Trick of the Mind (14 page)

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Authors: Cassandra Chan

BOOK: Trick of the Mind
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“Mmm,” said Bethancourt, his attention on the papers in front of him.
There was silence for a few minutes, while Bethancourt scanned the report and Gibbons closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the chair.
“So,” said Bethancourt, “you thought Rob Coleman was ‘personable’ and his wife ‘attractive.’”
“Which means I couldn’t make her out at all,” translated Gibbons, opening his eyes. He frowned. “I remember what she looked like, from Monday night,” he said, “but I don’t recollect that she said very much, and all I was left with was an impression of her looks. It’s odd, though, that I didn’t do any better the next day, in a longer interview.”
Bethancourt drew his knees up onto the bed thoughtfully. “She doesn’t give much away, our Mrs. Coleman,” he said. “She just—is. I mean,” he added as Gibbons raised an eyebrow at him, “she doesn’t react very much, and she says even less. ‘Attractive’ describes her very well.”
“And yet not well enough,” muttered Gibbons, closing his eyes again.
“Well, no, possibly not,” admitted Bethancourt. “Still, need we describe her very well? Colin James seemed to think it unlikely the Colemans had a hand in the robbery.”
“It is unlikely,” agreed Gibbons, but he did not open his eyes.
Bethancourt regarded him from the bed with concern. Gibbons, shifting gingerly in the chair, did not appear to notice his friend’s sudden silence. Bethancourt sat up, swinging his legs off the bed.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think I’ll just nip out and get a coffee—I think I need a little pick-me-up.”
“Sure,” said Gibbons, cracking his eyes open. “Are you coming back?”
“Right back,” Bethancourt assured him. “Cerberus will stay with you.”
He motioned to the dog, who settled back at Gibbons’s feet, and then he slipped out in search of the red-haired nurse.
In the corridor, it was apparent that it was meal time for those patients who unlike Gibbons were taking solid food. An unappetizing smell wafted from the cart of covered trays parked outside one
doorway, and Bethancourt immediately wished for a cigarette. Instead he turned to the bored-looking uniformed policeman sitting outside Gibbons’s door and said, “Jack doesn’t seem very well today.”
The policeman glanced back into the room. “No,” he agreed with a sigh. “It’s a pity about the peritonitis, though according to the nurse it’s not unexpected.”
“Ah,” said Bethancourt. “And what’s peritonitis when it’s at home?”
“Infection,” said the policeman succinctly. “It can happen when the peritoneum gets contaminated.”
“Oh.” Bethancourt thought a moment. “I assume ‘peritoneum’ refers to the bowels?”
“As near as I can make out,” agreed the policeman. “The way the nurse explained it was that when your intestines are perforated, what’s inside them can leak out. And since that’s not supposed to be outside, it can cause an infection.”
Bethancourt nodded understanding. “It doesn’t sound good,” he said. “I thought they expected him to make a full recovery.”
“Oh, they still do,” the policeman hastened to reassure him. “This is just—what did they call it?—a complication. He may be in hospital a bit longer, but it’ll be all right in the end. They expect the antibiotics they’re giving him now to make short work of this peritonitis, and the nurse says it’s not a bad case so far.”
“That sounds a bit better,” said Bethancourt, much relieved. He glanced back at his friend, who was still lying in the chair with his eyes closed. “I expect,” he added, “Jack’s got a fever now, and that’s why he’s so poorly.”
The policeman nodded. “His temperature went way up this afternoon,” he said, “but I think it’s come down a little now—leastways, Nurse Pipp said it was good enough that the sergeant could get out of bed for a bit.”
“I see,” said Bethancourt, who still harbored doubts about the wisdom of this. “Well, thanks for filling me in—I was worried. Here, get yourself a pint when you get off duty.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” said the policeman, pocketing the note Bethancourt slipped him. “I’ll do that.”
Bethancourt nodded and wandered back into the room. At the sound of his step, Gibbons opened his eyes and smiled weakly. “Where’s the coffee?” he asked.
