‘And what security would I have had then to make them pay for the use of my field?’ he demanded. ‘Look, Mr Tyroll, I know who your clients are. They’re a bunch of bloody hame-filers and snaffle-bangers. They can give themselves airs by buying cheap ponies for their kids, but when it comes down to it, they haven’t got a spare penny. I wanted to secure my grazing rent, so I took the animals. Are you trying to tell me that I can’t seize the ponies for debt?’
‘No,’ I said, and by now my teeth were permanently gritted. ‘I’m just saying that it was unnecessary. You might have tried trusting my clients.’
He gave a quick barking laugh. ‘Trusted them, eh?’ he said. ‘I didn’t build the Maiden Group by trusting people.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘You had the right to seize the animals if you chose to do so, but it didn’t have to cost as much as you claim. They’re only two little girls’ ponies, after all, not two wild stallions. One man and a truck could have done it easily.’
‘I had to call for volunteers,’ he said, ‘and I had to warn them of the dangers...’
‘Dangers?’ I cut in. ‘The dangers of rounding up two ponies in a little field?’
‘If you’d ever had a horse’s hoof in your bollocks, you’d know about the dangers,’ he said. ‘One of my lads might have got maimed. As to the cost, I had to use the people who volunteered and that’s who they were. I couldn’t pay them less than I’d have paid them for doing their own job on a Sunday afternoon.’
‘You have an obligation at law to mitigate your loss,’ I said.
He snorted. ‘Mitigate my loss? What’s that supposed to mean? I wondered when we’d get down to the legal argy-bargy.’
‘It means,’ I said, ‘that you can’t claim unnecessary expense against my clients. A court won’t allow it.’
‘It ay going to go into any court,’ he said. ‘I told you — I know about Samson and his mates. They ay got the kind of cash as can go up against me, have they? The three of them ay got a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of. They’ve got two choices — they can pay up and have their ponies back, or they can argue. If they argue, I’ll sell the bloody ponies for dogsmeat.’
‘I’m sure my client’s daughter and her friend will be delighted to hear that,’ I said.
‘Oh, don’t you try and turn the sentiment on,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a daughter and she rides. More than a bit, she’s a champion in the showring, but every one of her horses she’s paid for — even the first. She worked odd jobs and saved her money when she was at school to buy her first pony. You tell your Samson and his snaffle-bangers as they can pay my bill in full or I’ll send the ponies back in cans and they can buy their lasses a pup each.’
With which kindly thought he put the phone down on me.
I was just about to hurl Stone’s “Justices’ Manual” out of the window, volume by volume, when the door opened and the smiling face of my assistant, Alasdair Thayne, looked in.
‘You’re back,’ I said, gracelessly.
‘As you see,’ he said. ‘Fit as a fiddle and raring to go. Do I take it you’re not having a good morning, governor?’
‘Have you ever come across Dennis Maiden?’ I asked.
‘Dennis Maiden? The Maiden Group? Building, haulage, vehicle hire and all that? The bloke who’s always giving money to local charities?’
‘The very same,’ I said, ‘except that the arrogant, miserable bastard hasn’t got a single charitable cell in his wretched body.’
‘You lost the argument?’ he said.
‘I’m used to rich and powerful people going about treading on people and doing what they please,’ I said, ‘but this one rubs your face in it. He’s just told me that he can do what he likes because our clients haven’t got enough money to stop him.’
‘Then you want some law,’ he said.
‘Law?’ I said. ‘If you can find me a piece of law that says I can have Dennis bloody Maiden put in the stocks and whipped by the Parish Clerk six times a day, I’ll do it.’
He shook his head. ‘No stocks left,’ he said.
‘Oh yes there are — in the museum. You find me the law and I’ll personally pay for a replica — with spikes.’
He nodded thoughtfully and left without a word.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It did not get better. The day clouded over, the rain started to fall and every idiot and nuisance on my files decided to call me. At five o’clock I called it a day, rang for a cab and went home.
