Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

  'Any luck?' she asked cheerfully.

  I shook my head. She drove past me and parked beside the Rover. I picked some of the food boxes out of the back; there was enough there to feed an army for a campaign.

  'David'll be home on Tuesday,' she explained, then looked a little bleak. 'At least I hope so.' She perked up again, and turned to my problem. 'Never mind, I expect it'll turn up. Perhaps he left it at his apartment in town.'

  'He didn't.'

  She turned quickly. 'How d'you know?'

  I shrugged. 'I managed to get in there.'

  She looked at me carefully, then smiled. 'I suppose you have to do things like that. And you didn't find anything?'

  'Nothing.' We went up into the house, me wondering why she had looked shocked at my turning over the flat when she hadn't even blinked at the idea of me doing it to her own house. But not wondering very hard.

  We dumped the boxes in the kitchen and she looked around and said, 'It's very tidy. You don't seem to have moved anything. But I suppose you were trained to leave it like that.'

  'Something like it. Well – thank you for letting me try.'

  'Must you hurry back to London? Would you like a cup of tea?'

  Some silences are louder than a scream, some things unsaid are clearer than a parade-ground order. I hesitated, looking at her and seeing only a gentle, guileless baby-faced smile. But thinking suddenly of her as a woman, not Fenwick's widow or David's mother or a style or an accent… but as small neat breasts that looked sharp and would feel very soft, and pale skin like silk and long, agile legs and a clutching warm welcome…

  'Yes,' I said carefully. 'A cup of tea Would be very nice.'

  We sat on opposite sides of the big kitchen table and sipped politely.

  'What are you thinking?' she asked innocently.

  'Oh… about the weather.'

  'Of course.' Her smile got a little mischievous. 'Warm, for the time of year, what? '

  'Something to do with a region of high pressure.'

  'No cold fronts, then.'

  'Strictly warm ones. Or occluded, of course.'

  'I never understood what an occluded front was.'

  'A mixture of warm and cold fronts.'

  She nodded. 'How very wicked it does sound.'

  'No, that's just the way it looks on the weather map.

  'Does somebody have to draw you a map?'

  She smiled innocently again.

  And the phone rang.

  We stared at each other, eyes steady with false calm. Then she slowly got up and went out to the hall to answer it.

  I collected the cups and saucers and teapot and jug and sugar and put them away or stacked them neatly. I don't know why. Instinct, from living alone. Or for something to do.

  Then I went out to the hall. She was standing with the phone, listening and nodding. She reached out a hand to me and I held it. Her strong slim fingers twined around mine.

  She said into the phone, That's all right, Mr Baker, but you don't have to worry about that side of it."

  She lifted my hand and rubbed it gently against her cheek. I moved closer and smelt just the slightest touch of scent; something fragile and fresh, like a broken petal.

  'No, Mr Baker, my father's lawyers'll handle all that. I only-'

  Baker muttered on. I leaned and started nibbling her ear; she lifted her head towards me.

  'Yes, Mr Baker, but the house is still in his name so I couldn't decide that anyway.'

  She moved my hand slowly and drifted it across her breasts, caressing herself with me. Her bra under the blouse was very thin; I could feel her nipples hardening slowly.

  'Well, Mr Baker, if the tax people really want an answer then they'd better write to the States. I can't tell them.'

  I moved my other hand across and down her body.

  'All right, Mr Baker. Any time. Goodbye.'

  She turned towards me and let the receiver clatter loose on the table and her mouth reached for mine.

  It happened there, on the hall rug, a fast frantic rape -except I don't know who raped whom. In a few minutes we were lying side by side in a tangle of rugs and clothes -1- not even naked ourselves.

  'Do you think of me as a loose woman now?' she asked dreamily.

  'Well, not exactly as a tight one.'

  She laughed quietly, then shivered and wrapped herself in a corner of the long-haired white rug. 'Does this all go in your reports?'

  'I'm not writing reports for anybody.'

  'Ah. You must be a very private detective to employ yourself.'