“Finished it outside,” said Bethancourt. “I was having your guard tell me how you were today.”
“Oh?” said Gibbons. “And how am I?”
“You’ve got peritonitis,” Bethancourt told him.
“Right,” agreed Gibbons, but not as if it mattered much. “I’d forgotten what they called it this morning, but that was the name. It makes one feel awfully rotten.”
“I imagine it does,” said Bethancourt, smiling a little at this confidence.
“Although the pain’s worse,” Gibbons added, frowning as he shifted a little. “I never imagined just sitting up could hurt so badly.”
Bethancourt gave a sympathetic wince. “You’re young,” he said, trying to sound encouraging. “They say you’ll heal fast—it’s having your stomach muscles torn up that hurts so much.”
“Thanks for the diagnosis,” said Gibbons dryly.
“Sorry,” said Bethancourt.
The door opened behind him and he pivoted to see Gibbons’s parents. His mother, in the lead, looked pleased at first to see her son sitting up, but her expression changed swiftly as she took stock of the pain reflected in Gibbons’s face and the awkward way in which he held himself. Beside her, Mr. Gibbons’s mouth tightened and he laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
Another young woman had accompanied the Gibbonses; Bethancourt did not recognize her, or the two little girls she held by the hand, but assuming them to be family, he politely made his excuses and left them alone.
Cerberus, released from attendance on the wounded, was extremely eager for his walk. Upon emerging from the hospital, he turned west toward Regent’s Park in a determined and no-nonsense sort of way, and Bethancourt followed behind resignedly, letting the great dog have his way for a moment before calling him back to heel. Hierarchy
between master and dog reestablished, Bethancourt paused to light a cigarette, hunching away from the brisk west wind before continuing on their way.
It had rained while they had been in the hospital, leaving puddles on the pavement and making the turf in the park soggy underfoot. Bethancourt sniffed the wind and decided it would shortly be raining again. He let Cerberus loose and pulled out his mobile to check his messages while the great dog inspected an interesting scent amid the hedges. Both Marla and Spencer Kendrick had rung, leaving almost identical messages in which they announced their landing at Heathrow, asked after Gibbons, and wanted to know where Bethancourt was.
He rang Marla back first with the idea of meeting her somewhere for dinner, but she declined the invitation.
“I’m knackered,” she said. “And it’s a beastly night out in any case. My plans for the evening are to order in some Indian takeaway, and then get into bed early and watch the telly.”
Bethancourt had to agree the weather was unpleasant, and as the rain started up again, he was beginning to wish for his own warm, comfy flat. He tucked his mobile safely away and stood a moment in the driving rain. He had learned a great deal more about the Haverford case, and admitted to himself he had become rather intrigued by it. But he had not, in all his researching during the day, found anything that might have made Gibbons ring him on Tuesday evening and declare he had “an interesting one on.”
“But it’s early days yet,” he said to himself, trying to assuage his vague feeling of guilt that he had not come up with the answer. “I did have to catch up to where Jack was with the case before I could expect to see developments from his point of view. Perhaps tomorrow …”
But there his thoughts trailed off, as he had not the least notion of what he should do tomorrow. He sighed and whistled for his dog.
“Let’s get home, lad,” he said as Cerberus bounded up and then paused to shake himself vigorously, flinging water over his already drenched master. Bethancourt, accustomed to this performance, was unfazed. “I reckon you want your dinner,” he continued, leading
the way back toward the street. “I’m still feeling rather full of lunch, myself. I think an omelette and a salad will suffice for me tonight.”
When at last they had negotiated their way from north London down to Chelsea, Bethancourt found a package waiting for him, delivered by messenger that evening from Hampstead. Curious, he tore open the envelope and removed a small tract of about fifty pages, complete with colored photographs. It was entitled “A Short History of the St. Michel Jewels,” while the note tucked into the front cover read, “Hope you enjoy. I found it quite fascinating.—CJ.”
“Excellent,” said Bethancourt, smiling as he flipped through the pages. “Just the thing for a rainy November night. Whoa, Cerberus—not that way. It’s the bathroom for you until I’ve got you dried off.”
