Soft Summer Blood

by Peter Helton

  ‘And the file was found?’

  ‘I suppose so. He said the next day he had. I mean, look around you – one desk, one filing cabinet, one wastepaper basket, empty. How can you lose something in here?’

  ‘These rows David had with his father. Did you have the feeling they had been resolved at all?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. David never talked about it and I never asked. I’d rather not get involved in things like that.’

  McLusky thanked her and she followed him outside, shouldering the reluctant door shut. ‘There was one thing, though.’ She hesitated, her shoulder still against the now-closed door. ‘I don’t want to be disloyal or anything, but that night when he called me, I don’t think it was from here at all. He was calling from his mobile and he can never get a signal down here. It sounded like he was outside. And while he spoke, there was suddenly some music and people talking in the background, just for a moment. I thought he was really calling from outside a pub.’

  ‘Is there a pub around here?’

  ‘None David would be seen dead in.’

  ‘Are we calling him in?’ Austin, sitting on a desk in the incident room, swung his dangling legs like a child. ‘It was never much of an alibi to start with.’

  McLusky conscientiously stirred his tea while thinking it over. To save a few calories, he now took neither milk nor sugar with his tea but he stirred it out of habit. ‘I fancied him for it straight away. He has a strong motive. If his father got sick of bailing him out and told him “no more handouts”, he may have decided to hasten his demise and retire on his inheritance.’

  ‘And that must be a considerable lump. Mendenhall might even have threatened to change his will. But if he did, then he never got around to it. I spoke to his solicitor and there was no mention of changing his will. The copy we found was the latest version.’

  Just as Austin began to wonder whether the inspector would ever stop stirring tea that didn’t need stirring, McLusky dropped the spoon on the tea tray with a clatter. ‘It’s too thin. So what if he pretended to be in the office but was outside a pub? He’ll wriggle out of that easily. He’ll say, “I never said I was in the office; I said I had been at the office” or some such thing. It’s only his word against hers.’

  ‘Office or pub – what’s the difference anyway?’

  ‘The difference is that there’s a pub five minutes’ drive from his father’s house, while his office is at least thirty-five minutes’ drive away. But let’s save it for later. We’ll go and see his father’s other painter friend in a minute. Mr Leonidas.’

  ‘It’s Mr Poulimenos. Leonidas is his first name.’

  ‘I know. But Leonidas I can remember.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’d better leave now, actually. You can tell me about Emma Lucket’s night out on the way.’ He walked from the room, leaving his tea untouched on the desk. McLusky hated black tea.

  He drove fast, but in his quiet Mercedes he felt insulated from the noise and wind rush and often needed to check his speed. In the past, Austin, who drove a minute Nissan, had often chauffeured the inspector since his ancient cars broke down so frequently; now that McLusky drove a five-litre Mercedes, it was he who frequently worked imaginary brake pedals on the passenger side. He was doing it now. ‘Liam, that bend really tightens beyond those trees,’ he warned. They were approaching another bend at an ambitious speed.

  ‘Oh, yeah, so it does,’ said McLusky as he struggled to keep the car on the road. Having scared himself, he drove on more sedately. ‘What you’re saying is that our gardening assistant has no alibi, either.’

  Emma’s story of being out with friends had been corroborated. It was quite a large group that had descended on the Basement 45 club on the night in question. Austin had spoken to three of them but two did not remember seeing her after ten thirty. He had examined the footage of the club’s CCTV system. ‘After about ten thirty there’s no sign of her and all agree she was not there when they left. One friend’ – Austin riffled the papers to find her name – ‘has spoken to Emma since and, according to her, Emma said she got a headache and just went home.’

  ‘What you’re really saying, Jane, is that nobody has an alibi – not Mendenhall’s son, not Emma, not Gotts and not the housekeeper. In fact, Mrs Mohr told me quite defiantly that no one could vouch for her and she seemed to be enjoying that fact.’

  ‘Yeah, looks like they all had opportunity.’

