"He's as hard to convince as Commander Macalvie," said Jury.
"Good for Sanderson. I take it this Citrine woman was one of Roger Healey's ladies?"
"It might have been pure greed and not love and greed. Rena's the poor Citrine. Everyone else in the family had money. Roger and Rena must have made a divine pair, both after his wife's money. They meant to kidnap Billy; Toby was there; they had two boys to deal with. Somehow Billy Healey got away. But they couldn't let Toby live to identify them later-"
"So Toby Holt goes into the grave," said Wiggins. "Dr. Dench was right about the age, then." Wiggins sounded almost disappointed.
Macalvie cut a look round at all of them. "No, he isn't."
"Why are you still arguing, Macalvie? The woman tried to kill him. You sound like Sanderson talking about the time the calls were made. That's a little after-the-fact, isn't it?"
"That is, but this isn't. So she tried to shoot someone-"
"You're worse than a pit bull."
Macalvie steamrolled on: "Psychologically, your theory won't wash, Jury. I told you. Instead of running home to his mum, which would be the natural thing, he disappears-"
"Can't we assume he was scared out of his mind?"
"Which is why he'd go running home. Or to some kind of sanctuary. Instead he goes off to Ireland. To Ireland?"
Jury sighed. "I'm not saying at twelve he-"
"Some sanctuary." Macalvie sat with arms binding his chest, the brim of his loose tweed cap shown over his eyes. "This twelve-year-old piano prodigy just dusts himself off, grabs the ferry for Larne, becomes a guitarist, and lets his beloved step-mum sweat it out for eight years thinking he's dead. You got any Fisherman's Friends, Wiggins? I think I'll choke myself." Back and forth, back and forth, Macalvie slowly shook his head. "Uh-uh." He got up, drained the cup of tea. "I'm supposed to be in Sidmouth. Let me know what happens when the music dies." He nodded toward Melrose. "Plant's really into this; he's reading Segue."
Melrose looked up. "Jimi Hendrix was left-handed."
"So?" Macalvie rose just as Mary Lee came out of the stage door again, moving between security police. She carried a tray with fresh cups and a plate of stale-looking sandwiches.
She shoved the tray onto the floor of the van: "Want another cuppa? And there's someone rung up to talk to-just a tic…" She pulled a scrap of paper from her shoe, which she seemed to regard as the only proper place for safekeeping, like a safety deposit box, and read, "-Chief Superintendent Macalver." She emphasized the second syllable.
"Mac-al-vie," he said. "What someone?"
"A woman. Said to call right away."
Muttering imprecations, Macalvie jumped down from the van, nearly upsetting the tray and definitely upsetting Mary Lee who said, "You? You said you was from Juke Blues."
"I do that part time because I can't make a living as a cop." He patted her cheek. "Don't worry; your picture will be all over the papers. Where's the nearest phone?"
With some show of hostility she said, "I expect you could use my office."
Macalvie turned to leave, turned back again and called to Jury, "If you're so sure, Jury, why aren't you on the phone to Wakefield headquarters? I imagine Mrs. Healey would like to know he's alive."
He went off through the driving rain.
The first to come out was Stan Keeler, followed by Stone. The drizzle had turned to a steady downpour and the cigarette turned soggy in his mouth. "That was some play, man." He dropped the cigarette on the ground. "Am I nuts or was that a bullet that spun Wes around? Is some crazy trying to make a statement they don't like Sirocco? What the hell was going on in there?" He didn't seem to expect any answers. "Your friend was very persuasive. So where's this new landlady he was telling me about?"
"Front of the theater. You can't miss her. Red hair, silver jacket, beautiful nose."
Stan grinned. "Aw-right." He turned to the black Labrador.
Stone was already halfway down the alley.
"The last number; they'll be out in a minute," said Wiggins in answer to Jury's question. "Got to keep your strength up, sir." The sergeant pushed the paper plate toward him. Wiggins was munching on one of Mary Lee's cheese sandwiches. The bread was curling up on the edges. Jury picked up a pale-looking round and then put it down.
