The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1)

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘I dinna ken,’ said Macintyre, ‘but he’s wrong.’

  ‘You sound very sure of yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I am, Chris, I am.’ The doctor reached in his pocket and removed something. ‘Have you heard of cadaveric spasm?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I have. The famous ‘dead man’s grip’ beloved of novelists, when the hand of a dying person stays locked around something they were holding as they died.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. Dosnae happen so often as novelists wish, but it happened to old Brown this morning.’

  ‘And what had he got hold of? The mugger’s business card?’

  ‘That,’ said Macintyre, and dropped something on the table. It rolled erratically towards me.

  I picked it up. It was a brown button.

  ‘It’s a button,’ I said. ‘Zip-up leather jackets don’t have buttons.’

  Macintyre smiled. ‘Half marks, laddie. It didnae come off a leather jacket, that’s true, but what kind of jacket did it come off?’

  I looked again at the button, rolling it in my hand.

  ‘It’s moulded plastic,’ I said. ‘No — it’s woven brown leather!’ I looked up in surprise.

  ‘Aye,’ said the pathologist, triumphantly. ‘It’s the kind of button you get when you pay too much for your clothes. Nowadays even expensive clothes have plastic imitations, but our mugger wears the real, hideously expensive, thing.’

  ‘What did Howard say about it?’

  ‘He said it wasnae important and would I kindly confine my report to injuries and cause of death. What’s more, he hasnae asked me yet to get a DNA check on the tissue from Brown’s walking stick.’

  He drank noisily from his mug of tea. ‘Something stinks, laddie, something stinks.’ Down at the other end of the cafe the ancient wall-phone rang. ‘That’ll be Jayne, looking for me,’ I said, and gulped the rest of my tea.

  ‘Mr Tyroll,’ called Ruby, ‘that was your office. Jayne says you’ve got an important foreign client waiting.’

  ‘D’ye train her to broadcast these lies for advertising purposes?’ asked Macintyre.

  ‘Jayne,’ I muttered, ‘would claim that the entire Cabinet were in the waiting room if it interfered with my tea break.’

  2

  My office is in a distinguished Victorian building, across the square from the Guildhall, distinguished mainly by the imperial statuary in terracotta on the front and the poor state of decoration. A brass plate at the building’s side entrance bears the name and a long flight of stairs leads up to the reception window. In the days before street-corner betting shops the office had been the chambers of a credit bookmaker. Perhaps that was why there was a discreet rear exit via a fire escape at the back of the building. I had been going to have it changed before I realised its advantages.

  Now I walked through the front entrance, ignored the stairs, and carried on into the yard, mounting to my floor by the fire stairs. Like almost every working day I made a mental note to have them checked for rust and promptly forgot it.

  Jayne was my secretary when I occupied one room and shared it with the clatter of her old-fashioned Underwood. Ten years on she sits in state at an antique oak desk bigger than my own, from whence she runs the office’s administration and much of my private life. Now she regarded me with impatience as I put my head around her door.

  ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that, before you settle down to a disgusting-stories session with old Macintyre in the Rendezvous, you could remember to call in?’

  ‘Tried to,’ I lied, ‘but the phones were all busy. National press phoning the Murphy result to London — hold the front page and all that.’

  She eyed me hard and silently and jotted a note on a pad.

  ‘What’s that? You’re not keeping a list of my excuses, are you?’

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘was a note for the next office meeting re the purchase of a mobile phone.’

  ‘Staff wouldn’t stand for it,’ I assured her. ‘Health and Safety, that kind of thing. They fry your brains, you know.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she said.

  ‘You should. It was in the papers. Must be true. They don’t put lies in newspapers. Anyway, it’s no worse than important international clients at half-past four on a Tuesday. Is Alasdair in? I want to talk to him about Gormley’s committal.’

  ‘He’s still in Brum,’ she said, ‘and you’ve still got a client.’

  She picked up a business card from her desk and gave it to me. It said:

  Dr Sheila McKenna,

  Dept. of Social History,

  University of Adelaide,

  South Australia.

