A Ghost in the Machine

by Caroline Graham

  Now he cursed his indolence over the past month. There had been time to plan his departure carefully. He could have got himself another passport. Another name. Created a totally different persona. But how was he to know that Dennis would decide to play Sherlock Holmes? Or that some stupid woman—and, boy, had she been stupid—would have a clairvoyant experience that would put the whole enterprise at risk.

  The questioning had started off again; the hefty one repeating himself. Andrew frowned, cocked his head, faking a willingness to participate.

  “And we believe that late telephone call—”

  “Which you did not see fit to mention—”

  “Led directly to his death.”

  Prove it. Go on, I dare you.

  “I suggest that after Brinkley left for work the following morning you entered the house and sabotaged one of the machines.”

  Andrew couldn’t help himself. “Walked through the walls, did I?”

  “No. We think you used these.”

  The envelope was tipped upside down. It held a bunch of picks from the days when he was a petty thief. Gilda, having no idea what they were, had found them in an old box. Thought them “all spiky and thrilling” and wanted them turned into a necklace.

  Should he deny they were his? There seemed little point, for he hadn’t been able to conceal a start of alarm when they had been tossed on to the table. Still, proving they were his was one thing. Proving he had entered Brinkley’s house with them was something else. Andrew began some slow and calm breathing. The red-haired one replaced the picks in the bag using a clean handkerchief.

  “They haven’t been to Forensics yet.”

  “We have high hopes of Forensics.”

  “Apparently the lock on Kinders kitchen door had been oiled only a couple of days earlier.”

  Now that was entrapment. Because it simply wasn’t true. He’d been sure to check for anything that could transfer. On the handle too. And they wouldn’t be able to come up with a surprise witness either. After parking on the very edge of the village overlooking an empty field he’d sat on a bench opposite the house, sheltering behind The Times till the coast was absolutely clear. Then in like lightning and doubly cautious coming out.

  “Not a complicated business, modifying the machine, Mr. Latham. You had, I understand, seen it before?” Silence. “But what I did find difficult is how on earth Dennis Brinkley was persuaded to pull on the rope and release the weight that killed him.”

  “Yeah – that really puzzled us.”

  “He must have seen the trebuchet had been dragged out of place—”

  “Marks all over the floor.”

  “A mysterious, one might even say a suspicious thing to happen. Yet before any attempt was made to investigate—”

  “When the alteration to the ramp might well have been noticed.”

  “He reached out and tugged on the rope.”

  “Now what on earth would make him do that?”

  Andrew sighed and solemnly shook his head. It was plainly just as mysterious and suspicious to him. If only he could help…

  Actually the key to the whole stratagem was Dennis’s obsession with order, his compulsion to straighten and tidy. Andrew had left the rope caught up in a half-knot, the end hanging loose. Dennis would have been compelled to undo it. And to reach the knot he needed to lean directly over the machine and pull. It had been very precisely placed; just too high to get at any other way. Andrew was rather proud of this literally clever twist. The police would never work it out. And if they guessed, so what? When has a guess ever stood up in court? Solid evidence was what was needed and so far they’d got sweet FA. Which meant they’d either have to let him go, period, or release him on bail. In which case, Sorrento here I come.

  There was almost another hour of this then they took a break.

  His two interrogators having left the room, Andrew was offered something to eat. They had to do this apparently after a certain time. Sadly it was not brought by the gorgeous Abby Rose but by a spotty young constable who put the tray down and walked off, leaving the door of the interview room open. Andrew could just see him sitting on a chair in the corridor. The food was quite tasty: shepherd’s pie with garden peas and a custard slice. He asked to use the toilet, small and windowless. So much for the great escape. Then spent the rest of his time alone, recapping on the story so far and bracing himself for the questions to come.

  The Brinkley side of things looked pretty watertight. His only possible connection with the case – that final late-night phone call – the police had already discovered and it had availed them nothing. But Ava Garret?

  He could still remember with absolute clarity the moment in the radio interview when she started describing the death scene. The shape of the room, the tall narrow windows, the machines. She even knew what Dennis was wearing; the colour of his hair. If that child hadn’t started crying…

  Until then Andrew, sitting on a stool sipping his Lavazza, had been having a good laugh at the woman’s expense. Then came the shock. So powerful it was as if a great fist had crashed into his chest. He fell backwards, gasping. Coffee flew; burning his legs, staining the floor. His fingers trembled so much they couldn’t turn the radio off.

  He picked up the broken cup and put it in the bin, then stood helplessly amid puddles of brown liquid, unable to get his breath. It was as if something large and fierce had entered the room and was eating up all the air. Clearly drawn before him as on a map, he saw the end of everything. Goodbye money and sun and sex and sand. Farewell golden, shadowless landscapes and licentious living happy ever after.

  A genuine medium. He had never believed there was such a thing. But a little while later, when he began once more to think coherently, Andrew started remembering all sorts of instances when such people had helped the police with their inquiries. Had even found bodies.

  Filling the washing-up bowl, getting bleach out of the cupboard to scrub the floor, he tried to subdue the panic that shock had left behind.

