Blast Page 18

  She was surprised, after the heat of the previous day, that there was no sun to greet her when she pulled back her bedroom curtains, and wandering out on to her patio sipping a mug of black coffee, she thought she heard distant mutterings of thunder somewhere above the heavy black clouds which now hung low over a grey uninviting sea. But it was almost as humid as the day before and after a light lunch, which she had to admit to herself she was using as a delaying tactic while she tried to pluck up the courage to do what she had decided to do, she got dressed, donning a pair of blue shorts and a skimpy top. Then carrying her sandals in one hand, she crossed the beach and made her way up the path to the clifftop, hoping that any rain due would stay away until she got back.

  There was no one in sight as she headed barefoot along the cliff path. It appeared that the police had finished what they had to do on the headland and only the blue and white tapes remained just before the old engine-house, draped over the gorse bushes where a breeze had taken them.

  She shivered as she passed the iron seat on the edge of the cliff, knowing that Freddie Baxter had telephoned her from that very spot just before his death, but she forced herself along the path to the end until The Old Customs House reared up in front of her.

  Slipping through the side gate and around to the front of the house, she banged on the front door. There was no response and even after further knocking only the seagulls on the slate roof responded, uttering harsh cries as they swept away out to sea. She frowned. To be crude, she really needed sex – it was eating away at her like a kind of hunger – and it was just her luck to find that Alan was not at home. Where the hell had he gone? Maybe she should just find somewhere to wait until he returned?

  Making her way round to the patio, she pulled out one of the plastic chairs and was about to sit down when she noticed the wooden patio doors. One was not shut properly – insecure just like fat Freddie had claimed. In an agony of indecision, she stood for a moment staring at the tiny gap, trying to resist the temptation that was growing on her.

  She had been given a golden opportunity to take a look around inside while the place was empty to satisfy her curiosity and the reservations that had plagued her about Alan. But did she have the will to seize the moment? True, there was something about him that bothered her, especially after Freddie’s mocking phone call. It was that which had first sown the seeds of doubt in her mind, and although she had desperately tried to bury her suspicions and just enjoy that beautiful bronzed body while she could, the nagging doubts always returned, regardless of what she did. But “doing a Freddie Baxter” was just not her style – and she was acutely conscious of the fact that if she found out something she didn’t want to know, it could destroy everything she had ever hoped for in her relationship with Alan.

  Yet fat Freddie’s mocking words “What do you really know about him?” still echoed in her brain. Furthermore, she couldn’t erase from her mind the memory of a dishevelled Alan turning up at The Beach House the night of Baxter’s murder, with the unconvincing story about being bowled over by a jogger. Something just didn’t add up about the blind novelist, who had even lied to her about his literary status, and she knew she wouldn’t be happy until she found out what.

  The patio door opened easily and she saw at once why it was insecure. The door was warped and the catch did not engage properly. It had probably clicked open again after being fastened. No wonder Freddie Baxter had been able to get in so easily.

  The living room of the old house was cool and filled with the strong scent of the roses which occupied a tall glass vase on the window sill, and she felt the softness of the thick pile carpet beneath her bare feet. The clock in the hallway produced a peal of Westminster chimes as she approached the living room door, startling her for a second and giving rise to a rueful grimace as she recalled how it had also momentarily interrupted her previous night of passion with Alan.

  Waiting for it to finish striking the hour, she couldn’t help thinking of Freddie and the fact that he must have been in this same room maybe just an hour or so prior to his death. It was a sobering thought and she felt her skin crawl as she glanced quickly around her, half-sensing another presence close by, then dismissing the idea as totally absurd and moving on.

  Going from room to room, she was struck by the tidiness of the whole house. It was as though it had had a woman’s touch. Everything seemed to be in its proper place. Dishes washed and put away. The kitchen work surfaces clear of crockery and cooking utensils. Upstairs, the bed made and the bathroom scrubbed and clean. She had gained the impression on her previous visits to the house that Alan was a very fastidious man and the look of the place now certainly confirmed that fact.

