Shake Hands Forever, page 10
'There doesn't seem to be any reason why you shouldn't know.'
'Got it okayed by the Home Secretary first, did you ?'
Having the address didn't really help matters and its location meant very little to Wexford. He was prepared to drop the subject there and then, knowing as he did that discussing Hathall with Burden only made them both feel awkward. Strangely enough, it was Burden who pursued it. Perhaps he hadn't cared for that crack about the Home Secretary or, more likely, disliked the idea of the significance that might attach to his announcement if he left it islanded.
'I've always thought,' he said, 'though I haven't said so before, that there was one major drawback to your theory. If Hathall had had an accomplice with that scar on her finger, he'd have insisted she wear gloves. Because if she left only one print, he'd never be able to live with her or marry her or even see her again. And you say he killed Angela in order to do that. So he can't have. It's simple when you think about it.'
Wexford didn't say anything, He betrayed no excitement. But that night when he got home he studied his map of London, made a phone call and spent some time poring over his latest bank statement.
The Fortunes had come to stay for the weekend. Uncle and nephew walked down Wool Lane and paused outside the cottage which hadn't yet been re-let. The 'miracle' tree was laden with white blossom, and behind the house young lambs were pastured on the hillside whose peak was crowned by a ring of trees.
'Hathall doesn't prefer the flocks of silly sheep either,' said
I06
Wexford, recalling a conversation they had had near this spot. 'He's taken himself as far from Epsom Downs as can be, yet he's a South Londoner. West Hampstead is where he's living. Dartmeet Avenue. D'you know it?'
'I know where it is, Between the Finchley Road and West End Lane. Why did he pick Hampstead ?'
'Just because it's as far as possible from South London where his mother and his ex-wife and his daughter are.' Wexford pulled down a branch of plum blossom to his face and smelt its faint honey scent. 'Or that's what I think.' The branch sprang back, scattering petals on the grass. Musingly, he said, 'He appears to lead a celibate life. The only woman he's been seen with is his mother.'
Howard seemed intrigued. 'You mean you have a - a watcher ?'
'He's not much of a spy,' Wexford admitted, 'but he was the best and safest I could find. As a matter of fact, he's the brother of an old customer of mine, a chap called Monkey Matthews. The brother's name is Ginge, so-called on account of his hair. He lives in Kilburn.'
Howard laughed, but sympathetically. 'What does this Ginge do ? Tail him ?'
'Not exactly. But he keeps an eye. I give him a remuneration. Out of my own pocket, naturally.'
'I didn't realize you were that serious.'
'I don't know when I was ever so serious about a thing like this in my whole career.'
They turned away. A little wind had sprung up and it was growing chilly. Howard gave a backward glance at the hedge tunnel which was already greening and thickening, and said quietly, 'What is it you hope for, Reg?'
His uncle didn't reply at once. They had passed the isolated villa where Nancy Lake's car stood on the garage drive,
I07
before he spoke. He had been deep in thought, so silent and preoccupied that Howard had perhaps thought he had forgotten the question or had no answer to it. But now as they came to the Stowerton Road, he said, 'For a long time I wondered why Hathall was so horrified - and that's an understatement - when I told him about the print. Because he didn't want the woman discovered, of course. But it wasn't just fear he showed. It was something more like a terrible sorrow he showed - when he'd recovered a bit, that is. And I came to the conclusion that his reaction was what it was because he'd had Angela killed expressly so that he could be with that woman. And now he knew he'd never dare see her again.
'And then he reflected. He wrote that letter of protest to Griswold to clear the field of me because he knew I knew. But it might still be possible for him to get away with it and have what he wanted, a life with that woman. Not as he'd planned it. Not a flit to London, then after a few weeks a friendship with a girl, the lonely widower seeking consolation with a new woman friend whom, as time went by, he could marry. Not that - now. Even though he'd pulled the wool over Griswold's eyes, he wouldn't dare try that one on. The handprint had been found and however much we might seem to be ignoring him, he couldn't hope to go in for a public courtship and then marriage with a woman whose hand would betray her. Betray her to anyone, Howard, not just to an expert.'
