A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Page 4

  “I didn’t want to talk about the murder.”

  She ran her eyes over the imitation uniform, frowning. Then she considered me with deep and distrustful eyes. “Then what?”

  “The robbery.”

  “Somebody pinched something?”

  “You know they have. The inspector mentioned it.”

  “That woman?” She grimaced. “Bossy bitch. I thought she was just being clever. Inspector, is it?”

  “She is clever. But she’d be too busy to connect you with the robbery.” While she was thinking about that, I eased my way in. I was finding that in this respect the leg was useful. I was playing shamelessly on everybody’s sympathy, and adding my natural bulk to the awkwardness, to make a sort of shuddering battering ram.

  Nobody had cleaned the blood from the carpet. She had washed and she had dressed, but I doubted that she had had any sleep. She was wearing no make-up.

  She turned away from me and walked across the room. Then she turned back and watched me. I stood with the stick propping me up.

  “Been here long?” I asked.

  “A couple of months.”

  “I had the impression it was less.” She caught on.

  “We move. Moved a lot, place to place. I said that. You get so’s it’s too much trouble to straighten a picture, never knowing when…”

  “Never knowing?”

  She blinked, then smiled. The smile started in her eyes, stepped back into her lifted eyebrows for a run at it and creased its way all down her face, puckering the tip of her nose, broadening the already wide upper lip. A dimple appeared in her left cheek.

  “You’re being too clever. Why not just ask? Yes, I knew what my husband did, but I didn’t care. I didn’t get involved.”

  “I find it difficult to believe, that you didn’t care.”

  “It was his work. His business.”

  “Murder is a business?”

  “He wasn’t a murderer.”

  “Oh?”

  “He gambled. The stakes were high. Usually he won.”

  “But not this time.”

  “I’ve had to nurse him, many times. It was not always easy.”

  “For you, you mean?”

  “For him. But he was a strong man, a real man. He had courage. He was proud.”

  She meant proud in a different way, but I picked up on it, and twisted it. “Did he boast of it, then? To you?”

  She half turned away. I thought there was pain in her eyes. “Why don’t you sit down?” She was sarcastic, resenting me. “Rest your poor leg.”

  I moved round and sat. The chair was by the window, so that I could examine her face.

  “But he did come to you with pride?”

  “Any business man — in the city — might boast to his wife of a killing.”

  “Mmm!” I agreed, trying to appreciate her humour. But her face was placid, her eyes wide with innocence. “And he was jealous?”

  “He loved me…passionately.”

  “Possessively?”

  “He allowed me my freedom.” She moved slowly across and lowered herself onto the Swedish settee. She had complete self-possession. Her hand delicately arranged her skirt, I thought as a means to direct her gaze away from me. “You see, I’m being quite frank.”

  I wondered why. “Because you’ve already told this to the police?”

  “They were more concerned…” She paused. “But you said you were not interested in his death.”

  “I’m not. I’m working round to Larry.”

  “You mean you’ve seen him?”

  “I’ve told him Henry is dead. He didn’t seem relieved.”

  “I don’t see why he should be.”

  “If he’d known Henry was a killer, he’d be relieved.”

  She bit her lip and made a sudden, angry movement. “I had my own life.”

  “But Henry wouldn’t be pleased.”

  “D’you think I’m going to weigh every gesture and smile, because Henry was Henry?” she demanded. “Couldn’t I ever speak to another man, or dance with him…”

  “There’ve been others?” I asked.

  “Some.”

  “And Henry wasn’t pleased then?”

  “He was…I think…afraid they’d get at him through me.”

  “They?”

  She gestured, smiling in puzzlement. “Everybody. Henry was very much alone.”

  “And very much hated, no doubt. But he had you.”

  “I don’t think he believed that.”

  “Perhaps he was correct.”

  Her mouth was abruptly hard and angry. Her eyes were bright. “You mean Larry? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Just a pick-up?” I asked. “An episode?”

  “Is that what he said?”

