The Soft Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  Chapter Eleven

  A lead. The slightest of leads, granted. But a lead. If Conor’s protecting someone who was down in Sandymount with him trying to buy some E, then isn’t it at least likely that he’s protecting Belinda Withrington? His girl. Or, maybe, his girl until just recently.

  With a jolt of sharp irony he recalled, outside the once-familiar Harrison Academy gates oblivious of the dull penetrating cold, how just before his marriage began coming to its acrimonious end both he and Vicky had almost cooed with pleasure over the pair. Their son, little Conor, suddenly becoming a big boy, getting himself a real girlfriend. Becoming, if only just, a man. At that time he had stifled in Conor’s interest his doubts about the Withrington girl. But doubts he had had. She had seemed too sophisticated for her age, and, even in the little time he had seen her, had produced the odd remark sour with racist intolerance. She had had her sixteenth birthday in the summer, when Conor had given her - the foolish lad - the one object of real value he had ever unearthed with his metal detector, a sixteenth-century copper seal. He had had it, more expensively than he ought to have afforded, mounted on a gold chain, and she had worn it round her neck.

  So she was involved in drugs, if only on the edges and over E tablets, which half a million stupid youngsters up and down the country took every weekend at discos and raves. But was she still? Would she have been on a buying expedition to Sandymount on Monday, if only as a hanger-on to some more adventurous boy? With Conor, surely, as a hanger-on at yet another remove, now keeping stum to protect her?

  The knight errant. He felt a rush of warmth bringing tears, once more, to his eyes.

  But no time for sentiment. The knight errant at this moment sitting opposite Dragon Verney feeling the hot fire of relentless questioning scalding his very skin. Perhaps even causing him to confess to something he had not done.

  Or … Or worse, to confess to what, after all, he had done.

  Because, look at it whichever way you would, it was still possible that Conor, knowing nothing about drugs, had heard that Mrs Unwala was supposed to know where the Hampton Hoard was buried. Had he really then, motivated more by a will-o’-the-wisp desire for quick glory than greed for gold, gone to the old professor and attempted to get him to say where his wife had located the Hoard? And then…? Then met with adamant refusal had he lashed out with the first thing that came to hand? That ancient cricket bat.

  It was still possible. Vicky’s vague account of the time he had got back from school on Monday left it all open.

  But at least now there was something to go on towards disproving that worst scenario. If Belinda Withrington was down in Sandymount on Monday evening, Conor’s response when he had questioned him could be explained.

  He swore.

  If he was still on the case he would have had every right to send a detective who knew what he was about, someone like Jumbo Hastings, to the Withrington girl’s house. Under the guise of wanting to find witnesses in Sandymount he could get permission to ask her some questions. Then almost as a certainty, if Conor had been there with her, she would say so.

  But that line was forbidden to him now. He could not ask Jumbo or any other detective to do anything risking disciplinary action. So nothing for it but to go back to the nick and hope to bump into somebody who knows what’s going on in the interview room. Somebody who will have the decency to tell me.

  Unless it’s all over. One way or the other.

  At the station the person he bumped into was Di March, just coming out as he turned to go in. He would have passed her by with no more than a nod. But she called out from the top of the steps, the heavy double doors behind her still vibrating to a close. That intolerably loud voice, telling the whole dark street.

  ‘Hi, guv. You’re back then. Mr Verney’s been looking for you. Tell you your little boy’s been bailed. Let go about half an hour back. Only thing to do. Verney never had more than a sniff of a case. My view. Though, from all I hear, that doesn’t mean he’s giving up on your lad.’

  His swamping sense of partial relief only just overrode fury at this high-handed treatment of himself and even of Superintendent Verney.

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ he said, hurrying up the steps to give her less of an opportunity to trumpet out his concerns to the whole world. ‘And do you happen to know where Conor is now?’

  ‘Gone back to the place his mother shares with that Jack-the-Lad lover of hers, I imagine.’

  So much for keeping his private life private. But, no doubt, she’s right about where Conor is. Where else could he go?

