by Reginal Hill
He pointed at the notice on her wall.
She said, "Sixsmith, I knew these people."
"Sorry," he said. "But I didn't get the impression you were very close to Potter, and Sandra lies didn't come across as a big buddy either."
"What do you mean? She mentioned me?"
"No, but when I said you'd sent me, she sort of looked like I must be damaged goods."
For a second he thought Butcher was going to speak ill of the dead but she reduced it to, "Yes, Sandra was a great advocate of market forces. You're quite right, of course. We weren't great buddies, any of us. But like I told you, me and Pete had once been pretty close, and I couldn't get him out of my mind last night. Then when I came back and heard about Sandra
For a second she looked like a forlorn fifteen-year-old, then she must have caught an expression of sympathy on Joe's face because she puffed out a great veil of smoke and said, "Also, one person I'm very fond of is Lucy, Felix Nay-smith's wife, and it does seem to me that if someone's declared open season on the firm, then Felix could be in danger too. So I rang the cops to make sure they'd worked it out too."
"And had they?"
"In a manner of speaking. That idiot Chivers is still holding the fort
"I thought Willie Woodbine's holiday company had gone bust and he was on his way back?"
That's right," said Butcher, a smile lightening her sombre expression. "But it seems there's some problem about airport fees and the plane's having difficulty getting off the ground. Anyway, when I managed to get hold of Chivers he got very shirty and told me that it was all in hand. Mr. Naysmith had been fully informed."
She did a good imitation of the sergeant being pompous, making Joe smile.
"So he set your mind at rest?" he said.
"Like a line of coke," she said. "I thought I'd ring their cottage up on the Wolds. Couldn't find the number and as they're ex-directory I had a hell of a job getting it out of the exchange'
"How'd you manage that?" interrupted Joe, following Endo Venera's advice never to miss a chance of acquiring specialist knowledge.
"The usual way. Lies, bribes and blackmail," said Butcher cagily.
"Just the kind of thing the Law Society expects from its members," said Joe. "How come you're getting up such a head of steam over this guy?"
"Not the guy. I don't even like Felix all that much. But Lucy's different, and she's had a lot of trouble ... her nerves were sort of shot a little way back, and I was concerned how she'd react to the news that some old friends and colleagues had been murdered."
"Colleagues? She a lawyer too?"
"No, but she was a legal secretary at Poll-Pott till she got married. Anyway, I finally got through to her. It was quite incredible, I'm thinking about putting in an official complaint about that moron Chivers. They'd gone out for a meal about an hour after Felix had spoken to Peter on the phone, the call you overheard. Got back in about eleven. Chivers had clearly given up trying to reach Felix by then and he probably forgot all about him this morning with the excitement of finding you yet again hanging around a body. So Felix turned up at Oldmaid Row at noon for the meeting he'd arranged with Peter and walked straight into the middle of things. Can you imagine it? They were close friends from way back at university, him and Peter. Drinking buddies, played in the second row together, that sort of thing."
"Violinists?" suggested Joe.
"Rugger!" snapped Butcher. This isn't funny, Sixsmith. It really shook Felix up. And when they told him about Sandra too ... well, he rang Lucy back at the cottage in a hell of a state. The one good thing is that being cast in the role of comforter means Lucy's taking it all pretty well. It often works like that."
"Like when you get drunk with a mate," said Joe. Then seeing that the analogy was not impressing Butcher, he hastily added, "She heading back home to hold his hand, then?"
"No. Felix has got the car, remember? He's going to head back up to Lincolnshire when the police have finished with him. It's just a couple of hours."
"And is he getting any protection?"
"Allegedly, though what that means coming from a turnip-head like Chivers, God knows. Still, he should be well out of the way back up there in the cottage. And even if he calls in at home, they've got a house almost directly opposite Willie Woodbine's on Beacon Heights, so they've probably got a whole task force permanently on duty there. Anyway, we might be overreacting. Two episodes don't make a serial."
They do till someone writes The End in big letters," retorted Joe.
"Cheer me up," said Butcher. "But it's still hard to believe."
