A Ghost in the Machine

by Caroline Graham

  “And Roy’s painting my room. Come and see.”

  They went upstairs and Doris admired the Princess Pink colour and lovely new duvet.

  Roy said, “I’m going to paint next door all white.”

  Walking back along the L-shaped landing Doris peered around the corner of the leg, finding a pile of cushions and pillows on a thin mattress and a wooden shelf holding magazines. Seeing that she was puzzled, Karen explained.

  “That’s Roy’s room.”

  “Or was,” said Roy.

  Doris carried on downstairs, not trusting herself to utter a word. She believed in never speaking ill of the dead but there were no rules about thinking ill and she thought very ill of Ava indeed. Call that a room? Doris had seen roomier egg boxes. Downstairs she put the kettle on, made the tea and cut Roy an absolutely huge slice of cake.

  20

  The next morning the news that Ava Garret had been deliberately killed had made not only the local radio and television bulletins but also the Causton Echo. Give it twenty-four hours, thought DCI Barnaby, and the tabloids’ll be swarming all over the place. The landlord of the Horse and Hounds won’t know what’s hit him.

  The chief inspector had been in the incident room, almost empty but for the civilian telephonists, since half-past seven, working through yesterday’s house-to-house reports. As he had expected, given the passage of time since Dennis Brinkley’s death, they were bare of any really useful information. No one had seen any person or anything unusual in the village on the day in question, as far as they could recall. The feedback on Brinkley’s general demeanour and personality bore out what little Barnaby had gathered already. His general civility stopped a little short of real friendliness. He kept himself to himself but gave generously at the door and always contributed a handsome prize to the local fête’s tombola. His relationship with Benny Frayle was indulgently regarded. The landlady at the Horse and Hounds offered a kindly if slightly patronising summation: they were nice company for each other but everyone knew there was nothing really going on.

  Ava Garret was something else. Only a few people admitted to knowing her but those who did had plenty to say. The way she treated that poor little kid was a crying shame. The child was afraid of her own shadow. Plus Ava’s airs and graces were enough to make a cat laugh. No one believed her story about being married to a man who’d been to public school. What would he want with somebody whose dad was a navvy and mother a toilet attendant? As for her heavenly powers – the general opinion seemed to be that Ava was no more psychic than the dog’s dinner. No one questioned admitted to attending the Church of the Near at Hand.

  Throughout, the village opinion on any personal link between Garret and Dennis Brinkley remained firmly in the negative. As one crusty old gaffer in his retirement bungalow put it – he may have been weird but he weren’t barmy.

  Also on Barnaby’s desk were a large stack of pictures showing Ava as she had appeared on the night she died. Quite unrecognisable when compared to the vampiric photograph pinned up on the board.

  The chief inspector closed the files, pushed his swivel chair back and took a moment to savour the cool, refreshing atmosphere. Ah – the joys of air conditioning. He recalled the heat of last summer when the room had still been fitted with heavy ceiling fans. Wooden blades the size of aircraft propellors had languidly agitated banks of stale air, barely disturbing drifts of assorted insects. Progress – you couldn’t whack it.

  He checked his watch. Twenty minutes to the nine-thirty briefing. Just time to nip downstairs for sausage, egg and bacon. Definitely no chips. Or fried bread. And when he returned replete and in good humour there would his team be, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and raring to go. In your dreams, Tom, as the saying went.

  The briefing didn’t take long. The new pictures were distributed; allocations to be covered shared out and off they went. All but DS Brierly.

  “So, Audrey,” said the DCI. “Well done, getting Priest to come in yesterday.”

  “It wasn’t difficult, sir. I think they both enjoyed themselves actually.”

  “How were things at Rainbow Lodge?”

  “I’m not really sure.” Pulling a chair up to his desk. “She’s a strange little soul.”

  “Karen?” He recalled the child, frightened and wistful with her transparent skin and colourless hair. Like some manifestation in a ghost story. “Yes, that’s a good description.”

