Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

‘They did that already.’

  ‘What about Suzie?’

  ‘Ah yes. Well, I suppose they’ll have to ask her the same about Ken.’ And right then, Ken came in.

  He’d shoved on the same trousers and shirt and was looking a little smeared and puffy around the eyes but moved smooth and steady enough. ‘Christ, this is the time I wish I hadn’t given up smoking.’

  ‘Drink? There’s coffee or anything.’

  ‘Coffee and brandy. Did the old boy really kill himself?’

  I said carefully: ‘A pistol went off inside his mouth. It looked all right to me.’

  Nina’s eyes were suddenly wide. ‘It looked what?’

  ‘Genuine.’ I beckoned the chambermaid with the coffee. ‘It was a Walther PP in 9-mil. Luger. I saw the cartridge case.’

  Ken shook his head slowly. ‘He didn’t have any reason to kill himself. He had a big thing going.’

  I poured him a two-to-one mixture of coffee and local brandy. ‘There’s some angles, some loose ends, perhaps.’ Nina was still watching and listening.

  Ken gulped at the mixture in his cup and shuddered. ‘Has anybody told Mitzi?’

  ‘Yes. She’s talking to Inspector Lazaros now. He seems quite a sharp boy.’ I hoped Ken was getting the hint and Nina didn’t know I was giving it; he could be called up at any moment. Anyway, he just nodded and hunched his elbows on the bar, brooding. After a while more, Nina gave me a cool look and walked back to the table, her little bottom twitching left and right under the short black skirt in real professional style. I tapped my glass against my teeth and sighed.

  ‘When you last saw the Prof,’ I said, ‘what was he wearing?’

  Ken didn’t look up. ‘Dressing-gown, same as when you were there.’

  ‘Would he normally sit around all evening in one?’

  This time he did look up – with a rather clogged contempt. ‘Sure, he did all the time, in Beit Oren. Except dining-in nights, of course, when we wore white tie and tails.’

  All right, so it hadn’t been the brightest question of the evening. But then Ken put his face back down into his cup and muttered: ‘If you mean was he the sort who liked comfort and class when he could get it? – then yes. I could see him wearing that until he changed for dinner, anyhow.’

  ‘He didn’t have dinner. He’d arranged to eat in his room anyway, to stay secret’ I thought about it for a moment. ‘He took it off – the dressing-gown, I mean – to shoot himself. I can understand that, in a weird way; it was a nice gown. But then he put a shirt on instead; that, I don’t quite get.’

  He looked up again. ‘Are you looking for rational behaviour in a suicide? They do the wildest things. Women put on their old wedding dresses; men build fancy machines to hang themselves with. I heard of an armourer sergeant once who spent months altering a dummy Vickers to shoot himself with and all the time he had a dozen real ones sitting around. Or are you getting the idea that perhaps it wasn’t suicide after all?’

  ‘Why should anybody make him change into a shirt before they shot him? But now listen, bright-eyes: when you get upstairs don’t go stuffing that copper up with murder theories. He’s doubtful enough already; if he gets convinced it’s murder, we’ll be stuck on this bloody island until the clock strikes thirteen.’

  He cocked his head, then nodded. ‘What I’ll tell him, you could write on a flea’s jockstrap.’

  ‘And don’t get him niggled, either, or he may stick his nose into the Queen Air just looking for some technicality to catch us on.’

  ‘Christ, yes.’ He’d obviously forgotten about my cargo problems. ‘Okay, Roy, I’ll treat him like a police officer and a gentleman. And I suppose we’ll have a nice cosy chat about my last two years. Bastards. Oh well …’ He looked at his watch. ‘And twenty-four hours ago I was still safely tucked in the coop. Now …’

  ‘You’ll go on dreaming you’re still there for a few days yet.’

  ‘Yes, I did already. Your subconscious is a bit like a bloody met office, isn’t it? – Just won’t look outside to see what’s really going on.’

  ‘More coffee?’ But just then a uniformed cop escorted Mitzi back in and looked blankly around the rest of us. ‘Mister … mister Cavitt?’

  Ken got up. ‘Ready and willing.’