He herded his dog into the bathroom, stripping off his own wet things as he went, and spent some fifteen minutes rubbing the borzoi’s long coat dry. He repeated the procedure on himself with a fresh towel and then headed to the kitchen to take care of man and dog’s bodily needs.
It was not until after he had eaten his omelette and salad that he settled himself in one corner of the sofa, a glass of cognac on the table and his dog curled at his feet, and at last opened the tract in which Miranda had traced her great-grandmother’s affairs and the jewels that had resulted from them.
A Pint After Work
B
ethancourt was awakened the next morning, as he had been the morning before, by the persistent ringing of the telephone. In the normal way of things, he ignored such importunate intrusions, but with his sleep haunted by visions of a dying Gibbons, he found himself reaching to answer the phone before he was even truly aware.
His groping hand found the telephone receiver, and he cleared his throat loudly before saying, “Hullo?” in a groggy tone of voice.
“Bethancourt?”
He knew the voice, but in its present context he was unable to identify it.
“Yes?” he mumbled.
“It’s DCI Carmichael here.”
“Oh!” Bethancourt’s eyes sprang open and he struggled into a sitting position. “Good to hear from you, sir,” he said, recovering. “Is Jack all right?”
“He’s no worse,” Carmichael reassured him. “Still running a fever, but I gather they had expected that. No, I had another reason for ringing you. I was wondering if you might stop by the Yard this morning. There’s a report I’d like your opinion on.”
Bethancourt could not have been more surprised, but he jumped at the opportunity to have any kind of involvement in the police investigation.
“I’d be delighted to, sir,” he said. “I could be there in an hour or so, if that would be convenient.”
“Brilliant,” said Carmichael. “I’ll see you shortly, then.”
Bethancourt rang off and lay blinking in the bed for a moment, trying to assimilate this sudden occurrence. He reached for his glasses and squinted at the bedside clock, letting out a long groan when he saw the time. It was 8:15.
Cerberus, standing at the edge of the bed, wagged his tail and Bethancourt regarded him severely.
“It is far too early,” he announced. “Particularly for someone who sat up till two reading a tract on antique jewelry. Oh, dear,” he added, yawning as he swung his legs out of the bed and reached for his dressing gown.
The day outside was not very inspiring to one who had not got his usual quota of sleep. The view from the windows of the Chelsea flat, when its owner eventually looked out, was gray and bleak, with light splatterings of rain blown against the panes by intermittent gusts of wind. It was against this background that Bethancourt hastily showered, shaved, and dressed, gulping down strong black coffee the while. Despite all the caffeine, he was still not feeling particularly alert when he arrived at Scotland Yard, a fact he tried very hard to hide as he and Cerberus emerged from the lift and made their way to Carmichael’s office.
The chief inspector was at his desk with a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose and a paper cup of coffee by his hand. He looked up as Bethancourt appeared in the doorway and motioned the young man in.
“Good morning,” said Bethancourt, as cheerfully as he could manage. He moved to take one of the chairs positioned opposite Carmichael’s desk, and Cerberus, after a friendly tail wag in the chief inspector’s direction, laid down at his master’s feet.
“Good morning,” replied Carmichael, laying aside the paper he had been reading. “I’m hoping you can help me with something.”
“Anything you like,” responded Bethancourt. “I’d be grateful for the chance to do something to help with Jack’s case.”
Carmichael nodded understanding of this sentiment. “It’s been a shock to us all,” he said. “The more so as he’d just begun his stint in Arts Theft—traditionally one of the less violent divisions at Scotland Yard.”
“It had never occurred to me that Jack might be hurt in the performance of his duties,” admitted Bethancourt. “I knew, of course, that you often dealt with violent people, but the corollary never came to mind.”
Carmichael nodded again, thinking to himself that he, too, had once been that young, that inexperienced, and had the same belief in his own omnipotence.
“It’s not something one does think about,” he agreed. “But it does sometimes happen, and it’s up to me to sort it out when it does.”