  Once more he gave the tinny goblin door knocker a vigorous shaking. It brought no response, although there was light behind the curtains of the room next to the door.

  Standing there in the cold - another wave of fog seemed to be creeping in from the sea - the last time he had tattooed away at that silly little goblin came vividly back to him. Only a few hours after the murder had been discovered. Before he knew that the small huddled body with its head under a corner of that fallen bookcase was that of Professor Edul Unwala, Nobel Prize winner. At the time he had been stealing a few minutes from the investigation to make sure, on Vicky’s adamant instructions, that Conor was at home, had eaten his tea, was doing the work he had been set.

  Innocent Conor. Then. Guilty of no worse a crime than not regularly going straight back after school. Innocent Conor now, innocent of killing Professor Unwala? Evidently Verney at least had doubts. Otherwise he would have freed him, not bailed him.

  And me, do I have doubts now? Am I now as convinced of Conor’s innocence as I was when I set out to see that dusty raven at Harrison? Am I as convinced of his guilt as I was when I went hotfoot to the Gill and poured out all my facts, fancies and suspicions?

  The door in front of him cautiously opening saved him from having to answer.

  It was Conor, just as it had been on Tuesday afternoon. Myself when young. That damned long Harrison Academy black jacket and the grey trousers. But tonight no white trainers, size seven, on his feet. Instead a pair of down-at-heel red leather slippers.

  ‘Looking at the footwear, Dad? They took my trainers off me when I said they were the ones I wore all the time.’

  Another wave of gratitude. Conor’s survived. Or it seems he has. On an even keel, able to talk about his time down at the nick. God knows what internal damage there may be though, surfacing God knows when later on. When he’s taking his exams at the end of next academic year? Hoping he’ll do well enough to get into Cambridge, go on to receive one day - there’s irony - the Nobel Prize I jokingly forecast for him just before I realized why the name Unwala meant something? Or internal damage surfacing time and again while, the blackest outlook, he’s serving life for murder?

  He blinked and recovered himself.

  ‘Can I come in? Tell me about it all. I’m off the case, of course. Don’t know anything about what’s been happening. And then I owe you an apology. Did Mr Verney tell you who put them on to you in the first place?’

  ‘It sort of leaked out, yeah. But no hard feelings. I can see why you thought what you did.’

  Like father, like son. Well, if I’m always accused of seeing both sides, I’m happy actually that my son’s inherited that. Yes, by God, I am. Soft as a duck’s arse, or not soft as a duck’s arse, I think I’m right. And Conor’s right too.

  In the narrow hallway Conor murmured in his ear.

  ‘You’ll get a rocket from Mum, you know.’

  ‘Expected. And prepared for.’

  But no amount of preparation, and in point of fact he had not felt able to do much, would have readied him for the assault that met him as soon as he stepped into the cramped sitting room.

  ‘You. I said it would be. Conor, go up to your room. Mike, I think you’d better step into the kitchen. You can peel the bloody potatoes, for once in your life.’

  The two of them slunk out. As if retreating from a battlefield, soon to be blood-boltered, corpse-strewn.

  ‘I don
’t know how you’ve got the fucking cheek to show yourself here.’

  He stood for a moment dumbstruck.

  ‘But— But listen, Vicky,’ he brought out at last. ‘Conor is my son too, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Your son, and you go telling that filthy pig Verney he’s committed a murder. That your son has hit some old man on the head and then tried to hide his crime by hauling a bookcase on top of him. And you have the gall to stand there and say “He’s my son”. Your son. Christ, there ought to be a court order keeping you away from him for the rest of your life. If anything’s ever abuse, it’s what you did to Conor today.’

  He tried to halt the onrush.

  ‘Look, I know what I did may seem bad enough. But try to think of it from my point of—’

  ‘Your point of view. Here we go again. Always has to be another way of looking at something. Christ, if you were lying in front of an oncoming train, you’d start worrying about what the engine driver was going to feel. You sicken me. You really do. You get some fantastic notion in your head that your son’s gone down to some house in Sandymount and bashed to death a poor helpless old man, as if that’s in any way likely, and you go rushing off to get your superior officers to harass the wretched boy till he doesn’t know whether he’s on his head or his heels.’

