Shake Hands Forever, page 17
'Perhaps,' said Wexford thoughtfully, 'that wouldn't be such a bad thing - in moderation, of course.'
20
Sheila Wexford, the chief inspector's actress daughter, arrived on Saturday morning. It was good to see her in the flesh, her father said, instead of two-dimensionally and monotonally in her television serial. She pranced about the house, arranging the cards more artistically and singing that she was dreaming of a white Christmas. It seemed, however, that it was going to be a foggy one. The long-range weather forecast had said it would be, and now the weather signs themselves fulfilled this prediction as a white morning mist shrouded the sun at noon and by evening was dense and yellowish.
The shortest day of the year. The Winter Solstice. It was arctic in light as well as in temperature, the fog closing out daylight at three and heralding seventeen hours of darkness. Along the streets lighted Christmas trees showed only as an amber blur in windows. God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay . . . Seventeen hours of darkness, thirtysix hours to go.
Howard had promised to phone and did so at ten. Hathall had been indoors alone at 6z Dartmeet Avenue since three. Howard was in the call-box opposite the house, but now he was going home. His six watching nights to Christmas were over - today's had been a bonus vigil, undertaken because he couldn't bear to be beaten and he was going home.
'I'll watch him tomorrow, Reg. for the last time.'
'Is there any point ?'
'I shall feel I've done the job as thoroughly as it can be done.'
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Hathall had been alone most of the day. Did that mean he had sent the woman on ahead of him 7 Wexford went to bed early and lay awake thinking of Christmas, thinking of himself and Howard retired to a quiet corner and holding their last inquest over what had happened, what else they could have done, what might have happened if on z October a year ago Griswold hadn't issued his ban.
On Sunday morning the fog began to lift. The vague hope Wexford had entertained that fog might force Hathall to postpone his departure faded as the sun appeared strong and bright by midday. He listened to the radio news but no airports were closed and no flights cancelled. And as the evening began with a bright sunset and a clear frosty sky - as if winter was already dying with the passing of the solstice - he knew he must resign himself to Hathall's escape. It was all over.
But though he could teach himself to avoid introspection where Nancy Lake was concerned, he couldn't help dwelling with regret and bitterness over the long period during which he and Robert Hathall had been adversaries. Things might have been very different if only he had guessed at that payroll fraud - if fraud there was - before. He should have known too that an angry paranoiac with much at stake wouldn't react passively to his clumsy probing and what that probing implied. But it was all over now and he would never know who the woman was. Sadly he thought of other ques- tions that must remain unanswered. What was the reason for the presence in Bury Cottage of the Celtic languages book ? Why had Hathall, who in middle life had come to enjoy sexual variety, repulsed such a woman as Nancy Lake ? Why had his accomplice, in most ways so thorough and careful, left her handprint on, of all places, the side of the bath ? And why had Angela, anxious to please her mother-in-law, desperate for a reconciliation, worn on the day of her visit the
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very clothes which had helped turn her mother-in-law against her ?
It didn't cross his mind that, at this late stage, Howard would have any further success. Hathall's habit was to stay at home on Sundays, entertaining his mother or his daughter. And even though he had already said good-bye to them, there seemed no reason to suppose he would change his ways to the extent of going to Nouing Hill and her, when they were leaving together on the following day. So when he lifted the receiver at eleven that Sunday night and heard the familiar voice, a liKle tired now and a little irritable, he thought at first Howard was phoning only to say at what time he and Denise would arrive on Christmas Eve. And when he understood the true reason for the call, that at last when it was too late, Howard was on the brink of accomplishing his task, he felt the sick despair of a man who doesn't want hope to come in and threaten his resignation.
'You saw her?' he said dully. 'You actually saw her?'
'I know how you're feeling, Reg. but I have to tell you. I couldn't keep it to myself. I saw him. I saw her. I saw them together. And I lost them.'
'Oh, God. My God, it's more than I can take.'
'Don't kill the messenger, Reg.' Howard said gently. 'Don't do a Cleopatra on me. I that do bring the news made not the match.'