  ‘Please to come …’

  Mitzi had sat down at Nina’s table. I went over, didn’t sit. ‘Just want to say how very sorry I am, Miss Spohr. If there’s anything I can do …’

  She looked pale but dry-eyed; enclosed and introspective rather than openly sorrowing. She didn’t look at me. ‘Yes, please. If you can move my room.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’ The cops would be trampling around up there for probably hours yet. I went across to Kapotas and the Sergeant to arrange it, and after a bit of discussion we shifted her one down and a bit forward to 227, so she wouldn’t be under the old rooms.

  Then Kapotas asked: ‘And what shall I tell Harborne, Gough, in London?’

  ‘Whatever the police decide. What else can you say? People die in hotels all the time; it’s nothing new.’

  ‘But I must tell them what he was.’

  ‘A Professor – whatever that means in Austria – and a medieval archaeologist.’

  ‘But you knew him.’ Slightly accusing.

  ‘Only met him this afternoon. It was Ken who knew him; they met in jail in …’ From Sergeant Papa’s expression I realised my mistake; I’d never mentioned that angle to Kapotas before, and he hadn’t the Sergeant’s eye for spotting these things.

  ‘In jail?’ he hissed. ‘Both of them?’ He stared around wildly. ‘My God, now I’m running a brothel and a prisoner’s aid society! Why don’t we set up roulette wheels in the kitchen and sell marijuana at the desk? Or is that something else you forgot to tell me about?’ And he glared at the Sergeant.

  Papa stiffened and said with dignity: ‘There are no drugs in this hotel while I am hall porter.’

  ‘That’s a small consolation, then,’ Kapotas said bitterly, then looked at me. ‘And I suppose you wouldn’t be …’ Then he stopped because he’d remembered just what we’d discovered I had been doing. ‘Oh God, I need a drink. And I don’t care if it’s after dinner or before breakfast!’ And he headed for the bar.

  Papa said calmly: ‘He has not got the nerves to be a hotel manager.’

  ‘He never expected to be one. And there must be hotels where it’s easier.’

  ‘Not much. Even the best hotels cannot really pick their guests; they can only keep out some who they know to cause trouble.’

  ‘I suppose so …’ After that, we just sat in weary silence until a uniformed cop brought Ken back in and beckoned me up. Ken’s expression was just on the contemptuous side of blankness, but I wasn’t allowed to have a word with him.

  Chapter 9

  After an hour and a half of Lazaros’s interrogations, the atmosphere in 105 would have stopped flying at any airport in the world. The inspector himself was still sitting on the same place on the bed, only now with two ashtrays crammed full of butts, some still smouldering. If he lost his job with CID, with his sense of smell he’d no chance of remustering as a police dog.

  ‘Sit down, please, Captain.’

  ‘Just mister.’ I sat carefully on a sagging woven-cane chair, and he turned the pages of his notebook, sprinkling ash around an already grey patch on the counterpane.

  ‘Did you know the Professor had been in jail?’

  ‘I’d been told.’

  ‘You did not tell me.’

  ‘From me it would have been just hearsay. I knew somebody else would tell you.’

  He looked up blearily. ‘So you know something about the law and the courts?’

  ‘A pilot my age is bound to. The air’s got more laws than aeroplanes in it, these days.’

  He seemed to accept that. ‘Did you see the gun?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You have a good stomach. It made my sergeant sick.’ It had taken a little finding: it had been in
the bath itself, just about below the head.

  ‘Same answer: a pilot my age has seen some messy accidents.’

  He bought that, too. ‘Gunshot suicide … it is always too easy to arrange. And with the gun in all that blood, the fingerprints are gone. Why would it be in the bath, almost behind him?’

  I pointed my right hand at my teeth. ‘He sticks the gun in his mouth. The recoil blows it out again. If it stays in his hand for a moment, then it could swing his whole arm in an arc, right round to the side.’ I swung my arm and clouted my knuckles on the next chair. ‘Buggerit. So it hits the edge of the bath, the gun falls inside, slides down to where it was. His arm flops back by his side. If I’d been faking a suicide, I’d’ve put the gun in a more obvious place. Anyway, can’t you test his hand for powder marks?’

