nice little bonus then,” said Sergeant Troy. “Put them in his pocket when he scarpered, did he, our Tim?”

Sarah Lawson did not reply but became so pale Barnaby thought she was going to faint. He asked if she would like some water and when she said yes, decided this might be a good time to take a break.

“Get some tea sorted, would you, Sergeant? And sandwiches.”

Troy pushed his chair back and attempted to conceal his contempt that this latest diversionary ploy by the suspect had born such a quick result.

“Try not to disturb our legal eagle as you go. I think he’s hibernating.”

“Milk and two sugars,” said Starkey as Troy moved towards the door. “And I prefer corned beef and pickle. I hope, Chief Inspector,” he turned the desk fan to an angle more advantageous to himself as the door closed, “that the full extent of my client’s cooperation will be drawn to the court’s attention at the proper time.”

“Rest assured,” replied Barnaby, turning the fan back. “Although, if you can’t soon talk her into eating a few square meals, I fear there’ll be nothing left of her at the proper time.”

Sergeant Troy brought, as well as the glass of water, tea, ham sandwiches and four Wagon Wheels. All the men tucked in although Sarah would not be persuaded. Starkey ate three of the biscuits.

After about fifteen minutes Barnaby restarted the tape and the interview continued. To Troy’s disappointment the DCI did not pick up where he himself had left off, on the matter of Mrs. Hollingsworth’s jewellery.

“So, Miss Lawson. On Thursday the sixth of June things were left in a rather fraught state at Flavell Street. What did you do then?”

“I stayed at Bay Tree Cottage till I couldn’t bear it any longer. Tim wasn’t able to tell me what was happening, you see, as there isn’t a phone at the flat. I drove back about eight o’clock that same evening. When I knocked, he opened the door. The place was very quiet. There was no sign of Simone. Tim took me into the kitchen. He said he had got the first letter and a photograph off to Alan. I wanted to—”

“Just a minute. If he was able to leave the flat to post a letter, why couldn’t he ring you from a public box?”

“Can I just tell this in the order that things happened? Then you’ll understand.”

“All right,” said Barnaby. “So, you’re both in the kitchen.”

“I asked if I could see Simone but Tim said she was asleep and not to go into the other room. I should have been more persistent. I knew, after what she’d discovered earlier, she wouldn’t cooperate willingly. But then I told myself that somehow he had managed to talk her round.” She looked back and forth between the two men, urging them to see the inevitability of her actions.

“He told me to stop worrying, go home and make sure I was seen round and about the village over the next couple of days. And that he would ring me after the weekend. Tim did this on Monday afternoon and said that Hollingsworth was paying up. He didn’t give me any details. Just that he was collecting the money that same night and I should come to the flat around one o’clock the next day and help him count it. I asked about Simone, if she was all right and how he was going to, well, hand her over but he cut me short and rang off. When I arrived on the Tuesday he’d gone. There was no sign of Simone and her handbag was missing. I waited there for an hour or two. But I knew, in my heart, he wasn’t coming back.

“I thought at first that I’d simply been betrayed. That he and Simone had taken the money and gone off together. But then, in the sitting room next to my camera, I found the photographs. He’d obviously taken more than one at each stage and calmly chosen the most ... the most ...” Here Sarah broke down in a torrent of despair which completely overwhelmed her. She folded her arms on the edge of the desk and hid her face. There was little any of them could do but wait until the storm passed.

When she finally became calmer, Barnaby asked if she felt ready to continue. And Sarah replied, with great weariness, “Why not?”

“How long did you stay at the flat after this?”

“I suppose until the evening.”

“And you kept going back, even though you knew he had gone for good?”

“Hope springs eternal.” Everything about her belied the words.

“And then?”

“I heard that Alan had killed himself—at least that’s what people were saying. I was devastated. I knew he’d paid the ransom so I thought it must mean he’d been told Simone was never coming back. Then, when you told me it was an unnatural death I—God, I couldn’t believe it. There seemed no sense in it. And then I realised that was probably why Tim had had to run away.”