'I'm not angry with you. How could I be after all you've done? I'm angry with - fate, I suppose. Tell me what happened.'
'I started watching the house in Dartmeet Avenue after
- lunch. I didn't know whether Hathall was in or not until I
saw him come out and put a great sackful of rubbish into one of those dustbins. He was having a clear-out, packing, I I87
expect, and throwing out what he didn't want. I sat there in the car, and I nearly went home when I saw his light go on at half past four.
'Maybe it would have been better if I had gone home. At least I couldn't have raised your hopes. He came out of the house at six, Reg. and walked down to West End Green. I followed him in the car and parked in Mill Lane - that's the street that runs westwards off Fortune Green Road. We both waited for about five minutes. The z8 bus didn't come and he got
into a taxi instead.'
'You followed it ?' said Wexford, admiration for a moment overcoming his bitterness.
'It's easier to follow a taxi than a bus. Buses keep stopping. Following a taxi in London on a Sunday night is a different matter from trying to do it by day in the rush hours. Anyway, the driver took more or less the same route as the bus. It dropped Hathall outside a pub in Pembridge Road.'
'Near that stop where you saw him get on the bus before 7'
'Quite near, yes. I've been to that bus stop and the streets round about it every night this week, Reg. But he must have used the back street to get to her from Notting Hill Gate station. I never saw him once.'
'You went into this pub after him ?'
'It's called the Rosy Cross and it was very crowded. He bought two drinks, gin for himself and pernod for her, although she hadn't come in yet. He managed to find two seats in a corner and he put his coat on one of them to keep it. Most of the time the crowd blocked my view of him, but I could see that glass of yellow pernod waiting on the table for her to come and drink it.
'Hathall was early or she was ten minutes late. I didn't know she'd come in till I saw a hand go round that yellow glass and the glass lifted up out of my sight. I moved then and
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pushed through the crowd to get a better look. It was the same woman I saw him with outside Marcus Flower, a pretty woman in her early thirties with dyed blonde cropped hair. No, don't ask. I didn't see her hand. I was too close for safety as it was. I think Hathall recognized me. God, he'd have to be blind not to by now, even with the care I've taken.
'They drank their drinks quite quickly and pushed their way out. She must live quite near there, but where she lives I can't tell you. It doesn't matter now, anyway. I saw them walking away when I came out and I was going to follow them on foot. A taxi came and they got into it. Hathall didn't even wait to tell the driver where he wanted to go. He just got in and must have given his instructions afterwards. He wasn't going to run the risk of being followed, and I couldn't follow them. The taxi went off up Pembridge Road and I lost them. I lost them and went home.
'The last of Robert Hathall, Reg. It was good while it lasted. I really thought - well, never mind. You were right all along the line and that, I'm afraid, must be your consolation.'
Wexford said good night to his nephew and that he would see him on Christmas Eve. An aircraft sounded overhead, coming out of Gatwick. He stood by his bedroom window and watched its white and red lights like meteors crossing the clear starlit sky. Just a few more hours and Hathall would be on such an aircraft. First thing in the morning ? Or an afternoon flight? Or would he and she be going by night? He found he knew very little about extradition. It hadn't come in his way to know about it. And things had taken such strange turns lately that a country would probably bargain, would want concessions or some sort of exchange before releasing a foreign national. Besides, though you might get an extradition order if you had irrefutable evidence of murder, surdy you wouldn't on a fraud charge. Deception, the
rag
charge would be, he thought, deception under Section IS of the Theft Act of 1968. It suddenly seemed fantastic to contemplate putting all that political machinery in motion to fetch a man out of Brazil for helping himself to the funds of a plastic doll factory.
He thought of Crippen being apprehended in mid-Atlantic by a wireless message, of train robbers caught after long periods of freedom in the distant South, of films he had seen in which some criminal, at ease now and believing himself secure, felt the heavy hand of the law descend on his shoulder as he sat drinking wine in a sunny pavement cafe. It wasn't his world. He couldn't see himself, even in a minor capacity, taking part in exotic drama. Instead he saw Hathall flying away to freedom, to the life he had planned and had done murder to get, while in a week or two perhaps Brock Lovat was obliged to admit defeat because he had found no fraud or theft or deception but only a few vague hints of something underhand which Hathall might have been called to account for - if only Hathall had been there to answer.
