Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (3 page)

"Sick leave?"

Chief Superintendent A. E. Racer made an elaborate display of
cupping his ear with his hand as if the ear couldn't quite believe it. "
Sick
leave?"

Jury knew that for Racer this was, if not the opportunity of a
lifetime, at least the best one that had come along that day: here was
a chink in the old Jury armor, a rent in the old corduroy jacket, an
occasion that called for much more than telling Superintendent Jury a
policeman's life was full of grief, since it apparently was. Jury could
almost see the tiny guns taking aim in Racer's mind, trying for a salvo
that would never go off.

"You've
never
applied for sick leave."

"Perhaps that's why I'm sick."

" 'Sick leave' is Wiggins's department. He takes it for all of us."

Request denied. Punch time clock. Wheel to grindstone. There're none
of us who couldn't use a bit of a rest,
especially me. But you
don't see me lying down on the job
.

"Well, he looks sick to
me
," said Fiona Clingmore, who'd
come in to collect two big stacks of paper that she was now balancing
on her forearms at the same time her eyes were on the booby-trap box
Racer had rigged to catch the cat Cyril.

Did Racer really think he could outwit Cyril
? Fiona had
asked this question as she sat filing her nails into glossy claws.
Gets
worse every day, the chief does
.

"If you want me to bring a note from my doctor, I will."

"I'm sure Wiggins can rip out a page from one of his prescription
pads. Or furnish some Harley Street letterheads. His desk must be
littered with them." Racer smiled his razorblade smile and looked at
Jury over folded hands, the thumbs making propeller circles round each
other.

Fiona looked from Jury to Racer.

"He's worn out, he is. You only have to look to see he's dead on his
feet, practically."

Dressed in her usual black, this one the light wool dress with the
tightly zipped bodice and pinch-pleated skirt, Fiona looked like she
was ready to crash a funeral service, given the seamed stockings and
black hood hugging her tarnished gold hair. Whenever he looked at
Fiona, Jury thought of old trunks filled with taffeta tea-dance gowns,
ribbon-tied letters, the little paper valentines punched from books
that were handed round at school. . . .

Fiona, for all of her shoulder-shrugging, hip-thrusting brashness,
was a picture of poignance. He'd better stop thinking about her and the
past or pretty soon he'd be walking in his mind down the Fulham Road
hand-in-hand with his mother, perhaps watching the wash go round in the
launderette. A big dose of nostalgia was not what he needed to cure a
big case of depression. Though sitting in Racer's office, looking at
Racer's brilliant invention for trapping the cat Cyril helped to
assuage
that
. It was a small wooden crate with a drop-screen,
activated by pressure of foot or paw, whence the hinges would fold and
the screen fall back, covering the box. Inside was a tin of sardines.
Racer said he'd got this idea from old films he remembered about
hunters and Hottentots (or some other aborigine) where the Hottentots
were always falling through holes covered with vegetation into nets
that quickly tightened.

He forgot that Cyril—the cat that had wandered into the halls of
Scotland Yard seemingly out of nowhere—was not a Hottentot. Jury and
Fiona marveled at the pure idiocy of the sardine box-trap. True, the
screen banged shut. But all Cyril had to do was nose it open when he
had dined on his tin of sardines. Thus Racer must have had some vague
plan that he would catch Cyril at it, that he would return from his
club and find claws scrabbling at the screen. If Racer and Cyril (Fiona
had said) ever met, it would be in Hell. And it would be (Jury had
said) a brief meeting indeed, since Cyril could walk through flames
without singeing his burnished copper fur. Houdini (they had both
agreed) would have got free faster from that underwater escape if he'd
had Cyril with him.

Fiona had two dozen sardine tins in the filing cabinet, which she
was constantly using to replace the ones that Cyril ate. Cyril loved
the box; it was a second home. Sluggish from his meal, he would
sometimes nap on the can and Fiona would have to drag him out before
Racer returned. Jury told her not to worry; Cyril could scent Racer's
approach from vast distances. The cat could hear him, smell him, even
see him when Racer was pushing open the glass door of New Scotland
Yard. They did not want Racer to think his contraption wasn't working,
or his inventiveness might take a nose-dive and he'd revert to some
other means of disposal, like painting the carpet with poison.

