by J G Alva
Sutton nodded, and Hill followed him inside.
“The lift’s broken,” Sutton said, moving passed it to the stairs. Hill grunted.
He followed behind as Sutton pushed through the fire door in to the stairwell. The journey to the top floor was conducted in silence, except for the huffing and puffing of Hill’s progress, and the very audible sigh as they reached the top.
Sutton checked the sensor. The precautions that were now essential elements of his life.
All clear.
“Come in,” he said.
Hill had a light dappling of sweat over his top lip which he brushed off against the back of his hand.
In the lounge, Hill looked first at the view from the windows, out toward the docks and the open end of the gorge, at the city and the suspension bridge, and then turned to examine the rest of the room, spending some time looking at the easel and the sketches scattered over it.
“You paint,” he said.
If he had checked Sutton’s background, then he must already know that. It was a little annoying that he still persisted with the ruse…the ruse being that Sutton had no idea how detectives operated.
“Do you want something to drink?” Sutton offered, with the thinnest veneer of civility.
Hill shook his head.
They stood on opposite sides of the living room like two unruly tom cats.
“Have you found Gavin Thompson’s killer?” Sutton asked finally, knowing full well that he hadn’t.
Hill shook his head and, taking off his coat and draping it over the back of the sofa, sat down, one ankle coming up to rest on his knee.
“Unfortunately not.”
“So why are you here?”
He looked around the room again, nodding appreciatively.
“You live very well,” he said.
“You’ve come to admire my decor?”
“I know a little bit more about you than the last time we met. I did some checking on you. You’re a strange one, Sutton Mills.”
“Really.”
“Like this flat for example, which I must say is very nice. I especially like the view. Very pleasant. Records show that a Mrs Caroline Webb sold it to you for £10.”
Sutton didn’t reply.
“I thought it must be some sort of an error, but no, records confirm that she sold this property to you for £10. What’s its market value, do you think? £350,000? Half a million? Possibly more, with the location and everything. Not far from the city centre. Easy access to the A370. And a short ride down the Portway to the M5. Mm. At least half a million, I would say.”
Sutton shrugged.
“Must have been a slow year for the housing market.”
Hill sucked his teeth.
“You don’t give anything away if you don’t have to, do you.”
“I’m not interested in games.”
“Games?”
“Yes. Games. Especially ones involving power play.”
“I don’t-“
“We both know you already have the answers to your questions. So why don’t you just tell me why you’re really here?”
But Hill didn’t want to relinquish his games just yet. Instead of answering, he began picking at the shoe resting on his knee.
“The Caroline Webb that sold you this place wouldn’t happen to be the widow of the multi-millionaire Jeffrey Webb, would she? The guy who owned all those diamond mines in Africa?”
“And some copper mines as well, I believe. Just what is it you want, Detective?”
The small competent eyes fixed on him.
“I want to know how you managed to con this lovely flat out of Mrs Caroline Webb. In exchange for which I may not proceed with the complaint I have against you.”
“What complaint?”
Hill just stared.
Sutton matched his stare.
Hill tilted his head, a small indication that he was to capitulate, if he wanted a response…and for the sake of getting the information, Sutton did.
“I helped Mrs Caroline Webb out once. She had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. She insisted in giving me this flat by way of thanks.”
He grunted.
“Must be handy to have such generous friends.”
“What complaint?”
Hill cleared his throat, stared some more, and then came to a decision.
“I’m usually quite good with people,” he said. “It usually only takes me one meeting to get a sense of what a person is really like. And I knew right away that you were going to meddle. And you have been meddling, haven’t you. First you went to see Lee Shepherd, at Fastrack Deliveries.”
“Is that who the complaint is from?”
“And then you started asking questions about Dr Bodel.”
Sutton waited. Hill wanted to have his moment, so Sutton allowed him it, seeing as it was only a small thing, and that it might improve his day.
Finally, he said, “I don’t know who the complaint is from.”
“How is that-“
“The complaint was made to DCI Phillips. He has no reason to give out the identity of the complainant…certainly not to an officer as lowly as myself. But if DCI Phillips was willing to put at least a cursory investigation into place, then it must be from someone with some clout.” Hill shrugged. “Bodel would fit. Because I ‘d run checks on you, somebody thought I might like to know about it.”
“Am I going to be investigated?” Sutton asked.
Hill made a face.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Somebody went to bat for you, Mr Mills. The investigation was stalled before it had begun.” Hill smiled. “It seems you have friends in high places too.”
Maybe, Sutton thought. Maybe he had one friend in the police force.
“So. That’s why I’m here.” Hill spread his hands.
“Alright.”
“That,” Hill continued, “and to warn you to stop involving my niece.”
Sutton did not reply.
Continuing to pick at the raised shoe, Hill said, “my sense about you is that you might be reasonably good at meddling.” Sutton stared at him, surprised, and he continued, “but I do not want my niece involved in any way.”
