Once Too Often Read online

  Desmond touched him on the shoulder. ‘I know. Thanks.’

  When they had gone he said, ‘He means well.’

  ‘I realise that. Please, sit down, sir.’

  Desmond chose the same chair as the previous evening and glanced uneasily at Lineham, who was opening his notebook.

  ‘There are a few points we’d like to clear up,’ said Thanet. They had decided that he should conduct this interview. Last night, when Manifest had been so vulnerable, it had helped that Lineham was a familiar face. This morning it could be a disadvantage. ‘First of all, someone rang for an ambulance last night, from this number. Was it you?’

  ‘No. I was wondering about that. I told you – told someone, anyway, I’m afraid it’s all a bit of a blur – I’d only just got in when they arrived. Who did ring?’

  ‘That’s what we’re wondering.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  Thanet glanced at Lineham.

  ‘Just that there’d been an accident, and the address,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘I wonder who on earth it could have been. And why didn’t they wait for the ambulance to arrive? And how did they . . .?’ Desmond’s eyes narrowed. ‘Hang about . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was going to say, how did they get in? But I’ve just remembered . . . When I got home the door was open. My God, how could I have forgotten that?’

  Because, thought Thanet, assuming that you’re innocent, every time you’ve had a flashback to last night you’ll have seen nothing but that image of your wife lying crumpled at the foot of the stairs. ‘Because you were in a state of shock,’ he said. ‘But it does explain something that was puzzling me.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Last night, you didn’t say, “I saw her as soon as I opened the door.” You said, “I saw her as soon as I pushed the door open.” The implication is that it already was.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  ‘How wide open was it?’

  Manifest frowned. ‘Just a few inches, I think.’

  ‘You’d been for a walk, you said.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How long a walk? What time did you leave?’

  Manifest pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eye-sockets, then looked up, blinking as if the light were too bright for him. ‘About twenty past seven.’

  ‘And you didn’t get back until twenty-five past eight?’

  ‘So?’ The first hint of aggression there.

  ‘You were walking for over an hour.’

  ‘I like walking.’

  ‘Where did you go, exactly?’

  ‘The way I usually go.’

  Lineham scribbled as Manifest outlined the route. It might be necessary for someone to walk it later.

  ‘Did you stop at all on the way?’

  Something flickered behind the man’s eyes and there was the merest hesitation. But it was enough to alert Thanet. ‘No.’ He crossed his legs and his foot twitched.

  Thanet was well aware that people are more practised at controlling their facial muscles than their extremities. ‘You didn’t call in at a pub for a drink, for example?’

  Again that hesitation. ‘I was going to, but I changed my mind.’

  ‘Oh? Why was that?’

  A shrug. ‘Just didn’t feel like it, I suppose.’

  He was lying, definitely. But why? It was worth probing a little further, irrelevant as it might seem. ‘Was it the pub you usually go to?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes I go to the Green Man, down the road.’

  ‘It depends on whether you’re going for your usual walk, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. Look, what the devil has this got to do with . . . with . . .’

  ‘I’m just trying to get a clearer picture of last night,’ said Thanet soothingly. ‘And I’m afraid that might mean asking questions about all sorts of things which appear irrelevant. Just bear with me, will you?’

  Manifest didn’t argue, so Thanet went on, ‘So, you’d been for your usual walk. For some reason you decided not to call in at the pub as you often do – what time would that have been, by the way?’

  ‘I’m not sure, exactly. I’ve never timed it.’

  ‘Approximately, then?’

  ‘Ten or a quarter past eight?’

  ‘The pub is well over half way, then? You said you left here at 7.20 and if you reached the pub at 8.15 and got home again at 8.25, just before the ambulance arrived, it must be only about ten minutes’ walk away from here by the shortest route.’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. I never do the circuit that way around.’

  ‘Which pub did you say it was?’

  ‘The Harrow.’

  And Manifest hadn’t wanted to tell him that, either, but hadn’t known how to refuse. What was going on here? ‘So you got home about ten minutes later. Would you tell me what happened then? I’m sorry. I know this is going to be painful for you.’

