Time to Kill Read online

  “I’ll be along later,” said Vantage to Crewse.

  Crewse nodded. He left with the others. The flat was silent. It was nearly four in the morning.

  “Sit down,” Vantage said.

  I sat. An easy chair for me. It indicated a relaxation and confidence I wasn’t feeling. Vantage walked the floor.

  “Let’s have it again,” he said. “From the beginning.” He lit a cigarette, the first he’d allowed himself in five hours.

  I told him the whole thing from the beginning. He listened politely, not urging. “So you got here at nine?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so did Kyle?”

  “Almost dead on.”

  “Then you left him just before eleven?”

  I choked on the word. “Yes.”

  “So what are we doing raking him in for questioning?”

  “You could ask him how he managed to do it.”

  He made a disgusted gesture. “You’ve just given him an alibi.”

  I leaned forward, stabbing the pipe-stem at him vigorously enough to be called insubordinate. “But the coincidence!”

  “That he was here—yes. It seems unacceptable that Kyle should be in the same building with the man he had threatened, at the time he was actually killed, and still be innocent. But you have kindly given him an alibi. I think it’s just wishful thinking on your part. To me...it’s a coincidence. You get them, or there wouldn’t be a word for it.” He smiled thinly, and shrugged. “I’ll talk to him.”

  I waited while he sealed the door, then we left together. We had our own cars and barely spoke another word, other than goodnight.

  “Or rather, morning,” he said. “Oh...his wife.”

  “Yes, I know.” I felt him fishing for me to offer. “I’d rather do that, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  He was standing with his hand on the door of his Cresta. You could feel the relief flowing through him. “No doubt we shall be seeing you later in the day.”

  And quite obviously he was edging me away from Central Office just at that time, and away from Kyle. Vantage felt—quite correctly—that I would probably fly at him and tear his throat out.

  The car decided not to start. It was an ungodly hour to be around, the chill of the morning in the air and whisps of fog drifting down the ramp. Just when the battery was about expiring the engine fired. I cursed it heartily because I needed something to curse, and drove back to my two and a quarter rooms.

  I drew a bath in the communal bathroom at the end of the corridor, and tried to wash away some of the filth that seemed to be clinging to me.

  He’d killed Geoff and taken about twenty pounds from me as a bonus.

  I splashed angrily, then dried off and stalked back along the corridor stark naked. If there was anybody around to see me at that hour, serve them right. My mouth felt stale, and I needed some sleep. But it was the empty hour before dawn. I smoked a couple of cigarettes over a pot of tea and nibbled a few cornflakes. I scrambled a couple of eggs. The foul taste was still in my mouth.

  At seven-thirty I decided to phone Elsa, then squashed the idea. I just had to face the interview fairly and squarely.

  At eight o’clock I decided to start out. Elsa would soon be up and about, and worrying about Geoff. I got myself to the car, noticed I’d forgotten my pipe, then realized that if I went back for it I would probably not be able to get myself past the phone again. The coward’s way it might be, but that morning I was a rank coward.

  A weak sun was trying to hammer its way through the fog and was not succeeding. There would be traffic jams along the Hagley Road. The car would not start again. I raved at it for providing me with an excuse to turn back and phone Elsa, then cursed it when it fired.

  Along the Hagley Road there was a bright orange Mini every time I glanced in the rear-vision mirror. Then I lost it. The fog was lifting. I hit the Bridgnorth road and the sky was clear. The fields were all wheat stubble and streamers of mist. When I crossed the river I was still wondering how I was going to say it.

  Birch Meadows is a few miles south of Much Wenlock, nestling in the arms of the Brown Clees. It had been Geoff Forbes’s family home for generations. The first glimpse of it is on topping the rise a mile away. Then it glows, cream and green, in its surrounding parkland. Geoff had seventy acres that did nothing but grow and be eaten level by a small herd of sheep. The house is a square block with tall mullion windows and pillars round the front porch. The rear is a wide terrace rolling down placidly to green fields. The sun was rising clear in the pale blue sky, and a few clouds edged their way along the horizon.

  I drove up through the beeches and oaks that lined the drive, and crunched to a halt in front of the porch. By the time I had the car door open, Elsa was standing in the porch. She might not have expected Geoff home, but she would certainly have waited anxiously for a phone call.

  “David...has Geoff”

  “We’d better go inside, Elsa.”

  There was a high brown hall with dark panelling all round, and an open staircase swinging up one side and along the balconied rear. She took me quickly into their drawing room, which has noble windows looking out into immense distance, and an Adam fireplace dominating one wall. She turned to face me.

  “What’s happened?”

  I would have preferred to lead up to it. If she had only sat down! But she was too restless, premonition haunting her.

  Elsa was two years younger than I, twenty-eight to my thirty. That morning she was wearing a mustard skirt and jacket with a brown jumper. She had obviously spent a sleepless night; her eyes were dark and hollowed and a nerve twitched in the corner of her mouth. Normally her face was pale and delicate, but the strain was harrowing it.

  “What’s happened, David? I called the flat a dozen times last night. David...please...”

  “I’m sorry, Elsa. It’s not good news. Won’t you sit down?”