  ‘Did … Did Verney harass him that much? Did you get a solicitor there? What happened in the interview? I know nothing. Nothing about my own son in a situation like that.’

  ‘Well, what do you think happened? That pig bullied and shouted, and completely ignored the stupid solicitor we got given, and Conor went whiter and whiter till he could hardly get out any answer at all. And I suppose you’re going to say your precious Mr Verney was only doing his duty? And it was quite fair of him to reduce your son almost to tears?’

  ‘It was that bad?’

  ‘Of course it was. You should have thought of that before you denounced Conor like a bloody informer under the Nazis. But oh, no. No, you had to go and betray the poor boy when what you ought to have been doing was getting him out of the country as fast as his legs would carry him.’

  ‘But— But, listen, Vicky, why should I try to get him out of the country - as if I even possibly could - when, as you say, the boy’s done nothing?’

  ‘Done nothing? Is that what you’re going to claim now? Your son has only killed a defenceless old man. And you say that’s nothing. You disgust me, Phil Benholme. Disgust me more than I ever thought possible.’

  He stood looking at her, blinking in bemusement. But before she caught her breath again, he managed to jerk in a question.

  ‘Let me get this straight. Do you know Conor did it after all? Did he say something to you after he was let out on bail? My God, how could you have pretended to believe he did nothing if that’s what he’s said to you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be more stupid than you can help. Of course, he hasn’t come running to Mummy saying Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to break your pretty necklace. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t go to that house in Sandymount. Your Mr Verney seemed to be getting near the truth when he looked over what they’d taken from Conor’s pockets and found that seal thing he dug up once with his detector. He accused him then of wanting to find the secret of the Hampton Hoard and going too far in trying to get it out of that pathetic old man. And I thought - Conor was getting even more upset than before - that he was going to tear it out of him at last.’

  ‘But he didn’t?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t. Do you think Conor would be here, gulping down a huge tea, if he’d confessed to doing that? I thought you at least knew about how the police work.’

  Another jibe to be ignored.

  ‘But what you’re saying is, although Mr Verney’s let Conor out on police bail, he’s still convinced he’s got the right person? And you’re saying that you believe he has, too?’

  ‘Well, he went on about having Conor in again after what he called further inquiries. So he plainly believes Conor’s guilty. And if he is, whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that the boy doesn’t know enough of right from wrong that he can go and do a thing like that?’

  For an instant he wanted to shout at her that not ten minutes earlier she had been swearing black and blue that Conor was innocent. But he still had enough cool left to know that would get nobody anywhere.

  ‘How can you say,’ he began again in what he hoped was a reasonable tone, ‘that Conor doesn’t know right from wrong? What other instances make that even slightly likely? Is Conor an habitual liar? Does he steal? Does he bully kids weaker than himself? You know he doesn’t.’

  ‘And does he murder old men who get in his way? Do you know for certain that he doesn’t do that? All right, in your eyes he’s a little angel. But even you must admit the boy’s got a really vicious temper when he does break out.’

  A temper. Yes, Conor has that, though I’d dispute really vicious. So could he have … If for some almost unimaginable reason he had allowed himself to try to get the secret of the Hampton Hoard out of Professor Unwala would he, if the old man stood up to him, have altogether lost his temper? Can I really be sure then that he would have been able to control himself? Well, no. No, I must admit it. I can’t be sure. I can’t. No one can say that about anyone.

  ‘Yes. Well, I agree Conor’s got a temper, a pretty violent temper sometimes. Who hasn’t? Only one person in a thousand. In ten or twenty thousand, I dare say. But just because in the past on the odd occasion Conor’s thrown an utter wobbly, it doesn’t mean he killed Professor Unwala. He isn’t capable of murder. He isn’t.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t he? If he is - and, Christ, I can’t swear that he isn’t - then do you know why he is?’

