Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1)

by Ormerod, Roger

  ‘No. It probably surprised him when it happened, but he’d established five different collectors, all eagerly snapping up Graham Tonkin’s paintings. The word would get round. Graham became collectable. These would be people buying on the prospect of appreciation in value. No feeling for the works themselves. They weren’t any better paintings than the earlier ones, only in so far as his experience would naturally grow, but suddenly, paintings that would’ve sold with difficulty for fifty quid were going for five hundred, a thousand, and more than that at the end. And Graham, who’d already laundered most of his £50,000, just sat back and let it roll in. Isn’t that simply splendid, Oliver?’

  He stirred his final cup of tea thoughtfully. ‘But it doesn’t alter one tiny bit the fact that there is money, and quite a lot, which makes a very good motive for murder in anybody’s reckoning.’

  ‘You don’t think your kind Mr Grossman would be interested in all this?’

  ‘I’m sure he would. Fascinated, in fact. The fact that the money could be legitimate would make it all the better.’

  ‘Not all of it. I’ll owe, when I see any money, £50,000 plus interest to Fellowes and Simple.’

  ‘Yes. But the balance… Superintendent Goodman will be delighted to hear that if he can get a trial and secure a guilty verdict, he’ll be robbing you of legitimate wealth. You would not be entitled to money gained by murder, my love.’

  He’d said that with a straight face. The fact that he’d added ‘my love’ at the end in no way softened the impact.

  ‘As they say: smile when you say that. You’re not smiling, Oliver Simpson.’

  ‘Because, you see,’ he went on, reaching over and clasping his hand over mine, ‘it’s serious. All right, his theories might be a bit wild, but he’s digging his heels in. Polishing here, pruning there. Making a case, Phil, and against you. It’s not a happy thought. It could become very uncomfortable, and you must understand I have to do exactly what he instructs me to do.’

  ‘If necessary, to arrest me?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘If that was his instruction. Warn, charge and arrest. Do you imagine I’d enjoy it?’

  I didn’t reply. Couldn’t think what to say.

  All the way back he didn’t stop talking on safe topics, which suited me fine because I wanted to think. Every now and then I tuned in long enough to interject a yes or a no, as seemed appropriate. When he drew up in front of The Carlton, I asked him whether he wanted to take the briefcase with him. Hoping he’d come up to my room, hoping…hell, I don’t know.

  ‘I’d better get along to my office,’ he said. ‘I’ll send Jennie round for it.’ Unfeeling, that was Oliver. No imagination.

  Once up in my room, I realized I now couldn’t very well leave it. I stared impatiently from the window. Taking her time, wasn’t she? I wondered whether I dared nip across to Nel’s room. He couldn’t be in, though, otherwise I’d have got his tap and his, ‘kiddo’.

  Then, when I did get a tap and called out to come in, it was Jennie Lyons. I’d seen no car draw up outside, so she must have walked. Strange. One tends, these days, to forget they ever walked their patrols.

  ‘He says there’s something to pick up,’ she said brightly.

  ‘It’s on the bed. The briefcase. The Inspector knows what it’s all about.’

  ‘So I gather. He’s been out on his investigations.’ Her smile was lop-sided.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Better just check it out. While you’re doing that I’ll pop across the way. My partner…you’ve met him… I reckon he must be sulking.’

  Before she had time to agree I was out in the corridor. Nel never locked his door when he was inside, assuming other people would wander in as casually as he did himself. But I knocked. I called out, ‘Nel, are you decent?’ So that he’d hear it as a joke, know he was forgiven, and all was as it had been.

  I walked in. All was not as it’d been. He was lying half across his bed, and at first I thought he’d drunk himself into a stupor, then when I said his name again and moved closer, I saw that there was something unnatural in his position, something not sustainable even in an unconscious state.

  There was a black, bloody mess where his right eye had been. Not much blood. Enough. Beside him was his ridiculous camera case, flung on the bed with its back open. Room enough for two of those silly little pop-guns inside. There had been two. The second one now lay on the floor at his feet.

