The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 55

"What was it like where the car was?"

Porter wrinkled his broad, pink forehead. "Came down twelve or fifteen feet slammed into a rock, that did a lot of damage, and then banged into an old cooker. Folks tip their rubbish down there, look, it's not right. Driver's door comes open, and out he comes. Head's a real mess, they say all cut and b.l.o.o.d.y. Not nice at all."

A drunk in a car, Thornhill thought, a winter night, poor visibility, an unexpected bend with a dangerous drop beyond. What was so odd about the fact that the car was a wreck and the drunk was dead?

"I found the wallet down there," Porter was saying, his mouth forming the words very slowly as if no one had ever said them before. "Just by the cooker. Sarge wondered where that had got to. Must have been loose in the car and fell out when he did."

Thornhill glanced at the conference room door. "Any sign of theft?"

Porter shook his head. "Six quid in the wallet."

"Where is it?"

"Upstairs, sir. With the rest of his stuff. Sergeant Lumb's got it."

"I'll take a look at it," Thornhill said reluctantly. "And the clothes."

The relief on Porter's face glowed like a neon sign. Thornhill led the way upstairs. Lumb's desk was almost invisible beneath a mound of files and papers, lightly powdered with pipe ash. Porter pulled out one of the cardboard boxes on the floor beside it. Thornhill looked quickly through Wynoll's clothes a khaki-coloured duffel coat, a college scarf, a tweed jacket, flannel trousers, an Aertex s.h.i.+rt, vest, pants and socks. No hat, no tie, no jersey. The shoes were black Derbys, stained with mud. One shoulder of the duffel coat was thickly encrusted with blood, still tacky to the touch.

He looked up. "Where is he?"

"Up the RAF, sir," Porter said, which meant in the mortuary of the town's RAF Hospital on the Chepstow Road.

"Possessions?"

Porter held out an old s...o...b..x. Thornhill looked at the wallet first. No surprises a cheque book; a letter from the aunt, postmarked Southampton and addressed to a student hostel in Bloomsbury; a members.h.i.+p card for the Photography Club at University College; a driving licence with an address near Ashbridge, presumably the home of the aunt; a condom, carefully disguised in an outer wrapping torn from the corner of an envelope; a book of stamps with one used, a bus ticket from Lydmouth to Ashbridge, a return train ticket to London and six pound notes.

Wynoll had kept a running total on his bank balance in his cheque book. He had had well over a hundred pounds in his current account, so lack of money hadn't been one of his problems. According to the letter, the aunt had expected her nephew to come down yesterday afternoon. The dates on the tickets confirmed it.

There was also a packet of Park Drive with two cigarettes left. Another cigarette, half-smoked but not stubbed out, had fallen inside the duffel coat, where it had caused a burn before going out. Wynoll's other possessions were car keys, a Chubb door key and a handkerchief, once white and now almost the colour of the duffel coat. And a bottle of Teacher's, still with nearly an inch of whisky in the bottom and a smudge of blood on the label.

"What about in the car? Anything there?"

"It's in the yard, sir."

"Let's have a look."

They went down to the yard at the back of police headquarters. There was a separate shed reserved for cars under investigation and equipped with an inspection pit. The Ford Popular was still on the trailer that had brought it back to Lydmouth. The front off-side of the car was like crumpled wrapping paper. One of the headlights had come adrift and was dangling by the side, attached only by wires. The windscreen and the driver's window were broken.

Thornhill pulled open the door, which was hanging drunkenly on its hinges. He looked along the row of instruments on the dashboard. He turned the handle that had wound the driver's window up and down. At the moment the gla.s.s had broken, the window had been closed. He crouched to peer at the floor.

"Put some gloves on," he said, straightening up. "I want everything out of the car."

Porter stared open-mouthed. "What?" There was a pause. "Sir."

"Everything that moves. Mats, whatever's in the glove compartment, contents of the ashtray, even the sweet wrappers. Put it all on the bench. I'll be back in ten minutes."

The briefing had finished. Thornhill found Lumb skimming through a file in reception.

