A Thing of Blood (15 page)

‘I warned you earlier,’ said the woman behind the counter. Almost simultaneously I felt a firm grip on my unplastered arm and before I had time to think I found myself propelled into Little Collins Street. The thug who’d tossed me into the street yelled, ‘This is a café not a brothel, arsehole!’ His extraordinary supposition, based on my earlier inquiry I presumed, didn’t go unnoticed by patrons about to enter. As a PI’s enemy is exposure, I thought it wise not to attempt to correct my assailant, and slipped discreetly into the surrounding darkness. The nearest doorway was occupied. I couldn’t see who was fondling whom, but I heard the squeal and giggle of a woman and smelled the sickly odour of American aftershave.

This was a most unsatisfactory situation. I wasn’t keen on lurking in Little Collins Street and was reassessing my options when George Beech staggered through the door of the Petrushka. He was alone, and set off in the direction of Parliament House. Following him undetected was straightforward. His inebriated mutterings allowed me to keep a bead on him even though the darkness was absolute. If he moved more than a few feet ahead of me he became an indistinct shape. He crossed Spring Street and walked into the deep almost physical darkness of the Treasury Gardens, and must have put on quite a burst of speed, because one minute I could discern his silhouette and the next he’d vanished. There were no lights; not even the occasional dim, hooded ones that were to be found in other public parks. The government clearly thought that the palest pinpoint of light in the vicinity might lead to bombs raining down on Treasury.

Keeping to the path I felt rather than saw before me, I walked carefully forward — carefully because I didn’t want to stray from it and tumble into one of the air raid ditches that criss-crossed the open ground. I was suddenly aware of a sinister silence and stopped to listen for the reassuring night sounds of American soldiers rutting local girls. There was nothing — only the unexpected, instinctive rush of panic in my ears as I became aware that I was in danger. I swung around, and became immediately disoriented by fear. If I moved now I had no way of knowing whether I was heading deeper into the gardens or back the way I had come. I stood stock still, hearing my breath coming in little, desperate pants, sounding to my ears like a terrible parody of mounting physical pleasure.

When the blow came it fell across my shoulders with the awful heft of a heavy length of wood, wielded in a wide swing, and probably aimed at my head. The darkness in this respect was my friend. I pitched forward and fell face first into the abrasive embrace of the rough, gravelly path. I remained on the ground and drew my legs up to offer some protection against the kicking which would surely begin. Shoes and trouser bottoms appeared so close to my face that I could smell the leather and see enough to note that the wearer was at least doing his bit for the war by not having cuffs. The figure crouched down and revealed itself to be George Beech. A sharp, nasty little kick to the buttocks indicated the presence of a second person.

‘Who are you?’ Beech said. ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you.’

If I hadn’t been in quite so much pain I might have found this amusing. Beech grabbed my hair and pulled my head off the ground.

‘This is a warning, copper. I don’t give a fuck who you are, stay out of my business. If I catch you hanging around the Petrushka or following me, the next time you see your teeth, you’ll be picking them out of your shit.’

He pushed my gravel-rashed face back into the dirt. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with him, so I didn’t disabuse him of his misidentification. He straightened up and I relaxed, which is why my ribs took the full force of his savage kick. The fact that he settled for one was proof enough of the gratuitous nature of his violence.

I lay very still, feeling sick, and with a sharp pain in my chest which I visualised as a shard of jagged rib tearing at my lungs. When I was certain that I was alone I forced myself upright and was gingerly pressing against my ribcage when the narrow beams of two partially masked torches made me wince.

‘Jesus mate, you look terrible.’

‘Well, that certainly tallies with how I feel.’

‘You’ve been assaulted,’ said an observant second voice.

The owners of the torches introduced themselves as Constables Kelty and Burke, presumably on patrol in the gardens to defend the nation against lewd and immoral acts. They were sympathetic until I said that even though I’d been attacked I’d be unable to identify my attackers, (the last thing I wanted was the police crossing my investigative path), and that therefore it would be best if we let the matter rest.

‘So you don’t want to make any report at all,’ Constable Kelty said.

‘That’s right.’

They thought about this for a moment and concluded that I might have been guilty of just the sort of lewdness they were deputised to uncover and prosecute.

‘Were you here to make sexual contact with another man?’ asked Constable Burke, with ludicrous formality.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said slowly. ‘I have been assaulted, not fucked. Perhaps your training has not prepared you for the difference.’

Constable Kelty snorted.

‘We meet lots of your kind who like it rough, or maybe you just picked the wrong bloke tonight.’

Even through my discomfort I found his suggestion impertinent and offensive. With exemplary calm I said,’ I was not soliciting for sex- not with a man and not with a woman and not with a possum. I was simply walking.’

To hurry things along I produced my identification, waited while they examined it, and requested that I be allowed to go on my way.

‘You’re an entertainer, Mr Power,’ said Constable Kelty, and in a tone that indicated that he thought this was, in and of itself, half-way to proving a charge of buggery.

‘William Power,’ said Constable Burke. ‘Never heard of you.’

‘Well, constable, I don’t roller skate through lines of half-naked women while singing
There’ll Always Be An England
, which is no doubt your sort of theatre experience. I perform the plays of Shakespeare.’

Constable Burke was all for taking me in, the mention of Shakespeare having confirmed my probable deviancy, but Constable Kelty was by this time bored, and I suspected he wanted to move on, hopeful of discovering a couple
in flagrante delicto
.

‘You can go, Romeo,’ he said, and chortled at his witticism. Constable Burke, clearly the beta male, chortled sycophantically, and probably spent the rest of the evening wondering who Romeo was.