Yes, thought Jury, the depression was lifting, as he saw Fiona's eye
rove the room in search of the cat Cyril. He was missing, and Jury knew
where he was, though Racer hadn't twigged it. Jury screened his eyes
with his hand in a posture of sickliness that allowed him to look at
the bottom of the bookcase that Racer had converted into a drinks
cabinet. Tiny tinklings of glass emerged from it. Racer could cup his
ears all he wanted, but he was getting deaf.

The cabinet was fitted with doors easily opened by hitching a
finger (or paw) in the handle. Unfortunately, Racer would walk by
occasionally and kick the door shut. He had commissioned Fiona to get a
lock and key, grumbling (Fiona'd told Jury) about the char being at the
booze bin again. ("That's what he calls it, imagine? Common, ain't it?"
she'd added, tossing down her nail file and picking up the buffer.)

Inside the cabinet were two or three bottles each of Remy,
Tanqueray, Black Bush and aged Scotch, fallen off backs of vans
(according to Fiona): gifts from villains that Racer had done little
favors for. There was a miniature replica of a beer keg with a spout
and a small cup for catching the whiskey. Right at eye level, if you
were a cat. Cyril often wandered from the inner to the outer office in
a weaving, wondering way.

"He'll get sick," Fiona had said after one of the booze bin jaunts.

"Cyril? You know he's only doing it to drive Racer crazy."

"Maybe he should have a liver test."

"If you want my opinion," said Fiona, nodding toward her beloved
(now sick) superintendent, "a couple of weeks off—"

"No, I do not want your opinion, Miss Clingmore. I cannot recall
the last time—if ever there was one—that I wanted your opinion." He was
still twirling his thumbs, looking from his secretary to his
superintendent with that
got you both on the run, haven't I
?
expression.

Fiona pursed her bright red lips and said, hefting the pile of
papers, "So you want me to shred this lot, I expect." She quietly
chewed her gum and regarded him, poker-faced.

Racer's already alcohol-mottled face flushed a rosier red. "
Shred
?
I do not
shred
papers."

"No? What about all them—those—letters to the commissioner last
year. You surely didn't tell me to file—"

"Take those papers and your jeweled talons" (Fiona was deeply into
nail art) "out of here. And see if that cat's roaming the halls and
walking across the forensics lab tables.
Do you hear me
?"

With the weight of the papers, she still managed an indifferent
shrug. "Well, I still say anyone that's not had sick leave in fifteen
years deserves more consideration." Turning to go, she added, "I'll
just take these to the shredder." Fiona exited to the tiny tinkle of
glass on glass.

Wiggins was still holding a copy of
Time Out
in one hand
and with the other pouring a dollop of vinegar into a glass of water to
which he then added a spoonful of honey.

Jury just shook his head. That Wiggins had got to the point where he
could measure his medications without even looking up from his reading
was proof of a practiced hand indeed. "I'm not talking Fisherman's
Friends and charcoal biscuits, I'm talking
sick
, Wiggins."
Jury was yanking open the drawer of a filing cabinet. "The real thing,
official sickdom, sicko, down-for-the-count." Jury took one of the
forms from the drawer on his sergeant's desk. "Something only a week or
two in the country can fix. The damned things have enough copies, don't
they?" Jury fingered the multicolored form.

Wiggins stopped tapping his honeyed spoon against the glass and
looked from
Time Out
to the form to Jury, frowning. "I don't
understand, sir."

"Two weeks off, flat on my back. More or less." Jury scratched his
head over the wording of a question.
When was this illness first
evidenced
? He felt like answering,
My first meeting with
Chief Superintendent A. E. Racer. . .
. He glanced over at
Wiggins's desk. The sergeant was slightly pale. It was, Jury supposed,
one thing to be medicating oneself for a sore throat with honey and
vinegar while still at one's desk; it was quite another to have illness
stamped with the imprimatur of officialdom.

