Death Penalties

by Paula Gosling

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘One of the great modern compulsions is to answer the telephone. Most people think they have to respond instantly to it. That’s what phone freaks count on. This caller may be an adolescent with criminal fantasies. Making threats gives him a sense of power. Or a crank – we get plenty of those – someone seeking sexual thrills from an intake of breath, or the sound of fear in a woman’s voice. It isn’t necessarily a dangerous person, or even a person connected with this attempted break-in. Your caller could just be a neighbour who saw your lights on and decided to take advantage of the moment. Failing evidence to the contrary, that’s how we have to look at it. I’m sorry.’ And he was.

  Tess looked at Nightingale and tried to imagine him younger, with a beard, and couldn’t. But he was recognizably a police officer. Why? She looked at his partner, sitting quietly at the table, listening and watching. A closed face, that was it. They all had it. Eyes never still in ever-still faces, and carefully, professionally, unimpressed by anything or anyone. Would it help if she flew into hysterics? Screamed, threatened? She thought not. They would change mode instantly, trained to do the right things, say the right things, ‘sit down, drink this, calm down, it’s all right’, but nothing would change within them as they went through the rituals. Impervious, waterproof, seamless. The very best materials, the very finest workmanship, head to toe. She crossed her arms, settled herself. ‘Suppose I say something was taken. Suppose we did report a burglary. What then?’

  Nightingale shrugged and put his empty coffee mug down on the table. ‘Then it would go into the files as a reported burglary. The item or items taken would go on a recovery list.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Murray said. ‘That’s what would happen.’

  ‘And, of course, it’s a very long list,’ Tess said, resignedly. ‘Don’t you see, John? It’s no use. There has to be some actual blood shed before they can do anything.’

  ‘No,’ Nightingale said, firmly. ‘There only has to be a clear connection, a clear and specific threat to someone’s safety, or clear criminal activity or intent.’

  ‘I’m not making it up, you know,’ Tess said.

  Nightingale felt the sharp edge of her bitterness. It made a thin incision in the carefully-maintained envelope of his self-respect. He stood up. ‘I didn’t say you were,’ he told her, evenly. ‘But neither am I. That’s simply the position as far as we’re concerned.’

  The kitchen door banged back and Mrs Grimble erupted into the room. ‘I knew it. I told her. I told him. All mouth and no trousers, the police,’ she announced, glaring at the detectives. ‘Ready enough to accuse when it suits you, I’ll wager. Ready enough to push people around, yell at them, lock them up just for being alive.’ She turned to Tess, who saw with surprise that her eyes were filled with tears. ‘Local rozzers come round at seven o’clock this morning, for Walter, and it wasn’t a friendly call, neither. Wanted to know where he’d been last night, wanted to know what he was doing for money, wanted to know why, what, and wherefore.’

  Tess was stricken. ‘I’m sorry, that was my fault.’

  ‘Why would it be your fault?’ Soame asked.

  ‘They asked us about who’d been in the house. I told them Walter was here, yesterday,’ Tess said. She looked at Mrs Grimble. ‘I forgot.’

  She felt a vague guilt, because Walter Briggs had an old count against him. Years ago, at the age of twenty or so, he’d been convicted of grievous bodily harm against another boy, and had served five years for it. There had been some mention of homosexual advances, counter-charges of intimidation and theft. Mrs Grimble maintained the conviction was a false one because Walter had been too drunk to know what was happening, but the record – however old and however questionable – remained. What was worse, Walter’s life since his release did not bear close scrutiny, mostly because of his repeated backslides into alcoholism. He had learned some questionable skills in gaol, and made some less than honest friends. He came and went in Mrs Grimble’s life, his presence kept vaguely alive in Tess’s mind by Mrs Grimble’s occasional outbursts of despair on his behalf. Tess had always sympathized with the old woman’s frustration.

  Roger hadn’t been easy, either.

  ‘But he was here, wasn’t he?’ she asked, gently.