  As Andrew saw it, his hands, morally speaking, were clean. Yes, he had tinkered with the giant catapult and nudged Brinkley into a dangerous situation but the final step had been taken by the man himself. Even obsessives had free will and he had made the wrong decision. No reasonable person would call that murder.

  Even so this woman could put him away, perhaps for years. Years he hadn’t got, thanks to the decade of spineless grovelling that Gilda’s father had purchased with his scrap metal swag.

  Dennis’s death had taken place at one remove, as it were. Stopping Ava Garret would inevitably be more…the phrase “hands on” came horribly to mind and was immediately rejected. There was no way he could physically kill someone. He just hadn’t got it in him. He was not a violent man.

  He sat and thought for so long he only just got clear before Gilda returned. It was while he was tucked away behind Bunting St. Clare parish church waiting for going-home time that he remembered the methanol. He’d had it for years. Someone in the iffy circles in which he once moved had hinted at its efficiency and given him what had darkly been described as “the leftovers.”

  Andrew, interested and repelled in equal measure, had kept the unlabelled medicine bottle without ever asking himself why. Certainly he would never have slipped the stuff to Gilda. Taking risks for no financial advantage was definitely not his bag. Perhaps he was keeping it for himself. For when he got too old and tired to philander; too creaky to leave the house. Shut up with Gilda twenty-four hours a day might drive the most patient man to top himself. Anyway, whatever possible reason, it was still in the garden shed on the weed-killer shelf.

  The strange thing was, no sooner had he thought of the stuff than various schemes on how to use it came tumbling into his mind.

  Astonished and impressed, for he was not normally an inventive man, Andrew decided to regard this fecundity as a good omen.

  The first step obviously was to get hold of this clairvoyant. Using the nearest call box he tried Directory
Enquiries, giving her name and saying that he only knew she lived in the Causton area. No joy. He tried the Echo, who gave him the number of her agent, a Mr. Footscray. Even less joy there. Andrew had hardly opened his mouth before Mr. Footscray hung up on him. That left the studio.

  Even as he wrote down the number he recognised the chances of them handing out personal details about a programme guest were pretty slim. Then on the point of dialling (141 first, naturally), he had a brilliant idea. Why not pretend to be working for that honourable and world-renowned institution, the BBC? Surely a hack radio station run by teenagers who’d never make it and has-beens who’d already lost it was bound to be impressed. And it worked. There was a brief, awkward pause when they asked his name until Andrew noticed a framed advertisement for computer tuition right under his nose. He said, “Chris Butterworth.” And the die was cast.

  Having perceived Ava’s grandiosity, hunger for attention and blinding lack of self-awareness during the interview, Andrew had no doubts that she would agree to meet him. Getting her out of the house had been a doddle. Likewise redirecting her via the mobile, catching her just before she boarded the train.

  Where to take her had been slightly more problematical. Briefly, purely out of satisfaction at the symmetry of it all, he had been tempted towards the Peacock Hotel. The change in his fortunes had begun there just a few weeks ago, thanks to a chance meeting. How satisfying if the account could be closed there as well. But he frequented the place quite often and could be recognised. Common sense warned him off.

  A long time ago, just before he met Gilda, Andrew had been vaguely seeing a woman who lived at Northwick Park. Suburban anonymous, as he recalled, which meant several anonymous places to eat. He decided to take Ava there. Naturally it had all changed, but there were still plenty of cafés and restaurants. Driving round he couldn’t decide whether to look for a really busy one where they could both get lost in the shuffle, or somewhere nearly empty with perhaps just one waiter and a guy at the till to risk recalling their visit. In the end he hit on a little Greek Cypriot place, Cafe Trudos. There Andrew got the worst of both worlds as there was no one there when they arrived but by the time they left the place was packed.

  Ava had talked non-stop. Andrew need not have worried about answering awkward questions regarding his position at the Beeb, length of service, actual programmes produced. The only time his opinion was solicited was on how best to present her. The sets mustn’t be cheap and her support must definitely be a star of some magnitude. He was also instructed to contact Michael Aspel and explain that Ava was not comfortable with surprises.

  After about half an hour of this Andrew no longer found himself somewhat embarrassed at the thought that he was about to dispose of another human being. The miracle, it seemed to him, was that no one had done it years ago.

  He had been nervous about giving her the methanol. But his idea, to put it into his own glass – which he planned to conceal in his lap – then swap them round, worked perfectly. To distract her attention all he had to do was say: “Isn’t that Judi Dench over there?” (As if.) And there was Ava craning and gawping, twisting round, even standing up at one point before disappointedly flopping down again. Andrew apologised for his mistake but she refused to be mollified. He tried to make amends with some made-up gossip about Esther Rantzen but Ava would have none of it.

  “Miss Rantzen is a personality merely.”

  “She’s very famous,” said Andrew. “Got an OBE.”

  “There is nothing,” said Ava firmly, “like a dame.”

  Sipping his tiny cup of sweet, muddy coffee Andrew then explained that they must think about leaving as he had to be in the studio by eight a.m. Ava took this very well and so she should, having just been offered the chance to front a new documentary on Victorian Spiritualism. Andrew paid the bill and the waiter helped Ava on with her coat. While she was so distracted Andrew flipped open her handbag and stole the mobile, which he later destroyed by running over it with the car.

