The Soft Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  With what? Nothing found at the scene.

  So, one thing. As soon as it was daylight all the verge of traffic-thundering Seabray Way would have to be searched. If that size-seven footmark had been left as the lot of them were making their getaway, then they must have taken the murder weapon with them. Whatever it was.

  Find that. Find fingerprints on it, and we’ll be more than halfway there.

  And, another thing, call up on the computer the names of every young tearaway on the files. Detectives out and about as soon as the names were known, round to every address. This evening if possible. Check each one’s whereabouts on Monday evening, have a look at the youths themselves if they’re not out in the town. There’ll be signs of uneasiness there, almost for a cert. No one as young as that boy who shouted can have done that and still be totally unconcerned. Or only one in ten thousand.

  And - youths, hoys, young Conor - quickly drop in on him. No more than a couple of minutes there, then on to the Polworthys. Pity I’ve got to take time for them. But no point in going all the way back to the Incident Room now. Not when I’ve come out this far. And this boy, whoever he is, will still be there when we get to him, hoping and hoping he’s got away with it. He won’t, though. He won’t.

  But don’t leave it any longer than I have to, putting everything in hand. Still, won’t radio in. I’ll get this going myself. Hands-on. Make amends for the way I messed up the briefing. This time I’ll really have that steamroller determination. Be as hard as it takes.

  He started the car, pushed his way through the fog, even thicker on the outskirts of the town, until he reached the cottage in Frogs Lane where Vicky lived with her sports-mad lover. There were lights on in the living-room window and the uncurtained kitchen. So Conor had been getting himself his tea. Surprise, surprise. And now, no doubt, was getting down to his homework. Every Tuesday since this term had begun he had found him doing just that. But tell Vicky he didn’t need supervision? No way.

  He almost decided not to bother going in. Be through with the Polworthys all the sooner and back to the Incident Room. But the thought of how not turning up would put Conor on the spot with Vicky when she and Mike came home made him change his mind. The boy had troubles enough without him adding to them.

  He tapped hard at the ridiculous tinny goblin door knocker - no, be fair, not necessarily put there by Mike - and in a moment Conor opened up. Short, stocky build, square face with a little jutting knob of a chin, thatch of dark hair, big brown eyes slightly down at the corners. The mirror image of himself at that age, even to the Harrison Academy uniform he, too, had worn in his day. The same badge on the same long black jacket, the same ugly yellow and green striped tie, pulled down from the shirt top button in just the way that had annoyed his own father. Only the scuffed trainers on his feet were different. In his day it had been regulation black shoes, or else …

  Which reminds me. I’d thought I’d go myself and see the head there about this security-in-schools drive. After all, top school merits a senior officer. Must do it, soon as this investigation’s resolved.

  ‘Yo, Dad.’

  ‘Hi.’

  And, damn it, at once he was finding it altogether as difficult as usual to say anything that didn’t sound patronizing or downright silly.

  Conor gave him a grin.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have got myself my tea. I did have enough to eat. Did I wear my cagoule to school? No, I didn’t. I never do, unless it’s snowing or something. None of us do. And yes, I have begun my homework. Stinking French before I get on with history.’

  Stinking French. I do believe I used to call it exactly that too. That god-awful Mr Pasdore who used to take it. About all I remember of what he tried to drum into us: that saying Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner To understand everything is to forgive everything. Suppose it must have rung a special bell with me, even at that age.

  ‘Well then, your old dad may as well push off.’

  ‘Hey, no, man. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s only that when Mum rings you up tomorrow, she’ll ask all that stuff, and I don’t want my old dad to have to tell horrible lies.’

  Now it was his turn to grin, if more feebly than Conor.

  ‘As a matter of fact he said, T should push off soon as I can. There’s been a murder, and Superintendent Verney’s away on a Bramshill course. So I’m in full charge.’

  ‘Right. But what sort of a case is it? Sherlock Holmes stuff, or just some domestic?’

