Just Not Cricket

by Joyce Cato

  Jenny shot him a sour look. ‘Gee, thanks,’ she muttered. ‘Nice to know you have such faith in my taste in men,’ she teased right back.

  And then she frowned. Although she appreciated a little levity now, after the shocks she’d just been through, her mind was still whirling like a dervish. ‘Seriously, though. You don’t think we might have two separate killers on our hands, do you?’

  Causon cocked his head thoughtfully to one side as he gave this some consideration. ‘What? That someone killed Tris, for whatever reason, and then someone else decided to kill Cluley. It doesn’t seem very likely, does it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ she admitted. ‘Unless the motives were very different,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Or unless someone else was protecting Tristan’s killer?’ She paced up and down quickly. ‘What if someone else besides Tris’s killer knew that James had seen whoever it was who had gone behind the pavilion? If that person wanted to stop him from talking …’

  But Causon was already shaking his head impatiently. ‘Now, don’t you go complicating matters,’ he advised her. ‘It’s only in television dramas or in the pages of those complicated thriller books that you get multiple-murderers or twist-in-the-tale conundrums. Usually, killings are very straightforward. I think you’ll find that someone killed lover-boy because he bedded the wrong woman, and then that same someone later killed James Cluley because he was stupid enough to try and sell his silence to whoever he saw leaving the back of the pavilion after doing the deed. Or, if you still refuse to see the old man as a blackmailer, the killer went after him because he believed that Cluley represented some other kind of danger to him. Or her.’

  Jenny slowly nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re probably right.’

  But then again …

  Jenny wasn’t able to follow that thought to its logical conclusion because just then, a man she hadn’t seen before, and not one in uniform, pushed into the room behind them.

  ‘Sir, you have to come to the gents’ toilet,’ this individual demanded.

  It took both Causon and Jenny a moment to grasp that the man, dressed in casual jeans and a white T-shirt, had to be one of the volunteers from Traffic, who’d volunteered to give up their day off to help out.

  ‘Oh?’ Causon, in spite of everything, play-acted looking very amused. ‘And why, pray tell, do I need to do something as unsavoury as that, er … Constable…?’

  ‘Tripp, sir.’

  He was a tall, brown-haired man in his early twenties, and his rather plain face was flushed with excitement. No doubt they didn’t get many double murders in Traffic. In any case, the older man’s caustic amusement slid right over his head. And given what he said next, Jenny could understand why.

  ‘Sir, we’ve found a man in the gents trying to clean himself up. And he’s got blood all over him!’

  Causon leapt forward. ‘Well, why the bloody hell didn’t you just say so in the first place, son?’

  The youngster simply goggled at him, and Causon sighed wearily. ‘Well, all right. Let the dog see the rabbit, Tripp.’ And as the now thoroughly bemused constable simply goggled at him some more, added, ‘Bring him in here, Constable.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  And so it was that Lorcan Greeves was frog-marched, protesting vehemently, into the storeroom. And it quite quickly became evident that he was indeed very blood-spattered, and was also holding his right hand cradled gingerly in his left.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said at once, trying to look both aggrieved but determined to be reasonable, and failing to achieve either effect. His eyes shot nervously from the inspector, then with evident and perhaps understandable bewilderment to Jenny, whom he vaguely recognized as being the caterer. ‘Why was I manhandled out of the lavatory in that way?’ His chin was thrust out in an effort to bolster his bluster, but he lacked the necessary backbone to bring the look off, and instead he looked merely ridiculous.

  Causon looked him over carefully, then said to Jenny, ‘Do you know this man, Miss Starling?’

  Jenny nodded briefly. ‘I think his name is Lorcan Greeves,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ Lorcan piped up, trying to wrest control of the situation back into his own hands, and failing yet again. ‘All you had to do was ask me,’ he added, a shade petulantly.

  Causon nodded. ‘Indeed, sir. You seem to be in some difficulties,’ he said, nodding down at the newcomer’s injured hand.

  Greeves had obviously attempted to clean it up, probably in the gent’s sink and then bandage it, no doubt with the help of the first aid kit stashed somewhere on the premises. But he hadn’t done a particularly good job of it, and blood still oozed from his wound, situated, by the looks of the seepage, somewhere on the meaty part of his palm.