  ‘And there we are, back to square one, which is motive. David has the obvious motive: money.’ McLusky had a mental list of reasons why the citizenry committed murder, and greed and stupidity ranked first and second. The third was fear. ‘David’s business looks shaky. His dad tells him “not a penny more”. David’s afraid to lose the lot. His dad has just taken up jogging, he’s getting fit. Could live for another twenty years. The horror of it! So he goes and kills him.’ They had reached the outskirts of Chew, a small town south-west of Bristol which gave its name to the valley and the lake therein – Chew Valley Lake. ‘Well, we’re here, but where is Bybrook View?’ He fished a piece of paper from his jacket and handed it to Austin.

  ‘It’s got the postcode – just put it in your satnav.’ He noticed McLusky hesitate. ‘You do know how to use it?’

  ‘Not got round to reading the instructions yet.’ McLusky was not a Luddite by choice; it was just that technology often mystified him enough to make him steer clear of it.

  ‘Instructions? You don’t need instructions.’

  Five minutes later a delighted McLusky had grasped the rudiments of programming his own satnav, guided by his patient sergeant, and was told by a mellow voice which way to drive. ‘The nice lady says it’s that way.’ He sawed at the wheel and powered down a narrow lane.

  Bybrook View was a converted farm complex at the edge of Chew Valley. It had a view not just of a brook but also the distant glitter of the lake.

  ‘Nice. Very nice,’ said Austin as they drove in. ‘How did Poulimenos make his money?’ They entered a large yard, entirely cobbled with ornamental stone in grey and terracotta. Several potted palms were doing well in the shelter between the main nineteenth-century house and the converted storage barns and other outbuildings. One of those had been turned into a slate-roofed garage, the doors of which stood open, revealing a dark-coloured Bentley Continental. ‘Do you think he left the door open on purpose so he won’t have to drop it casually into the conversation that he drives a Bentley?’

  ‘Possible. But our man is in real estate and shipping. Perhaps he doesn’t feel the need to impress a couple of coppers.’ McLusky thought that the house did it quite well by itself.

  Bybrook View, previously Bybrook Farm, had had a lot of money spent on it, and fairly recently too, it seemed. McLusky was well aware that appearances could be deceptive, a fact he was reminded of when Leonidas Poulimenos opened the front door of the main house. Poulimenos, who was in his early sixties, had long wispy hair and spoke without a hint of a Greek accent. McLusky thought he looked more like an ageing hippy than a rich businessman.

  ‘Come through, come through.’ The interior of the house had been restored and furnished with an expensive mix of the modern and the traditional. All the floors were flagged in terracotta, with Persian rugs everywhere. All the walls were white, yet in the sitting room, which consisted of several rooms knocked into one, McLusky noted two tell-tale rectangles of brighter paint where paintings or wall hangings had been removed. The air smelled of cigar smoke. Somewhere in the depth of the house a vacuum cleaner was being pushed about.

  Poulimenos let himself drop heavily on to one sofa and indicated the one opposite for them to sit on. He was a large man with an almost comically shaped pot belly which protruded above his black trousers and stretched his black shirt. His long hair, while mostly grey, still retained some colour. He breathed noisily as he moved.

  On the blue-and-white mosaic table that divided the two camps stood a heavy Murano glass ashtray littered with cigar stubs and next to it a half-drunk gla
ss of white wine. Poulimenos reached for it with a grunt, changed his mind and let himself slump back without touching it. ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee perhaps? I’m afraid I have been drunk for most of the time since I heard Mendy had been shot.’

  ‘You were close friends?’

  ‘That close.’ He tapped the sides of his extended index fingers against each other. ‘What kind of bastard would want to kill Mendy?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

  ‘Was anything taken?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I’m looking for an explanation, Inspector. People don’t get shot for no reason.’

  ‘Rarely,’ McLusky agreed.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We have yet to establish a motive.’

  Poulimenos once more stretched out a hand towards his glass of wine and changed his mind again. ‘I’ll make you some coffee,’ he said abruptly. McLusky, who rarely turned down a chance to top up his caffeine levels, brightened up. ‘I could do with some myself,’ Poulimenos said and levered himself off the couch. ‘Real coffee. Greek coffee. To the kitchen, gentlemen.’

