A Violent End. Emma Page
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Kelsey told Mrs Clayton. She gave a little hostessy nod and stepped aside for them to leave. She followed them out and closed the door.
She walked towards the cream-coloured car and stood beside it, watching with a detached, courteous air as the two men got into their own vehicle. She raised a hand in a gesture of farewell as Lambert drove off, then she got into her car and switched on the engine. Kelsey glanced back and saw the vehicle slip into motion after a conspicuously jerky start.
The Roscoes’ house was not far away but in a neighbourhood markedly less fashionable. A modern detached house a good deal smaller than the Claytons’, the paintwork fresh and gleaming, the windows sparkling in the sunlight, the small front garden smartly disciplined, the little lawn closely shorn, every last weed extirpated from regimented flowerbeds still dutifully bright with carefully staked chrysanthemums, pompom dahlias.
Sergeant Lambert pressed the bell once, twice, three times, but there was no reply. No sign of life inside the house, or–when he walked round–in the back garden.
‘Might be out shopping,’ Kelsey guessed. ‘We’ll get along to the industrial estate, we can try again here after we’ve seen Clayton.’
The electronics factory was on the other side of town and it was several minutes later when Lambert turned the car in through the gates. The place was silent. A handyman armed with a bucket and washleather was cleaning windows. He came over as the two men got out of the car.
‘Mr Clayton’s in his office in the annexe,’ he told them. He gestured over at a small building. Kelsey walked briskly across and rapped on the door.
As soon as he laid eyes on Clayton he knew him for the man in the snapshot hidden away in Karen’s bedroom. He was dressed in casual clothes. He looked poised and alert, with an energetic, highly-charged air.
Kelsey introduced himself and asked if they might go inside. Clayton took them into his office and pulled forward chairs. His manner was calm and cooperative.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked when they were all seated, Clayton facing them across the desk.
The Chief came straight to the point; he asked him if he knew a girl named Karen Boland.
Clayton sat very still. The pleasant expression left his eyes, his look was cold and armoured.
‘I did know her,’ he answered after a pause. ‘I haven’t seen her for some time.’
‘When did you last see her?’
This time there was no pause. ‘I haven’t seen her since she left the Roscoes–her foster parents–and went back to the children’s home. That was several months ago. May I ask what all this is about?’
Kelsey threw it at him without preamble. ‘Karen Boland is dead.’
Clayton jerked back in his seat but recovered at once. ‘May I ask how she died?’
‘We’ll know more about that later today.’
All at once the colour drained from Clayton’s face. He put a hand up to his forehead, leaned forward and rested his elbow on the desk.
‘Do you mind if I have a drink?’ he asked in an unsteady voice. ‘It’s been rather a shock.’ He stood up and went across to a wall cupboard, took out a bottle of whisky and a glass. He glanced back at the two men with a gesture of invitation but Kelsey gave a brief headshake.
Clayton poured himself a stiff whisky and drank half of it down in quick gulps.
‘How well did you know Karen?’ Kelsey asked when Clayton showed no disposition to resume his seat. Clayton took another swallow, topped up his glass and went back to the desk. The colour had begun to return to his cheeks.
‘I expect you know all about the business of Karen leaving the Roscoes?’ he said as he sat down again. His voice was once more firm, confident. He set down his glass with an air of challenge.
‘We’ve heard something,’ Kelsey acknowledged. ‘We’d like to hear your side of it.’
‘It was nothing.’ Clayton made a dismissive gesture. ‘A silly flirtation, quite harmless. It meant nothing at all.’ He took another drink. ‘Mrs Roscoe’s a very strong church-woman, on the puritanical side. She and my wife got together, tried to make a lot more out of it than there was, they blew it up out of all proportion–you know what women can be when they get the bit between their teeth.’ His tone invited understanding, the fellow-feeling of the badgered male. ‘They wouldn’t be satisfied till they’d driven the poor kid out.’
‘Did you have any contact with Karen after she went to Overmead, to live with her cousin, Mrs Wilmot?’ Kelsey asked.
‘None whatever. I gave my word to my wife that I wouldn’t see Karen again, and I kept my word.’ He moved his hand. ‘Not that I had any wish to see her again. I was only too glad to forget the whole thing.’
‘Where were you yesterday afternoon and evening?’
He answered readily. He had spent the day in a large town some fifty miles to the west of Wychford. ‘There’s been a trade exhibition on there this last week, it finished yesterday. I’ve got several customers over that way, so I decided to make a day of it. I called in here first, to see if there was anything important in the post.’ He had visited his customers during the morning, taken one of them out to lunch, spent the afternoon at the exhibition.
On the way home he had called on another customer. ‘I drove home from there. It was around seven-fifteen when I got in. I spent the rest of the evening in my workshop–it’s in the garden, out of the way of the children. I was in the workshop till around eleven, then I went back into the house and went to bed.’
‘Do you often spend the evening in your workshop?’
‘I spend most evenings there. I’ve done it all my life, ever since I was a lad.’ He grinned. ‘It was a draughty little garden shed in those days, I can afford something better now. I had it built specially. There’s no phone in there, no interruptions. I’m always tinkering at something, always getting fresh ideas. I had several ideas yesterday after the exhibition, that kind of thing always sets my brain going. You can’t stop it, you have to go along with it. If you don’t tackle them right away they’re all gone by next morning.’ He grinned again. ‘You could be kissing goodbye to a winner.’
Kelsey asked what vehicle he had used yesterday.
‘The one I normally use. I drove here in it this morning.’
‘We’d like to take a look at it.’
‘By all means.’ He took them out through a side door. The car was parked nearby on a hard standing–the car in the snapshot, Kelsey saw at once. A small, economical runabout, dark green, three or four years old. ‘It’s all I need for calling on customers,’ Clayton said. ‘Easy on gas, nippy in traffic, no trouble to park.’
The car had been freshly washed, thoroughly cleaned inside and out, polished to a high gleam. ‘That’s been done by the handyman,’ Clayton said in answer to Kelsey’s question. ‘He always does it on a Saturday morning.’ He offered no objection when Kelsey asked if he could speak to the man.
The Chief walked round to the other side of the factory where the handyman was busy on his windows. His manner was straightforward and cooperative. He didn’t hesitate in his answers, but neither did he appear to be repeating something recently rehearsed; he showed no curiosity.
Yes, he always cleaned all the vehicles thoroughly on a Saturday morning, he always did them first thing, before he made a start on the sweeping out, the windows, the routine maintenance jobs. No, he had received no particular instructions this morning regarding Mr Clayton’s car.
Kelsey went back to where Clayton and Sergeant Lambert stood waiting and all three of them returned to Clayton’s office and sat down again. Clayton now wore a passive, unresisting air, as if resigned to whatever might be going forward.
‘May