I took a step back and she laughed. She couldn't have known that I have brittle bones.
She turned to study Malcolm Carlyle's premises again. 'Do you know what we really need to do?'
'No.'
'We need to get inside.'
'Inside . . . ?'
'Don't you see? It closed down overnight. So if nothing came out, then all his old files are still sitting there. And if you get hold of those, you might be able to answer whatever questions come walking through your door right away.'
'But that would be like someone telling me the answers to the crossword. The fun is—'
'Oh shush, it'll give you time to tackle bigger fish. Didn't you say Malcolm Carlyle flew off to Frankfurt and claimed to have found something out? Maybe it's in the files.'
'What're you suggesting? We break in?'
'Maybe we don't have to break anything. Maybe if we thought we heard intruders and in the spirit of public service we went to investigate . . .'
'No, Alison. Absolutely not. No way.'
She smiled again. It was lovely and warm. But misleading. I knew now that she was capable of extreme violence. She had hands of death. I'd spent the last few days looking for a femme fatale, while all the time there was one right under my nose.
'Oh, look at your face.' She reached up and touched it. Her hand was soft. 'I'm only teasing you. Shouldn't you be opening up? Are you not worried about Looney Tunes messing up your precious books?'
She had a point. It was well past lunchtime now. Any other business along this street might have had a queue of impatient customers waiting to enter.
I had none.
As I pushed the shutters up Alison said, 'I should be getting back myself, but I have to see if he's been murdered.'
'He hasn't been murdered,' I said.
As I punched the combination, then undid the bolts, then turned the five keys in a particular sequence, she said, 'In those sick books you sell, the murder victim is quite often displayed in some gruesome fashion, you know like he's been crucified or his organs are laid out in alphabetical order.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' I said.
I opened the door.
I stepped back and allowed Alison to enter first.
I am a gentleman. And she is a self-confessed trained killer.
It was gloomy inside. And quiet.
Nothing moved.
The clock ticked on the wall above Columbo.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
We stood side by side.
We said nothing for six more ticks.
There was no blood.
No smell of cordite.
No stench of death.
'Do you think . . .' Alison whispered, but before she could finish, a noise came from the small kitchen at the back of the store. There was a shadow of movement across the gap at the bottom of the door, which slowly began to open.
Alison's hand found mine.
Daniel Trevor appeared. 'I hope you don't mind,' he said, 'but I made myself a cup of tea.'
18
It was the first bodily contact I'd had with a woman since 2002, and that was my mother slapping me in the chops for failing to send her a Valentine's card. My hand-holding with Alison lasted for about eight seconds before she let go. I was elated. For Alison I think it wasn't anything remarkable. I was learning that she was quite tactile. To be able to touch someone like that without even considering the likelihood of them being a carrier of bubonic plague, well, I could only perspire to that.
Daniel volunteered to make us both a cup of tea. When he returned to the kitchen I said, 'See, alive and kicking.'
'And not obviously deranged,' said Alison. 'Although in the sort of books you sell, they're all sweet one minute, then they plunge a knitting needle through your eyeball the next.'
'You have a very poor opinion of the books I sell.'
'You forget I come in here at lunchtimes.'
'Yes, but with idiot boy as your guide. I could show you fantastic things.'
'I know. But what about the books?'
Reader, I blushed.
Alison had to go back to work, but asked if she could return later. Instinctively I replied, 'Why?'
She gave me a funny look and said, 'If it's not convenient . . .'
I talked my way out of it. Of course I wanted her to come back. I was just a little bit wary of being alone with her. Starbucks was different. There were other people there. Distractions. Even being in my own shop with her was different in daylight, with Daniel there and the remote possibility of customers. But alone, after closing time, with the shutters at least half down? What would I say? There was The Case of the Dancing Jews of course, but it couldn't all be about that. There would have to be chit-chat. I've never done chit-chat. That or I could ask her to stand with me and look for patterns in the spines of the books, and I don't mean alphabetically. But it was probably a bit early in the relationship for that.
Relationship. I liked the sound of that. It was so alien.