Bethancourt looked sympathetic, while Carmichael leaned forward to sift through the various papers and folders spread out across his desk.
“I wanted your input on this report of O’Leary’s,” he said, frowning a little as the said report did not immediately come to light. “He had a drink with Gibbons after work that evening, you know.”
“No, sir, I didn’t,” said Bethancourt. “I don’t think,” he added, a little hesitantly, “that was anything out of the ordinary, though—Jack has often mentioned having a pint with Chris O’Leary.”
“Yes, yes,” said Carmichael absently, his attention taken up with burrowing to a deeper level in the piles on his desk. “Ah, there it is! I was beginning to think I’d lost it.”
Bethancourt, viewing the chaos on the desk, privately agreed that this was a possibility, but kept the thought to himself.
“The thing is,” continued Carmichael, turning back to his guest, “O’Leary is currently working a murder in Walworth. It’s just possible that something he said about the case might have been the reason Gibbons went down to Walworth on Tuesday night in the first place.”
“But surely,” objected Bethancourt, “if Jack had an idea about the Walworth murder, he would have told O’Leary?”
Carmichael nodded, pleased to have his own estimation of his
sergeant’s character confirmed. “So I would have thought,” he agreed. “But I suppose it’s just possible his idea was so extraordinary he felt the need to check it out a bit before mentioning it. Gibbons does sometimes come up with quite, er, unique views of a case. I was thinking that perhaps he had rung you up to see what you thought of it. His call to you was placed not long after he left the pub where he and O’Leary had been drinking.”
“I see,” said Bethancourt. “Yes, I expect that might have been what he wanted.” In truth, he was thinking that most of the ideas Carmichael found so unique were probably his own. It was Bethancourt, not Gibbons, who was prone to flights of fancy, and every once in a while one of those flights would lead somewhere. But he could hardly tell Carmichael that.
“In any case,” said Carmichael, “I dropped off a copy of O’Leary’s report on their conversation for Gibbons to look at, but he was so under the weather last night, I doubt he’s even seen it yet.”
“You thought if he read a transcript of the conversation, the same notion—whatever it was—might occur to him,” said Bethancourt.
“Just so,” answered Carmichael. “Always assuming that was indeed what took him to Walworth Tuesday night. But as I say, Gibbons isn’t up to much at the moment, and then I thought of you. You know him better, I think, than anyone else. I imagine he’s more open with you about his thought processes than he is with me or with another colleague.”
Carmichael looked at Bethancourt hopefully.
“We do sometimes brainstorm together,” admitted Bethancourt. “I don’t know that reading over a conversation of his would give me the same ideas as he had, though. I could try, I suppose.”
“That’s all anyone could ask,” said Carmichael. He proffered the manila envelope he had dug out of the pile on his desk. “Let me know what you think,” he said. “I’m afraid I must ask you for the report back once you’ve finished with it. And, mind you, no one else is to see it.”
It was clear Carmichael had some qualms about bringing a civilian in on the police side of an investigation, and Bethancourt did his best to reassure him.
“I understand completely, sir,” he said, taking the envelope. “I’ll
have it back to you as soon as I’ve digested the information. To tell the truth, this is the first I’d heard of any other case being involved in the attack on Jack.”
Carmichael sighed and leaned back in his chair, polishing his glasses absently on his shirtfront. “It’s probably not,” he said. “Still, the fact remains that Gibbons had a conversation about a crime in Walworth and then popped up there some three hours later. And there doesn’t seem to be another reason for him to have been in that neighborhood.”
Bethancourt nodded.
“By the way,” said Carmichael, “were you aware that a distant relation of Gibbons had recently moved into the Walworth area? A woman,” he added as Bethancourt frowned, “named Dawn Melton.”
“Oh, yes.” The frown cleared from Bethancourt’s brow. “I’d forgotten. Jack has mentioned her occasionally. I believe she’s a first cousin of his, though I don’t recollect which side of the family she’s from. He wasn’t best pleased that she ignored his advice and moved into Walworth. But I don’t think he sees much of her—I take it she wasn’t the reason Jack went down there that night?”
