Dead by Morning Page 13

  Tiller stared at him. Then his shoulders drooped and he turned away. ‘I can’t win, can I? I can’t bloody win!’

  ‘You don’t help yourself by getting all worked up like this, that’s for sure,’ said Thanet gently. ‘And I do assure you that we are putting precisely this kind of question to everyone who had access to the van that night. Everyone. Sooner or later the truth will come out. And I meant what I said. If you are not involved you have nothing to fear and everything to gain by cooperating with us in full.’

  Tiller made a dispirited gesture. ‘I’ve told you all I know. But if you want to ask questions about other people you’ll just have to go and talk to them yourself, because I can’t and won’t answer.’

  There really was no point in continuing. ‘Very well, Mr Tiller, I can understand that.’ Thanet glanced at the others. Ready to go? ‘We’ll leave you to get on with your work.’

  Outside they crossed the yard in a tense, embarrassed silence. After a few moments Draco cleared his throat.

  ‘I owe you an apology, Thanet.’

  Thanet said nothing.

  ‘I shouldn’t have interfered. I was most impressed by the way you handled him.’

  Apologies didn’t come easily to Draco and Thanet felt appeased. ‘I admit he had me worried for a moment there, sir. I was glad you and Lineham were present.’

  ‘Tricky customer. And no fool. With a chip as big as a mountain on his shoulder. If that’s the degree of antagonism Martindale was capable of arousing, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if someone grabbed the opportunity to get rid of him. Think it was Tiller?’

  ‘I just don’t know, sir. What do you think, Lineham?’

  Lineham was pleased to be included in the discussion, Thanet could see, but the sergeant was as undecided as he was himself.

  ‘If Mr Martindale happened to be walking down the drive when Tiller drove down to collect Mrs Rankle, well, I could certainly see him being tempted. But I don’t know that he would deliberately have planned to do it.’

  ‘I agree.’ Thanet sighed. ‘If only we had a better idea of Martindale’s movements …’

  ‘What’s your next move, Thanet?’ Draco was still being conciliatory.

  ‘I thought we might go and see Mrs Rankle.’

  Thanet held his breath, praying that Draco wouldn’t say he would accompany them.

  They had reached the front drive and Draco stopped. ‘Right, I’ll leave you to it, then, I’ve got to be getting back.’

  Relief. ‘Right, sir.’

  One foot in the Land Rover, Draco turned. ‘And as I said, Thanet, well done.’

  Thanet raised a hand in acknowledgement and watched the Land Rover drive off.

  ‘Think he’ll give you a medal, sir?’ said Lineham.

  He ducked as Thanet threw a mock punch at him and tension dissolved into laughter.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Pretty uphill work, isn’t it?’ said Lineham as they set off down the drive.

  ‘I feel as though I’m swimming against the tide most of the time,’ Thanet admitted. ‘I can’t ever remember a case in which we’ve had so many hostile witnesses. I just wonder …’

  Lineham glanced at him. ‘What?’

  Thanet shrugged. ‘I was wondering if this means we’re barking up the wrong tree. That it was after all just a simple hit and run accident.’

  ‘I’m not quite with you, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m being fanciful, and I don’t quite know how to put this, but … Well, if someone had killed Martindale, his anger against him would be defused. It wouldn’t still be around. But most of these people, they’re still so angry it’s like handling a lot of unexploded bombs. D’you see what I mean? It’s almost as if …’

  Lineham raised his eyebrows.

  Thanet gave an embarrassed little laugh. ‘It’s almost as though their hostility towards Martindale has been redirected, at me.’

  ‘Are you suggesting we should abandon the investigation?’

  ‘Absolutely not. In fact, the harder it gets the more determined I become to find out the truth.’

  ‘I wonder if there’ll be any response to the TVS appeal.’

  They had arranged for a request for all motorists passing through Sutton-in-the-Weald between the hours of seven p.m. and two a.m. on Tuesday night to come forward.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  ‘That’ll be Mrs Rankle’s cottage, I think.’