Jury scratched away, half-conscious of the sergeant's rather ragged
breathing. Practicing for the doctor himself, perhaps? He looked up;
Wiggins was looking at Jury sadly. Across the corner of the
entertainment magazine he held was a banner saying,
The Last Wind
Blows
. Whatever that meant. The cover showed the face of a young
man, head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open. Round his neck was a
strap holding a sleek white guitar. Across the picture of the guitarist
was written
SIROCCO
, the white cursive letters streaming
across the cover as if wind were blowing the letters away. "I need a
different climate. Warm. Sand, sea, warm breezes."

Wiggins said, "My doctor suggested just that a while back. A year or
two ago."

Jury smiled at the fact that now Wiggins sounded somewhat envious. "
What
are you putting down, sir? Not that you don't need time off—"

Jury nodded toward the magazine. "Or Time Out. Nervous collapse,
how about that? He certainly looks as if he might have one."

Wiggins flipped the magazine over, looked at the cover, said, "Well,
apparently he thinks he is. 'The Last Wind Blows.' It's his last
concert."

"Whose?" Jury looked up. Where had he seen the face?

"Charlie Raine's. He's lead guitarist for this rock group, Sirocco.
Surely you've heard of them."

That was it. Posters tacked up around London. "Last
concert
?
God, he looks like he just started his last form in public school."

"A shame, isn't it?"

Jury penned in another answer to another inane question. "A
publicity stunt, more likely."

"I don't know, sir. Actually, when you think of it, success is
pretty hard on a person."

Putting aside his pen, Jury said, "We should know."

"What sea and what sands are you going to?" His smile was like the
last tiny sliver of waning moon.

"Yorkshire."

The magazine fell to the desk; the pen dropped. They had been across
the North Yorkshire moors years ago. It was not the high point in
Sergeant Wiggins's career.

"
West
Yorkshire, Wiggins. Wanner."

Wiggins gave him a sickly smile.

Jury rose, stretched, and got out a cigarette. He went round to
Wiggins's desk and added, looking down at the picture of the young
singer, "And maybe awhile in Cornwall. Don't you have a day or two of
leave coming up?" Jury nodded at the form. "Why don't you take it?"

Wiggins took fright momentarily. "I expect you could call that sea
and sand," he said with an unusual turn of mild humor.

Jury lit a cigarette, looked at the face on
Time Out
.

"Heathrow was flooded with fans. They had enough police for a
terrorist attack. Carole-anne was probably there," said Wiggins.

"Living Hell seems to be her group."

"Oh, that's hard to believe. They're passe."

Sergeant Wiggins often surprised him with a knowledge of unusual or
arcane subjects, totally unrelated to his work.

"She's been poring over maps and timetables for a week now in her
spare time."

"Is she taking a trip, then? I'll miss her."

Wiggins could move quickly from speculation to a
fait accompli
.
And then, Jury realized, so could he. He shoved the form to one side,
drumming his fingers impatiently. "What about the Devon-Cornwall
constabulary? What did Superintendent—what was his name?"

"Goodall, sir. He's passed away, sir." Wiggins looked into his glass
as if it were the funeral wine. "Last year it was. I got a chief
detective inspector, though."

"What did he say?"

Wiggins took a large swallow from his glass of honey-vinegar elixir
before answering. "Nothing very helpful; he seemed reluctant to go into
it. That it had been over eight years, after all. Couldn't dredge up
the details off the top of his mind."

"No one's asking for the top of his mind." Jury leaned back, looked
up at the ceiling molding. A spider was swing-ing precariously from a
thread of its broken web. "They must have a fairly thick dossier on
that kidnapping; even I remembered the essentials, and I wasn't in
Cornwall. Couldn't he take the trouble to have one of his lackeys open
the files?"

"He was at home, sir. In Penzance. Said I'd got him in from his
garden. Staking up some ornamental trees, or something, that a storm
had—"

"Swell." Jury thought for a moment. "It's the Devon-Cornwall
constabulary." He reached for the telephone. "Maybe Macalvie knows
something."