"The Little Russia crash," Thornhill said. "Keep me posted, will you?"

The sergeant frowned. "Any reason, sir?"

"Just in case."

Lumb tapped the file. "We've traced Wynoll's movements yesterday. He was drinking in the Bathurst most of the evening with a young man about the same age as him. Barmaid didn't know who it was but she said they were having a bit of an argy-bargy about something at closing time. Couldn't say what about."

"Description?"

"Little chap. But she said he wasn't bad-looking, for what that's worth. Trouble is, kids all look the same these days. They left together."

When Thornhill returned to the yard, Porter was waiting by the door of the shed. Thornhill picked his way through the contents of the car. Apart from a surprising quant.i.ty of small stones and pieces of dried mud, there were half a dozen cigarette ends, more Park Drive by the look of them, along with used matches, an AA handbook and ten or twelve vividly green and purple wrappers from Brashers Mint Imperials. He put to one side a selection of less predictable items from a piece of string to a brown-paper bag containing two dried apple cores, from a travelling sewing kit to a half-used jar of Marmite.

Marmite, he thought, mints and matches. String. A sewing kit. Apple cores. His mind strained to combine them into something that made a pattern.

Matches?

When he had finished he went back outside. Porter stared expectantly at him. The constable's mouth was open as though he was hoping his superior officer might feed him with a t.i.tbit.

"Yes," Thornhill said at last. "Perhaps it is."

"Yes, sir. But what, sir?"

"As you said, Porter: perhaps it's odd."

"Chicken," Jill said aloud.

She was alone in the layby, standing under an umbrella in the rain beside her green Morris Minor. Behind her was the road, snaking up to Ashbridge and the Forest, divided from the layby by a ragged crescent of saplings, bramble and long gra.s.s. It was unexpectedly private. In front of her were the rusting remains of a barbed wire fence, draped on rotting posts. Sections of it had fallen away.

The view was beautiful. The densely wooded Little Russia valley stretched downhill, narrow and steep-sided, funnelling outwards and curving to the north in the direction of the invisible river below. The layby itself was less attractive. A rotting mattress, disgorging its horsehair bowels, lay at one end, among rusting tins, empty bottles and the remains of a sack of plaster that had left dirty-white streaks in the mud.

She walked slowly across the cracked tarmac to the largest of the gaps in the fence, a stretch of about five yards towards the end closest to the road downhill. The drop was almost vertical. The underlying sandstone was exposed. At the bottom was a jagged rock about the size of a small caravan. Beside it was a rusting gas cooker on its side, a selection of empty tins and a couple of bald tyres. It would be possible to scramble down there, but it was not something to attempt in a decent coat, a snugly-fitting skirt and two-inch heels.

Farther down the slope a roof was visible through the branches, the clay tiles streaked with lichen. A little barn, perhaps, she thought, or a shepherd's hut. It must be invisible in summer. The Forest was studded with these mysterious little buildings, usually ruinous, which must once have had necessary reasons for being where they were. Unlike her.

She stared at the rock. This was where the boy had died. Shards of gla.s.s glinted beside the rock. She wondered if she was imagining a smear of pale grey paint on one side. What had she expected to find? An explanation? The confirmation of a hunch?

There was a rustling below her, somewhere in the bushes below the rock. Jill felt suddenly guilty, as though detected in a small, shabby crime. She glanced down into the ravine and at the same time took a step backwards.

Her movement was too little, too late. Not five yards from the rock, a face appeared among the branches. There was no possibility of a silent and dignified withdrawal now.

"h.e.l.lo, Richard," Jill said.

Formal as ever, he touched his hat. "Good afternoon, Miss Francis."

"When we're alone you might as well call me Jill, don't you think? I know things between us have well, things have changed, but it's quite absurd to be so pompous." Colour rose in his face. "Very well. What are you doing here?"

"I'm a journalist," Jill said. "Remember?"

"I can hardly forget." He touched his hat again. "I won't keep you."

Jill turned on her heel, leaving Thornhill in undisputed possession of Little Russia. She climbed into the car, lit a cigarette and started the engine.