When she'd gone I spent another twenty minutes talking to Daniel. He had calmed down considerably, and after we'd looked up a German newspaper on the internet – like Rosemary, he was quite fluent – and read an account of the death of one of the country's best-known publishers, he was quite relieved to learn that the police were not treating Manfredd's death as suspicious, but, as I'd kind of known all along, an unfortunate accident.
'I've been so foolish,' he lamented. 'But you have to understand . . .'
'I do understand. It's a very difficult time.'
'But at the end of it, we're no nearer finding her, are we?'
'I wouldn't say that. I think the dancing Jew is an interesting lead.'
'The what? Oh – Anne. Yes. Possibly. Does that mean you're not giving up the case, that you're going to keep looking for her?'
He seemed impossibly sad. It was like looking in a mirror.
'Of course I'll keep looking for her,' I said. And then added, 'As long as you keep signing the blank cheques.'
He smiled gratefully. Sometimes when things seem impossibly bleak, when you think they can't get any worse, the tiniest little light, nothing more than a candle flickering in a strong breeze at the far end of a lengthy tunnel, can mean so much. Daniel Trevor had me.
I had Alison.
And lithium.
He was going to return to his country retreat. He was going to tell the poets to shut up and go for a lie-down. He was exhausted by nine months of worry and despair.
He should inhabit my shoes.
I kept a surreptitious eye on the jeweller's via the webcam, and worried some more about what to say or do. But she didn't look over, not once. She was a cool one indeed. When there was a lull in business – hah! – I popped out and bought dips. When Alison arrived, she had changed out of her uniform and had that ridiculous woollen flying cap on her head.
She said, 'Wow, are you having a party?'
I had been unable to decide about which dips, so had bought every variety. They were laid out on a trestle table, which was covered in a disposable cloth. There were paper plates and plastic cups and four bottles of wine.
'Book launch,' I said, 'but they cancelled at the last moment. Have a Quaver.'
We munched.
After a while she lifted her handbag and opened it. 'We should probably get started,' she said, removing a flashlight from within.
'Started what?'
She raised a speculative eyebrow before indicating for me to follow her across the store. We entered the kitchen. 'If this place is anything like our place . . . and they look identical . . . then . . .' At the end of the kitchen there are stairs leading up to three rooms on the first floor. 'Yip, here we go.' She started up. I followed. Each of the rooms was stuffed full of unsold stock. She stopped in the hall and looked up at a panel in the ceiling. 'Drop-down steps?' I nodded. There was a stick with a hook on the end of it resting against the wall. She lifted this and prised open the panel bef
ore carefully lowering the steps. 'Light up there?' I nodded. 'Floored?' I nodded. 'Hot water tank by the dividing wall?' I nodded.
'Excuse me,' I said, 'but I didn't order a plumber.'
'We have to do this,' she said.
'What?' I asked as I began to follow her up the steps. 'And why?'
She pulled herself up into the roof space and tugged on the string light. As I clambered up myself, fearing at any moment that the vertigo that had stopped me becoming a paratrooper or window-cleaner might strike, Alison shimmied her way through more boxes of books until she was standing to the right of the tank, facing the wall that separated No Alibis from the vacant detective agency next door.
'Okay,' she said, tapping the wall, 'exactly like ours. A child could get through it.'
'Excuse me?' I said, coming up beside her.
'Unfortunately we don't have a child.' She put her hands on her hips. 'Look, we owe it to ourselves to do this.'
'We owe . . . ourselves . . . to do what?'
'This.'
She swivelled and kicked the wall. I had not noticed until this point that she was wearing DM boots. A lump of plaster immediately came away.
'Please stop,' I said. 'The insurance . . .'
'Insurance, inschmurance . . .'
She kicked again. More plaster cracked and fell. The wall behind now had a visible crack in it.
'Alison, please. You can't just . . .'
Her third strike went through. Her boot was next door while the rest of her was still in my roof space. 'I believe I just did,' she said, and then held a hand out to me to stop herself from falling back.
I took it. 'This is insane,' I said.
