Moriarty Returns a Letter (12 page)

There had been a billiard loft above the pub, but most of that level had been blown away; the remaining floor tilted downward, with a heavy, full-size snooker table leaning at a forty-five-degree angle from the loft floor to the ground.

To the right in the background was the pub bar, with its draft beer spigots still intact somehow. A bartender was very deliberately standing behind the bar, passing a glass to a patron who was very deliberately standing there as well—in a pose intended to convey that come hell or high water or bombs that fell in the dead of night or the glorious energy of the day, Londoners would carry on as though it were all less an inconvenience than the weather.

In the foreground—facing the camera, having apparently paused for just a moment at the request of the photographer—was a tall, thin man in his mid-seventies. On either side of him, each holding one of his hands, were two children—a boy about nine years old, and a girl of perhaps five.

“Who are these children? Do we know what became of them?” said one of the pensioners.

“Indeed we do,” said the tour guide, with a proud smile. “The older man in the foreground was in fact the founder of this very hotel. And the two children you see there next to him—well, you may well have already seen them on our premises or on the video today—because that little girl is our hotel manager, and that little boy is CEO for the entire chain.”

With that, the tour guide gave them all a moment to study the photo further.

The face of the man in the photo was defiant, almost glowering back at the camera. Courage in the face of violent adversity would have been anyone’s first interpretation, though his expression wasn’t quite the same as any of the others.

The girl whose hand he held appeared to be on the verge of physiological shock.

The boy standing on the other side of the older man showed something else—alarm, fear, rage, it was hard to tell which of those was winning out. Whatever he had seen, in the tour guide’s opinion, it must be something no child should—but she saw no need to point that out to the observers. It was a war photo, after all.

The firemen in the photo seemed to be looking at something not in the foreground—something mostly concealed by the corner of the heavy slate and mahogany billiard table that had come crashing down to meet the pavement, something that perhaps the photographer had not even noticed when the shot was taken. Something that most people would not notice now.

But the young woman with the intense green eyes seemed drawn toward it. As soon as the pensioners gave her room, she stepped up for a closer look. Much closer. She stared for a long moment.

And then she turned toward the tour guide.

“Who is this on the ground?” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Here,” said the young woman. “Behind the snooker table.”

The tour guide stepped in and took a look.

The tour guide was quite young and her eyesight was perfect, but even so, it took a moment of study. And then she saw it as well.

Behind the snooker table, covered so much by fallen gray plaster and hazed over so much by the graininess of the photo that it was almost indistinguishable, there was a body. The edges of a military uniform—an American uniform, given the olive jacket and tan trousers—were just visible.

“Oh my—” said the tour guide.

She knew the hotel would never have posted the photo had they known. It was simply not appropriate. There is hotel history, there is the war history, and there is showing respect. She immediately turned, facing the little tour group, blocking their line of sight to the photo.

“And that concludes our little tour for today, thank you very much for attending.”

The tour guide remained standing there, until the little group disbanded. Then she hurried off in the direction of the hotel manager, who was still standing behind the potted plant at the far end of the mezzanine.

As the tour guide hurried off, the green-eyed woman returned.

She stood for a long moment, staring at the photograph, before she, too, finally turned and walked back down the corridor, toward the exhibits that the tour group had already viewed earlier.

And then, as the green-eyed woman moved on, Helene, the hotel manager, came down the corridor to have a look for herself.

The tour guide had alerted the hotel manager where in the photograph to look, and it took just a moment for her to verify that yes, indeed, the tour guide was correct—there was a body visible, just partly. The photograph would have to come down.

But the hotel manager stared at the display for a much longer moment.

She had never seen this photograph before. She had been aware of its existence for years; she knew that someone at the National Archives had suggested it for the exhibit, and she had not objected; she had not been able to think of a good reason to do so—not even when the hotel’s marketing group conceived the idea of distributing copies throughout the entire hotel chain for display during the centennial.

But she had never had any desire to look at the photo herself. She simply did not want to. She had been there. It was not a historical artifact to her. It was personal.

And she just hadn’t felt any need to see it.

But she had to look at it now, and she did so. She looked at her own face in the photo. At that of her brother. And at that of her grandfather.

And then, finally, she took the photo down, frame and all.

She carried it under her arm and began to walk down the corridor, heading for the lift that went to the top floor.

And then, before she got to the lift, she stopped. She was still in the mezzanine corridor, where other documents from the hotel’s history were on display—and directly across from her was an empty display frame on the corridor wall.

A document was missing—gone from its frame.

It took her just a moment to realize which one it was. It was the partnership document—the original signed agreement from 1898 that had created the hotel. Someone, in the past few minutes, had to have stolen it.

Helene pondered that.

And then she turned and hurried to the lift. As she got in, she rang the head of security—but she got only his answering machine.

Bloody hell, of all the times for him to be out.

Several moments later, at the front of the hotel, Helene came out from the lobby. She commandeered the hotel’s luxury limo, and told the driver to take her to corporate headquarters in Canary Wharf.

She arrived there, took the lift to the top floor, and went directly to her older brother’s office.

“He may be in conference,” said his personal secretary in the waiting room. “I’ll ring him to let him know you’re here.”

“Ring all you want,” said Helene. “I’m talking to him now.”

She opened the closed office door and went on in.

Forty minutes later, Helene left her brother’s office and took the limo back to the hotel.

Her state of mind was such that after several minutes the limo driver, as professionally discreet as anyone in the business, actually broke the code and asked her what was wrong.

She just shook her head, made no other answer, and closed the limo partition.

9

THE NEXT MORNING

At Baker Street Chambers, Reggie had just arrived at work, and barely had time to set his takeaway coffee down on his desk, when the phone rang.

Reggie picked up.