'So what can he do?'
'He has two alternatives,' said Wexford crisply. 'He and the woman may have agreed to part. Presumably, even if one is madly in love, liberty is preferable to the indulgence of love. Yes, they could have parted.'
"'Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows" ?'
I08
'The next bit is even more appropriate.
"And if we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain."
'Or,' Wexford went on, 'they could have decided - let's say grandiloquently that their passion decided for them, love was bigger than both of them - to have gone on meeting clandestinely. Not to live together, never to meet in public, but to carry on as if each of them had a jealous suspicious spouse.'
'What, go on like that indefinitely?'
'Maybe. Until it wears itself out or until they find some other solution. But I think that's what they're doing, Howard. If it isn't so, why has he picked North-west London where no one knows him as a place to live ? Why not south of the river where his mother is and his daughter ? Or somewhere near his work. He's earning a good salary now. He could just as well have got himself a place in Central London. He's hidden himself away so that he can sneak out in the evenings to be with her.
'I'm going to try and find her,' Wexford said thoughtfully. 'It'll cost me some money and take up my spare time, but I mean to have a go.'
I2
In describing Ginge Matthews as not much of a spy, Wexford had rather underrated him. The miserable resources at his disposal made him bitter. He was perpetually irritated by Ginge's unwillingness to use the phone. Ginge was proud of his literary style which was culled from the witness-box manner of thick-headed and very junior police constables whose periphrasis he had overheard from the dock. In Ginge's reports his quarry never went anywhere, but always proceeded; his home was his domicile and, rather than going home, he withdrew or retired there. But in honesty and in fairness to Ginge, Wexford had to admit that, although he had learnt nothing of the elusive woman during these past months, he had learnt a good deal about Hathall's manner of life.
According to Ginge, the house where he had his flat was a big three-storeyed place and - reading between the lines - of Edwardian vintage. Hathall had no garage but left his car parked in the street. From meanness or the impossibility of finding a garage to rent? Wexford didn't know and Ginge couldn't tell him. Hathall left for work at nine in the morning and either walked or caught a bus from West End Green to West Hampstead Tube station where he took the Bakerloo Line train to (presumably) Piccadilly. He reached home again soon after six, and on several occasions Ginge, lurking in a phone box opposite number 6z Dartmeet Avenue, had seen him go out again in his car. Ginge always knew when he
IIO
was at home in the evenings because then a light showed in the second floor bay window. He had never seen him accompanied by anyone except his mother - from his description it could only be old MrsHathall - whom he had brought to his flat by car one Saturday afternoon. Mother and son had had words, a harsh low-voiced quarrel on the pavement before they even got to the front door.
Ginge had no car. He had no job either, but the small amount of money Wexford could afford to give him didn't make it worth his while to spend more than one evening and perhaps one Saturday or Sunday afternoon a week watching Robert Hathall. It could easily have happened that Hathall brought his girl home on one or two of the other six evenings. And yet Wexford clung to hope. One day, sometime . . . He dreamed at night of Hathall, not very often, possibly once a fortnight, and in these dreams he saw him with the darkhaired girl with the scarred finger, or else alone as he had been when he had stood by the fireplace in Bury Cottage, paralysed with fear and realization and - yes, with grief.
'On the afternoon of Saturday, June Isth inst., at 3.5 p.m., the party was seen to proceed from his domicile at 6z Dartmeet Avenue to West End Lane where he made purchases at a supermarket . . .' Wexford cursed. They were nearly all like that. And what proof had he that Ginge had even been there 'on the afternoon of Saturday, June Isth inst.'? Naturally, Ginge would say he had been there when there was a quid in it for every tailing session. July came and August, and Hathall, if Ginge was to be trusted, led a simple regular life, going to work, coming home, shopping on Saturdays, some- times taking an evening drive. If Ginge could be trusted . . .
