A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Read online

  “You’ve only got to shout.”

  “I’ll remember that.” But having that rotten leg was having a peculiar effect on me. It was making me more independent, if possible, and more determined to manage in spite of it. “But it’s under control.”

  “It didn’t sound like it.”

  “You were inside the court?”

  “You’re up to your neck, George. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If you don’t mind. You can run me over to the King’s Hotel.”

  He looked at me searchingly, then nodded. “We can do that.”

  He gave scant attention to my leg, and let me get on with it. When I was in the back, Elsa drove away.

  “I don’t know where it is,” she said.

  Dave directed her. He turned. “That’s where he’s staying?”

  “I don’t think he’ll have moved.”

  “He’ll be expecting you,” he warned.

  “I’m expecting him to.”

  He didn’t pursue it. We drew up at the King’s Hotel. “If we went in together…”

  “No,” I said firmly, and I got out to stand beside the car. “But I’m grateful for the bail.”

  “George,” he said. “Some time we should get together.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Coe and Mallin,” he said. “It has a ring.”

  “Oh…sure.”

  And I watched them drive away. Maybe we’d get together, but I had to sort this one out alone. That blasted pride of mine.

  They’d found another 7.65 Mauser for the little one with the bandaged wrist. He showed it to me. The gun.

  “Used it yet?” I asked. “You have to take the cotton wool out of the spout.”

  He looked down it and I laughed, and then stopped laughing because I realised that I’d found Carol.

  She was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room, and apart from the shoes was dressed as I’d seen her before. But without the shoes she looked tiny, a child wrapped and enclosed in the deep chair. Somebody had washed her face and all the makeup had gone. Her features were naked and revealed. It was a doll’s face, smooth, unlined by anything. She was swinging her legs idly, her hands on the arms of the chair, and she was smiling at me.

  “Big daddy,” she said in happy welcome.

  “You’ve returned for your young friend,” Sarturo observed.

  He was dressed in a silk dressing gown, apparently over pyjamas. His hands were thrust in the pockets. His minions idly clustered about the room, smoking with their left hands, their right fingers delicately brushing imaginary ash from their lapels.

  “She’s no friend of mine,” I said. “Why’d you set me up?”

  “It amused me.”

  “I thought I detected a sense of humour, hidden behind the — ”

  “I rarely get a chance to express it.” And he gestured meaningly around the room. Two of them smiled, in case it was a joke.

  “I hope you can see all right this morning,” I said.

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “Because I want you to be quite certain that I’m not smiling.”

  “You disappoint me,” he said.

  “I’ve come for Carol.”

  “Although she’s not a friend?”

  “And I’ve come to tell you it’s not on.”

  He knew I meant his commission. “That was what I thought you’d say.” He was quite pleasant about it. He turned to Carol. “Do you want to go with your friend?” he asked.

  She considered me. I looked closer. Her eyes were pin-points. I gripped both hands on the handle of my stick, supporting myself by leaning forwards. Carol shook her head. “No,” she said. “Emilio is very kind.”

  The hair was prickling at the back of my neck. Emilio laughed easily, but it broke into another of his immature titters. “You see what a little kindness will do? Like butter on a kitten’s paws. She’s left home, Coe. She had nowhere to go. We took her in, and we were kind to her. She appreciates it. There’s never been anything like it.”

  We looked at her. She shrugged down between her shoulders in self-ecstasy, then shuddered up again, expressing some extreme of delight that was beyond words. Her words, anyway.

  “You see,” Sarturo explained, “I got the impression that you weren’t too enthusiastic at my suggestion. I thought you needed encouragement. It didn’t take all my supply of heroin to make things difficult for you. There’s enough left. Don’t worry, Carol dear. There’s quite enough. Ten milligrams every eight hours, and we could go on for weeks…”

  He spread his hands, briefly producing them for that purpose.

  I was slowly swivelling the stick beneath my clamped fists, backwards and forwards, drilling the ferrule into the carpet. I had to keep my hands busy, otherwise they’d have been at his craggy throat, and I’d have been dead before he was, which’d get us nowhere. But he knew that I knew that one dose of heroin does not make an addict. Oh, they might never forget that kick, that first impact like the bursting of all ecstasy in one cataclysmic surge. But they’re not hooked. That doesn’t happen until they’re dependent on it. Which could take a few days, take less, take more. Depending on the person. And then it’s a matter of not being able to live without it, when withdrawal can mean crippling and nearly intolerable physical suffering over a period of a week or more. When they get to dependence, there’s nothing left to face, either way, but hell.

  That was why I always felt such affection for people like Sarturo. I smiled my affection.

  “I don’t care who killed your Enrico. I’ll take a guess at who’s going to kill Emilio.”

  “Then the sooner you do begin to care,” he said placidly, “the better. The moment you bring me my son’s killer, your hand on his shoulder, then you can take away Carol.” He grimaced. “She’s not an amusing companion.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t appreciate your happy nature,” I suggested. “Her taste in music doesn’t cover Bach. Or,” I added, “Tchaikovsky.”

