Dry Bones

by Sally Spencer

  I scan the article.

  A man who committed suicide by gassing himself in his own garage in a small town on the Spanish island of Majorca was known to all his neighbours as John Tate, but documentation left on the passenger seat clearly identified him as Edwin Gough, who was once the head porter at St Luke’s College, Oxford. Gough was believed to have died over twenty years ago, and indeed has a grave in Sóller Cemetery on that island. Mrs Joan Maitland, who lived across the road from Tate/Gough, said, ‘He and his late wife were a quiet couple, but they were always more than willing to help you out, if you had a problem.’

  Was Gough afraid of being dragged back to England to face the consequences of his acts, I wonder.

  I don’t think so.

  I think the whole process was just too much of an effort now that he had lost his wife.

  I think, in other words, that he simply couldn’t be bothered, and death was an easy – and not too upsetting – experience.

  But how like him to have left all the documentation so easily accessible, I tell myself. He was, I think, a man whose preference was to have everything cut and dried, but who so often found himself in a situation where, for the good of the college, cut and dried simply wouldn’t work.

  I cross the road, and enter the Bulldog. By the time I reach the bar, the barman has a glass hovering under the gin optic, and just wants to know whether I’d like a single or a double.

  What do you think I tell him?

  I take my double gin and tonic over to one of the small tables next to the window, and sit down.

  It was from this very pub, I remember, that my last really insane drinking jag began …

  It had been a hell of a few days.

  My father had died, and I was weighed down with guilt over failing to do things for him that neither I – nor anyone else without godly powers – could possibly have done.

  The case against the Shivering Turn Society, into which I’d invested my heart and soul, had all-but collapsed.

  And somehow, the idea of ordering neat gin chasers to go with G&Ts had seemed like not just a brilliant idea, but possibly the most brilliant idea of the twentieth century.

  After the Bulldog, there had been the Red Lion and the Turl. By the time I’d reached the Eagle and Child, I’d probably been too drunk to even consider the possibility that I’d had more than enough.

  I don’t know how long I was in the Eagle – I was temporarily living in a special fuzzy time, in which minutes and hours played very little part – but I remember crashing my hip into a table occupied by two highly respectable couples out for a quiet drink.

  And then, suddenly, Charlie (having been called by the pub landlord) was by my side, and ushering me to the door. The taxi he’d called didn’t want to take me – the driver calculated, not unreasonably, that there was a very good chance I’d puke – but Charlie gave him two hundred pounds – then and there – to cover loss of earnings if I did spew up my load.

  Once he’d got me home, he undressed me, and put me to bed. He tucked me in, too – he didn’t make a particularly good job of it, but it’s the thought that counts – and offered to spend the night on my incredibly uncomfortable sofa, if that was what I wanted.

  And that’s Charlie Swift for you – thoughtful, tolerant, and generous to a fault.

  Charlie is simply not the kind of man who would rob someone else of his life (even someone as despicable as James Makepeace had probably been) in order to save himself serving prison time, I tell myself.

  I know that now, and I’m very ashamed that I ever doubted it, even for a second.

  And if he would never have killed James Makepeace, then he would never – ever – have killed Lennie Moon.

  He needs me to get him out of this mess – there’s simply no one else who can do it – and in order to achieve that, I’ve suddenly got to become a lot smarter than I seem to have been so far.

  I order a second G&T, and think about what I do actually know.

  I know that Mr Gough blamed Makepeace’s murder on the Americans, and (conveniently) that was what Makepeace allegedly claimed himself, just before he died.

  It could be the truth, or it could be a lie.

  If it was a lie, Mr Gough’s reason for telling it was obvious; it tied up all the loose ends, and pointed any future investigations up the most unpromising of blind alleys.

  So I can understand that lie. What I can’t understand is why he would lie about the reason for the murder – why he would give it a sexual spin when there clearly wasn’t one – because, although Makepeace was homosexual, Comstock definitely wasn’t.

  Another question: why did Mr Gough choose to hide the existence of the black market operations from me, when they would have provided not only a better explanation of why Makepeace killed Comstock, and Comstock’s associates killed Makepeace, but one which, if I chose to investigate it, I would find was actually grounded in fact?

  There’s only one answer possible – the reason Mr Gough didn’t want me looking too closely at the black market racket was because there was something about it that would make me abandon the idea that one of Comstock’s gang was the killer, and focus my attention on someone else.

  But who could that someone else possibly be?

  I really can’t see Mr Gough being involved in the black market – it would have been a denial of everything he ever believed in.

  I can’t see Mr Jenkins becoming involved, either – for pretty much the same reason. Besides, he couldn’t have killed Makepeace, because by the time the murder occurred, he was somewhere on the south coast, training to be part of the invasion force.

  And what about Lennie Moon? It’s inconceivable that the scheme could even have been explained to Lennie. He’d just never have got his head round how it was run.

  OK, so I’ve reached the end of a blind alley, just as Mr Gough intended me to.

  Keep calm!

  Take a few steps backwards, and then try approaching things from a different angle.