  I felt that I had at last touched an emotion. She had seemed to pride herself on her grasp of the present scene, and in fact I was wondering whether she had perhaps allowed the situation to develop simply to prove to herself that she could control it. But I had allowed a hint of contempt in my voice, and she resented it. She resented Larry.

  “He didn’t say,” I admitted. “Not in so many words. But inferences bounced off the walls.”

  She was watching me warily. “It was all…casual.”

  “Not what I saw.”

  “Saw?”

  “The light went out. Perhaps the radio sounded better in the dark.”

  “I didn’t hear it.”

  “In the dark — you were too occupied?” But the radio had gone off at the same time as the main light.

  “The radio went off,” she said. Her voice was vague, but her eyes never left me, waited for me, were poised for me. She was always one thought ahead.

  “Things change,” I said philosophically. “In my day, that meant something. Now it’s nothing. A casual meeting. You did say casual? Would Henry have thought the same, if he’d lived?”

  But I’d made a mistake somewhere. Her tense awareness had relaxed as I switched the emphasis back to Henry. “Larry didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know the danger he was in?”

  “I wouldn’t have let Henry touch him.”

  “But perhaps Larry didn’t know that,” I suggested gently.

  Her eyes were bright. Her voice was soft. “I doubt he’d have cared.”

  “He wouldn’t have run?”

  “Where could he have gone?” she asked, surprised that anywhere could have been safe from Henry Saturn.

  “Did Henry know that this one wouldn’t have cared? If he’d known that, maybe he’d never have let it go on.”

  She snapped one hand firmly on her knee in anger. “You’re playing with words. Pleased? What’s that? Let it go on? What do you mean?”

  “I believe that you and Henry fixed it up, and that you picked up this young man on your husband’s instructions, simply because he had a room that I could be persuaded to watch…”

  “You’re revolting!” she snapped.

  “I’m suggesting that your husband used you, like he used his gun, as an instrument, something to assist him in the general scheme of things.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “I’m surprised,” I said. “You calmly talk of murder, and of knowing what your husband did. And then you bristle at me over some trifling moral distortion…”

  She was on her feet, pointing at the door with that ridiculous emphasis women use, as though I’d be impelled along the gesture.

  “It’s a vile suggestion,” she shouted.

  “Vile?” I shook my head. “When you no doubt knew who your husband worked for. When you must know that he was intimately involved with the drug traffic…”

  She made a disgusted gesture and spat at me one short word of furious disparagement. I took that as a signal that I’d lost her sympathy, and levered myself to my feet.

  “But maybe,” I said gently, “that wasn’t quite the idea. Perhaps Henry expected that you’d only play a few tapes in this Larry’s room. Perhaps it was not intende
d that the lights should go off. But Larry must have seemed an attractive young man, especially compared with Henry…”

  “Get out of here!”

  “In which event, it’s perhaps as well that Henry died before I’d told him the light went out.”

  “Light!” she screamed. “Is that all you can talk…” Then suddenly her face seemed to crumble and she clasped her hands to it, holding it together. “You can’t know,” she whispered. “You can’t ever understand.”

  I lumbered over to the door and spoke conversationally, cooling the scene.

  “What I can’t understand is that having fixed it all with Henry, you must have known that somebody would be watching that window, so why did you let Larry put out the light?”

  She stared at me above her fingers and I walked out of there steadily enough, because it was a good exit line, but I had to lean on the banister for a minute or two because my leg had almost given way in there. Perhaps the pain did it, otherwise I might have realised that I was within one thought of sorting it out, right at that moment.

  But the pain was bad. I decided it was time I rested it up.

  CHAPTER IV

  One person was pleased, anyway, my landlady. It’s not easy to have a lodger on nights, and she was one of those people who make things worse the harder they try, just from being nervous about being nervous. She knew I had to rest during the day, so she spent all my sleeping hours attempting to do her housework in a tense hush that only provoked crashes and curses and slammed doors and penetrating hissed apologies. Oh, she was very pleased to hear that it was all over, and never enquired where the next job was coming from.