  He had brought two, my mind continued logically, reasonably. One for him, one for me. Did he expect we’d roam the countryside, shooting our way to the truth? The British version of Bonnie and Clyde. Bessie and Claude. Had he expected, I amended in my mind, because everything was now in the past and Nel was dead.

  Then it all flew apart and I was screaming, fingers pressed over my face and screaming through them. Standing there and…

  ‘What is it?’

  Jennie had my arm, shaking me, forcing me to turn so that she could see the bed.

  ‘Out,’ she said. ‘Out of here. Back to your room. Be quiet! D’you hear? Quiet!’

  I sobbed myself to silence and stumbled with her back to my room. I sat on the bed, nodding in agreement when she snatched the phone and called for assistance. Yes, yes, that was what she must do. We wanted assistance. I wanted…oh God, but he was dead.

  She came back from the bathroom with a glass of water and a wet, cold towel. I drank, wiped my face, and found myself chewing a corner of the towel. She sat and held me upright. ‘They’ll be here in a minute.’ Already I could hear somebody out there. Pounding feet. She got up quickly and went outside, and I could hear her voice authoritatively clearing them away. Staff and residents. Who’d been screaming? I’d been screaming, that’s who, and still was, inside. She stayed out there, guarding.

  The next time it was Oliver who came in. He didn’t ask me what had happened, just asked was I all right. I nodded, and mumbled something.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We had a row. I said nasty things. He must have —’

  He cut me short. ‘We’ll see. Here’s Jennie now. She’ll look after you.’

  Jennie was very good. Give her that. I supposed she’d had practice at it. She rang down for brandy, and I sipped it, feeling it stirring my brain, re-assembling it to more or less its normal organization. I found myself talking. Jennie listened. She was good at that.

  ‘We had this row, see. Me an’ Nel. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He’s a fool, you know, a great idiot, and he never knows when he goes too far. Always does it. We’d have made it up. Rows before, but we always forgot ’em. But I… I was so furious. So very, very angry with him. And I didn’t know he’d got another one. Those stupid little guns! That was one of his funnies. You’d got to know Nel. Took some getting used to, he did. I mean he was fun, fun, fun…’ And there it all went incoherent again.

  We seemed to be waiting there for hours. I must have talked all the while, or maybe I dozed off. I don’t know. I don’t remember Jennie saying anything. Then at last Oliver came in, raising his eyebrows at Jennie and waiting for her to nod before he approached me. Infuriating. Treating me like a time bomb that had to be defused. At his shoulder appeared Grossman, looking heavily grave.

  Oliver said, ‘Did you know about the other gun, Philipa?’

  ‘No. I told Jennie that. I didn’t know. If I had…oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think he’d take his own life. The very last thing… I blame myself. I didn’t think. He’s always bounced back. But I went too far.’

  ‘Miss Lowe,’ put in Grossman. ‘Please. May I say something?’

  Could he? He was actually asking my permission. I nodded, my lower lip between my teeth.

  ‘You’re assuming he took his own life,’ he said. I raised my eyes to look directly at him, his voice had been so soft, and I saw his expression was of sympathy. ‘It is not so, and you’re not to blame yourself. Already we know that much. There are no fingerprints on the gun. It’s been wiped clean.’ Then, in case I didn’t under
stand, he went on kindly. ‘He couldn’t have done that himself, and Miss Lowe, they never shoot themselves in the eye. Never.’

  The eye is one of those special spots where a gun that size can be lethal. Someone other than Nel might have known that.

  ‘You’re sure?’ I ventured.

  ‘It’s not,’ he said, ‘natural.’

  As though taking your own life could be in any way natural!

  ‘We didn’t want you to be thinking those thoughts,’ said Oliver. Then they turned and went out again.

  It was a small, very small, comfort, that I’d not been responsible for Nel’s death. In contrast to my previous self chastisement, which had almost had me bleeding inside, it was a vast, uplifting relief. It very nearly overcame the distress that I was feeling that Nel was dead, my partner was no longer there, to be consulted and planned with…and Marietta! I’d forgotten her. She had to be told.