“She volunteered-“
“I don’t care,” Hill said abruptly, angrily, and then calmed himself. “She’s led a…sheltered life. She’s still mourning over Thompson. She can’t handle any more knocks.”
“I suggest you tell that to her.”
“I’m telling you.”
“I told you, Hill,” Sutton said, smiling coldly, “I don’t take kindly to bullying.”
A dark cloud came over Hill’s face, and was gone just as quickly.
“I will talk to her.”
“Good luck with that. Do you think she’ll listen?”
Hill didn’t like that.
Instead, he changed the subject by saying, “have you found out anything?”
Sutton hesitated, and then said, “Gavin’s killer visited me here, and tried to bash my head in with his fists.”
Hill’s mouth dropped open almost comically.
“Jesus Christ, why didn’t you contact me?”
Sutton shrugged.
“And tell you what? He was gone before I had chance to ask any questions.”
“Is that how you got that mark on your face?”
Sutton smiled.
“I know that look,” Hill said, and it was his turn to smile. “Yeah, you should have seen the other guy.”
“Well...”
“Damn it, you should have phoned me.”
“If I could have held him, I would have.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No. He was depressingly silent.” He paused. “He’s mad, I think,” he said.
“I gathered as much from the brutality of the attack on Gavin and the officers who tried to stop him.” Hill thought. “Anything else?”
Sutton shook my head.
“Only that Dr Bodel is a little too invol
ved in Gavin’s life for my liking.”
Hill nodded.
“Dr Bodel,” he said, and it was not said with warmth.
“Did you know that Dr Bodel diagnosed Gavin Thompson with a terminal disease at the end of July?”
Hill stopped.
“What?”
“Dr Bodel told Gavin he had cancer. And that he only had six months to live.”
Hill blinked. He thought about the implications of that a moment, and then his eyes came back to Sutton’s face.
“It would explain a lot,” he said.
Sutton nodded.
“But there’s more,” he said, and with a sigh sat down to tell him about it. But he didn’t tell him all of it; he didn’t tell him the identity of Gavin’s killer; he didn’t tell him about his incarceration, or his confrontation with the Chapel’s. These were things Hill would have to act on…and Sutton didn’t need that kind of blundering about. He had blundered, and it had gotten him locked in a hole. He couldn’t expect the same outcome for Hill, but enough blundering would alarm those responsible, so that they would be just that more cautious…and certainly more difficult to catch out.
Hill listened with at first frank scepticism, and then with narrowed eyes that weren’t quite so disbelieving.
“And that would be why Gavin’s body was taken,” Sutton finished. “You heard about that?”
Hill nodded gravely.
“I did,” he admitted. He paused, leaning over his knees and staring at the floor. “Jesus,” he said finally, lifting his head to look at Sutton. “It’s pretty incredible.”
“But how do you feel about it?”
He thought some more.
“That it makes everything work,” he said. He shook his head in wonder. “What do you need from me?”
“You need to find that body. Without it, we can’t verify anything.”
Hill grunted.
“Right.”
“I’m serious.”
“You may very well be, but it’s still going to be tough.”
“And it might be an idea to start looking into Dr Bodel.”
Hill sighed as if he had a long way to go with a very heavy load.
“Will you do it?” Sutton asked.
He looked annoyed in that moment.
“Of course I’m going to do it,” he said, standing. “It’s what I get up for in the morning.”
*
It had been an eventful day, but it seemed it was not over yet.
At just before six, the landing sensor shrilled, swiftly followed by a knock at the door.
The spyhole revealed a blonde head: Janice.
He opened the door.
“Hi,” he said.
She wore a black leather jacket with piping in the collar and on the shoulders; it was sort cut, and revealed a cream coloured top underneath. Her jeans were faded, and tight enough to have been painted on. She presented some very tantalising, very attractive curves: the narrow waist blossoming outward to the curve of a thigh. Her eyes came up to the level of his nose. She was pleasantly tall.
She smiled. She looked vaguely guilty.
“Hi. I thought…I invited myself. Do you mind?”
“No,” Sutton said, and he didn’t. “Come in.”
She stepped into his flat, and he shut the door behind her.
“Also, I found something,” she said, holding up a sheet of paper. “Grey’s secret lab.”
*
“It mentions the lab,” Sutton said, after he read the copy of the interview Grey had given in 2002 for The New Scientist. “But it doesn’t say where it is.”
Janice was distracted, and didn’t really hear him: she was poke-nosing around his flat. Her prerogative, he supposed, considering he had seen her abode.
“What’s in here?” She asked, indicating the closed door to the second bedroom.
“Nothing. Well. Just some exercise machines.”
She opened the door, turned on the light, and stepped inside.
Sutton waited.
She retreated, turning off the light and shutting the door behind her.