  The policeman’s son. Ready with the jargon. And, not so good, the job-of-work attitude, a case as something to be resolved and nothing more.

  ‘No, it’s a bit more than a domestic. An old man living all on his own in a big house down in Sandymount. May turnout to be nothing more than a mugging that went wrong, but we’ll see.’

  ‘Sandymount? When was it then?’

  ‘The body wasn’t discovered till this morning, but it looks as though the actual murder happened at about six o’clock yesterday evening.’

  ‘But I was there, or—’

  He came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘You were down in Sandymount then? What were you doing there? I thought you were meant to come straight home after school.’

  Conor looked uncomfortable. But he answered quickly enough.

  ‘Who’s nagging now? And, as a matter of fact, Mum isn’t quite so hot on me getting straight back from school as she’d like you to think. So, really, Tuesdays are often the only time I do come straight home.’

  Home, he thought, with a sudden retch of bitterness. So this is what Conor now thinks of as home. After all the years.

  He decided abruptly that he would go on in. Talk to the boy. His son. If only for a minute or two.

  In the sitting-room - crammed with fat chintzy armchairs, worn-looking oriental flowered carpet covering only part of the oak-boarded floor, big fireplace with a chunky stone mantelpiece, squitty little electric fire in the hearth - he saw that an exercise book on the gateleg table had a page half filled in, with Conor’s French grammar and dictionary open beside the telephone.

  And, next to that, there was a spiralbound pad of the sort they had always had for taking messages beside the phone at home. It was, he saw, carefully turned to the newest blank sheet. In just the way theirs had always been kept, ready to use. He felt an odd jab of pleasure. So Vicky’s taken with her some of our set routines. I’m not totally cast off, then.

  ‘See your mother’s still taking phone messages the old way,’ he said, unable to stop himself.

  ‘What? Oh, the pad. Well, I suppose that’s more me than Mum. You know what she was always like, tearing out the pages for shopping lists and losing some vital message. Mike’s even worse.’

  Disappointment. Or not. Better to have put the idea of the message-pad system in your son’s head than your wife’s? Nearly ex-wife’s.

  But change the subject. Dangerous waters.

  ‘Well then, what do you do, the days you skive off coming back straight after school?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. Have a Coke somewhere. Talk with my mates. Mess about. Depends.’

  ‘Any treasure hunting? That what you go down to Sandymount for?’

  ‘Treasure hunting? Oh, God, Dad, call it by its name. I’m a detectorist.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean to knock it. I’m delighted you’ve got a worthwhile hobby, in fact.’

  And immediately he thought: God, worthwhile, what do I sound like? And then he made matters yet worse.

  ‘And how about that girl you’re friendly with? Belinda? She one of the mates you see?’

  ‘Well, I can hardly help seeing her, can I? We are in the same class at school.’

  The sulky answer. And a hint, surely, that love’s young dream may be taking a wrong turning. Some rival butting in?

  And me losing what rapport we had. So what can I say now? Steer clear of Miss Belinda, for one thing. Though not altogether sorry if that’s coming to an end. Didn’t much like her, times I met her. Snob
by little bitch. Dad, that smart dentist. Though suppose she can’t really be expected to throw off all her poncy upbringing.

  Then, to end the developing awkward silence, he simply plunged.

  ‘Look, lad, I don’t want to preach, but—’

  ‘Oh, Dad, come on. “I don’t want to preach”. Why are you always so bloody understanding? You do want to preach really, don’t you? Well, go on, preach. Preach away, I can take it.’

  He grinned back, perhaps less feebly than before.

  ‘You win. And anyhow, you know what I was going to say, don’t you? A levels at the end of next year, and you could get to university, you know. You’ve got the brains, and you’ve got the push. Your keenness on archaeology, metal detecting, all that.’

