The Soft Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  Then, behind him, he heard the front door crash back as it was swung open. And became aware that, concentrating on the pad, he had been only subliminally conscious of a car coming to a fast stop just outside.

  He turned.

  Into the room came Vicky and, looming behind her sports-ace Mike, bursting out of a white high-neck pullover and blue blazer. Plainly unable to decide whether or not he should be subduing his everlasting grin.

  ‘Phil,’ Vicky shot out. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  He recovered himself.

  ‘I came out to you because no one had answered the phone all afternoon and most of the evening, and when I arrived I found the front door open.’

  Vicky swung round to her Mike.

  ‘You mean to say you came out after me and never even thought to lock the door?’

  ‘But sweetheart, we were in such a hurry. Conor gone and everything.’

  ‘Conor? Yes, where is he? What’s happened to him? Do you know?’

  ‘God knows where the damn boy is,’ Vicky snapped.

  ‘But— But his note on the pad? He left a message for you, didn’t he? Did he say anything about - about killing himself?’

  ‘Killing himself?’ Vicky answered shrilly. ‘Oh, come on. All he said was he was going away. Running away. Just wait till he comes back. I’ll give him a message all right.’

  ‘But the note here, the one he just began, it says Mum. Sorry I can’t. And then his pen ran out.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, I forgot. We’ve got what he really wrote with us. Show it to him, Mike, for Christ’s sake.’

  Mike felt first in one pocket of his brass-buttoned blazer and then in another and another. At last he brought out from a trouser pocket a roughly folded sheet. He handed it across.

  Written with a soft, dark pencil, it said: Mum. I’m sorry but I can’t take any more from that boss of Dad’s. The truth is I know what friends of mine thought of doing the night Prof Unwala was murdered. But I’m not going to betray them. They are my friends

  Then came two words that had been crossed through, despite what. And the message continued: I know if I have to sit there being asked and asked III eventually give in. So I’m going. Somewhere well out of sight. Tell Dad.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I think that makes it clear the silly fellow hasn’t done anything disastrous. Thank God. So have you both been looking for him? I take it you’ve had no success?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vicky said, more quietly. ‘I’d gone out to the shops just before lunchtime, and when I came back I found that note, and Conor gone. Plus whatever money I had in my dressing-table drawer.’

  ‘And how much was that?’

  ‘How the hell should— Oh, well, I suppose there must have been thirty or forty quid.’

  ‘So, enough for Conor to have buzzed off to London. Or anywhere.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I don’t know. When I phoned Mike we went to the station and the coach station as well as everywhere else we could think of. But nobody seemed to have seen a boy answering to Conor’s description. Phil, what are we going to do?’

  He felt a tiny glint of pleasure, of revengeful pleasure, in her appealing to him rather than to hulking, half-grinning Mike. But he quelled it.

  ‘There are procedures,’ he said. ‘I’ll see they’re put in train. A Missing from Home notice. Circulating a description to all the neighbouring forces. Message to the Met. One of them may turn up trumps.’

  Then he brought himself to face facts.

  ‘But, on the other hand, it’s only fair to say kids of Conor’s age go missing by the hundred in the course of a year, and a good many of them stay missing for a long, long time.’

  ‘And what he said in the note, that he’d only been so obstinate with your Mr Verney because he was shielding some friends, is that true? I mean, you don’t think he did have something to do with the murder, do you?’

  He almost groaned aloud.

  ‘No. No, you see the bloody awful thing is Conor’s been taken out of the frame. Altogether. It’s been confirmed that at the time of the murder he was actually making his way back here.’

  Now the familiar, furious speak-first, think-afterwards Vicky came swooping back.

  ‘And you knew this all along? You knew that Conor was not going to be interrogated any more? You knew it. And you didn’t care enough simply to ring me up and tell me. To tell him, even?’

  He tried to stem the acid flow.

