‘Obviously. What did he tell you that you thought I’d find out? What was important enough to send a young lady thirty miles to wait outside my place on the off-chance I’d call in?’
‘It might not seem important to you.’
Tony grimaced as he brought her a fresh glass. ‘What?’
‘Daddy’s state of mind. What he was thinking at the time. Why he was doing all that. You know.’
‘Why he was doing what?’
‘Oh, you can be stupid when you try. All of it.’ The wine followed the rest. The glass banged down like a signal.
Down in the gaming room they were working up to French. Trois came out as troy.
‘You see,’ I explained, ‘all he was doing was buying a gun. He was a chap you don’t normally associate with guns. It was his first excursion into the underworld, and he was like a traveller in a distant land. Lost. That’s the picture I got. A lost and unhappy man—’
‘Unhappy man?’ she put in sharply.
‘I’d hardly imagine he was happy about it; the circumstances under which he was doing it.’
She bit her lip. ‘No.’
‘So, as I say, a lost and unhappy man.’ She’d known about the circumstances, grown up with them. ‘Fumbling his way along. Having to be shown how to do this and how to do that.’
‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked.
I had. She drew on it.
‘And that’s all it meant to you?’ she asked in scorn.
I managed to meet her eyes levelly. ‘What else is there?’
‘What he said about how far away would it kill a man. Where to aim.’ She had been speaking to Lovejoy.
‘If you intend to kill a man, it’s best to know that sort of thing.’
Now the scorn was rampant contempt. Her voice had a touch of hoarseness in it, where the emotion touched it.
‘You’re a very unintelligent man for an enquiry agent,’ she cried. ‘Anybody else would have realized daddy was lying.’
Troy eased himself on his stool. I glanced round, because the soft buzz of conversation had eased around us.
‘So your father was lying. That’s very interesting. I never guessed. What was he lying about?’
‘Pretending he didn’t know which end was which, that he couldn’t fire the thing. Of course he could. He’d had one of his own for years.’
So there we were. I was supposed to fall off the stool with shock. This was what it had all been about, this urging me on to seek out Lovejoy. So perhaps if I’d been bright—and if I hadn’t already known—I’d have seen that construction in it. But I’m not too bright. She’d had to go to all this trouble getting me to force it out of her.
I don’t register shock too well. I compromised by dropping my cigarette. On the way back up I noticed how delicate her feet were. ‘Had he?’ I said.
It was something she’d secretly cherished for thirteen years, and now its revealing fell flat and empty.
‘I knew he’d got it,’ she said, pouting. ‘He used to take it down into the woods and try it out. I don’t think he could hit a tree, but daddy was like that. It was an adventurous toy. He played with it.’
Her voice was low now. Vibrant. There was complete scorn in it, not now for me, but for her father, a grown but immature man who played with his gun in the woods. She was silent. I prompted her gently.
‘So he knew very well how to re-load it?’
‘Of course he did.’
‘So that all this scene of his with Lovejoy was just a bit of background that he was laying-on, just in case the police came into it later, so that he could play that clever trick of his? No, I couldn’t re-load! No, I didn’t understand it at all!’
‘No, no!’ she hissed at me fiercely, her teeth tight because she was trying to stop herself from shouting. ‘Not for the police. For him. For Paterson.’
It was a pretty piece of work. She wasn’t angry at all. She’d got it round to what she’d been intending, which was to show me why her father had gone to Lovejoy. I was not to consider the fact that Neville Gaines had known, all the while, how to re-load the gun, and the inferences that might grow from that. Poor Gaines had been fighting for his life. After the murder he’d been in shock, but all of a sudden he’d realized we’d only found one gun. He’d caught hold of the idea with both hands. It had been a fine act he had put on, but unfortunately he’d convinced Crowshaw that there had to be two guns, and it was now a sad thought that in this way Gaines had precipitated the whirl of publicity that had ultimately condemned him.
‘For Paterson,’ I agreed. ‘The scene with Lovejoy was for Paterson’s benefit.’