  When I told Mr Gough that Lennie had been murdered, his initial reaction was not so much shock as grief – as if he’d always known that Lennie might be killed. And that doesn’t make sense either, because if you hear a gangster’s been killed, you shrug your shoulders and say you suppose it’s just an occupational hazard, and the same is pretty much true of a politician.

  But a porter – a childlike man who divided his time between the college, his bedsit and the river, where he watched puppies playing and forgot about boats he’d put in the water?

  Is there perhaps something – some small grain of truth – in Charlie’s explanation of why Lennie had to die?

  Charlie said that he’d had to kill Lennie because Lennie had seen him kill Makepeace, which was not true, but is it possible that Lennie saw someone else kill Makepeace?

  Maybe, but if he had, then Mr Gough must have known about it, too – if only because Lennie would have found himself incapable of keeping it a secret from his boss.

  And if Mr Gough knew, then he’d have been in much the same danger himself, yet he never even gave me so much as a hint that he thought he might be next on the killer’s extermination list.

  My thoughts are dashing round and round in circles, and if not I’m careful, I warn myself, my hippocampus will become one giant whirlpool, and the rest of my brain will be sucked into it, never to be heard from again.

  I order a third gin and tonic – this is going to have to be my last if I’m going to be any good for anything – and turn my mind to my one and only close encounter with Lennie Moon:

  ‘Mr Jenkins isn’t the only man to have a medal from the war,’ he’d said proudly. ‘I’ve got one, too.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I’d asked.

  ‘Yes, I got it when . . .’

  And it had been at that point that Mr Jenkins had intervened.

  ‘Lennie!’ he’d said, in a much harsher voice than I’d ever heard him use before.

  Lennie had looked totally lost.
/>   ‘Remember what we said about that medal?’ Mr Jenkins had asked.

  But poor Lennie hadn’t, and Mr Jenkins had been forced to spell it out for him.

  ‘We … said … that … you … shouldn’t … talk … about … the … medal … to … people … because … it … might …?’

  ‘Because it might make them angry!’

  ‘That’s right, Lennie, it might make them angry.’

  And later, as we walked around the college together, Mr Jenkins had said to me, ‘I hope I didn’t sound too harsh back there, but people who’ve got medals can get quite offended when they hear Lennie pretend to have one – I know they shouldn’t, but they do – and so, in order to avoid any unpleasantness, I’ve told him never to talk about it.’

  I’d accepted all this easily enough at the time, because Lennie was merely background to the investigation – a bit player who didn’t merit serious consideration. But he isn’t a bit player now – he’s very much centre stage – and the more I think about it, the more it doesn’t add up.

  For a start, I don’t think Lennie had the kind of imagination that would have allowed him to conjure up a medal, and – more specifically – a medal from the war. And Mr Jenkins didn’t say to Lennie that the medal didn’t exist, nor did he tell me that it didn’t – at least, not as long as Lennie could still hear him. What he did say to Lennie was that Lennie shouldn’t talk about it.

  So, given all that, the chances are that there is, in fact, a medal – but that, for some reason, Mr Jenkins is eager that no one knows about it.

  Suddenly my instinct is getting very excited about the medal, which means – if that instinct is right – that the medal is going to be very important – perhaps even crucial – to the investigation.

  That’s why Lennie’s bedsit was searched after his murder, I tell myself – it was because the murderer was looking for the medal.

  If he found it, then I’m left up another blind alley, banging my head against yet another brick wall.

  But if he didn’t find it, then the chances are the police – who had both the experience and the time to conduct a proper search – did find it!

  I have a strong urge to ring George Hobson now – to tell him I demand to see this important medal of Lennie’s, which will explain everything, and will set Charlie Swift free.

  I suppress the urge by reminding myself that I am not exactly in George’s good books at the moment, and that the only way I’m ever going to get to see the medal is by being very persuasive (i.e. sneaky).

  I look at my watch. It is early evening, which means it will be at least twelve hours before I can do anything positive.

  I don’t know if my nerves will survive it.

  TWENTY-TWO

  17 October 1974

  George Hobson is a fussy eater. I’m not talking here about the quality of the food he eats – an alley cat would turn up its nose at some of the garbage he joyfully shovels down his gullet – but rather the fact that he likes to make an aesthetically pleasing pattern of his meal before he attacks it. And breakfast is no exception to this rule, I think, as I stand in the doorway of the Early Bird Café, watching him – three tables down – addressing his plate.

  Stage one of the process is to cut up his sausage into four equal pieces, and then arrange the pieces around his fried egg, so that, from above, it might well suggest (to any observer) four fat little brown worshippers gathered at a giant monument to the god of the sun. Next, this Salvador Dali of the breakfast plate builds palisades of crispy bacon rashers, which run from one fried tomato minaret to another, around the entire sun temple complex.

  I tell myself that the reason I’m blocking the entrance to the café is that I don’t want to interrupt him while he’s having so much fun, but I know – deep down – what the real reason I’m putting off talking to him is.

  I know, too, why I’m choosing to frame my current thoughts in this flowery, frivolous, quasi-poetic manner – why I’m thinking of George as dipping one of his newly-cut sun worshippers into his golden lake, before opening his mouth to allow it to make the ultimate sacrifice, when all he’s actually doing is swallowing a bit of sausage dipped in egg yolk.