Sheila must be psychic. Despite the fact that it was my turn in the kitchen, she welcomed me with food, coffee, alcohol, and only the most minimal conversation until I had eaten, drunk and unwound.
‘I am going,’ I announced eventually, ‘to pass this evening watching telly. If a client rings in deep distress or dire peril, tell them that I’m out, ill, in jail, dead or whatever.’
I picked up the local paper to look for the TV schedule. Kath McBride’s face, made paler and wider as news photos do, stared solemnly at me from the front page, alongside a headline that said, “Phone Fiend Harasses Grieving Mum”.
I swore and read the accompanying story. It told me nothing I didn’t know, merely recited the tale of the mystery phone calls. It referred to Sean as, “her 18-year-old son, who sadly committed suicide in a fume-filled garage only weeks ago”.
I passed the paper to Sheila and picked up the phone to ring Kath. As soon as she heard me she became apologetic.
‘I know what you’re going to say, Mr Tyroll,’ she said. ‘I didn’t put it in the paper, well, not deliberately.’
‘How did it get in there, then?’
‘I was talking to this fellow at the Club last night. Really sympathetic, he seemed, but it turned out he was a reporter. Has it done any harm?’
‘If Charlie Nesbit was making those calls, that story may make him duck and hide. In fact, whoever was making them may do the same. I think I’d better go and see Charlie before he disappears. What’s his address?’
She gave me the address — not far from the garage where Sean had died — and I rang off. Sheila was picking up her handbag.
‘Want a chauffeur?’
‘If you’re up for it. Here comes the rotten end of a rotten day.’
The “place” in the address Kath had given me was what used to be called a “close” because it had a dead end. Blocking that end was a square, redbrick building with a concrete balcony along its front and a stairway at the lefthand end. I wondered if le Corbusier would have bothered if he could have known where minimalism and functionalism would take modern architecture. Kath had said that Nesbit’s flat was on the ground floor at the back. We left the car and followed a concrete path around the side of the block. It turned across the rear of the building, flanking a grey, dusty patch of yard, ornamented with steel clothes-line posts and plastic wheelie bins. Three doors painted in sunfaded Municipal Green and three small kitchen windows looked out on to the yard. Nesbit’s door was the far one.
I rang the bell vigorously, hearing no ringing from inside and wondering whether it was working. Whichever, it produced no response. I rattled the flap of the letter-box loudly with equally little result. At last I tried the door and found it was unlocked.
I always hate this bit. The law says that anyone can come to your door, knock on it or ring your bell, for any legitimate reason. If they don’t have legal authority to be there, you can always tell them to “Bugger off” and they must comply. If you don’t answer the door and it isn’t locked, that isn’t an invitation to enter. The moment you do that, you’re trespassing and the penalty will depend on why you’re trespassing.
I stepped inside cautiously, calling Nesbit’s name and motioning to Sheila to stay on the doorstep. There was no hall, the front door opened straight into a sitting room and a small kitchen opened on the left. The room was lit by a window at the far side, alongside which another door led, presumably to the bedroom and bathroom. The room smelt of stale smoke, food and socks.
Sheila followed me in and sniffed the air. ‘Strewth!’ she said, ‘Eau de bachelor — industrial strength!’
I called a couple more times, while I surveyed the sitting room. Two walls were shelved and the shelves untidily crammed with paperback books and records. An old-fashioned hi-fi stood beneath the shelves and a large colour TV with a cheap video-recorder alongside it. An acoustic guitar and a tenor banjo were propped in a corner.
There was still no response to my calls, so I stepped through the far door. A small hall gave access to a bedroom on the left and the bathroom to the right. An open door showed that the bedroom held only an unmade double bed and a cluttered dressing table. The bathroom door was shut.
I hate this bit, too. Last time I stepped into a stranger’s bathroom, I found him hanging from the shower-head. I tapped the bathroom door, called Nesbit’s name again, then went in.
A slim young man clad in grubby denims was doubled over the side of the bath, his head and his left arm inside it. His right hand trailed on the bath mat and close to it lay a small automatic pistol. If this was Charlie Nesbit, a single shot had passed through his head and he was very dead.
