This part of the building seemed deserted, though there would be limited activity in the front office. I climbed the back stairs ponderously, and was just reaching for the handle of my own door when I noticed a line of brighter light under a door farther along the corridor.
I hesitated, then walked along, opened the door, and broke in on Chief Inspector Donaldson.
Donaldson was alone. He sat behind his desk in a thick fug of cigarette smoke, with his forehead supported on the palm of his left hand, his right forefinger moving along the lines of a typed report as though it commanded his reluctant eyes. He was in shirt sleeves, one rolled up beyond the elbow, the other flapping loose. There was a thinning patch in the centre of his slicked hair, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses sliding forward along his nose.
Hearing the door open he looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, with heavy pouches beneath them. For one brief moment I couldn’t help feeling pity. The man was trying, really trying.
‘Patton?’ he asked, blinking, his voice hoarse. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Brought you a report.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Getting on for two.’
He groaned. ‘What’ve you got?’ His tone was almost pleasant. Exhaustion had beaten the crisp aggression from him.
‘I’ve been saving you the trouble of a search warrant, or the unpleasantness of persuading Mrs Trowbridge to let you take a team into her house, whichever you had in mind.’
He blinked. ‘Not for my benefit, I’m sure.’
‘Very true. For her sake. I’d impressed on her that you’d be around, anyway, so she did a search. She came up with one of her husband’s old shaving-soap bowls. Plastic, so it took a good print. I ran it along to the lab, and they did a quick check for me. There’s their report.’
I flicked it across the desk. He leered at me, as though I’d revealed a weakness. Then he put his head down and began to read. I took the spare chair, crossed an ankle over the other knee, and started my pipe. He coughed, and lit a cigarette in self-defence.
At last he raised his head, his eyes hooded, peering over the rim of his glasses. ‘I suppose I ought to be grateful,’ he conceded.
I inclined my head.
‘But it doesn’t alter anything, really.’ He looked away, and then back. ‘I was going to work on the assumption that it’s her husband. So far, nothing else fits. The case seems straightforward, with only a few details to clear up. I’ll go round there in the morning....’ A thin smile. ‘This morning. No need to bring her in, I think, not for a first interview. This report simply makes it easier for me — gives me a firm basis on which to build a case. I’m...grateful to you.’
He paused. I said nothing. He moved restlessly.
‘You’ve got to realise,’ he went on, ‘that I’ll have to treat her in exactly the same way as any other suspect.’
‘Of course,’ I said, my voice tight. That was what she was — a suspect.
His voice took on an edge. ‘Then what did you expect to get out of it? Why go to all this trouble?’
‘I’m finishing at midnight. I just fancied the idea of seeing an end to it before I go.’
He grunted. ‘I think we’ll have an end before then. There’s nothing unusual about it, nothing complicated.’ Then his eyes opened wide. His tongue flicked out to moisten his lips. There was pain in his voice. ‘Are you asking to be present at the first interview?’
‘No.’ I shrugged.
‘Then what?’
‘Just a couple of points. I’d hoped to persuade you to think very carefully about the glass on the ground outside the window, but not beneath the hole it came from. And it’d be nice if you could find an explanation for the Remington shotgun —both barrels discharged but not reloaded, and leaning against the wall by the fireplace.’
I got to my feet. He failed to meet my eye, but managed to speak with confidence. ‘That’ll all become clear when I’ve had a few words with her.’
‘Do you really think so? I’ll be surprised if she’ll tell you any more than we’ve got now.’ I paused at the door, and tried to speak kindly. ‘I’d get off home, if I were you. You’ll be whacked in the morning.’
His head jerked. Advice from me he didn’t need. ‘Just do that yourself. I’ll look after myself.’
I shrugged, and closed the door quietly behind me. I hesitated at my own door. There seemed no point in going in now, but all the same, instinct had the door open, the light on, and the four strides completed to my desk. Then I was glad it had. There was a note from Ken on my pad.
