An Air That Kills Read online

  Table of Contents

  Also by Andrew Taylor

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: Wednesday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two: Thurday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Three: Friday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Four: Saturday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Five: Remembrance Sunday

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Also by Andrew Taylor

  The William Dougal Series

  Caroline Minuscule

  Our Fathers’ Lies

  An Old School Tie

  Freelance Death

  Blood Relation

  The Sleeping Policeman

  Odd Man Out

  The Lydmouth Series

  An Air That Kills

  The Mortal Sickness

  The Lover of the Grave

  The Suffocating Night

  Where Roses Fade

  Death’s Own Door

  Call the Dying

  Naked to the Hangman

  The Roth Trilogy

  The Four Last Things

  The Judgement of Strangers

  The Office of the Dead

  The Blaines Novels

  The Second Midnight

  Blacklist

  Toyshop

  A Stain on the Silence

  The Barred Window

  The Raven on the Water

  The American Boy

  Bleeding Heart Square

  The Anatomy of Ghosts

  About the Author

  A bestselling crime writer, Andrew Taylor has also worked as a boatbuilder, wages clerk, librarian, labourer and publisher’s reader. He has written many prize-winning crime novels and thrillers, including the William Dougal crime series, the Lydmouth crime series and the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy. Andrew Taylor lives with his wife in the Forest of Dean, on the borders of England and Wales.

  To find out more, visit Andrew’s website,

  www.andrew-taylor.co.uk

  AN AIR THAT KILLS

  Andrew Taylor

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Copyright 1994 by Andrew Taylor

  First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Hodder and Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  The right of Andrew Taylor to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN 978 1 444 71677 1Paperback ISBN 978 0 340 61713 7

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Nick and Pippa

  Into my heart an air that kills

  From yon far country blows:

  What are those blue remembered hills,

  What spires, what farms are those?

  A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XL

  Part One

  Wednesday

  Chapter One

  November is the month of the dead. Jill Francis acquired this scrap of information quite by chance and only minutes before she reached Lydmouth.

  The train had rattled out of a tunnel and into the daylight. The wind drove the smoke from the engine at window level along the line of carriages. Jill coughed and put down her book. The window of the compartment was slightly open.

  ‘Allow me,’ said the bearded man in the corner by the door.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The compartment had been full when they left Paddington two and a half hours earlier. Now there were only the two of them. She thought that the beard gave the man an ostentatiously nautical air which did not fit with the rest of his appearance. Perhaps he had served in the Navy during the war and like so many men of his age was reluctant to leave the past behind.

  He laid his own book on the seat between them and stood up. He was slightly built and wore a brown double-breasted pinstripe suit with a poppy in the buttonhole. The suit was badly cut and hung loosely on him. His beard was neatly trimmed and his complexion had the texture of candle wax.

  The train swayed and he steadied himself by holding on to the luggage rack. When he closed the window he was careful not to brush against Jill’s knees. He smelled powerfully of tobacco and eau de cologne.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again as he edged past her.

  ‘My pleasure entirely.’ The man hesitated, which made Jill instantly wary. He waved towards the window and added, ‘It’s a pretty sight, eh?’

  She looked up again, first at him and then through the window. The train was running parallel to the river. On the farther bank was a rolling patchwork of fields which rose gradually towards a range of blue hills in the west. It was a grey day and mist blurred the outlines of the hills. The train was still in England, but the hills must be in Wales. She supposed that in normal circumstances it would strike her as a beautiful landscape. She wasn’t quite sure what normal meant any longer.

  ‘Super, eh?’ the man said in a flat, unemotional voice.

  Jill nodded and allowed her eyes to stray back to her book; she turned a page. A moment later, the man slid back t
he door of their compartment and disappeared into the corridor.

  She was alone for the first time since this morning when the taxi had arrived to take her from the flat to Paddington station. As if on cue, her eyes began to smart with tears.

  ‘Damn it,’ Jill said aloud.

  In an attempt to distract herself, she glanced towards the book which her fellow passenger had been reading. It lay face upwards on the seat. She could see the pages without moving her head. Probably a detective novel, she thought, or perhaps a textbook on a subject like accountancy or surveying.

