Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (48 page)

"Why are you still arguing, Macalvie? The woman tried to kill him.
You sound like Sanderson talking about the
time
the calls
were made. That's a little after-the-fact, isn't it?"

"That is, but this isn't. So she tried to shoot
someone
—"

"You're worse than a pit bull."

Macalvie steamrolled on: "Psychologically, your theory won't wash,
Jury. I told you. Instead of running home to his mum, which would be
the natural thing, he disappears—"

"Can't we assume he was scared out of his mind?"

"Which is why he'd go running home. Or to
some
kind of
sanctuary. Instead he goes off to Ireland. To
Ireland
?"

Jury sighed. "I'm not saying at twelve he—"

"Some sanctuary." Macalvie sat with arms binding his chest, the brim
of his loose tweed cap shown over his eyes. "This twelve-year-old piano
prodigy just dusts himself off, grabs the ferry for Larne, becomes a
guitarist, and lets his beloved step-mum sweat it out for eight years
thinking he's dead. You got any Fisherman's Friends, Wiggins? I think
I'll choke myself." Back and forth, back and forth, Macalvie slowly
shook his head. "Uh-uh." He got up, drained the cup of tea. "I'm
supposed to be in Sidmouth. Let me know what happens when the music
dies." He nodded toward Melrose. "Plant's really into this; he's
reading
Segue
."

Melrose looked up. "Jimi Hendrix was left-handed."

"So?" Macalvie rose just as Mary Lee came out of the stage door
again, moving between security police. She carried a tray with fresh
cups and a plate of stale-looking sandwiches.

She shoved the tray onto the floor of the van: "Want another cuppa?
And there's someone rung up to talk to—just a tic . . ." She pulled a
scrap of paper from her shoe, which she seemed to regard as the only
proper place for safekeep-ing, like a safety deposit box, and read
"—Chief Superintendent Macalver." She emphasized the second syllable.

"A/ac-al-vie," he said. "What someone?"

"A woman. Said to call right away."

Muttering imprecations, Macalvie jumped down from the van, nearly
upsetting the tray and definitely upsetting Mary Lee who said, "
You
?
You said you was from
Juke Blues
."

"I do that part time because I can't make a living as a cop." He
patted her cheek. "Don't worry; your picture will be all over the
papers. Where's the nearest phone?"

With some show of hostility she said, "I expect you could use my
office."

Macalvie turned to leave, turned back again and called to Jury, "If
you're so sure, Jury, why aren't you on the phone to Wakefield
headquarters? I imagine Mrs. Healey would like to know he's alive."

He went off through the driving rain.

The first to come out was Stan Keeler, followed by Stone. The
drizzle had turned to a steady downpour and the cigarette turned soggy
in his mouth. "
That
was some play, man." He dropped the
cigarette on the ground. "Am I nuts or was that a bullet that spun Wes
around? Is some crazy trying to make a statement they don't like
Sirocco? What the hell was going on in there?" He didn't seem to expect
any answers. "Your friend was very persuasive. So where's this new
landlady he was telling me about?"

"Front of the theater. You can't miss her. Red hair, silver jacket,
beautiful nose."

Stan grinned. "
Aw-right
." He turned to the black Labrador.

Stone was already halfway down the alley.

"The last number; they'll be out in a minute," said Wiggins in
answer to Jury's question. "Got to keep your strength up, sir." The
sergeant pushed the paper plate toward him. Wiggins was munching on
one of Mary Lee's cheese sandwiches. The bread was curling up on the
edges. Jury picked up a pale-looking round and then put it down.

He imagined himself sitting in the lounge of the Old Silent,
staring down at his plate after the conversation with Sanderson. It
wasn't, he realized now, anything Sanderson or he had said, it was the
plate. The detail which then had tried to surface now did.

Wiggins was talking to him about the chap whose job it had been to
monitor the spotlight. "He could identify her, sir. Why didn't she kill
him if she was that desperate?"

Jury stared at his sergeant without answering. He had his own
personal allergist sitting right there before him. "Wiggins, people
can outgrow allergies, can't they?"

Wiggins looked perplexed by his superior's interest in a subject
Jury generally considered as fascinating as one of Racer's preachments.
He was, nonetheless, delighted to hold forth at some length about the
various
types
of allergic reactions. "Billy Healey's?"
Wiggins frowned. "Doubtful. His was very serious."

