Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (32 page)

"Sorry. Like I said, I don't know anything about drugs. I'm not a
user."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, we didn't mean that; I mean, I can tell one
from miles away. But look: if your band does get any news about
something going down—"

Something going down? Jury bit his lip.

"—tell me direct, okay? Don't talk to no one else." She paused,
shrugged, tossed Jury a bone. "Except maybe
him
."

"I'll do that."

"Another thing . . ." Mary Lee's voice arpeggiated upward on a
scale of eighth notes: "I was wondering, might I have your autograph?"

"Sure." Charlie smiled and nearly short-circuited her frenetic
search for a bit of paper to write on. When Jury saw her bend down he
was afraid she was going to rip the hem off her petticoat.

She reached out her high-heeled shoe to Charlie. "Here."

He laughed shortly, baffled. "Wait, it'd ruin your shoes. I

must have something . . ." But he had nothing in his pockets.

Jury had been about to get out his notebook and didn't. The
intensity of Mary Lee's transaction stopped him.

"It's okay. Never mind. These ones are old; I hardly wear them."

Jury did reach over his pen to Charlie, who still seemed uncertain.
"I don't think the ink will hold on the clear stuff—"

"That's all right, then. If it don't, I'll find something else," she
said reasonably and watched with fascination as he carefully inked up
the top of the shoe. He handed it back.

Mary Lee took it carefully, as if it were really glass. She said
nothing, only looked down at the inscription. Beside her, Jury read it,
too:
To Mary Lee's shoe. Charlie Raine
.

It was too much for her. Without a word Mary Lee turned and limped
up the aisle into the shadows.

"Can I give you a lift to your hotel?" asked Jury.

Humping the gig bag over one shoulder Charlie said, "Thanks. But I
was only just going to the pub round the corner. Haven't eaten all day.
Care to join?"

"I could use a pint myself."

Charlie Raine turned up the wattage of his smile. "We can talk about
drugs."

Jury carried the flanger and the delay-box—which, according to
Charlie he used when he wanted distortion. The lecture on heavy
distortion was pretty much lost on Jury. He was wondering about that
comment on drugs.

"Because you're not the Drug Squad," Charlie said in answer to
Jury's question inside the pub. "You're C.I.D."

Jury was getting the drinks, Charlie was standing at the steam table
and food counter, absorbed by the large bowls of salads and rice that a
girl with rusty red hair was busily covering with wrap.

The pub was a plain one, deal tables and chairs, long bar whose only
color and decoration were supplied by the rows of bottles ranged on
shelves. No handsome mirrors, no mock Tiffany shades. But there were a
number of framed posters and pictures of musicians who'd probably
played at the Odeon.

Indeed, directly behind the food counter and the back of the aproned
girl was the by now well-known poster of the Sirocco band.

She drew herself up, hands on hips. "It's gone two. No food after
two o'clock." She turned icy blue eyes on both of them.

"You can't just do a ploughman's? Something cold?"

Her sigh was overwhelming, the roll of her eyes toward the heavens
the signal to God that she was a true martyr to her job. "And what's so
funny, I'd like to know?"

This was directed at Jury, who was standing at the bar watching the
porky bartender draw the pints. He had looked up at the poster behind
her, laughed, and shaken his head.

"If I were you," said Jury, "I'd give him what he wants." His tone
was mildly threatening.

It fueled her martyrdom. "If you was
me . .
. well, you
ain't, not from where I stand." Hands on hips she swiveled from one to
the other of them, displaying the hips to their best advantage. "So
where d'ya get off coming in here and telling me—"

"Police," said Jury. He shoved his warrant card near her face.

Under the bronze makeup, her face paled as if a mask were sliding
off. "Well, I
never
... oh ..." And she set about uncovering
the cheese plate and whacking off a chunk. Not, however, before she'd
given them a dismissive wave as if it weren't that she was scared, but
that the meal was being prepared out of her infinite largess.

Look up
, Jury silently commanded her. She didn't. Charlie
was looking at the face in the poster as if it belonged to somebody
else, only mildly interesting.