  Manifest compressed his lips, narrowed his eyes and frowned, remembering. ‘So far as I can recall,’ he said slowly, ‘there was nothing out of the ordinary until I got close to the front door. Then I saw it was ajar and that did alarm me. Jess would never have left it open when she was alone in the house at night. I called out to her as I pushed it open and then I . . . There she . . .’ Manifest swallowed hard, over and over, as if to suppress incipient nausea.

  Thanet waited for a few moments while Manifest got himself under control again, then said, ‘Now, I want you to think carefully. Did you touch your wife at all? Move her in any way, to even the slightest degree?’

  This was very important. If he had, it was possible that Jessica might have been alive until that moment, that an understandable but fatal effort to check whether or not she really was dead, or a spontaneous gesture of despairing love, such as gathering her up in his arms, might have finally severed a badly damaged spinal cord. In which case, Manifest might in all innocence have caused her death.

  But he was shaking his head emphatically. ‘I saw a St John’s Ambulance film once and it said if it looks as though someone’s neck is broken the last thing you should do is touch them. And it was obvious right away . . . I mean, the angle of her head . . .’

  ‘Good,’ said Thanet. ‘You did exactly the right thing. Now, I have to ask you this. Do you know of anyone who might want to harm your wife?’

  Manifest pushed a hand wearily through his hair. ‘The obvious explanation, so far as I can see, is that it was a burglary which went wrong. And even so, of course, it might have been a pure accident.’

  ‘Quite. Well, we shall see. It’s early days yet.’

  Manifest hesitated, then said slowly, ‘But there is one other possibility.’

  ‘Oh? What?’

  ‘My wife was convinced that someone had been following her lately. I’m afraid I didn’t believe her – thought she was imagining things. I never saw any sign of anything like that. But perhaps I should have listened, paid more attention. If I had . . . Oh God, if I had, perhaps she’d still be alive.’ And he buried his face in his hands.

  Thanet and Lineham exchanged glances.

  ‘Des,’ said Lineham. ‘Could you tell us a bit more about this?’

  Manifest shook his head but he did straighten up again and take several deep breaths in an effort to calm down.

  ‘Try, will you?’ Lineham urged. ‘It could be important.’

  ‘There’s nothing more to tell, really. She did make a complaint to the police, but nothing came of it.’

  ‘Did she ever describe the man to you – I assume it was a man?’ said Thanet

  ‘We both assumed it was a man. But no, that was half the trouble. It was just an impression, really. A feeling she had. And twice at night she was convinced she’d seen a prowler outside, watching.’

  ‘In the garden, you mean? Looking through the windows?’

  ‘Once she thought she’d seen a movement in the back garden. I went outside to look, but there was no one there. And a
nother time she thought she saw someone behind the hedge across the road. But that time I was out.’

  ‘I see. Well, we’ll look into it. There’s only one other point to clear up at the moment, I think, then we’ll leave you in peace. When we were talking to you last night, you said – let me see if I can remember the words exactly: “I don’t understand. I mean, why was he there? He should have been here.” What did you mean?’ Thanet could tell immediately by the guarded look which had appeared in Manifest’s eyes as he was speaking that another lie was coming.

  ‘I can’t imagine. I was very confused. I didn’t really know what I was saying.’

  • • •

  ‘Well,’ said Lineham as they walked down the path to the gate. ‘I don’t know what you think, but if he had anything to do with her death he’s missed his vocation. He should be on the stage.’

  One workman was now pecking away half-heartedly at the hole with his pickaxe while the other stood by, leaning on his spade.

  ‘Don’t overdo it, will you?’ murmured Lineham after they were past them. ‘On the other hand,’ he went on, returning to what he was saying, ‘it’s obvious he was lying in his teeth when you asked him about the pub.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder why?’

  ‘I was thinking about that. What if he wasn’t as fond of his wife as people are making out? After all, she didn’t treat him too well by all accounts, did she? And what if he’d found himself another girlfriend, was in the habit of meeting her in the pub, and didn’t want to mention the pub because he thought if he did we might check up and find out about her?’