That he could be, up to a point, was proved in September just before the anniversary of Angela's death. 'There is reason to believe', wrote Ginge, 'that the party has disposed
III
of his motor vehicle, it having disappeared from its customary parking places. On the evening of Thursday, September both inst., having arrived home from his place of business at Go p.m., he proceeded at 6.50 from his domicile and boarded the number z8 bus at West End Green NW6.'
Was there anything in it ? Wexford didn't think so. On his salary Hathall could easily afford to run a car, but he might have got rid of it only because of the increasing difficulty of on-street parking. Still, it was a good thing from his point of view. Hathall could now be followed.
Wexford never wrote to Ginge. It was too risky. The little red-headed spy might not be above blackmail, and if any letters should fall into the hands of Griswold.... He sent his wages in notes in a plain envelope, and when he had to talk to him, which, on account of the paucity of news, happened rarely, he could always get him between twelve and one at a Kilburn public house called the Countess of Castlemaune.
'Follow him ?' said Ginge nervously. 'What, on that bleeding z8 ?'
'I don't see why not. He's never seen you, has he?'
'Maybe he has. How should I know? It's not easy following a bloke on a bleeding bus.' Ginge's conversational manner was markedly different from his literary style, particularly as to his use of adjectives. 'If he goes up top, say, and I go inside, or vicey-versy . . .'
'Why does there have to be any vicey-versy ?' said Wexford. 'You sit in the seat behind him and stick close. Right?'
Ginge didn't seem to think it was right at all, but he agreed rather dubiously to try it. Whether or not he had tried it, Wexford wasn't told, for Ginge's next report made no reference to buses. Yet the more he studied it with its magistrates' court circumlocutions, the more interested he was by
ITS
it. 'Being in the neighbourhood of Dartmeet Avenue NW6, at 3 p.m. on the z6dh inst., I took it upon myself to investigate the party's place of domicile. During a conversation with The landlord, during which I represented myself as an official of The local rating audhority, I enquired as to the number of apartments and was informed that only single rooms were to let in the establishment . . .'
Rather enterprising of Ginge, was Wexford's first Thought, though he had probably only assumed this role to impress his employer and hope he would forget all about the more dan- gerous exercise of tailing Hadhall on a bus. But chat wasn't important. What astonished the chief inspector was that Hathall was a tenant rather than an owner-occupier and, moreover, the tenant of a room rather Than a flat. Strange, very strange. He could have afforded to buy a flat on a mortgage. Why hadn't her Because he didn't intend to be permanendy domiciled (as Ginge would put it) in London ? Or because he had ocher uses for his income ? Both maybe. But Wexford seized upon this as the most peculiar circumstance he had yet discovered in Hathall's present life. Even with rents in London as extortionate as They were, he could hardly be paying more than fifteen pounds a week at The most for a room, yet, after deductions, he must be drawing sixty. We~ford had no confidant but Howard, and it was to Howard, on the phone, that he talked about it.
'You're thinking he could be supporting someone else ?'
'I am,' said Wexford.
'Say fifteen a week for himself and fifteen for her on accommodation . . . ? And if she's not working he has to keep her as well.'
'Christ, you don't know how good it is for me to hear someone talk about her as a real person, as "she". You believe she exists, don't you ?'
II3
'It wasn't a ghost made that print, Reg. It wasn't ectoplasm. She exists.'
In Kingsmarkham they had given up. They had stopped searching. Griswold had told the newspapers some rubbish - in Wexford's phrase - about the case not being closed, but it was closed. His statement was only face-saving. Mark Somerset had let Bury Cottage to a couple of young Arnericans, teachers of political economy at the University of the South. The front garden was tidied up and they talked of having the back garden landscaped at their own expense. One day the plums hung heavily on the tree, the next it was stripped. Wexford never found out if Nancy Lake had had them and made them into 'miracle'jam, for he had never seen Nancy since the day he was told to lay off Hathall.
