Dead End (18 page)

‘
I’m
telling
you,’ she said as if he had argued the point, ‘it wasn’t a musician who killed Radek. You mark my words. You’ll see I’m right.’

‘I hope you are,’ he said.

‘You’ve definitely cleared Bob?’ she asked after a pause.

‘Yes. He won’t be bothered again.’

‘Because you don’t realise how frightened ordinary people are by the law. Most ordinary people never open their door to find a copper standing there. It’s like being invaded by aliens from Mars.’

‘Of course I realise. Don’t you think I know how I’m looked at? Do you think I like being a Martian?’

He spoke more warmly than he meant, and she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s all right.’ There was an awkward silence. The real issue came thrusting upwards again. He had to say something. ‘Jo, can we meet? I need to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘If I could answer that on the phone I wouldn’t need to meet you, would I?’

‘I suppose not. Oh, Bill, I don’t know. It won’t do any good, you know. It’s over between us.’

‘It isn’t. If it were, you wouldn’t be on the phone now, getting mad at me.’

‘You were my friend once. I could get mad at you,’ she said.

‘I still am your friend. Whatever happens, you can’t say there’s nothing between us. Let me see you and talk to you, just that at least.’

There was a long silence, and he had no idea whether she was going to say yes or no. He thought probably she didn’t know either. Then at last she said reluctantly, ‘I’m off tomorrow night, as it happens.’

Relief rushed straight to his trousers. ‘All right. Good. Wonderful. Look, I should be able to get away around six, half past six. I’ll come round to your place, shall I?’

‘Yes, all right,’ she said, but on a dying cadence, as if the idea didn’t exactly thrill her. But she’d said she’d see him. It was a start.

Slider was astonished by the change in Poor Old Buster. When he had first seen him he had been dapper, spry, with the alertness and movements of a man in his fifties; now, only a few days later, he had shuffled to answer the door like an octogenarian, and climbed the stairs ahead of Slider slowly, pulling himself up by the banisters. Here in the drawing-room he sat in the armchair with his hands in his lap, utterly immobile, like an old man in a home waiting to die, his eyes blank, his muscles slack, his clothes crumpled, his previously firm face seeming somehow untidy with grief. Here, if anywhere, was the justification for Radek’s life. If even one person mourned him as deeply as Keaton, he could not have been without worth.

‘Mr Keaton, I’m sorry to bother you again,’ Slider began.

Keaton sighed and said with an obvious effort, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve nothing else to do.’

‘Are you managing all right?’ Slider enquired gently.

‘Managing?’

‘Cooking and shopping and so on.’

‘Oh – that.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing I want. I have nothing to live for now.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t say that,’ Slider protested, and Keaton lifted dull eyes to him.

‘It’s a statement of fact. How can I help you?’

‘I understand from Mr Coleraine that Sir Stefan had a gun – a revolver, in fact.’

‘Yes,’ Keaton said, without any particular emphasis. ‘It was the one he used during the war. He kept it as a souvenir.’

‘Do you know where he kept it?’

‘In the drawer of his desk, in his study.’

‘May I see it, please?’

Keaton got up with an effort, pushing himself with his hands on the chair arms. The study was across the hall from the drawing-room, a large and handsome room furnished with desk, chair, map-table, a large leather sofa, and a handsome range of bookshelves, several shelves of which were dedicated to leather-bound music scores. There was also a baby-grand piano, and over by the window a magnificent mahogany and brass music stand. Seeing Slider notice it, Keaton said, ‘He used to work here. People don’t understand how many hours of preparation and practice went into his performances.’

Slider nodded sympathetically. Performances seemed an odd choice of word, until he noticed that opposite the music stand, fixed to the wall, was a full-length mirror. He actually practised his arm-waving then, Slider thought with wry amusement; watched himself in the mirror. He would love to tell Joanna that.

Keaton had shuffled over to the desk, and now opened the top left-hand drawer. ‘He kept it in here,’ he said.

