with the chauffeur. All very nice and safe, and when could she possibly have struck up an undesirable acquaintance? But was it so nice and safe? Braidie was sixty-five and past caring, but Braidie, it seems, retired about three months ago. The fellow they’ve got now – I wonder if the Becks have even noticed? – is one Stockwood, twenty-fourish, good-looking and altogether presentable. And because Mrs Blacklock was away at her conference, and Blacklock prefers to drive himself, Stockwood was given the week-end off after he’d driven Mrs Blacklock down to Gloucester, and he reported back only to fetch her home on Wednesday. Annet had the opportunity to get to know
‘And that’s all?’
George said, with his eyes fixed on the roofs of Hill Street outside the window, and the small crease of personal anxiety between his brows, ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to get on to Capel Curig, and ask them to check up on the boys and their camp-site, I suppose. Shouldn’t take them long, we can tell them exactly where they were supposed to be.’
‘I did,’ said Duckett smugly, and grinned at him broadly through the smoke of his pipe and the stubbornly un- military thicket of his moustache; and anything that could raise a genuine grin that day was more than welcome. ‘I should have told you sooner – you can cross off young Mallindine. They were there, all right, both of ’em, we found people who saw them regularly two of three times a day, one couple who climbed with them all day Sunday. Saturday night, around the time we’re interested in, know where they were? In the local, with a couple of half-pints. The barman remembers, because he asked ’em, by way of a leg-pull, if they were eighteen. He says one of ’em looked down his nose at him and said yes, and the other blushed till his ears lit up.’
‘Good God!’ said George blankly, manfully suppressing the thankful lift of his heart. ‘I didn’t know he could.’
‘Plenty of things you don’t know about your Dom, you can safely bet on that. But his friend’s in the clear over this, and your boy hasn’t had to tell any lies for him. As for his crime against the Licensing Act, you take my tip, George, don’t waste it. Save it up till the next time he gets uppish with his old man, and then flatten him with it. You’ll have him walking on tip-toe for weeks, thinking you’re Sherlock Holmes in person.’
‘I wish to God I was!’ owned George, sighing, and rose somewhat wearily to put on his coat. Something was gained, at least, if Miles was safely out of the reckoning. Only let there be someone observant and reliable somewhere in Birmingham at this moment, reading the noon edition over his lunch, and suddenly arrested by Annet’s recognised and remembered face. Let him be able to set another face beside it, clearly, quickly, before that other turned the same page, to swallow his heart and pocket his shaking hands, and ponder at last, inescapably, that it was Annet or himself for it.
‘I’m going to snatch a meal,’ he said, picking up his hat from Duckett’s desk. ‘I’ll be back.’
He had the door open when the telephone rang. Very quietly he closed the door again, and watched Duckett palm the hand-set, his shaggy head on one side, his thick brows twitching.
‘Ah, like that!’ said Duckett, after a few minutes of silences and monosyllables, and emitted a brief and unamused snort of laughter. ‘Yes, thanks, it does. Clears the decks for us, anyhow, and leaves us with at least a glimmer of a lead. Yes, let us have the reports. Thanks again!’ He clapped the receiver back and thrust the set away from him with a grunt that might have meant satisfaction or disgust, or a mixture of both.
‘Well?’ said George, his shoulder against the door.
‘One more you can cross off. His parents didn’t see him for most of Saturday, he came in after midnight. But there’s a girl. A clinger, it seems. All Saturday afternoon and evening she never let go. You can take the story he told to you as being on the level, tyre-tracks and all, for what they’re worth. Whoever knocked old Worrall on the head, your Number One didn’t.’
Chapter VII
« ^ »
The evening paper wasn’t dropped into the Felse family’s letter-box until the last edition came in at about five o’clock. Bunty Felse was alone when it came, with the tea ready, and neither husband nor son present to eat it. Dominic was always late on rugger practice afternoons, but even so he should have been home before this time. And as for George, when he was on this kind of case who could tell when she would see him?
She sat down with the paper to wait for them patiently, and Annet Beck’s face looked out at her from the front page with great, mute, disconcerting eyes, beneath the query: ‘Have you seen this girl?’
‘Anyone who remembers noticing the girl pictured above,’ said the beginning of the text more precisely, ‘with a male companion in the central or southern districts of Birmingham during last week-end, should communicate with the police.’
Bunty read it through, and in fact it was as reticent as it could well be and still be exact in conveying its purpose and its urgency. She sank her head between her hands, threading her fingers into the bush of chestnut hair that was just one shade darker than Dominic’s, and contemplated Annet long and thoughtfully. ‘A male companion,’ ‘it is believed,’ ‘helping the police in their enquiries’ – such discreet, such clinical formulae, guaranteed non- actionable. But a real girl in the middle of it, and somewhere, still hidden, a real boy, maybe no older than Dominic.
They were pretty sure of their facts, that was clear. They knew when they laid hands on the partner of Annet’s truancy they would have Jacob Worrall’s murderer. What they didn’t know, what nobody knew but Annet, was who he was. And Annet wouldn’t tell. Bunty didn’t have to wonder or ask how things were going for George now, she knew.
No one could identify him but Annet. And she wouldn’t. Why, otherwise, should they be reduced to appealing to the public for information, and displaying Annet as bait? He might be anyone. He might be anywhere. You might go down to the grocer’s on the corner and ask him for a pound of cheese, and his hands might be trembling so he could hardly control the knife. You might bump into him at a corner and put your hand on his arm to steady yourself and him as you apologised, and feel him flinch, recoiling for an instant from the dread of a more official hand on his shoulder. He might get up and give you his seat in a bus, or blare past you on a noisy motor-bike at the crossing, and snarl at you to get out of his way. He might be the young clerk from the Education Department, just unfolding the paper in the bus on his way home. He’d killed a man, and he was on the run, but only one girl could give him a face or a name.
How well did he know his Annet? Do you ever know anyone well enough to stake your life on her? When all the claims of family and society and upbringing pull the other way? If he was absolutely sure of her loyalty, there was a hope that he wouldn’t try to approach her at all, that he’d just take his plunder and make a quiet getaway while he was anonymous, leaving Annet to carry the load alone. Could she love that kind of youth? Plenty of fine girls have, owned Bunty ruefully, why not Annet? It might be the best thing, because if he started running he would almost inevitably lose his nerve and run too fast, and just one slip would bring the hunt after him. Somewhere away from