The day had come.
Waking early, Wexford thought of Hathall waking early too. He had seen Howard the night before, had suspected he was still being followed, so wouldn't have dared spend the night with the woman or have her spend the night with him. Now he was washing at the sink in that nasty little room, taking a suit from the Battle of Mons wardrobe, shaving before packing his razor into the small hand-case he would take with him in the aircraft. Wexford could see the red granite face, more heavily flushed from its contact with the razor's edge, the thinning black hair slicked back with a wet comb. Now Hathall would be taking a last look at the ten by twelve cell which had been his home for nine months, and
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thinking with happy anticipation of the home that was to be his; now across to the call-box, at mid-winter daybreak, to check his flight with the airport and harangue the girl who spoke to him for not being prompt enough or efficient or considerate enough; now, lastly, a call to her, wherever she was, in the labyrinth of Notting Hill. No, perhaps one more call. To the taxi rank or car-hire place for the car that would take him and his luggage away for ever . . .
Stop it, he told himself severely. Leave it. No more of this. This way madness - or at least an obsessional neurosis - lies. Christmas is coming, go to work, forget him. He took Dora a cup of tea and went to work.
In his office he went through the morning mail and stuck a few Christmas cards around. There was one from Nancy Lake, which he looked at thoughtfully for a moment or two before putting it inside his desk. No less than five calendars had come, including one of the glossy nudes genre, the offering of a local garage. It brought to mind Ginge at West Hampstead station, the offices of Marcus Flower . . . Was he going crazy? What was happening to him when he let erotica bring to mind a murder hunt ? Stop it. From his selection he chose a handsome and immensely dull calendar, twelve colour plates of Sussex scenes, and pinned it on to the wall next to the district map. The gift of a grateful garage he put into a new envelope, marked it For Your Eyes Only and had it sent down to Burden's office. That would set the prim inspector fulminating against current moral standards and divert his, Wexford's, mind from that bloody, unspeakable, triumphant, God-damned crook and fugitive, Robert Hathall.
Then he turned his attention to the matters that were at present concerning Kingsmarkham police. Five women in the town and two from outlying villages had complained of obscene telephone calls. The only extraordinary thing about
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that was that their caller had also been a woman. Wexford smiled a little to note the odd corners of life into which Women's Liberation was infiltrating. He smiled more grimly and with exasperation at Sergeant Martin's attempt to make an issue out of the activities of four small boys who had tied a length of string from a lamp-post to a garden wall in an effort to trip up passers-by. Why did they waste his time with this rubbish? Yet sometimes it is better to have one's time wasted than spent on hankering ever and ever after a vain thing . . .
His internal phone was bleeping. He lifted the receiver, expecting the voice of a self-righteous and indignant Burden.
'Chief Inspector Lovat to see you, sir. Shall I show him up ?'
HI
Lovat came in slowly, and with him his inevitable interpreter, his fidus Achates, Sergeant Hutton.
Lovely day.'
'Be dawned to the day,' said Wexford in a throaty voice because his heart and his blood pressure were behaving very strangely. 'Never mind the day. I wish it would bloody well snow, I wish . . .'
HuKon said quietly, 'If we might just sit down a while, sir 7 Mr Lovat has something to tell you which he thinks will interest you greatly. And since it was you put him on to it, it seemed only a matter of courtesy . . .'
'Sit down, do as you like, have a calendar, take one each. I know why you've come. But just tell me one thing. Can you get a man extradited for what you've found out? Because if you can't, you've had it. Hathall's going to Brazil today, and ten to one he's gone already.'
'Dear me,' said Lovat placidly.
Wexford nearly put his head in his hands. 'Well, can you ?' he shouted.