  But he did not react. He gestured, and one of the thugs showed me out. I stood and trembled in the corridor, then decided I’d better get on with it.

  I was not certain, in going first to see Larry, which I was now tackling, the murder or the robbery. I hoped he would tell me. I was beginning to be angry, and people are more eager to tell me things when I’m like that.

  He wasn’t home. It didn’t take a glance at my watch to tell me that it was dinner time, because they hadn’t come up with a VIP breakfast at the station. So I reckoned that with Larry’s cooking facilities he was probably somewhere close, eating. As the nearest pub was the Potted Shrimp, and as I knew they did sandwiches, I tried there first, and he was at a comer table in the snug washing down cheese sandwiches with a pint of bitter. I ordered the same and carried them over to join him.

  He grunted in protest when I sat down opposite him. I told him I’d hoped to see him at his place.

  “Something I wanted to show you,” I said.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “You didn’t tell me the truth,” I told him severely, “and I think I can prove you didn’t.”

  “I told you all I’m going to. Now shove off.”

  I smiled at him round the sandwich. It was Wensleydale. “Did I tell you about the robbery?”

  “Heard about it.”

  “But you’re not interested?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “Because the gate’s right opposite your room.” He didn’t comment. “While you were having it off with Berenice Saturn, somebody pulled off a beautifully smooth job.”

  “I’m sorry about it. My heart’s bleedin’.”

  “Did they tell you how I was conned into watching your window? I’m not keen on watching while a couple of virile and active young people are having — ”

  “I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that.”

  “Because it’s not true? But there’s no danger now. He’s dead. You don’t have to deny it no
w.”

  “I know he’s dead.”

  “But you were aware of the danger?”

  “I should worry…”

  “But you should have done. Didn’t you know what he was?”

  “How’d I know that? Lemme eat, will you!”

  “She’d surely tell you something about him. In fact, she as good as told me she had. She enjoyed making her husband jealous.”

  “She said that?”

  “I got that impression. But she wouldn’t tell him about you, and then not tell you about him. That’d take some of the excitement out of it.”

  He considered me suspiciously. “She did say something.”

  “That he was vicious?”

  “Something about him being connected with a gang. Hell, why’d I worry about that?”

  “Didn’t she say he was a trained killer? Didn’t she tell you that killing was his profession?”

  The little laugh was fractionally delayed. “She’d hardly say that.”

  “But she did tell you that he’d killed?”

  “Only that he could. You know…was capable…”

  “Was capable of killing? And actually had done so?”

  “Well…yes, if it makes you happy.”

  “And it didn’t worry you to have her round to your place, with the explicit purpose — ”

  “Will you lay off”

  “Did she say there’d been others?”

  “Other what?”

  “Lovers.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake…”

  “She’d say that, just to lay emphasis on it. You weren’t the first…you know…she’d say what Saturn did about it previously.”

  “So what if she did? What you getting at?”

  “What did he do?”

  “Frightened ‘em off.”

  “Just frightened?”

  “Well — if you must know — one was shot.”

  “Killed?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.

  “So one previous lover was shot, and you weren’t afraid. Perhaps you own a gun, and you can use it…”

  “Don’t come that, old man. I’m warning you.”

  “So why shouldn’t you have been afraid?”

  “For chrissake, that one was different. He was a chap out of another gang.”

  “And you’re not? Out of another gang, I mean.”

  He drew his breath in slowly. “Oh yes, very clever. Give the man a silver medal.”

  “Because you were ideally placed to watch the night guard’s activities. Because you were used to distract my attention. Because it’d be a bloody miracle if you weren’t involved with it.”

  He looked round the nearly empty snug, as though seeking witnesses to my insanity. “Well, that’s just fine. That’s a laugh, that is.”

  “I hoped you’d say you were,” I said gently. “I hoped you’d admit that you’re actually one of the robbery gang.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you did.”

  “Because there’s a lot of suspicion leaning in your direction, lad. Which is bad enough. But when somebody’s got an alibi that can be proved to be false, that’s a sight more suspicious than not having one at all.”

  “I’ve got one. I was in that room…”

  “Now listen, Larry. If you haven’t got an alibi, it might be better not to have it for a robbery, than not to have it for a murder.”

  He was silent for a few moments, looking down at the glass between his palms, rotating it slowly backwards and forwards on the table. When he looked up his eyes were completely clear. The intelligence was obvious.

  “But you’d never prove it.”

  “Oh, but I can. Last night I was in a room that had a standard lamp. I didn’t have to reach its switch to put it out. I simply yanked out the plug.” He moved impatiently.

  “I can’t stay here listening to you.”

  “It gave me an idea, Larry. I remembered the set-up in your room.

  A switch adaptor in the light socket, and an extension from that to your radio. The little button switch in the adaptor puts the main light on and off, but it leaves the extension live all the while. Now, I imagined what it’d be like, living with that set-up. You’d want the radio available any time of the day or night, but the light only for when it was dark. You following me?”