  “I checked things out as well as I could without seeming to. The house is clean. There’s plenty to eat. And there’s someone looking after them.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “An Aunty Doris, by all accounts.”

  Audrey had been extremely relieved that the aunt was present. She had not gone alone to Rainbow Lodge but had carefully chosen someone totally unthreatening – a young constable, barely three months into the service – who would have been pretty useless in the role of supporting adult.

  But DC Cotton had not been entirely a waste of space. Admiring the newly decorated rooms, talking about football, bemoaning the lack of any decent clubs in Causton, he had got on very well with Roy while remaining blissfully unaware that Roy thought him a complete and utter wanker.

  Sergeant Brierly had been terribly tempted to take Karen’s aunt to one side, reveal the frightening truth about Ava Garret’s death and leave Doris whatever her name was to do the dirty work. But she couldn’t do that. No one forgets the deliverer of terrible news. They are remembered with revulsion: hatred even. A child especially will not forget. So Audrey sat down with Karen on the stained settee and held her hand and gently explained that someone had deliberately given her mother a poisonous drink and that was why she had died.

  “Like the apple in ‘Snow White’?” asked Karen.

  “Yes,” said Audrey, not knowing the story.

  “But then she coughed and the apple came out and she was all right again.”

  “Fairy tales are different,” said Audrey.

  “I wonder who it was.”

  “We think whoever she went out with on Wednesday night.”

  “The man from the BBC?”

  Audrey was spared from wrestling with an answer to that as Doris came in with a large pot of tea and some lemonade for Karen. Doris said: “Fetch Roy, there’s a good girl.” Karen ran off and Audrey repeated her announcement. Though she tried to make her voice flat and dull the words still seemed absurdly melodramatic. But Doris took it all quite calmly, saying that that possibility had been on a lot of people’s minds but no one had liked to say so out loud.

  “Karen hardly reacted at all,” murmured Audrey, hearing the others coming. “But later on…I think she’s bound to feel…um…”

  “Don’t you worry about Karen,” said Doris. “I’ll be looking after her. She’s been sold short for too long, that little lass. She needs a lot of love.”

  “Don’t we all,” murmured Audrey. But silently.

  Karen had obviously told Roy, who came downstairs, his eyes shining. Geoff Cotton followed, dribbling an invisible football while Karen shouted, “Goal, goal.” Roy immediately started bombarding Audrey with questions. She fielded them patiently for a while, then brought up the matter of he and Karen coming into the station to help them sort out a recent likeness of her mother.

  Roy was hesitant but Doris said he really should, out of decency’s sake. And Karen, once the procedure was described, got very excited and wanted to go straightaway. She loved computers. So that was settled.

  “Is she a permanent thing – this aunty?” asked Sergeant Troy. The vulnerable, fragile little girl, so near to his own daughter’s age, had quite got to him.

  “I think so. Mrs. Crudge—”

  “Crudge?” exclaimed Barnaby. “That rings a bell.”

  “It’s Brinkley’s cleaner, sir,” said Troy. “She’s coming in today.”

  “When?” On being told one o’clock, Barnaby looked at his watch. “We should be back by then.”

  “From?”

  “I w
ant to check out Brinkley’s office. See what this partner of his is really like.”

  “According to Lawson he couldn’t stand the bloke.”

  “Hardly an impartial observer.”

  “As you say, Guv.” Imparshal. One more word to look up in Talisa Leanne’s dictionary. Education, there was no end to it.

  The old brass plate beside the street door on Market Hill still read “Brinkley & Latham: Financial Consultants.” Very sensible, thought DCI Barnaby. From what he had heard about Dennis Brinkley’s business acumen and personal probity, the name would probably continue to inspire confidence even though the man himself was no longer present.

  Leading the way upstairs, Sergeant Troy was already looking forward to checking out the talent. Alas, the receptionist proved to be a bit of a dog but, once she had led them into the main office, things began to improve. A very pretty blonde was operating the photocopier. Not as pretty as Abby Rose, but then – who was?