I walked all the way back to Clutterbuck’s house, and as I did so the pain in my ribcage declined to a dull ache, replaced in intensity by the sting in my face. So nothing had been broken at any rate, although I could expect extensive bruising. I was glad I’d got the life modelling out of the way. The class would have thought they were drawing someone recently pulled from a train wreck.

There were no lights on downstairs when I entered Clutterbuck’s house, and upstairs was similarly unilluminated. It was late, so I assumed he was asleep. I went into my bathroom and began to pick small pieces of gravel out of my cheek. I looked terrible and I was furious with George Beech. A private inquiry agent should blend into the background, not draw attention to himself by looking like the victim of some ghastly, temporarily disfiguring accident. I gritted my teeth and splashed a dilute solution of peroxide onto the angry skin. It hurt so much I gave free rein to a yowl of pain and listened guiltily for evidence of having wakened Clutterbuck. The house didn’t stir, and the silence, perhaps because it reminded me of the silence just before George Beech jumped me, made me suddenly edgy. There was something amiss. I knew so little about Clutterbuck that I didn’t know whether I would find him asleep in his room, or still out somewhere. His routines were unknown to me. I had to check on him and put my mind at ease.

I switched the light on in the hallway and approached his bedroom door. If he was in fact asleep, there was nothing to be gained by waking him, so I didn’t knock. Instead, I turned the doorknob carefully and pushed the door gently. It gave, but met resistance after a few inches. My heart began to race and I pushed harder, believing that it was Clutterbuck’s corpse that lay slumped on the other side of the door. Fortunately my instincts, usually so reliable, were wrong, and the door easily dislodged the impediment. This, however, was singular, because I couldn’t imagine Clutterbuck sleeping happily in a room where something had been carelessly discarded onto the floor.

The light from the hallway was enough to show me that something was very, very wrong. I snapped on Clutterbuck’s bedroom light, certain that he wasn’t there, and was greeted by a scene of utter chaos. Every drawer of every wardrobe was pulled open and its contents hurled into the room. Someone had gone through Clutterbuck’s belongings with the concentrated destructiveness of a highly localised cyclone. His bed had been stripped and the mattress turned over. His shirts, trousers, socks and underwear were spread in violent disarray and the gaping, empty compartments in which they had lain made this look all the more shocking. His bathroom had been similarly turned upside down. Bottles of aftershave and cologne tumbled from the cabinet, and towels were thrown willy-nilly into the bath. Surprisingly, there was nothing broken. This had been a search, not a burglary.

I came back into his bedroom and stood among his clothes, like Ruth amid the alien corn. Clutterbuck was leaning in the doorway.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he said calmly. ‘Find anything?’

Initially his words made no sense to me, but my mouth fell open when I grasped his meaning.

‘I didn’t do this,’ I said, and, caught completely off-guard, blurted out, ‘I think it was James Fowler.’

Clutterbuck coolly raised an eyebrow.

‘No, Paul, really. What reason could I possibly have for turning your room upside down? It was definitely James Fowler.’

I was relieved when he nodded and said, ‘I told you he was a pill.’

‘But why, Paul? Why would Nigella’s brother do something like this? What’s he looking for?’

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, Will. Why are you so sure it was James?’

‘I didn’t want to tell you, but this afternoon, after you and Nigella had left, I caught James snooping around your room. He didn’t see me. He was being pretty careful though. I wouldn’t have expected this.’

Clutterbuck remained impressively composed; his innately disciplined nature overcoming what must have been outrage at the state of his room.

‘You might want to think about whether Fowler had something to do with Gretel’s death.’

‘Surely your fiancée’s brother wouldn’t be so opposed to the marriage that he’d kill someone to stop it.’

‘The person who did this,’ Clutterbuck said, sweeping his hand over the room, ‘would not find murder too much of a stretch.’

Although I couldn’t equate untidiness with a tendency to kill, I had to admit to myself that James Fowler was now, as a coroner might say, a person of interest.

Chapter Seven

church going

I SLEPT BADLY
. Every time I turned my cheek to the pillow I woke with a stinging pain. In the morning the pillow was speckled with blood. What must Mrs Castleton have thought of me? — carbolic in the bath, blood on the pillow. Her impression of Mr Clutterbuck’s new tenant would surely be a grim one.

I began to shave but abandoned it. The razor being drawn across raw skin was more than I could tolerate. By the light of day my face bore spectacular witness to George Beech’s attack. It looked as if someone had taken a cheese grater and rubbed it up and down my right cheek.

I’d told Clutterbuck what had happened in the Treasury Gardens, and although he acknowledged that I was earning my keep, the state of his room had prevented him from offering a more sympathetic response. I’d noticed, indeed, that his reaction to any departure from the norm was a nervous, uncomfortable little smile. It would be easy for the unobservant to misinterpret this. The smile on his face when he examined my injury wasn’t one of pleasure, but an involuntary expression of a little-boy belief that a smile might make it better. I saw it as a charming idiosyncrasy in his otherwise formidable, cool self-assurance.

I left early, before Clutterbuck made an appearance. I wasn’t sure where he’d slept — in one of the spare rooms probably. I couldn’t imagine him dozing in his own bedroom. The mess would have created a storm of noise in his head. As I walked towards Mother’s house, nursing tender ribs which sat beneath skin the colour of monsoon clouds, I determined that by the end of the day I would know all that there was to know about Mr Trezise, and that I would have discovered who killed Gretel Beech and why. How I was going to accomplish this wasn’t yet clear, but I was buoyed by the amount of information I had accumulated in only two days.