Forests of the Night (25 page)

Freda Palfrey had been carted off to the cells. She went quietly, with barely a word, her face revealing none of her feelings or inner turmoil. It was as though all her emotions had been squeezed out of her.

David was chuckling by the side of me as the car rocked gently from side to side as it sped down the narrow streets. ‘Old Dirty Knight won't like this at all,' he said with some delight. ‘He was convinced that Fraser was the guilty party.…'

‘Or had convinced himself that was the truth,' I ventured.

David nodded. ‘You are probably right. In essence he's a good copper, but he does tend to jump to conclusions and then refuses to budge.' He chuckled again. ‘He'll hate you even more now you've proved him wrong.'

‘I'm not sure I've proved anything. I am as surprised as anyone that Mrs Palfrey is our man … so to speak.'

‘Right you are. A real turn up for the book. Still, she's not right in the head, is she?'

‘Not now, I suppose. An obsessive mother unable to cut the apron strings … I can't help but feel sorry for her.'

‘Come on, boy, she was not that innocent. She was a cunning old girl and everything was coldly premeditated.'

‘But her actions were selfless. She was saving her daughter and punishing her corrupters.'

‘Saving her daughter…? By stabbing her in the chest? I can't cope with that kind of twisted psychology.'

‘If it's any consolation, I don't understand it fully myself,' I said, lighting up a cigarette. While waiting for the ambulance Epstein had told me in great detail about her visit to his flat and all that she had said to him, had confessed to him. Freda Palfrey had just sat there listening to his recital and never said a word. Her face was a blank sheet registering no emotion. In fact, I wondered if she was actually listening to him. Probably not. She was most likely lost in some other world where her kind of justice made sense.

‘Do you think the father was in on it?' asked David.

I shook my head. ‘I don't think so. If they were both involved, why on earth come to me to investigate the matter?'

‘People who are not right in the head do many strange things.'

I blew a wreath of grey smoke at my own reflection in the darkened window of the car. ‘No, I think he was as naïve and innocent as the rest of us. He loved Pammie too much to hurt her in that way. I wonder how he'll take it.'

‘Well, we'll soon know,' David observed, as the patrol car pulled up outside the Palfrey home. Not much of a home now.

I glanced at my watch. It was just coming up to 2 a.m. My God, I thought, what a long night it's been.

David instructed the driver to stay in the car, while we went to rouse Mr Palfrey. I did not envy David's job of passing on the terrible news that his wife was in custody on the charge of murder and that one of the victims was his daughter.

He wrapped hard on the front door and rang the bell. We heard the notes of ‘Greensleeves' playing faintly. We waited. There was no response. With the blackout curtains, it was almost impossible to tell whether anyone had been roused by the noise. David tried again, shouting the word, ‘Police' through the letter box.

Nothing.

He gave me a quizzical look. ‘Not happy about this. Reckon I'll have to make a forced entry.'

I nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Well, before you do yourself some personal injury trying to break the door down, let me have a go with my portable burgling kit,' I said, taking out my sturdy bit of wire.

In less than two minutes I had released the lock and we were able to enter the Palfrey household. The first thing we became aware of was a smell, faint but definite.

‘Gas,' I said.

‘Bloody right,' he cried, opening the first door he came to – the one leading to the sitting-room. He had difficulty pushing the door back because something was obstructing it: a row of cushions.

The smell of gas grew stronger. The room was full of it.

‘Don't, for God's sake, turn the light on,' I cried. ‘One spark and we could be up there with the Spitfires.'

‘I'll use my torch. I'll go outside to switch it on.'

This done, we both clamped out handkerchiefs to our faces and peered inside the room. The beam of David's torch soon fell upon the body of Eric Palfrey; he was lying by the gas fire, his head resting on a cushion. The unlit fire hissed gas at us.

