Deadlock

‘I’ll hang on, then,’ Hamlin offered. ‘I’m off home myself. I can give you a lift. You’re not many minutes further along my own road.’

‘That’s very good of you.’ Conway passed a hand over his eyes.

Footsteps sounded along the corridor. Hamlin turned his head and saw Detective Chief Inspector Kelsey approaching. He stepped smartly to one side of the open door.

The Chief gave him no more than a passing glance as he halted on the threshold. A big, solid man with a freckled face dominated by a large, fleshy nose. Carroty hair, thick and springing, the vibrant colour still untouched by grey. Bright green eyes; a penetrating look, even at this late hour.

‘There’s nothing more tonight,’ the Chief informed Conway. ‘You can get off home.’ He gazed down at him with compassion. Pale and exhausted under the bright light, still with a boyish look.

‘Will you be at home tomorrow?’ Kelsey asked. ‘Around lunchtime?’

Conway stared up at him with a lost air as if tomorrow was a stretch of time he couldn’t begin to envisage. He gave a hesitant nod.

‘We’ll probably be in touch with you then,’ Kelsey told him. ‘We should have the results of the post-mortem.’ Conway gave another slow nod.

‘You’ll want some transport,’ Kelsey added.

Constable Hamlin stepped forward. ‘I can give Mr Conway a lift home. I live out in that direction.’

‘Right,’ Kelsey said. Conway still sat motionless. He wore a poleaxed air as if rising from the table was beyond his powers.

‘Don’t sit up half the night brooding,’ Kelsey advised. ‘Going over things in your brain. Won’t do any good. Try to get some sleep.’ He bade them both good night and went back along the corridor.

Still Conway showed no sign of stirring. Hamlin went into the room and took Conway’s coat from the back of a chair. He held it out.

‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Let’s be off.’

Conway got slowly to his feet and put his arms into the coat. ‘You’ll want to button it up,’ Hamlin said with a kindly air, as if to a child. ‘It’s bitter out.’ Conway obediently buttoned up the coat, gazed about him, picked up the squared newspaper. He stuffed it into the pocket of his coat.

Hamlin ran an eye over him. He looked fit for nothing. ‘Any friend or relative you could stay the night with?’ he asked. ‘I could give them a ring, explain matters. I don’t mind running you wherever it is.’

Conway shook his head. ‘Very good of you,’ he said heavily, ‘but I’ll be all right, thanks. Got to face it some time.’

During the drive home Conway didn’t speak. As they neared Ferndale he said, ‘No need to drive in.’

Hamlin pulled up by the gate. ‘Sure you’ll be OK?’ he asked as Conway opened the car door. ‘Got something to help you sleep?’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Conway said again. The wind tore at him. The crescent moon shed a pale radiance. Conway plunged through the stormy gusts to the front door.

Hamlin waited till the lights came on inside the bungalow, then he drove off. Poor devil, he thought with a shake of his head. I don’t envy him the night he’s got in front of him.

He went back along the way he had come, to his trim little semi in an outer suburb of Cannonbridge. The house was in darkness, his wife gone to bed. He drove into the garage with a minimum of noise. He got out, turned to close the car door.

Something white caught his eye – the folded newspaper, lying on the floor, half under the passenger seat. He reached over and picked it up.

He switched on the car’s interior light and looked down at the paper. After a moment he raised his eyes and stared ahead, then he looked down again at the newspaper, frowning, pursing his lips.

CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_66664e54-b6aa-5566-a300-3dea0bc5efbf)

The wind had blown itself out in the night. At noon, brilliant yellow sunlight flooded in through the tall windows of the Cannonbridge General Hospital.

The pathologist came out of the mortuary, closing the door on the echoing chill, the clinical smells, gleaming white tiles. Chief Inspector Kelsey waited for him along the corridor. They stood discussing the findings of the autopsy. Anna Conway had died from loss of blood. Both wrists had been neatly slit with a keen-edged instrument.

‘A pocket knife,’ Kelsey confirmed. They had found the open knife in the bath, its blades razor-sharp.

Conway had identified the knife as belonging to him. He had had it for some time, had scarcely ever used it. It was kept with other oddments in a small drawer of the dressing table in the bedroom; the blades had always been very sharp. He clearly recalled drawing his wife’s attention to the fact some weeks ago when he saw her picking up the knife. She had made no comment, had merely replaced the knife in the drawer.

The pathologist went on to say that Anna had ingested a quantity of assorted drugs, a mix of the standard medications she had been prescribed: anti-depressants, sleeping-pills, tranquillizers. A sizeable quantity but by no means a lethal dose, washed down with a milky chocolate drink, strong and sweet. There was nothing else in the stomach.

The effect of the drugs would be to induce a drowsy lethargy, drifting into a deep sleep, from which, in the ordinary way, she would have awakened in due course without ill effects.