  ‘Well, yes, he was,’ Mrs Grimble admitted. ‘What of it? Aren’t I allowed—’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Tess said, quickly. She put out a hand, but the old lady went right over to Nightingale and glared up into his face. Though she was not small, the flowers on her hat came just to his nose, and he had to lean back to avoid being tickled by them.

  ‘It seems to me you police spend so much time hassling people like Walter, there’s none left for doing what you’re supposed to, which is protecting the public. Mrs Leland’s a member of the public. What’s more, she’s a woman alone with a little sick lad to look after and money to earn. But you’re just leaving her to it. Never mind people keep breaking in here and calling her up and all the rest of it, oh no. What’s so important that you haven’t got time for her, hey? What else have you got to do?’

  ‘We are investigating a murder—’ Murray began.

  Mrs Grimble whirled on him. ‘I’ll give you murder,’ she said, in a dangerous voice. Her eyes fell on the coffee mug he’d put down. ‘And look at the ring that mug’s leaving on my kitchen table. Isn’t it enough vandals try to break in, but we have to invite them in as well. You ought to be ashamed.’ She snatched up the mug and took it over to the sink. Soame had to leap out of the way to avoid being splashed as she ran hot water at full pressure and added far too much detergent, squeezing the plastic container as if it were someone’s neck.

  Nightingale had turned slightly pink across the cheekbones. ‘We’ll tell the local men to maintain their drive-bys. You know their telephone number, and ours. Sorry we can’t do more . . . ’

  ‘Certainly couldn’t do much less,’ Mrs Grimble snorted over her shoulder, and jabbed the dishmop into the mug so hard the wooden handle split from end to end.

  SIXTEEN

  Back in the car, Murray breathed out. ‘Whew,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been screeched at like that since my mother caught me smoking in the garage.’ He shook his head. ‘Women’s voices,’ he said. ‘God, how I sometimes hate women’s voices.’

  ‘The damnable thing about it is, she had a point,’ Nightingale sighed.

  ‘I’d like to make a point,’ Murray said. ‘My point is this, what the hell was that all about?’

  Nightingale smiled. ‘I wanted an objective observer.’ ‘Well, you got an observer who objects, instead. Come on, give. It has to do with that file you’ve been crooning over, doesn’t it? The one that I’m not supposed to know about.’

  ‘It does,’ Nightingale agreed. And he outlined the trail that had led from one old dead copper to this particular house. ‘Perhaps Soame is right, Mrs Leland – and her son as well – may well be in danger.’

  ‘But from what?’ Murray asked. ‘And why?’

  ‘If we’re to go by the phone calls – and they are the only specific we have – because of some unnamed amount of money she insists she knows nothing about.’

  ‘Do you think she’s lying?’

  Nightingale thought about it. ‘I don’t honestly know.’

  He looked back at the house, which was the end terrace in a line that curved around the remnants of a crescent garden. Once, perhaps, there had been flowerbeds and benches where there was now simply uncut grass plus a great deal of litter beneath two defeated-looking lime trees. The railing around this tribute to municipal negligence was rusting badly, and the gate which implied admittance to only a favoured few was wired shut and obviously admitted nothing.

  The windows and door of the Leland house had been painted bright red, but the handle and knocker of the door were still the old, plain steel. No expensive reproduction brassw
ork. No doorside flower urns, no coy china numberplate. And the brave red paint was beginning to chip.

  The other houses in the terrace were a mixed lot. Two had been ‘done up’ in the full and accepted manner, and four or five looked neat and respectable, but many of the others had been allowed to disintegrate to such a degree that the contrast was painful. Several had multiple doorplates and bells, indicating bedsitters within. A mixed prospect, then. Neither a good neighbourhood nor a bad, exactly, but something awaiting the inevitable slide into one or the other.

  How long had the Lelands lived here? Judging by the condition of the paintwork trim, about ten years. No doubt there had been a moment, back then, when Kingfisher Terrace had looked about to burst into gentrification, and a local estate agent had got several people to buy on that promise, the Lelands among them.

