'Annoyed. We were arguing. He stormed out in a mood.'
'Right. Well, my guess is that he's just cooling down somewhere and will come back when he's ready. You can formally report him as missing, but I have to tell you that the police will take little action. I'm afraid the law regards it as a person's privilege to go wandering off if they so wish. As there is no suspicion of a crime, our hands are tied.'
'I expect you're right,' she sniffed.
'I'm sure he'll back soon,' he added comfortingly, as he watched her uncross her legs. 'Now, about the car. I presume your husband does still own a blue Volvo?'
'Yes, well, it's the company's.'
'I see. And he's taken it with him?'
'Yes. Of course.'
'Does he normally keep it in the garage?'
'No, out on the drive.'
'Right. In that case I will have to call back in a few days to see Mr.
Davison, presuming he returns home.' And if he hadn't? Well, in that case she'd need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, wouldn't she? He'd always fancied older women.
The PC got to his feet and started towards the door. He was hoping that he would be offered a cup of tea, but perhaps the circumstances were too fraught for that. Next time, perhaps. He hesitated, trying to second-guess the sergeant he would have to answer to when he returned to the station after a fruitless mission.
'Have you checked to see if the car is in the garage, Mrs. Davison?' he asked, after a rare burst of inspiration.
'Why, no.'
'In that case, do you mind if I have a look now?'
'If you insist, but I can't imagine Reg putting it away and then going off somewhere he drives everywhere.' She took a key from a hook just inside the kitchen door and handed it to him. 'This fits the side door. Just leave it in the lock when you've finished.'
The side door to the garage evidently wasn't used much. It was seized with paint, and some gardening tools were leaning on the inside of it.
He pushed and the tools fell over as the door creaked open and the evening sunlight spilled in.
The blue Volvo was there. So too was Reg Davison. He was hanging from a roof joist by a length of electric flex. It had bitten so deep into his flabby neck that the skin had met around it. There could be no doubting his determination when he'd kicked the buffet from under himself, but he'd soon changed his mind as the wire cut into his throat. The boot of the Volvo bore the scratches his flailing feet had made as he desperately tried to get them back on something solid.
Our valiant PC looked at the grotesque face, like a fermenting pumpkin, and was promptly sick in the corner. It would come to visit him many times in the next few months. He relocked the garage door and walked slowly to his car, wiping his mouth. After radioing for assistance he sat quietly for a few moments, composing himself and a short speech to the long-legged Mrs. Davison, informing her that she was now eligible for a widow's pension.
Inspector Peterson's parents, May and Joe, had been desperate to give their first born a name to remember. Something with style. A few days before the birth they saw Citizen Kane at the Tivoli and decided on Orson. He grew up hating the name. Throughout his school years he was known to children and teachers alike as Orson Cart. In 1962 the musical genius he shared a surname with came to town and someone accidentally called him Oscar. He made no attempt to correct them and it just grew from there. His wife, Dilys, had thought this was his name until two days before their wedding, when he realised that a before-the-altar revelation might be his undoing. Even so, he distinctly heard gasps of surprise from his friends in the pews behind as the vicar addressed him.
None of the detectives he was now deep in a brainstorming session with knew his secret. The warbling of the internal phone interrupted them and a DC answered it.
'Yes, sir.' He pulled a face, pointed upwards with his index finger and passed the instrument to Peterson.
'Yes, sir, right now.' Peterson put the phone back in its cradle.
'Excuse me, gentlemen, but the Screaming Skull wants me to go up and check if his parting's straight.'
A minute later he knocked on the door of Chief Superintendent Tollis's office and went in.
'Come in, Peterson, and sit down. This won't take a minute. First of all, any new developments in the Reverend Conway case?'
'No sir, not since our morning meeting.'
The morning meeting had concluded less than an hour earlier, so the chances of further revelations were slim.
'Quite. Right then, let me show you what I received in today's mail.'
The Superintendent picked up a large manila envelope and drew its contents out on to the top of his desk. There were three large cuttings from newspapers. One described the death of the Reverend Gerry Wilde, who had fallen down his church tower; the next told of the brutal murder of Father Harcourt; and the third was a front-page splash from a tabloid describing the last moments of the Reverend Conway.
'Obviously some crank, cashing in on other people's misfortunes,' stated the Superintendent. 'Can't think why he's sent them to me, though.'
Maybe it's because you've let all the press know that you're the officer in charge, thought Peterson. He didn't dwell on the thought.
He would have been delighted to hand over this investigation to anybody who wanted it. He could see his retirement date slipping away, like a pair of taillights receding into the motorway fog. This was going to be a big one, and he needed it like the Super needed a comb.
He sat there, transfixed by the three cuttings. Neatly pinned in the top left-hand corner of each was a picture of a mushroom, similar to the one found in the Reverend Conway's top pocket.
'No, sir,' he said eventually. 'It's not a crank. We've got a fuckin' loony on the loose.'
Up to then the investigation into the murder of Ronald Conway had been a parochial affair. Everybody who'd known him was in the process of being interviewed. Detectives were knocking on doors, working outwards from the vicarage in an ever-widening circle. Questions were being asked and people encouraged to gossip. There was plenty of gossip about Reverend Conway.
Enquiries with Criminal Records showed that he'd received a caution for an unspecified sexual assault when he was seventeen.
'I don't believe any of the dirt that's coming up about him,' asserted DI Peterson in one of the morning meetings. 'It's all hearsay. OK, so maybe he flashed in the park when he was a kid. That doesn't mean anything. From then on it's been handed down, following him around like a starving dog. If he'd been a member of some paedophile group, or into SM, we'd have found out about it by now. All the evidence is that he was a decent, devout, happily married bloke. It's not the angle we're looking for.'
'I'm not so sure, Peterson,' stated the Superintendent. 'The leopard can't change its spots. That sexual offence must show what type of man he is.'
'With respect, sir, there are only two types of men.'
Eight pairs of eyebrows shot up. The Super's went so high they'd have vanished into his hairline, if he'd had one.
'Wankers and liars,' the DI explained.
Now the murder was linked with the other deaths the scope of the enquiry widened. Peterson visited Norfolk and obtained the relevant files. The evidence that Father Harcourt was knocked off his bike by Reg Davison was fairly conclusive. The jack in his car boot had almost certainly been used to finish the priest off. To Reg, the archetypal salesman, appearance was everything. He'd topped himself because the hopelessness of his situation, and the disgrace that would follow, were more than he could bear. Gerry Wilde could have fallen down his tower accidentally, but he could have been pushed. It didn't make sense, but murder often doesn't.
There was still a mood of discontent in certain branches of the Church of England over the ordination of women priests, but they hadn't resorted to terrorism yet. And investigations showed that Conway was in favour of them, Wilde almost certainly against. Any Roman Catholic movements in that direction were invariably aborted immediately after conception.