  He shook his head, not in denial but with weary disinterest.

  “So what you’d do,” I said, “after you’d got used to it, would be to leave the switch by the door turned on all the time. In that way you’d be able to control the radio with its own switch, and you’d use the button switch in the adaptor to put your light on and off. Wouldn’t you?”

  “It doesn’t follow. Some people would, and some not.”

  “But you did. The time I was in your room it was daylight, your light was off, but the radio was live. I turned it on, so I know. That confirms what I said, that you left the light switch by the door turned on.”

  “So I did!” he cried. “What the hell’s it matter?”

  “Larry, I was watching your window at the time of that robbery. When the light went off — ”

  “You noticed when?” he interrupted suspiciously.

  “I was watching. Of course I noticed.”

  “You said…at the time of the robbery.”

  I had his attention firmly. “Around that time. It went off at just after half past eleven.”

  He smiled warily. “I don’t have to believe you, you know.”

  This was a point I hadn’t considered. Usually it’s the other way round. “Perhaps you’ll believe me when I say that the radio dial went off at the same time.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “It would.”

  “You agree it would?” I asked, pleased. “Then you’ll realise what that means.”

  “It’s your theory.”

  “It means that because they went off together, then in that instance the wall switch was used. You wouldn’t do that. For the light, you’d reach up for the button of the adaptor, and if you wanted the radio off, you’d switch it off at the set. That means that she did it. Berenice put off the light.”

  “You’re making a big issue of it.”

  “I told you I’d prove something.”

  “All you’re proving is that you can talk.”

  “Larry, I’ve had some discussion already about equality of the sexes, but that seems to take it a bit far. In your room, she’d put off the light? Oh no, lad, you’d do that. After all, you’d be best qualified to get back to the bed in the dark. But she did…”

  “And that means I wasn’t there?” he sneered. “I’m getting out of here…”

  “It shows more than that she put out the light,” I said gently. “Don’t get excited. There’s something else that shows she did. I happened to see the light come on again the next morning.”

  “More theories?”

  “I saw the radio dial come on first.”

  “All right — then I put the radio on first.”

  “In the dark? No, you’d automatically want some light. But the radio dial…”

  “Came on first,” he mimicked. “How exciting.”

  “It is, if you think what it means. We know that the wall switch was used to put both of them off together. But you, Larry, as I said, wouldn’t touch the wall switch. You probably hadn’t touched it for months.”

  “I’ve only been there three weeks.”

  “Is that so? Long enough, though, to establish a habit.” More than long enough to establish a dependence on heroin. I heard my voice harden. “So, in the dark, you’d go for the adaptor switch, but as it was all off at the wall, nothing happened. And then, still in the dark, you’d realise what had happened. But you wouldn’t know whether you’d just put the adaptor off or on. You couldn’t tell by touch. So what would you do? You’d simply go to the wall and snap on the switch there. But you’d actually turned the adaptor switch off, so all that came on was the radio dial, because the radio switch had been left on. And then you went ba
ck to the adaptor switch and put on your light. That was exactly what I saw, and however you work at it, you won’t find any other explanation for that sequence of lights.”

  “Well,” he said, “you have thought about it. But it doesn’t prove…”

  “But it does. Because, you see, it means that you were not in that room when the light went off, otherwise you’d have known that the wall switch had been used. You were not there at a very critical time.”

  There was half an inch left in his glass. He suddenly seized it and drank up. There was nothing left in mine. “Get you another?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Bitter, please.” He was playing for time, and there was no longer any mention of his leaving. He came back with two more pints.

  “Your argument’s not valid,” he said. “I could have been looking away…”

  “I’ve seen her. Hardly likely.”

  “Asleep, lighting a fag, anything…” I shook my head. “You simply were not there.”

  “It’s not proof.”

  “Not proof that I’d produce in a witness box. No. But for me it’s good enough to lead me on to the next point. That is — if you weren’t there, where were you? It’s pretty clear now that you and Berenice, and probably Henry Saturn too, thought up this method of keeping my eyes in the wrong place. But I reckon the intention — as far as Saturn was concerned — was for me to see her arrive, and then for me to watch a lighted window. But you had other ideas. Or she had. I don’t know. But it wasn’t necessary for you to be there at all, and whether you went along to help with the robbery — ”

  “You’re guessing,” he cut in violently.

  “Out the back way, along the backs as far as the canal. It’s feasible. Or you could have become rather closer to Berenice than Saturn intended. You and she together could have planned his murder. There’s a lot of these 7.65 Mausers about, and it’s just possible that she got one for you.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “One of the alternatives is crazy. But you must see that it matters which. I’ve got to know if you went out on the robbery, or the murder.”

  He laughed, then raised his voice in derision. “And you think I’d admit to one of ‘em? Not on your life.”

  “It’s become rather important to me.” I managed to say it softly, though my fingers itched to reach over and shake out the truth.