The question wasn't whether Divisional Commander Ma-calvie knew
something
but whether he knew
everything
, a conviction that his
Scene-of-Crimes expert assumed he held, and that she was in the process
of challenging.

Since Gilly Thwaite was a woman, and Macalvie's lack of tolerance
was legendary, none of her colleagues at the Devon headquarters had
expected her to last five minutes in the bracing presence of Brian
Macalvie.

But Macalvie's suffering others to live had nothing to do with sex,
age, creed, species. He had no end of tolerance as long as nobody made
a mistake in the job. And he was fond of saying that he understood and
sympathized with the possibility of human error. If the monkey could
really type
Hamlet
, he'd take the monkey on a case with him
any day before ninety percent of his colleagues.

He couldn't understand (which is to say, he didn't give a bloody
damn) why people found him difficult to work with. Occasionally,
someone who'd actually got a transfer (requests for them had become
routine) would burst into his office and tell him off. One had actually
accepted a demotion to Kirkcudbright and told Macalvie Scotland was
hardly far enough away from him; he'd asked for Mars. Macalvie was part
Scot himself, and had just sat there, chewing his gum, warming his
hands under his armpits, his copper hair glimmering in a slant of sun
and the acetylene torches of his blue eyes turned down a bit from
boredom, and replied that the sergeant was lucky it was Scotland
because he'd forgot to do up his fly, and in Kirkcudbright maybe he
could wear a kilt.

Not everyone on the force hated Macalvie; the police dogs loved him.
They knew a cop with a good nose. The dogs belonged to the ten percent
of the population Macalvie thought had it together. He only wished he
could say the same for their trainers. And the fingerprint team. And
foren-sics. And especially for the police doctors. At this point
Macalvie had read so many books on pathology he could have earned a
degree.

So ten percent—well, seven on an especially bad day— comprised that
part of the population Macalvie thought might possibly know what they
were doing. Gilly Thwaite was one, although one would be hard put to
know why from the dialogue going on between them when Jury's call came
through.

"You're not the pathologist, Chief Superintendent." Gilly Thwaite
only tossed him a title, like a bone, when she was being sarcastic.

Actually, he didn't care what he was called, except when
he
was being sarcastic. He said, "Thank God I'm not
that
one.
The last time he opened his murder bag I thought I saw a hammer and a
spanner. He'd make a better plumber." He shoved the diagram she'd
slapped on his desk aside and went back to the same deep immersion in
the newspaper she'd chortled about when she came in. "
You?
Reading on the job
?"

This he had ignored and he tried to ignore her now. Her argument was
perfectly intelligent; it was just wrong. The item in the
Telegraph
was sending up his blood pressure.

Still, she mashed her finger at the diagram, a drawing of the
trajectory a bullet might have made from entrance to exit wound. "The
entrance wound is
here
, see,
here
. The bullet
couldn't possibly have lodged
there
—"

He regarded her over the edge of the paper. "The bullet could've
glanced off one of the ribs."

"Macalvie, you can't go into court and say our
own pathologist
is wrong."

"Not going to. I'm going to say he's not a pathologist, he's a
plumber."

Gilly Thwaite was shaking her head rapidly; her ordinarily tight
brown curls had got longer because she hadn't had time to cut her hair.

"Your hair is turning to snakes, Medusa."

She pounded her fist on his desk so hard the telephone jumped as it
rang and she squealed in frustration.

He snatched it up. Anything for a reprieve. "Macalvie," he said.

"My God, Macalvie, are you sticking a pig?"

"Hullo, Jury. No, just Gilly Thwaite. Get out, will you?"

"I just got here," said Jury.

"Her." Silence. "I shut my eyes. She's still here. Go get a
haircut." Back to Jury. "I was just reading about it."

Although he was slightly startled by Macalvie's mind-reading, he
didn't question it. "Roger Healey, you mean."