  Lineham pulled up in front of a pair of semi-detached cottages. In the garden of one of them, a youth, warmly wrapped up in rug, anorak and bobble hat, was sitting in a wheelchair parked in front of a rapidly thawing snowman. He was leaning forward and patting it.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Thanet, smiling.

  The youth’s head swung around and Thanet saw that he was much older than Thanet had thought, in his late twenties, perhaps, with the vacant stare of the mentally handicapped. He looked upset, on the verge of tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Thanet squatted down in front of him.

  ‘No gone.’ The words were barely intelligible.

  Thanet frowned, trying to understand.

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  The voice was shrill with alarm. A woman was standing at the open door of the cottage. She started towards him as Thanet stood up.

  ‘Mrs Rankle? Sorry, we didn’t mean to startle you.’ He introduced himself. ‘Your son seems upset.’

  She was in her late fifties or early sixties, thin and slight, with untidy brown hair and a worn, lined face. There were deep creases between her brows and she looked as though she carried the sorrows of the world on her bowed shoulders. She wore no make-up and was dressed in a shapeless brown skirt and fawn jumper matted by many washings. She fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and briskly wiped the young man’s cheeks. ‘He’s upset because the snow is melting, aren’t you, Vince? You thought it was lovely, didn’t you? Come on, we’d better go inside, you’re getting cold.’

  She turned the chair and began to push it across the soggy lawn. It was hard going and Thanet said, ‘Let us do that for you.’

  Between them he and Lineham manoeuvred the chair on to the path and in through the front door. Mrs Rankle went ahead of them, along a short passage. She flung open the door. ‘In here.’

  It was a squarish kitchen-cum-living-room, old-fashioned but adequately furnished with central table, china-clay sink, gas cooker and antiquated refrigerator. A small coal fire burned in the black cast-iron grate and there was a wooden armchair beside it, complete with cushion and curled-up cat. It should have been comfortable enough, cosy even, and yet … Thanet, ever-sensitive to atmosphere, looked about, searching for dues to his unease. The place felt curiously empty, bleak. Perhaps it was because the room was not only spotlessly clean but immaculately tidy. There was none of the clutter that Thanet associated with living – books, newspapers, magazines, plants, and no signs of any kind of activity on the part of either Mrs Rankle or her son. What did they do all day in this small bare cell?

  Stupid question, he realised. Mrs Rankle had been removing Vincent’s hat and coat and now she went to the huge television set, which Thanet had noticed but not really registered, and switched it on. A gardening expert was explaining how to care for pot plants. Then she manoeuvred Vincent’s wheelchair so that it was positioned squarely in front of it. ‘All right, love?’ She ran her hand over his hair in a gesture of affection before turning to Thanet. ‘What did you want?’

  ‘May we sit down?’

  She looked around. ‘We need another chair.’ She started towards the door. ‘I’ll get one from the front room.’

  ‘No, don’t bother,’ said Lineham. ‘I can stand.’ He went to lean against the sink.

  ‘You’re sure?’ She sat down in the armchair, Thanet in the single upright chair beside the table. Didn’t they ever have visitors? he wondered.

  ‘As you’ve probably guessed, we’re looking into the death of Mr Martindale, on Tues
day night.’

  He paused. What was the expression that had flitted across her face? Satisfaction?

  ‘And one of the things we’re trying to do is piece together his movements during the day.’ He gave her no chance to ask him why. ‘You were seen talking to him in the village that afternoon … Having an argument with him, in fact.’

  No response.

  ‘We wondered why … Why you were arguing with him, that is.’ He waited for denial, prevarication, outright refusal to discuss the matter. It would only be par for the course.

  She glanced at Vincent who was apparently absorbed in how to take geranium cuttings, her mouth settling more firmly into bitter lines. ‘No reason why I shouldn’t tell you. If I don’t, you’ll hear soon enough from someone else, I’ve no doubt …’

  She gestured at her son. ‘Leo Martindale did that to Vince.’

  Thanet was shaken. What did she mean?