  As Barnaby introduced himself and stated his business a man emerged from one of the enclosed cubicles. He had an air of being in charge and introduced himself as Leo Fortune.

  “We’ve been expecting a visit. Ever since the news that Dennis had…um…since we heard…”

  “What really happened to him,” concluded the woman from reception.

  Barnaby noted Fortune’s hesitation and was not surprised. It was a funny word murder. It sold more papers and books and movies than any other. No TV drama series would risk their ratings for long without introducing one. True crime reconstructions were watched by millions. Complacently wise after the event, they would then have “their say” by phone and e-mail. But when the victim is personally known that all changes. Then reaction is muted and euphemism sets in.

  “Is anyone away today?” asked Barnaby.

  “Two are on holiday.”

  “One holiday, one honeymoon.” Gail Fuller nodded towards two vacant desks.

  “And…?” Barnaby glanced towards the empty office.

  “Mr. Latham has not, so far, favoured us with his presence.”

  “Oh, be fair, Leo,” argued a youth in a pink-striped shirt. “It’s barely twelve o’clock.”

  There were a few sniggers at this but they quickly died away. Everyone became quiet and serious as befitted the gravity of the occasion. Though the staff were looking concerned, there was no feeling of unease in the room. They all met Barnaby’s gaze frankly though he had been round the block enough times to realise how little that signified.

  “Mr. Brinkley died on Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of July. Were you all here then?”

  The office junior, who turned out to be doing only work experience, was at school. And a stoutish woman with a large nose and a Snoopy telephone admitted to being absent on a Rolfing With Angels course at the Steiner Institute.

  “And Mr. Latham?”

  “He turned up mid-morning, as usual.”

  Barnaby asked the rest if they went out at all that day. Only Leo Fortune and Latham had not left the office. The others had “nipped off” to shop, grab some lunch or go to the library. Asked to be more precise as to time, the longest anyone was absent was fifty minutes. This was down to the pink-striped man, who had spent the break in the Magpie playing bar billiards and drinking Guinness.

  “And when do you close?”

  “Five-thirty, officially,” said Fortune, “though Dennis and sometimes myself are often here later.”

  “And that night?”

  “I honestly can’t remember. There was no reason to till now.”

  “Quite,” said Barnaby. He came across this all the time. Unless something incredibly interesting or appalling had happened during the day under discussion who on earth was going to remember it three weeks later?

  “Are any of you familiar with this Near at Hand church?” No one appeared to be. “Did Mr. Brinkley ever mention it at all?”

  “He never talked about his personal life,” said Belinda, the pretty blonde.

  “Isn’t it to do with the other world?” asked the stout lady, whose name was Dimsie. She sounded sorrowful and just a teeny bit cross. “I’m afraid Mr. Brinkley had little time for the spiritual.”

  “Did you hear this medium – Ava Garret – broadcast?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. We were all working.”

  “Can anyone imagine why someone would wish to kill Mr. Brinkley?”

  The response was immediate. Fervent denials followed by warm and plainly sincere incredulity that anyone could have brought themselves to do such a wicked thing.

  “It’ll be a stranger.”

  “That’s right. No one who knew Dennis would—”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Wish I could meet the bastard up a dark alley.” The billiard player flexed his arm, and an incipient muscle, like a piece of thin string, upped and stretched itself.

  “How come the verdict was wrong the first time?”

  Barnaby spent a few moments explaining what they would soon be able to read in the papers, then asked them again to try to cast their minds back, this time to the weeks leading up to Dennis’s death.

  “Did any of you notice any change in Mr. Brinkley? Did he seem worried about anything in particular?”

  Everyone shook his or her head, though Barnaby noticed Leo Fortune frowning to himself.