  ‘It is being done.’ He groped around on the bed and found a crumpled pack of cigarettes, then lit one from the stub of his last and found a parking place for that in one of the ashtrays. ‘But whose gun could it be?’

  ‘Doesn’t the licence tell you?’

  ‘I assume that is a joke.’

  ‘In Israel he had a gun – so I’m told. That’s what got him the year.’

  He made a note. ‘But his daughter said he had no gun now.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe she didn’t know. Anyway, would she admit knowledge of a criminal offence?’

  He nodded sagely; the question hadn’t been too serious. ‘And tomorrow all the relatives from Vienna will fly in and be very excited, and half of them will want me to prove it was murder because suicide is not respectable and the other half will prefer suicide because murder is not respectable, either.’

  I grinned briefly. ‘So can’t you make it an accident? – while cleaning a gun?’

  ‘He was licking the dirt out of the barrel, perhaps?’

  ‘It’s been done before. Isn’t that how Ernest Hemingway died – according to the record?’

  ‘I believe so,’ he said gloomily. ‘And people still compare national suicide rates. So – why did he kill himself?’

  ‘Since when has guesswork been admissible evidence?’

  ‘We are not in court, we are in a third-rate hotel bedroom and wishing very much we were home in bed.’ His voice had a sudden edge to it. Then he paused, sighed, and joggled the loose flesh around his jaw as if he were trying to rub some life back into it. ‘Perhaps I want it to be murder and I could solve it and become promoted. Suicide promotes nobody; there is nobody to blame except the world. What made him kill himself?’

  ‘He was insane.’

  He nodded. ‘That is one of the best arguments in a circle that even you English have invented. Why did he kill himself? – Because the balance of his mind was disturbed. How do we know it was disturbed? – Because he killed himself. Inquest closed. But why was he unbalanced?’

  I took a pipe and peered at the crusted ash in it, but then lit it anyway. My tongue already felt like a new-laid tarmac road, so a few more puffs couldn’t hurt. ‘He’d spent a year in jail. In that time his wife might have walked out on him—’

  ‘His wife died five years ago.’

  ‘All right, but he could have gone broke, lost his academic status … anything.’

  He tilted his head and looked at me with rather worn curiosity. ‘I find that our files have already heard of Professor Spohr. His academic status is … somewhat past. Mostly he spends his time discovering relics and selling them, usually illegally.’

  Cyprus is one of the touchiest places about the export of antiquities; the airport is plastered with notices forbidding it. I shrugged again. ‘He obviously didn’t belong to the jail-going classes, so just being inside might have shaken him up. But he could live through the year because he’d always got something to look forward to: getting out. And then he gets out and finds it’s all flat and grey and no hope of that improving, so … bang.’

  ‘That is good,’ he said admiringly. ‘That is very sensitive and understanding. What did he talk to Mr Cavitt about this afternoon?’

  I almost blew it – little though I knew anyway. With the rambling, late-night chatter and then the flattery, he’d done a nice job of easing me off balance for the important question. If I’d had less experience with coppers who were even bigger bastards, I’d probably have babbled of green fields. As it was—

  I looked uninterested and shook my head. ‘I dunno. I think it was just a booze-up with an old cell-mate. Anyway, Ken didn’t tell me anything.’ And I knew Ken hadn’t told him anything, either. Drunk or sober, Ken’s distrust of the Law was in far better training than mine.

  He nodded vaguely. ‘You see, perhaps Mr Cavitt was the last person to see him alive …’

  ‘Didn’t his daughter? – Mitzi?’

  ‘Ah yes, perhaps.’ As if he’d forgotten her.

  ‘Didn’t you ask her why she thought he killed himself?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded again and his head went on waggling as if he were too tired to switch it off. Finally he said: ‘Yes. She thinks it may be because he had incurable cancer and only two months to live.’

  After a long time I said: ‘And you still think it would be better if he’d left a suicide note?’

  He smiled wearily. ‘Yes.’

  When I got downstairs again, Mitzi and Kapotas had vanished and Sergeant Papa was snoring steadily on a bench seat by the bar. Ken and Nina sat at a table, each with a small brandy glass, not saying anything.