  'I'm not a detective. Can I have a drink?'

  I found my trousers and carried them through into the drawing-room. It was suddenly bright in there, although the day beyond the windows wasn't. Just that the hall had a permanent twilight.

  I heard her going upstairs.

  A quarter of an hour later she came in, looking bright and fresh and now wearing a light-blue cashmere sweater and rather worn blue jeans. She'd tidied her hair a bit, as well.

  I had a glass of weak Scotch and water in my hand. 'Can I get you one?'

  'No thanks, Jim. Or is it Jimmie or what? I really ought to have asked before.' She actually blushed.

  I laughed aloud. 'Jamie, mostly. The Scottish thing.'

  'Let's go out and have a drink. I haven't been to a pub in – oh, I don't know…'

  'What about the neighbours?'

  'We'll find a small village place where nobody'll possibly recognise me.'

  So we went. On the way out, at the top of the steps, she stopped suddenly and said, 'Kiss me.'

  I did. She was suddenly shaking all over.

  We sat in the corner of a small boozer, too small for the brewery ever to bother tarting up, just across the Sussex border, and talked in near-whispers. We were the first there and the barmaid's ear was waggling like a radar aerial only eight feet away.

  Lois almost giggled into her cider. 'If wewere committing adultery this would be a great place to get remembered in. The first customers of the evening, my accent and clothes, your city suit – I bet that woman could describe us exactly in court a year from now.'

  'Dare say she's done it before. Adulterers probably come from three counties to find somewhere as out-of-the-way and genuinely folksy as this.' It was the true English village pub, all right, with its hard wooden benches, a mean little iron fireplace that was empty anyway, the walls decorated with a bus timetable and the bar with a vase of plastic flowers.

  Lois lit a cigarette. 'Where do you live, Jamie?'

  'Flat in London. Chalk Farm. Not far from…'

  She nodded. 'Why did you leave the Army – you were a career officer, weren't you?'

  'Sixteen years, yes. I'd just served my time and I didn't get to bea lieutenant-colonel. I could have hung on, but… promotion gets a bit rare in the Intelligence Corps, after that level.'

  'Why?'

  'We were specialists; most of our work didn't involve much in the way of command. And the Army wants itself run by people who can command troops. I believe the Air Force has the same bias towards people who can fly aeroplanes – pilots. It makes a sort of sense.'

  'What did your wife think of you leaving?'

  'That's when we busted up.'

  'She wanted you to stay?'

  'She wanted me to be colonel.' Then, after a long mouthful of beer-flavoured water, 'I don't know if that's quite fair. I don't think she was all that rank-conscious. Maybe she wanted me to be the sort of person colonels are. Maybe she just married the wrong person.'

  'It can happen.'

  'To you?'

  'Oh, no. Martin was quite right for me – and hope I was for him.'

  'Your father didn't think so.'

  'Oh, Dad…'

  'What had he got against Martin?'

  'I think he thought he was a bit of a stuffed shirt. Too English. He wanted me to marry some hot-shot lawyer.' She swigged her cider and changed the subject. 'What else do you do – out of working hours?'
/>   'I visit lovely ladies.'

  She laughed her cheery bell-toned laugh. 'I thought that was only in the Une of duty.'

  'Strictly above and beyond. And one day I'll finish a commentary on Vegetius.'

  'On what?'

  So I had to explain about him.

  'What makes him so interesting?' she asked.

  'He wrote the most complete description of the Roman armies, and that was everybody's ideal army for better than a thousand years after. They all read him: Charlemagne, Richard Coeur de Lion, all the Renaissance princes.'

  'Was he a great general himself? '

  'No, probably not even a soldier. He was pretty much of a historian in his own day; the Roman army had gone to pieces by this time. Rome itself got sacked a few years later. Prophet without honour and all that.'

  'Will you publish this when you've finished it?'

  'Oh, yes. I've got a publisher who wants it for a specialist military series. But it'll be a time yet.'

  'Will you ever finish it?'