  ‘You’d never believe it to look at him, would you, but until he was nine he was a perfectly normal, healthy little boy.’ Briefly the sour lines around her mouth slackened, then tightened again. ‘One day, nearly twenty-five years ago, we were visiting my mother, in this cottage. We didn’t live here then. We had a council house in Cranbrook … While we were here Vince went out to play. We’d told him not to go out on the road but you know what boys are. The first we knew, there was a squeal of brakes and a crash … We went rushing out. Vince was lying in the road and Leo Martindale’s sports car was slewed across, nose in the hedge.’

  In a brief, vivid flash of memory Thanet remembered the heart-stopping moment when Ben, aged about nine himself, had been knocked off his bicycle by a tractor. His stomach clenched as it had then and he was not surprised that as she recalled the incident, even now after all this time, Mrs Rankle’s hands were moving in desperate wringing movements painful to watch and her eyes had filled with tears. She dashed them angrily away. ‘He’d been drinking,’ she said bitterly. ‘There was a girl with him. They were both all right, of course, but Vince …’ She glanced at him again, immobile in front of the flickering screen. ‘We thought he was going to die. He was in a coma for weeks, and when he recovered …’ She shook her head and gave a cynical little laugh. ‘Recovered! Not a very good choice of word, as I think you’ll agree.’

  What could he say? What did one say, in such circumstances? ‘It must have been a terrible time for you.’

  ‘I can’t tell you …’ She glanced at him assessingly, as if suddenly aware of whom she was talking to, and he could see her wondering whether to continue. Strictly speaking, of course, he had got at least part of what he wanted, the fact that she had a powerful motive for wanting Martindale dead: revenge. He could understand now that look of satisfaction earlier, when he had mentioned Martindale’s death. Even if she hadn’t been at the wheel of the van herself there must be for her a delicious irony in the fact that he had himself been killed in a road accident similar to that in which he had maimed her son. Thanet knew that he should now go on to question her about her use of the van that night, but something held him back. There was more that she wanted to tell him, he was sure of it. It occurred to him that it must be rare indeed now for her to have the opportunity to talk about the tragedy that had surely blighted her life. The local people must all know about it and would scarcely welcome hearing the same old story over and over again, and she could hardly go up to a total stranger and buttonhole him like the Ancient Mariner.

  ‘It wasn’t as though it was over, when he came out of the coma,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It was only just beginning. When we found he was permanently brain-damaged and would never walk again, my husband … He just couldn’t take it, you see. He stuck it out for a couple of years and then walked out.’ Her mouth twisted and she snapped her fingers. ‘Just like that. One day he was there, the next he was gone. Leaving me stuck …’ She pulled herself up. ‘Not that Vince isn’t a good boy, he is. Very loving and obedient, but … It’s just that there’s no relief. You know it’s going to go on and on and on, day after day, month after month, year after year …’

  Her voice was rising and the desperation in her face gave Thanet a glimpse of the endless, unremitting years of selfless commitment she had had to endure. How could she bear it? ‘Don’t you have any help at all in looking after him?’

  ‘A couple of times a year they take him into residential care while I have a break, but that’s all. There just isn’t enough manpower to give people like me any help on a regular basis, it’s as simple as that – especially in a rural area like this. And the fact of the matter is, that so long as you’re coping, you’ll be left to get on with it.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t want him to go into residential care.’ Thanet made it a statement, not a question.

  ‘I’ve thought about it, often. And I have got as far as making enquiries once or twice when I’ve been feeling really desperate, but you wouldn’t believe the waiting lists, for people in far worse case than Vince. Besides, he’s happy here and so long as I’m able to look after him … When you have kids you can’t just opt out of your responsibilities when the going gets tough, can you?’

  An understatement if ever there was one. Thanet shook his head sympathetically. ‘Was there a prosecution?’

