A Place Of Safety(104)

‘He’ll probably be turning left any minute, Bennet. Heading for Lomax Road, number seventeen. If he enters the house, fine. Just stay close. If he tries to leave, detain him. We’re only five minutes or so behind you.’

‘Right, sir.’

As DS Bennet switched off, the Humber moved away from the traffic lights, followed by about a dozen cars, including the Alvis. The Escort was held up by a red light but catching up wasn’t a problem. The flow of the traffic was pretty smooth and Bennet could see well ahead. He watched the Humber turn left and, a few moments later, the Alvis did the same.

Turning himself, Bennet discovered that they were indeed at the top end of Lomax Road. But then something went wrong. Traffic moved more and more slowly and finally stopped. Car horns started to blare. Motorists were putting their heads out of the windows of their vehicles and abusing no one and nothing in particular. DS Bennet got out of his car, walked a little way looking ahead, trying to find the source of the hold up. Located it. And started to run.





The Alvis was in the middle of the road. The driver had simply come to a halt, got out and walked away. A little further down, Bennet saw the Humber awkwardly jammed into a too small parking space, the rear end sticking out.

He hurried along the pavement. The DCI had suggested number seventeen. He could hear shouting inside the house from several doors away. On his home patch an excited clutch of neighbours would already be gathering. Here passersby just passed indifferently by.

The front door was ajar. Bennet hesitated. He had been told simply to watch the house but a disturbance was a disturbance. And with the Alvis holding the traffic up, who knew how long it would take the DCI to get here? The volume of sound from the voices, both male, escalated. One was cracking with violence, the other let forth anguished screams of pain which became transmuted into grunts and snarls and panting.

Once the verbals became physical, Bennet decided to act. He wondered whether to call the DCI before going in then decided against it. This half-second hesitation was to prove fatal. As he opened the front door he looked upwards and saw two figures struggling on the landing. One fell backwards against a wooden stair rail. It splintered under his weight then gave way entirely. Bennet watched in horror as a man tumbled through the air, landing with tremendous force on the stone floor directly in front of him.





It was some considerable time before Barnaby was able to interview the survivor of this terrible confrontation. The local police were on the spot a good half-hour before the chief inspector who left his sergeant stuck opposite the White Hart and half walked, half ran to the house in Lomax Road. They had already called out their medical officer, driven the Alvis away, and were now trying to clear the still honking traffic jam.

Arrangements had been made to remove the man on the hall floor, whose skull had been crushed as a result of his fall, to the morgue of the London Hospital as soon as some transport could get through. Meanwhile he was invisible underneath a bedcover removed from the flat upstairs where the argument had started.

DS Bennet sat on the stairs, devastated with shame. When the DCI arrived he sprang up.

‘Sir, Christ, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I heard them - how violent it was getting. I should have gone in before. I just didn’t know whether - what . . . I’m so sorry.’

Barnaby crouched down, lifted a corner of the bedcover and carefully replaced it. He touched Bennet lightly on the shoulder as he went by.

‘No need to be sorry, Sergeant.’





Several hours later, extensive liaising having taken place between the Thames Valley and the Metropolitan police forces, Valentine Fainlight, having been formally charged, was released into the custody of two officers from Causton CID.

At the station he washed and changed his clothes for a clean shirt and jeans his sister had brought along. She had refused to go home and had been waiting in reception now for almost two hours.

Barnaby and Troy had been sitting in a room on the ground floor at the back of the CID building for roughly half that time, attempting to get some sense out of Fainlight, with no success whatsoever. In London he had been seen by a doctor, examined, his cuts and bruises attended to and declared fit to be interviewed. He had not spoken there either.

Physically fit, that meant. As for the rest of him, Barnaby was not so sure. Grievous bodily harm was a term well understood in police circles. But where was the definition to cover grievous mental harm? For that was surely what the end of Fainlight’s searingly destructive relationship had brought about.

He sat with his head in his hands, his shoulders bowed. He had been offered food, tea, water and had refused all, shaking his head without speaking. Barnaby had given up switching the tape on and off. Now he tried again.