Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (19 page)

"But we've
got
to bury Busted Or she'll start smelling up
the whole barn."

The air, Melrose thought, should have been redolent with the smell
of Buster, given the cat had been there for twenty-four hours.

"Go home," Abby said again, in that same atonal voice.

Ethel tossed down what was left of her sandwich and got up,
haughtily, as if to say it made no odds to her whether she stayed or
went. But as she pushed her sleeves into her coat on her way to the
barn door, she issued one parting shot.

"And if there's no heaven and we just turn into vapors, then just
where's
your
mother,
I'd
like to know!"

Abby's eyes were turned to the old beams of the roof. "With Ricky
Nelson."

Lost cause
was a term that never applied to any case Brian
Macalvie was working on; it often extended to the people working under
him, however.

Often, but not always. The female voice Jury heard coming from the
forensics lab at the end of the corridor belonged to Gilly Thwaite,
Macalvie's Scene-of-Crimes officer.

When Macalvie saw Jury appear at the open door, he motioned him in
with an impatient wave of his hand as if Jury were an overdue referee.

Not that Macalvie needed one; he was standing in his usual posture,
hands pushed in trouser pockets and shoving back the raincoat he seemed
never to remove, and chewing gum at a rate roughly equivalent to the
fast-talking Gilly Thwaite. Across the lab table she leaned into him.
like a heavy wind.

Jury sat down in a white enamel folding chair and tipped it back,
watching Macalvie stand there like the tree that wouldn't be uprooted.
She was trying to face him down about fingerprints, or the lack of
them, in the case they were working on.

". . . no partials, no latents, only elimination. For the sixth damn
time. Nothing!" Her big black-rimmed glasses took over half of her
small, triangular face like goggles.

Gilly Thwaite was more than usually edgy, thought Jury. She was
smart enough to know that what Macalvie's co-workers thought of as the
chief superintendent's "arro-gance" was better described as his simple
confidence that he was right ninety percent of the time—which he was.
Ma-calvie allowed a margin for error or natural disasters: flooding of
the River Dart, the collapse of Exeter Cathedral, the disappearance of
the Devon-Cornwall coast, or worse—information withheld from him. This
was why Gilly Thwaite was being defensive, Jury knew. She suspected
that Macalvie was going to pull the rug out.

"The toilet seat, Gilly? I mean
under
the toilet seat.
Even a bastard that could shove an old guy's skull in can be very
fastidious about—"

"Yes! Under, over, inside the tank. ..." She came close to slapping
him with the folder she fanned in front of his face; Macalvie brushed
it away as if it were a mosquito. "Look, you seem to forget I'm
not
your print expert—"

"Be grateful for small blessings, Gilly," said Macalvie round the
cigarette he was lighting. "Let's get to the call box on the corner. At
thirteen-five a call was made to that number. At thirteen-ten the old
guy was killed—"

"Two call boxes, Superintendent,
two
." She held up two
fingers directly in front of her chief's eyes.

Macalvie's expression didn't change, so she finally dropped her
hand. "I'm talking about the
only
one this villain could
have called from and got to that house in four minutes." He shrugged.
"But if you insist on two possibilities, it's still the same thing,
it'd just take a little longer."

"Those call boxes were dusted for prints; do you think between the
whole team we don't have at least one brain ... I take that back." It
was hard to make Gilly Thwaite's face flush, but Jury saw the blood
rising along the neck.

"Either of them credit-card phones? Phone-card phones?"

Wiggins, who had been scrutinizing a row of phials on one of the
tables for either cures or diseases, looked over at the two.

"Regular call boxes." Gilly Thwaite pretended to be shrugging this
off because she knew it was important and she'd missed something. Jury
could almost see her mind racing, sprinting round the course trying at
least to keep abreast, if not ahead, of Macalvie's nag.

He stood there chewing gum while she didn't answer. "You thought of
calling Telecom?" He tapped ash into his hand. "Probably make their
day, a couple crowbars, an axe or two . . ."

She stood there frowning, saying nothing.

"Think about it." He looked at his watch as if he were timing her,
then started toward the door.

"Why do you have to play with your people's minds, Ma-calvie?"

They were on their way down the corridor to his office.

"To find out if they've got any. She's one of the few who does.
What's wrong, Wiggins?"

