The problem of the fingerprints would also be explained. Identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. However, in some cases the fingerprints of identical twins are alike in appearance, with minor distortions, slight differences in size. They are not similar enough to be wrongly identified by a fingerprint expert, but in certain circumstances they can be easily mistaken for each other. It seemed to me that the ungloved hands of the murderer on a humid day, seizing a baseball bat in a fierce grip, using it violently, would leave behind several blurred or smudged fingerprints, looking little different from the ones already there, the ones they partially obscured.
Motive? Not all brothers love each other. Families are complex and dynamic, often riven by jealousy, ambition, perceived betrayals, a sense of unfairness. Just because Dever and Lew were twin brothers did not mean they were incapable of murdering one another.
And there was the matter of the missing money. How could that be explained? There was a chance that it was not the immediate motive for murder. Perhaps Lew, sensing his life was in danger, converted his wealth into cash that morning, concealed it somewhere he thought would be safe, then met his nemesis later that day.
Another possibility: Dever, his identical twin brother, posed as Lew. He made false use of identity papers, faked his brother’s signature, converted the wealth into cash, hid it temporarily, then went to his brother’s house and murdered him. After that he locked up the house, returned to pick up the money from where he had stashed it, stuffed it into the large shoulder bag he had taken from his brother, then caught the next inter-island flight to wherever he lived on Salay Sekonda.
It was late. I went to bed.
14
Half Answers
Spoder phoned. It was still early, a peaceful time of quietude and warm air, before the sun rose high enough to bake the land. The road was virtually free of traffic. The cicadas stilled long before the sun rose. I had woken early and was on my recliner on the decking, the remains of an early breakfast around me. I was holding a mug of coffee.
‘Sir, I have found out almost everything you need to know about Antterland’s murder,’ Spoder said. The cable of the landline was stretched from the connector on the wall of my study, through the open windows. He went on: ‘I have access to the file, photos of the body, plans and more photos of the crime scene.’
‘Is this the murder on Salay Hames?’ I said. ‘Lew Antterland?’
‘No – he was the suicide. I’m talking about his brother Dever.’
‘I think Lew was also murdered.’
‘No, sir. Lew killed himself. I have a copy of the inquest report.’
‘OK, Spoder. Tell me about Dever.’
In the past I had learned that Spoder did not like discovering I was already ahead of his researches, seeing himself, justifiably, as my professional consultant. The internet had made access to documentary information so widely available that sometimes he and I followed parallel routes to similar pieces of information. Whenever that happened and we duplicated the effort, or as in this case I had gone more deeply into the story than him and worked out what had probably happened, I chose to stay silent, as now.
I needed Spoder’s input, though. He had access to internal police material that I could not get hold of otherwise, and his outlook on crimes and the mentality of criminals was usually different from mine. He challenged and refreshed me when he passed material on, even when we had doubled up our searches. Even when his sometimes manic attitude alienated me. As often it did.
Apart from my certainty about his role in the death of Lew, I knew nothing about the events surrounding Dever Antterland.
‘I’m still sorting through what I have,’ Spoder said. ‘I wanted to tell you it’s all here.’
‘Could you bring it over later?’
‘Tomorrow would be better.’
‘I’m thinking about what happened to Lew, his brother,’ I said.
‘Is there a story or a novel in that?’
‘I don’t know at the moment. It probably depends what you have on Dever.’
‘I’ll come to the house tomorrow morning.’
In the middle of the day Jo contacted me from her hotel room in Chor. A business meeting was going on which did not involve her. We spoke online for half an hour. After she had told me about the work she was being offered, she asked what I had found out about the Antterland brothers. I told her how grateful I was for the research she had done. I said I thought that as a result I had solved one case, but Spoder and I were still working on the other. I told her my theory of the murderous twin.
Relating the events aloud made me think again about what I had deduced, what I was saying. I had not consciously thought about this before, and suddenly I opened up to Jo about it. Was there still an allowable, plausible way of plotting a crime novel that involved identical twins?
I voiced this aloud to Jo, putting into words the concern that had been lurking unsaid. Impersonation as an attempt to conceal a murder was an old story device, over-used by thriller writers for decades.
I told Jo I was inspired and excited by the idea of the Antterland case, because it was a real one, not a story someone had made up. I had worked out the modus operandi of a murder, one thought by officialdom to have been a suicide. Then every few minutes I would resile mentally from it, rejecting it because it was so familiar, almost obvious.
I anticipated the embarrassment of putting the Antterland killing into a story or novel, modified and fictionalized in some way, only to have the publishers tell me that I could not get away with such a clichéd idea: not now, not these days, not another one of those identical twin plots. Worse, perhaps, further on down the line having the reviewers and readers say much the same thing.
I knew what a standard trope it was for a crime novel, one that had fallen from favour because of over-use, exactly like locked room mysteries and attempts to commit the perfect murder. They too were classic stories of the past.
But my position kept shifting. I would recover my confidence and something about Lew Antterland’s death would grab my interest again.