  For a moment then there flashed into his head fat Mrs Damberry’s talk about the Hampton Hoard. Should he ask Conor about that? But no. A false lead if ever there was one.

  He searched about for something more to say on the subject of schoolwork, something that wouldn’t show too much understanding.

  ‘Look, you’ve just got to stick at it this year and next, and you’ll find yourself with good enough grades to get into Cambridge or Oxford. Reading archaeology. You could, you know. Start of a great career. PhD, lectureship, professor, startling discovery somewhere, Nobel Prize, if there is a—’

  He came to a dead stop.

  Nobel Prize. Unwala. That’s why I know the name. Poor dead little monkey Mr Unwala in fact none other than Professor Unwala, Nobel Prize winner back in the forties. Physiology, or something. Eventually retired to King’s Hampton, with, yes, his English wife, a King’s Hampton girl. Big piece in the Advertiser at the time. Remember it from years ago. Professor Edul Unwala, the forename’s even come back to me. But, oh Christ, this is going to put a whole different complexion on the case. Bloody nationals will want a story, TV, the lot. Not every day a Nobel Prize winner gets murdered. And, yeah, well… Well, very likely won’t be seen as a case for a mere DCI any longer. Better get on to Headquarters pronto. The Chief will want to know.

  ‘Hey, Dad, what’s up? You look as if you’ve suddenly been hit over the head. You all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. But, you see, all of a sudden. I’ve realized my murder’s a top-brass affair. The victim’s famous. He won a Nobel Prize. It was years ago, in nineteen forty-five, nineteen forty-six, way back then. Some discovery about the human brain. Hey, yes, the mice. That’s what they must be about.’

  Conor looked at him.

  ‘You gone off your rocker, Dad? Mice? What mice?’

  He managed a laugh.

  ‘Sorry. Mind was racing away. No, you see, in the room where it happened there were cages and cages of mice, each one numbered. I couldn’t think before what he wanted with them, but now I see. They must be his specimens. And there was scientific apparatus in two of the bedrooms. I thought it was for some sort of a hobby. But no. No, Professor Unwala must still have been performing experiments. God, that makes it all the sadder somehow.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

  He saw the look of sudden thoughtfulness on Conor’s face, and was glad of it.

  ‘But, look,’ he said, T really will have to go now. I’ve got to radio this in, or I’ll certainly lose charge of the case.’

  ‘Jeez, Dad, I’m sorry.’

  Someone else capable of understanding. My son.

  He felt an uprush of warm feeling that all but brought tears to his eyes.

  Chapter Five

  Only after he had radioed to Headquarters did it come to him that, in the excitement of making his discovery, he had never asked Conor what had taken him to disreputable Sandymount. The boy, of course, knew the area because the estuary dunes were the best place locally for using a metal detector, if hardly in the same class as the detectorist camp in Norfolk where he had spent a prized fortnight last summer. But he could not have been treasure hunting - no, forbidden to call it that - on a dark November evening.

  So why was he down there? Well, time enough to sort that out when I see him next Tuesday.

  The Polworthys’ house, he found, was one in a short terrace some speculative builder had contrived to put up almost in the country at the far end of Frogs Lane. Mr Polworthy, in his sixties, heavy in body, long fat face not shaved that day, led him in silence into a rigorously neat sitting room. And went straight back to sit in what was plainly ‘his’ chair on one side of the tiled fireplace, making no attempt to switch off the television tranquilly pumping out the day’s episode in the farm life of Emmerdale. A sullen pudding.

  His wife, dead Mrs Unwala’s sister, sparse, pinched of mouth, silver-grey curls dragooned into place, had not left her upright armchair opposite when he came in. She did take her eyes from the screen to glance at him through pallid-rimmed spectacles, but her fingers stayed fiercely knitting at what looked like a steely grey cardigan.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m the bringer of bad news,’ he said.