Damn you, Richard, you’ve got him working us to a frazzle. He wants to get it tidied into a neat bundle before you leave us. just to show you won’t be missed, I reckon. Here’s one who’ll miss you. Ken.
It was meant to be amusing, even encouraging, but I crumpled it angrily and tossed it into the wastebasket, then stood hesitant for a moment before deciding to go home. My mind was so tired that it wouldn’t turn up a good reason for meeting Brason at Swallow’s End at ten, as I’d arranged.
But all the same I wasn’t late. Heavy-eyed and stiff, I still managed to climb from the Stag and confront Brason briskly. He was waiting beside his official Allegro.
‘Didn’t keep you waiting, I hope?’ I asked.
A DI is entitled to keep a constable waiting. He blushed. ‘It’s a pleasant morning, sir.’
And so it was. The sun was mildly warm, with no wind to take the edge from it. Nearly all the snow had gone, with only scattered pockets lying in the shadow of the thorn hedge leading up to the cottage. I looked round. The air was crisp and clean. I felt alive again. Even eager. There was so much living still left unexplored. I glanced at Brason, who was poised and very official, and briefly envied him his youth. Then I noticed his inexperience, and pitied him. Why, I wondered, had I asked for Brason to be there? Then I remembered, and couldn’t match his smile.
‘The cottage is sealed, sir.’
‘Yes, I know. But I don’t want to go inside.’
We strolled towards the cottage unhurriedly. Blue smoke drifted from my pipe. Brason didn’t speak, waiting for me to take the lead. He matched me, pace for pace.
We stood in front of the cottage. For the first time I noticed there was a number on the front door. ‘Three?’ I asked, looking round. The place was totally isolated. ‘Where’re the other two?’
‘Two other tied cottages, over beyond those pines, sir. It’s the postal number.’ He seemed surprised at my interest.
I shook my head in wonder. A postman travelling half a mile between numbers two and three! ‘The keys,’ I said. ‘I was going to ask you about the keys.’
‘How d’you mean, sir?’
‘They were both found in their locks inside the cottage, and there hadn’t been any break-in. The place was unoccupied for years, but it’s impossible to lock it up and leave the keys inside. So...how would anybody be able to get in?’ I glanced at him. ‘And don’t tell me the keys were taken from Rennie’s office when the shotgun was pinched, because...’
‘Oh no, sir. Certainly not. It’d been lived in for at least a fortnight, and the gun was taken no more than ten days ago. But it’s easily explained.’
‘I’d like to hear.’
‘The keys would be in the outhouse. It was the first place I looked.’
‘That’s a funny arrangement.’
He allowed himself a little quiet satisfaction. ‘Not out here, not in the country. You’ve got to realise...two rather big keys, and a family living here, say. They wouldn’t want to carry one around, and they couldn’t afford half a dozen duplicates, anyway. And so — the last one out locked up, and left the keys in the outhouse. First home knew where to look.’
‘I see.’ I found it naively amusing. ‘I wondered why that courting couple seemed confident they could get in. Generally known, is it?’
‘Around here, yes.’
‘Not much security, then.’
‘We get trouble, but not that.’
‘Hah! Show me where.’
Brason, uplifted by the interest and warmly smug with his low crime rate, led the way round the building. He put a finger through the hole in the outhouse door, lifted the latch, and swung it open. We stepped inside, wedged together.
It was the general size, with the same stifling atmosphere, of a coalhouse. The dust was thick on the floor, scuffed near the door by forensic feet. just around the corner, and hard against the side wall, was a structure of brickwork, which raised a square, galvanised water tank so that its upper rim was above our heads. Crouched behind it in the far corner there was a solid ancient block of cast-iron machinery, still bearing traces of its original green paint, and smelling strongly of oil.
‘There,’ said Brason, pointing.
A nail, level with the tank top, protruded from the cement between the plain brickwork. It was festooned with cobwebs, recently broken and not yet repaired.
‘They’d be hung there,’ he said.