  What is this?

  ‘Why should I know why?’

  Her eyes gleamed yet more ferociously.

  ‘Because of the way you’ve brought the boy up, Phil See-all-Sides Benholme. Because of the way you’ve always overruled me when I wanted you to punish him. The way you always said Oh, I can see why he did it. It isn’t the hoy’s fault. I know just how he feels. When what he should have been feeling was the back of your hand. But you’re just too bloody weak to do what you have to.’

  Am I? Was I? Is she right, rage or no rage?

  He stood there in the middle of the little overheated room with its bulging, chintz-covered armchairs and asked himself if, never mind Vicky’s shrieking and snarling, Conor had become capable of murder because all of his life he had been allowed too much of his own way.

  And he could not make up his mind.

  Chapter Twelve

  He drove very slowly back from Frogs Lane to the house on the other side of town that he had shared for so long with Vicky. The house where Conor had been born, had been brought up over fifteen busy years. As he put his key in the door, from the estuary in the quiet of the night there came one last, long foghorn call, muffled and mournful.

  But how well in those fifteen years had Conor been brought up?

  The question he had asked himself so forcefully in the wake of Vicky’s accusation had thumped away in his head, unanswered, unanswerable, all the while he had pushed onwards through the thickening fog. It thumped away still as he peered indifferently into the fridge, saw the four cold chipolatas congealed in whitish grease he had left on an old green saucer, all that remained of a wedding-present breakfast set for two. With a couple of slices from a stalish loaf they would do as supper. Thank God there was beer.

  Setting down his glass tankard - another wedding present, he thought wryly, and again the only one of a set of four that had escaped Vicky’s high rate of breakages, he stared straight ahead for a moment and then spoke aloud in the chill emptiness of the kitchen.

  ‘Right. Get it sorted. Are you, Phil Benholme, responsible for your son committing murder because you let him get away with too much over the years?’

  But at the other side of the pale grey plastic-topped kitchen table there was no Phil Benholme under interrogation. There was no shiny gre
en interview-room table between these two Phil Benholmes, only the one he had known for so long, with the chip in its grey surface that had been there for five years or more, its painted legs scuffed and scarred from little Conor’s kicking. A mute witness of family life. No way, sitting at it here, of getting any clear-cut yes or no to the obsessive question.

  Getting up and putting plate and drained tankard into the sink, he thought that in any case it all depended on whether it was true that Conor was the person who had brought that cricket bat swinging down on to Professor Unwala’s frail, white-haired skull. If the boy was a murderer, and boys as young as Conor had killed in circumstances as hard at first sight to credit, then perhaps he himself did have a grave charge to answer. And never mind that it had been put by Vicky in her typical no-holds-barred extravagant way. If, though, Conor had not killed Professor Unwala, but was simply protecting his Belinda, or his friend Alec Gaffney or some other mate, from getting into trouble over buying Ecstasy, then his upbringing hardly came into it. Or if it did, it was a credit to the way he had been brought up that he would go so far to protect a friend.

  But could Conor go on fighting on that friend’s behalf - if he was not in fact fighting to protect himself - hour after hour in the interview room, even day after day? For how long could he go on taking the sort of battering Verney had already given him, even if he was guiltless?

  Then, suddenly, he thought he saw a reason for believing what he hardly dared believe, that Conor was not guilty. It was not the sort of reason you could very well put up as evidence in court, however brilliant a defence lawyer you were. But to him it had the ring of conviction.

  It was the copper seal Conor had unearthed.

  Six months ago Conor had gone to more expense than he could really manage to have that seal, his most precious find, mounted on its gold chain to give to Belinda for her birthday. The momentary thought of Belinda, as he had tried just a few moments ago to get the whole business straight in his head, had brought back to him now what Vicky had said in the heat of their row. Your Mr Verney seemed to be getting near the truth when he looked over what they had taken from Conor’s pockets and found that seal thing.