Her hands were shaking slightly. Chicken, she thought. That's the trouble with all of us we're all b.l.o.o.d.y chicken.

When he was alone in Little Russia, Thornhill methodically quartered the scene of the crash, picking his way among the rubbish, the shattered branches and the fragments of rock. It was a shocking waste of time to be doing this himself, he told himself, particularly as his reason for doing was so tenuous in fact not really a reason at all. And what had Jill been up to? d.a.m.n it, she was editing the Gazette now if they wanted local colour for their piece on the crash, why not send a minion?

s.h.i.+vering because of the cold, Thornhill set off towards the Forestry road where he had left his car. He followed a winding track that pursued an eccentric four-footed logic, for Little Russia was more frequented by deer and rabbits, badgers and foxes than by humans. He stumbled into a puddle, spattering filthy water on the skirts of his navy-blue overcoat. It began to rain, and he had not brought his umbrella.

The track pa.s.sed the corner of the small stone building with its sagging roof of double Roman pantiles, patched in places with corrugated iron. There was an unglazed opening high in the gable but no other windows. The door, held in place with a rusting, hand-forged Suffolk latch, was still sound.

A unexpected colour, a vivid mauve, caught Thornhill's eye on the ground immediately outside the door. He stooped. There were two ticket stubs a few inches from the door jamb. He picked them up and felt them between finger and thumb. They couldn't have been there long, for they were still dry. A tiny oddity? He slipped them between two leaves of his notebook.

Thornhill lifted the latch, pushed open the door and went into the barn. The air smelled damp but unexpectedly fresh. The roof was still weathertight. He stood in the doorway and watched the rain drifting over the treetops towards the valley below.

He turned his back on the weather and, as he moved, his foot snagged on a soft, yielding obstruction. He looked down. There was a filthy brown blanket on the earth floor.

His immediate thought was that at some point a tramp must have pa.s.sed a chilly night here. He walked about the building, automatically looking for something that would confirm or refute the theory. He found nothing. In the doorway again, he bent down to the blanket and examined it more closely. There was a cl.u.s.ter of darker spots on the coa.r.s.e wool, fresher-looking than the ancient dirt on the fabric. He angled the blanket towards the light from the doorway. The spots were rust-red and dry to the touch. Blood? If it was, then the colour suggested it was relatively recent in origin.

Thornhill straightened up. The rain was petering away, driving north-east up the river valley below with a freshening wind behind it. Suddenly he was in a hurry to get back to Lydmouth, to the warmth and familiarity of police headquarters.

The path between the barn and the Forestry track was easier going than the path to the site of the crash. In less than ten minutes he reached the broad ride, surfaced with rubble. From there it was only a few yards to the junction of the track and the road, where he had left his car.

A brick house stood on the corner a square modern building in an unkempt garden overshadowed by gangling conifers. As Thornhill approached, an ambulance was pulling out of its concrete driveway. It swung on to the road, where it turned left towards Lydmouth.

Thornhill unlocked his car door. He glanced up at the house. He was just in time to catch sight of a face, little more than a pale blur, before it vanished from an upper window.

"He's not absolutely sure," Amy Gwyn-Thomas said. "The boy doesn't come to chapel very often now. Of course they change so quickly at that age, don't they? And he's been away in the army."

"Who isn't sure?" said Jill, who had not been listening to her secretary.

"Ronald Mr Prout." Amy blushed. "I happened to b.u.mp into him in the Gardenia, quite accidentally. The rush at lunchtime is getting worse and worse. We had to share a table."

Jill didn't believe in that sort of accident. She suspected Amy of conducting a clandestine courts.h.i.+p with Mr Prout, who kept a toyshop and played the organ in the Baptist Chapel.

"Whatever was Mr Prout doing in the Bathurst Arms?" Jill asked. "I hadn't put him down as a drinking man."

The blush intensified. "Of course not. He was collecting for the Mission Society. Anyway, he said, there were two young men in there, obviously rather the worse for wear if you know what I mean, at one of the tables in the saloon bar. They didn't give him anything just waved him away; people can be so rude, can't they? Ronald was almost certain that one of them was Little Joe. He wasn't sure, or he would have said something."