  The running title at the top of the left-hand page dispelled this idea. It said ‘Aspects of Common Culture’. Jill skimmed through the first few lines, gathering the sense even though the unshed tears made the lines of print buckle and blur.

  . . . is often referred to as the month of the dead. The Dutch called November Slaght-maand, which means slaughter month. This clearly corresponds with the Anglo-Saxon Blodmonath, or blood month. It was the time of year when the beasts were slain and salted for the winter months.

  As so often happens, pagan usages, albeit much altered, have descended into the modern world. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, celebrates All Souls’ Day on the 2nd November, when worshippers pray for the souls of those in Purgatory. Curiously enough, we mourn the millions who died in the Great War in November – on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Strangeways and Foster have shown . . .

  A change in the light, a minute darkening of the page, alerted Jill to the fact that she was no longer alone. The door slid back. The bearded man came in and sat down. She wondered whether he had seen her prying. To her surprise she found that she didn’t much care.

  She couldn’t concentrate on her own book. Since they left Paddington she had taken in hardly a word. Instead she stared out of the window. Now the train was running along the bottom of a wooded slope. The changing colours of the dying leaves brought a richness and a warmth to the dull landscape. The world seemed unreal, like a picture in a gallery or a film in a darkened cinema.

  Jill looked at her watch. If the train were on time, they should be in Lydmouth within five minutes. She wished she were looking forward to getting there. It struck her, not for the first time, that perhaps she was making a mistake in coming. On the other hand, she could hardly have stayed at the flat in London. She had considered making her excuses to the Wemyss-Browns and going to a hotel by herself. But in that case there would have been no distractions, nothing to save her from her thoughts. Besides it would have forced her to make decisions. It was easier to drift.

  In truth, whatever she did would feel wrong. Coming to Lydmouth could be no more of a mistake than any other course of action. The mistake had already been made – long before, when she had first allowed Oliver Yateley to take her out to dinner and feed her a heady mixture of compliments and inside information. Now there was nothing to be done except live through the consequences. She sat staring out of the window and seeing nothing. Instead, she remembered and wished with all her heart that she might forget.

  The tears threatened again. She dug her nails into the palm of her hand and forced herself to concentrate on the view. The train rounded a bend. In front of her and to the right was a low hill covered with buildings. Near the highest point was a church with a spire. They had arrived.

  The train began to slow. Turning towards the window so that the bearded man could not see her, Jill opened her handbag and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. She examined her face in the mirror inside the lid of her powder compact. It surprised and almost offended her that she should look so normal. There was no sign of the emotions churning so uncomfortably behind the mask of skin and bone. She put a dab of powder on the tip of her nose and shut the compact with a click.

  The train hissed as it slid along the platform. Jill got up and put on her coat. She checked the angle of her hat in the brown-spotted mirror beside the fading prewar photograph of Tintern Abbey. Her fellow passenger showed signs of wanting to lift her suitcase down from the rack. She pretended not to notice.

  As she lowered the case, the past sprang another of its boobytraps: she noticed that there was part of a blue label gummed to the lid, and it brought with it the memory of a hotel in Paris; and the memory had the sharpness of a knife. Her eyes blurred again. She blundered towards the door of their compartment.

  The man with the beard slid back the door for her. She heard herself murmuring thank you. The train stopped with a jerk; Jill staggered and almost collided with him.

  ‘Lydmouth!’ a voice cried. ‘Lydmouth!’

  Carrying the suitcase, she walked crabwise along the corridor and joined the little queue at the end. She would have to find a porter if Philip had not come to meet her; she was still weak, and the doctor had advised her not to exert herself physically. To her dismay, she heard footsteps behind her. The man with the beard was also getting out at Lydmouth.

  There was a delay before the door opened. Then the first passengers, a mother with two toddlers in tow, took an interminable time getting off the train. Jill did not look round. She smelled tobacco and eau de cologne. Beneath it she thought there lurked the rank smell of sweat.

  One by one the passengers spilled on to the platform. Jill and the man behind her were almost the last to get off the train. She glanced up and down the platform. To her dismay, there was no sign of Philip or Charlotte. Most of the passengers were already walking towards a staircase leading to a bridge over the lines.