'Well you're the expert,' she said.
There wasn't time to think about that then – though it had the potential to keep me awake for days – because she immediately used me as leverage to pull her boot back through before renewing her assault on the wall. She rained half a dozen further kicks against it until she'd created a hole large enough for her to squeeze through.
And me. If I chose to.
'Are you coming or not?' she asked from the other side. I could already see the beam of her flashlight criss-crossing my neighbour's roof space.
'No,' I said. 'It's illegal. It's . . . wrong.'
'It's an adventure.'
'Please, Alison . . .'
'Oh come on . . . it's just some harmless fun . . .'
'I really don't think it's—'
'OH JESUS CHRIST!'
Her cry was sharp and piercing.
'ALISON!' I threw myself through the gap into the dark interior. No flashlight. No sound. 'ALISON!'
The torch flicked on, under her chin, illuminating her smiling face. 'I thought I saw a spider,' she said. 'Still, while you're here . . .'
She angled the beam to the floor and began to search for the ceiling panel that would allow her, us, access to the office below.
There is a thin line between love and hate.
Very thin.
Alison led the way down bare, creaky stairs, my heart in my mouth, dust mites conspiring to ignite my allergies. Running a bookshop I fight a constant battle to stop the place smelling musty; unsold books can do that. Even after six months, Malcolm Carlyle's offices smelled fresh. If I ever met him again I'd ask him his secret.
Before I could stop her Alison flicked on a light switch as we entered the front office. Surprisingly the power was still on. There was a desk and a switchboard, although I'd never seen a receptionist. I think it was all just for show. He was strictly a one-man operation, although if he'd asked he could have borrowed my idiot. There was a set of filing cabinets behind the desk that lay open; files spilled out of the drawers; many were scattered across the floor. As I crouched down to examine them, Alison moved across to check out the main office.
I was looking for the Ts – Daniel Trevor or Rosemary – but they were all jumbled up. I did find the Geary file, but I'd already solved that one. From somewhere behind, Alison again said, 'Jesus Christ.'
'I suffer from arachnophobia,' I said. 'You'll have to sort it out yourself.'
She repeated, 'Jesus Christ,' a little louder.
'Alison, I'm not falling for—'
'Jesus Christ!'
Something about it made it sound as if she wasn't swearing, but literally appealing for help and guidance. As I glanced round I saw that she had reversed out of Carlyle's office to the point where she was now steadying herself against the door jamb.
'Alison?'
She stared back into the office.
There was still a fair chance that she was attempting to stitch me up again, so I just smiled and stood and carried several of the files across to her, determined not to be sucked in, but also curious. 'If we're going to go through all of these we'd be better taking them back to my place rather than—'
Then I saw what she saw.
Malcolm Carlyle was sitting in a leather swivel chair, the flesh rotted off him, and hung with hundreds of Pine Fresh air freshener trees.
'Jesus Christ,' I had to agree.
19
No Alibis was warm and welcoming and all laid out for a party for two, but neither of us felt much like dips. We were both shaking with adrenaline and fear and disgust. Ever the trouper, Alison opened the wine.
'What the hell, what the hell,' I was saying, 'what the hell, what the hell, what the hell . . .'
'Please,' Alison pleaded, 'stop pacing, you're making me seasick.'
'Shouldn't have gone in, shouldn't have gone in, shouldn't have gone in . . .'
'Listen to me – he might just have had a heart attack after closing up for the night.'
I stopped. 'Yes, and Rosemary is off on holidays and Manfredd is careless around big speeding trains! God!' I started again. 'Shouldn't have gone in, shouldn't have gone in, shouldn't have gone in . . .'
'Look . . . look, you're right, but it's done now . . . what difference does it really make . . . we found his body, maybe we'll get a pat on the back.'
'No! They were all murdered! The only pat on the back we'll get will be with a huge fucking pickaxe! Shouldn't have gone in, shouldn't have gone in, shouldn't—'
'Please! Just settle down!'
I glared at her. It was all her fault. There was a wall between our two stores for a reason. It was private property.
