The Mannequin House (28 page)

The cheery whistle of a workman drew a knot of emotion to his throat. It seemed an inhumanly callous sound. Like birdsong, incapable of conceiving of suffering.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘We must take care, Macadam. This latest . . . spectacle is designed to confuse us, I think. Designed to present a greater mystery than is actually there. But it is not a mystery at all. It is simply an outrage. We must not be distracted by the outlandish aspects of the case. There is a very simple explanation to all of this, I am sure. People are lying to us – that’s to be expected. That’s why we must concentrate on the evidence. The facts. The facts are all there. Like the coloured fragments in a kaleidoscope. We must twist the kaleidoscope until a pattern appears. A pattern that makes sense.’

‘And what are the fragments we have so far, sir?’ Macadam gave an encouraging smile.

They had come out into the dispatch yard. Plumes of stinking black smoke rose from a brick-built incinerator. Next to it a heap of rubbish was accumulating, ready for burning. Mostly broken crates and crumpled boxes, together with their discarded metal bindings. There was waste from the various workshops that were housed in the store, carpentry offcuts, oddments of carpet and sundry rags. Scraps from the kitchens gave it the characteristic ripeness of a rubbish heap. There was a large willow-patterned teapot on the summit of the heap. Quinn picked it up because at first he could see nothing wrong with it. Closer examination revealed that the tip of the spout was chipped. The teapot looked as though it had seen many years’ service; the inside was stained with tannin. He placed it carefully back on the pile of rubbish, in exactly the same place from where he had taken it.

A high fence ran along the side of the yard next to the incinerator.

‘No one entered or left the mannequin house through the front door. We can be
sure
of that, can’t we, Macadam?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Macadam answered forcefully, as if he was affronted at the very voicing of such a question.

‘So, it’s obvious that the body must have been brought out through the rear of the house. No mystery there. It’s simply a matter of deduction.’ Quinn walked over to the incinerator. He scanned the fence, craning his head back to take in its full height. ‘The back garden to the mannequin house adjoins the yard somewhere along here, does it not?’

Macadam nodded and pointed upwards. ‘You can just see the top branches of the tree in the garden there. The one that blasted monkey jumped from.’

‘Ah, yes, the monkey. I can’t help thinking that the monkey holds the key to this mystery, after all. Just as DCI Coddington first suspected.’

‘Do you really think so, sir?’

‘What was it doing in her room? How did it get there from the Menagerie without the salesman knowing? There’s no mystery to this, Macadam. It’s simple enough. Glaringly obvious, if you subject the facts to rigorous deduction.’

Macadam frowned deeply, as if willing himself to a point of understanding.

‘Naturally, the eye is drawn to what is most . . . eye-catching. We are overwhelmed by the sensational. It is a technique employed by stage illusionists. I believe it is known as misdirection. The secret, from our point of view, is not to be bamboozled. In terms of finding a solution – or of working out how the magician has pulled off his trick – the sensational aspects are the least important. And the least interesting.’ Quinn began to feel his way along the fence with both hands, applying varying degrees of pressure as he went. His manipulations resembled those of a doctor making a tentative examination of a patient’s abdomen. ‘There must be . . . some way . . .’ Quinn felt a panel of fencing shift beneath his fingers. He tensed his fingers and kept up the gentle movement. All at once, the panel swung stiffly away from him, revolving on a central upright axis. The climbing plants on the other side of the fence gave some weak resistance to the movement. But Quinn was able to push it open far enough to step through into the garden of the mannequin house. He had the sense that the plants had been loosened by many previous passages.

The grass had still not been cut and was meadow-lush in places. The tallest stems had seeded. The border plants sprawled with a wayward abundance. The camellias were already out: great wads of pink littering the ground. There was a sense of wildness barely held back.

Macadam joined him. ‘If Blackley knew about this . . .’

Quinn nodded grimly. ‘Of course he knew about it. That’s how he came and went as he liked. He never used the front door. No wonder we didn’t see him last night.’

‘He claims he has an alibi.’

‘His wife, you mean? His wife and children . . . I dare say they will confirm it. People lie to us, Macadam. You know that.’

‘So how did he get into the house? Through the scullery?’

