Last Reminder (26 page)

‘Did you have an affair with Lisa?’ I asked.

For a second he did not know how to answer. He reached across and started rubbing the muscle of his left arm, a pained expression on his face. ‘Who told you that?’ he asked.

‘I get paid to ask questions.’

‘Did Ruth tell you?’

‘Did you?’

‘No, of course not. What did Ruth say?’

‘Same as you.’

‘So who told you I’d had an affair with Lisa?’

‘She did.’

‘Lisa? You knew Lisa?’

Full marks to K. Tom. We were supposing that Lisa told him about me in the second phone call.

‘Mmm.’

‘So why did she tell you that?’

‘Why would she lie? She rang you, twice, the night before she was murdered. What did she want?’

‘Just someone to talk to. She was drunk. She said
it was about her VAT returns, but that was just a pretext.’

‘And the second call?’

‘I’d asked her for some figures. She rang me back with them.’

‘What were they?’

‘I don’t remember. I didn’t even write them down. I only said it to get her off the phone. Like I said, she was drunk,’

‘So late Friday night this drunk woman finds her accounts books, extracts some figures from them to do with her VAT returns and rings you back with them. Sounds unlikely, to me.’

He was rubbing his arm again and looking disgruntled. ‘Well, it’s the truth,’ he declared. In other words, prove otherwise, if you can.

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Months ago. Sometime in the summer.’

‘When exactly?’

He shook his head. ‘Can’t remember.’

‘What was the occasion?’

He picked up a blue ball, rotated it in his fingers and put it down again. ‘That’s right,’ he stated. ‘Ruth’s birthday. They came round with a present for her. So it would be…June…or July.’

‘And when did you last see Justin?’

‘Same time.’

‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you were his number two fan, his mechanic, followed him all over the Continent.’

His face turned red and his arm was troubling him again. Some people pull their ear lobes or scratch their heads. He rubbed his upper arm. ‘I, er, might as well tell you,’ he sighed.

‘Go on.’

‘All that…going over to the Continent, with Justin’s bike and some spares. It’s just a ruse. I don’t go to watch him.’

‘So why do you go over there?’ I couldn’t believe he was going to tell me about smuggling gold. He didn’t.

‘It’s, er, Ruth. We, er, don’t have much of a, er, relationship, you know.’

‘You mean, sex.’

‘That’s right. I have a friend, in Amsterdam. I go over to see her as often as I can. You’re a man of the world, Inspector. I’m sure you can imagine how it is.’

Why do they always throw it back at you? I didn’t have a bloody clue how it was to have a street full of friends in Amsterdam. Someone once told me that the tour guides always recommend the girl in number 42 as the most beautiful. Presumably she was the one to avoid, unless you fancied catching the Japanese strain of HIV.

It was blowing cold outside, threatening rain. I glanced at the garage as I climbed into my car, and
wondered about the bullbars. It would be easy enough to raise a search warrant, and that might tell us if he was smuggling gold inside them but we’d not find the rest of it. So far he didn’t know we were interested in the gold, unless Jimmy the Fish or the Wattses had tipped him off. I decided it was best to keep on playing it softly-softly.

The next call was the one I wasn’t looking forward to. Normally, I don’t hang about when I drive, but everything overtook me as I wound reluctantly up the old back road between Heckley and Oldfield, towards Broadside, home of Justin Davis.

He was digging the garden, working furiously, oblivious to the knife-edged breeze flattening the cottongrass on the moors. I closed the gate and walked towards him as he straightened up. Long hair blew across his face. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans with ripped knees. I stopped about five yards from him, not sure what to expect. He only stood about five feet six tall, but was wiry with it. Proper muscle, not the false stuff you see on TV freak shows.

‘I came to say how sorry I was – about Lisa,’ I shouted to him, across the patch of newly dug earth.

He placed his foot on the spade and drove it into the ground. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he suggested, and walked towards the house, leaving the spade
standing there as if marking a grave.

‘Just give me a minute,’ he said, ushering me into the front room. ‘Sit down, please.’

The parrot wasn’t there. I stood and looked out of the window, down towards the Peak District and what I imagined to be Mam Tor. Big drops of rain dashed on to the glass and slid diagonally away.