  Even so, it wouldn’t have come cheaply. Newly or recently married, perhaps, he looking for an investment, she looking for a home to make, they’d taken the plunge. And they had been happy, no doubt, those ten years ago. Full of hope for the future and one another, the way young people persisted in being no matter what they saw around them.

  But the estate agent’s hope for the neighbourhood had died. Why? Absentee landlords, most likely, who continued to profit from those bedsitters. Or perhaps owners too poor or too old or too uncaring either to maintain their homes or move from them. The city was moving outwards, a tentacle here, another there. Once-genteel neighbourhoods that had dragged their petticoats in the mud for years were now rising again, and where broughams had been replaced by bangers, Porsches and BMWs now parked. But not in Kingfisher Terrace.

  Although he was hardly an experienced observer of marital patterns, Nightingale thought hope had died in the Leland marriage, too. The evidence was clear. Their first expenditure had been the last. Because after the first flush of ownership they had never bought the brass doorknob, or modernized the kitchen, or planted the garden out. They had converted the top floor to a flat. For added income? For company? To increase resale value? What had gone out of the Leland marriage that was reflected in the Leland house? If he’d had money in the beginning, and his business had been doing well at the end, where was the money now?

  He had met Tess Leland, but Roger Leland was beyond his recalling. What had been his true character, the inner persona that his wife had discovered, as all wives do, over their years together. Profligate or miser? Had he hoarded? Had he gambled? Maintained a mistress? Played the market? Did it have a bearing on his death? On what was happening now? And, most importantly, was it worth pursuing? He kept coming back to that, over and over.

  Was this a suitable case for investigation or not?

  Murray broke into Nightingale’s reflective silence with a reflection of his own. ‘Loneliness and grief can make women do strange things, Tim. She could have staged the first burglary, broken open the back door herself any time before the boy woke up. You have only her word for the words spoken in the phone calls – all the calls picked up by the housekeeper were silent. As was the one Professor Soame heard last night.’

  ‘But what would it get her?’

  ‘Company. Sympathy. A reason to fail. Who knows? Maybe somebody else has some money she thinks she should have, and she’s trying to smoke it out,’ Murray suggested. ‘Or, if we’re to believe this phantom caller, it’s the other way around – she has some money somebody else thinks they should have.’

  Tim sighed. ‘Where would she have it?’

  ‘How about a safety deposit box?’ Murray said.

  ‘But she’s gone to a lot of trouble to get Soame in to teach the boy so she can keep on working. Why would she do that if she has money?’

  ‘Camouflage. She has it, and means to keep it.’

  ‘Where would she have got it?’

  ‘From her old man, I suppose. Or maybe there’s somebody else we don’t know about. Maybe she was playing around before he got killed, maybe she was into something he didn’t know about – or found out about. Yeah, how about that? Maybe he got killed because of something she was up to.’

  ‘And maybe cops could fly,’ Nightingale said, as he put the car into first and, glancing back, pulled away from the terrace. ‘Looks like there’s a lot more to do before this is finished. I certainly want to check up on the housekeeper’s brother and find out what kind of “list” he’s on, for a start. If that’s a dead end, I can see about four different directions to go in if I’m right.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong, the only direction for you is down.’

  Nightingale banged the steering wheel. ‘It stinks, Tom. Peters sensed it and so do I. Something is going on here, and I want to find out what it is.’

  ‘For Peters’ sake, so to speak?’ Murray asked, wryly. ‘Well, if you’re going on with this, you’d better clear it with the Inspector.’

  ‘Don’t nag.’

  ‘That’s not nagging,’ Murray said. ‘That’s insurance.’

  The wine bar was very crowded, and Nightingale had to hold the two glasses high to avoid the heads of his fellow-imbibers. He managed to return to the table without dousing anyone, and sank into his chair with surprising gratitude, seeing as it was too small for him and very unsteady. He’d been on his feet most of the day, doing follow-up interviews on the Primrose Street robbery, and had not enjoyed it.

  Being on your feet presumably included access to and use of the mind – his employers paid him on that basis – but his had been elsewhere. He hoped it didn’t mean he’d missed something vital, probably the clue and the arrest of a lifetime.