That anyone could go gunning for a firm of lawyers? Why not? Spend your life messing with criminals, you're bound to make some enemies."
They didn't do that stuff," said Butcher. They're high-profile commercial, big corporate accounts mainly, not the kind of groups who work out their grudges physically."
"Anyone can get physical if you hit them in the pocket," said Joe. "It's called market forces. It would be interesting to check out who they've been giving bum advice to."
"Yes, it would," said Butcher sternly. "And it's an interest you'd do well to leave entirely to the police. Especially when no one's paying you to poke around. Sixsmith, what the hell is that?"
Joe had pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket. With it came a photograph which fluttered on to the desk, facing Butcher. He turned it round and examined it. Sandra lies, Peter Potter and their three other partners stared back at him.
"Oh shoot," he said. "I must have stuck it in my pocket when I was round at Ms Iles's place."
"You mean you stole it from the scene of a murder?"
"No, it was an accident," he answered indignantly. "I suppose I'd better give it back."
She shook her head, closed her eyes and said, "I shall deny ever having said this, but no, in the circumstances I'd just stick it on the fire. The less explaining you have to do the better."
"Fair enough," said Joe. "Matter of interest, I know Potter and lies, but not the others. Who's the nice old gent with the white hair?"
"You get one out of three," said Butcher. "That's Darby Pollinger and he's neither nice nor gentle. He's the senior partner and he eats widows and orphans for breakfast."
"And the guy with the whiskers?"
"Victor Montaigne. Half French and wholly freebooter. Known in the business as Blackbeard the Pirate."
Subtle these lawyers, thought Joe. Which left the blond Aryan as Naysmith, the living half of the second-row partnership. He stuck the photo back in his pocket.
That's it then, I hope," said Butcher. "Some of us have work to do."
"All of us. Thanks, Butcher."
"For nothing, unless you've stolen something," she said. "Get out of here."
Joe had been tempted to tell her about Zak, but that was paid work and also he felt he'd already slipped over the bounds of client confidentiality in his conversation with Hardiman. In any case, Butcher probably wouldn't be all that sympathetic. Watching people running, jumping and throwing things she rated a waste of time only slightly less culpable than watching people kick balls. As for the Plezz, her indignation became almost a medical condition when she started on about the waste of public money and the incentive to local-authority corruption involved in the project.
Merv was the man to turn to if you wanted the sporting inside track. He loved games of all kinds, and worshipped the ground Zak Oto ran on.
Seeing Merv gave him an excuse to go to the Glit. Whitey indicated he had no objection, which was not surprising. Here he was a star.
Dick Hull said Merv hadn't been in yet. Leaving him to draw his Guinness, Joe went out to the lobby phone and, using the Sexwith flier he had in his pocket, he dialled Merv's mobile. No answer, which didn't surprise him. Merv's electronic equipment tended to come from nervous men in pub car parks after nightfall, and they didn't offer extended care contracts.
Now he tried Merv's home number.
It chimed different from what he remembere
d, but that didn't surprise him. Merv was a natural Bedouin, moving from oasis to oasis, which in his case were marked not by the presence of palm trees but widows of independent means. Whenever he moved in, he always imagined permanency, but it never worked out that way. Presumably he was still with Molly who had the dyslexic daughter in stationery, but there was no absolute guarantee.
"Yes?" snapped a voice in his ear.
It was male and not Merv. Time to box clever. Merv owed him, but that was no reason to drop a friend in the clag.
"I'm ringing on behalf of my firm to say that if you ever felt in need of a confidential enquiry service
Even as he began his ingenious cover-up, it occurred to him he could be in a fix if this guy tried to employ him to check up on his woman who was being balled by Merv ... "Who the hell is this?" demanded the man.
"My name's Joe Sixsmith," he said. "Look, if this is a bad time ..."
"Bad time, of course it's a bad time, you bastard. How did you get this number? Did the police give it to you?"
The man sounded even more agitated than a bit of unwanted cold-calling should warrant.
"No, why should they ... ? Look I'm sorry, perhaps I got a wrong number, who am I talking to here?"