  But there was something not quite right about it all. At first she couldn’t put her finger on it, but then it dawned on her. Being blind, how did Alan know when the house was untidy or needed dusting or vacuuming? As far as she was aware, he didn’t employ a domestic of any sort. Yet the place was even cleaner than her own.

  It was too clean in another way too, and the word “clinical” immediately sprang to mind. In short, it was completely devoid of anything of a personal nature. Anything to say who Alan actually was. There were no family photographs. No correspondence lying about. No credit cards. Not even a single bill or receipt with his name on it. So he was blind and wouldn’t have been able to see these things anyway, but surely he would have wanted to display pictures of the wife he said he lost, even though he could no longer see them himself? Despite his disability, letters would still have arrived in the post too, if only junk mail, addressed to the occupier, and she supposed there would have been communications in braille from the blind associations and the welfare and support agencies.

  Furthermore, surely there should have been some evidence to indicate his strivings as a writer? Rejection slips or letters from agents or publishers who were not aware of his disability maybe? A few reference books in braille? So he’d said he used a Dictaphone, which seemed to be missing now anyway, but there were not even any used tapes lying around to support his claim that he stored his manuscripts electronically. In short, it was as if Alan had no identity at all. That he didn’t actually exist.

  To think that she had had dinner with him. Had shared his bed and imparted confidences to him. Had trusted him completely. Yet, in the final analysis, she didn’t even know who this handsome man really was.

  Her misgivings were about to get a lot worse too. She saw the expensive-looking Rolex wristwatch lying on the bedside cabinet in the main bedroom, but didn’t give it much thought at first. So Alan had forgotten to put it on when he went out. So what? But then the realisation hit her. It was quite conventional in style. Not a watch with a braille face that had been specially adapted for use by a blind person. The bedside clock was the same – bog-standard and unremarkable.

  It struck her that she should have noticed these anomalies when she had shared Alan’s bed. She gave a rueful smile. At the time she had been a little bit too preoccupied to notice what was on the bedside cabinet – or anywhere else for that matter – so maybe that wasn’t so surprising. But were these the things that Freddie Baxter had noticed or had he found something more significant?

  Her heart was thudding with a mixture of excitement and apprehension as she carried out a more thorough search of the room. Nothing in the built-in double wardrobe was of any interest except a steel cabinet in one corner, almost hidden behind a couple of coats, but this turned out to be locked. Making a grimace, she checked the drawers of the bedside cabinet to see if she could find a key.

  There was no key. Just the usual handkerchiefs, underwear, socks and trouser belts, which were to be found in most men’s bedside cabinets. But then she frowned as her nimble fingers located something hard under a pile of neatly folded underpants. She carefully lifted it out. It was a spectacle case containing steel-framed glasses. More significantly, there was an appointment card trapped under them, bearing the name of a Truro optician, with an appointment time
of 3.30pm the following Thursday. That wasn’t the last of her discoveries either. Pulling open a second drawer and delving into another pile of underclothes, she discovered a pair of small, but expensive-looking field glasses.

  For a moment she just stood there looking at the “evidence”, her brain clenched in an ice-cold fist and her legs beginning to shake at the knees. A blind man with a standard wristwatch and bedside clock was suspicious enough, but spectacles and field glasses? She dropped on to the edge of the bed, feeling sick and dizzy. What on earth had she uncovered? Who the hell was Alan Murray? And more importantly, what was he?

  But she was given no time to try and work that one out. Hearing a loud whistle, she stumbled to the window and glimpsed Murray walking up the path to the front door, Archie trotting ahead of him off the lead. In a panic, she about-turned and raced back down the stairs, taking two at a time. She heard the key turn in the front door as she reached the living room and only just exited on to the patio in time. Archie saw her through the open hall door as she closed the patio door, she felt sure of it. But even as he bounded into the living room, she was across the patio and running barefoot down the path to the side gate.