  ‘No, look, I knew nothing about it. I was still off the case. It was Verney who should have told you and didn’t. I suppose I can understand why. He’d a lot on his mind and—’

  ‘Christ, Phil, will you for once in your life stop making excuses for people. A lot on his mind. For God’s sake, what he ought to have had on his mind was that he’d been harassing and bullying a defenceless fifteen-year-old for hour after hour and when he found he’d got hold of the wrong person the least he could do was apologize. To fucking grovel, in fact.’

  He was about to try to explain how Verney could reasonably have not informed her about Conor, when into his mind there flooded the resolution he had made sitting on Conor’s bed not ten minutes earlier. He had confessed to himself there, believing Conor might very well have taken his own life, that he had been guilty over the years of being too tolerant. Especially in the way he had handled Conor. He had made some sort of a resolution, sitting on the bed there, to be harder in future. To comprendre, but not then unthinkingly to pardonner.

  I made a resolution in fact not to be always soft as a duck’s arse. So now let me tell Vicky she’s right, however violently she’s expressed herself. I shouldn’t pardonner Verney.

  ‘Yes, Verney was out of order. I admit that. However much he has on his plate with the media making all the fuss about Brilliant Nobel Scientist Slain, he damn well ought to have let you know. No getting away from that.’

  ‘Well, I hope you bloody well tell him. To his face. I would. And I dare say one of these days I will.’

  ‘I will, yes. If it comes up. But I must get back and start things going. Try not to worry too much. I reckon Conor’ll think better of this in a day or two.’

  ‘Yes, and what will you do then? Tell him he’s been a good boy and Daddy understands?’

  He gave her a rueful grin.

  ‘Well, no. No, I don’t think I will do that this time. And not for a long time to come, I hope.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  He got late to bed in his cold, empty house that night. But he was satisfied he had put in train every possible step towards finding Conor. Not that any sign of him had come to light.

  He lay there on his side of the double bed, where as a baby Conor had romped with them both, and thought of where he might be. In London, likely as not. And without a bed. Lying in some squitty cardboard box in a doorway somewhere, if he had been lucky enough even to find a box. Or, perhaps worse, with a bed but in some house he had been lured to by a predatory pimp. Conor, for all his brightness, was still in many ways an innocent.

  Exhausted with emotion as he was, it was not long before he fell asleep. But then he slept so heavily it was well past eight before some interior watchdog jerked him into consciousness, abruptly aware that he had to bring young Alec Gaffney in for questioning.

  And Alec, he asked himself as, cancelling breakfast, he pulled on his clothes from the day before and hurried out, will he stand up to Verney as Conor managed to do? Just managed to do? Or will he crack inside half an hour?

  He realized, as he came out and got into the car, that the fog had lifted. One good thing in this badly begun day.

  But in the end how well had Conor stood up to Verney, always only just on the safe side of forbidden oppressive questioning? All right, Conor had succeeded in not naming the friend or friends he was protecting - Alec Gaffney? Belinda? Someone else? - but at what a cost. The mere prospect of another session with Verney sending him running desperately into hiding.

  But where? Only as far away as Barminster, and h
appily sitting there over bacon and eggs in some cheap bed-and-breakfast place? It could be. It might only be that. And before the end of the day he could be back at the cottage and everything put right.

  But be realistic, that was unlikely enough. The second message on the pad had shown more determination than that. So I’m going. Somewhere well out of sight.

  Pulling up outside the estate agent Harold Gaffney’s big house out on the far edge of the town, the sweep of lawn in front of it still sparkling with the moisture of last night’s fog, he looked at his watch. Good. Time enough to get hold of Alec and get him down to the nick before nine, together with one parent or another as Appropriate Adult. And then?

  Then will tank-crushing Verney in one brisk bout of hard questioning lay his hand on the murderer of Professor Unwala? Triumph before the ready-to-pounce media make life hell for the whole of Barshire Constabulary?

  He rang the doorbell.

  A maid, yellow duster half-concealed behind her back, answered. He made sure from her that Alec had not gone out and then asked for his father.

  ‘Mr Gaffney’s leaving for business any minute, sir.’