"Then I don't imagine he'd be eating a ploughman's." He looked from
the sandwiches to his sergeant. "Lunch. Consisting mainly of cheese."

Wiggins stopped the cup of tea on the way to his mouth. "If you'd
only told
me
what he had for lunch—"

"Duckworth's column," said Melrose, "mentions the eccentricities of
some guitarists. Hendrix was left-handed and restrung right-handed
guitars because he thought they were probably superior."

"What's the point? Charlie Raine's a right-handed guitarist."

"He taught himself to play by looking at instruction books and
naively assumed the guitar had to be held that way. Mirror-image." He
tossed Jury the magazine. "By now, he's ambidextrous. But he was born
left-handed."

"Remind me to ring up Dr. Dench," said Wiggins, smugly.

* * *

The band came out.

Jury jumped down from the van and walked over to Wes Whelan. One arm
of his red shirt was caked with blood. "You amaze me. You didn't even
drop a beat. That was the most acrobatic turn I've ever seen." He shook
his hand.

Grinning, he said, "You forgot? I grew up in Derry with the IRA." He
looked at his shirt. "This is but a scratch. Nothing a tall a tall. It
only grazed me."

"You all showed incredible presence of mind."

Jiminez laughed; it was very deep, very throaty. "Man, we were so
into things I doubt we even knew what was goin' on until Stan Keeler
came out on that stage. Don't give us no credit."

Jury smiled. "No, of course not. Where's Charlie?"

Swann motioned over his shoulder. "In there. Hates to leave the
stage, Charlie does." He pushed back his golden hair and smiled.

"Don't wait for him," said Jury as they started piling into the
limousine.

"If you're going to the Ritz," said Melrose, "may I hitch a ride?"

He was sitting on the bottom level of the black platform in the
center of the stage, a towel round his neck, holding the white Fender,
plucking a string, plucking another, playing a chord as if some ghostly
remnant of that shouting, ecstatic audience still sat out there in the
rows of empty seats, as if there were the lingering echo of applause.

Perhaps because of the way he sat there, looking out, the theater
seemed not so much empty as abandoned. In the aisles a couple of lads
were cleaning up the detritus of the concert, but they left, lugging
plastic bags behind them. A clutch of roadies were standing at the rear
of the stage looking out, smoking, talking. Wondering, probably, what
the hell had gone on in here tonight.

When Jury sat down beside him, he didn't turn to look. "Wes is a
great drummer. He's got the quickest reaction time of anyone I know."

"Quicker than mine, certainly."

"I never knew anyone to pull off anything like that."

"What about you, Charlie?"

He looked down, strummed one chord, then another. He looked out
through the semidarkness much the way Nell Healey had stared beyond
that broken wall, as if someone might materialize before her eyes.

" 'I was trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the
bootstraps broke.' Stevie Ray Vaughan said that. Great guitarist."

"Stevie Ray Vaughan mended the bootstraps. You're quitting at the
height of your career as some sort of penance, that it?"

He didn't answer, just picked a few more notes, struck a few quick
chords.

"Or was the penance learning to play that"—Jury nodded toward the
guitar—"in the first place?"

There was a long silence, and then he said: "Every morning,
sometimes twice a day, since I've been in London I've gone to Waterloo.
Go into the buffet, get a cup of tea, go out, walk around and look at
the departures. There must be a train to Leeds nearly every hour." He
took his hand from the strings and reached into the back pocket of his
jeans. "I bought these." He fanned out four tickets—day-returns to
Leeds. "For eight years I tried to come back and tell her what
happened." He was silent. "I couldn't face her."

Jury waited, let him hold on to his guitar, strum the chords to
"Yesterday's Rain," and stare out over the emptiness as blighted,
perhaps, to him as Haworth Moor.

"The last time I saw her was when I was looking down from my window
that faced the sea and she stopped on that cliff path and looked up and
waved. She had a way of waving and smiling that was so"—he
shrugged—"joyful you'd think she hadn't seen you in ages. Like mums on
station platforms when the kids come down from school on their
holidays. You know." He looked over at Jury then, who was looking down.
"I really loved her. Hard to believe, but I'd have died for her."

Jury raised his eyes and looked out over the empty seats. "You did."