  I sat down. ‘Did you know anything about the Prof dying of cancer?’

  ‘Yep,’ Ken said, a chopped-off sound. He went on staring at the tabletop. ‘Mitzi told me just now.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it must be true, and the post-mortem’ll show it, but …’ I shook my head helplessly. ‘But if he’d only got a couple of months to go, it must’ve been pretty bad. Did he know about it in jail?’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t. And the medical checks you got in there, they just about counted your legs and arms and no more. I remember he’d got this sort of hernia trouble, but that was right at the end and he said he’d wait and see a doctor in Vienna. Well, it turned out that was it: they operated and found a secondary cancer in his groin.’

  ‘Where was the main one?’

  ‘It was a … a melanoma or some word like that, sort of skin cancer in the middle of his back. Apparently it doesn’t hurt, there. In fact, the docs said it wouldn’t hurt at all until near the end and then you go down fast.’

  Nina shivered and instinctively tightened her folded arms. I may have shivered myself, a bit. I’d stopped knowing what to feel about the Professor, but at least a 9 mm slug through the mouth sounded a bit more reasonable, now.

  ‘If those buggers in Biet Oren had spotted it when he could still be operated on,’ Ken said quietly, ‘he’d still be alive. They bloody well killed him.’

  ‘Well, not quite that,’ I tried to soothe him. ‘You should get back to bed; tomorrow’s another day.’

  ‘It looks like today from where I’m sitting.’ Well, yes, since it was nearly three in the morning. But he suddenly slapped both hands on the table, levered himself upright and gave a long shuddering stretch like a cat. ‘See you, kids.’ And he’d gone.

  Papa snored on. Nina looked at me with solemn eyes. ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ll settle the account and you get off home, love.’

  ‘I have to charge you for my time,’ she said.

  ‘I know. And I won’t say I didn’t end up with regrets, but … maybe another time. Right now I’d be as much use as a banana skin.’ I started dealing pound notes from my wallet and grinned suddenly at what Kapotas would have said about Castle’s money. At what he certainly would say, tomorrow, when I tried to prise some more out of him.

  She said: ‘I wouldn’t have thought you needed us, usually.’

  I let that go and kept on dealing. When I’d run dry, there were just sixteen pounds on the table.

  Nina said carefully: ‘I’ll take Suzie’s share, too.’

  ‘I’d
assumed that. Ken hasn’t got any money anyway.’

  ‘Well … we usually reckon on ten pounds each.’

  I nodded and looked around. The bar takings would be locked up and I didn’t fancy borrowing off Papa. Then I remembered the desk petty cash box; there just might be something left in it.

  The only person left in the hall was a constable dozing in a chair opposite the stairway. He half-opened an eye and watched as I dishonestly appropriated property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it, or however they put it in Cyprus. The box had a pound note, a 500-mil., a new 250-mil., a few coins and even fewer stamps than I’d seen earlier. It came out at just over two quid.

  ‘Can I owe you the last two? They’ll have to pay me in a day or so if only to get rid of me.’

  ‘Okay.’ She collected up the notes, half turned to go, then turned back and said: ‘Something about you and your friend Ken worries me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The way you don’t take anything seriously, like being broke and this man shooting himself …’

  ‘I thought Ken was taking that pretty hard.’

  ‘The idea didn’t shock him enough. It’s … it’s as if you were people in a war and you don’t care about tomorrow.’

  I frowned. ‘That’s a sort of shivery idea. I don’t think it’s like that.’

  ‘People like you frighten me.’ And she reached suddenly, pecked my cheek and bounced neatly out of the front door.

  I watched the door wig-wag to a stop behind her, then slowly put the cashbox away under the desk and then just sat, too tired to do anything else. And too tired to feel anything, either.

  Inspector Lazaros and his team came down at twenty past three. ‘We are going now, you may lock up. Tomorrow I shall need formal statements from Papadimitriou and the daughter and you.’

  ‘Not too early.’

  ‘I hope not. Good night, Captain.’

  ‘Just mister.’

  I sat on for a while after they’d gone, then went in and woke Papa. ‘They’ve gone, so you can lock up if there’s nobody else left on a short-night. What happened to Kapotas?’