"This is Naysmith, Felix Naysmith, who the hell did you think it was? The police told me about you, Sixsmith. What the hell do you want?"
"Oh yes, Mr. Naysmith," said Joe, completely bewildered. "From Poll-Pott? I mean, from the law firm ... what are you doing there .. ? I mean, just where are you, Mr. Naysmith?"
"At home, of course. Are you drunk, or what? And what is it you want?"
"Well, just to talk, perhaps we could meet, I thought it might help or something," bur bled Joe, trying to get his act together.
"You did, did you? Can you hold on a moment. There's someone at the back door."
Joe's mind which, like a small lift, had strict passenger limitations, was suddenly crowded with thoughts.
By what amazing coincidence had he managed to mis dial and get through to Felix Naysmith's home? And why was the guy there when his wife was expecting him back in Lincolnshire?
And who on a dark midwinter's night went prowling round the rear of a house to knock on the back door ... ?
At last the surplus weight was dumped and the lift went shooting up his cerebrum.
"Mr. Naysmith!" he yelled. "Don't open that door!"
But it was too late. He'd heard the bang as the phone was dropped on to a table, and now he could hear distantly a bolt being drawn and a door opened, then Naysmith's voice saying, "Good Lord, what the hell are you doing here?" And then the sound he most feared, which was no sound at all for a long amazed second, then the silence violently broken by a confusion of noise, gaspings, groanings, scufflings, broken words, choked-off cries ... "Joe, my man. Not doing the heavy breathing to the nurses' home, I hope!"
A heavy hand clapped on to his shoulder. He looked up to see Merv's beaming face satelliting above him.
There were questions to ask but not now.
He thrust the phone into the taxi driver's huge hand and cried, "Merv, dial 999, tell them to get round to the Naysmith house on the Heights, tell them it's urgent."
Then he was off. What was it Butcher had said? Opposite Willie Woodbine's house ... well, he knew that, having been there once for a party which had gone off, literally, with a bang. Should mean the Rapid Response Unit would get their fingers out, but no guarantee. On the Rasselas, RRU meant Really Rather U-didn't-bother-us. So, time for the lone PI to ride to the rescue!
The Mini's engine snarled as if it had been waiting all its long life for this moment.
But even breaking speed limits and shaving lights couldn't turn a fifteen-minute drive into less than twelve and as he hit the hill which (along with the property prices) gave Beacon Heights its name, he saw he'd been maligning the police. Up ahead the frosty night air was pulsing with blue. Which was good. Except that some of the strobe was coming off an ambulance. Which was bad.
A stretcher was being lifted into the ambulance. He ran the Mini up on to the pavement and hurried forward.
"What's happened?" he demanded as he forced his way through the small crowd of spectators. "Is Naysmith dead?"
"Don't know. What's it to you, anyway?"
The man responding was a crinkly blond, in his thirties, beautifully tanned or heavily made up, and wearing a dinner jacket. A butler maybe, thought Joe. Then he checked out the teeth and upgraded his guess. Anyone could wear a bow tie but only money in the bank got you teeth that looked like Michelangelo had chipped them out of Carrara marble.
"I'm just worried, is all," said Joe.
It occurred to him that most of the spectating men were dinner jacketed and their accompanying women were wearing fancy evening gowns which displayed a lot of rapidly goose-pimpling flesh. Presumably there'd been a top-people's party in one of the neighbouring houses, but good breeding hadn't stopped them pouring out to enjoy a spot of ghoulish gawking.
"Don't live round here, do you?" said the man with the authority of one who did.
"No," said Joe. "Just passing through."
"Or just coming back to the scene of the crime, eh? Hold on. I think you'd better have a word with the constabulary."
Joe, realizing nothing useful was likely to pass between those twinkling teeth, had taken a step away in search of higher intelligence. Now he felt himself seized by the collar and dragged up till he stood on his toes. If he'd paused to think, probably good sense would have made him decide against a physical reaction. Or even if he'd opted for it, the intervention of the thought process would have meant he got it all wrong. But indignation blanked his mind, leaving plenty of uncluttered space for the exercise of pure intuition.