‘Take a seat,’ he told me when he returned. He’d changed into a clean version of the same outfit, but was barefoot. His hair was back in a ponytail and his face freshly washed.

‘Thanks.’ I sat in silence for a long time, looking at some object on the floor, like a Buddhist monk contemplating a candle flame. ‘I rang Lisa, Thursday night,’ I began. ‘I wanted to ask her about K. Tom – your stepfather. There are certain suspicions about him smuggling. Gold, we think. I wondered if your falling out had anything to do with it, so I made an appointment to talk to Lisa Friday morning. That’s why I was here. The papers made it sound… They tried to make something out of it. You know what they’re like.’

He nodded. His face was white and lined beyond that caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, his eyes bloodshot and twitching. Fifty hours in a jumbo jet wouldn’t have helped. Fingers with chewed-down nails drummed on the arms of his chair and his feet beat a rhythmless tattoo on the carpet. He badly needed another fix of whatever kept him going.

‘Has the doctor seen you?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. I think the police must have asked him to call.’

‘Did he give you anything?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t like pills. Reality is scary enough. The thought of not being in control terrifies me.’

‘That’s a good philosophy,’ I agreed, ‘but the odd pill might help you sleep, or something.’

‘No, I’m OK.’

‘Is anybody calling to see you? Friends, anybody?’

‘Team mates, and their wives. One or two. I guess it’s awkward for them.’

‘You’re right. They want to do whatever is best, but don’t know what that is.’

We chatted on, me letting him do most of it. He suggested coffee and we drifted into the kitchen.

‘When will I be able to…?’ he began. ‘When will they let me…?’

‘The funeral? When will they let you arrange a funeral?’

‘Yes. That’s what I meant.’

We perched on high stools round what I supposed was a breakfast bar. ‘Usually,’ I said, ‘in a situation like this – a murder case – we have to leave the body in the mortuary after the post-mortem, for the defence to arrange their own PM, if they require it. I can’t see that being necessary. I’ll have a word
with the coroner, see what we can do.’

‘I’d be very grateful. So would Lisa’s parents.’

‘I know.’

I asked him if he’d go back to Australia, but he hadn’t thought about it. Said he might eventually settle over there, make a fresh start.

‘Where’s the bird – Joey?’ I wondered. ‘He’d be some company for you.’

‘Lisa’s parents are looking after him. I’ll have a ride over to collect him, this afternoon.’

‘I should. He, er, was on the floor, near the front door when I came. I picked him up. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life.’

Justin gave the briefest of smiles. ‘He was probably scared. He wouldn’t hurt you.’ He looked in his coffee mug, realised it was empty and reached out for mine. ‘Another coffee?’

‘Please.’

With his back to me, as he waited for the kettle to boil again, he said, ‘Lisa loved Joey. And he loved her. He was a present for her tenth birthday. She used to take Joey in the bath with her. He’d stand on the taps, and after she’d rinsed her hair with the attachment she’d give him a shower. He enjoyed that.’

‘He did look a bit straggly,’ I said.

He slid the full mug across to me and climbed on to his stool. ‘Did Lisa suffer, Charlie? That’s the question I need answering, most of all.’

I finished stirring in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, touched the tip of the spoon on the surface of the coffee to remove the last droplet and deliberately placed the spoon alongside my mug, equidistant from it and two edges of the tabletop. ‘It was quick,’ I told him. ‘And she didn’t struggle. She had no time to struggle. That’s all I know, but that much, I guarantee.’

‘I appreciate what you say. Will you catch…whoever it was?’

‘I’ll catch ’em, Justin. That I vow.’

The visit I’d been scared of making lasted two and a half hours. I promised to call again and told him he could ring me any time, night or day. At the door I said, ‘Sooner or later, Justin, it’s going to occur to you that if I hadn’t been nosing into various people’s affairs, this might not have happened. I’m aware of it, and it bothers me.’

He shook his head, saying, ‘No. You were only doing your job. Two years ago a rider crashed while trying to get past me. He’s in a wheelchair, now. If I hadn’t been so determined not to let him through he’d still be walking about. I won an extra point and twenty quid. He got that.’

The car was facing in the wrong direction, but I didn’t bother turning it around. I drove to the highest place on the moors and just sat there for half an hour, safe and warm, with the wind buffeting the car and the view slowly turning to a
khaki smudge as a wall of bad weather blew in from the west and the first sleet of the season built up on the windscreen.

