Death Penalties

by Paula Gosling

Tess sighed. He was very right. She looked at him speculatively. Was this a man with secrets? Did that open countenance and B. Lancaster smile go all the way through, or was what she saw exactly what she got? ‘Give me a minute,’ she said, and reached for the phone.

  A few minutes later, assured by John Soame that he and Max were deeply, happily – and literally – glued to their model-making, she allowed Archie McMurdo to take her to tea at the Ritz.

  It was all that he had promised, but he impressed her more than the pillars and the confections. Gone was the loud-mouth complainer, the opinionated boor, the troublesome gadfly. Like some antipodean chameleon, he changed his colours to suit the background, and proved to possess all the polish necessary to negotiate the maze of tiny tables, the spindly legs of the gilded chairs and the ostentatious flurries of the waiters. He ordered exactly the right things in exactly the right voice, but did no more. He sat beside her in his dark suit and cranberry tie and seemed to glow, quietly. The heads that turned belonged only to assessing females, and she met several pairs of covetous eyes with, she hoped, total disdain. He poured her tea and treated her like some rare and valuable visitor from another world. She forgot her wrinkled suit and decidedly tired silk blouse. Gradually the images of peevish Adrian and possessive Richard and impecunious John faded from her mind. She was somebody, after all. Somebody who deserved tea at the Ritz.

  In short, this particular Archie was both a balm and a revelation.

  He caught her watching him and grinned.

  ‘Forgiven?’ he asked.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘All the strife I’ve been causing out at the house,’ he said. ‘I know you didn’t like it – you’re a hard-hearted sheila, and you can cast a mean eye on a man when you want to.’

  ‘Can I?’ Tess asked.

  ‘Scared hell out of me,’ he smiled.

  ‘I doubt that very much.’

  ‘Well, all that’s over. We’re going to get on beaut, now, aren’t we? We’re going to declare a truce.’

  He looked so earnest, so contrite, that she couldn’t resist him. ‘Oh, all right,’ she relented. ‘Let frivolity reign.’

  ‘Absolutely. Have another cucumber sandwich.’ He held up the plate for her selection. As she chose, she chanced to glance up at him and saw him staring fixedly at the people passing down the main corridor below the steps that separated the tearoom from the lobby. When she followed his gaze, she saw an older man had paused, hand on a chair as if seeking support in a crisis, and was staring back at him. His face was pale above the velvet collar of his dark blue coat, and his mouth slowly thinned as he pressed his lips together.

  ‘Good Lord, do you think he’s unwell?’ Tess asked.

  ‘Who?’ asked Archie, casually, replacing the sandwich plate on the crowded top of the small table that sat before them.

  ‘That man you were looking at, he seemed about to faint.’

  He looked at her in some puzzlement. ‘Sorry?’ he asked.

  Tess looked over at the wide, carpeted corridor. Many people thronged there, going right to the cocktail bar or left to the dining-room. The high-backed blue upholstered chair was still there. The frightened man was not.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, blankly. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘More tea?’ asked Archie.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘Secrets,’ Tim said, abruptly.

  Murray spoke without looking up, turning a page and keeping his place with one finger. ‘Whose secrets?’ he asked.

  ‘Anybody’s secrets. It’s secrets that lead to all the trouble in the world, secret thoughts, secret caches of arms, secret scientific developments, secret political moves, secret agreements to do or not to do—’ He had been pacing back and forth between the desks for over an hour.

  ‘Listen, if people didn’t have secrets, we’d be out of a job,’ Murray said. ‘I’d be stuck in my mother’s antique shop, and you’d be . . . what would you be?’

  ‘Much happier,’ Tim said, coming to a stop and a decision at the same time. ‘Much, much happier.’ He went to his desk, picked up the file that had been weighing down his blotter all afternoon, and went out of the door.

  Murray looked after him, smiled, and went back to revising for his promotional exams.

  ‘Well, Nightingale?’ Detective Chief Inspector Abbott looked up from his paperwork.