“You mean because he was responsible?”

“Well, there must be some sort of connection. The coincidence is too great.”

“I’d agree with you there,” said Barnaby. “But what reason do you think he’d have for killing Hollingsworth?”

“All I could think of was that something had gone wrong when Alan handed over the money. That he’d tried to follow—Tim. Or recognised him.”

“Recognised him?” This time it was Sergeant Troy quick off the mark.

“I mean, would have recognised him if he’d seen him again. In a ... what do you call them? A police line-up?”

“I don’t think that’s what you—”

“Look, Sergeant, my client is answering all your questions willingly and to the very best of her ability. And this in spite of being in an extremely distressed condition.” For the first time John Starkey spoke with some authority. In fact he sounded quite dynamic, as if he had been stoking up the few scraps of conviction he naturally possessed to let forth in one splendid salvo.

Sergeant Troy was indignant. “We have a right—”

“You have no right to badger people. Especially those who ...” The imperious dialogue tapered off. Barnaby guessed that the man had been about to say “who have done nothing wrong” and then recalled the precise details of Sarah Lawson’s situation. Everything about Starkey suddenly deflated. He began to wobble, looking rather like a shabby jellyfish in his tight brown Terylene suit.

Barnaby asked if they could please get on.

“Yes, Chief Inspector, of course. Absolutely.”

“Let’s recap for a moment, Miss Lawson. I’d just like to confirm that you have not seen or heard from this man, who for the moment we have decided to call Tim, since he telephoned you on Monday the tenth of June?”

“That’s right.”

“He did not come to your house late that night or during the early hours of Tuesday morning?”

“No. I’ve just told you.”

“You have no idea where he is at the moment?”

“None at all.”

“And you are not prepared to help us further in this matter?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“By giving us his home address, for instance.”

“No.”

“I’m wondering if you fully realise the gravity of your position. Apart from the part you have played in the kidnap and ransom of Mrs. Hollingsworth, you now appear to be shielding someone who may well be guilty of murder.”

“I do understand how serious it is, yes.”

“And do you understand that you could be looking at a very long custodial sentence? If you couldn’t cope with a couple of hours in the station interview room, how will you cope with ten years in a prison cell?”

“I shall never have to.”

“If you think you’re going to get off light,” Sergeant Troy was truculent, throwing in a sarcastic laugh for good measure, “on the ploy that you didn’t know exactly what he was up to, you can think again.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

After this Sarah Lawson would not speak and, fifteen minutes of fruitless questioning later, Barnaby drew the interview to a close.

Over the next two days both the flat in Flavell Street and Bay Tree Cottage were subjected to a scrupulous Scenes of Crime investigation. The results were disappointing.

Only Sarah Lawson’s prints were found at the flat where Simone Hollingsworth had been held. And only she appeared to have handled the camera. This seemed to indicate, as Barnaby pointed out to his team at their next full briefing, a pretty cold-blooded and thorough clean-up by her lover before he moved out.

The much more neglected interior of Bay Tree Cottage yielded a richer and more complex haul although, alas, no hint of the identity or natural habitat of the man still only known to the police as Tim. But there were many and various prints, all of which took some time to identify and disentangle. Sarah’s own, those of Avis Jennings and Gray Patterson, and several that had still to be identified. Some from a very small hand matched precisely those taken from toiletries in the bathroom at Nightingales and were thus presumed to be those of Simone Hollingsworth. Several strands of very fair hair were taken from an armchair cushion, carefully analysed (they proved to be dyed) and optimistically filed. The white-gold filaments would be useful should the body, for that is how everyone’s thoughts by now inclined, be discovered.

But everyone was to be proved wrong, for on Saturday, 22 June, two weeks and two days after she had disappeared from her home in Fawcett Green, Simone Hollingsworth was found.

Indeed it would have been hard to miss her for she was thrown out of a van, alive if not actually all that well, barely ten yards from the main entrance of Causton police station.