  Though as far as I was concerned, the last one wasn’t yet finished. A fortune in drugs was still hanging around somewhere — I hoped that it hadn’t yet been handed over — and Emilio Sarturo was whiling away the waiting hours at the organ of the Mason’s Hall. Sarturo wouldn’t go any closer to the actual robbery than lending minor aid on the side. Henry Saturn, possibly starved of action with nobody around to eliminate, had provided that minor aid. He had arranged to have the night guard at gate No. 3 otherwise occupied.

  But what I was not yet certain about was the extent of Berenice’s involvement. Larry was probably an innocent bystander, important only because of the location of his room. But perhaps Berenice had entered too enthusiastically into the charade. I’d have watched that window just as carefully if the light had remained on.

  I was thinking all these things, stretched on the bed because I’d got to sleep some time and it’d take a day or two to readjust, and listening to Mrs Perkins expressing her relief at my change in lifestyle by smashing up the place with her vacuum cleaner. I knew I’d never sleep through it, but it was five when I woke up.

  It didn’t help that there’d been a letter in the second post. It was from Anne. One glance at the writing…

  I hadn’t written her for ages, and now conscience made me hesitate to open it. Yet I knew what she would say. There was a home waiting for me there, and a woman. She was a teacher, and we’d do very well, and she didn’t exactly say come to me, George, but it was there, between the lines. She’d got her pride, but she wasn’t so inflexible as I am, and the invitation stood out clear and bright. But how could I go there with my bit of pension and a chronic limp? “I don’t see why you go on with it,” she wrote, “when all you get out of it is a bed in hospital.” Damn it all, did she think I was finished — beaten? She didn’t actually say it, but it was there — and you’re not getting any younger, George Coe.

  “Finish your kipper, Mr Coe,” said Mrs Perkins.

  So I did, had a wash and shave, and was ready at six.

  This timed everything very nicely. Antrim, the lab assistant, should be home at six-thirty or so, and I urgently desired words with him. Before Grace got onto it.

  Farleigh is a good run out on the bus. You go right out of town, to the west, and divert along a couple of B roads. The bus drops you by a petrol station, where the river comes in on your right and then swings round to skirt the village. It’s not really a village now, but an extension of the town waiting for the outskirts to catch up. Town residents have moved out into the new estates they’ve built there. It’ll be convenient for the motorway when they get it, but just at this time it’s a peculiar contrast, with the old village shops trying to compete with the shopping centres built into the estates.

  Rose Cottage was about due to go. One estate ended, there was a gap, and another began. Rose Cottage stood incongruously between and behind them, not old enough to be quaint, not young enough to compete. It had a rickety fence along the road, with a leaning wicket gate.

  It was becoming dark, but there was no sign of lights in the cottage. The front garden was overgrown with weeds, though you’d have thought he could’ve cooked himself up something to discourage them, and they reached out for my legs as I walked up the path. An old rambler clung round the front door. It almost closed it in, so I reckoned he usually used the back. I went round there. Still no lights.

  The long rear garden led down to the river. I could hear it, but not see it. Fruit trees were enclosing the light here; they pressed in on me, rampant and unpruned. There was a water butt on the corner of the building, a tiny kitchen window, and the back door.

  As a formality I tapped on it. There was no sound inside. The traffic seemed distant and placid. I tapped again. He was clearly not at home.

  The rear door had a latch you reached for with a finger through a hole, and a large keyhole a foot below it. Large keyholes accommodate large keys, and large keys are not convenient to carry, so I looked round for a ledge or a nook, and located it under a loose brick in the step. I let myself in.

  I had no torch, but in any event would not have used one. For a couple of minutes I stood and allowed my eyes to get used to it, the window being so small, and by that time had realised that the kitchen was very old and very tiny. My stick groped and informed me that the floor was uneven, probably ordinary building bricks, and I could detect that I stood beside an ancient sink. A square bulk beyond it was probably a cooker. The one beside the block of lighter doorway facing me was low enough to be a fridge. I groped for it and the door opened, the light coming on. I gave it only a couple of seconds. There was nothing inside but a hard block of cheese and a saucer of butter. No milk, and I’d seen none on the step. It seemed to indicate that he was not living there, but, as the electricity was still connected, that he intended to return. I went back to the sink, two taps in silhouette against the window. Both produced water, so he was definitely intending to return.