I tackled the gas fire, switching it off, while David pulled back the blackout curtains and threw open the windows. For a while we both stood with our heads outside the windows breathing deeply, filling our lungs with untainted cold night air. After ten minutes or so, the atmosphere had cleared in the room sufficiently for us to lift the body and carry it into the hallway and then out on to the path outside. Of course, it was too late. Eric Palfrey was dead. No doubt it was what he had wanted: to float to his Maker on a sea of fumed sleep.

In his hand he clutched a piece of paper. Gently I unfolded his fingers back and released it.

The paper contained just two words. ‘I know.'

thirty-six

Dawn was creeping into the sky when a police car dropped me off at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. I thanked the driver for the lift. He gave me a weary look to indicate that he was only obeying orders and that he'd had no choice in the matter. I had hardly stepped out of the vehicle when he slammed it into gear and with a squeal of tyres he drove off at speed.

For some time I watched the car, its tail lights flashing angrily occasionally as the tired driver braked for some reason or other, until it had disappeared from sight – and I was alone. A solitary figure in a lonely landscape. The shapes of clouds could now be discerned overhead, but the lightening sky showed no traces of blue. It was to be another grey day. In more ways than one.

As I began to trudge back to my flat, I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and emptiness. In many ways, I had only been a peripheral player in the Palfrey tragedy but events had affected me more than I could articulate. A family had destroyed itself for no real reason. And there were other casualties as well. With a measure of tolerance, understanding and some undemanding love, none of this would have happened.

I shrugged. What did I know? I was just the poor bastard who'd tried to untie the knots in this bloody ball of string. I had failed. Well, all but. I reckoned I might get a Christmas card from Leo Epstein. I grinned weakly at the thought.

I spotted an empty milk bottle in the gutter and for no explainable reason I stepped into the kerb and gave it a hearty kick. It sailed into the air and landed in the middle of the road where it smashed into a thousand pieces. It gave me great satisfaction to see the shiny fragments scatter across the tarmac. It lightened my soul.

As I got to the corner of Priors Court, I passed Sammy Wills with his milk cart. I patted his horse, Marcel, and blagged a free pint of milk from Sammy.

‘Don't drink it all at once, Master Johnny,' said old Sammy, giving me his toothless grin.

‘This has to last me the week,' I called back over my shoulder.

‘Away with you,' he called, pulling his old nag further down the street.

When I arrived at the entrance to Hawke Towers, I found it blocked by a bundle of rags – or what at first glance appeared to be a bundle of rags. It was in fact a little boy, curled in a foetal position, fast asleep.
Déjà vu
time.

It was Peter.

I roused him gently, tugging his shoulder until his eyes flickered open. It took him a while to remember who he was, where he was and who the chap was louring over him. When he did, his face brightened and his eyes shone. ‘Johnny … Mr Hawke. You've come at last.'

‘What on earth are you doing here, my lad?'

‘I've come to stay with you, of course. I've left the hospital. I'm better now. The nurse told me. And she said that they were going to send me to an orphanage. That's why I had to escape. Well, I'm not going to one of them prisons. You won't let them take me, will you?'

He suddenly lunged forward and clasped his arms around my legs and began to sob.

God, I thought, this long, horrible night is still not over.

‘I think,' I said, at length, ‘we'd better go in for some breakfast.'

His wet, tearstained face gazed up at me. ‘Oh, yes please,' he grinned.

*   *   *

As usual the Hawke larder yielded up little of consequence. I managed to find a few slices of bread and a tin of beans. Well, beans on stale unbuttered bread was a speciality of the house. However, it delighted Peter. He sat enraptured, watching me while I prepared this modest feast and then he wolfed it down as though he hadn't eaten for months.

I poured us both a mug of tea. He slurped his noisily and then apologized.

‘Now then,' I said as casually as possible, ‘what's all this about you leaving the hospital … and the truth mind. Remember Tiger Blake never lies.'

‘Except to the enemy.'

‘Well, that's different. And I'm your friend.'

Peter grinned and nodded. ‘Yes,' he said.