“Heath! Glad I caught you in.”

It was Detective Inspector Wembley, though the reception was poor.

“How are you, Wembley? You sound faint.”

“I’m on my mobile. On Canvey Island. There’s something here that you will want to see, Heath.”

Reggie had no idea what that might be. He had no criminal cases pending. “You know I’ll be out of town with Laura as of Saturday,” he said.

“Yes, I read the papers,” said Wembley. “It’s all the more reason you’ll want to see this now. I suggest you drive out, Heath. I’ll be around for another hour or two with Forensics.”

And then the connection cut off.

Reggie got in the Jaguar and drove to Canvey Island, on the Thames Estuary.

The air was cold, but the sky was clear, and it was difficult to imagine things dark and dangerous while driving through sheep-dotted hills and blue vistas. No doubt Wembley was exaggerating the sense of urgency.

Reggie took the turnoff, and he saw below him the little hamlet of Canvey and, just beyond that, the sea.

He drove through the village, past a pub at one end as he entered, and then past another at the other end.

He pulled over and got directions from a woman at a bus stop, who seemed ready for the question. She told him to drive on another quarter mile toward the estuary and then turn right before he got to the marina.

He did that. He drove up a small rise. The estuary was clearly visible from here, and the water was not as calm as it had seemed from a distance; it was choppy, with dark cobalt angles in continual motion.

He drove down into a dell and took another turn, off the narrow paved road onto an equally narrow unpaved one.

He was approaching a small wood-frame cottage, all by itself in the dell. No fence. There was an old lorry with a wooden flatbed.

And there were two vehicles with the official insignia of Scotland Yard parked in front. One of those was the van used by Forensics, and Reggie recognized the other as Detective Inspector Wembley’s sedan.

Reggie parked and walked up to the front porch. If he hadn’t already known that a small, lone house this close to the estuary would belong to a fisherman, he knew it now from the scents that came from the wooden structure.

A forensics official was unpacking some equipment from the van. Reggie recognized her—a woman, in her forties, named O’Shea. She glanced over as Reggie approached.

“Good morning, Heath,” she said. “Wembley’s inside.”

“Do you know why he rang me?” said Reggie.

“I guess he’ll tell you,” she said. “Put these on before you go in, please.”

She tossed a pair of thin disposable booties to Reggie.

Reggie stepped up onto the narrow wood porch, put the booties on over his shoes, and pushed the door open.

He paused at the entrance, to let his eyes adjust to the dark room and get some light through the opened doorway. There were windows on two walls, but the solid, grease-stained vinyl blinds were pulled down.

“Don’t touch anything.”

That was Wembley.

The detective inspector was kneeling carefully on the floor at the opposite end of the room. At his feet was a chalk outline of a human form, and near that was a pool of dried blood.

That end of the room served as the kitchen, and it was a narrow space; there was a steel sink and faucets, and an old, chipped white enamel stove with black grills. There was a small table with two plain chairs.

Reggie stood in the portion of the room that served as the general living area; there was an old green cloth sofa immediately to his right, with a small end table and lamp. To his left, an old television set and a tiny wooden bookcase were crowded together in the near corner; a narrow, collapsible cot was set against the wall. There was a door to the bedroom. At his feet, the dark oiled floor timbers extended from the porch into the front room and then into the kitchen.

There was a residual scent of some sort of grilled meat; Reggie looked down and saw that on the floor, just inside the doorway and next to the sofa, was a half-empty, white paper sack of something from a fast-food restaurant.

At the opposite end of the sofa, between it and the kitchen, was a broken floor lamp.

Reggie moved closer to the kitchen. He saw two unwashed dishes, accompanying utensils, and a tea strainer in the sink. A frying pan and greasy residue on the stove. A teacup and a couple of beverage glasses on the counter; some spilled instant coffee granules; a loaf of bread, the wrapper of which had not been properly closed.

Reggie looked about, but only casually. He had been asked not to touch anything, and in fact he had no reason to do so. It was not his case.

And he did not envy Forensics the task of trying to identify all the biological substances absorbed by the floor in that kitchen.

“And don’t brush up against anything either,” said Wembley. “I don’t want them to have to distinguish your camel hair overcoat from every other fiber in the place. You should have taken the bloody thing off before you came inside.”

Reggie said, “It’s cold, Wembley, and I don’t intend to touch a thing. I just want to know why I’m here.”

The detective stood.

“The body is already on its way to the lab,” said Wembley. “His name was Cheeverton. A fisherman, sixty years old. A neighbor was walking by yesterday evening, on the way to the pub around six; saw the front door open, checked, found the body and called it in. According to the neighbor, Cheeverton lived here alone.”

“But I would guess he’s had company recently,” said Reggie.

“Yes,” said Wembley. “Possibly a working lady. The neighbor said he rarely had guests, but O’Shea found a phone box advert in the bedroom, and a woman’s hair in the loo sink. Hey, don’t touch those.”

“I’m not touching them,” said Reggie, looking at receipts and ticket stubs that the forensics team had sorted out on a plastic tray. “But which of them—the fisherman who’s lived here all his life, or the working lady—do you suppose would have been taking the bus out to Kew and doing research in the National Archives?”

“That’s a fair question,” said Wembley. “And if he set up a cot in the living room for a working lady, I think he was a little unclear on the concept. But what I want to show you is over here.”

Wembley came over to the front of the room and switched on the little table lamp next to the couch.

On the floor underneath the couch, a two-foot rectangle had been marked out by the forensics team. One of the dark boards had been pried up. Wembley knelt down by the loose board, lifted it, and withdrew from the space beneath it a small tin box. He turned and took the box out to the porch, where there was light and a forensics table, and Reggie followed.

“Was that board already removed when the body was discovered?” said Reggie.