"Gill, B M - Tom Maybridge 03 - The Fifth Rapunzel 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)

Lisa Bradshaw had loved the almond tree. She had planted it as a sapling, tended it, watched it grow. Now it cascaded its spring blossom in droplets of white on the rough orchard grass. This had been Lisa's private place, well away from the house and not seen from any of the windows. Lisa's refuge when she wanted to be alone.
And now her son's.
Simon had approached with some trepidation, as he had used to in the days when he might find her there. His sickness had gone but the pain, the natural pain, was intense. He wanted her to be there, as he had last seen her. She had been wearing slacks, blue cotton or linen, a light material, too light for winter. But the day hadn't been cold. Sunlight had slanted on her short, crisply curled hair. From a distance she had looked like a tall slim boy, not a woman in her forties. Her breasts were small and her hips very neat. Everything about her was neat. Coolly elegant. It was hard to imagine her doing anything as gross as giving birth. She could hardly bear to touch him. He flinched, remembering.
On that last day, that last day he had seen her, he had sought her out on his father's orders so that he might say goodbye to her properly. His father's words. It was his last day of the Christmas holidays and he was due back at Collingwood. His father had put the luggage in the car and they were ready to go. She had played the maternal role during breakfast, had even cooked bacon for him. And she had asked dutiful questions. Had he remembered to pack everything? Had he enough socks? Whether he had or not was patently of no interest to her. She hoped he would have a 'good term', whatever that might mean. And he had thanked her for hoping it. He had gone upstairs to fetch his anorak and, glancing through the window, had seen her walking down the garden. The maternal role, this time, hadn't included standing waiting for him in the hall. Not even a perfunctory farewell. It had hurt. It always did. But it never surprised. His father had been irritated by the omission and he had sought her out to please him. Reluctantly.
The long winter grass had muffled his footsteps as he had approached. Miserably. Silently. She was unaware that he was there and was startled when she turned and saw him. "My God," she said, "do you have to creep up on me like that?" She controlled herself, assumed the maternal role again. "I'm sorry, dear, but you startled me." She 'deared' him a lot - 'deared' most of her acquaintances, too - half the time, he guessed, she couldn't remember their names. He said he was sorry, too. She seemed to wait for more - his reason for being there. He said he'd come to say goodbye. Obviously she thought they'd already said it, but she extended her hand. "Of course, dear. Have a good journey. Remember me to that headmaster of yours with a name like a bird - Kester - Kestrel - whatever." He said he would and was careful not to point out that you can't remember someone you've never seen. It was natural, perhaps, for men who had just turned eighteen to shake hands with their mothers, rather than kiss. It hadn't been natural when he was younger. The handshake was dutiful and very brief. His father's leavetaking up at the school had been unusually demonstrative. He had hugged him. "It's okay, you know," he said. "Life's a bit of a survival course. You jump a few hurdles, knock a few down, eventually with average luck you arrive where you want to. Your mother can't help being the way she is. Don't let it bother you."
He wondered now, as he stood by the almond tree, what a normal domestic set-up would have been like. His father had planned holidays for him that took him away from home as much as possible. He had gone on various adventure courses. He could absail. Navigate. Pitch a tent. A desert island would hold no terror for him. Nothing physical bothered him. Except sex. Girls, as far as he knew, played a passive role. What if he couldn't do it?
His mother and father had been sufficiently adept, or careless, to produce him. They had been sufficiently in love - or was that too strong a word? - to celebrate twenty-five years of marriage by going abroad together. So with them it must have been all right. He wasn't quite sure what he meant by 'it'. Not just sex - more than that. Had they ever touched each other lovingly? He tried to remember occasions when they had. There had been no flinching away from each other, of that he was sure. He was the one who had to keep his distance. His father's last hug had been unexpected. He was grateful for it. Would remember it.
He touched the bole of the tree. It felt flaky and warm. Tiny insects moved busily in the angle of a branch. The air smelt greenly of sunlight on sap.
This was his place now. He could approach it boldly, more boldly as time went on. The rickety, ancient and very comfortable captain's chair in the summerhouse, just a few yards away from the tree, was his, too. She had spent hours sitting on it, writing sometimes, sketching, or just lying back with her eyes closed. Dreaming. Of what? I needed to know you, he thought. I needed to talk to you. I can't hate you. I can't love you. So why this pain now? This bloody, terrible pain?
He walked back to the house. Away from her. Trying to ward off the pain as if it were something physical outside himself. Something that wouldn't go.
The phone was ringing in the hall.
He watched it. Listened to it. Took it off the receiver. Replaced it. Removed it again before the caller could reconnect. An easy way of shutting people up. He didn't want the conversation of strangers. Not even of friends. There had been quite a few messages of condolence over the phone. Mostly from people he didn't know. And there had been a large pile of condolence cards and letters. Someone, who should have known better and not interfered, had arranged the cards on every available flat surface in the sitting-room. The two on the television were particularly grand, large gold crosses entwined with violets. In loving memory of two wonderful people had been the message on one. In the hands of God had been written on the other. And there had been a verse about the mills of God grinding slowly, hand written in red ink on the opposite page. He hadn't bothered to read beyond the first line. The usual maudlin tripe, he'd thought. Now, glancing in at them from the hallway, he noticed that a draught from the window had blown several of them on to the floor. He went in and picked them up and then decided to get rid of the lot of them. The room without them would look less of a ghoulish shrine.

Maybridge, aware that Simon had deliberately disconnected the telephone, shrugged. He had phoned because Rendcome had told him to. The Chief

24

Constable's reaction to the tampered wreath had been less than calm. Simon, he said, should be told about it. All in good time, Maybridge had thought.