"Why else would you be calling, unless you too have some inane
theory on the trajectory of a bullet through human organs. She's still
here. I've been teaching her about ribs. How every body has them, and
there's a heart, and lungs. I think she's ready for her first term of
pre-med. I'm flattered. The case was in the less-than-expert hands of
Superintendent Goodall of our Cornwall constabulary."

"The chief inspector Wiggins talked to said the case was closed; he
said he couldn't remember much about it."

"Billy Healey was walking along a public footpath with his
mum—correction,
stepmum
, which it seemed to make a big
difference to some minds—walking along this footpath about four hundred
yards below their house on the coast, an isolated house—"

Jury nodded to Wiggins quickly to pick up the extension. Wiggins
did, very quietly, getting out his notebook at the same time.

"—near Polperro. That's about thirty, forty miles from Plymouth—
Wiggins. How's January treating you?"

As if that were a cue, Wiggins sneezed and said hello, himself.
"How'd you know I was here?" Wiggins smiled at this little magic act of
the divisional commander's.

"Nobody breathes like you, Wiggins. It's an especially uplifting
sound. Shall I start again?"

Said Jury, "I think I can remember those details. I'll try hard."

"Let's hope so. Anyway, it was around four, maybe a little after,
and they were walking. Nell Healey—that's the stepmother—said that
they'd been walking the path so that Billy could look for bird eggs.
They usually did this in the afternoon, she said, even though they
never found any, but it was a fantasy both of them seemed to get a kick
out of. Anyway, Billy said he was going in to fix some sandwiches for
him and Toby. Toby was indoors.

"The way his stepmother put it, Billy ran and walked by turns over
the ground back to the house and would turn and wave every so often."
He paused and Jury heard some rustling of papers and what sounded like
the click of Macalvie's cigarette lighter.

Wiggins frowned. "Thought you'd given that up, Superintendent."

"I wish you'd join my forensics team, Wiggins. They can't see their
own shoes much less through telephones."

"You know what your doctor—"

"Wiggins." Jury gave him a look.

"Oh, sorry, sir. Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Macalvie. He'd just gone
back to the house for the sandwiches."

Macalvie continued. "He didn't come back."

There was a pause and an uncharacteristic clearing of his throat, as
if something had lodged there. One might have thought the divisional
commander was getting emotional.

Wiggins didn't take it this way: "How many packs a day are you up to
by now?"

"Into thin air, you'd think. She waited and finally went back to the
house. Thought he'd got caught up in some game with Toby, couldn't find
either of them, and then thought maybe he was doing the hide-and-seek
bit with her. So for a while she wasn't anxious. And, of course, it's
not like losing sight of your kid in the middle of Oxford Street or
Petticoat Lane. Then she looked outside, everywhere, and
then
she called the police. Do you want all this detail or just the
highlights?"

"I'm amazed you remember all this detail. It wasn't even your case."

Another pause. "Well, let's say I took an interest. A kid being held
for five million in ransom money—"

Wiggins whistled, went on writing.

"That's a case you can hardly avoid developing an interest in. And
watching Goodall making a right cock-up of it. There was one botched
attempt by his men to make contact with the kidnappers. I was detective
sergeant then." The tone was a combination of wistfulness and wonder.

Even Macalvie had once been a constable. Even as a divisional
commander, he didn't hesitate to do constable's duty. Jury had watched
him write a traffic ticket once. Macalvie's net got tossed out and
anything that came up he inspected closely. Anyone else in his position
would throw back the little-fish cases. Macalvie would dissect minnows.
"You assigned yourself to it, more or less?" asked Jury, smiling.

"I got myself assigned to it."

Even as a police sergeant, Macalvie was known to be better than
most of the men on the force.

"You know the story about the actual investigation; you've obviously
read the accounts—"

"I'd rather hear your version."

"I don't blame you. I got myself assigned to the Healey case because
there is nothing,
nothing
as touch-and-go as an abduction.
I'd sooner try to balance on razorblades than negotiate a kidnapping.
You know the pressures that exist there and the chances of getting the
person back. The need for rational thought. Well, it's pretty hard to
be rational when it's your kid. And let me tell you the emotions
churning round that house could have bulldozed half of Dockland."