  ‘She’s been waiting half an hour,’ Jayne said. ‘She said she had to see you and you would know what it was about.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ I said. ‘And I can think of better ways to end a bad day than being nice to some sun-raddled old academic biddy in a hideous print dress and elastic stockings, with an accent like a sawmill at full stretch.’

  ‘Lost Murphy’s case, did you?’ she said, brightly. ‘I’ll give you five minutes to make your desk presentable, then I’ll wheel her in, elastic stockings and all,’ and she looked at her watch meaningfully.

  I gave way. ‘OK,’ I said, wearily. ‘Set some tea and biscuits up, will you? They say that Adelaide’s so respectable you can get arrested for walking down the street with your gloves off after dark, so we’d better do the posh Pommy professional bit.’

  The tea was on my desk three minutes later. Two minutes afterwards a brisk rap announced Jayne with the client.

  No elastic stockings, no print dress, no sun-raddled complexion. No old biddy, either. Dr McKenna was a lightly suntanned, tall blonde of about thirty. Her natural linen safari suit was cut close enough to reveal a lithe, well-modelled figure and under the fringe of her ash-blonde hair a pair of grey-blue eyes looked out wide and direct from a fringe of freckles.

  I rose and motioned her to a chair, realising that, whatever her business, the day was looking up. ‘Please have a seat, doctor. I’m Christopher Tyroll.’

  I had been wrong about the voice as well. It was rich and soft and its accent only made it more attractive. ‘Please don’t call me ‘doctor’,’ she said. ‘It makes me sound like some kind of sawbones. You can call me Sheila if you don’t make obvious Pommy jokes about it.’

  ‘Right, right.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I’m Christopher — Chris. You told my secretary that your business was with me and I would know what it was.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m sorry to say that I don’t. Do you have the right firm, doc — Sheila?’

  She drew a paper from a plain leather shoulder bag. ‘No doubt at all. This is Tyroll’s, 24a Jubilee Chambers, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, but … ’

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you what my connection with Belston is,’ she continued. ‘My people came from here. My mother was Patricia Brown and my grandfather is Walter Brown of Grenville Street. You’re his solicitor, aren’t you?’

  It had to be a dreadful coincidence. She couldn’t possibly have had time to hear of the old man’s death and make her way from South Australia. So she didn’t know — and now I had to tell her.

  I picked up the teapot. ‘That’s right,’ I said slowly. ‘Would you care for tea?’

  She let me pour the Earl Grey and took it without milk. When we had both sipped I said, ‘Have you seen your grandfather lately, Sheila?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not for five years,’ she said, ‘but we kept in touch. He was my only relative. My mum and dad emigrated in the fifties, but they were both killed in a crash on the Eyre Highway five years ago, so Grandpa’s all I’ve got.’

  I pushed the biscuits across, fumbling for words. ‘You came straight here today?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d had to replace a colleague at a conference in Brussels at short notice, so I booked some leave and decided to surprise the old boy. The conference finish
ed this morning, so I came over, but he wasn’t home this afternoon. The only thing I knew was that you’re his lawyer, so I thought I’d better come here.’

  I still hadn’t nerved myself to break the news when the phone rang. Gratefully, I excused myself and picked it up. Jayne was on the other end.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I think it’s connected. I’ve got Sergeant Parry on the phone. He wants to talk about Mr Brown’s death and he’s mentioned a Dr McKenna.’ ‘OK Jayne. Put him through.’

  Parry’s cheery Welsh voice came on. ‘Hello, Chris. You’ll have read about the mugging in the park this morning? One of yours, I believe?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, we need to get into his house and we need to contact any relatives. Now his housekeeper’s got keys, so we’re going in now, but she says his only relative was a Dr McKenna at Adelaide University in Aussie. We’ve rung there, but they say she’s on leave in the UK. You wouldn’t know where we could contact her, would you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Right here.’ I dared not give Sheila an inkling of the conversation’s content.