Kelsey nodded as he listened. It all squared with what Conway had told them, that Anna had eaten and drunk nothing before he left the house at seven-fifteen yesterday morning. This was in accordance with Anna’s usual practice. Conway regularly left for work while his wife was still in bed – as often as not, still asleep. It had never been his habit to take her a cup of tea or any other kind of hot drink in bed. She had never been accustomed to it, didn’t want it.

Yesterday morning Anna had been woken by the arrival of Garbutt’s car, the sound of voices. Conway told her about the fruit, the present of jam. She had insisted on getting up to thank Garbutt herself.

The pathologist was of the opinion that Anna had died around an hour to an hour and a half after swallowing the drugs and the chocolate drink. The delay had in all probability been deliberate, to allow the medication time to take effect, so that when she did step into the bath she would feel no disabling agitation, would be able to deal calmly enough with the unpleasant business of slitting her wrists.

Kelsey cast his mind back to the estimated time of death given to them by the police doctor summoned to Ferndale. It was scarcely ever possible to be precise in such matters but in the case of Anna Conway it was particularly difficult. The bathroom was heated, the body had lain a considerable time in water at first hot, gradually cooling. The doctor’s best estimate – and it could be no more than a very rough estimate, he strongly emphasized – was that death had occurred between eight and eleven on Monday morning.

The Chief was very much inclined to put the time of death towards the latter rather than the earlier part of this three-hour period. It had been a dark morning. There had been no light on in the bathroom when Garbutt kicked the door in. Anna would surely have switched the light on if she’d gone into the bathroom before nine-thirty or ten. Kelsey couldn’t see a young woman like Anna Conway taking her life in the dark.

It was well after one o’clock when Detective Sergeant Lambert drove the Chief over to Ferndale to give Conway the results of the autopsy. The Chief had eaten nothing since a sketchy breakfast; post-mortems always destroyed his appetite.

He gazed unseeingly out as they drove through the spectacular colours of the autumn landscape. A fair proportion of self-inflicted deaths would appear to be unintentional, the attempt being in the nature of a cry for help, made in the sure confidence of being found in time, dragged back from the brink. But some accident, some chance or whim takes a hand. The person cast all unknowing in the role of rescuer doesn’t behave as expected. He meets a friend, stops for a chat. He is seized by hunger or thirst, he steps into a cafe. Or he merely catches a later bus than usual. The door opens too late, there is no rescue.

Then there was the other group, where the attempt was far removed from any kind of play-acting, very serious indeed, the would-be suicide making absolutely certain of not being found too early, not being dragged back, carefully choosing a time when there was no chance whatever of that door opening.

It seemed to Kelsey that Anna Conway’s death fell unmistakably into that second category.

When they reached Ferndale Kelsey got out of the car and paused before pressing the doorbell. He glanced round the garden. It wore a melancholy appearance: ragged clumps of old perennials, untidy borders. A wheelbarrow half full of clippings was visible over by the shrubbery. On the ground beside it lay a billhook and a pair of shears.

Conway answered their ring at the door. He had been in the kitchen, clearing away the remains of a late lunch. He looked drained and apathetic but in control of himself.

He offered them coffee, asked if they had eaten – it wouldn’t take him many minutes to knock up a few sandwiches. He couldn’t offer them a drink, he didn’t touch alcohol himself, never kept any in the house.

Kelsey declined the offer of sandwiches but would be glad of coffee. Conway carried the tray along to the sitting room. He saw Kelsey’s eye rest on the photograph of Anna on the mantelpiece.

‘That was taken on our honeymoon.’ Conway’s voice strove for composure. ‘We had a week by the sea in February.’ He mentioned a sheltered resort on the south coast. He looked across at the photograph. ‘It was taken in one of those instant photo booths. That was the best one of her, I had it enlarged.’ He handed round the coffee.

As Kelsey gave him the results of the autopsy Conway sat in silence, his head lowered. He looked up when the Chief had finished; distress showed clearly in his face.

‘What time do you believe Anna took the pills?’ His tone was urgent and unsteady. ‘Do you think it was soon after I left the house?’ A terrible thing to have to live with, Sergeant Lambert thought: someone so close to you on the very brink of self-destruction, but you noticed nothing out of the ordinary, you kissed her goodbye and went blithely off for the day, leaving her in that dreadful state of despair, utterly alone.

The Chief did his best to let Conway down gently. ‘There’s no reason to suppose it was soon after you left.’ He explained in greater detail why it was impossible to be exact about timing. ‘It could have been as late as nine-thirty when she took the tablets. She may have gone back to bed after you left. She could have dozed off, had a bad dream, perhaps, or woken in a fit of panic. She could have made her decision on a sudden impulse that you couldn’t possibly have foreseen.’

The Chief shook his head. ‘No way you can get inside someone else’s head, fathom out their thought processes, however close you are to them. It does no good at all to start blaming yourself. There was no reason why you should have been able to guess what was in the wind.’

Conway’s expression lightened fractionally.