  ‘Oh, this,’ Loran tried for breezy unconcern next. ‘This is nothing,’ he added nonchalantly, right on cue.

  ‘It hardly looks like nothing to me, sir,’ Causon said affably, feigning concern.

  ‘And from the way it’s leaking, it looks as if it needs stitching. I didn’t realize cricket was such a dangerous game.’

  The inspector watched him carefully, to see if he might go for the bait, and even Jenny could see the sudden look of speculation leap into Lorcan’s eyes. Should he take the line that he’d hurt himself at the match? But then she saw him reluctantly abandon the idea – as appealing as it obviously was. And it didn’t exactly take a genius to understand his reasoning. There would be far too many witnesses to the fact that Lorcan hadn’t sustained his injury on the pitch to try and pass it off that way.

  Indeed, when you thought about it logically, Jenny mused, it was hard to see how he could have come by such an injury while playing cricket, when surely the only real hazard was a flying ball? Concussion or painful bruising might result from that, but surely not such a bloody hand wound.

  ‘Er, no. I didn’t get it out on the field, as it happens,’ Lorcan finally admitted miserably.

  ‘No? I didn’t think so,’ Causon said, still in that friendly, vaguely curious way that was so transparently fake that it made you want to grit your teeth. ‘It looks like a nasty cut to me. Got it whittling some wood, did you, sir?’ Causon slipped in.

  Lorcan Greeves frowned uncertainly, looking at the older man in what appeared to Jenny at any rate, to be genuine puzzlement.

  ‘Whittling wood?’ he repeated blankly. ‘No.’

  Jenny could almost hear his brain buzzing as he tried to figure out the significance of the words.

  ‘Why on earth should I have been whittling with wood?’ he finally asked, very cautiously indeed, clearly sensing some sort of trap in the policeman’s words.

  ‘Oh, just speculating, sir,’ Causon said, more cautiously himself now, making Jenny wonder if he, too, hadn’t picked up on what seemed to be Greeves’s genuine bafflement. ‘So, how did you come by such a cut? Hardly a paper cut, is it, sir?’ he asked, deciding that the time for playing games was over.

  ‘Er … no. I er … broke a glass. Yes, very clumsy of me, I know,’ Lorcan said, trying to look embarrassed. ‘It was so hot, I had a nice cold beer, but what with the condensation on the glass and what have you, it just slipped out of my hand and shattered. And when I went to pick up the pieces, I stumbled and almost fell, and put my hand out to save myself, you know like you do.’ He was all but gabbling now. ‘And … well, ouch! There you have it. Brought my hand down rather hard on a jagged piece of glass and there you have it. Gashed my palm pretty badly, I don’t mind saying.’ He shrugged again. ‘My ex-wife always said I was hopelessly cack-handed.’

  Causon nodded. ‘Quite a tale of woe, sir,’ he said sympathetically. ‘So if we unravel those, if I may say, rather inexpertly applied bandages, we’ll see a nasty, irregular shaped gash, will we?’

  Lorcan blinked. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, quite clearly lying. ‘But it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Oh, I think we should get you some proper first aid for that, sir. We can’t have allegations of police brutality or
inhumane treatment being bandied about, can we?’ Causon said earnestly. ‘I’m sure there’s someone outside qualified to help you out. A nurse, or someone with medical training.’

  ‘No!’ Lorcan said precipitously, his voice rising to a near squeak. And when the inspector raised his eyebrows and all but pantomimed a man being taken considerably aback, he managed yet another painful attempt at laughter. ‘Really, there’s no need to bother anyone, Inspector, I can assure you. I can always take myself off to the ER later, if it doesn’t stop bleeding soon.’

  Causon nodded. ‘Very well, sir. If you say so. And where did you drop this glass, exactly?’ he asked, still in that reasonable, amiable voice that was beginning to get on Jenny’s nerves, even though it wasn’t aimed at her. ‘Not outside on the grass, I imagine. It would hardly break on grass, would it?’

  ‘What?’ Lorcan said blankly. He’d begun, quite visibly, to sweat. Then, ‘No. I mean, why do you want to know where I was?’