Police matters were normally discussed in police stations but today was an exception. They had driven over to Maybridge's home, which was just a few minutes away from the church, and were gathered together in the living-room. The wreath, with the pig's trotter nestling in a ring of sweetly perfumed yellow roses, was on the mahogany coffee table. Meg, reasonably careful of her furniture, had placed the current issue of the Guardian under it. Why Rendcome hadn't just removed the trotter from the wreath she couldn't understand. Later, she supposed, she or Tom would have to take the wreath back, minus the trotter, and put it on the grave again together with the others.
The situation was disturbing but not unique. Hate mail and the occasional obscene object were all part of policing. Maybridge had been taunted by a lunatic's letter at a writers' conference some while ago. That had had its funny side. This, she conceded, hadn't.
She wondered at what stage she would be expected to invite her three unexpected guests to lunch. She had prepared cold roast pork and salad for herself and Tom. There would probably be enough for everyone. No one, just now, would be keen on the pork.
Superintendent Claxby commented drily that had Bradshaw been present he would have traced the lineage of the pig back to its distant ancestors, given a learned discourse on its claws, minutely dissected its hairs, and then named its present owner. But as he wasn't and as this was probably a final gesture from an aggrieved relative of Hixon's, the Rapunzel strangler whom Bradshaw's evidence had put behind bars, he didn't see much point in bothering with it.
"All the same," Rendcome persisted, "a final gesture or not, Simon should be aware of it. We would be failing in our duty if we didn't tell him. His father would wish it."
It was easy, Meg thought, to attribute attitudes to the dead. Peter might or might not wish it. Lisa wouldn't care. "If it were David," she said, "and that wreath had been Tom's, I'd put that nasty piece of meat in the bin and not tell David a word about it."
Maybridge smiled at her. And I'd give you my celestial blessing, he thought, if I were anywhere around.
"Ah, but as David's mother that would be your prerogative," Rendcome pointed out. "If Mrs Bradshaw were here the decision would be hers."
Lisa's decisions about anything were, to put it mildly, bizarre. Obviously Rendcome hadn't known her. She felt impatient with him, and with Tom, too. Tom should have refused to make the phone call. What would he have said if Simon had answered? "Someone has desecrated the Chief Constable's wreath and he's hopping mad?" The fact that it was a wreath from the local constabulary and with a few appropriate lines written on the mourning card in Rendcome's careful script added insult to injury, she guessed. Had it been the vicar's wreath it wouldn't have rankled so much.
It crossed her mind that someone at headquarters might not have liked Bradshaw. A policeman could have been responsible. She looked thoughtfully at Sergeant Radwell, who had found it. The trotter hadn't lain on top of the rosebuds, it had been semi-concealed beneath them. Radwell must have done a little probing.
Why?
Radwell, who had been sitting in silence for the last ten minutes, was debating whether or not to point out the obvious or to shut up about it. Superintendent Claxby had rightly praised Professor Bradshaw's forensic skill in his take-off of him just now, but he hadn't suggested that Bradshaw would have removed the trotter and looked at the square of greaseproof paper that was under it - as he had. None of the senior policemen, not even his immediate boss, had done so. He suggested now, rather diffidently, that he should.
Maybridge, aware that the young sergeant rarely spoke out of turn unless he had good reason to, complied. The piece of paper, grubby and distinctly unpleasant, had something scrawled on it in pencil. It was difficult to make it out. He took it over to the window and read, holding it up to the light:

Prov. Chap. 19.9.

He frowned, puzzled.
"Proverbs, chapter nineteen, verse nine." Radwell mumbled. It was embarrassing to instruct one's elders. And bad policy. He had gained his sergeant's stripes by being as tactful as possible and producing immaculate paperwork.
"Which is ...?" Maybridge asked.
Radwell said he didn't know. He had spent some while in theological college before discovering he hadn't the temperament to be a priest, and been teased about it by his younger colleagues from time to time. And by some of the senior ones too. Surely Maybridge didn't seriously believe he'd learnt the Bible by heart?
Maybridge, aware he'd asked a stupid question, looked around for the family Bible he'd been leafing through recently, trying to find something suitable for this morning's service, and then he remembered that Meg had tidied it away in her study upstairs - if tidied was the right word. The study, unlike the rest of the house, was in a controlled state of chaos. Meg's university notes were in a pile of manilla folders on the floor by the window. Her students' essays, separated by elastic bands, covered the surface of the antique cherry wood desk. A word processor, a gift from one of her fellow dons who had recently retired and didn't want it any more, was balanced on a blanket box by the bookcase. The bookcase spilled books like a river in full spate from the bottom shelf. But the Bible was where it usually was. On the top shelf, incongruously sandwiched between two volumes of Rousseau which happened to be the same size and held it neatly.
Maybridge returned with it to the living-room and, resisting the temptation to look it up himself, he handed the Bible to Rendcome.
Rendcome, after a little fumbling, found the right section. He read the proverb aloud: "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish."
The words were chilling.
No one spoke for a moment or two.
Rendcome closed the Bible and put it on the table beside the wreath. He addressed Maybridge directly. "We were both in court when Hixon was sentenced. Do you remember his words to the judge?"
Maybridge did. He had accused Spencer-Leigh of being swayed by the false evidence of the forensic expert - Professor Bradshaw. And then, before he could be stopped, he had turned to the jury and in a sing-song tone, verging on hysteria, had quoted a psalm at them.
The words were memorable. Maybridge repeated them.
"When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his office."
Bradshaw hadn't been in court at the time but had heard about it afterwards. He had called Hixon a Bible freak, unfortunately in the presence of the Press. 'Strangler sings psalms' was the Sun's headline. Pithy and alliterative.