‘So that even a stranger might find them. Looking round for a way in, without having to break anything.’
He protruded his lower lip. ‘A stranger who’d lived in a place like this...yes, I suppose so.’
‘This the pump?’ I pointed my pipe stem at the machinery. ‘It doesn’t look too efficient to me.’
He calmly reached over the tank rim, felt for the ball, and pressed it down. At once the pump began its operation, a thump, thump, thump that shook the cement floor beneath our feet. Water splashed into the tank.
‘They fit a micro-switch instead of a plunger valve,’ Brason was pleased to explain.
I was relieved to back out of there. Too claustrophobic for my liking. As he was swinging the door closed, the thumping stopped. I reached out and caught the door.
‘Hold on a sec. Something I wanted to check.’
Then, shaking my head at my forgetfulness, I plodded away and back to the Stag. When I returned, Brason was looking puzzled, no doubt because I was carrying the rusted old wreck of a shotgun that I’d found at Kendall’s bungalow.
‘Spotted something,’ I said, and re-entered the outhouse.
In the back, left-hand corner the dust layer had not been disturbed by feet. It consisted of countless years of brick and cement dust shaken into the air by the intermittent throb of the pump. Six inches from the wall, way in the corner, there was an indentation in the dust. I tried the butt of the stock in it. The fit was absolute.
‘Would you say this could have stood here?’ I asked.
‘It’s possible.’ He obviously thought it couldn’t matter, as the gun clearly couldn’t have fired.
‘And would it rust away like this?’
‘Oh, sure. In here it’d always be damp. Ten or twenty years in here, and the best of guns’d be like that.’
‘Mmm!’
I carried the gun out into the daylight. It was strange that it should have been taken from the cottage all the way to Kendall’s bungalow, just to take its place in a threat to Kendall. Both threats, the doll and the gun, looked very like the Clayton brothers in action. But if this was so, it indicated their innocence in anything beyond threats. And when I came to think about it, so did the fact that we were no longer considering the body as being that of Kendall. My heart beat a little faster.
Somewhere along the line the murderer always makes a mistake. I felt I held that mistake in my hand. It would’ve been too easy for the murderer to assume that the rusted gun would never be traced back to the cottage.
Calmly, pretending I was not elated, I went along and peered through the kitchen window.
‘What had we decided?’ I asked. ‘Ah yes, that a stranger might have found the keys.’ I straightened, facing him squarely. ‘I suppose you’ve heard we’ve got a positive identification?’
‘I heard that, sir. Mr Trowbridge. It kind of links with the gutted car.’
‘Doesn’t it? But it’s unlikely he’d know about this place...anyway, assume he came across it, and we’ve decided he might have located the keys easily enough...’
I’d hung it on a question. Brason frowned. ‘If you’re satisfied about that...sir.’
‘I’m not. But assume it for now. Then, it’s reasonable to suppose he’d let himself in by the back door, this one here, then leave the keys in their relevant locks.’ I waited, but he disappointed me. So I went on: ‘And if the necessity didn’t arise, he might not even try to open the front door, and discover that it’s wedged solid.’
‘Yes.’ He relaxed. He’d got the point. ‘Not until the day he died, say, and unlocked the front door in order to...’
‘Welcome a visitor?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Or am I stretching it a bit?’
He was thoughtful. ‘Well...I suppose...it’s no more than an argument about human behaviour.’
‘Yes.’ Then I suddenly laughed, and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re thinking in terms of the evidence you’d need to make an arrest. But when you’re thinking about having to present a case in court — and you have to keep that in mind all the time — then little details like that can suddenly become critical. A defence lawyer could well think up an explanation that’s quite convincing, and at the same time makes it impossible for his client to be guilty. You have to allow for that, and get in ahead with your own reasonable explanation.’
He smiled in embarrassment. ‘But surely, sir, that sort of thing, it’s for officers a bit higher ranking than me.’
‘And you’re assuming you’ll never be that? Don’t be a defeatist, son. It’s all good practice.’