  ‘Right there? You don’t mean in your office?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Suddenly it dawned on Parry. ‘She’s with you now, isn’t she? Does she know?’

  ‘Yes, and no.’

  ‘Jesus, Chris! I’m sorry, man. I’d no idea. I’d better leave you to it.’ He paused. ‘Look, when she’s ready I’ll need to talk to her, OK?’

  ‘Yes, that’ll be OK in due course. I’ll let you know, John. ’Bye.’

  When I put the phone down I knew that my evasions had run out. I had kept the phone close to my ear. She couldn’t have heard, but she knew. She was watching me, sharply.

  ‘Was that about my grandfather?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and about you. The local police want to talk to you.’

  ‘What’s happened? Has something happened to Grandpa?’

  I twisted a ballpen between my hands. ‘There’s no way to wrap this up,’ I said. ‘Your grandfather was found dead this morning, in the park. I’m sorry.’

  She jerked her face away from me as though she had been slapped, and kept it averted while she fought down the reaction. When she turned back her eyes were moist but she was in control.

  ‘He was eighty-five,’ she said. ‘I guess it had to happen soon. That’s why I wanted to see him.’

  ‘It wasn’t his age,’ I said. ‘He was attacked — mugged. He was … ’

  ‘Murdered?’ she said, quietly.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was. Look, Sheila, I don’t know what your business was with me, but I’m sure it can wait.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it can’t. I didn’t just come to see him. He wrote me a letter, a very strange letter. He told me to see you. It worried me a bit.’

  She took a couple of folded sheets out of her bag and passed them across. I recognised my former client’s firm, even hand, the writing of a man who had been taught properly and had never forgotten.

  ‘Read it,’ she said. ‘You might know what he meant.’ I skimmed the letter quickly. It was not very long:

  My dear Sheila,

  It seems to be a long time since you have been home, and I am not getting any younger. If you could find the time to come over soon, I would be very glad to see you.

  When you get to my age, you start looking back, and I have been trying to set a few things in order before I go. I suppose some people wouldn’t think they were important, but I was brought up to do what was right.

  There is one matter in particular that has bothered me for a long time, but now I think I might have the answer. I’d just like to see right done before I go, but I don’t know if I shall be able to finish it off. That’s why I should like to talk to you about it.

  If you can’t come soon, if I’m gone before you come home, go and see my solicitor. His name is Christopher Tyroll, of Tyroll’s, 24a Jubilee Buildings. That’s in the Market Place, opposite the Guildhall. He’s a bit of an odd fellow for a lawyer, but I think that he likes to do things right in his own way. He’ll help you if I’m not here, but I hope I shall be.

  In the hope of seeing you soon,

  Your loving Grandpa

  P.S. Don’t worry about the cost. If you can come I’ll buy the ticket.

  ‘I can see why it worried you,’ I said. ‘So far as I could see, he wasn’t a man who dwelt much on the past, nor did he seem unduly worried about the future. He made a will, of course, and we’ll have to go over that. Basically, he left everything to you apart from a small bequest to his housekeeper. It won’t keep you in luxury, but he was a careful man and, apart from the house, there’s a decent sum as well.’

  She waved my talk of the will aside, impatiently. ‘That can wait,’ she said. ‘What was it that he was trying to sort out? What is it that you can help me with?’

  ‘That’s a bit of a problem,’ I admitted. ‘I haven’t got the least idea what this letter’s about.’

  3

  She stared at me. ‘You haven’t the least idea?’ she repeated. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really, Sheila. As I said, he came in a couple of years ago and said he wanted to exercise an option to purchase on his house. That was no problem, he paid cash in full. Then he wanted a will made. That was straightforward, too. He left everything to you apart from a few hundred to Mrs Croft, his housekeeper. I must have seen him about half a dozen times at most and that was just business. He never mentioned any problem to me, or discussed any proposition with me, other than the house and the will.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’ she asked. She picked up the letter. ‘This is dated about six weeks ago. Perhaps he intended to see you about something and didn’t.’