Slider moved to his side. ‘Wasn’t the drawer usually kept locked?’

‘Oh no. It wouldn’t have been any use against burglars if he’d had to unlock a drawer to get at it,’ Keaton said, as though it were obvious logic.

‘Did he keep it loaded as well?’

‘Of course. What use is an unloaded gun?’ He pulled the drawer further out and bent to peer in. ‘That’s funny. He must have moved it.’

‘The gun isn’t there?’

‘No. Here’s the ammunition, all right, but—’ He pulled out a box, old, softened, grimed with time, the lettering rubbed and faded: DC 43. Slowly, painstakingly, he searched every drawer. ‘I can’t find it. He must have put it somewhere else. I wonder why?’ He straightened up, frowning at Slider. ‘Is it important? Will we have to search the house?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Slider said. ‘Do you remember when you last saw it?’

A sort of bleak dawn suffused Buster’s face, and his mouth sagged like a baby’s who had just been given a spoonful of spinach. ‘Oh my goodness, you don’t mean—? Are you saying that it was his own gun? That someone shot him with his own gun?’

‘I don’t know for sure, but it looks that way.’

‘Oh, but that’s terrible!’ He gaped with dismay. ‘What a mean, awful thing to do! I had no idea! It never occurred to me that—’ He shook his head agitated by the enormity of it. Humankind is so strange, Slider thought. Amid all the butchery of war, the fact that someone was shot on Christmas Day will be held up as the nadir of depravity. Forty-eight hours later it would be ho-hum just another body.

‘If someone did steal Sir Stefan’s revolver,’ Slider prompted him, ‘it would be useful if you could remember when you last saw it in its usual drawer.’

‘To give you a
terminus a quo,
yes, I see,’ Buster said helpfully. Blimey, the education you get on this job, Slider marvelled. Better than going to grammar school. ‘But we haven’t been burgled, you know. And Sir Stefan can’t have missed it, or he’d certainly have mentioned it to me.’

‘So it must have been taken by a visitor to the house – unless he lent it to someone?’

‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t do that. He was very careful with it. He would never let Marcus touch it, for instance, however much he begged. You know how fascinated little boys are with guns.’

‘Unfortunately, as it wasn’t kept locked away, anyone who came to the house and was left alone for a few moments could have taken it. Do you remember when you last saw it?’

‘Wait, wait, let me think. I’m sure it was—’ Keaton folded one arm across his chest, rested the other elbow on it, and cradled his jaw in deep thought. At last his face brightened. ‘Yes, of course, I knew there was something! It was on Sunday afternoon when I brought him his tea. He usually has it in here, and when I came in with the tray he was sitting at his desk cleaning it – the gun, I mean. I remember because I don’t like the smell of the oil, and I was going to say something to him about being careful not to spill any on the carpet, but in the end I didn’t because he’d been a bit on edge and I didn’t want to start a
quarrel.’ He looked at Slider hopefully, as though for praise. ‘Sunday afternoon, definitely.’

‘Very good,’ Slider said. ‘Now if you could think very carefully and tell me everyone who called at the house between then and Wednesday.’

‘Oh, but no-one came,’ he said quickly. ‘We don’t have callers of that sort.’

‘Of what sort?’ Slider asked in private amusement. Was he visualising swarthy villains in masks ringing the doorbell and saying, ‘Burglar, sir, come to nick your gun. All right if I go up?’

‘Well, of any sort really. Nobody comes here – or at least, no-one gets let in, because we have people collecting and that sort of thing.’

‘Mr Coleraine told me that he called on Tuesday to see his father-in-law.’

Enlightenment transformed Keaton’s face. For a moment he looked almost happy. ‘Oh, family, you mean? Naturally I didn’t think you meant anyone we knew. Certainly Alec was here on Tuesday morning.’

‘At what time?’

‘It would be about half past nine. I was annoyed that he called so early, but he said he was on his way to work.’

‘You let him in?’

‘Of course.’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Did you show him upstairs, or did he go up alone, what?’