  It began to rain as she stumbled homewards across the headland and she was soon soaked to the skin. But she was hardly aware of her sodden hair or the water streaming down her arms and legs. She had other things on her mind. In fact, her thoughts were spinning around inside her head like some crazy kaleidoscope as she asked herself the question over and over again: what the devil did a blind man want with spectacles, field glasses and optician’s appointments?

  ****

  Mick Benchley turned up at The Beach House late in the afternoon in warm heavy rain, exactly four and a half minutes before Lynn Giles returned home from her clandestine visit to Murray’s home. The policeman had left London at just on 7am that morning. He had stopped just once on route for lunch at a motorway services, and apart from being very tired after his long journey he was both disappointed and irritated by the fact that there was no response to the rap of his knuckles on the weathered wood of the front door and then the French doors at the back.

  He decided to call on The Blue Ketch Inn immediately afterwards and he took an instant dislike to Snake-eyes. The barman’s shifty manner suggested that he was someone who couldn’t be trusted, and the mark of the schemer was clearly written into his crafty expression as the detective faced him across the counter of the empty public bar, holding his warrant card up in front of his face.

  ‘Have you a Felicity Dubois staying here?’ he queried.

  The barman shook his head. ‘No one ’o that name, no.’

  ‘A black girl.’

  Realisation dawned. ‘Did ’ave, yeah. Gave ’er name as Denise Cross. Checked out sudden like yesterday afternoon’. From Lon’on. They’s all from Lon’on.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yeah, Emmet what fell off the cliff an’ ’is mate. Feller called Wiles. All from Lon’on.’

  ‘Emmet?’

  ‘Yeah, means vis’tor in these parts.’

  ‘Is Mr Wiles still here?’

  Snake-eyes nodded.

  ‘Pop’lar feller, this Mr Wiles. Lots of folk hereabouts wants to see ’im lately.’

  ‘Like who, for instance?’

  Snake-eyes smirked. ‘Well, there’s that detective woman. Oh yes, and the Emmet staying over at Bootleg Cove. Mary Tresco I think she calls ’ersel’.’ They’s both been ’ere.’

  ‘So which room is Mr Wiles in?’ Benchley snapped.

  Snake-eyes sighed. ‘Tha’s confidential.’

  Benchley could see what the man was after, but he was in no mood to barter for the information. Thrusting his face across the counter to within an inch of the barman’s pointed nose, he rasped, ‘Room number, mister, before I really lose patience with you.’

  Snake-eyes flinched and the Adam’s apple in his scrawny throat visibly jumped as he gulped on his next breath. ‘They ain’t got no numbers,’ he replied sourly, ‘names only – after Cornish coves, see?’ He nodded towards a flight of carpeted stairs a few yards away. ‘All upstairs.’

  ‘And?’

  He scowled. ‘’E’s in Coverack – leastways, ’e was when ’e first checked in.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Snake-eyes shrugged. ‘Only seen the feller once since ’e come. Stays in ’is room mostly – ’as ’is meals took up to him and left outside the door when ’e orders ’em. Real weirdo.’

  But Benchley didn’t wait to hear any more. Turning his back on him he headed for the stairs, thinking that, weirdo or not, maybe, just maybe, Vernon Wiles might have something new to tell him.

  The musty damp smell hit him as soon as he got to the top of the stairs and he crinkled his nose in disgust as he stepped off the landing into a narrow corridor, surprised to see that there were no windows and the only light was provided by a couple of faintly glowing ceiling lights.

  “Coverack” was the first room on the left and he almost tripped over a tray outside with plates and cutlery on it. He knocked sharply on the door, which stood ajar. There was no reply.

  ‘Mr Wiles?’ he called. ‘It’s the police.’