“Some machines,” she said.
Sutton shrugged.
“I can’t afford to be slow, or unfit,” he explained. “For me, slovenly would be very dangerous.”
“Your second job.”
“Mm.”
“It’s a nice flat,” she said. “A very nice flat.”
“Have you eaten?”
She smiled, and her eyebrows wriggled briefly.
“What have you got?”
*
“I’m no cook,” Sutton said again.
Janice smiled around a mouthful of food and nodded her head. He waited for her to finish chewing.
“Microwave meals are okay. Anyway. It’s good to know there’s some things you can’t do.”
She gave him a broad, mischievous smile.
Sutton felt slightly off balance. He liked this Janice: sly, playful…but at the same time she was very different from the Janice that he had taken for coffee in the Galleries. And it was this that was making him second guess himself. If she had called…but then again he should have called her. He hadn’t, because he had been busy.
Was she different? Or did she just appear different, because his feelings about her had changed? She was a chameleon, and as much as he liked a woman with a smart mind, he couldn’t abide one who hid herself from him. From everyone else, fine, but from him…no. Some things about her were so familiar, he felt as if he had known her a lifetime: the smile, the tilt of her head, that place at the base of her throat. But at the same time she was wholly unfamiliar.
It was a disturbing contradiction.
“I mean,” she continued, looking around the room, “your paintings. They’re really good.”
“You sound surprised,” he remarked.
She looked shocked.
“No, I…” She made a face. “Sorry. You said you were a painter, but I thought you were one of those new ones. You know. That do everything on a computer.”
He spread his hands.
“What can I say? I’m old fashioned.”
“Would you draw me?”
Again, he felt off balance. Did she know he wanted to draw her?
Looking at her, he could believe that she did.
“I usually work from photographs,” he said, getting up. He took his tray and hers and put them on the counter in the kitchen, and then retrieved his camera from the cabinet next to the easel. He held the camera up, a question, and she answered it by nodding her approval.
He took some pictures of her, all the time feeling a sense of unreality. No, not unreality; as if this were a play, and they were simply going through the motions; as if something else was happening off stage, behind the curtain.
And then it hit him: that Janice had come here, ostensibly to talk about what she had found out about Grey, but in truth for some other reason.
He thought about it as he sat on the sofa and looked at the photos on his camera. What did she want? To see where he lived, to get a more concrete sense of who he was…or something else? None of the photos did her justice. He hadn’t captured the essence of Janice, if such a thing could be done on a camera: this smart, intelligent woman, who carried a great burden, and was somehow wiser – and perhaps wounded – because of it. None of that was in evidence. What he saw on the small LCD display was what he saw now, on the opposite sofa from him: the smiling face presented as the public profile to the world, no more real, or indicative, than a photograph.
“So what happens next?” She asked.
“Well,” Sutton said. “I’ll print some out and decide which one is best, and try and put it down on to a canvas.” He stopped, as a thought struck him. “Or were you talking about something else?”
The smile slipped slightly, and she quickly turned her head away.
She said, “you’re wondering why I came.”
“Well…”
“I came because…” She turned
to face him once more, and the smile she produced cost her something. “I want to know what’s going on. With us.”
Sutton sighed.
“Janice…”
“You all but ran out of my house last night,” she pointed out; there was hurt in her voice.
He stared at her.
Her head was bowed, the curtain of her luxurious blonde hair hanging down from her forehead, the slender neck bent forward like the stem of a flower. Beautiful, he thought.
The camera clicked.
She flinched.
“Sorry,” he said, putting the camera on the table. He had pressed the button unintentionally.
“I think you like me,” she said tentatively, staring at the camera on the table. She looked at him, and then quickly looked away.
“I do.”
“But you don’t trust me.” She sounded hurt.
“I don’t know you.”
She looked angry then.
“I need to be honest, if I’m involved with someone,” she said. “I didn’t have to tell you what I was doing. I took a risk. I trusted you.”
“I know.”
“But you can’t trust me in return? That’s hardly fair.”
“It’s not that…”
“Then what is it?” She looked to him for an answer, but before he could respond she said, “I know what it is. Your wounded pride.”
“Janice-“
“You think you’re good with people, but you didn’t suspect that I had an agenda,” she said. “Surely it can’t hurt to know that you’re not infallible?”
Sutton sighed.
“It was just a shock, that’s all,” he admitted.
And a disappointment, he thought. Another woman who could not be what he wanted her to be. What she should be.
She nodded.
“I just came here to find out where I stand,” she said, rising to her feet and putting the black leather jacket back on. The jacket made her seem dangerous, like a biker. “I’ve had so much uncertainty in my life, I don’t think I can make room for any more.”
Sutton thought about her house, about the flavour of impermanence that he had detected. Was she talking about other men? Or about the weight of the secret about Bodel?