And so he told me all about his daring ‘escape' from the clutches of his enemies at the hospital who planned to cart him off to an orphanage prison; and how he reckoned I would let him stay with me instead, ‘kind of adopting me, sort of' because he liked me and we both liked Tiger Blake.

Looking at that smiling little boy, with the animated features and the bright light of hope burning fiercely in his eyes, I felt sick at heart. I wanted to hold him to my breast and hug him tightly until all his demons, all his unhappiness had been squeezed away.

But I couldn't do that. It wouldn't work. Life is not that easy.

‘Well, we'll have to see, Peter, old chap. Certainly for the moment you can call Hawke Towers your home,' I said as casually as possible, playing for time with a false smile in place.

That lie seemed to please him and he began slurping his tea once more.

‘One thing, Peter … you mustn't run away from me again. OK? Cross your heart and hope to die.'

‘It's a deal: cross my heart and hope to die.'

And then another slurp.

*   *   *

After the food and the warm tea, I was overcome with tiredness. Luckily so was my young charge and almost in unison, we fell into a deep sleep in our chairs by the fireplace like two old duffers in a gentleman's club after one snifter of brandy too much.

Pressure on my bladder roused me first and I was amused to hear my young guest giving forth a whole series of variegated pig-like snores.

I gave myself a strip wash, shaved and dug out a clean shirt from the wardrobe. I felt almost human again. While I was doing this, Peter snored on as though giving an inarticulate commentary to my actions. When I was ready, I woke the lad.

‘I've got to go out now. I've a few jobs need doing. I want you to be a good fellow and wait here for me. I'll be back before dark. OK?'

Bleary-eyed, he nodded.

‘If you get hungry there's a packet of biscuits in that cupboard. And you know how to make a cup of tea, I'm sure. When I get back, I'll take you out for a meal at a very posh restaurant, I know.'

‘Really?'

‘Really. There are some Tiger Blake comics I got you under that chair so you can spend some time reading them.'

‘Great. Thanks, Johnny.'

I ruffled his hair. ‘That's OK, kid.'

He grinned back at me. I had never seen him so happy.

thirty-seven

When I entered the cell, Freda Palfrey was sitting on the bed, a tray with an uneaten meal by her side. She was staring straight ahead at some invisible point beyond the confines of her prison, her hands clasped together on her lap.

Her eyes flickered with recognition as I pulled up a chair and sat opposite her.

‘Hello, Mrs Palfrey,' I said, quietly.

She did not reply.

‘You'll forgive me for coming to see you, but there are some things that are nagging at the back of my brain – some things I've got to understand. Things that only you can tell me.'

She turned to look at me. ‘Me?' she said softly with some puzzlement.

I nodded. ‘It might help you to talk.'

She shook her head. ‘I've done with talking.'

‘The police will have other ideas. But their purpose is not mine.'

She raised her eyebrows.

‘I just need to know the truth … to lend you a sympathetic ear.'

She paused for a while.

‘I am not in need of sympathy.'

She meant it.

I tried a different approach. ‘Why did you engage me to find your daughter when you knew where she was all the time? You did know where she was, didn't you?'

Her features registered no emotion but her eyes flickered with amusement. ‘Oh, yes, I knew. As soon as Pamela started to work for Epstein, I made it my business to keep an eye on her. She was my baby and she didn't know the nastiness of the world. Father and I had done our best to protect her from it. But we couldn't keep her at home for ever. So I watched her, followed her, and saw, to my horror, what she was turning in to. She became a tramp, a cheap whore. Years of our care, training and preaching were dispensed with overnight. It was as though she had flung our love and moral values back in our faces. It was then that I knew I had to kill her. To save her soul.' She paused and allowed herself a little ironic smile. ‘But of course I can't expect you to understand.'

I shook my head. ‘No, you're right, I don't understand.'

‘Of course I had to bide my time. Choose the right moment to release my Pamela from her sordid existence. But then events overtook me. You see I never told Father what our daughter had become. It would have destroyed him. He just thought she had rebelled a little, that's all. He was desperate to find her. He was sure he could persuade her to come home again.'