  “Are you permanently on reception?” he asked the middle-aged woman who had let them in. She nodded. “Could you tell me if anyone called to visit him that you hadn’t seen before? A new client, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “What about phone calls? Was anyone especially persistent? Not, necessarily a business client.”

  “I can assure you,” she flushed angrily, “I’ve better things to do with my time than listen in to other people’s conversations.”

  Barnaby widened his interrogation somewhat, asking how the death of their employer might affect the staff. Would all their jobs remain secure, for example?

  At this the mood changed. People looked at each other a touch mistily. Smiled and nodded. Leo Fortune spoke for them all. Barnaby offered his congratulations, noting that here were seven neat little motives and no mistake. Some doubtless stronger than others. Perhaps he had been a touch too quick to dismiss the present company. He got up from his perch on the corner of a desk and nodded at the busily scribbling figure of his assistant.

  “Sergeant Troy will take your names and addresses. And those of any members of staff who are away.” He raised his eyebrows, nodding towards Fortune’s glassed-off enclosure.

  The man left the group, followed the chief inspector, sat down behind his desk and said, “No, I didn’t.”

  “You anticipate me, Mr. Fortune.”

  “None of us knew about the will. We were all knocked sideways. There were a lot of tears the day the solicitor came. And they weren’t just tears of gratitude.”

  “You have been here…?”

  “The longest. Twenty-four years.”

  “So presumably you have taken over Mr. Brinkley’s clients?”

  “Yes. He didn’t have many but what he had were choice.”

  “Which means?”

  “Stonking rich.”

  “Do you know any of them? Or are you going in cold, as it were?”

  “I’m familiar with the accounts, of course. They were our most important, so someone other than Dennis had to be. Not that he was ever ill.”

  “And the other partner?”

  “Latham?” He gave a shout of what appeared quite genuine laughter. “He’s pathetic. His father-in-law bought into the business, apparently to get him from under his wife’s feet. The man can hardly use a computer.”

  “So what does he do all day?”

  “Smokes, drinks, walks about, reads the paper. Disappears for long periods.”

  “And he gets a salary for that?”

  “No. Gilda – that’s his wife – gives him hand-outs. When she thinks he deserves it.”

  “What about clients?”
>
  “Hasn’t any. He inherited a few from old man Fallon but they all decamped. Some to myself. Others just left.”

  “And his share of the company?”

  “Her share. Forty-nine per cent.” He beamed with satisfaction, showing sharp white teeth. “So we’ll always have the edge.”

  “I’d better take his address and phone number.”

  As Leo Fortune scrawled this down he said, “By the way, the night Dennis died I was playing David Bliss in Hay Fever.” He handed the sheet of paper over. “Amdram, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Barnaby. He remembered his daughter at Cambridge. John Webster at the ADC. Amdram with a vengeance. The stage alight.

  “Why did you ask us about going out during the day? The papers said Dennis died in the early evening.”

  “That’s true. But the apparatus that killed him was set up before he arrived home.”

  Fortune looked puzzled at the word “apparatus.” Barnaby explained in precise detail what had happened and straightaway regretted it.

  “Christ…how absolutely…” Fortune then turned an interesting pale green and began to slip from his chair.

  Five minutes later the two policemen were out in the street. They did not leave in good odour. Someone was pushing Leo’s head between his knees while someone else, directing a deeply reproachful glance in the chief inspector’s direction, rushed past with a glass of water.

  The others had gathered around Belinda. The beautiful Belinda, just married, deeply in love and newly pregnant was shrilly holding forth while tossing her curls about. Of all the bloody cheek was her gist. And her with a ring on and everything. All those who weren’t already giving Barnaby a hard stare went to work on Sergeant Troy.

  “Anyone’d think,” he said, now sulking outside on the pavement, “I’d asked her how much for a blow job.”

  “What did you ask her?”

  “Would she like a drink after work? What’s so terrible about that?” Troy started savagely kicking a hamburger box in the gutter. “I thought we were supposed to be living in the twenty-first century.”