  The kitchen was luxuriously kitted out, yet Poulimenos made coffee on a tiny camping stove on the counter next to the wine-red Aga. While he did so, McLusky asked all the obvious questions. When did he last see Mendenhall? On the same day Jennifer Longmaid had, on their visit to the Arnolfini. Did he seem different? On good form. Was he in a dispute with anyone? Not that he knew of. All the while McLusky carefully watched the ritual of Greek coffee-making. Poulimenos appeared unperturbed by any of the questions. With his fleshy fingers he set tiny cups on a silver tray, spooned coffee into a long-handled little pot, then added a little sugar and three measures of water.

  ‘His son, David. What’s your opinion of him? You have met him, presumably?’

  ‘What do I think of David?’ He snorted dismissively. ‘I don’t think much of him at all. Altogether, I don’t think I spent more than ten minutes in the same room with him. When he was younger, he wanted nothing to do with the brewery, purely out of opposition to his father, I think. Drifted along on an allowance, started some wishy-washy degree, dropped out of college, and then when Charles sold the business, he realized what a mistake he had made. Charles had wanted him to take over the business. When he sold it, David got upset because he had not been consulted. The little prick. There were huge rows and Charles stopped his allowance.’ He had stirred the pot until the froth rose, then removed and returned it to the heat two more times before he whipped it off the stove and set it next to the cups on the tray. He led them back into the sitting room, carrying the tray like a sacramental offering at the head of the procession. ‘That’s when David started his so-called businesses – wheeler-dealing, buying and selling. But he wants to get rich quick. Hasn’t managed it yet. He wants all the trappings but to do none of the work.’ He divided the froth between the three little cups before filling them in turn with the fragrant coffee. ‘He can have all the trappings now, I expect. I’m glad I don’t have to watch him burn through his inheritance.’ The cup looked even smaller in the man’s large fleshy hands as he lifted it to his lips. They followed his example. McLusky had to suppress a groan of pleasure as the taste of the sweet and aromatic liquid hit his taste buds.

  Poulimenos put down his cup and looked up. ‘You don’t think David killed his father?’

  ‘I don’t think anything at this stage,’ McLusky lied. ‘We need to get as complete a picture as possible of the people around him.’

  Poulimenos contemplated this for a moment. ‘And naturally that means you’ll be asking other people about me the same way you asked me about him.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Then let me get in there first. I’m rich. I enjoy being rich and like people to know I’m rich. But I am not interested in making money. I’ve made a lot of it in the past and now I’m trying to enjoy what’s left of my life.’ He took another sip of coffee and grunted. ‘My wife chose to betray me with a younger man and three weeks ago I threw her out. She took two paintings’ – he nodded at the blank patches on the wall – ‘her clothes and her Porsche.’

  ‘Were these paintings you had done?’

  He wrinkled his nose in displeasure. ‘No. They were by David Bomberg.’

  McLusky thought he had heard the name yet failed to bring an image to mind, but he rightly guessed the paintings had been expensive. He moved on to what he hoped was safer territory. ‘Do you have children?’

  Poulimenos pulled himself to his feet and walked off, beckoning them to follow. ‘No. I cannot have children.’ McLusky and Austin exchanged a quick glance and followed. He led through a narrow door to the outside and under a covered walkway to a low building that had begun life as a milking shed but had, as McLusky rightly guessed, been converted into a luxurious painting studio. It was dominated by a long table full of art projects in progress. A mahogany easel with gleaming brass fittings stood at one end and a small hand-operated printing press at the other. A long skylight in the open-beamed roof made it a bright and airy space, quite unlike the Rembrandtian gloom of Mendenhall’s studio.

  ‘These are my children.’ Poulimenos indicated a long line of paintings propped up against the wall, all small enough to fit comfortably above a fireplace. As with his two friends, his favourite subjects were landscapes, but the treatment was less dated. Some were coastal views but many were rural scenes, perhaps from around the Chew Valley itself; McLusky couldn’t tell. He walked slowly along the line of paintings as though studying them, but he was busy musing on other things. When he spoke, it was from the opposite end of the room. ‘Real estate, brewery, antiques and painting. I assume it was the art that brought you together?’