The two of them looked up at the house. Glancing sunlight flared in the windows, shimmering blinds of soft fire suddenly drawn.

Quinn’s curiosity was snagged once again by the door that went nowhere. One storey up, with no way of reaching it, since the steps that had once led down to the garden had long ago been dismantled and never replaced. ‘They said there wasn’t a ladder. Do you remember? When the monkey was in the tree? Blackley and Miss Mortimer both claimed to know nothing about a ladder. But there must be one here.’

Quinn had the bit between his teeth now. He scanned the garden with a methodical rigour, seeking out irregularities, chinks in the innocent screen of appearances. But it was a strange regularity that caught his eye.

Along a strip of the sprawling border the long grass presented an abrupt and very straight edge.

Quinn got down on his knees, feeling the moisture of the grass through the material of his trousers. ‘They lied to us.’ He pulled it out – a simple wooden ladder that had been hidden away beneath a line of rampant shrubbery.

At first sight it seemed too short to provide access to the door on the first storey. But Macadam helped him set it upright against the wall of the house. Quinn climbed to the top rung. Standing on that and leaning into the wall to keep his balance, it was just possible to reach the handle of the door that went nowhere. It could certainly be opened from the ladder. One energetic hoist up would be enough to get inside.

Quinn nodded to Macadam with satisfaction and climbed down. ‘I think this proves Blackley had the means. But we must be careful not to jump to a premature conclusion. He may not be the only one who knew about the gap in the fence and the ladder.’

‘He may not have known about them at all,’ Macadam pointed out.

Quinn gave his sergeant a startled, indignant look. ‘I have no doubt he will deny all knowledge of them.’

He retraced his steps to the back of the garden and led the way back through the revolving fence panel into the dispatch yard.

‘If you wanted to dispose of a body, the means are here. That is the normal instinct of a murderer – or any criminal – to destroy the evidence. Not to flaunt it in the most public of places. If Blackley is the murderer . . . that aspect of the crime simply doesn’t make sense. His outrage at the presence of the body in his precious store appeared genuine. I am not sure he is such a proficient actor. That damned smile of his . . . He manages to hold it in place, but the effect is hardly natural.’

‘You are inclining to the view that someone else is the killer, sir?’

‘Regrettably, yes.’

‘Why regrettably, sir? Surely it makes no difference to us who the killer is, provided we catch him?’

‘I don’t like him. I have never liked him. Not from the first moment I saw him. I don’t like the way . . .’ Quinn’s words trailed off. He had caught sight of the warehouseman coming out from the loading bay. The man fixed him with a sullen glower as he hunched over the lighting of a cigarette. The still-burning match was thrown without regard to where it landed.

The warehouseman lifted his head defiantly as Quinn approached. ‘You have a habit of throwing lighted matches around, don’t you? I saw you do that once before. It’s a rather dangerous habit, is it not? It could easily spark a fire.’

The man blew out smoke. He stared Quinn in the eye without flinching.

‘What’s your name?’

‘’Oo vants ’a know?’ Quinn remembered the man’s accent, the strange mangled growl of Cockney and something even more eastern, more exotic.

‘Kaminski, isn’t it?’ Quinn remembered now the exchange he had heard between the warehouseman and the driver. ‘Good day, Mr Kaminski. I am Detective Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department.’

‘You looking for dat monkey? I ain’ seen ’im.’

‘No, I’m not looking for the monkey. I’m interested in the fence. Did you know about it?’

‘Vot abou’ da fence?’

‘There’s a way through to the house.’

The man shrugged.

‘Have you ever seen anyone go through there?’

‘I ain’ see nobody.’

‘Mr Blackley? Did you ever see him go through this way?’

The man spat.

‘How about his son? Mr Blackley Junior? You do know who he is, don’t you? Did you ever see him cut through here?’

‘I never see nobody.’

‘Any of the other men from the store?’

The man’s expression remained blank. He did not seem dismayed or even surprised by Quinn’s persistence. He simply shook his head with detached patience.

A sudden thought occurred to Quinn. ‘What about you? Did you ever go through there?’

Kaminski evidently found this a hilarious suggestion. His laughter struck Quinn as somewhat forced.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Vy I vant to go in dere?’