'I'd better tell you what Mr Lovat has found, sir. We called at the home of Mr and Mrs Kingsbury again last night. They'd just returned. They'd been on a visit to their married daughter who was having a baby. No Mrs Mary Lewis has never lodged with them and they have never had any connection with Kidd and Co. Moreover, on making further enquiries at the boarding house Mr Lovat told you about, he
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could discover no evidence at all of the existence of the other so-called account holder.'
'So you've had a warrant sworn for Hathall's arrest?'
'Mr Lovat would like to talk to Robert Hathall, sir,' said Hutton cautiously. 'I'm sure you'll agree we need a little more to go on. Apart from the - er, courtesy of the matter, we called on you for Hathall's present address.'
'His present address,' Wexford snapped, 'is probably about five miles up in the air above Madeira or wherever that damned plane flies.'
'Unfortunate,' said Lovat, shaking his head.
'Maybe he hasn't left, sir. If we could phone him ?'
'I daresay you could if he had a phone and if he hasn't left.' Wexford looked in some despair at the clock. It was tenthirty. 'Frankly, I don't know what to do. The only thing I can suggest is that we all get out to Millerton-les-deux - er, Hightrees Farm, and lay all this before the chief constable.'
'Good idea,' said Lovat. 'Many a fine night I've spent watching the badger setts there.'
Wexford could have kicked him.
He never knew what prompted him to ask the question. There was no sixth sense about it. Perhaps it was just that he thought he should have the facts of this fraud as straight in his mind as they were in Hutton's. But he did ask it, and afterwards he thanked God he had asked it then on the country lane drive to Millerton.
'The addresses of the account holders, sir ? One was in the name of Mrs Dorothy Carter of Ascot House, Myringham -that's the boarding house place - and the other of Mrs Mary Lewis at I9 Maynnot Way, Toxborough.'
'Did you say Maynnot Way?' Wexford asked in a voice that sounded far away and unlike his own.
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'That's right. It runs from the industrial estate to . . .'
'I know where it runs to, sergeant. I also know who lived at Maynnot Hall in the middle of Maynnot Way.' He felt a constriction in his throat. 'Brock,' he said, 'what were you doing at Kidd's that day I met you at the gates?'
Lovat looked at Hutton and Hutton said, 'Mr Lovat was pursuing his enquiries in connection with the disappearance of Morag Grey, sir. Morag Grey worked as a cleaner at Kidd's for a short while when her husband was gardener at the hall. Naturally, we explored every way open to us.'
'You haven't explored Maynnot Way enough.' Wexford almost gasped at the enormity of his discovery. His chimera, he thought, his thing of fanciful conception. 'Your Morag Grey isn't buried in anyone's garden. She's Robert Hathall's woman, she's going off to Brazil with him. My God, I can see it all . . .1' If only he had Howard beside him to explain all this to instead of the phlegmatic Lovat and this openmouthed sergeant. 'Listen,' he said. 'This Grey woman was Hathall's accomplice in the fraud. He met her when they both worked at Kidd's, and she and his wife had the job of making withdrawals from those accounts. No doubt, she thought up the name and address of Mrs Mary Lewis because she knew Maynnot Way and knew the Kingsburys let rooms. Hathall fell for her and she murdered Hathall's wife. She isn't dead, Brock, she's been living in London as Hathall's mistress ever since . . . When did she disappear?'
'As far as we know, in August or September of last year, sir,' said the sergeant, and he brought the car to a halt on the gravel outside Hightrees Farm.
For the sake of the reputation of Mid-Sussex, it would be most unfortunate for Hathall to escape. This, to Wexford's amazement, was the opinion of Charles Griswold. And he saw a faint flush of unease colour the statesman-like face as
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the chief constable was forced to admit the theory was tenable.
'This is a little more than "feeling", I think, Reg.' he said, and it was he personally who phoned London Airport.
Wexford and Lovat and Hutton had to wait a long time before he came back. And when he did it was to say that Robert Hathall and a woman travailing as Mrs Hathall were on the passenger list of a flight leaving for Rio de Janeiro at twelve forty-five. The airport police would be instructed to hold them both on a charge of deception under the Theft Act, and a warrant had better be sworn at once.