  'Course I will.' Maybe I sounded a bit annoyed, because she smiled kindly and put a hand on mine.

  'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I wonder if they've got anything to eat here?'

  'A bag of crisps, a pickled egg, and an aspirin, if you're lucky, I should think.'

  She laughed again. I said, 'We could find somewhere else to eat.'

  'No, let's try here. Are you going back to London tonight?'

  The baby-faced innocence with which she could say things like that. I said slowly, 'I suppose not.'

  The loving was slower, gentler, calmer. A careful exploration, a memorising of each other's bodies. But at first she was nervous, dodging from shy stiffness to clutching hunger… almost inexperienced, though that couldn't have been it.

  And afterwards we lay side by side in her bed, not quite touching each other. The house and the countryside beyond it were very quiet. Funny how I missed the constant noises of the city that you never notice until they're gone, like a forest without birds.

  Lois lit a cigarette and the light glowed from her pale soft body. 'Jamie…?'

  'Yes?'

  'Do you always have a gun with you?' She'd seen me take the derringer off my wrist; she hadn't seen the Mauser in my jacket pocket.

  'No – but recently, yes. Things have been getting a bit rough since… Arras.'

  'Why was Martin going to Arras? – have you found out?'

  'He was being blackmailed, I think. To give up the logbook.'

  'What about? Was it little Maggie Mackwood?'

  'I think so.'

  'Ah.' She sounded quite calm. 'Martin was rather highly sexed. He was a very good lover.'

  There's a time and place for comments like that, like some other time and place. But I didn't say anything.

  Suddenly, but quite gently, she began to cry. I put an arm around her but she didn't come any closer. She was weeping for memories I would never know, never share.

  After a while she got up, leaned over me, and kissed me gently. A few tears touched my cheek. 'I'll sleep in Martin's room,' she whispered. 'Sleep well, Jamie.'

  When she'd gone, I pulled the bed apart and remade it and then lay down again. Sleep well. Why not? – I was alone, as usual.

  After a time I remembered the half-finished drink I'd brought upstairs and found and finished it. And some time after that, I slept.

  Thirty-one

  It was still dark, still silent. I didn't know what had woken me but it must have been something positive because I'd come awake with a rush. I lay and listened.

  Far away, a lorry made a painful gear-change on a hill and wheezed out of hearing. Nothing else. I lifted my wrist to look at my watch. And a door clicked.

  It could be Lois. It could be the wind. In a strange house it could be a dozen things I wouldn't know about. But I wanted to know. I reached for my trousers, my shoes, then the Mauser.

  Outside the room I stopped, trying to remember the layout. Stairs to my right. I paused again at the head of them, and a cold draught breathed on my chest. The front door was open.

  Down there, the dining-room was ahead on the right, the drawing-room back on the right, the study ahead on the left.

  And that was where a faint line of light glowed and Vanished. Somebody was working by torchlight in there. It was the obvious place to begin, just as I had.

  I kept right over against the wall where the stairs were least likely to creak and mousied my way down.

  Halfway down, the door opened and a pool of torchlight wavered across the hall floor. Two figures, barely more than shadows, followed it. I leaned against the wall and held my breath.

  The light shifted around indecisively, the figures blended, and an indecipherable whisper floated up towards me.

  Then the torch flashed up the stairs, across me, away, and back, pinning me down like a butterfly in a case.

  An incredulous voice said, 'Christ, it's Card!'

  A younger voice yelped, 'He's got a gun!'

  Something long glinted at the base of the light, the older voice shouted, 'Don't shoot!' and I threw myself against the bannister.

  A gigantic double explosion slammed through the house and the air swirled around me. A red-hot fingernail scored across my back.

  I got my hand out from under me and fired blindly down into the dazzle of the torch. The little Mauser snapped feebly in the ringing deafness after those bangs.

  I'd fired three before I realised what I was doing and stopped. The double bang meant a shotgun, of course, and now an empty one. The torch tilted towards the floor, fell, and went out.