  I picked up the phone. ‘Jayne,’ I asked, ‘can you check the last time I saw Walter Brown? Yes, I know it’s all on the computer, but I hate looking like an idiot in front of a client when I press the wrong button. And can you bring in his house file and the will file? Thanks.’

  I turned back to my visitor. ‘I doubt that they’ll tell us much,’ I said. ‘He was a pleasure to deal with because he knew what he wanted, he answered letters and he paid his bill promptly. There’ll be nothing additional in those files.’

  Jayne tapped the door and entered with two folders. Placing them on my desk, she gave me a slip of paper. ‘That’s all his appointments with you about the house and the will. On the last date you didn’t see him.’ I glanced over the slip. ‘What happened that time?’ I asked.

  ‘You were at court. He came in without an appointment and said he’d mislaid his copy of the will and he’d like to look at ours. I took ours out of the deeds cabinet and let him read it and he went away. That’s all.’

  ‘Thanks, Jayne,’ I said and she left. I picked up the two slim folders and skimmed through them quickly. ‘No, there’s nothing here apart from correspondence about the house and the will.’ I took a photocopy from one folder and passed it across to her. ‘There’s a copy of his will for you.’

  She glanced at it briefly then folded it into her bag. ‘Disappointing.’ She smiled. ‘I thought you were going to sit at a long table and read it all out to me and Mrs Whatsername.’

  I was pleased to see her smiling. ‘Obviously you get bad American movies in Australia, as well,’ I said. ‘What’s the date on your grandfather’s letter?’

  She picked it up from the desk again. ‘It’s 14th April, just over six weeks ago.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ I said. ‘That’s the day before he came in here to look at his will.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’ she asked. ‘People forgetting what’s in their will?’

  ‘Well, sometimes they think of things afterwards. They can’t remember if they put Cousin Ethel in and they can’t find their copy because they hid it away safely, so they come in and ask. I shouldn’t have thought your grandfather would do that. Apart from the will being so simple, he always struck me as better organised than tha
t.’

  ‘He was,’ she said. ‘It’s not like him at all. He was like an elephant — he never forgot anything. He never mislaid anything, either. He was in local government offices all his life and he was a fanatic about keeping records and keeping things in their proper places.’

  An idea occurred to me. ‘So, if he hadn’t really forgotten,’ I said, ‘then he came in here to talk to me about something he wouldn’t tell Jayne.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ she said.

  ‘The bit about the will was an excuse. He wanted to talk to me, but I was out, so he made an excuse for being here. That’s odd in itself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Jayne may frighten the hell out of me, and she can empty a waiting room full of lager louts with one stamp of her jackboots, but the older clients think she’s wonderful. I wonder why he wouldn’t tell her.’

  Sheila looked at her watch. ‘We’re getting nowhere,’ she said, ‘and I’m taking up your time. Look, I’ve got to fix up to stay somewhere, but when I’ve done that I’m going to stay around a while. Can we come back on this?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, delighted that she was staying, even if only briefly. ‘Look, the Victoria, across the square, is about as good as you’ll find around here. Let me take you across and see you settled in and — if it’s not the wrong time — let me buy you dinner tonight?’

  She smiled, warmly. ‘No, I — it’s not the wrong time at all. I’d be delighted.’

  I try hard to avoid male arrogance, but you need to try harder than that when you sit in the restaurant of the town’s biggest hotel and a head-turningly lovely blonde is escorted to your table. Even more so when the other diners know you, but they’ve never seen her before. Throughout the meal a succession of professional colleagues, professional enemies, and slight acquaintances paused at our table to say hello and be introduced to my guest. To each one I explained Sheila as ‘Dr McKenna, a client from Australia.’

  During a lull in the traffic she said, ‘You seem to be a pretty popular bloke, Chris.’ ‘Don’t you believe it. They’re all going back to their tables and saying to each other, ‘What’s that bloody commie Tyroll doing with a beautiful client from Australia?’’