  Causon shrugged his hefty shoulders. ‘Oh, I just want to be sure that all that nasty glass is properly cleared away, sir. After all, we wouldn’t want a little kiddie falling down and hurting themselves on it as well, would we?’

  ‘Oh, there’s absolutely no chance of that,’ Lorcan said airily, going to wave his hand loftily in the air, and realizing just in time that that wouldn’t be a good idea. ‘I made sure to clear it all up, Inspector. I was very careful, I promise.’

  The chubby stockbroker’s eyes were darting around the storeroom, like a mouse desperately searching for a way out of a maze.

  ‘That was very public-minded of you, sir, considering that you must have been bleeding profusely all that time. You seem to have got a good deal of blood all down your shirt and on your trousers too.’

  ‘Yes, it did drip rather. It does look bad, I know, especially since I’m wearing white and all,’ Lorcan admitted cheerfully. ‘But I haven’t bled as much as it looks. I was just going to change out of my cricket whites into my day clothes anyway.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you were,’ Causon’s crocodile smile made the most of his rather crooked set of teeth. ‘If you’ll just tell me which bin you put the broken glass into, I’ll have my constable here bag it for evidence.’

  He nodded at the young man from Traffic, who had been listening to the interview with evident fascination.

  ‘What? What do you mean? Evidence of what?’ Lorcan blustered anxiously. ‘I thought Tris had been hit over the head? There wasn’t any blood at the scene …’ He trailed off as Causon shot him a very keen glance indeed, and then gave a shame-faced smile and a brief shrug. ‘All right, I have to admit it. Along with a lot of other people, I did just have a quick peek at Tris, before your people first arrived. I was curious and concerned. He was my friend and business associate, after all. Oh, James made sure that nobody went behind the pavilion and disturbed the scene, of course, but he couldn’t stop any of us just looking, could he?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose he could, sir,’ Causon concurred flatly.

  ‘Well then … I don’t see what my cut hand has to do with anything,’ Lorcan said, trying to work his way up to some righteous anger now. ‘I understand that you have your duty to do, of course, but there’s no need to be so officious.’ He looked rather proud of this sentence, and tried to follow up on it. ‘So, if you don’t mind …’ He made vaguely, about-to-leave gestures.

  ‘Oh but I do mind, sir,’ Causon said incisively. ‘Collecting evidence of your broken beer glass will be crucial to my case. But I’m not referring to the murder of Tristan Jones. I’m referring to the murder of James Cluley.’

  Lorcan Greeves literally gaped at him. It wasn’t often that Jenny had ever seen anybody actually do that before, but there was no other way to describe it. Lorcan’s jaw literally dropped, his eyes bugged out a little, and he looked like nothing so much as a seriously surprised frog.

  ‘James! James is dead?’ Lorcan gasped.

  Causon sighed heavily. ‘Yes, sir. His body was found a little while ago. He’d been stabbed.’ He very carefully didn’t add any further details about the murder weapon. ‘And his killer must have got covered with blood,’ he continued, his voice heavy with accusation now. ‘And the funny thing about stabbing someone is that, very often, the one doing the stabbing also gets cut as well. Not many members of the public are aware of this fact, but it’s very easy to nick yourself when you’re wielding a blade of some kind. Especially if you’re not familiar with a weapon, or how to use it properly.’

  Lorcan slowly but comprehensively went a very pale shade of sickly green, which only reinforced Jenny’s mental image of him as a thunderstruck amphibian.

  ‘But … but … but …’ he spluttered. He seemed to find it both hard to breathe and to string together a coherent sentence.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ Causon prompted genially.

  ‘But … but … I didn’t kill James,’ Lorcan finally managed to gasp out.

  ‘But you did kill Tristan Jones?’ Causon asked casually, slipping in the question smoothly.

  ‘What? No! No, I haven’t killed anybody!’ Lorcan denied, so panic-stricken he sounded ready to burst into tears.

  ‘No? Well, unless you feel like telling me the truth about how you came to slice open your hand, I shall have no choice but to arrest you for the murder of James Cluley,’ Causon informed him, almost blandly. ‘In point of fact, my Superintendent would be most miffed with me if I didn’t. And you can’t expect me to get in my superior officer’s bad books, can you?’