  ‘Yes. I dare say. But I have to speak to him. Will you tell him it’s Detective Chief Inspector Benholme, on a matter concerning his son.’

  It did the trick. Harold Gaffney came out to him in the hall.

  He realized then that he must have seen him at Harrison Academy functions over the years. A tall, lean man, taller even than his beanpole son, with what must once have been the same red hair now faded to a pale pepperiness echoed in a heavy moustache.

  ‘What is this, Chief Inspector? I’m right, aren’t I, in thinking my son and yours are at Harrison Academy together? In the same year?’

  ‘They are. But can we go somewhere more private? I have something I have to tell you about your Alec’

  He saw a look of sharp surprise come into the washed-out blue eyes beneath the pale red bushy eyebrows, and thought he was going to be abruptly rebuffed.

  But evidently Harold Gaffney had seen his own look of plain determination.

  ‘Very well. But I trust what you have to say won’t take long. I like to take a look in at our various offices on Saturday mornings and I’m usually gone by nine.’

  He did not answer that, but followed the tall estate agent into a room that was evidently his study, two soft leather armchairs on either side of the fireplace in which a fire had been laid but not lit, a big partner’s desk with a scatter of papers on it, dark almost patternless curtains, dim paintings of rural scenes.

  ‘Well, Chief Inspector?’

  He had not been invited to sit, and was glad of it.

  ‘I have to tell you, sir, that I have come to take your son to King’s Hampton police station to be questioned concerning his possible involvement in the murder of Professor Unwala in Sandymount last Monday.’

  Harold Gaffney went a shade paler, but his blue eyes at once shot out an angry glare.

  Well, I suppose I know how he feels, little though I like what I’ve seen of him. But what I felt when I first thought Conor might have killed the old man, that’ll be what he’s suddenly feeling now.

  ‘Mr Benholme, can you really be meaning what you have said? I can’t imagine Alec’s ever been to Sandymount. An area like that. And I can assure you he’s not the sort of boy to be involved in anything of that nature, not even peripherally.’

  ‘I can well understand how you must feel, sir. But I can tell you Alec admitted to me when I had a word with him as he left school yesterday that he had indeed been in Sandymount. And at the time we know the murder took place.’

  ‘Well, even if that’s so, I still cannot see why you wish to take the lad down to the police station like a common criminal. Surely, if you’ve anything to ask him, you can do it here and now?’

  ‘I am afraid not, sir. Detective Superintendent Verney is in charge of the inquiry, and he wishes to question your boy under proper conditions. And for that reason, too, we shall require him to be accompanied by an adult, preferably either yourself or his mother.’

  ‘But, Chief Inspector, I’ve already told you I make the rounds of our offices on Saturday mornings, and, of course, it’s out of the question for Mrs Gaffney to accompany Alec in circumstances like these. Surely you can make alternative arrangements?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir. I would hesitate to suggest a gentleman of your standing was obstructing the police, but I must tell you that, if necessary, I would go along that route.’

  Washed blue eyes fixed in a look of baleful fury.

  ‘Well then, I suppose I shall have to comply. But - but I don’t even know that Alec is still in the house.’

  ‘He is, sir. So I was informed.’

  A hot breath of thwarted rage.

  ‘Very well, very well. Just let me call the boy and inform my wife. I suppose that won’t be construed as obstructing you?’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’

  But, though it was barely three minutes past nine when he led Alec Gaffney, visibly trembling, face blotchily pale and red, into the interview room, there was a long, tense wait for Harold Gaffney’s solicitor before Verney himself arrived. And then he found he was in for a surprise.

  As he made to leave, duty done, Verney took hold of his elbow.

  ‘No, Mr Benholme, I want you to assist at the interview, if you please.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  They sat down at the long green-surfaced table, Verney and himself on one side, with, opposite, Alec Gaffney, looking now almost at fainting point, his father gathered up for the fight, and Barham Williams, King’s Hampton’s top solicitor, known to all the CID as Baa-baa, doing the gravitas act.