He imagined himself sitting in the lounge of the Old Silent, staring down at his plate after the conversation with Sanderson. It wasn't, he realized now, anything Sanderson or he had said, it was the plate. The detail which then had tried to surface now did.
Wiggins was talking to him about the chap whose job it had been to monitor the spotlight. "He could identify her, sir. Why didn't she kill him if she was that desperate?"
Jury stared at his sergeant without answering. He had his own personal allergist sitting right there before him. "Wiggins, people can outgrow allergies, can't they?"
Wiggins looked perplexed by his superior's interest in a subject Jury generally considered as fascinating as one of Racer's preachments. He was, nonetheless, delighted to hold forth at some length about the various types of allergic reactions. "Billy Healey's?" Wiggins frowned. "Doubtful. His was very serious."
"Then I don't imagine he'd be eating a ploughman's." He looked from the sandwiches to his sergeant. "Lunch. Consisting mainly of cheese."
Wiggins stopped the cup of tea on the way to his mouth. "If you'd only told me what he had for lunch-"
"Duckworth's column," said Melrose, "mentions the eccentricities of some guitarists. Hendrix was left-handed and restrung right-handed guitars because he thought they were probably superior."
"What's the point? Charlie Raine's a right-handed guitarist."
"He taught himself to play by looking at instruction books and naively assumed the guitar had to be held that way. Mirror-image." He tossed Jury the magazine. "By now, he's ambidextrous. But he was born left-handed."
"Remind me to ring up Dr. Dench," said Wiggins, smugly.
The band came out.
Jury jumped down from the van and walked over to Wes Whelan. One arm of his red shirt was caked with blood. "You amaze me. You didn't even drop a beat. That was the most acrobatic turn I've ever seen." He shook his hand.
Grinning, he said, "You forgot? I grew up in Derry with the IRA." He looked at his shirt. "This is but a scratch. Nothing a tall a tall. It only grazed me."
"You all showed incredible presence of mind."
Jiminez laughed; it was very deep, very throaty. "Man, we were so into things I doubt we even knew what was goin' on until Stan Keeler came out on that stage. Don't give us no credit."
Jury smiled. "No, of course not. Where's Charlie?"
Swann motioned over his shoulder. "In there. Hates to leave the stage, Charlie does." He pushed back his golden hair and smiled.
"Don't wait for him," said Jury as they started piling into the limousine.
"If you're going to the Ritz," said Melrose, "may I hitch a ride?"
42
He was sitting on the bottom level of the black platform in the center of the stage, a towel round his neck, holding the white Fender, plucking a string, plucking another, playing a chord as if some ghostly remnant of that shouting, ecstatic audience still sat out there in the rows of empty seats, as if there were the lingering echo of applause.
Perhaps because of the way he sat there, looking out, the theater seemed not so much empty as abandoned. In the aisles a couple of lads were cleaning up the detritus of the concert, but they left, lugging plastic bags behind them. A clutch of roadies were standing at the rear of the stage looking out, smoking, talking. Wondering, probably, what the hell had gone on in here tonight.
When Jury sat down beside him, he didn't turn to look. "Wes is a great drummer. He's got the quickest reaction time of anyone I know."
"Quicker than mine, certainly."
"I never knew anyone to pull off anything like that."
"What about you, Charlie?"
He looked down, strummed one chord, then another. He looked out
through the semidarkness much the way Nell Healey had stared beyond that broken wall, as if someone might materialize before her eyes.
" 'I was trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the bootstraps broke.' Stevie Ray Vaughan said that. Great guitarist."
"Stevie Ray Vaughan mended the bootstraps. You're quitting at the height of your career as some sort of penance, that it?"
He didn't answer, just picked a few more notes, struck a few quick chords.
"Or was the penance learning to play that,"-Jury nodded toward the guitar-"in the first place?"
There was a long silence, and then he said: "Every morning, sometimes twice a day, since I've been in London I've gone to Waterloo. Go into the buffet, get a cup of tea, go out, walk around and look at the departures. There must be a train to Leeds nearly every hour." He took his hand from the strings and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. "I bought these." He fanned out four tickets-day-returns to Leeds. "For eight years I tried to come back and tell her what happened." He was silent. "I couldn't face her."
