A Ghost in the Machine (41 page)

“You have been here…?”

“The longest. Twenty-four years.”

“So presumably you have taken over Mr. Brinkley's clients?”

“Yes. He didn't have many but what he had were choice.”

“Which means?”

“Stonking rich.”

“Do you know any of them? Or are you going in cold, as it were?”

“I'm familiar with the accounts, of course. They were our most important, so someone other than Dennis had to be. Not that he was ever ill.”

“And the other partner?”

“Latham?” He gave a shout of what appeared quite genuine laughter. “He's pathetic. His father-in-law bought into the business, apparently to get him from under his wife's feet. The man can hardly use a computer.”

“So what does he do all day?”

“Smokes, drinks, walks about, reads the paper. Disappears for long periods.”

“And he gets a salary for that?”

“No. Gilda – that's his wife – gives him hand-outs. When she thinks he deserves it.”

“What about clients?”

“Hasn't any. He inherited a few from old man Fallon but they all decamped. Some to myself. Others just left.”

“And his share of the company?”

“Her share. Forty-nine per cent.” He beamed with satisfaction, showing sharp white teeth. “So we'll always have the edge.”

“I'd better take his address and phone number.”

As Leo Fortune scrawled this down he said, “By the way, the night Dennis died I was playing David Bliss in
Hay Fever.
” He handed the sheet of paper over. “Amdram, you know.”

“Yes,” said Barnaby. He remembered his daughter at Cambridge. John Webster at the ADC. Amdram with a vengeance. The stage alight.

“Why did you ask us about going out during the day? The papers said Dennis died in the early evening.”

“That's true. But the apparatus that killed him was set up before he arrived home.”

Fortune looked puzzled at the word “apparatus.” Barnaby explained in precise detail what had happened and straightaway regretted it.

“Christ…how absolutely…” Fortune then turned an interesting pale green and began to slip from his chair.

Five minutes later the two policemen were out in the street. They did not leave in good odour. Someone was pushing Leo's head between his knees while someone else, directing a deeply reproachful glance in the chief inspector's direction, rushed past with a glass of water.

The others had gathered around Belinda. The beautiful Belinda, just married, deeply in love and newly pregnant was shrilly holding forth while tossing her curls about. Of all the bloody cheek was her gist. And her with a ring on and everything. All those who weren't already giving Barnaby a hard stare went to work on Sergeant Troy.

“Anyone'd think,” he said, now sulking outside on the pavement, “I'd asked her how much for a blow job.”

“What did you ask her?”

“Would she like a drink after work? What's so terrible about that?” Troy started savagely kicking a hamburger box in the gutter. “I thought we were supposed to be living in the twenty-first century.”

“Only just.”

“I should have remembered my stars.” Troy, always prepared to assign to fate what he refused to concede to self-awareness, developed his theme. “Maureen read them over breakfast. ‘Any desire for intimacy is way off scale this week.'”

“Maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part?”

“No.” Troy, missing the point, bowed to the inevitable. “Apparently Orion's on the cusp.”

“You'll be on the cusp any minute now if you don't stop kicking that bloody box about.”

 

Barnaby was halfway through an excellent steak pie and buttered carrots in the canteen when the desk let him know that Mrs. Crudge had arrived.

“Off you go, Sergeant.”

“Sir?”

“Look after her, see her through the system, take her to my office. Sort some tea. The usual stuff.”

Troy watched the chief chomping away, then looked down at his own plate. At the fine piece of succulent haddock, potato croquettes and mushy peas. Not much point in asking them to put it in the oven. Once he'd left the table that was it. No wonder he was so thin. He thought, I'm fading away. They'll be sorry when I'm gone.

Barnaby finished his meal. For a shameful moment he toyed with the idea of eating Troy's fish. Excusing such a gluttonous impulse by wondering what might be waiting for him that night at Arbury Crescent and fantasising going to bed hungry, something he had never done in his life. He hurried away before greed could get the better of him.

 

“Look at this mess.” Mrs. Crudge waggled stained fingers in the air. “That stuff they give you to wipe it off wouldn't clean a mouse's bottom.”