  Jenny glanced at Causon curiously. She was finding his unorthodox policing methods interesting. Presumably his brand of caustic humour worked on a suspect’s nerves to the point that they confessed, simply to get him to stop speaking.

  ‘But why would I want to kill James?’ Lorcan asked, sounding quite genuinely wounded now. ‘I didn’t know him all that well, but he seemed a perfectly pleasant sort of fellow to me.’

  Causon sighed. ‘Your hand, sir. How did you cut it? And no more of this guff about a dropped beer glass if you please,’ he rapped out.

  Lorcan’s eyes slowly began to widen in horror. ‘But … but … but …’

  Causon rolled his eyes. ‘This again, sir?’ he asked wearily. ‘Really?’

  ‘But I can’t tell you that!’ Lorcan wailed, almost comically.

  ‘No?’ Causon said, finally losing patience. ‘In that case, Lorcan Greeves, I arrest you on—’

  ‘No! Wait,’ Lorcan rushed in, his face going from green back to white again. ‘All right! I’ll tell you. It was Marie Rawley. She cut me. It was an accident. I mean, she didn’t mean to do it or anything … It was just an accident,’ Lorcan trailed off miserably.

  Whatever either Jenny or the inspector had expected him to say, it certainly wasn’t that and Causon stared at him for some moments, his mind doing a whole series of mental twists.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ he finally said. ‘Marie Rawley attacked you with a knife?’ He carefully enunciated each word.

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘Please make up your mind, sir. Either she did, or she didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, she cut me, but no, she didn’t attack me. It was an accident, like I said,’ Lorcan pleaded desperately.

  ‘And how did this accident happen, exactly?’ Causon asked, clearly not believing a word of it.

  ‘We were just … er … talking … and we got into something of an argument …’

  Lorcan hesitated, as if suddenly aware of just how dangerous the ground was becoming underneath him.

  ‘And this argument entailed the use of a knife, did it? A bit drastic for your regular, run-of-the-mill argument, isn’t it? Do you often bring a knife to a conversation with a lady, sir?’

  ‘No, I do not!’ Greeves denied indignantly. ‘It was her knife. That is, she brought it with her.’

  ‘Oh? Did she have reason to suspect that you might attack her?’

  ‘What? No, of course not!’

  ‘Were you and she an ite
m, sir? Had she ended the relationship and you wouldn’t take no for an answer? Defending her honour, was she?’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous? Me and Mrs Rawley? I barely know the woman!’ Lorcan yelped, looking genuinely appalled. ‘And I can assure you, she’s not my type.’

  ‘No?’ Causon’s patent disbelief was relentless. ‘So she was a woman scorned, was she? She made advances and you disdained her, so she set about you with a knife. Is that what you’d have me believe?’

  Lorcan stared at the inspector like a rabbit staring at a pair of approaching car headlights. ‘No! No, no, no, no. It was nothing of the sort. If you’d just let me explain how it really was.’

  ‘Perhaps that might be best,’ Causon agreed.

  ‘She was … just … er … waving it around and …’ But again Greeves stumbled to a halt.

  ‘And just what exactly was it that you were discussing that resulted in Mrs Rawley “just waving a knife around”, sir?’

  And it was then that Lorcan Greeves finally had the sense to call a halt. Clearly he felt too battered and bamboozled by the inspector’s interrogation to come up with even the most pitiful of lies. His shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘I want a solicitor,’ he said flatly. ‘I’m not saying another word until I have a solicitor present.’

  Causon’s lips twisted bitterly, and Jenny could easily guess why. Once a suspect called for a solicitor, the police couldn’t continue the questioning.

  ‘Very good, sir. I’ll just get my sergeant to take you back to the station. There we’ll get the police surgeon to take a look at that hand of yours, and you will be formally charged.’

  Causon asked the traffic officer to go and fetch Graham Lane, and then the three of them waited in an awkward silence for the sergeant to arrive.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The sergeant duly arrived and was given a quick run-down on the situation by his superior officer. The younger man seemed quite excited by the new development, and Jenny could see that, as far as the sergeant was concerned, the case was all over, bar the mopping up.