‘Why would daddy want another gun when he already had one? Why would he go to all that absurd trouble to get another one, unless he’d got a special reason? But you can see it.’ She stared at me aggressively. ‘Can’t you? He didn’t want to do anything. It was just a warning.’
‘But he did do something.’
‘Yes, later. Later. When the warning had no effect.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It makes sense. His attitude tipped off Lovejoy that it was something out of the ordinary.’
‘There you are then,’ she said in triumph.
‘Yes, there I am.’
But where the hell was I? She had known that her father owned a gun, and perhaps she could expect me to discover the fact. So she had given me a reason for his obtaining a second gun. Valid, was it? Yes, reasonably. Gaines had clearly been rigging the scene as a warning to Paterson. But was that his only reason for searching out a second gun, when he already had one? There could be another reason, which Karen preferred I shouldn’t find.
‘It’s a pity I had to spell it out for you,’ she said tartly. ‘You’re not very sharp.’
‘Perhaps I’d have got round to it,’ I said. ‘Though possibly not to the fact that your father already owned one. They… we… didn’t ever think either gun was his. The assumption was that he’d gone out and bought two. Two illegal purchases. You must have realized that.’
She’d realized it very well indeed, else why should she now have made such a thing about presenting me with this detail?
‘Of course,’ she said prettily. ‘But I didn’t think it mattered. I was only a little girl then.’
But she thought it mattered now. She did not avoid my eyes, and I thought she was simply being naïve. Then I realized it was something else. She was establishing a lack of interest in Carter Finn.
He had come up behind me silently, and there was just a hint of his after-shave in the air. Probably a club owner shaves in the evenings. I turned. I smiled.
An articulated lorry loaded with scotch stood between us.
‘Nice to see you around,’ he growled. His smile creaked.
‘I came for the drink you owe me.’
‘Owe you?’
‘Four crates,’ I reminded him.
A small flood of colour rose above his collar. His eyes were huge. ‘I don’t get the point.’ His gaze enjoyed the wrappings on my left hand. ‘But you can have your drink. Tony!’
Tony was there already, hovering, putting another glass in front of Karen.
‘Ginger ale,’ I said. ‘I’m driving.’
‘Keeping you busy, is it?’ Finn asked nastily.
‘I’m running up a lot of expenses.’
No expression marred his face. ‘Let me have a list.’
I nodded. Tried the ginger ale. ‘I’ve got a message for you. From Lovejoy.’
He was beside me now. Karen was looking at him with contempt from behind her glass.
‘You met him, I hear.’
‘He wanted it quite clear that it was me dug him out, and not the other way round.’
To me it seemed that the bar had gone quiet. Troy gently pushed one of his three glasses away, slid down to his feet, and shrugged his shoulders more firmly under the pads.
‘All I don’t get is how you found him,’ Finn said.
I wasn’t going to say anything. To s
how how relaxed I was, I took my glass up again and added a little more to my abstinence. It was because of the glass in one hand and the wrappings on the other that I couldn’t prevent what happened.
Karen spoke softly. ‘It was me who told him where to go.’
His lips went back. ‘You interfering little bitch!’ Then his right hand lashed his knuckles across her face.
She swayed back on the stool, made no sound but a surprised whimper, then came forward with her teeth showing and her eyes blazing, and he got the rest of her wine in his face. Then with a whirl she’d got the glass clenched high in her tiny fist and it was on its way down to smash into his eyes. His left hand met her wrist and trapped it. I heard her quick, hissing intake of breath, and his right hand swung back for a blow which could have cut open her face.
But Troy was there. He plucked Finn’s poised hand out of the air and held it rigid.
‘Easy boss, easy,’ he said gently.
Finn turned his face slowly to Troy. I barely heard what he said, but the tone cut like an icy draught.
‘Take your hands off me.’