Jury waited, let him hold on to his guitar, strum the chords to "Yesterday's Rain," and stare out over the emptiness as blighted, perhaps, to him as Haworth Moor.
"The last time I saw her was when I was looking down from my window that faced the sea and she stopped on that cliff path and looked up and waved. She had a way of waving and smiling that was so,"-he shrugged-"joyful you'd think she hadn't seen you in ages. Like mums on station platforms when the kids come down from school on their holidays. You know." He looked over at Jury then, who was looking down. "I really loved her. Hard to believe, but I'd have died for her."
Jury raised his eyes and looked out over the empty seats. "You did."
"I was getting my clothes on when I looked out the other window, the one facing the rear and saw her,"-he looked up toward the corner of the circle-"walking down that back road. I wondered what in hell the aunt was here for; no one said she was coming. Then she disappeared inside, into the kitchen. I started down the stairs-the room was at the top of the kitchen stairs-but then I stopped. I still don't know why I didn't just clatter on down. I could only hear muffled voices and in a minute the door slammed. The kitchen door. I went back into my room and saw his Aunt Irene and Billy walking up the road, and Gnasher, his terrier, padding behind him. I nearly raised the window and shouted but something stopped me, again. It was just, I don't know,wrong."
"Then I ran down and looked for Mrs. Healey. Nell. She must have walked farther along the cliff and I thought, no, I'd just waste time looking for her. So I went round the house and up the road, trying to catch up and stay out of sight at the same time. Then I saw the car, the aunt's car; I recognized it from seeing it at the Citrine house. It was parked nearly all the way up to the entrance and they got in. It looked like they were having an argument about the dog, but Billy pulled it in. Anyway, it gave me a chance to get to the shed and get the bike and an old slicker. It was getting dark fast. Where the car ended up-"
He stopped. He looked down at the guitar as if he'd never seen it before.
Jury turned and said, "Was a disused graveyard."
He nodded. "It came on suddenly, the dark. The only light came from the car's headlamps and an electric torch. It was held by a man but I couldn't make him out; it was like the torch was shining right in my eyes, had me pinned down. But they hadn't heard me. The rest was like broken-off images in a dream. I could hear Billy, saying something, and then crying. I could hear Gnasher, he just barked once and then nothing. But I didn't hear them, I mean they went about all of this in silence while I was ducked down behind a grave marker. It was all so nightmarish I read over and over the words on the marker."
"Billy was lying on the ground, and the little dog was lying beside him. His aunt pushed the dog down into the ground." He stopped. "Did you ever have one of those feelings you become two different people? It's as if one part of you is sitting in a chair and the other part gets up and walks across the room? That's what happened to me. It was like part of me still hid behind that stone and the other part ran toward the grave. I was yelling; but even my voice didn't sound like my voice. I still couldn't see his face, the man's, because he was down in the grave, but hers-good God, I'll never forget that look."
"And then it all happened in slow motion: she brought out a gun, a small one, from her pocket and turned it on me; I backed up against a tree and she fired. But she must be as good a shot with a revolver as she is with a rifle-" He laughed ruefully, "-because she missed. Missed killing me, I mean. The bullet only nicked my ear, but, my God, the blood…"
He stopped to pluck a few more notes on the Fender, then to search for a cigarette. Jury shook one out of his packet. "She thought she'd killed me, though, I think. I slid down the tree and crumpled. He was running over now, shoving her back, calling her a bloody stupid bitch and while they were exchanging names, I managed to edge myself away from the tree, get up, and run. You've got to understand, I thought Billy was dead. I ran back to the road, thinking maybe I could stop someone. I was holding a piece of my ripped-off shirt up to stop the blood with one hand and hailing a car with the other. Brilliant." Here he played a flashy riff in a burst of anger at himself. "Did you ever try to outrun headlamps?"
"No. I take it the car was theirs."
"I don't know how she missed me again, but she did. This time with the car. What would I have been but another hit and run?"
"You'd have been hard to explain, in the circumstances."
