Come to Grief (16 page)

I put my arm around her shoulders while she sobbed. So many disasters were forever. So many Edens lost.

I waited until the weeping fit passed, and then I told her I’d discovered who had maimed and destroyed Silverboy.

“You’re not going to like it,” I said, “and it might be best if you can prevent Rachel from finding out: Does she ever read the newspapers?”

“Only Peanuts.”

“And the television news?”

“She doesn’t like news of starving children.” Linda looked at me fearfully. “I’ve
wanted
her to know who killed Silverboy. That’s what I’m paying you for.”

I took out of my pocket and put into her hands an envelope containing her much-traveled check, torn now into four pieces.

“I don’t like what I found, and I don’t want your money. Linda ... I’m so very sorry ... but it was Ellis Quint himself who cut off Silverboy’s foot.”

She sprang in revulsion to her feet, immediate anger filling her, the shock hard and physical, the enormity of what I’d said making her literally shake.

I should have broken it more slowly, I thought, but the words had had to be said.

“How can you say such a thing?” she demanded. “How
can
you? You’ve got it all wrong. He couldn’t possibly! You’re
crazy
to say such a thing.”

I stood up also. “Linda ...”

“Don’t say anything. I won’t listen. I
won’t.
He is so
nice.
You’re truly crazy. And of course I’m not going to tell Rachel what you’ve accused him of, because it would upset her, and you’re
wrong.
And I know you’ve been kind to her... and to me ... but I wouldn’t have asked you here if I’d thought you could do so much awful harm. So please ...
go.
Go, just
go.”

I shrugged a fraction. Her reaction was extreme, but her emotions were always at full stretch. I understood her, but that didn’t much help.

I said persuasively, “Linda,
listen.”

“No!”

I said, “Ellis has been my own friend for years. This is terrible for me, too.”

She put her hands over her ears and turned her back, screaming, “Go away. Go away.”

I said uncomfortably, “Phone me, then,” and got no reply.

I touched her shoulder. She jerked away from me and ran a good way down the lawn, and after a minute I turned and went back into the house.

“Is Mummy crying?” Rachel asked, looking out of the window. “I heard her shout.”

“She’s upset.” I smiled, though not feeling happy. “She’ll be all right. How are the fish?”

“Cool.” She went down. on her knees, peering into the wet little world.

“I have to go now,” I said.

“Good-bye.” She seemed sure I would come back. It was a temporary farewell, between friends. She looked at the fishes, not turning her head.

‘“Bye,” I said, and drove ruefully to London, knowing that Linda’s rejection was only the first: the beginning of the disbelief.

In Pont Square the telephone was ringing when I opened my front door, and continued to ring while I poured water and ice from a jug in the refrigerator, and continued to ring while I drank thirstily after the hot afternoon, and continued to ring while I changed the battery in my left arm.

In the end, I picked up the receiver.

“Where the bloody hell have you
been?”

The Berkshire voice filled my ear, delivering not contumely, but information. Norman Picton, Detective Inspector, Thames Valley Police.

“You’ve heard the news, of course.”

“What news?” I asked.

“Do you live with your head in the sand? Don’t you own a radio?”

“What’s happened?”

“Ellis Quint is in custody,” he said.

“He’s
what?”

“Yes, well, hold on, he’s sort of in custody. He’s in hospital, under guard.”

“Norman,” I said, disoriented. “Start at the beginning.”

“Right.” He sounded over-patient, as if talking to a child. “This morning two plainclothes officers of the Metropolitan Police went to Ellis Quint’s flat overlooking Regents Park intending to interview him harmlessly about his whereabouts early Saturday morning. He came out of the building before they reached the main entrance, so, knowing him by sight, they approached him, identifying themselves and showing him their badges. At which point”—Picton cleared his throat but didn’t seem able to clear his account of pedestrian police phraseology—“at which point Mr. Ellis Quint pushed one of the officers away so forcefully that the officer overbalanced into the roadway and was struck by a passing car. Mr. Quint himself then ran into the path of traffic as he attempted to cross the road to put distance between himself and the police officers. Mr. Quint caused a bus to swerve. The bus struck Mr. Quint a glancing blow, throwing him to the ground. Mr. Quint was dazed and bruised. He was taken to hospital, where he is now in a secure room while investigations proceed.”

I said, “Are you reading that from a written account?”

“That’s so.”

“How about an interpretation in your own earthy words?”

“I’m at work. I’m not alone.”

“OK,” I said. “Did Ellis panic or did he think he was being mugged?”

Picton half laughed. “I’d say the first. His lawyers will say the second. But, d‘you know what? When they emptied his pockets at the hospital, they found a thick packet of cash—and his passport.”

“No!”

“it isn’t illegal.”

“What does he say?”

“He hasn’t said anything yet.”

“How’s the officer he pushed?”

“Broken leg. He was lucky.”

“And ... when Ellis’s daze wears off?”

“It’ll be up to the Met. They can routinely hold him for one day while they frame a charge. I’d say that’s a toss-up. With the clout he can muster, he’ll be out in hours.”

“What did you do with my report?”

“It went to the proper authorities.”