Troy writhed his cut lip into a smile. ‘Drop it, Karen,’ he said, and she opened her fingers. The glass tinkled down to the floor. A tiny trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Troy stepped back. Finn shook himself as though he’d just walked through a waterfall.
Then Myra’s voice clipped in. ‘Carter!’ It came from behind us, and I turned to face her.
She had just come through the curtains and was moving rapidly towards us. It was so quiet that you could hear the disturbed air from the hem of her long evening dress. Myra was white. Her lips seemed dark. The brooch sparkled at the breast of her cornflower dress.
‘Carter,’ she snapped, ‘how dare you!’
He told her with a harsh voice. ‘I dare because she’s had the impertinence to interfere.’
She stood in front of him, shaking. ‘I told you never to touch her.’
‘I’ll kill her if she does it again.’
‘You’ll do as I say,’ she told him, and for one moment I thought her long, delicate fingers were going to fly for his eyes. ‘Don’t touch her again, Ever.’
And there, in that company, in his own club, Finn could think of nothing to say. To do, yes, perhaps. I watched his right hand curl into a hard knot of fist. But he did not dare to use it. Not there. I saw the impotent fury rise into his eyes, and he was out of control. All he could do was turn away from it. He did so, then abruptly he whirled back, his fingers clawing.
‘And take that thing off!’ he snarled.
His fingers closed over the brooch, and jerked. But this time it did not come away. There was a tearing sound and the dress went from neck to waist. He’d got the brooch all right. He’d also got a yard of cornflower material. Then, ridiculously trailing it from his right hand, he stormed off into his office.
Myra was wearing nothing underneath. In the shock of it, she made no attempt to cover herself.
‘Mother!’ Karen screamed.
She was off her stool like a wild little terrier and heading after Finn. Myra said quite softly, ‘No, Karen,’ but I don’t think it would have stopped her. Troy caught her by both shoulders, shaking his head. For a minute she fought his strength, then she went limp, hanging her head.
Myra clasped what was left of her dress across her naked bosom, and with challenging dignity swept down into the gaming room and across to the private door. When I turned from watching her, Troy was dabbing gently at Karen’s lips with one of his paper handkerchiefs and whispering to her.
I finished my ginger ale and headed for the phone booth.
It was half past ten, and Freer had gone home. But he’d left a message that if Mallin phoned he should be put through to the lab.
‘Mr Mallin? Mr Freer left a message—’
‘I know. What’d you find?’
‘It’s a Colt thirty-eight, around 1940 manufacture. It’s pretty badly rusted. Three shots fired.’
‘And had it jammed?’
‘Nothing we can detect. The safety catch was off, and there was no reason it wouldn’t go on firing.’
I told him thank you very much, and that it was very interesting.
Everything was quiet in the bar. Presumably Finn would be fuming in his office. Troy wasn’t around, and neither was Karen. There was nothing to keep me there, so I left, said good night to Feeney, and climbed into the Porsche.
It was fifteen minutes to West Lees Farm, which made it around eleven when I got there. The night had deteriorated into something dreadful, and I had every reason to expect that any self-respecting farmer would have retired for the night. At any rate, his bailiff should, assuming he’d be up with the dawn, ploughing and scattering and the like.
Drover lived in a cottage half-way up Crowshaw’s drive. There was a light in the front window. I got out. He opened the front door with a grating sound. When I got inside I saw the place was old, but not ancient enough to rate ceiling beams.
The front door opened directly into his living-room, which was a big, square room with two small windows and one of those old black ranges in an outer wall. He had a good fire going, and had been watching his television. Just inside the door he had a very fine glass-fronted case containing about a dozen sporting guns. There were two easy chairs in decrepit, beaten leather standing on one of those rugs they used to make with cut strips of cloth.
He’d got one low table in there, with on it a tray with an empty coffee pot and the crumbs of his sandwiches.
‘I could make some more coffee,’ he suggested.