“Sorry about that. Thank you for coming—”

“What d'you want my fingerprints for anyway?”

“Elimination,” explained Barnaby. “How did the—”

“Nobody believes this. You should have heard them in the post office. Murder – in Forbes Abbot!”

People were always saying such things to the chief inspector. And with exactly that mingling of shock and indignation. It was as if their special patch had been granted divine exemption from such nastiness and the Almighty had done a runner on the deal.

Sergeant Troy opened the interview by asking if he could take one or two details from Mrs. Crudge, starting with her Christian name.

“I gave all that to them what come to the house. I'm not going through it again.”

“Not to worry,” said Barnaby. “First, could you tell me how long you've been employed by Mr. Brinkley?”

“Since he moved to the village, so that's over twenty years. But the office job, nearer five. After their last cleaner retired.”

“He was easy to work for?”

“A lovely man. Straight as a die. And courtesy itself. Mind you, he was very particular.”

“In what way?”

“Things had to be just so. Take ornaments – I had to put them back precisely in their place. A fraction of an inch out and he'd know. And any bit of a ruck in a cushion or curtain he'd be there, smoothing it out.”

“Goodness, that is particular.”

“Like he was driven to it,” said Mrs. Crudge.

“What about the room with the machines?” asked Sergeant Troy. “Did you clean in there?”

“Just the floor. He wouldn't let me touch anything else. I wouldn't want to neither – horrible things.”

“The day he died—” began Barnaby.

“I never went in. My days are Wednesday and Friday.”

“And the previous Friday when you did the floor, did everything look as usual?”

“I couldn't swear to that. I just mop it over and scarper.”

“Would you have noticed,” asked Sergeant Troy, “if there were drag marks on the floor, made perhaps by moving the apparatus about?”

“Oh, I'd've noticed that all right.”

Barnaby wondered if the murderer knew the cleaner would not be coming in on the day the machine was tampered with. If Dennis was as private a person as had been suggested, the murderer might well have been ignorant of her very existence. Unless he lived in the village. Like Lawson.

“I presume you have house keys?” Mrs. Crudge nodded. “Do you know if anyone else does?”

“Nobody. Mr. Brinkley was most security-conscious.”

The DCI couldn't let that pass. “We saw several keys hanging on a board in the garage.”

“They'd be for the garden shed and such,” said Mrs. Crudge. “Anyway, it wasn't burglars so much he was worried about as the threat of damage to his precious machines.”

Barnaby tried for the hundredth time to put himself into the shoes of Dennis Brinkley. And failed again. “What about visitors? Did anyone come on a regular basis?”

“How would I know? When I was at Kinders he was at the office.”

“What about phone calls? Did you ever take messages?”

“No. Mr. Brinkley always said to ignore the telephone.”

“Did you have keys to the office as well?”

“That's right. I do Saturday mornings, when the place is empty.”

“And now,” Barnaby smiled, “I believe you're a shareholder?”

“Me and Ernest are already shareholders,” bridled Mrs. Crudge. “We're with BT. And British Water.”

At this point there was a knock at the door and a uniformed policewoman came in with a tray. Three plastic beakers of tea, some sugar and a plastic spoon.

“Pushing the boat out then?” suggested Mrs. Crudge. Brought up never to drink tea with a hat on, she removed her black felt, placed it on the floor beside her chair and stirred in three sugars. “Saw you coming out of Appleby House yesterday. How d'you get on?”

“You know the Lawsons?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“Worked for the old lady since I were fifteen,” said Mrs. Crudge. “I'm still there – for now, at any rate. Remember Mallory growing up. When Benny first came.”

“You must know her well, Miss Frayle.”

“I'm very fond of Ben. 'Course, it was all down to me that she got that message from Mr. Brinkley in the first place.”

“The message…?”

“From the world of spirit. I was the one who persuaded her to go.”

“To the Church of the Near at Hand?”

“I'm a senior member. There's not much going on there I don't know about.”