In a move of which Mr. Takeushi must have been the source, but whose execution by this least cpt of his pupils would have amazed the old judo instructor, Joe jumped in the air, transferring all his weight to marble-tooth's arm. The man staggered forward, bending under the sudden burden, and Joe, reaching back over his shoulder with his right hand, seized him by the bow tie and brought him flailing through the air in a very effective if slightly unorthodox hip throw.
The women screamed in terror, or delight; the men made the kind of indignant baying noises by which good citizens since time began have indicated their readiness to become faceless cells in a lynch mob; and Joe looked anxiously down at the recumbent man, his mind full of fear that he might have incidentally dislodged one of those perfect teeth.
"You OK, mate?" he said.
The man had difficulty in replying, mainly because his tie was half strangling him.
Joe stooped to loosen it, saying, "Always use a clip-on myself. Lot safer."
Then he felt himself seized again and dragged upright. Any inclination he had to resist died when he saw it was two cops who'd got a hold of him and a moment later he heard Sergeant Chivers's familiar voice cry, "I don't believe it. Twice may be coincidence but three out of three's too good to be true. Bring him inside!"
"Shall we cuff him, Sarge?" said one of the uniformed men.
"Cuff him?" said Chivers. "You can kick him senseless for all I care. Only don't let anyone see!"
Nine.
There was good news.
Felix Naysmith wasn't dead.
And there was bad news.
He'd been badly beaten about the head and was in such a state of shock, he'd been unable to say anything about what had happened. He certainly hadn't said anything to confirm Joe's story.
"Ring the Glit," said Joe. Talk to Merv Golightly. All I came here to do was save the guy's life."
He tried to sound persuasive but he wasn't at the best angle for persuasion. Chivers had put him in what must be Naysmith's study, sat him at a huge leather-topped desk, then handcuffed his right hand to the desk leg so that he was forced to lean forward and rest his head on a large blotter.
"Sixsmith, you've gotta learn to tell better lies," said Chivers.
"Chivers, you
gotta learn to keep better laws," said Joe. "This is illegal restraint, you know that?"
"Sue me," said Chivers.
The door opened and a head appeared.
"Sarge, there's a gate in the garden fence where it boundaries the wood and they think they've found a recent print."
"Great." He stooped down and pulled off one of Joe's slip-ons. "Let's see if it matches this. Don't go away, Sixsmith."
He was seriously out of order, of course, and it was all the worse because Joe suspected that he knew not too deep down in his shrivelled heart that he had as much chance of pinning this on Luton's finest black PI as he did of making
If
Chief Constable. This was mere ritual humiliation which he could get away with because there was nothing Joe could do about it.
Or perhaps there was. From his snooker player's viewpoint Joe could see the smooth silhouette of an answer phone at the extreme left edge of the desk. Reach that, ring Butcher, get her down here to witness his illegal imprisonment, and he could possibly get Chivers by the legal short and hairies.
He swung his left arm and touched the machine. Unfortunately the actual phone was at its left edge. He strained to reach the few extra inches, the ball of his thumb pressed a button and suddenly a female voice with a backing of "Santa Rock' was screeching in his ear.
"Feel loose! It's Wilma. We're just having the greatest time here on the beach and I thought I just had to ring and say HI! Hope all your troubles are behind you and that you're having the happiest Christmas of your lives. Ring me soon. Bye-eel"
He'd started the message tape. He worked out that 'feel loose' was Australian for Felix and Lucy who had narrowly missed being woken in the early hours of Christmas morning.
He started searching blindly for the stop button then changed his mind. Could be something significant on the tape. And besides, what else did he have to do just now?
He settled down to listen.
Next voice was male, local, blurred with booze.
"Can you send a cab to the Queen's, mate? Quick as you like ... oh bloody hell, Trace!"
There was a brief vomiting sound then the phone went dead. Some other poor sod who had been misled by Merv's flier. Not that any sane taxi driver would agree to pick up a fare at chucking-out time from the Queen's notorious Xmas Rave!