Sheila was examining the records when I returned to the sitting room. She turned to show me a 78 rpm disc in a heavy cardboard sleeve. The punched-out sleeve centre showed the label — ‘Bridget Reilly — She Moved Thro’ The Fair.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘but that isn’t the problem any more.’
She noted my face. ‘He’s dead,’ she guessed.
I nodded. ‘Have you got your mobile phone?’
She took it from her shoulder-bag and handed it over.
‘While I phone the police,’ I said, ‘fetch the camera from the glove compartment.’
‘The fuzz’ll photograph it,’ she said.
‘Yes, but they won’t give them to me, so we might as well take advantage. Just don’t touch anything more.’
I didn’t call 999. I rang John Parry’s mobile. He answered quickly.
‘John? Chris Tyroll. Are you on duty? Good. Sheila and I have run into a spot of police business in Wheatstone Place.’
‘What sort of police business? Not another corpse?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, yes.’
There was a muffled explosion of oaths in Welsh and English at the other end, ending in ‘...attract them like flies to bloody jam.’ Then, ‘Indoors or outdoors?’
I explained the situation in outline. ‘Right!’ he said, ‘Get out and sit in the car. Don’t touch anything in the flat or I’ll kill you. Don’t even breathe until you’re out of the door. I’ll be right there.’
He wasn’t quite ‘right there.’ He left me ample time to photograph the whole interior of Nesbit’s flat before I retired to the car.
Sheila and I were sitting silent in the car when two police cars hurtled into the close and drew up in front of the block. Inspector Parry unwound himself from the front of one, making a beeline for us and motioning his colleagues to make for Nesbit’s flat. He let himself into Sheila’s car and settled in the rear seat.
‘Right!’ he said, ‘What unlikely excuse have you got this time for finding another stiff on my patch?’
I expanded the brief story I had given him on the phone, and he listened quietly, nodding occasionally.
‘And what’s this one, then? Suicide or murder?’ he asked when I had finished.
I shook my head. ‘Suicide seems the obvious explanation.’
‘Why?’ he demanded.
‘Because he saw the story in tonight’s paper.’
‘Why would that drive him to suicide?’
‘He seemed to have some kind of secret knowledge of Sean McBride’s death,’ I said. ‘Or else why the phone calls? If that was very guilty knowledge, he wouldn’t want the press drawing attention to it.’
‘Are you saying that Nesbit may have killed his mate?”
‘I’m saying that I am now entirely convinced that Sean McBride did not commit suicide. If Sean was killed, then someone did it and that someone could reasonably have been Charlie Nesbit. After all, it’s usually friends and relatives who murder people.’
He nodded. ‘If you have to find a dead body, Chris, and it seems you can’t stop yourself from finding them, do you think you could have found a nice, straightforward suicide, not a possible suicide linked to a suicide that probably wasn’t and might have been a murder?’
‘Sorry. I just can’t bear to think of you getting bored.’
He opened a door and heaved himself out of the car. ‘This’ll cost you,’ he said. ‘Don’t go to bed early. I’ll be round for supper.’
As we pulled away I gave Sheila Kath McBride’s address. ‘We’d better go and give her the bad news,’ I said, ‘before she reads it in the papers.’
Kath was at home in front of the telly. In the dining room her daughter was hunched over the table with a display of homework. Kath saw my face and shut the dining room door.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Charlie,’ I said. ‘What does he look like?’
‘He’s a thin lad, really skinny, with auburn hair.’
‘Then I’m sorry to tell you he’s dead,’ I said.
Both of her fists came up clenched and her pale face turned paler. ‘Oh no!’ she gasped. ‘Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!’
Sheila took her by the shoulders and lowered her into a chair, then disappeared towards the kitchen. I lowered myself onto a couch and sat helplessly, while Kath bent her head and beat her clenched fists against her knees.