Jo listened, then said: ‘Maybe this means there was more to the murder than you’ve realized.’
‘I’ve tried to see it that way.’
‘This woman cop you met on Dearth – she told you that long story. There must have been a reason.’
‘An ulterior motive?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jo said. ‘I haven’t read it, of course. But was she trying to tell you something else?’
‘I thought that too. I simply didn’t know her well enough to read her intentions properly. At the time I wasn’t paying attention, mentally fending her off because I’m fed up with people trying to describe their rotten ideas for books. I was listening to her but not paying proper attention. It was only yesterday, when I transcribed the recording, that I began to wonder what was going on.’
‘You always say that’s where the real interest of a crime story lies. Not in the mystery the plot seems to be about, but what is not being told, the undercurrent. You once described it to me as the darker world of unadmitted motive. The story the killer didn’t intend to reveal, the one the detective misses, and only spots belatedly.’
‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly alert again. I needed Jo to remind me of these things.
‘That’s what makes your novels different, Todd. But this Antterland murder has made you think like an amateur sleuth, isn’t that right? You always say you shouldn’t do that. It’s the wrong way to make crime interesting.’
‘Yes,’ I said again.
‘Now you’ve solved a mystery from fifteen years ago, one few people have ever heard of, let alone will care about. What’s the real story behind it? The one you should be interested in. The one you might be able to write?’
‘I suppose that’s what I’ve been looking for,’ I said, feeling chastened. Jo knew my work better than I did.
‘Your last novel broke new ground,’ Jo went on. I glanced across at the page
proofs, about a third read so far, the rest of them yet to be checked. ‘You said that book, when it comes out next year, will move you further away from the standard genre stuff, and the new novel—’
‘I’m still working on it. I’d be writing it now if I hadn’t had to go away for a week.’
‘OK,’ Jo said. ‘Then can’t you forget this old stuff and get back to it?’
‘I will,’ I said. ‘I haven’t lost interest – it was just that going to Dearth was a huge interruption, and I was distracted by what you call the mystery from fifteen years ago. I’m beginning to realize there wasn’t a mystery at all – just the usual story of the police not doing a thorough job.’
‘Good.’
‘I’ll get back to the new book tomorrow.’
‘After Spoder has been to the house and given you a new mystery to solve?’
‘No – I want to carry on with what I was doing. I’ll throw him out as soon as I can. And the proofs are here of the last book. I have plenty to get on with.’
‘So you’ll do it?’ Jo said.
‘I will.’
Jo suddenly said: ‘You haven’t mentioned those newspaper links I found. Did you follow them up?’
‘No – not yet.’
I had noticed them, but I skipped over them without searching for them online. They were old URLs that I would have to enter manually, and most of them in all likelihood would have been closed in the years since they went up.
‘There was one that ran an article about Dever Antterland. At the time he was killed he was working as a magician.’
‘What?’
‘A stage magician. He had his own small theatre and ran shows in a holiday resort. I thought that might interest you.’
I loved Jo for the mischief she often played on me.
‘I didn’t see that!’ I said, rising to the bait. ‘Where was it?’
‘I have to go. Their meeting has finished. Get on with your new novel, Todd.’
We said goodbye, broke the connection.
I looked at the first draft of the new novel, but once again it felt arid. I had learned the hard way not to force myself to write when the inner chemistry was wrong. Not an excuse – a pragmatic decision. I read through all the pages I had written before I went away, made some handwritten notes on what would come next, then put it aside. I would try again the next day.
I took a break, walked through the garden, crossed the road and walked down the sward towards the beach. It was mid-afternoon and the sunshine was broiling. I had left the house on an impulse so I had not brought my hat. I stood for a few minutes regarding the familiar scene of the shingly beach, the shining sea with its gentle waves, the tiny offshore islands almost invisible in the glare from the sea, then I turned back and went to the house. I made myself an iced drink, returned to my decked patio and turned on the cooling fan. Later, Barmi joined me, sitting so that his fur was lifted by the flow of air.
I had been thinking about what Jo said, so as soon as I was settled I pulled the page proofs towards me and began reading and checking them in earnest. I completed them within an hour and a half.
In the evening I felt a return of the restlessness that the Antterland story had induced in me. I had a spurious feeling of triumph: I had worked out what had happened the day he was killed. I was sometimes able to anticipate the revelation in someone else’s novel, but that was not the same as this. Lew Antterland was real, his death came about through a violent attack.
I read Frejah Harsent’s account again. It seemed increasingly unreliable every time I looked at it or thought about it. As I read the words I had transcribed I remembered the noisy restaurant where she had spoken them, the semi-guilty way she had looked, my own feelings of uncertainty about what she was telling me and why. The coldness of print both smoothed those impressions away, but also revealed more and more duplicity.