Authorities was such a vague word. Who ever described their occupation as “an authority”?

“Thanks for phoning,” I said.

“Keep in touch.” An order, it sounded like.

I put down the receiver and found a handwritten scrawl from Kevin Mills on
Pump
letterhead paper in my fax.

He’d come straight to the point.

“Sid, you’re a shit.”

The week got worse, slightly alleviated only by a letter from Linda on Thursday morning.

Variably slanting handwriting. Jerky. A personality torn this way and that.

I wrote, back thanking her for her letter, accepting her invitation and saying I would phone her soon.

 

On Tuesday Ellis was charged with “actual bodily harm” for having inadvertently and without intention pushed “an assailant” into the path of potential danger (under the wheels of a speeding motor) and was set free “pending inquiries.”

Norman Picton disillusionedly reported, “The only approximately good thing is that they confiscated his passport. His lawyers are pointing their fingers up any police nose they can confront, screeching that it’s a scandal.”

“Where’s Ellis now?”

“Look to your back. Your report is with the Crown Prosecution Service, along with mine.”

“Do you mean you don’t know where he is?”

“He’s probably in Britain or anywhere he can get to where he doesn’t need a passport. He told the magistrates in court that he’d decided to do a sports program in Australia, and he had to have his passport with him because he needed it to get a visa for Australia.”

“Never underestimate his wits,” I said.

“And he’d better look out for yours.”

“He and I know each other too well.”

On Wednesday afternoon Ellis turned up at his regular television studio as if life were entirely normal and, on completion of an audience-attended recording of a sports quiz, was quietly arrested by three uniformed police of ficers. Ellis spent the night in custody, and on Thursday morning was charged with severing the foot of a colt: to be exact, the off-fore foot of an expensive two-year-old thoroughbred owned by Mrs. Elizabeth Bracken of Combe Bassett Manor, Berkshire. To the vociferous fury of most of the nation, the magistrates remanded him in custody for another seven days, a preliminary precaution usually applied to those accused of murder.

Norman Picton phoned me privately on my home number.

“I’m not telling you this,” he said. “Understand?”

“I’ve got cloth ears.”

“It would mean my job.”

“I hear you,” I said. “I won’t talk.”

“No,” he said, “that, I believe.”

“Norman?”

“Word gets around. I looked up the transcript of the trial of that man that smashed off your hand. You didn’t tell
him
what he wanted to know, did you?”

“No ... well ... everyone’s a fool sometimes.”

“Some fool. Anyway, pin back the cloth ears. The reason why Ellis Quint is remanded for seven days is because after his arrest he tried to hang himself in his cell with his tie.”

“He
didn‘t!”

“No one took his belt or tie away, because of who he was. No one in the station
believed
in the charge. There’s all hell going on now. The top brass are passing the parcel like a children’s party. No one’s telling anyone outside anything on pain of death, so, Sid ...”

“I promise,” I said.

“They’ll remand him next week for another. seven days, partly to stop him committing suicide and partly because ...” He faltered on the brink of utter trust, his whole career at risk.

“I
promise,”
I said again. “And if I know what it is you want kept quiet, then I’ll know what not to guess at publicly, won’t I?”

“God,” he said, half the anxiety evaporating, “then ... there’s horse blood in the hinges of the shears, and horse blood and hairs on the oily rag, and horse blood and hairs in the sacking. They’ve taken samples from the colt in the hospital at Lambourn, and everything’s gone away for DNA testing. The results will be back next week.”

“Does Ellis know?”

“I imagine that’s why he tried the quick way out. It was a Hermès tie, incidentally, with a design of horseshoes. The simple knot he tied slid undone because the tie was pure smooth silk.”

“For God’s sake ...”

“I keep forgetting he’s your friend. Anyway, his lawyers have got to him. They’re six deep. He’s now playing the lighthearted celebrity, and he’s sorrowful about
you,
Sid, for having got him all wrong. His lawyers are demanding proof that Ellis himself was ever at Combe Bassett by night, and we are asking for proof that he wasn’t. His lawyers know we would have to drop the case if they can come up with a trustable alibi for any of the other amputations, but so far they haven’t managed it. It’s early days, though. They’ll dig and dig, you can bet on it.”

“Yeah.”

“None of the Land-Rover evidence will get into the papers because the sub judice rule kicked in the minute they remanded him. Mostly that helps us, but you, as Sid Halley, won’t be able to justify yourself in print until after the trial.”

“Even if I can then.”

“Juries are unpredictable.”

“And the law is, frequently, an ass.”

“People in the force are already saying you’re off your rocker. They say Ellis is too well known. They say that wherever he went he would be recognized, therefore if no one recognized him, that in itself is proof he wasn’t there.”

“Mm,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about that. Do you have time off at the weekend?”

“Not this weekend, no. Monday do you?”

“I’ll see if I can fix something up with Archie ... and Jonathan.”

“And there’s another thing,” Norman said, “the Land-Rover’s presence at Combe Bassett is solid in itself, but Jonathan, if he gets as far as the witness box, will be a meal for Ellis’s lawyers. On probation for stealing cars! What sort of a witness is that?”