He wandered through into his kitchen, and I drifted after him. Here it was really old, and tiny. One corner had a built-in square block of brickwork, which was a boiler, if you cared to stoke it up. The sink was low and earthenware, and, like Paul, he had only one tap. He’d got a modern cooker, though, and he’d squeezed a refrigerator into a corner.
‘I thought it was time we had a chat,’ I said.
He was percolating the coffee. ‘A little late.’
‘I’m sorry. It was difficult to fit in. I had to chase Lovejoy to Nottingham.’
He didn’t react to the name. ‘It’s taken thirteen years.’
‘For somebody to get round to it?’
He was silent for a moment, then he began digging out fresh cups and saucers from his narrow kitchen cupboard.
‘We’re a quiet lot in the country, Mr Mallin. We notice things, but we don’t go running with our mouths open wide. We sit and wait. Sometimes somebody comes along and asks questions. Then we say. If people ask. Do you fancy a piece of cake? Home-made.’
I said I’d like a piece of cake. He was a handy, self-contained man.
We took the tray back into the living-room. He poked a long, thin poker between the bars of the fire, and sparks whipped up the chimney.
I said: ‘I asked Lovejoy how he knew you. He said I’d better ask. I came round to do that.’
‘He’s a delicate lad. He didn’t want to land me in any trouble.’
I accepted the coffee. The cake was on a little plate on my right knee. I was going to be in difficulties.
‘Would there be trouble?’
Little wrinkles grew in the corners of his eyes. ‘Not now. Nothing I’m ashamed of, you could say.’
‘So you did know him?’
He moved the low table across, so that I could get both the cup and the plate on it.
‘There was a chap I used to know called Hutchinson.’
‘Hutchinson?’ I said it in quite a normal voice.
‘A policeman from the next village. It’s all right to tell you now, because they kind of retired him early. Can’t tell you where he’s got to, though.’
‘I can. He’s dead. Six months ago. It was suicide.’
‘Ah, yes. He was a rather unstable chap. Anyway…’
They hadn’t been very close; there’d been very little regret in those sharp, understanding eyes.
‘Anyway,�
� he said, ‘this Hutchinson and me, we’d sort of meet from time to time, and things got a bit friendly. You know. This wasn’t his territory but he’d come over, and we’d take a couple of guns out, if we felt like it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then one day he said he’d got a chap coming over from Birmingham and he couldn’t very well put him up at that station, and could I put him up here.’
‘That didn’t strike you as strange?’
‘Of course it did. But ask no questions and you don’t get worried. I said yes. Curious, you see.’
I saw. The cake was fine, the coffee excellent. ‘And this was Lovejoy?’
‘Lovejoy, yes. About thirty he’d be, then. A queer type, I thought, but he was friendly enough, and chatty. We got on fine. He admired my guns. I’ve got a Purdy in there he drooled over. Oh, he knew guns, and pistols, and rifles.’
That was Lovejoy. ‘And how long did he stay?’
‘A couple of nights. He went missing in the evenings. Then he visited again about a year later.’
‘And you never found out what was going on?’
‘I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. But I saw him and Hutchinson and two more chaps in the Black Swan, and they looked pretty rough types to me.’
Freer had been right, and Crowshaw had been right. Hutchinson had been bent, right enough. The miracle of it was that he hadn’t automatically drifted into crime when he was dismissed. Perhaps, out of the force, he was no further use.
‘So by that time,’ I suggested, ‘you had a pretty good idea that Lovejoy’s business wasn’t legal, and that it involved the sale of weapons.’
He chuckled. ‘I knew damn well.’
‘So that when Neville Gaines asked you, you knew just where to send him?’
‘You make it sound as though Mr Gaines came running, and said where could he get hold of a gun. That’s not very likely, is it?’
It hadn’t seemed likely at all, and I’d been worrying about it. ‘Then tell me what is.’
‘You’ve got to understand about Mr Paterson,’ he said. I nodded. ‘He’d had the place since his father died. I worked for his father, right from the time I left school, and I admired him. Mr Andy was a different thing altogether. Not interested in farming, you understand.’
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