Sergeant Wiggins was looking decidedly puzzled as he slowly
unwrapped a tin of Sucrets. "What? Oh, nothing. Nothing."

The office was cold because Macalvie always kept a window open
whatever the season. Since he never seemed to remove his coat—he was
out more than in—the cold didn't bother him. Jury was surprised to see
the window festooned with scraggly blue and brassy-orange tinsel, the
sad remains of the passing season. The late sun reflected and refracted
it on Macalvie's copper hair and when he turned, sparked his intensely
blue eyes. God did the lighting for Macalvie.

He had plunked himself into his swivel chair at a desk full of
ashtrays, folders, and coffee mugs that could have gone to the lab;
amidst this buildup of what Jury imagined was the residue of old cases
that Macalvie refused to close and therefore to let anyone file, he
pulled out a folder it would have taken his secretary a week to find.

Wiggins hunched down in his heavily lined raincoat and looked
unhappily at the open window. He pulled his thick gloves from his
pocket and put them on, staring at Macalvie. Hint-wise, it wasn't of
much use; Macalvie could never un-derstand disturbances of the body so
long as the mind was in first gear.

Jury hadn't bothered taking off his coat, either, and hadn't
bothered sitting down because he was too busy staring at the photos
Macalvie had spread out, facing Jury. "What's this, Macalvie?"

"Pictures." Macalvie reached down into his file drawer, stuck a pint
of Glenfiddich on the table with some paper cups, leaned back, and
propped his feet on the desk top. "Photos of remains. A boy and his
dog."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look at the photos. They buried the dog, too."

Jury's head came up. "I'm not one of your team, Brian. You don't
have to wait for me to catch up with you. If you're talking about Billy
Healey, he was never found, and Toby Holt was killed by a lorry. This
isn't Dunstable races, and I don't care if I win, place, or show. I
just want to show up with something when the chips are down—"

"The chips are always down. Have a drink." He started pouring small
measures into cone-shaped cups.

Wiggins, who ordinarily looked at liquor the same way he looked at
lizards, actually drank his down neat, choked, pulled out his lozenge
tin.

"No, thanks," said Jury, waving away the drink. Leaning on the
divisional commander's desk, his hands splayed, he said levelly,
"Listen to me: you're a chief superintendent, a divisional commander,
not Sam Spade—you even call your secretary 'Effie'—and you act like Joe
Cairo and the Fat Man are going to come walking through a bead curtain.
You run a department, Macalvie; you're not Spade or Marlowe. So stop
pulling cards out from behind your ear, okay?"

Wiggins quickly pulled out his charcoal biscuits, anodyne for
anything—digestion, anger—and shoved one toward Jury. Jury took it
without thinking, stuck half in his mouth, and chewed the dreadful
thing. No wonder Wiggins was almost always sick if this is what he
thought would cure him.

Macalvie sat wide-eyed, feigning wonder . . . feigning concern . . .
just feigning. "You through?"

Jury swallowed, choked, and reached for the paper cup Macalvie was
taking up. He took a drink and said, "I can only
assume
,
since you didn't tell me anything, and since I'm here on the Nell
Healey business, that somehow you've discovered the boy's body.
How
,
I don't know."

Macalvie looked surprised. "How? I just kept on searching, Jury."
Why
wouldn't any cop do the same
? his expression asked.

Jury scanned the police photographs of skeletal remains, human and
what appeared to be animal, taken from all angles, first lying in the
grave, later carefully removed and placed on the ground, out of it.
"Nell Healey doesn't appear to know you've found anything."

Macalvie took his feet off the desk, made a neat stack of the photos
and replaced them in the brown envelope, which he handed to Jury. "You
want to tell her, Jury?"

Wiggins coughed, sucked his lozenge noisily, and looked from the one
to the other. Macalvie was out of his chair, jamming a tweed cap on his
head. "Especially since you don't know the whole story? Come on; we're
going to Cornwall."

Wiggins shoved his lozenge under his tongue, and said, "Well, it'd
help if you
told
us the story." He sneezed. "Sir."

Jury smiled. "Be sure you leave the window open, Macalvie. You
never know when
He
might call you to fly out of
it."

The window shut with a bang that splintered the old paint at the
corners. "You guys are a treat."