* * *

Sitting at a table scratched and coal-bitten by cigarette stubs Jury
said to Charlie, "C.I.D. You're pretty observant."

Charlie shook his head, watched Jury over the rim of his pint of
lager, said, "No. I didn't get it from your ID; it was your name."

Jury looked over at the huge poster, apparently useless as
identification, and smiled. "I'm so famous?"

Charlie didn't return the smile. "I read the papers, see—"

The redhead, still haughty and tight-lipped, set Charlie's plate
before him. But she did hover a bit, looking at him more studiously.

"Thanks," said Charlie.

"You're most welcome, I'm sure." The edge of sarcasm had crept back
in. She rolled off, hips swaying like a sailor who hadn't found his
land legs. Her own legs were in no way, however, of being lost.

"Does this happen to you often?"

"What happen?" Charlie was arranging some cheese on a piece of dark
bread.

"Not being recognized? She's trying to work out where she'd seen you
before and that poster's right over her flaming head."

"Happens a lot." He put a pickled onion on top of the cheese, bit
down. "Recognize Alvaro more than the rest of us. But he's big and he's
black. I mean, I don't think Hen-drix would've been able to walk down
the street without people pawing him and collapsing and ... Or Elvis.
I'm just a face in the crowd. It's nice."

"You say you read the papers—"

"Your name was right there. That murder up in Yorkshire. What
happens when a policeman's the witness?"

"Nothing much. Like any other witness."

"I'll bet." Charlie put a hunk of crumbly Cheshire on another thick
piece of bread, stuck on some Branston pickle, and tried to work his
mouth round the clumsy sandwich. All the while he was casting glances
at Jury with solder-colored, expressionless eyes. Strangely so, given
the light they had projected back in the theater. It was as if the
tints of an impressionist painting had vanished, fled from a Monet,
perhaps, recalled to be used elsewhere. Jury doubted the smile bestowed
on Mary Lee was ever put to much use.

Jury had never felt so totally off-guard. The comment about the
murder was the last thing he had expected.

They both seemed to be waiting for the other to give out with
information—some signal, some clue—like poker players.

Jury called. "You've been in London for two days to give a concert
and your mind's on some obscure killing in the West of Yorkshire?" He
smiled slightly.

"I just thought it was interesting. Scotland Yard detective as
witness. You saw the whole thing."

"Yes." Jury added nothing.

"I expect you're not to talk about it?"

"What did you want to know?"

"Me?" The eyes opened wider. "Nothing." When Jury didn't comment, he
added, "Well, I expect I was interested because I was born up there.
Leeds. But you probably know that."

"Why would I know that?"

"You're a fan." His attempt at a smile was depressing. Jury thought
his picking up the paper napkin to wipe his mouth had more to do with
wiping away the false smile.

Jury looked over to the food counter. The fiery-haired girl was
standing there, legs crossed, smoking a fag, and still trying to sort
it out.
A regular customer? Don't be stupid, girl. You know the
regulars. A busker, maybe. He has that guitar. That could be it. Passed
him in the Hammersmith station. No, that wasn't it
. In an
irritated little gesture she flicked ash from the cigarette, recrossed
her ankles, went back to staring at Charlie Raine.

Jury could read her mind; he wished he could read Charlie's. "I
think it was—a great tragedy, that killing."

Charlie returned the uneaten portion of his sandwich to the plate,
looking at it as if it were an obscure memory, some detail from the
past he couldn't fit in. Then he reached into his jeans pocket and
brought out some coins, got up, headed for the jukebox.

He hung there for a while, hands splayed on glass front, looking
down. By the time he came back to the table, a voice both rich and
ragged had started singing, /
was born . . . by a little old river
.
. ." The
born
was sustained in some time warp of the
singer's imagination; it was a thrilling voice.

"Otis Redding," said Charlie. He sat back, tilting his chair,
looking past Jury at nothing. Then he said, "His plane went down over
Wisconsin; only twenty-six, he was."

"How old are you? Twenty, twenty-one?"

"Twenty-three. Why?"

"Because you're quitting." Jury didn't expect any answer but the
same one Charlie had given Jiminez.