  As he led her towards the platform for the Uxbridge train he was concernedly watching for signs of illness. He’d had little time to bone up on methanol and had no idea how long it took to take effect. Maybe he’d been lucky to have got through the dinner without her falling into the feta saganaki. At the other extreme, if its make-up was not stable, the potency could have completely faded, in which case she’d wake up tomorrow morning with a bit of a headache and he’d have to start all over again.

  Except that he wouldn’t. He’d screwed his courage to the sticking place once, and once was enough. Though there was more money to come, he would walk – no, he would run away, as far and as fast as the wind would carry him.

  The policemen were coming back. The older one, the chief inspector, came in first. As soon as Andrew saw his face he knew that something had happened. Something bad. He got up, pushing back his chair, which screeched and scraped against the concrete floor.

  Barnaby stood at his office window watching the sun go down. The longest day was now nearly eight weeks behind them and the evenings were insidiously creeping in.

  Sergeant Troy put on his jacket; checked his watch. He glanced across at the chief, wondering if a cheery word might not come amiss.

  Barnaby’s profile was not easy to read. Today it featured his enclosed, poker face. This inscrutability could be rather frightening, which was strange really, because there was nothing to see or read behind it to cause concern. It could be misleading too. Troy remembered once coming across the boss late one night sitting bolt upright in his leather revolving chair, showing this same impassive profile and inscrutably fast asleep.

  Right now, though, he was probably simply knackered. Even Troy felt tired and he’d got twenty years on the DCI. Barnaby was, as Troy saw it, a scarred and battered old war-horse. Himself, by comparison, a jumping, prancing young stallion caparisoned by FCUK and with barely a scratch to his glossy hide.

  It had been a dramatic, if ultimately barren, afternoon. After their break, when they had wearily eaten whatever was left in the canteen – warmish meat stewed to rags and green jelly with grapes in it – and Troy had seen off the remains of a packet of Benson’s in the yard by the waste bins, they had returned to the interview room to discover that Latham had decided that he did, after all, want a solicitor.

  Although this inevitably caused some delay the request pleased the chief inspector. It meant that, when it came to questions regarding the death of Ava Garret, Latham was not nearly as confident as he had appeared that morning. Not that his modus operandi changed much. Apart from the occasional murmured aside to said solicitor, silence continued to prevail.

  As no answers to his questions had yet been forthcoming Barnaby decided to change tack. He would describe the matter and manner of Dennis Brinkley’s murder as he supposed it to have been carried out and observe Latham’s reactions.

  He didn’t learn much. The man listened with a slight smile, frowning sometimes or shaking his head. At no point did he look surprised. Only once was there an uncontrolled reaction. This was when Barnaby touched, for the second time that day, on the strange scene in Leo Fortune’s office.

  “What was it that upset you, Mr. Latham? And so severely that you had to leave the building?”

  Latham shrugged.

  “Shall I tell you what I think?”

  Latham did one of those resigned, open-armed gestures you get when returning substandard merchandise to an iffy market stall.

  “I believe it was because you discovered that the person Brinkley saw entering his office the night before he died was Polly Lawson.”

  At this Latham became excessively pale. Globules of perspiration broke out across his forehead; dark crescents bloomed in the armpits of his shirt.

  “And not, as you had assumed, the woman who was your accomplice.”

  Latham produced a handkerchief and mopped his face.

  “It might also interest you to know that Ava Garret had no clairvoyant insight into Dennis Brinkley’s mur
der. She was able to describe the scene of his death only after being fed this information by a member of the public.”

  Latham was now as white as paper, swaying slightly as if from a gentle push. His solicitor became attentive; asked for a drink.

  “So how does it feel,” persisted Barnaby, “to have killed two people for nothing?”

  Here the solicitor’s protestations were interrupted by a uniformed policeman with a message. Sergeant Troy asked him to fetch some water and Barnaby, having read the note, indicated that the tape should be turned off.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mr. Latham.” He used the phrase automatically as he seemed to have done a thousand times in the past thirty years, the job being rather conducive to such situations. Invariably what followed provoked sorrow and despair. Fear, sometimes. Rage, often. But anguish as tormenting and exquisite as was presently in his power to bring about was something new. His voice showed not the slightest shadow of sympathy as he continued, “We’ve just heard from Great Missenden that your wife has passed away.”

  Barnaby did not leave it there. He explained the circumstances of her admission; related his conversation with the family solicitor. Latham was made aware that he had been the only beneficiary in Gilda’s will; a place now seconded to the Cat Protection League. That her health was such as to encourage imminent collapse. And that if he had walked away from the marriage the circumstances were such that any court in the land would have granted him recompense.

  By the time the chief inspector had finished speaking Latham was practically unrecognisable. It looked, Sergeant Troy remarked afterwards, as if all the blood had left his body. All the blood but not the bile. A few seconds later and, quite without warning, yellow liquid arched into the air and all over the tape recorder.

  “Sir?” Troy brought the present back into the room. “D’you think we’ll get witnesses for whatever happened at Northwick Park?”