They passed the desk of Macalvie's secretary, whose eyes were bent
on an embroidery hoop. "Will I see you again?" she asked, sucking a
finger that she seemed to have stabbed with the needle at her boss's
appearance. "Or should I just leave up the decorations till next
Christmas?" Her face, as chisled as a square-cut diamond, turned to the
ceiling mold-ing, round which were festooned more dull and dusty
strands of tinsel. "Sergeant Thwaite called to say Telecom is having
your service at home disconnected."

Macalvie's cap was pulled down somewhere in the region of his nose.
"I don't have a home; I don't have an office; I don't need a secretary.
So long, Effie."

She seemed to be considering this, as one hand left the hoop to
scratch almost meditatively, like a cat, under one armpit. "Then can I
take down that bloody tinsel and moth-eaten wreath?"

Jury smiled at her. "We could all do with a bit of glitter." He
looked at the faded gold loopings and smiled even more broadly. "I take
it the decorations aren't your idea."

The hoop was forgotten, lying on her typewriter, a decades-old IBM.
Her smile was as wide as the wreath. "His. Every year, he wants the
damned stuff up."

Wiggins made a sound between a giggle and a sneeze as Macalvie's
coat disappeared round the door.

Jane leaned her square chin on her equally square fingernails. "And
every year he gives me the same present."

"Bath salts," said Jury, solemnly.

"Bath salts," said Jane with an added touch of glamour in her smile.
"Crabtree and Evelyn."

"Good-bye, Jane."

She brought her fingers to her palm a couple of times in a good-bye
wave.

"That's okay, Wiggins, I'll drive," said Macalvie as Wiggins was
quickly trying to capture the driver's seat.

Jury got in the passenger's side while Wiggins stowed himself into
the rear seat and appeared to be offering up a prayer.

Macalvie twisted round and said, "We can take the A-thirty-eight,
but the shortcut across Dartmoor's better. No traffic."

Obviously recalling an earlier drive through sheets of rain and
hemtned in by stone walls (no stone of which Macalvie had left
unturned), Wiggins brought out his big gun: the vaporizer.

Macalvie gave Wiggins a look of disgust. Jury nodded at the road
ahead. "Take the A-thirty-eight."

Macalvie shrugged, tore away from the curb.

When they hit the roundabout, a black Lamborghini with a woman
driver dripping jewels and a fox fur cut him off, gave him a finger,
and took the car up to ninety as she sped onto the motorway.

"Lady, lady," sighed Macalvie. He yanked the blue light out and
shoved it on top of the Ford.

"Brian we're going to
Cornwall
. You're not—" Jury was
tossed against the back of his seat as Macalvie jammed the pedal down.

"Following her, we'll get there a hell of a lot faster." He smiled
broadly.

Wiggins had a coughing fit and Jury just shook his head as the Ford
closed in on the Lamborghini. "You're not a traffic cop, for Christ's
sakes."

"So what? There's never one around when you need one." The
Lamborghini finally pulled over. Macalvie braked on the shoulder, got
out a ticket book that he kept stashed in the glove box, and said,
"This won't take long."

Macalvie, Jury knew, loved being a copper. The possibilities were
endless.

Looking through the rear windscreen, Wiggins said, "Do you think he
might have been a deprived child, sir?"

"No." Jury was blowing on his hands. "But his parents were."

"There's one old Lambo won't be hitting the highways for six
months." He whistled and drifted out into the traffic.

An hour later, they were flying by a brightly lit Little Chef that
Wiggins eyed longingly, as if the wind stirred up by the traffic was
wafting the aroma of plaice and chips and beans on toast down the
motorway through the driver's open window.

Macalvie had been giving Jury the details of the scene, eight years
ago, in the house on the Cornwall coast. They were the same details,
but Macalvie liked to get everything right at least twice before he
moved on. "You should have heard them, Jury—Healey and Citrine—when she
refused to pay up. I thought Roger Healey was going to take the poker
and let her have it. Daddy wasn't quite so violent, but it looked like
a cardiac arrest was imminent. '
Are you insane, Nell? He's my sonP
or '
My dear God, you've got to. He's like my own grandson
.' No
one seemed to think Billy Healey was
her
anything."