“Apparently not,” answered Carmichael, in the manner of a policeman who never rules anything out until the whole solution is bare before him. “I just wondered if you knew her.”
“No, we’ve never met,” said Bethancourt. “I only know about her because of remarks Jack’s made. I gather he didn’t think much of being given the job of looking after the lamb in London, but couldn’t tell his mother so.”
This coincided exactly with the impression Carmichael had formed, but he was happy to have the confirmation from Gibbons’s best friend.
Bethancourt was hesitating. “I did wonder, sir,” he said, “if you’d discovered anything about Jack’s movements that night.”
“Not very much.” Carmichael sighed. “It’s rather unusual, having this blank slate to fill. Normally, we’re checking a statement given to us and when we find a deviation, we look into it and one thing leads to another, so to speak. With this, we have no idea what direction to take. The only thing we know for certain is that Gibbons didn’t go
straight home. Was he thinking about the Haverford case? About the Pennycook murder? About something else altogether? Did his conversation with O’Leary remind him of his familial responsibilities and send him off to check on his cousin?” Carmichael threw up his hands.
“I see,” murmured Bethancourt pensively. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way before. Jack thinks,” he added, a little tenuously, “that his call to me referred to the Haverford case.”
Carmichael nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true,” he said. “I know myself, when I’m on a case, it’s always there in the back of my mind, waiting to come out the moment I’m not occupied with something else.”
That was an interesting take on the mindset of a professional detective, something Bethancourt tucked away to mull over later. It was certainly quite different from the way he personally approached things and he couldn’t help but wonder if that reflected his lack of professionalism, or merely a characteristic eccentricity.
They were interrupted by the telephone, which Carmichael reached to answer, holding up a finger to tell Bethancourt to wait. He listened for a moment, frowned, and then asked the caller to excuse him for a second.
“I’ve got to take this,” he said, returning his attention to Bethancourt. “You’ll look at the report and let me know?”
“I will, sir,” said Bethancourt, tucking the envelope under his arm as he rose. “You’ll hear from me by tonight.”
He clucked at Cerberus to bring the dog to heel and retreated from the office. He was greatly tempted to linger within earshot of the chief inspector’s conversation, but the penalties for being caught outweighed the possible benefits.
So he went back out into the cold drizzle. There was a café just down the street and he turned into it gratefully, ordering a large latte and settling into a corner at the back where there was room for Cerberus to lie down. Thus fortified, he lit a cigarette and opened the manila envelope.
Unlike Carmichael, Bethancourt was unaccustomed to reading police reports and found the style stolid. He skimmed quickly over it, only slowing when he came to the depiction of the conversation. He
read that section over twice, and then leant back to let his thoughts roam.
He was rather glad no one had mentioned the Pennycook case to him before this, since clearly Gibbons had heard of it for the first time that night.
“So,” he said to himself, “here I am, sitting in a public place, having a drink of something, knowing quite a lot about the Haverford robbery and having just heard about the murder of an old-time fence. Just like Jack that night. Only the wretched Pennycook case seems to have shifted his train of thought about his own case onto a different track, and it’s not doing a single thing for me. Damn.”
This last was said aloud and Cerberus raised his head, looking a question at his master.
“Well, is it doing anything for you?” demanded Bethancourt of his dog. “No, I thought not. Still,” he added thoughtfully, “stolen jewels must be fenced—could Jack have gone down to Walworth to look at a pawnshop? Well, let’s go and ask him, shall we, lad?”
Cerberus, who had rather been hoping for a piece of any of the foodstuffs he could so clearly smell, abandoned hope and resignedly got to his feet as Bethancourt pulled on his gloves.
Remembering his promise of yesterday, Bethancourt stopped at a stationery shop to buy one of the notebooks Gibbons favored, as well as a couple of the inexpensive mechanical pencils he knew his friend habitually used. But as he was paying for his purchases, another thought came to him.

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