  I shouted, 'Hold it! You're a lovely target in that doorway!' Then I stood up carefully and winced at the pain in my back. I could feel a trickle of hot blood slide down it. Behind me, a light went on, and Lois said, 'Jamie, what are you-' Then she screamed.

  I didn't look round. I kept the gun pointed and moved slowly, carefully, down towards the two figures in the hall. I was beginning to tremble, and not just from the cold blast coming through the front door.

  It was Mockby's chauffeur, Charles. It had to be, of course. And his young friend, still clutching the twelve-bore. Charles was holding his right arm out in almost a hand-shaking position, but as I watched, it began to drip blood.

  'I got you,' I said. My voice sounded high and strained. 'You got me, too. That makes it all square, doesn't it? Perfectly fair, what? I was aiming at the torch, so it wasn't a bad shot, was it? Only a few inches off. I suppose none of the others got you, did they? Not like through the stomach? I'd like you to have got one through the stomach. It takes about five minutes to come on really strong, they say, but then it apparently feels like rather bad peritonitis. Rather jolly, that. I could stand watching you have peritonitis. You aren't saying much, are you?'

  Both of them were standing rigid as ice statues, staring at the Mauser. It was shaking in my hand like the last leaf of summer, but it couldn't miss at that range. And a part of me, a part beyond legality and morality and common sense and probably humanity itself, wanted to squeeze the trigger and go on squeezing until the slide locked open. And they knew it.

  I said, 'I think I'd better sit down,' and sat on the stairs. My voice must have sounded more natural because they both took deep breaths and relaxed. The younger one let the shotgun droop.

  'You want to be careful with that thing,' I said cheerfully. 'You never know how being mistaken for a partridge is going to affect people. Some people take it one way, some another. You just can't tell, can you? I'm sorry about your arm, Charles, but I think we'd better both stay here bleeding until the US Cavalry arrives.'

  At the top of the stairs, a phone bell gave a single ting.

  Charles said evenly, 'We're having the coppers in, are we?'

  'It sounds like it, doesn't it? I suppose it had to happen eventually. Not my decision, but it's probably all for the best. You know how frightfully jealous the fuzz gets when you try to keep gunshot wounds to yourself.'

  He lifted his f
orearm until it was vertical; from wrist to elbow, his thin suede jacket was black with blood. He looked at it unemotionally and then at the young man with the shot gun.

  'You stupid little sod,' he said wearily.

  It took time; it always does. These things start fast but finish very slowly – if ever. A bullet leaves a gun at around a thousand feet a second, and it starts a file that they keep going until long after you're dead, just in case somebody wants to check back to that night when…

  By five o'clock things had settled down a bit. Charles and I had been to the hospital and I'd come back; the other lad was down at the local nick talking over his past and future with a chief inspector. All I had on the far side of the dining-room table was a detective sergeant, name of Keating.

  He had my statement – two long, laborious pages of the police prose that makes every action sound so mundane and planned. Even mine, almost.

  ' "Mrs Fenwick seemed worried at the news I told her and asked me to spend the night at Kingscutt Manor to protect her," ' he quoted. Then looked up. 'Is that correct, sir?'

  I nodded dully; I felt tired and stiff and the casualty ward had smeared my back with something that itched like a forest fire.

  'You do realise that the defence will get a big laugh from this in court, sir?'

  I shrugged again. 'I doubt it. They'll dodge the whole issue of why I was here.'

  He was a stocky, broad-shouldered type with the sort of gut detectives get in their forties through too much 'observing' in pubs. Normally, his face would have been stolid and impassive; at this hour, expressions kept slipping on or off and he had to pull the pieces together again.

  He said, 'Why do you think that, sir?'

  'Because any argument about why I was here keeps bringing us back to Paul Mockby. I say it was because I expected his goons to come around, and sure enough around comes his chauffeur, at least. He doesn't want that argument, and who d'you think's paying for the defence – Father Christmas?'

  'Who pays for a defence isn't something we can bring out in court.'

  'Sure. That'll be why he does it. Have you got hold of Mockby yet?'