" '
I've told you and told you not to come here alone
,'
Citrine—Nell Healey's father—kept saying. People love hindsight; we'd
rather look back any day than forward. What a scene, what a scene.
Blaming the kid's stepmother for not taking better care of him. Then
there was the father, Healey, who was pretty much useless, ranting
around and yelling at the mother—stepmother, excuse me—'
How could
you leave him alone, Nell? Didn't you ever stop to think Billy might be
a target for kidnappers
?' I ask you, Jury. 'Mummy, I'm going to
make a sandwich,' and she's supposed to be sitting there wondering if
he'll be kidnapped? Okay, I'm not a father—"

Jury smiled slightly.

"—but it seemed to me old Roger could have been offering comfort
and succor to his wife instead of hurling insults. Citrine was at least
level-headed enough to get down to business. He seemed pretty cool,
though it was taking its toll on him, obviously."

Watching the tiny spider repairing its web, Jury asked, "How did she
react? Nell Healey? What did she say to all this negligence bit?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" Jury frowned, looked over at Wiggins scratching away on
his pad. He was better than a tape recorder.

At the other end of the telephone, Macalvie let out a sigh.
"Nothing. She was sitting on a window seat, a kind of bay window, and
looking out, as if to sea. I thought she was out of it, frankly. In
shock, or something. All the while Goodall was talking. He had a very
soothing voice, and he was trying to assure Citrine—all of them—that
the police were doing everything in their power. He gave the Kidnapping
Speech, or what I think of as the Kidnapping Speech: '
Mr. Healey,
as we're dealing with a crime that can mean life imprison-

ment, it's always possible that the victim might be harmed in
some way. Naturally, you need some assurance that the boy is still alive
—'
The Kidnapping Speech went on. How, if Citrine paid this ransom, it
would be best to have a detective go with him, the usual crap. Argument
over more police intervention further endangering the boys' lives.
Argument over marked bills. Argument over police going along. Argument
over publicity. Argument over Roger Healey
insisting
on
paying, period. Charles Citrine talking to somebody from the bank—there
was a V.I.P. there from Lloyd's. It went on."

"But Citrine finally refused to pay up."

There was another pause. "It wasn't Citrine, see."

"The ransom wasn't paid."

"Citrine was directing the Lloyd's person to get the money ready. I
was sick of listening to the usual codswallop of junk about 'options'
and 'alternatives.' So I said, 'You hand over that money and you're
signing both those kids' death warrants.'"

Jury shook his head. "That's the 'negotiation'-type thing we're
talking about?"

"Jury, you know and I know, and I'm sure
Goodall
knew the
chances. Not just the chances but the game. You know the way people
like that think—"

"I wish I did."

"Then I'm telling you: they say to themselves, Now I've got the
money, what do I do with the evidence? Especially if it has eyes and
ears? At least
until
they get the money, there's a chance
they'll keep the victim alive."

"I'm not arguing with you, Macalvie. Tell me the story."

Another pause. It seemed to worry Macalvie if someone wasn't arguing
with him. Some people were like that; they needed it just to sort
things out. Macalvie wasn't asking for approval; he was asking for
consultation. "Okay. The minute I said that, they all started
rabbiting on, the biggest rabbit being Superintendent Goodall, who
quickly told me to shut up. Actually, he went frostbitten with anger.
Roger

Healey shouted at me. It was the "how-can-you-know?' routine.
Citrine looked pretty ashen, but at least he was trying to keep his
head. Finally, he said, 'You might be right. But then you might be
wrong.' "

"That pretty much covers the ground." He could almost see Macalvie
smile. "Then?"

"Then he said he'd pay any amount of money to get Billy back."

"But you changed his mind?"

Silences from Macalvie were unusual. There'd been at least three in
this accounting, and now there was another. Jury could almost hear the
air hum out there in Exeter. "No. It was Nell Healey's mind. She turned
her head from that window she'd been staring through and gave me a look
that could cut diamonds. I must admit it even pinned
me
to
the wall. Well, you've met her—"