  He waited for a response. It somehow seemed indecent to tell them about the death of their relative by marriage with the drone of country voices issuing remorselessly from the TV and the self-absorbed click-clicking of Mrs Polworthy’s knitting needles going steadily on.

  Well, perhaps she’s simply deadly shy, he thought. You get people like that, almost totally incapable of initiating any conversation. So break it gently.

  ‘It - it’s your brother-in-law, Mrs Polworthy,’ he said, raising his voice above Emmerdale’s grumbling.

  ‘Him,’ Mr Polworthy barked, eyes still steadily attached to the events on the screen. ‘Can’t say I hold with him. Never have.’

  Jesus, how can anyone come out with a remark like that at the very mention of poor old Professor Unwala. And it’s not making my task any easier.

  But try again.

  ‘The fact is that early this morning Mr Unwala was found dead.’

  From Mr Polworthy simply a grunt. From Mrs Polworthy a quick glance of suspicion from behind the pale-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Well, he’s gone then,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was to be expected. He must be getting on for ninety, you know. Dolly was much the younger, not so old as I am even. Of course, he didn’t really look his age. Indians don’t.’

  All right, neither of them going to be too upset when I tell them the poor old fellow was murdered.

  ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t old age Mr Unwala died of. I’m sorry to have to tell you he was murdered, attacked in his house and left dead or dying.’

  An expression of pointed indignation did appear now on Mrs Polworthy’s taut-cheeked face. But it might have been produced by the way she had been told the news. Or as a comment on the state of society in general. Certainly there had come no signs of real grief or horror.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, T can’t say we ever knew him all that well. Dolly met him when she was at Cambridge University. Always was the clever one of the family was Dolly. And much good it did her. Marrying someone from there.’

  ‘From there? From Cambridge?’

  ‘An Indian. She knew nothing about him, you know. Nothing about what they’re like.’

  ‘But he was a very distinguished man, wasn’t he? A Nobel Prize winner.’

  ‘That’s as may be. I’m not saying they’re not clever. But they’re not like us. I don’t know what Dolly meant bringing him back here like that.’

  Still not invited to take the third chair round the TV in the scrupulously neat little room, he thought it was probably as well for Professor Unwala that his wife’s sister used to see little of them. A dismal cloud of disapproval would have come in with her the moment she stepped into the house. But, see her side of it. Mrs Unwala, her younger sister, and plainly much more intelligent. Top of the class at school here no doubt, then a scholarship to Cambridge. No wonder Mrs Polworthy regarded her with such unyielding sourness, however much she should not.

  ‘I suppose you don’t happen to know…’ Mr Polworthy began solemnly from the other side of the spluttering little fire in
the narrow tiled fireplace. Then he came to a halt.

  Had his attention been abruptly riveted by some new development in Emmerdale? But, no. His eyes were turned towards himself in lugubrious, silent questioning.

  ‘I’m sorry? Do I happen to know what?’

  ‘If there’s a will. By rights, Milly here ought to come into the money. There wasn’t no one else.’

  ‘But didn’t Mr Unwala have relations in India?’

  ‘That he did not,’ Mrs Polworthy broke in. ‘Many a time Dolly told me he was all alone in the world. I expect that’s what made her interested in the first place. She was always like that. Stray dogs, if Mother had ever let her keep them. A blackbird once, with a broken wing. Nasty dirty thing.’

  Plainly they don’t know if they’re going to get any money or not. One possible motive, very doubtful at best, out of the way.

  ‘So you neither of you saw very much of the Unwalas?’ he asked, well knowing the answer.

  But get as much as possible out of the two of them. If Mrs Ahmed’s ‘boy’ and his mates turn out to be a no-no, we’ll need every scrap of background we can get hold of. And that’s another thing. Must send over to the Advertiser, get a copy of that piece they did, Nobel Prize Man Comes to King’s Hampton.

  ‘We kept ourselves to ourselves,’ Mrs Polworthy answered his question with a little prim nod of her fixed grey curls.