She put her hands together, as if in prayer. 'Okay, he was probably murdered. But that was six months ago! Nobody knows we've been in there, can't we just close up the hole in the roof space and forget about it?'
'Forget about it? Don't you know anything?' I didn't really care that she looked hurt. She had put me in this position. I was implicated. I was a suspect. I was an accessory. 'I shouldn't have listened to you, I shouldn't have listened to you . . .' I stopped. I tried to control my breathing the way they'd taught me. 'We're screwed, we're really screwed . . . every way you look at it we're screwed . . .'
'I don't see how . . .'
'Then listen, you halfwit . . . ! Sorry . . . sorry . . . it's just . . . just because nobody's found the body yet, when they do, when they do, the police, the police will seal the place off and their forensic people will go in and they'll find our DNA, our fingerprints, we will be accused of killing him!'
'We could go back in and wipe it up and—'
'No, you moron, it doesn't work like that! And we may not even survive long enough for them to find the body anyway. Don't you see? Everything I thought in the first place is right! There's a murderer out there, and he's killing everyone who knows about the book, he's killed Rosemary and then Malcolm and now Manfredd and it's like he's ticking them off and it's only a matter of time before he comes looking for Daniel and me. Me!'
'So I'm okay?'
'No! As soon as we're arrested for next door, he'll find out about you, and he'll just add your name until there's no one left. We're all up shit creek!'
She nodded to herself. 'Or.'
'Or?'
'Or because I've only just met you, an
d have nothing to do with your crime-fighting, and nobody but you knows that I even know about it, and because Malcolm Carlyle had customers in there all the time, so that's how my DNA got in there, you could just stand up like a man and take all the blame if the police come calling, that way I won't be involved in discovering the body and I won't be on the killer's hit list. What do you say?'
'Fuck off! You got me into this, it's your fault, I didn't want . . .'
But she was holding up her hands. And bloody laughing. 'I'm only joking.'
'This isn't a time for jokes!'
'I know . . . I know . . . but of course I'm in this with you. And we'll work it out. Honestly.'
'How?'
'I don't know . . . but we will. We'll solve it. We really will.'
And then she came forward and gave me a hug.
And it was quite one of the most wonderful things that has ever happened to me, so I forgot for the moment that I hated her and that I was in imminent danger of being murdered, and luxuriated in her embrace, because it couldn't last for ever, and didn't.
She let me go, shook her head and said: 'Fucking pine trees. Piece of genius or what?'
I was trying to work it out in my head, while Alison quickly got drunk.
I rarely drink. It reacts with the medication. For this, I needed to be in control of all my remaining faculties, because now I knew that at any moment of any day from here on in the killer might strike. I had no idea if the Odessa still existed – I mean, it wasn't as if it had a website – but even if it did, Malcolm Carlyle's death seemed like the work of just one man, probably a German. Rosemary was killed in Germany, so was Manfredd, and Malcolm had gone there to investigate Rosemary's disappearance. He had surely then been followed back to Belfast and killed in his own office. The fact that the killer had left the body in situ suggested that he wasn't confident enough to try to dispose of it in an unfamiliar city and/or that he didn't have the physical strength to lift it himself. Malcolm Carlyle wasn't a huge man, but a dead weight is, literally, a dead weight, and extremely hard work. I know this because I'd dragged my father's body from the bathroom where he collapsed and died to the bedroom where I laid him out. He had been delirious, and weak as a kitten, but it says much about the moral core of the man that he had forced himself up and into the bathroom to use the toilet so that he wouldn't soil the bed. His last words to me, as I hovered near the door, were, 'Tumbling into the darkness.' He could see death coming. My mum's last words to me were, 'Comb your hair.' She wasn't dead, we just weren't speaking. But Dad wasn't a big man either, yet so heavy in death that I staggered under the weight of him. I fell and his corpse fell on me, and I had to crawl out from beneath him and start again. Unless Malcolm Carlyle's killer was some kind of weightlifting champion, he would have struggled to dispose of the body.
Mystery Man Page 9