  ‘I must make a phone call,’ I said. What time was it? Seven. Three o’clock there. She’d be at her desk.

  ‘Who to?’ Jennie asked.

  ‘They’ll have to know. The office in New York.’

  ‘Not now, I think,’ she said. ‘Not now. Really.’

  She was right, of course. It could wait. But I felt restless, my nerves driving me. I got to my feet and walked around. Jennie watched me.

  ‘I suppose you’re used to this,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not New York, you know. We don’t get many shootings. Shotguns sometimes. Accidents. They wave them around. No, I’m not used to it.’

  ‘You’re so calm!’

  ‘No. I’m all shaking inside, and I feel sick. I try not to show it, in front of the men.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I found a smile. ‘And they try not to show it in front of the women. It’s a good argument for a mixed force. It leads to firmer resolution.’

  She laughed lightly. ‘You’re feeling better, I see.’

  ‘Yes. Boiling inside. Furious. But better. Why are they taking so long?’

  ‘Waiting for the Scene of Crimes Officer to take over. He’s got to come from HQ. Then they can get away and leave him in charge.’

  ‘They’ll get him, d’you think? The man who did this.’

  ‘Or woman.’ She nodded. ‘They haven’t got the one who killed your husband, nor the one who did the quarry killing — if it was.’

  ‘They’re all connected, you think? Damn it, I’m stupid. They have to be.’

  Shortly after, Oliver was free, and Jennie went away with Grossman. Oliver walked all round me, as though wondering where to start on cleaning up a statue.

  ‘You can ask me, you know,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whether I’m holding together.’

  ‘You seem very resilient, Phil. I don’t need to ask. Shall we go down to dinner?’

  ‘I couldn’t swallow a bite.’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘I couldn’t…’

  And so on, down to the dining room, where we were early. I was suddenly very hungry indeed. And hungry for action.

  ‘Any clues, Oliver?’

  ‘It’s a police matter. And no, nothing so far. Early days, though.’

  ‘Really, Oliver? It’s been going on too long already.’

  As he couldn’t deny this, he continued silently with his meal. At last he conceded one tiny atom of information. Or uninformation.

  ‘We don’t know yet when he died.’

  I thought about that. ‘You mean — before or after you came to pick me up?’

  ‘The Super has that in mind.’

  ‘And there I was, thinking how kind he was being.’

  He said nothing. I stared at my plate. It had all started again.

  15

  After the meal he had to leave me. He took me up to my room like a little gentleman, but left me there. And abruptly now, in the empty silence of the room, the loss of Nel was a stunning blow. I was alone, miserable, and with no one to turn to. I could go out and walk the streets, no doubt discover a cinema or bingo hall or disco. And go completely raving mad.

  I was enwrapped in a heavy blanket of doom. If I lifted my face free of its folds there was nothing to see but blank despair. If I freed my feet from it, I couldn’t walk a dozen yards without tripping over distress. It was there in the room with me, and I hated it. Hated it.

  Why was it that nothing pleasant was in sight? The horizon in all directions was flat and bleak, with not a ray of sunshine. I needed something enjoyable for a change, if only to revive a belief in the existence of humanity, as opposed to inhumanity. I had to see, arising from the destruction, a face smiling with uncomplicated pleasure. And suddenly I knew where to find one.

  Anna! I would visit Anna.

  After all, I had not yet had the opportunity to thank her for driving to get help. She’d broken a wrist, they’d said. She would be in pain, poor girl. It was likely that she, too, would need cheering up, and now I had something to tell her. I would go and give her the news that Graham’s paintings were now worth a lot of money, without revealing, of course, that I knew she had some of them hidden away. And the cottage — it would be hers. We might discuss that. Whatever happened, I was determined that it should be hers. And cheered up she would be.

  I admit that this was a purely selfish idea. After all, I would enjoy myself immensely.

  Back into slacks and the anorak. Just the process of changing lightened my mood. I went to get the car. I wasn’t going out of the district, was I? In any event, surely they would no longer need to keep me under surveillance.