"Has he got a car?" Jill said. "Little Joe, I mean. What's his real name, by the way?"

"Mark. Mark Joseph. And I don't think he's got a car. He can't be more than nineteen or twenty. He couldn't afford it. But he might have the use of his father's. I know Mr Joseph's got one, I've seen it at chapel. It's black. Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered." Jill picked up her handbag, which was beside the desk.

"Are you going out again?"

Before Jill could answer, Amy's telephone rang in the next room. She went to answer it. As Jill was leaving her office a moment later, Amy waylaid her. There was a pink, moist spot on each of the secretary's powdered cheeks.

"Well, I never," she said. "That was Ronald Mr Prout. He went to see his mother at the hospital after lunch. And guess who he saw being carried out of an ambulance there? Little Joe."

Acute carbon monoxide poisoning turns your cheeks cherry-pink and gives them a misleadingly healthy appearance. By that time, however, you may well be dead or comatose.

Mark Joseph was alive, but only just. The consultant thought it likely that, if the boy recovered, his neurological functions would be considerably impaired, perhaps in the long term. Translated, that meant it might be a long time before the police would be able to get any sense out of him a.s.suming, of course, that he survived.

Sergeant Lumb and a policewoman had been to the house in Little Russia. On his return Lumb told Thornhill that Little Joe had used strips of dustsheet to attach the hose of the vacuum cleaner to the exhaust of his father's car, which was parked in a garage beside the house. He had run the hose through the driver's window and sealed up the cracks with Sellotape and brown paper. Then he had climbed into the car, started the engine and waited to die.

"It was the sister that saved him," Lumb said. "Sylvia she's ill, having a day or two off work. Came downstairs to make herself a drink, and she heard the engine running. Doc said he'd have been dead in another half-hour."

"Why did he do it?" Thornhill asked.

"Don't know, sir. But it was suicide he left a note: but all he said was sorry. And he sent his love to his sister."

Thornhill considered. Then, "Not to his parents?"

"Mother's dead. He don't get on with his dad. To be fair, not many people do they call him Uncle Joe round here. As in Stalin. He's a nasty old b.u.g.g.e.r, excuse my French, the holier-than-thou type."

"Has he been told?"

Lumb shook his head. "He's staying with friends in Scotland. No telephone. We've contacted the local boys, asked them to take a message over."

"I'll go and take a look at the house. I'd like to talk to the sister, too."

Thornhill took his own car, along with the uniformed WPC who had accompanied Lumb to Little Russia earlier in the day; it was all too likely, Thornhill thought, that Sylvia Joseph would be difficult to handle emotional, possibly hysterical and dealing with that sort of thing was woman's work.

The problem was, he realized when he drew up outside the Josephs' house in Little Russia, the wrong woman had already turned up to deal with it. A green Morris Minor was parked outside. He walked quickly up the concrete path, b.u.t.toning his overcoat for the air seemed much colder here. Jill Francis opened the door before he had time to ring the bell. For an instant they stared at each other, both of them conscious of the silent policewoman at Thornhill's side.

He raised his hat. "Good afternoon, Miss Francis. We've come to see Miss Joseph."

"She's downstairs now," Jill said. "In the sitting room."

"How is she?"

"Shocked. Miserable. Just sits there eating sweets and hoping it will all go away. Would you like to come through?"

"Perhaps you and I might have a word beforehand." He turned to the WPC. "Go and see Miss Joseph. I won't be long."

The young woman glanced at him, the confusion evident on her face. But she said nothing. Jill showed her into the room where Sylvia was sitting. Thornhill glimpsed a childlike figure in a dressing-gown. She seemed scarcely older than his own daughter. She was sitting in a chair, her fingers delving into a green and purple box on her lap, and she did not raise her head to look at him. Lank brown hair curtained her face. The door closed.

Jill draped her coat over her shoulders like a cape and joined him on the doorstep.