"I was getting my clothes on when I looked out the other window, the
one facing the rear and saw
her"
—he looked up toward the
corner of the circle—"walking down that back road. I wondered what in
hell the aunt was here for; no one said she was coming. Then she
disappeared inside, into the kitchen. I started down the stairs—the
room was at the top of the kitchen stairs—but then I stopped. I still
don't know why I didn't just clatter on down. I could only hear muffled
voices and in a minute the door slammed. The kitchen door. I went back
into my room and saw his Aunt Irene and Billy walking up the road, and
Gnasher, his terrier, padding behind him. I nearly raised the window
and shouted but something stopped me, again. It was just, I don't know,
wrong
.

"Then I ran down and looked for Mrs. Healey. Nell. She must have
walked farther along the cliff and I thought, no, I'd just waste time
looking for her. So I went round the house and up the road, trying to
catch up and stay out of sight at the same time. Then I saw the car,
the aunt's car; I recognized it from seeing it at the Citrine house. It
was parked nearly all the way up to the entrance and they got in. It
looked like they were having an argument about the dog, but Billy
pulled it in. Anyway, it gave me a chance to get to the shed and get
the bike and an old slicker. It was getting dark fast. Where the car
ended up—"

He stopped. He looked down at the guitar as if he'd never seen it
before.

Jury turned and said, "Was a disused graveyard."

He nodded. "It came on suddenly, the dark. The only light came from
the car's headlamps and an electric torch. It was held by a man but I
couldn't make him out; it was like the torch was shining right in my
eyes, had me pinned down. But they hadn't heard me. The rest was like
broken-off images in a dream. I could hear Billy, saying something, and
then crying. I could hear Gnasher, he just barked once and then
nothing. But I didn't hear
them
, I mean they went about all
of this in silence while I was ducked down behind a grave marker. It
was all so nightmarish I read over and over the words on the marker.

"Billy was lying on the ground, and the little dog was lying beside
him. His aunt pushed the dog down into the ground." He stopped. "Did
you ever have one of those feelings you become two different people?
It's as if one part of you is sitting in a chair and the other part
gets up and walks across the room? That's what happened to me. It was
like part of me still hid behind that stone and the other part ran
toward the grave. I was yelling; but even my voice didn't sound like my
voice. I still couldn't see his face, the man's, because he was down in
the grave, but hers—good God, I'll never forget that look.

"And then it all happened in slow motion: she brought out a gun, a
small one, from her pocket and turned it on me; I backed up against a
tree and she fired. But she must be as good a shot with a revolver as
she is with a rifle—" He laughed ruefully, "—because she missed. Missed
killing me, I mean. The bullet only nicked my ear, but, my God, the
blood . . ."

He stopped to pluck a few more notes on the Fender, then to search
for a cigarette. Jury shook one out of his packet. "She thought she'd
killed me, though, I think. I slid down the tree and crumpled. He was
running over now, shoving her back, calling her a bloody stupid bitch
and while they were exchanging names, I managed to edge myself away
from the tree, get up, and run. You've got to understand, I thought
Billy was dead. I ran back to the road, thinking maybe I could stop
someone. I was holding a piece of my ripped-off shirt up to stop the
blood with one hand and hailing a car with the other. Brilliant." Here
he played a flashy riff in a burst of anger at himself. "Did you ever
try to outrun headlamps?"

"No. I take it the car was theirs."

"I don't know how she missed me again, but she did. This time with
the car. What would I have been but another hit and run?"

"You'd have been hard to explain, in the circumstances."

"I veered off the road and ran toward the coast, toward the cliffs.
There wasn't much she—or he—could do by way of following in the car. I
probably wasn't losing as much blood as I thought. I managed to stagger
along for a mile, maybe two, maybe more; I wasn't counting. And then I
had the best piece of luck I've ever had: ran into a party of campers.
There were five of them, sitting round a campfire. They were Americans,
backpacking round the British Isles. All of them young, in their
twenties." Charlie grinned. "And all of them stoned. They were
absolutely fascinated by this bloody—literally—Brit who stumbled into
them. Again, literally. I'll never forget them: Katie, Miles, Dobby,
Helena, Colin. They had some stuff in their backpacks to take care of
the wound. They thought I was hallucinating, they really did, when I
kept talking about getting the police, told them I'd just seen someone
murdered. I'll never forget Miles looking at me, blinking. He handed me
a roach-clip and said, 'Hey, man, mellow out.'