  ‘You assume correctly, Inspector,’ said Poulimenos, smiling for the first time. ‘The four of us met on a painting holiday. In the Lake District.’

  McLusky had walked back along the line of paintings. ‘The four of you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Poulimenos buried his hands in his pockets and nodded lugubriously. ‘In the beginning there were four of us. Now there’s only two of us left.’

  ‘Who was the fourth of your painting group?’

  ‘Ben. Ben Kahn. He was probably the most talented of us. Actually, he was definitely more talented than the rest of us. But then …’ He shrugged and fell silent.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He died in a boating accident. Quite a while ago now – summer of 1998. I don’t know whom I’ll miss more, Ben or Charles. Time will tell.’

  Austin’s phone rang. The sergeant excused himself and went outside to take the call. Poulimenos lifted his chin. ‘Do you appreciate the fine arts, Inspector?’

  McLusky, making a note of the name Ben Kahn and the date 1998 on his phone, hesitated before answering. ‘I do, though I don’t know the first thing about them.’

  ‘Please don’t say it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ McLusky promised. ‘Primarily because I don’t really know what I like.’

  ‘Do you like these?’

  ‘Your children?’

  Poulimenos snorted, but with delight. ‘Precisely. You don’t often hear an honest opinion about your own children. I mean, no one says, “Darling, your kids are quite ugly”; no, it’s always “Aren’t they gorgeous?” And it’s the same with paintings, because who wants to strain a friendship with honesty? But you and I, Inspector, are never going to be friends. Go ahead, let me have your honest opinion.’

  McLusky walked down the line of paintings, then back again. Eventually, he pointed at the third one in the row, a sunny seaside scene of a cove and lapping waves, with blue skies and a tiny figure swimming in the sea. ‘I like that one. Better than the rest.’

  ‘Then take it, Inspector.’

  McLusky thanked him for the kind offer. ‘But I couldn’t possibly accept a gift from a member of the public; it could be considered a bribe. In fact, it would definitely be considered a bribe.’


  ‘But that’s nonsense! What would I be bribing you about?’ Poulimenos asked.

  Before McLusky could answer, the door opened and Austin came back into the room. He waggled his mobile. ‘Something has come up. And it’s quite urgent.’

  ‘We were more or less finished here anyway,’ McLusky said, ‘but we might need to talk to you again. Oh, and thank you for the coffee; it was excellent. I’d never had Greek coffee before.’ He told him they would find their own way out, but Poulimenos insisted on escorting them back to the front door.

  ‘What’s up?’ McLusky asked as he slid behind the wheel of his car.

  ‘Nicholas Longmaid has been found dead.’ Austin slammed his door for emphasis.

  ‘Shit. Where?’

  ‘His place.’

  Leonidas Poulimenos stood in the doorway to his house and wondered at the inspector’s driving style as the Mercedes screeched away towards the road with tyre-smoking wheelspin.

  SIX

  ‘Gunshot?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Shit,’ McLusky said for the fifth time and pressed harder on the accelerator. ‘At least we’re halfway there already.’

  ‘So what’s the hurry?’ asked Austin, still grappling with his seat belt. ‘We’ll get there faster if we avoid a tour of the ditches.’

  ‘You don’t trust my driving at all, do you, Jane?’ McLusky eased off the accelerator all the same.

  ‘Do you want me to stick the satnav on?’

  ‘No, I know the way to Longmaid’s house. Anyway, I’m not keen on that woman’s voice.’

  ‘First Mendenhall, then his painting buddy. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  Just then the inspector had been recalling Mrs Longmaid’s unusually short skirt. ‘I doubt that. Although if you mean that the two deaths are connected, I can almost guarantee it.’ McLusky, whose life was as littered with coincidences as everyone else’s, stubbornly refused to believe in them. ‘I’ll bet you what’s left of my pension that we are dealing with the same killer. And I don’t bloody like it.’