  Still nothing. He frowned and knocked again. The door stirred slightly and he pushed against it with one hand until it swung slowly back to hit the wall with a soft thud. He winced, but there was no challenge from anyone. Curious, he stepped over the threshold and stood for a moment just inside, peering about him. Thick curtains had been pulled across the single window and only the feeble glow from the corridor lights trickled in behind him.

  ‘Anyone here?’ he said.

  Automatically his hand felt for a light switch, found it and snapped it on. Then he simply stood there, feeling the bile rising in his throat as he stared at the double bed. The man lying crosswise on the rumpled, blood-stained duvet could not have answered him even if he had wanted to. Someone had put a bullet in his head, taking half the skull away on one side.

  ****

  Lynn Giles knew all about festering bitterness She had suffered from it ever since the bomb outrage at The Philanderer’s Club. But then it had all been about what had happened to her physically and how that single incident had ruined her life. This time it was different. This time her bitterness was motivated by suspicion and resentment. Suspicion because she sensed Alan Murray was not what he pretended to be, and resentment over the fact that he had deceived her so blatantly, just as she was falling for his charms.

  Of course, she could be totally wrong about him. The spectacles could have been prescribed before the accident, which he said had claimed his sight as well as the lives of his family, but what about the optician’s appointment, the field glasses, wristwatch and bedside clock – not to mention the ultra-clean house?

  Other things occurred to her now too. When she had visited him at his home after their first meeting on the beach, how had he known it was her? All that nonsense about recognising the smell of her suntan oil and her lightness of step just didn’t ring true. Then, the day she had seen him swimming off the little beach below his house, how had he managed to keep clear of the rocks in the cove and not only determine when to turn back, but to know in which direction the shoreline lay? Just as importantly, how had he managed to negotiate the narrow cliff path and steep steps to reach the beach, to start with? And how had he managed to find her house on his own, following the alleged incident with the jogger the night of Freddie Baxter’s murder? None of it rang true and he’d certainly not been walking like a blind man when she’d seen him returning to the house, with Archie trotting ahead of him off the lead, after she had searched the damned place earlier.

  Changing from her rain-soaked clothes into trousers and an over-blouse, she drained the glass of gin and tonic she had poured for herself and went through to the kitchen for tonic and lemon so she could prepare another drink, her mind as much in turmoil now as when she had fled Alan’s house a couple of hours before. Why would someone claim to
be blind and go to all the trouble of acting out that pretence, complete with guide dog and white stick, if it was all a load of rubbish? What would they have to gain, apart from public sympathy and the negligible benefit of eligibility for a disability allowance? And if it was all a con, it must have been a con which had taken some time and planning to set up, particularly where Archie was concerned. It was patently obvious from the way the Labrador acted that he had been trained as a guide dog and you couldn’t just go to a pet shop and buy one of those off the shelf.

  She was getting more and more confused by the minute. She had to find answers. Had to discover whether Alan was a fraud or whether her inherent paranoia was simply getting the better of her, as it had done in the past. There was only one way to resolve the issue too. She had to go back. Return to The Old Customs House and try to get into the locked cabinet in the main bedroom to see what secrets it held. If that failed, then it was a case of trying to get the truth out of Alan by surreptitious means. And the best place for learning truths was in bed. She smiled thinly, aware once again of a familiar itch despite her reservations about her mystery man.

  Her mind made up, she crossed to the living room window and peered out into the rain. It was absolutely sheeting down now and out to sea she caught a multiple flash of lightning. The storm was gathering in strength and crossing the headland on foot in such conditions was obviously madness. It had to be the car, even if that meant taking a much longer way round. Quickly finishing her drink, she returned the dirty glass and bottle of gin to the sideboard. Then grabbing her anorak and ignition keys, she headed for the hall – only to stop in the act of opening the front door, a little voice in her head shouting a warning. “Now, just hold it, girl, think about what you’re doing and where you are going. Think what could be behind all this.”