‘I accompanied him to the drawing-room, and then went to fetch Sir Stefan. He was still in his bedroom. He doesn’t get up early unless he has an engagement.’

‘So Mr Coleraine was left alone down here for some minutes?’

Buster’s eyes widened. ‘You surely aren’t suggesting—!’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I have to make a note of every possibility, even if only to eliminate it.’

‘But Alec wouldn’t – you can’t think he or Marcus—’

‘Marcus? Was Marcus with him?’

‘No, no, but he called on his grandfather on the Tuesday afternoon. It was inconvenient – we were just going out. But Sir Stefan saw him for a few moments in here.’

‘Did he leave Marcus alone for any of the time?’

‘I don’t know. I was downstairs. I was really annoyed because it was making us late for rehearsal, and we dislike very much to be unpunctual. Young people are so thoughtless. I told him when he arrived we were on the point of leaving, but still he kept Sir Stefan a quarter of an hour, and put him in a temper.’

‘In a temper? About what?’

‘I don’t know. I told you. I was downstairs. It was just some nonsense, I expect. Marcus can be very annoying.’

Slider nodded. ‘And who else called between Sunday teatime and Wednesday lunchtime?’

‘No-one else. No-one at all.’

‘You’re quite sure? Not friend or relative, however well trusted? Not meter-reader, plumber, double-glazing salesman, or wandering faith-healer?’

Keaton frowned. ‘No-one. I’m quite sure. And I don’t think this is a matter for levity.’

‘I’m sorry. Do you know what Alec Coleraine called for? Did you hear his conversation with Sir Stefan?’

‘I wasn’t in the room. I went to make coffee. Sir Stefan wanted his coffee – Alec refused any. When I brought the tray in, things seemed rather heated. Sir Stefan was quite angry, and Alec was pleading with him.’

‘Do you know what about?’

‘I think he’d been asking for money.’ Buster’s lips folded in disapproval. ‘It wasn’t the first time. There’s always some people willing to spend what they haven’t earned.’

Money again, Slider thought. It was coming together nicely now. ‘You think Sir Stefan refused?’

‘Certainly. He believed people should stand on their own feet, as he always did.’

‘I see. And you’re quite sure no-one else came to see Sir Stefan?’

‘Yes. But I’m also quite sure neither Alec nor Marcus had anything to do with his death. I know them, I’ve known them for many, many years. It is simply not in them to do such a thing. In fact—’ He hesitated, something visibly working through his mind.

‘Yes?’ Slider prompted. ‘You’ve thought of something else?’

‘No,’ he said, and then again, more surely, ‘no. I was just going
to say that in their own ways they were probably all very fond of each other. It doesn’t do to judge by appearances. People often quarrel with those they love best.’

‘Mr Coleraine said just the same thing to me the other day.’

‘Yes, yes, so you see?’ Keaton said eagerly.

Slider smiled comfortingly. ‘I assure you I never judge by appearances. I always turn over every stone. It’s astonishing what can be under them.’

‘Quite so,’ Keaton said. The animation drained from his face, and he returned abruptly to the listlessness of grief.

The drawback to being a human, Slider thought as he took his leave, was that pleasure tended to be over quite quickly, while unhappiness went on for great big indigestible lumps of time.

Nutty Nicholls was in the front shop when Slider went through. Nutty, a burly Scot from the rain-lashed shores of the far north west, had once at a fund-raising concert sung the
Queen of the Night
aria from
The Magic Flute,
and was known in consequence as the copper with the
coloratura,
or occasionally Noballs Nicholls. The latter was manifestly unjustified, but Nicholls only smiled and took it in his stride. It was a performance practised and polished to perfection, he told Slider, in a part of the world where there was nothing else to do, and no airborne pollution to damage the vocal chords.

He called to Slider as he passed through. ‘I’ve got a message for you, Bill. An anonymous caller, no less, leaving you an address. I’d congratulate you on a secret assignation, but by the voice it was either a bloke or the bearded lady from the fairground on the Scrubs.’