  He froze for a moment, did an instant replay of the day’s confrontations, then relaxed. To hell with it.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked the blonde girl sitting opposite him. She was tall and sleek and clever, and they had been conducting an on-off affair for the past few years, emotional weather permitting. He had met her during his time at Lloyds and knew her to be adroit in bed, hopeless in the kitchen, and a demon at the bridge table. She was personal assistant to one of the medium-powered underwriters, and loved her work more than she loved Tim. He found this a source of great comfort, as he felt the same way about his occupation. Neither saw their relationship going anywhere, but neither – at the moment – saw another relationship coming from anywhere. And so it went on. Her name was Sherry, and her eyes were that colour, too.

  ‘I think you work hard enough without doing unpaid overtime,’ Sherry said, sipping her claret and raking the crowd with a comprehensive glance to check there were no clients among the throng that might merit a smile. Her eyes returned to his, and he saw they were amused. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I work hard, sure. So do you. That doesn’t mean I can’t have an outside interest.’

  ‘In an inside subject? You risk becoming a law and order obsessive, Tim. Pretty soon you’ll be reminding me to renew my car tax and put a better burglar alarm in my flat.’

  ‘All praiseworthy things. Consider yourself so advised.’

  ‘Oh, get stuffed,’ Sherry said, with a grin.

  ‘Come on, come on. You have an opinion. You always have an opinion, and this one is ripe. I can see it trembling on your luscious lips.’ He picked up the battered bar menu and made a pretence of scanning it. She watched him, then sighed.

  ‘Okay. I think you’re probably right, there was something wrong and there probably is something wrong. One coincidence: “isn’t life strange”. Two coincidences: “wait a minute”. Three or more: uh-oh, forget one and two. But as far as I can see, what you can do about it on your own is damn-all. Don’t murder investigations require lots and lots of people? That’s what it said in the last mystery book I read.’

  ‘Mary Poppins Meets the Bad Person? Loved it. Very sound, technically.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘I can look into it a little.’

  ‘How little?’

  ‘Too
little.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He fixed her with a flat expression. ‘Or I can wait around to see if Mrs Leland gets beaten up or killed – that might alert DCI Abbott that something is amiss.’

  Sherry frowned. ‘Do you think—’ Her last words were lost in a roar of manly guffaws from a group of pin-striped young things at the far end of the bar.

  ‘What?’ He leaned forward.

  ‘I said, do you really think she’s in danger?’ As usual, a silence had followed the outburst at the brass rail, and Sherry’s question turned heads in their direction.

  Tim waited until curiosity died, and then nodded. ‘But how much and from what or whom, I can’t say. That’s what makes it so damnable. She could have some money in a building society somewhere under a false name—’

  ‘The book would be in the house, that burglar would have found it.’

  ‘She might keep it in a safe deposit box somewhere.’

  ‘But you said she seemed genuinely puzzled by the phone call demanding money.’

  Nightingale made a wry face. ‘She did. I must admit, she was very convincing. But then, I’ve only spoken to her once before, so I have nothing with which to compare her attitude. She might be the greatest actress the stage has ever lost, or a pathological liar, or have several personalities – maybe Tess Leland is also Griselda Leland, and only Griselda knows about the money.’

  ‘You’re tired,’ Sherry said.

  He rubbed his face. ‘Of course I am. Coppers are congenitally weary, wasn’t that in your book?’

  ‘Yes, Chapter Four – Mary Poppins Goes To Bed Alone Again.’

  ‘I’ve never been that tired,’ he protested. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘You will be, if you insist on following every hunch that pops into your head.’

  ‘It’s more than a hunch.’

  ‘I see.’ She leaned her elbows on the table and ran her hands through her hair, dislodging the last of the pins that had held it in place. The glossy, deep golden strands tumbled down over her ears and she shook it back carelessly. It was a moment he always looked forward to with pleasure – when she shrugged off the office and became a girl again. He wished he could perform a similar shrug of responsibility, but hadn’t learned the knack as yet. Maybe his hair was too short.