At the end of her story Frejah had drawn attention to what she called three inconsistencies in what she had experienced. These were: the lack of evidence at the murder scene of Stud’s (Stod’s) involvement, the dubious quality of his confession leading to the way the investigating police officers had tried to fit the available evidence to him, and the effect of the mutability she had detected within the house. (Of this last one, I had no opinion.)
As a police officer, Frejah had a duty to report these findings, but instead she signed off what she had investigated, adding nothing to the file compiled by the police on Salay Hames. At the very least this indicated incompetent police work, but as Jo had said to me, the duplicity hinted that Frejah knew more than she admitted. That in turn suggested she might have been somehow involved with the crime, and/or was covering something up, and/or that she had pre-knowledge of it.
Now that I had been able to compare her account with what was objectively recorded in the media at the time of the incident, I could see several more ‘inconsistencies’, to use her word.
The most glaring of these was that she had said she was sent to Salay Hames alone, whereas the record showed two Dearth detectives were there. Frejah seemed certain to have been one of them. Detective Serjeant Jeksid would be the obvious companion. What then was his role in checking the facts of the murder? Was he also somehow involved with the crime itself?
While she was working with the Hames police, Frejah must have seen or been shown the witness accounts describing how Antterland, or someone who looked just like him, was seen leaving the house after the murder. She must have been told about the missing money – a clear motive for the killing. And if fifteen years later, my contact, Spoder, then an officer on another force, could remember the story that Lew Antterland had a twin brother, she would surely have been told, or found out about it. Those details were memorable, unusual, not easily ignored.
I added these thoughts to the pages of notes I was taking of the Antterland case.
But then, with a feeling of guilt, I put everything aside. Jo’s remarks to me had been important. She was not a writer, and lacked any need or aspiration to be one, but channelled her artistic abilities into the design and sculpting work she did. However, she had an uncanny awareness of and sensitivity towards what I tried to do in my books. We had been living together for many years. Jo knew more about my writing than I ever liked to admit. I had learned to listen to her.
She was right about the Frejah story: I was obsessing about a minor mystery from fifteen years earlier, of no lasting interest or relevance.
Once again, my absorption in the Frejah story had made me unaware of the passing of time. It was now close on midnight. My eyes were tired and I knew I should not have wasted most of the evening on this. I closed down my study, switching off all the equipment and lights. I headed for the bedroom.
While undressing I noticed that the clothes I was wearing while travelling on Dearth were still lying in a heap on the floor. It was time they were laundered. As I checked that the pockets were empty I found, to my surprise, deep in one of the back pockets, a stiff plastic card.
It was a clean, brilliant white, with an embedded computer chip in the centre. Apart from a small hotel logo printed in gold in one corner, and a border strip coloured bright red, there was no identification.
I placed it on my bedside table, then went to the bathroom, dumped the clothes in the laundry basket, took a brief shower and brushed my teeth. I was expecting Jo would be home again the next day, giving us a few more days together before her trip to Muriseay.
15
A Detective Inspector Calls
I was awake, eating breakfast on my patio decking, reading my emails. The main one was a terse one that had just arrived from Jo – she said she was being delayed, and would not be returning until the next day. I had written back straight away, because I was concerned about her upcoming trip to Muriseay. The delay would mean there was only a day and a half at home before she had to travel again, and the Muriseay visit was open ended. She had warned me she would have to be there at least five days, maybe a week, maybe two, depe
nding on how well it went. I did not mind and said so, but I knew how wearing these trips could be. Jo was younger than me, but not by much.
We were both at an age of denial: we wanted to act as we always had from the time we met, denying the two decades we had put behind us since, but we now appreciated comfort and the pleasures of idleness and early nights more than we would admit.
Jo replied to say all was well. She would be back early, we’d have time before she had to leave again. She had already pre-packed her bags for the longer trip.
We agreed to make contact by internet that evening.
I was still browsing through the other emails when Spoder arrived at the house. I was not expecting him because he normally turned up in the middle of the day. I knew it was him as soon as I heard him: he always arrived on his motorcycle via the narrow access road behind the house, then scraped and scuffed noisily across the gravel of the short drive, leaving tyre grooves.
He marched through the house without preamble, wearing his crash helmet. As he came on to the patio he lifted it off and tossed it aside. It landed on the edge of the table, toppled over and rolled noisily but harmlessly over the planking.
‘Sorry, sir!’ he said, when he saw my reaction. ‘I didn’t mean to drop it like that.’
I stood up and faced him. He was wearing bright blue shorts, a yellow T-shirt with the name of a rock band printed in gothic lettering on the front, and sandals. He threw down a pile of papers on the table next to my laptop, then picked up my electric jug of coffee and looked around for a spare mug. I went into the house and found one for him.
‘Help yourself to some breakfast,’ I said, indicating the small plate of rolls and croissants I had put out.
‘Thanks, but I never touch food at this time of day,’ he said. ‘Sir, you know what a pleasure it is to act as your researcher, but this time you have excelled. I am in debt to you. This is the sort of case I have always dreamed of.’
The Evidence Page 12