At last she looked up, tears streaming down her face. ‘I did it!’ she declared. ‘I did it, with my big mouth. The people who killed Sean have killed poor little Charlie now.’
I shook my head. ‘You didn’t do it,’ I said. ‘It looks as if it’s either suicide or murder. Very probably suicide. Did Charlie own a gun, do you know?’
She stared at me, blankly. ‘A gun?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. What would he want with a gun? What sort of a gun?’
‘A small automatic pistol,’ I said.
‘I never saw him with one and Sean never said anything, but Charlie was a funny one. He made his money ducking and diving, selling a bit of pot and that. Maybe he did have a gun, I don’t know.’
Sheila came back with a tray of tea mugs and Kath stirred herself to fetch a bottle from a cabinet and gave each of us a generous splash in the tea. Then we sat silent again and drank our tea.
At length Kath wiped her eyes and looked at us. ‘This is the most terrible thing,’ she said. ‘As if my Sean wasn’t enough, now it’s his poor mate. Who’s done it, Mr Tyroll? Who’s done it?’
‘I’ve had a long talk with Macintyre, the pathologist,’ I said. ‘He agrees that Sean’s death wasn’t suicide.’
Kath’s eyes widened. ‘He says it wasn’t suicide!’ she exclaimed. ‘So he agrees it was murder?’
‘No, no. You’re going too fast. He is sure it wasn’t suicide, but he can’t rule out some kind of accident.’
Her face fell again. ‘It was no accident,’ she said stubbornly.
‘Kath,’ I said, ‘I know Charlie’s death has made things worse for you, but it has caused one advantage.’
‘What’s that?’ she demanded suspiciously.
‘The police will now connect Charlie’s death to Sean’s.’
‘Why would they do that?’ she said. ‘They always go the soft, easy way.’
‘They’ll do that,’ I said, ‘because I have pointed them in that direction already.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but they’ll say, “Ah, the Coroner said suicide, so it must have been”.’
‘Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but the officer in Charlie’s case is Detective Inspector Parry. John Parry likes to do his job thoroughly, and he’ll be looking at both deaths now, which makes things a lot easier.’
‘And if he thought there was something wrong about Sean’s death, he’d do something about it?’
she asked, with understandable suspicion.
‘Yes, Kath. He would, and it would be easier for him to get the Inquest re-opened than it would be for us, so keep your fingers crossed.’
I was ready to leave, but Sheila was looking about her.
‘Kath,’ she said, ‘have you cleared Sean’s things? Is his room still the way he kept it?’
Kath nodded. ‘It is,’ she said. ‘I cannot bring meself to do anything about it. If you want to see it, it’s the one opposite the stair-top. I won’t come up with you, but you’re welcome.’
Sheila glanced at me and got up. I followed her upstairs.
Sean’s room was an ordinary, squarish, council-flat bedroom, furnished with a single divan bed, a cabinet, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. A stereo radio-cassette stood on the floor by the bed and an acoustic guitar hung on a wall. A half-filled holdall lay on the bed. The bag he had been taking away with him. A Chinon camera with a built-in zoom lay on the chest of drawers.
The only striking feature of the room was the photos, which covered every available wallspace, blu-tacked in rows and columns. Colour pictures of Sean and his pals at every kind of event over the past ten years. In many of the more recent was a girl with a pale, oval face, wide dark eyes and long black hair. In all of them Sean looked cheerful. In the ones with the girl, he looked happy. None of them looked like a potential suicide, but then, nor did Charlie Nesbit who was in many of them. Some of the photos showed just three people — Sean and the girl and Charlie. All relaxed, smiling, laughing. And now two were dead.
We checked the wardrobe and the drawers, but found nothing unusual. Sean McBride had lived an ordinary life. Maybe he had died an ordinary — accidental — death. Downstairs again we found that Tracy Walton had arrived and was sitting with Kath McBride. We explained the situation to her and she shook her head silently, then showed us out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
John Parry was as good as his word. He turned up for supper, looking less than his usual cheerful self. We let him eat before the questions started.
Crowner and Justice Page 6