I knew Gilbert wouldn’t be in, so I used the back stairs and sat in his office while I rang Superintendent Isles. He couldn’t see any reason why Lisa’s body shouldn’t be released. Sometimes, with cut throats, great weight is put on the angle of the attack, and whether it was done by a left- or right-handed assailant, but we’d made no conclusions about this. He promised to have a word with the coroner. After that I waited in the gathering gloom until it was time to go home.

I wasn’t hungry, so instead of tea I settled for listening to a Joan Baez CD. The first song on it was ‘Diamonds and Rust’, straight out of my desert island selection. After that I typed my ethics paper.

At eight o’clock I rang Annabelle. ‘Have you finished eating?’ I asked, when she answered.

‘Yes, thank you. I wish you’d been able to be with us.’

‘I, er, thought I might be working late. Did your friends find you OK?’

‘Yes, but…’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I think they expected you to be here, too.’

‘You mean, living with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m open to offers.’

After a pause she said, ‘Maybe that is something to discuss another time.’

‘Right,’ I replied. I liked the way this was going. ‘Have you been anywhere?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, brightly. ‘Marie and Toby didn’t arrive until nearly two, so we couldn’t go too far. Would you believe I took them to the Sculpture Park? They enjoyed it immensely.’

‘Good. I bet they didn’t guess as many as I did.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they, never having been before?’

‘I’d never been before,’ I protested in my hurt voice.

‘Ha, I’ll believe you. They didn’t even make a passable attempt at poor old St Sebastian.’

‘At who!’ I exclaimed, sitting up.

‘St Sebastian. Surely you remember him.’

‘No, you’ve lost me.’

‘The tall one, with the bicycle wheel on his head. That is his halo. He was martyred by being shot with arrows, hence the spiky bits. Didn’t I tell you who he was?’

‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘You never mentioned it.’

‘Well, now you know. Are you coming for supper, tomorrow?’

‘Er, yes, I’d like that.’

‘Good. Any requests?’

‘No, er, Annabelle, I, er, won’t keep you from
your guests any longer. See you tomorrow, eh?’

We said our goodbyes and I rolled on the floor, holding my head. The martyrdom of St Sebastian. Five yards in, at five yard intervals. That’s where the gold was buried, just over the fence from Davis’s paddock.

Sparky was at home when I rang. ‘Does Daniel own a metal detector?’ I asked him.

‘No. Why?’

I explained.

‘Task force have them,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘I could collect one from HQ and meet you there.’

‘What, now?’

‘Why not? If we did a search in daylight we’d end up with every gold-hungry nut in the country converging on the place. I could meet you there in less than an hour.’

‘Right,’ I agreed. ‘Pay and display car park. I’ll take a spade. See you there, quick as you can.’

I’m not sure what the courting couple thought when these two dark-clad figures unloaded their cars and set off across the park, but nobody rang the police. Maybe their attention was elsewhere. I led the way across the big field, hoping to find a short cut through the temporary exhibits.

‘Waaah!’ Sparky yelled, dropping the detector and throwing his arms around my neck. We’d reached the crowd of headless men.

‘Be quiet,’ I hissed. ‘Security will hear you. They’re only statues.’

‘Scared the living daylights out of me,’ he gasped.

The short cut wasn’t such a good idea and we had to retrace our steps.

‘What’s that one supposed to be?’ he hissed.

‘It’s called
Spindle Piece,
by Henry Moore.’

‘What’s it worth?’

‘Oh, about half a million.’

‘Jesus. We’re looking for the wrong guy.’

‘You’re a Philistine.’

There were no lights coming from the direction of Davis’s house. ‘This is the one we’re looking for,’ I whispered. ‘It’s St Sebastian.’

‘Could’ve fooled me.’

‘And the fence is about fifty yards that way. I’m presuming they mean five yards in from that.’

‘Makes sense.’ He lowered the metal detector to the ground, placed the headphones over his ears and shone a little torch on the controls.

‘Do you know how it works?’ I asked.

‘They gave me a crash course. It’s set to detect anything metallic, so if I get a buzz in the headphones, you have to dig it up.’