  ‘Could I have a word, sir?’

  Abbott threw his pen aside with every evidence of relief and leaned back in his chair. He seemed in an expansive mood, and Tim was encouraged. ‘What can I do for you this time?’

  ‘It’s about the Leland case, sir.’ Tim sat down and placed the file on his lap, ready to hand.

  Abbott’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Is that something new?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Abbott gazed at him for a moment, then closed his eyes and groaned slightly to himself. ‘It’s still this Peters thing, isn’t it? You didn’t give the notebooks back.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I did.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘After I’d photocopied the relevant pages.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I’ve been looking into things in my free time.’ Abbott started to show anger, then shrugged. Free time meant just that – he really couldn’t stop Nightingale going around asking questions while off duty, as long as he didn’t abuse his position. ‘Let me guess,’ he said, cautiously. ‘You have a hunch.’

  ‘More of an itch, really.’ Tim explained about his interview with Tess Leland and his discovery of her situation: the burglary, the phone calls, the interrupted break-in. ‘I’ve said to her that it’s all coincidence, but frankly I think there’s just too much of it to ignore. Peters stirred something up, and whether it killed him or not, it’s still stirring. Roger Leland’s death could have been a beginning rather than an ending. Or it could be part of something much, much bigger.’

  ‘And so now you want to scratch this Leland itch officially, is that it?’

  ‘I think it should be looked into, yes.’

  Abbott shook his head in what looked like regret. ‘We’ve got too big a case load to go chasing butterflies, Tim.’

  ‘And we always will have. But if it turns out that Ivor Peters was right and I’m right and Roger Leland’s death was more than an ordinary accident, and his widow and son suffer through our negligence, we’d look very bad. And feel even worse.’

  ‘Hmmmm.’ That possibility was not pleasing to Abbott. He scowled. ‘But the Leland woman could be an hysteric, looking for attention.’

  ‘I’ve considered that. But Soame believes her, and I respect his judgement. He was there when the latest phone call was made, he saw her reaction.’

  ‘Who the hell is Soame?’ the DCI demanded.

  Patiently, Tim explained how John Soame had recently entered into the Leland household. ‘He’s a well-known historian. I used to attend his lectures at university. He was very sound.’

  ‘ “Sound”, was he?’ Abbott asked, with only slight sarcasm. It was an awkward moment. Abbott was a good DCI, but only at the Yard temporarily, and thus lacking the aggressive edge that ambition honed so sharply in men who were out to make themselves known to those on the top floors. He liked Nightingale – most of the men liked Nightingale – but he was hesitant to trust his judgement completely. It was always expensive to trust young Detective Sergeants completely, and there’d been so much fuss about budgets, lately. As far as he could tell, in fact, almost everything up here was about budgets.

  ‘Well, I really can’t justify it, you know,’ he finally said, with a sigh.

  ‘It would be a lot more expensive to investigate Mrs Leland’s murder,’ Tim persisted. ‘And we are supposed to prevent crime as well as detect it, aren’t we?’

  ‘Theoretically.’

  ‘Well, this might be doing both. We can’t be blamed for trying, ca
n we?’

  Abbott regarded Nightingale thoughtfully, thinking of the DCI who would return to this desk in a few months. The man he was temporarily replacing was an officer of the old school, who’d come up through the ranks, whereas Abbott himself – like Nightingale – had received Accelerated Promotion because of a university degree. He understood Nightingale’s impatience with Yard politics, and the niceties of rank, privilege, and rumour. He didn’t think DCI Spry, when he returned, would be so sympathetic. If he encouraged Nightingale, he might only be making future trouble for Spry and the boy himself. If he discouraged him, however, he could nip in the bud the very qualities that were already lifting Nightingale above the others in the Service. Which responsibility should he honour first: loyalty to the Service and its concomitant infrastructure; or loyalty to the future, where officers like this one could create better and more sensitive policing? He glanced at the clock again, swiveled his chair to look out of his window, and considered. Finally, he turned back and slapped his hands on the desk. ‘Just keep it down,’ he said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get on with whatever you want to set in motion, but keep the costs down and keep your head down, too. We’ve only got so much time, only so many hands, we’ve got to do it all the best we can.’ He stood up. ‘Unless and until something bigger or more urgent comes along, that is. Understood?’