‘I understand that.’ He was grave, already with the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
‘Good. Now, there was something else...’ I wagged my head, trying to shake it free. ‘Oh yes — the light switch. Do you remember, Ken Latchett and I were standing inside. The daylight was fading, and you came in and put on the switch.’
‘I’m sorry about that, sir. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘I know you weren’t. It was instinct. It was almost as though you knew there was electricity available. A kind of absent-minded confidence.’ I said it casually.
I cocked my head, smiling slightly, but I could see I’d overdone it. He knew I’d been serious, and was instantly confused. The mood had changed.
‘I know I shouldn’t....’ he began awkwardly.
‘It’s not that. I’m not blaming you. But you knew the light would come on.’ I was pressing him on it.
Then Brason realised he’d been trapped. The idle chat about keys might have been intended to lull him, but this was in earnest. ‘Well...I...I,’ he fumbled. ‘Of course I knew, sir,’ he recovered. ‘The sergeant had already spotted the broken seal on the company’s fuse box.’
‘But that didn’t prove anything at that stage. Think, man, think. When you and the sergeant first arrived, you broke open the back door with a tyre lever. Then you and Ken went in. He’d have been in the lead...’
‘Yes.’ He was hot, hurt and baffled.
‘But at that time,’ I reminded him, ‘it was daylight. And you, with your actions dictated by instinct rather than procedure...Brason, when you walked with Ken into the living-room, was it perhaps that the light was on, and you put it off without considering, instinctively, as you’d have done at home? Because then you’d have known the electricity was connected. It’d register itself in your mind.’
There was immediate relief. ‘Oh no, sir. I didn’t do that. The light wasn’t on.’
‘A pity.’ I shook my head. ‘It could’ve explained a lot of things.’
He was staring at me. I laughed at his expression. ‘You’re thinking this could be another of my piffling details?’
‘Oh no, I wasn’t thinking that.’
‘Then we’ve achieved something, at least. Come on, let’s go and have a look at the front.’
By that time I’d got Brason’s brain working flat out, and he’d relaxed into a new confidence. When we got there, he said: �
��I’ve been thinking about the glass, Mr Patton.’
I was staring down at the small patch of glass shards beneath the opening window. I nodded approvingly. ‘And what did you come up with?’
‘Well, sir, Mr Donaldson said the hole might’ve been blasted at an angle from inside the room by the Remington, but somehow...and I’ve seen a shotgun hole in glass...it’s not like that hole at all. A shotgun leaves a rounder hole, with the edges not so jagged. And anyway, I can’t really see that the bits’d fall where they are, closer to the hinge than the hole itself. Not even with Mr Donaldson’s idea of a slanted shot. It’d kind of spray out, anyway.’
He paused. I nodded encouragement. ‘Go on, son. You’re doing fine.’
‘So I reckoned...it must’ve been knocked out, and at a time when the window was open, not when it was shut.’
‘That’s what I thought. Something was poked through the glass.’
‘Say, if the window was flung open,’ said Brason eagerly.
‘In welcome?’
‘By the person inside, having turned the key in the front door, and found it was wedged solid.’ He was going well now, his imagination leaping at every little flick of my mental whip.
‘And the hole in the glass was made by?’
‘The muzzle of the other shotgun. The one he was killed with. And then....’ But he faltered to a halt.
‘And then?’ I asked quietly.
He shook his head, but I persisted. ‘Go on. Take it from there.’
But he was winding down. ‘The man inside slammed the window shut, because he’d seen the shotgun coming through the glass.’
‘And? You’re not carrying it on through.’
‘Hell, sir, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘What doesn’t make sense?’
He was miserable that he’d allowed himself to be led on. Maybe he’d already seen this dead end. He shrugged.
‘The man inside, waiting there for trouble — he’d fired both his barrels and hadn’t reloaded. He’d probably had the window open when he fired...'
‘Seems likely.’
Face Value (Richard and Amelia Patton) Page 13