"I veered off the road and ran toward the coast, toward the cliffs. There wasn't much she-or he-could do by way of following in the car. I probably wasn't losing as much blood as I thought. I managed to stagger along for a mile, maybe two, maybe more; I wasn't counting. And then I had the best piece of luck I've ever had: ran into a party of campers. There were five of them, sitting round a campfire. They were Americans, backpacking round the British Isles. All of them young, in their twenties." Charlie grinned. "And all of them stoned. They were absolutely fascinated by this bloody-literally-Brit who stumbled into them. Again, literally. I'll never forget them: Katie, Miles, Dobby, Helena, Colin. They had some stuff in their backpacks to take care of the wound. They thought I was hallucinating, they really did, when I kept talking about getting the police, told them I'd just seen someone murdered. I'll never forget Miles looking at me, blinking. He handed me a roach-clip and said, 'Hey, man, mellow out."
"I mellowed out, all right. I passed out. Slept through the next day and when I woke up, Dobby and Miles were jamming on their guitars. Still stoned. Only the girls were beginning to take me seriously, but just as seriously they told me to stay away from the cops. I didn't see a newspaper for six days and didn't know about the ransom demand. And I don't mind saying I was terrified. I was a witnessand I suppose I'd seen too much telly."
Jury said, "Whose idea was it to identify somebody else's body?"
"Mine and Uncle Owen's. I couldn't stand him thinking I was dead, like Billy, so I rang up, finally."
"You mean he knew Irene Citrine had done this and didn't go to the police?" Somehow that didn't sound like Owen Holt.
"He didn't know. I didn't tell him. I was afraid for him and Aunt Alice. I told him… I didn't know who they were."
"But your aunt didn't know. Your uncle didn't tell her. Why?"
There was a silence. "He was going to, but then he thought, in the long run, it might be easier for her just to think I was dead than that she'd never see me again, probably." He looked at his guitar. "And you've met Aunt Alice. Do you think she'd really have been able to keep it to herself? Uncle Owen was afraid she'd go to the police. She'd hardly have been able to talk to you without telling you. Maybe it was cold-blooded, I don't know."
"None of you strike me as that. Go on."
"Uncle Owen said not to worry. To leave things to him, to lie low-he'd find some way of getting money to me. He did. A lot."
Jury smiled. "Your uncle never did strike me as a gambler."
"
What?" The boy frowned.
"Nothing. You went to Ireland?"
"I did. From Stranraer to Larne. And I met Wes." He smiled. "Wes had more than talent. He had contacts-like someone in the U.D.C. who knew someone who knew someone who could forge passports."
Back at the rear of the auditorium, light fanned briefly across the wall as one of the doors swung open and shut. Whoever it was was standing back there or had sat down.
Mary Lee, Jury bet, and smiled. Then the memory of Charlie writing on the clear surface of the shoe came back to him.
"The longer I kept quiet about it, the more guilty I felt," Charlie was saying. "And the more guilty I felt, the harder it was to do anything, to come back, to tell the story. The old vicious circle of guilt. Why didn't I do something to save him?"
The question was rhetorical, but Jury answered it anyway. "Because you knew damned well they'd kill you."
Charlie rested his forehead against the guitar frets, eyes closed. "But not to do anything about it later-"
"You did. You thought if he'd lived, Billy Healey would have gone on to have a highly successful career as a concert pianist-"
"He would have." Charlie brought the guitar back up to his lap.
"I doubt it."
Charlie looked round, sharply. "That was the whole idea."
"His father's idea. Not Billy's. And not necessarily Nell Healey's. Wasn't it hard to get him to practice?"
"Yes. But he was a natural."
"Come on, Toby. You, of all people, would know that even a 'natural' has to practice like hell to get where Roger Healey wanted his son to go. Billy was lazy. Irene Citrine said that. On the other hand youwere just the opposite. Determined. Or as your aunt put it, pigheaded."
He had to smile. "I expect I was."
"You 'expect' you were? You weren't a 'natural'; you couldn't play anything. That is, you couldn't play anything until you were so driven by guilt to pick up on a career that Nell's son had lost; there roust have been times when you wished you could have died in his place."
The Old Silent Page 38