  ‘Possible. But it also occurred to me . . . You know what we were saying, about him having seen someone somewhere he hadn’t expected to see him, someone he had in fact expected to be with Jessica . . . What if he’d intended calling in at the pub, but had seen – either through a window or after he’d gone in – the person he had thought would be here, and that was why he changed his mind about having a drink and came home instead?’

  ‘Yes. That would make sense. In which case . . .’

  ‘Quite,’ said Thanet. ‘We need to find out who that someone was.’

  ‘But if that’s so, why didn’t he tell us about this person? What possible reason could he have for not mentioning him?’

  ‘If we find out who, we might find out why.’

  ‘Shall we go to the pub, ask some questions?’

  ‘No. We’ll get someone else to do that. We’ve got too much to do today. But first, I want to nose around here a bit. Let’s take a look behind that hedge, shall we? See if there are any signs of this prowler.’

  ‘If he exists,’ said Lineham.

  ‘Quite. If Manifest had nothing to do with his wife’s death he’s certainly feeding us plenty of red herrings – open front doors, watchers in the dark . . . Over that five-barred gate, I think?’

  ‘I suppose the prowler could be the young man that neighbour mentioned.’

  ‘That’s certainly a possibility.’

  ‘But what I don’t understand,’ said Lineham as they climbed the gate and worked their way along behind the hedge, ‘is why Des goes out walking in the evenings, when he’s got all day to do it in. It does sound as though he made a habit of it.’

  ‘Unless he has a girlfriend, as you suggested.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. On second thoughts I admit the girlfriend idea is unlikely. He does seem genuinely cut up about his wife’s death.’

  ‘Perhaps it was simply that she’d got fed up with him,’ said Thanet, ‘and wanted the place to herself in the evenings. Remember the separate rooms? Or that he regularly went out when she had a visitor he wanted to avoid.’

  ‘The mysterious someone!’ Lineham had been poking around in the hedge with a stick and now he straightened up with a jerk. ‘Yes! That makes more sense. What if it was a lover, sir?’

  ‘And Manifest went out on the evenings he was expected, leaving him a clear field? Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.’

  Over the hedge Thanet saw Desmond Manifest’s father leave the house and fetch something from the Datsun. The car didn’t belong to the neighbours then.

  ‘Just say I’m right, though,’ Lineham persisted. ‘Say she and her lover quarrelled and he pushed her down the stairs. He panics, rings for an ambulance, then scarpers . . .’

  ‘And Manifest gets back a quarter of an hour later, realises what has happened and decides to cover up for him? I really think we’re moving into the realms of fantasy here. Anyway, it doesn’t add up, Mike. If you’re right about all this, the lover was sitting in the Harrow and Manifest saw him there.’

  ‘But it all depends on the timing, sir! You said yourself that the Harrow was only ten minutes’ walk away. That’s only a couple of minutes by car. This chap could have arrived at the house after Des left at 7.20 and while Des was walking for the next fifty-five minutes there’d have been plenty of time for him and Jessica to have quarrelled and for him to have driven to the pub afterwards so that he was sitting there calm as you please for Des to see when he got there at 8.15!’

  ‘True. Well, we’ll see. It shouldn’t be too difficult to unearth him if he exists. All this, of course, assumes that Manifest didn’t do it himself.’

  ‘I still think that unlikely. Though I agree, we shouldn’t rule it out. It all depends, really, on whether he was telling the truth about the front door being open. Otherwise he might well have rung for the ambulance himself and simply have been pretending that he’d just arrived before they did. What do you think, sir?’

  ‘At the moment I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Doc Mallard didn’t seem in any doubt that he was genuinely in a state of shock last night, and if the business about the door was a ploy to divert suspicion from himself, it was a pretty subtle one. Just to slip in that he pushed it open and leave it to us to pick up –’

  ‘But he didn’t, sir. He was the one who brought it up this morning. He wouldn’t have known that you were going to mention it anyway.’

  ‘I still think there would have been a temptation for him to make more of it last night. Anyway, it’s pointless to speculate any further at this stage. Let’s get a few more facts under our belt first.’