  She grimaced. ‘Yes. All he got was a six-month suspended sentence and his licence taken away for eighteen months … It still makes me mad to think about it. Oh, it wasn’t so bad when Mum was alive. Vince and me moved in here with her and she used to look after him while I went out to work part-time. But since she died, ten years ago … No one can imagine, who hasn’t been through it …’

  And with no prospect of relief in sight, thought Thanet. It wouldn’t have been surprising if, hearing that Martindale was back and faced with the opportunity to avenge the long purgatory of looking after a son born perfectly fit and healthy and now reduced to helpless dependency, she had succumbed to the impulse to run his destroyer down. He hoped very much that this was not what had happened. How could he live with his conscience if she were convicted and Vincent’s only prop were removed?

  Come on, he told himself. You’re not here to judge, simply to discover the truth. And whether you like it or not, that’s what you have to do.

  Closing his mind with difficulty to the rumblings of his conscience he said quietly, ‘Mrs Rankle, I understand you borrowed Mr Tiller’s van on Tuesday night, to come back here and check that Vincent was all right?’

  She blinked at the change of subject. ‘Yes, I always do. It’s the only night of the week I go out.’ She was on the defensive now. ‘I put Vince to bed a bit early on Tuesdays. He can’t move about by himself, you see, so he’s perfectly safe. But I do like to check he’s OK, halfway through the evening.’

  ‘I’m not questioning the care you take of him. It’s obvious he’s very well looked after, it’s just that … did you see anybody, on your way here, or on your way back to the pub?’

  She frowned, thinking. ‘Not so far as I can remember. It was very cold, the roads were icy and I was concentrating on driving, I don’t drive much, you see … Oh!’ Her eyes widened as she realised where this could be leading. ‘Just a minute … I was wondering why you’d come. You’re not trying to tell me it was Sam’s van that knocked him down?’

  ‘We’re not absolutely certain yet, but it looks that way, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ She glanced at Vincent then shrank back in her chair, looking near to panic.

  Thanet saw her throat move as she swallowed convulsively and she put her hand over her mouth as if she were about to be sick. Her eyes above it were wide and staring. If she were acting, he thought, it was a first-rate performance. He sincerely hoped she wasn’t.

  Then she sat up again, making a visible effort at self-control. ‘You …’ she whispered, running the tip of her tongue over dry lips, ‘Surely you’re not suggesting …? Oh God, you are, aren’t you? You think I might have run him down.’

  ‘Mrs Rankle, I assure you that at
this stage we’re not suggesting anything. We’re merely trying to find out what happened.’

  A thought struck her. ‘Sam …’

  ‘Several people drove the van that night, Sam included. We’re talking to all of them.’

  Now that she was over the initial shock she was rallying. He could see it in the straightening of her back, the tilt of her head, the hardening of her expression. She was a fighter, he reminded himself. If she wasn’t, she would have given up long ago.

  ‘That’s why you were asking about the argument.’ Her voice was much stronger, almost belligerent as she said, ‘Well let me tell you this. I may have no reason to love Mr rotten Martindale, but that doesn’t mean I’d run him down in cold blood. And in case you’re wondering, I didn’t knock him down accidentally, either.’

  Suddenly she leaned forward, eyes gleaming. ‘You said, “All of them”. That several people had driven the van that night and you were talking to all of them. Does that include Lewis Fever?’

  Thanet saw Lineham, behind her, stiffen.

  ‘What do you mean?’ It was scarcely surprising that she should try to use diversionary tactics, but this could be an unexpected break for them. If Tiller had lent Fever the van on Tuesday night they had both kept very quiet about it. Presumably Mrs Rankle felt no such loyalty to Fever.

  ‘He borrowed the van that night too. He came into the pub, about …’ She put her hands to her temples, pressed them as if trying to force her memory to function efficiently. ‘Let me think. It was … Yes, it was before I came to check on Vince.’ The words began to tumble out as she recalled the incident more clearly. ‘It must have been about, oh, around a quarter to nine. He came into the pub and asked Sam if he could borrow it. He and Sam are old mates … He’d just heard his mother-in-law had been taken ill and he wanted to run his wife over to see her.’

  ‘Why didn’t he use his own car, or his wife’s – I presume she’s got one?’