Nothing came from Ginge for a fortnight. At last Wexford phoned him at the Countess of Castlemaine to be told that on his watching evenings Hathall had remained at home. He would, however, watch again that night and on the Saturday afternoon. On Monday his report came. Hathall had done his usual shopping on Saturday, but on the previous evening had walked down to the bus stop at West End Green at seven o'clock. Ginge had followed him, but being intimidated ('made cautious' was his expression) by Hathall's suspicious backward glances, hadn't pursued him on to the 28 bus which his quarry had caught at ten past seven. Wexford hurled the sheet of paper into the wastepaper basket. That was all he needed, for Hathall to get wise to Ginge.
Another week went by. Wexford was on the point of throwing Ginge's next communication away unopened. He felt he couldn't face another account of Hathall's Saturday shopping activities. But he did open the letter. And there, of cause, was the usual nonsense about the supermarket visit. There too, appended casually as if it were of no importance,
II4
a throwaway line to fill up, was a note that after his shopping Hathall had called at a travel agency.
'The place he went to is called Sudamerica Tours, Howard. Ginge didn't dare follow him in, lily-livered idiot that he is.'
Howard's voice sounded thin and dry. 'You're thinking what I'm thinking.'
'Of course. Some place where we've no extradition treaty. He's been reading about train robbers and that gave him the idea. Bloody newspapers do more harm than good.'
'But, my God, Reg. he must be dead scared if he's prepared to throw up his job and flit to Brazil or somewhere. What's he going to do there ? How will he live ?'
'As birds do, nephew. God knows. Look, Howard, could you do something for me? Could you get on to Marcus Flower and try and find out if they're sending him abroad ? I daren't.'
'Well, I dare,' said Howard. 'But if they were, wouldn't they be arranging the whole thing and paying for it ?'
'They wouldn't pay and arrange for his girl, would they?'
'I'll do my best and call you back this evening.'
Was that why Hathall had been living so economically 7 In order to save up his accomplice's fare ? He would have to have a job there waiting for him, Wexford thought, or else be very desperate to get to safety. In that case, the money for two air fares would have to be found. In the Kingsmarkham Courier, which had been placed on his desk that morning, he remembered seeing an advertisement for trips to Rio de Janeiro. He fished it out from under a pile of papers and looked at the back page. There it was, the return fare priced at just over three hundred and fifty pounds. Add a bit more for two single fares, and Hathall's saving could be accounted for . . .
He was about to discard the newspaper when a name in the
II5
deaths column caught his eye. Somerset. 'On October Isth, at Church House, Old Myringham, Gwendolen Mary Somerset, beloved wife of Mark Somerset. Funeral St Luke's Church October zznd. No flowers, please, but donations to Stowerton Home for Incurables.' So the demanding and querulous wife had died at last. The beloved wife? Perhaps she had been, or perhaps this was the usual hypocrisy, so stale, hackneyed and automatic a formula as to be hardly hypocrisy any more. Wexford smiled drily and then forgot about it. He went home early - the town was quiet and crimeless - and waited for Howard's telephone call.
The phone rang at seven, but it was his younger daughter, Sheila. She and her mother chatted for about twenty minutes, and after that the phone didn't ring again. Wexford waited till about half past ten and then he dialled Howard's number.
'He's bloody well out,' he said crossly to his wife. 'I call that the limit.'
'Why shouldn't he go out in the evenings I'm sure he works hard enough.'
'Don't I work? I don't go gallivanting about in the evenings when I've promised to phone people.'
'No, and if you did perhaps your blood pressure wouldn't rage the way it's doing at this moment,' said Dora.
At eleven he tried to get Howard again, but again there w is no reply and he went off to bed in a peevish frame of min l. It wasn't surprising that he had another of those obsessive Hathall dreams. He was at an airport. The great jet aircraft was ready to take off and the doors had been closed, but they opened again as he watched and there appeared at the head of the steps, like a royal couple waving graciously to the wellwishing crowd, Hathall and a woman. The woman raised her right hand in a gesture of farewell and he saw the L-shaped scar burning red, an angry cicatrice - L for love, for loss, for
II6
leave-taking. But before he could rush up the steps as he had begun to do, the stairs themselves melted away, the couple retreated, and the aircraft sailed up, up into the ice-blue winter sky.