  Yet he was not on holiday.

  I moved, then, more freely. Once through that doorway, I found that the two nearest streetlamps offered enough illumination to make a search possible. But already I guessed there would be nothing.

  There were two rooms at the front, one not furnished at all, and the other, the one opening from the kitchen, furnished sparsely. He was a solitary man, probably selfish, because he did not deny himself a bit of luxury. One swivelling easy chair, one colour television, one set of crockery in a sideboard, but of course two speakers to his hi-fi. No, by heaven, four. I found two more mounted on the walls in the rear corners. He’d gone quadrophonic. I fingered through his discs with interest, turning them up to catch the meanest lick of light, and saw that they were mainly pop. There were a few cassettes in a neat rack. Pop, too. He’d have himself quite a ball, with a complete set of amplifier and cassette deck, and a transcription turntable which in itself would have allowed me to go to Anne with a decent amount of capital.

  There were no books in the room, and no pictures on the walls.

  In his bedroom I found the bed stripped. The walls were hung with posters, some rather horrific. I’d have thought he was too old for that. The dressing table — it was a complete set, almost feminine in its careful alignment of the mirrors — held only a few rags, as I’ve no doubt he’d call them, way-out stuff that would have hurt the eyes in a stronger light
.

  In a side cupboard there was a plastic pack of a dozen once-only hypodermics.

  It could have meant he was a diabetic. I didn’t think so. The general impression of an immature personality didn’t necessarily have any connection with drugs. But he was living alone, he craved company — if his bizarre clothing and pop-fixation meant anything — and he was probably insecure. Such a man could well be dabbling in drugs. And drugs were in the air.

  I thought I knew where I might find him.

  I left the key carefully where I’d found it, realising as I did so that he was a little stupid leaving his expensive equipment so readily available, and walked off back to the bus stop.

  But finding the right place was another thing. The clubs had sprung up like goose pimples, and I’d no doubt they would disappear as quickly when things became too warm for them. I’d got two names to start with, the Starlight and the Prince of Denmark, but there was no point in asking anybody, their existence being so transitory. What they do is look for an empty building — old shop, anything like that — preferably down a side street not far from the town centre, then board up the windows because daylight doesn’t enter into it, and give it a splash of paint. Then, inside…

  I never did find out what they did to the insides. You couldn’t see through the sound. I stumbled inside half a dozen — “Charlie sent me” — fumbled around in the gloom, and saw nothing remotely resembling Antrim. Nothing remotely resembling anybody, really. Then, behind the post office in Claridge St., I discovered the Starlight. It had an illuminated star over the doorway. A muffled roar like an underground train rustled along the street, disturbing the old fish and chip wrappings. I went in. There was nobody on the door.

  They had removed the floor. This gave immediate access to the cellar steps and provided a high ceiling which no doubt improved the acoustics. Blindly, I fumbled down the iron railing, and sound assaulted me.

  I was in a pit that swung and swooped around me as coloured lights circled like laser beams. Posters screamed at me from the walls, seeming to reach out and then retreat, flicking at me with their erotic emphasis. Hysteria pounded at me, faces thrust themselves towards me, swam for a moment in tinted horror, and then were away and gone. The beat pounded the air. It caught it and compressed it against my head, and clutched at my heart. One complete wall must have been a loudspeaker. Against a far wall, a wall that seemed to move further away as I approached, was spread the equipment. The floodlights were suspended overhead, their rays bucking at the impact of sound. But then I saw him. There, by the disco set, crowned in beatific hypnosis, he sat on a high stool, his head reeling and his hands moving, his beads swaying. He was stoned to the eyeballs.