  “No. There’s been an accident?”

  “Elsa...he’s dead.”

  Straight between the eyes, and I was doing my best at being delicate. I saw her recoil. It’s just not my line.

  She sat down. Her lips were pale. I took a seat opposite her, so as not to look upwards. Besides, I wanted to search her face.

  “There’s no mistake,” I told her. “We’ve been round there since eleven last night. A whole squad. There can’t be any mistake.”

  She looked at me with haunted eyes. “But I phoned and phoned. If someone was there, they’d have answered.”

  I did not pick it up. She was watching my lips, waiting for my reply, hoping that she’d found something that would disprove the situation.

  “It’s not as simple as I said, Elsa. It was no accident. You understand?” Every word I said simply piled on the agony, and me watching it in the play of light on her face, feeling it for her, and with nothing I could do or say to ease it. “He was murdered.”

  She gave a small cry or sob, put her hand to her mouth as though it was a social error or something, and jumped to her feet. Her back was towards me—there was only the shaking of her shoulders to guide me. After a few moments she turned slowly to face me.

  “Have you got a cigarette?”

  She had given me something to do. I fumbled over to her with my case, held my lighter for her, then snapped it off when she did not put the cigarette to her lips.

  “I’ll get you a drink,” I offered.

  I went over and poured her a brandy. When I got back with the glass she was crouched on the front edge of an easy chair, one elbow on its arm to support the shaking weight of her hand and its cigarette.

  “Drink this.”

  “No...” A violent shake of the head. “Brandy…”

  “Drink it.”

  She looked up at me with wide, swimming eyes and gave me the hint of a haunted smile. “Don’t bully me, David.”

  But she took a sip of the brandy and shuddered. Then I lit her cigarette. She drew deeply on it. “Tell me.”

  I told her, glossing it o
ver, watching colour glow back into her cheeks. Then suddenly, impatiently, she interrupted.

  “But I phoned and phoned. Why didn’t somebody answer it?”

  “Where did you phone, Elsa?”

  “The flat.” She stared. “Of course.”

  “But which flat, Elsa?”

  I had to get up and turn away. Her pain had been difficult enough to take, sitting there and praying she would not break, because I didn’t know what I could have done about it if she had. But in her eyes now was a gentle accusation. Why are you teasing me, David? Why are you being cruel?

  “There’s only one flat, and you know it,” she said. “So why are you being so persistent about it?”

  “We weren’t at the flat in Edgbaston.” I turned, caught the flutter of her hand. “This was the flat at Queens.”

  She was watching my face with such intensity that eventually I had to look away. “This is some sort of sick joke?”

  “Joke!”

  “You know we’ve only got one flat in town.”

  “Geoff had had this place for two or three months, Elsa.” I blinked at the stark impatience in her eyes, the sudden jerk of rejection of her hand. “He hadn’t moved in. He didn’t live there, or anything like that. But...he used it.”

  She was seeing the implications. Abruptly, angrily, she stood up. She raised her voice. “You’re making this up. For some reason you’ve got to pretend...” She searched my face. “What would he want another flat for?” She tossed her head.

  “I didn’t want to spring it on you like this, but I had the idea I’d do it better than some anonymous copper.”

  “You’re doing it wonderfully.”

  My throat was tight. The situation was running away from me. “I came here because I had to.” She shook her head, rejecting me. “I’m hating this Elsa, but it’s got to be said.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she shouted.

  I walked away. There was a bookcase at one end of the room, containing some of Geoff’s first editions. I stared morosely at the titles. With the length of the room between us I could voice it.

  “He used it for taking some woman up there.”

  That single phrase just about summed up my tangled emotions. I listened to the rejection in my own voice as I said it.

  “Not Geoff,” she said with quiet confidence.

  Not Geoff, I insisted to myself. Not Geoff with a woman.

  There had always been something special about Geoff and Elsa’s marriage. Neither seemed alive without the other existing somewhere as an influence in the background. And yet neither interfered with the other’s life. There was no need. Geoff thought only of Elsa. When I first knew him they’d been married a year and he was an Inspector. He never really spoke of her, but you knew she was there, guiding him and encouraging. Then one day he introduced us, quite casually, just as though the world wasn’t flying apart.

  I didn’t understand how Geoff could be so confident about it. A woman with Elsa’s grace and poise should have been locked away from the marauding males. Then I saw her look at him, when he wasn’t noticing, and I understood.

  Geoff was the world for her. That was after a year. Three years later it had mellowed into a calm acceptance that they were for each other. I still could not meet her without the same old tingle in my blood, and I was afraid she would notice—had noticed—and would be embarrassed by my feelings. It seemed best if I saw as little as possible of her. Nothing good could come of it. Geoff never realized, and seemed to take Elsa for granted. But why should he be so confident of her? Who was he to accept all this, as he accepted our friendship?

  But he was my friend, and proved it a dozen ways. If he ever realized I was in love with his wife he gave no sign. I invented excuses not to meet Elsa, until I thought he must have noticed. I would have died rather than hurt Elsa, and that was how I saw any relationship that could develop between us.