  Oh yes, I know what the game is all right!

  The game is called put-off-the-moment or perhaps you-can’t-face-reality-quite-yet.

  But I can’t put off the moment, and reality does have to be faced.

  Looking around casually – as people sometimes do – George finally notices me standing in the doorway. His initial surprise lasts no more than a moment, and then he gestures, with a crook of his index finger, that I should join him. It is not perhaps the most welcoming gesture that’s ever been aimed at me, but I suppose it’s about as good as I’ll get.

  He waits until I’ve sat down, then says in a voice thickly coated with world-weariness, ‘Why are you here, Jennie?’

  ‘I’m here to stop you making a big mistake,’ I tell him.

  ‘Oh, so you’re here purely for my benefit, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  George curls a rasher of bacon around a slice of fried tomato, spears them both with his fork, and pops them into his mouth.

  He’s making me wait, and he knows he can afford to – because he holds all the power.

  ‘You’re here for my benefit,’ he repeats, ‘and it has nothing at all to do with Charlie Swift?’

  ‘I’m here for him, too.’

  ‘You’re just going to have to come to terms with the fact that he did what he said he’s done,’ Hobson says. ‘Everyone else has.’

  ‘It was a clean break, wasn’t it?’ I say.

  ‘What was a clean break?’ George asks, going for a sausage-fried tomato combo this time.

  ‘Lennie’s neck,’ I say, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. ‘His bloody neck!’

  ‘Yes, it was a clean break, as a matter of fact,’ George says – and now he’s sounding just a little uncomfortable.

  ‘The doc didn’t use the term “professional break” by any chance, did he?’ I ask.

  George blinks. He only does it the once, but I don’t miss it – because it’s what I’ve been looking and hoping for.

  ‘Charles Swift was in the army during the war,’ he says, defensively. ‘That’s probably where he was taught to do it.’

  ‘Taught to do it professionally,’ I say, ramming the point home.

  ‘Taught to do it professionally,’ he concedes.

  ‘You were in the army,’ I say. ‘Do you know how to break a man’s neck professionally?’

  ‘I wasn’t in the army during the war,’ he says. ‘It was peacetime when I did my national service.’

  ‘Ah, so in peacetime, the army doesn’t see the need to teach you how to kill, so you all make daisy chains instead.’

  ‘You’re being frivolous now.’

  ‘Charlie was a tank commander,’ I say, ‘and if Lennie had been run over by a tank, you’d get no argument from me if you arrested him. But Lennie wasn’t run over by a tank, was he?’

  ‘So you’re sure Swift didn’t do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then tell me who you think the real killer is, and I promise I’ll give it my serious consideration,’ George challenges. ‘Unless, of course, you can’t do that, because you have no idea who he is.’

  He’s expecting me to look down at the table, and mumble something about not knowing who the real killer is, but being certain it isn’t Charlie.

  But that wouldn’t be true because I think I do know who killed Lennie. And how did I reach that conclusion? Well, if you rule out Charlie, there’s really only one person it could be, just as there’s only really one person (a different person) who – given all the kerfuffle that occurred after James Makepeace’s death – could have killed Makepeace himself. What I still don’t know for sure is what motivated Lennie’s killer, but I’m starting to agree with Mr Gough that it may have been a mercy killing.

  ‘Well?’ George asks, slicing a bit
off one of his eggs, and swishing it through the juice left by his tomato.

  There’s virtually no physical evidence in this case, so if I’m ever to get Charlie out of jail, the murderer is going to have to confess. And who is more likely to get that confession out of him – me or the fried egg monster?

  ‘I can’t give you a name at the moment,’ I tell him, ‘but if you were to answer a couple of my questions, I think that maybe I could.’

  ‘Like what?’ George asks.

  ‘If I could look at the evidence that you collected from Lennie’s bedsit—’

  ‘That’s not a question – that’s a request to tamper with the evidence – and the answer’s no!’ George interrupts.

  ‘You know I’m a good detective,’ I say, trying to sound – unsuccessfully – as if I’m not pleading. ‘You know that you’d never have cracked the Shivering Turn investigation without me.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he concedes. ‘In fact, there’d never have been an investigation at all, without your persistence.’

  ‘Well, then …?’ I ask hopefully.

  ‘The answer’s still no.’

  ‘Don’t let the fact that you hate me at the moment blind you to the need to do what’s right,’ I beg.

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ he says sadly, ‘it’s just that you’ve turned out to be a big disappointment to me. But even if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t show you the evidence, because – and listen very carefully to this, to make sure you take it in – because you’re not a police officer.’

  Well, that’s Plan A buggered, so we’ll have to switch to Plan B – and given that Plan A was desperate, I don’t hold out any great hopes for its successor.

  But I have to try – for Charlie’s sake, I have to try!

  ‘If I talk about some of the things that might have been in Lennie’s bedsit, will you confirm whether they were there or not?’ I ask.

  ‘I might,’ George says.

  ‘A television set? ‘

  ‘Yes, there was a small colour television.’

  ‘Pictures on the wall?’