  I therefore drove to the cottage with a light heart. The evening was clear and bright — the first time I’d seen the stars since I’d been there. You never see stars over New York, because of the reflected sky-glow. Nel would’ve been…stop that! Don’t think of that.

  The lane was still terribly muddy. It would take a month of dry days to harden it up, I knew from experience. My hare wasn’t around. This was only a tiny deduction from the pleasure-rating of the trip, though. I hurried to confront the major part of it.

  There were lights on in the cottage. This removed a secondary fear that Anna might have gone home with her family. I could walk confidently to the door, assembling my expression as I went.

  I knocked. Silence. But this was the country, with barely any necessity to lock your door. I turned the door-knob, and wasn’t surprised that I could walk directly into the hall.

  ‘Anna? It’s me. Philipa.’

  I pushed open the living room door and walked in.

  Anna lifted her head. She was lying on the rug in front of the fire with her head resting back against the chair. She moved her lips to say something, but I’d already turned to run, because I knew I’d done it again; walked in where I wasn’t wanted and didn’t want to be.

  Fellowes had been standing against the wall beside the doorway. I’d almost brushed against him coming in. I stopped. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to because his huge hand was clasped around a revolver, which looked small amongst all that flesh but was clearly very much larger than Nel’s. A pistol! In England! Ridiculous. Where could he have obtained a pistol? But — no arguing about it — it was a pistol and it looked real.

  I backed away from him, turning to Anna. Now her attitude, her almost complete lack of movement, were both explained. He had used the pistol already. On Anna. Her right wrist, which had the plaster cast on, was twisted unnaturally. He’d broken it again. The livid bruises on the side of her face, her bruised and split lips, these, too, had felt that pistol.

  In sudden vicious fury I turned back on him. He made no sound, simply swung the gun at my face, back-handedly. I flung up my arm and felt the blow, the flare of pain. It was fortunate that the anorak was padded. For a moment my hand and arm were numb, but then I found I could flex my fingers. Nothing broken. I stepped back, watching him carefully, the manic fury inside me settling down to a steady hatred. My legs didn’t feel as though they belonged, and I wanted abov
e all things to sit down. But the hatred steadied me.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. I turned my head. Maguire was coming down, talking before his head was revealed.

  ‘Nothing up there. I’ve been up to the loft, too. Ah…’ He’d seen me. ‘Company! How very pleasant.’

  Ignoring him, I fell on one knee beside Anna. She was conscious, and I was able to move her into a more comfortable position. She mumbled something. I wasn’t sure what it was.

  I straightened. They were standing side by side. Maguire was the spokesman. ‘What is it you want here?’ he asked.

  ‘I came to see Anna. No more.’ My voice sounded reasonably firm, I was surprised to hear, because I was shaking inside.

  ‘I don’t believe that. Graham’s two women, working together, that’s what it is.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Anna knows nothing about the money. I knew nothing, when I was living with Graham. He kept his mouth shut. A clever man, Graham was. He knew one basic human truth — trust nobody. And my partner, Nel Schmidt, he knew nothing, either. He was acting the fool with you, that and no more. He enjoyed it. But you…who ever saw two more humourless characters? You thought he was being clever, pumping you for information. Fools! That’s what you are. Nel knew nothing about Graham’s money, where it came from, or anything else.’

  Brave words! But I was talking because I couldn’t stop. It was a nervous reaction. I’d read somewhere about keeping talking. But wasn’t that for potential suicides? Or potential rapists? I didn’t know. I just had to keep talking, to postpone — what? I shrank from the thought.

  ‘And you do?’ Maguire demanded, in a dead voice.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Know something. Don’t try to act stupid with me.’

  ‘Mr Maguire, I know nothing about the origin of Graham’s money. His fifty thousand. That’s what’s worrying you, I know. All I’ve discovered about it is that he had it in five accounts, and he’s spread it around and back-credited it, or whatever you might call it. But I do not know where it originated.’

  ‘You were seen taking a briefcase from here,’ Maguire said with icy impatience. ‘The assumption is that it contained Graham’s private papers. You’ve had time to go through them. So now you know too much.’