  Then Verney, before taking the twin tapes out of their plastic wrap, switching on the recording machine and explaining its function, leant towards him and whispered three words: ‘Old routine, Phil.’

  So that’s his idea. The old routine, the one we used to do so often in the past. Me hard: you soft. If that’s the way he wants it, no choice of course. But… But am I now the same softie who played that role so easily in the old days? After what I learnt about myself when I thought I’d find Conor’s body hanging from a tree in the garden there? No. No, I’m not. So how will I manage?

  Well, I’ve play-acted being hard in the past when I thought some suspect would cough in the face of a show of toughness, and I brought it off. So I suppose I can play-act the softie now. I suppose I can…

  At once Verney, daring Baa-baa Williams to utter the slightest objection, began going through the standard explanation for the recording. Time noted, those present named, two tapes being made, one for each party. On and on.

  And then, with all the due precautions observed, it began.

  ‘Right, lad, I want you to understand without any room for doubt what this is all about. It’s about murder. It’s about someone who battered to death a man called Edul Unwala in a house in Percival Road, Sandymount, on Monday last. Now, do you understand that?’

  Verney’s words thump-thump-thumping out like blows from a steam hammer.

  Alec Gaffney swallowed hard, tried to speak, failed. Beside him Baa-baa Williams leant forward.

  But at last Alec managed to choke out a word.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes? You understand I am inquiring into a murder?’ ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  Alec’s hand, clutching the edge of the table, was already leaving sweaty smears on the polished green surface.

  ‘Right. Now, as I said, Edul Unwala was murdered in his house in Percival Road, Sandymount, at - we know this almost to the minute, remember - six p.m. on Monday last. Now, where were you at that time, lad?’

  He’s headed right into it, old Verney. The crunch straight away. Christ, I feel sorry for the kid, guilty or not.

  Twice Alec tried to answer. Only at the third attempt did he succeed.

  ‘I - I don’t know where I was. Not exactly. That’s almost a week ago. I can’t remember.’<
br />
  ‘But you were seen, lad. You were seen in Percival Road itself.’

  Baa-baa jumped in.

  ‘You don’t have to answer, Alec. If you cannot recall where you were, you can’t.’

  All right, young Alec, don’t answer. Don’t say a word. As Mr Williams has been so quick to tell you, that’s your right. But I have my rights too, you know. And one of them is the right to draw conclusions.’

  The look across the shiny green surface of the table was as unyielding as steel.

  ‘But - but - listen, well, it is true I was—’

  Baa-baa pounced again.

  ‘Alec, remember—’

  ‘No, no. It’s no use. I was down there. Mr Benholme told me yesterday I’d been seen. Oh, what’s the bloody use. I was there. Yes.’

  Verney had not taken his eyes once from Alec’s face, shiny with perspiration all over now.

  ‘Yes, you were there. In Sandymount. And now tell me what you did there. And, remember, it’s no use inventing and lying and trying to get out of it. We know you were in Sandymount. We know Professor Unwala was murdered in Sandymount, and we know when. So, now, let’s hear just what happened.’

  ‘No. No. Nothing happened. All right, all right, I was down that way on Monday. I was in the shop at the corner of Percival Road. But that was all. You can ask—’

  A silence.

  ‘Yes, lad? Who can we ask?’

  ‘You can …’

  A longer pause. Tongue flicking out to wet lips, like a lizard’s.

  ‘Who can we ask, lad?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it. You can ask the people in that shop. They’ll remember us. Me. They’ll remember me. Me. I - I tried to buy— Well, all right, I tried to buy some whisky, and they wouldn’t bloody well let me have any.’

  Harold Gaffney swung round to his son.

  ‘What the hell were you doing buying whisky? You know the very taste of it makes you physically sick. We’ve had more than one disgusting exhibition of that. And what were you doing in Sandymount in any case? A son of mine …’

  ‘Mr Gaffney.’ Verney’s voice iron-hard. T am here to ask your son certain questions. If you attempt to ask him questions of your own, I shall have no alternative but to suspend this interview and detain your son in custody until I have your assurance you will not interfere.’