  And now, after these years of pain and longing, was I to accept that Geoff was just another married man, his wife a simple background to his life, and with another woman on the side?

  “There’s proof,” I said softly. “The porter’s seen him taking a woman up there...a blonde.”

  And there’d been a woman’s prints in the flat. I looked at Elsa. She had spread her fingers on one arm of the chair, and was looking at them intently.

  “But you didn’t know?” I asked. Her head came up. “About the flat at Queens.”

  “Of course not.” She brushed it away.

  I drew a breath. “You’re quite sure of that, Elsa?”

  “Whatever do you mean? David, you’re not doubting what I said?”

  I watched her with agony. The Hollands and Cointreau had been there. The Stravinsky and Ravel recordings were Elsa’s. She saw my doubt and swept to her feet angrily, her eyes dark and bleak.

  “But you still will not accept it?” she demanded.

  I shook my head, not wanting to go on with it.

  “You ask me to accept he took another woman to this flat,” she cried. “Well...maybe I can—given time. I don’t know. But now you’re inferring I knew about it. David, you’re insulting...”

  I don’t know if I looked as bad as I felt. I tried to back out, retreat, anything to wipe the pain from her eyes. “I’m sure you couldn’t,” I mumbled.

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You meant something horrible. I think you ought to go.”

  “I can’t leave you like this.”

  “You brought it here. Now leave it with me.”

  She’d got an old housekeeper and a man who came in and looked after the grounds. Nobody she could cry with. I moved a hand in some sort of tentative offer. She turned her back.

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Where have they taken him?” she asked, lifting her chin.

  “The city morgue. Elsa, you don’t have to go...”

  But Vantage would want to see her. Maybe he would drive over later in the day, but it would be easier if she went there—give her something to do.

  “I shall have to go,” she said.

  “Then let me drive you.”

  “I can drive myself.” And under such emotional stress she might easily crash. I was about to say something but she was watching me calmly. “I can quite well drive myself.”

  I shrugged. It seemed that the longer I stayed the worse it became. I turned away numbly.

  “David.”

  I stopped. Turned.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got to have time.” I nodded. “Give me time, David.”

  I nearly shouted: and then what? Give you time to accept it, yes. I’ll do that. But to become soured by it and cynical? No.

  “I’ll come back at a better time.”

  I drove away from there, not looking behind me.

  4

  From Bridgnorth it is not a great diversion to run through the outskirts of Wolverhampton. The traffic was heavy. I plugged behind a diesel transporter for three miles with the heater shut off, and was glad to branch off into a reasonably quiet residential area.

  They had retained enough of the trees to give the district an element of elegance. The homes were all a little different, enough for each owner to boast he’d got an individual property. The lawns, though, were uniform and sedulously cut every Sunday morning, the weeping willows a favourite choice, with squat stone walls along the pavement and up-and-over doors everywhere. In the summer it would be the thing to leave your car out on the drive, just to show you’d got one and infer there was another one filling the garage, and status symbols bristled like angry words.

  Eldon Kyle had rented a furnished bungalow. I parked at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, certain that I should not be going there, but unwilling to let him think he’d got away with it. Vantage would not have been able to hold him, and unless he was out somewhere working on the details of another murder, he should be home. A snooker player works in the eve
nings. After a few minutes building up my self-justification, I drove on in.

  Or rather, I tried to start the engine and drive on in, but sometimes when it’s hot it’s as awkward as sometimes when it’s cold. After a minute or so of starter-whining, I decided I was making myself conspicuous and went on in on foot.

  He was pruning his landlord’s roses. “You’re too early,” I said. “You prune in November or March.”

  “I may not be here in March.”

  “You may not be here in November.”

  He took it in his stride. “My agent’s trying to fix me an American tour for the spring. That was a very sad thing with your friend.”

  “I wouldn’t let your agent get too far with it,” I advised him. “If we can’t nail you for it, I’ll personally disable you, perhaps break an arm or two.”

  He’d got a very fine pair of secateurs. He weighed them in his hand and glanced at me. “I can go quite a way with these. Self-defence. I wouldn’t try anything, Mallin.”

  He had that neutral voice of his going again. He very nearly laughed in my face, but nothing of it appeared in his voice. I could have picked him up and broken him apart.

  Instead, I said: “Just don’t try going too far away.”

  “You’re not offering me another snooker match?”

  Freckles stood out on his nose and forehead. He wet his lips delicately with the tip of his tongue. Kyle was very scared of me. Perhaps he realized how close I was to breaking. But nothing simple like assault was going to end this.

  I left him to it, because it was no good asking him the simple things like how he’d done it. If they’d been his I’d have prayed his roses would die.

  The car started easily enough. I decided for the fiftieth time that I ought to change it, drove through Wolverhampton on to the New Road, and picked up the bright orange Mini at Warley. I pulled in. Breeze had no alternative but to do the same. I walked over and leaned on his roof. His head popped out of the sliding window.

  “You haven’t missed much,” I assured him.

  “It was the fog.” Almost as though he was apologizing. “You were driving mighty fast for the fog.”

  “I tell you what...shall I make a suggestion?”