  ‘Look at this, sir!’

  Their little foray had been rewarded. At a point directly opposite the Manifests’ house the ground was trampled, the grass flattened, and there were a number of cigarette butts.

  ‘Roll your own,’ said Lineham, taking a polythene bag from his pocket and slipping it over his hand so as to pick them up without touching them. ‘Not many people smoke those these days.’

  ‘We’ll check to see if she did file a complaint.’

  ‘I was wondering, sir . . . That unauthorised parking at the pub . . . You don’t think the owner of that Nissan –’

  ‘The same thought had occurred to me. What was his name?’

  ‘Barcombe. Alastair Barcombe.’

  FIVE

  The owner of the Nissan lived in one of the little Victorian terraced houses on the Maidstone Road in Sturrenden. These had been built in the days when their peace would have been disturbed by nothing more intrusive than the gentle clopping of horses’ hoofs and the rumble of carts, but now, in addition to local traffic, a never-ending line of lorries, cars, vans and buses streamed past on their way to the Channel ports, to the huge passenger station for the Channel Tunnel trains at Ashford, to the new industrial estates which had sprung up to the south of that town and to the Tunnel car terminus on the M20. That the beautiful county of Kent, the so-called garden of England, had become little more than a through-route to Europe, never failed to anger Thanet and all those who, like him, loved the county and had known it before so much of it had been sacrificed to the god of transport. It still boasted some of the most beautiful gardens, the most historic castles, the loveliest landscapes in England, but its long-suffering inhabitants couldn’t help wondering where it was all going to end.

  Double yellow lines and the narrowness o
f the road meant that it was impossible to park in front of the house and they had to drive some way past and turn off the main road to find somewhere to leave the car before walking back. The sun had broken through at last but Thanet scarcely noticed, he was too preoccupied with trying to take shallow breaths in order to avoid filling his lungs with the exhaust fumes with which the air seemed saturated. The houses were small, with only the narrowest of pavements to protect them from passing vehicles. Here and there an optimistic gardener had managed to gouge out a hole in which to plant a climber, but coated with the dust constantly thrown up by passing traffic the shrubs had failed to thrive.

  ‘Don’t know how people ever manage to sleep at night living on a road like this,’ said Lineham as they waited for an answer to their knock, raising his voice to make himself heard over the roar of a passing lorry. ‘It must be impossible to have the bedroom windows open. If you weren’t deafened you’d be suffocated.’

  ‘I suppose you get used to it,’ said Thanet. ‘But I agree, I’d hate it.’ So often, when interviewing people in their homes, he gave heartfelt thanks for his own comfortable if modest home. Though this one, he had noted, was much cherished: the windows sparkled, the paintwork was in pristine condition, and the brass knocker, the letterbox and even the keyhole cover shone with much polishing.

  ‘House-proud,’ said Lineham, reading his mind.

  Thanet nodded as the door opened.

  ‘Mrs Barcombe?’

  ‘Yes?’ She was tall, thin and bony, clutching a duster and a spraycan of polish to her chest and was dressed like a charwoman from a forties comedy, with a turban over her hair and a floral crossover apron of the type Thanet would have expected to be virtually unobtainable nowadays. Perhaps she made them herself, he thought irrelevantly as he introduced himself.

  She immediately looked alarmed. ‘Police?’ Her eyes darted from one to the other. ‘What’s happened? Is it Kevin?’

  ‘No. Please don’t worry. These are merely routine inquiries. Er . . . May we come in for a moment?’

  She looked down at their feet and Thanet saw that not only was she herself wearing carpet slippers but that two more pairs, men’s, were lined up to the right of the door. A thick sheet of plastic carpet protector ran down the centre of the narrow hallway. Mrs Barcombe evidently carried her war against dirt to the kind of extremes he would find impossible to live with. On the whole Thanet tried to accommodate himself to the lifestyles of those he had to interview on the principle that there was no point in arousing unnecessary antagonism, but he drew the line at taking off his shoes. He watched her struggle to overcome her desire to request just that, and waited with what he hoped was an expression of polite expectation.