‘Do you know who lives in that house?’

‘I know.’

‘The mannequins.’

‘I know.’

‘You know then that a girl was murdered there on Tuesday night. You may have heard that another girl has been killed now. We believe her body was brought through here. Through your yard. Through your warehouse.’

‘I ain’ seen it.’

‘You must have seen something. What time is the yard opened?’

‘Depends.’

‘This morning, for example.’

‘
Dis
mornin’?’ The emphasis suggested incredulity that Quinn should be interested in this particular morning.

‘Yes.’

‘We open early dis mornin’. Saturday, ain’ it? We go’ a van in early, ain’ it?’

‘Early being . . .?’

‘Seven.’

‘You were here at seven?’

‘I was.’

‘Was anyone else here then?’

‘I’m always first.’

‘So you were here on your own?’

‘I ain’ see nothin’. I ain’ see nobody.’

‘Where do you come from, Mr Kaminski?’

‘Come from? I come from Whitechapel.’

‘No. What’s your country of origin?’

‘Polska.’

‘How long have you worked here at Blackley’s?’

‘I work ’ere ever since I come over. Thirty years now I’ve been at Blackley’s.’

‘Any complaints in that time?’

Kaminski’s expression darkened. ‘Wha’ do you mean?’

‘Does Mr Blackley treat you all right? I’ve heard he can be something of a tyrant.’

Kaminski concentrated on his cigarette, which for some reason had become suddenly fascinating to him. His expression was distracted when he met Quinn’s eye again, as if he had forgotten the question.

‘Well? I’d be grateful if you’d answer my question.’

‘You speak to anyone here. Dey all got complaints. Wha’ you gonna do?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Kaminski. What are you going to do?’

Kaminski’s gaze became inward-focused. Then he looked up, startled, at a sudden cry that came from the entrance to the loading bay.

‘Ah, Quinn, there you are!’ DCI Coddington, in his herringbone Ulster, stalked across the dispatch yard. His face was set into what he no doubt imagined was that of a stern, implacable authoritarian.

Kaminski took the opportunity provided by the interruption to squeeze out his half-smoked cigarette and tuck it behind his ear as he slipped back inside.

‘This is a bloody mess, Quinn!’ Coddington did his best to maintain his angry martinet persona.

‘Yes, sir.’ All at once, Quinn was overwhelmed by exhaustion. He found he had little patience for Coddington’s charade. Edna’s death was simply too upsetting to indulge in games. And if anyone had a right to take Edna’s death badly, Quinn felt it was he. ‘We didn’t see it coming, sir.’

‘You can say that again, Quinn. This doesn’t look good for you, you know.’

‘But no one saw it coming, sir,’ Quinn insisted. ‘Did you?’

‘Don’t be impertinent. I should never have let you talk me into the surveillance operation.’

‘The surveillance operation didn’t kill Edna.’

‘Can you be sure? What if the murderer got wind that he was being watched?’

Quinn felt the same stab of self-reproach that had pained him earlier. He had set up Edna, or Albertine, to be his source on the inside. The killer, or someone linked to the killer, could conceivably have overheard him talking to her. The conversation had taken place in her room. But it was not unknown for people to listen at doors. He had to accept that there was some truth in what Coddington said.

‘You’re finished, Quinn. Finished. Do you hear?’

‘I see.’ Quinn felt strangely liberated. He realized how physically tired he was after a night divided between the floor and the window. Suddenly all he wanted to do was to go home and sleep. He had felt he was getting somewhere with the case, that a solution was within his grasp. But now he was not so sure. No matter how much he twisted the kaleidoscope of fragments, he could not form them into a pattern that made sense. ‘So you will be taking over the case completely?’

Coddington’s eyes stood out in panic. His moustache was convulsed with twitches. ‘No, no . . . What I mean is, you
will
be finished. Just as soon as you’ve wrapped things up here.’

Quinn almost found the energy to smile. ‘I see. I’m to solve the case for you, and then I will be dispensed with.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Quinn. There’s any number of officers who could solve this case. It’s simply that you’ve been working it from the beginning. It doesn’t make any sense to replace you at this stage.’

‘Not quite from the beginning, sir. You were working it to begin with. I was brought in on the second day.’