  Jill followed. The suitcase was heavy enough to make her feel lopsided. Unfortunately there was only one porter in sight, and he was crawling up the stairs laden with the luggage of an elderly lady. But Jill was determined not to show any hesitation, because the man with the beard might construe it as a request for him to carry her case. She did not want to show weakness. Nor did she want to accept favours, particularly from a man.

  She climbed the stairs more quickly than she would otherwise have done. There were footsteps behind her. The man’s shoes had nails in their soles which rang against the iron treads of the stairs. He was gaining on her.

  She pushed herself to go faster. The footsteps behind her seemed to quicken their pace. Turning round was out of the question. She forced herself to go still faster. Her head hurt and her breathing was fast and ragged. There was a stab of pain deep in her groin which made her gasp. She stumbled and had to seize the handrail with her free hand to prevent herself from falling. Simultaneously her mind was pointing out that she was reacting inappropriately. The little man behind her had shown her nothing but kindness. But he was a man, and she didn’t want kindness ever again.

  She reached the top of the stairs. Her right arm felt as though it were on fire. The fingers were becoming numb. The last of the passengers in front had reached the head of the stairs down to the opposite platform. A moment later, she was alone on the bridge with the bearded man.

  Her suitcase collided with one of the stanchions supporting the handrail. The impact jerked the handle from her fingers. The case scraped against her leg as it fell. She clung to the rail with both hands. She felt sick. Part of her mind wondered if her stocking was laddered. A door slammed on the platform below and a whistle blew.

  ‘Can I be of any assistance, miss?’

  She felt the man’s breath on her cheek. She smelled the eau de cologne and the stale tobacco.

  ‘Jill!’

  The train began to move. The bridge shook. Smoke billowed from the engine. She looked up. Philip was loping towards her, an anxious expression on his florid face. He was hatless and his overcoat flapped about him. A poppy glowed in his buttonhole like a spot of blood. He loomed over her – he was a good six inches taller than she was – and his size was enormously and shamefully reassuring.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he demanded.

  ‘I – I dropped my case.’

  He pecked her cheek, and the warmth of his lips brought her nothing but comfort. She found it difficult to think of Phi
lip as a man. He had more to do with childhood memories of large dogs and teddy bears.

  ‘You look pale,’ he said accusingly. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’ She watched the man with the beard disappearing down the stairs to the farther platform. Such a lot of fuss about nothing: she felt as though her emotions were no longer hers to control.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. Got held up in some roadworks.’ Philip picked up her bag. ‘Have a good journey?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. How’s Charlotte?’

  ‘I left her polishing the silver teapot in your honour.’ He glanced at her and smiled; but his eyes were serious. ‘She’ll murder me if she finds out I was late.’

  They walked along the bridge and down the stairs to the platform below. The man with the beard had gone. Philip steered her through the ticket hall into the station yard. It had begun to rain – a fine drizzle that cast a grey, greasy pall over everything it touched. The Wemyss-Browns’ Rover 75 was standing by the kerb. Philip opened the front passenger door for Jill and put her case on the back seat.

  Jill stared through the windscreen. The rain trickled down the glass. To her dismay, she felt her eyes filling with tears. This time there was no holding them back.

  Philip opened the driver’s door. The car rocked under his weight.

  ‘Jill – what is it?’

  He moved towards her. He lifted his arm as if to put it round her shoulders. Before she could stop herself she jerked away.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Philip said. ‘I’m quite harmless, you know.’ He leant back in his seat, his hands safely in his lap, and cleared his throat.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jill rummaged in her handbag for a handkerchief. ‘It’s just that – it’s been a bad week – I’m rather tired.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  She turned away to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

  ‘I always say November’s a depressing month,’ he went on. ‘Nothing to look forward to. Even Christmas isn’t what it used to be before the war.’

  ‘It’s the month of the dead,’ Jill said. ‘November, I mean.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I read it somewhere.’ She felt she had to keep talking – partly for Philip’s sake and partly for hers. ‘It’s the time of year when they used to kill all the animals, and when the Roman Catholics pray for dead souls. And then there’s Remembrance Day.’