He was surprised, then, when Charlie shoved his plate back and said,
"I've gone as far as I want to go." He shifted sideways on the bench,
put one grimy Reebok up, and laid his arm across his knee. The pose was
listless; he was looking over toward either the redhead or the
jukebox. The girl was still washing up, still watching them, still
frowning slightly. "Think she'll twig it?" He slipped a cigarette from
Jury's pack, thumbed the tip of a match into flame, and inhaled deeply.
"Like Otis: 'too hard living, afraid to die.' " He turned with a grim
smile to look at Jury, said nothing, studied his cigarette, went on
smoking.

"You're at the top, and you don't want it, when you must have worked
like hell to get there. You must have practiced until your fingers
bled." Jury was looking at the hand holding the cigarette, the fingers
hatched with tiny marks.

Charlie said nothing.

"And then what?" asked Jury.

He shrugged. "Go home for a bit."

"To Leeds?"

"To Leeds. Find a regular gig." He looked over at Jury, his eyes
narrowed against the scrim of smoke. "Dusty answers, right?"

This time, Jury didn't comment.

"I gotta go, man."

The British accent had taken on the edge of the American and the
idiom he'd been used to hearing for several years. "Who plays
keyboard?" asked Jury.

That surprised Charlie at least enough to make him stop counting out
pounds and pence. "Caton Rivers. Why?"

"Just wondered. Do you ever play keyboard, then?"

He stacked up the pound coins, the ten- and fivepence ones, and
beckoned to the redhead. "No, not much." He zipped up his jacket,
started gathering his gear together.

"Nell Healey won't get off with a lecture, you know. It took all the
weight of the Citrine-Healey name—not to mention money—to keep her out
of custody after she killed her husband. Now—"

He froze. "She probably had one hell of a good reason for killing
him." The waitress, eyes glued to him, swept the money off the table.
But Charlie didn't even see her. "And it'll be God knows how long
before the trial."

Jury got up. "I'm going to Haworth tomorrow. Want a lift to Leeds?"

"Sirocco's got a concert tomorrow night. Remember?"

"I remember."

"You coming?"

"I hope so. Perhaps I can talk Mary Lee into a couple of tickets."

Charlie reached into his back pocket. "I'm sure you could, but
here." He handed Jury two tickets. "Friend of mine can't make it."

Jury smiled. "I'll be mugged on the way back to the Yard. They're
that hard to come by."

Charlie Raine ran his hand through his long hair. "Look—" Then his
eye went past Jury to the bar. Jury followed his gaze and saw the
redhead, the expression on her face, standing there, her feet together,
holding the money
with
a sadly knowing look. "Hold
this, will you."

Jury
watched him walk over, look around, take one
of the paper plates from the stack and the pen hooked onto her belt. He
wrote, handed it to her, almost had to force it on her because she
stood there, stiff and wide-eyed.

He would never, thought Jury, let anyone suffer if he could do
something to stop it.

"Thanks for the beer," said Jury. "Want a lift?"

They stood looking up at the cold, hard sky. "I'm not going anywhere
much. Schmooze around. I like to walk in London."

"So do I," said Jury.

When Jury walked into his office at New Scotland Yard, Wiggins was
studiously turning the pages of an uninvitingly thick book whose
bindings seemed to resist this mild assault upon a volume that had lain
dormant for so long.

"Hullo, Wiggins." Jury stuck his raincoat on a peg and sat down in
his chair that creaked as if it had some symbiotic relationship with
the old book. Books. Three others, all equally thick, were open and the
pages held down by weights that Wiggins had found at his disposal: a
small ceramic pot that Jury had noticed him taking spoonsful from to
put in his tea; a tin of Sucrets wedged between pages of another; a
black biscuit as a bookmark. In the one he was now reading he had
marked several different places with Aspergum.

"What's that?
Gray's Anatomy
?"

Wiggins favored him with a crimped smile and went back to his book,
marking yet another page with a cylinder that looked like a stick of
incense.

He was so deep in his research that nothing was about to make
Wiggins risible.

Jury pulled his In box over and rifled through the messy collection
there as Wiggins looked up politely and said he'd got several reports
he must sign and, incidentally, what did the doctor say?