“Really?” Barnaby put his tea aside, folded his arms and rested his elbows on the edge of his desk. He looked sympathetic, concerned and very, very interested. “So, tell us all about it, Mrs. Crudge.”

 

Andrew Latham rested in a vast rose-patterned hammock under a fringed awning to protect against the sun. Lying back on the puffy, goosedown cushions, he pulled on a silky cord, let it slip through his fingers, pulled on it again gently tilting the hammock to and fro. Within easy reach was a low table with a jug of sparkling water, a dish of sliced lemons and a bottle of blue label Stolichnaya. There was also a clock with a plain face and large numerals. The clock was the most important item. It told Andrew how much time he had left before he had to depart, leaving not a trace of his presence.

Today the trouble and strife was at the Malmaison Beauty Salon, being massaged and steamed and waxed and primped by Shoshona, her personal beautician. Andrew thought a more accurate description for the plucky woman who got to grips with Gilda's constantly shifting outline should be uglician. An uglician at the troll parlour.

These insights so entertained him he laughed aloud, spilling his drink, not just on his trousers but all over the cushion. It was quite a big mark. Thank God vodka was colourless and didn't smell. He was just turning the cushion over and thinking it was about time he made tracks when a car turned into the drive.

Although the car was an ordinary saloon and the two men getting out wore plain business suits Andrew knew immediately who they were. He had had near misses with them often enough. What was it about the police? A sort of wary confidence. As if whatever right you had to be where you were they claimed the same right just by waving their bloody warrant cards. They were doing it now.

“Mr. Latham?”

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“We're investigating the deaths of Dennis Brinkley and Ava Garret. You weren't at the office when we called this morning so…”

“Here you are, this afternoon.”

“Exactly.” The young one pulled out a chair and sat at a round table under a large umbrella. “OK if we…?”

“Actually I was just—”

“This won't take long, I'm sure, sir.”

Then the big one sat down too. Bugger, thought Andrew, and looked at the clock again.

“I was given some idea as to your background with the company.” Barnaby repeated what he had heard from Leo Fortune, leaving out the insults. “Is that correct?”

“Roughly.”

“And how did you get on with Mr. Brinkley?”

Latham shrugged. “He did his job – I did mine. We didn't mingle.”

“Do you remember what you were doing the day he died?”

“Working, I suppose.”

“We were told—”

“Not necessarily at my desk. I'm in and out a lot. Occasionally I visit clients in their homes.”

“Is that what you've been doing this afternoon, sir?” Sergeant Troy's expression was innocent, his voice politely puzzled, his gaze extremely respectful. You felt, given the chance, he might curtsy.

“Is that relevant to your enquiries?” As he spoke Andrew gathered up the drinks bottle, jug and clock. Said, “I have to change these trousers,” then disappeared into the house to empty the water and hide the vodka in his underwear drawer.

“That man was actually sweating.”

“It's very hot,” said Sergeant Troy.

“He wasn't sweating when we arrived.”

Within minutes Latham was back. He now had on a smart jacket, a tie, different trousers and was munching a mouthful of something green. Barnaby guessed parsley.

“I have to throw you out now, I'm afraid.”

“Just a few more questions, Mr. Latham.”

“I really can't—”

“Regarding Ava Garret.”

“Who?”

“The medium who was killed just under a week ago. Connected to the Brinkley case?”

“It was all over the papers,” said Troy. “And on the telly.”

“Yes – of course, I did hear of it. But—”

“Did you know Mrs. Garret?”

“No.”

“She lived in Forbes Abbot.”

“Well, it can hardly have escaped your attention, Chief Inspector, that I don't live in Forbes Abbot. So I'm not likely to have met her.”

“Have you ever been to the Church of the Near at Hand?”

“I never go to any church. The cards I've been dealt, God's lucky I haven't razed them all to the ground.”

At this point a large BMW drew up, dwarfing the yellow Punto. A colossal woman heaved and rolled her way out. She was draped in a great deal of grey gauzy fabric with a silvery finish. The comparison with a barrage balloon was inescapable. A loud bellow crossed the distance between them.