  Nightingale nodded, stood up, and turned to leave the office. He wanted to get out before Abbott changed his mind or put any limitations on him or said anything else, but he wasn’t fast enough.

  ‘Nightingale?’

  Tim turned in the doorway. ‘Sir?’

  ‘What do you intend to do next?’

  ‘I want to run up to Cambridge and talk to a few people.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve only heard Soame lecture, sir. I know nothing about his private life. He is new on the scene, and he is right there in the house and—’ he paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And telephones can be rigged to ring on an electronic command – the technology can be picked up in half a dozen shops along Tottenham Court Road. You can be in the same room and call yourself, so to speak. You can also rig a phone to relay taped messages on command, all kinds of things. Just because he was beside her when she got one of the calls doesn’t mean he wasn’t behind it.’

  ‘I thought you said he was “sound”.’

  ‘He is – on the nineteenth century. And anyway, that was a long time ago. That doesn’t mean he’s perfect. Or honest. Things may have happened to change him since I was up there. I don’t know what his motivation might be, or if he has any connection with Mrs Leland, but some answers might be available in Cambridge.’

  ‘Not trusting anyone is a bitch, isn’t it?’ Abbott said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But good policing, all the same,’ Abbott said, approvingly. The door began to close. ‘Tim?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Make it a day trip, I’m not authorizing any overnight expenses so you can have a piss-up with your old school ties.’

  Tim grinned. ‘All my old school ties are now rich merchant bankers or pop group promoters. If I do make contact in Cambridge it will probably be with other coppers. And you know we industrious, trustworthy coppers only drink tea, sir.’

  Tess and Archie moved on from the Ritz to a small Italian restaurant just off Dean Street, where the food was superb and the wine ambrosiac. She had far too much of both, and found herself telling Archie all about the phone calls and the mysterious burglar who wasn’t there.

  ‘And they’re after this money of yours, is that it?’ he asked, offering her a breadstick.

  ‘Yes. Except that there isn’t any money,’ Tess said. ‘If I knew what they were talking about, it would make sense, but I don’t, so it doesn’t.’ She paused. ‘Any more than that sentence does. I don’t think I should have any more wine.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he said, filling up her glass. ‘It’s just what you should have.’ He topped up his own glass and then raised it to her. ‘Here’s to nonsense.’

  ‘I wish I agreed with you,’ she said. ‘It would be funny if it wasn’t so frightening.’

  ‘It looks to me like maybe it has something to do with your husband,’ Archie suggested. ‘Maybe he had some money. Maybe he put it some place and didn’t tell you – how about that?’

  ‘Well, maybe, but that wouldn’t have been very like Roger. He was secretive about some things, but—’ she paused.

  ‘But?’ he asked, encouragingly.

  She shrugged and sipped more wine. ‘If there was any money hidden in the house, I expect the burglars found it weeks ago.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Archie said. ‘Maybe your husband hid it in some really terrific place. What kind of things interested him? What did he do with his time?’

  ‘He didn’t have much time of his own, really. He was a workaholic. But when he did take time off, he liked to walk, and drink wine . . . and read . . . ’

  ‘Maybe he hid some money in a book.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Tess said, sadly. ‘He played squash, sometimes. He was quite good at that.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very promising,’ Archie said.

  ‘No,’ Tess agreed.

  ‘Hey, cheer up. Have some more wine. You’re supposed to be having a good time, here, remember?’

  When they emerged, around ten o’clock, it was raining. They began to walk along the pavement towards Shaftesbury Avenue, where taxis would be patrolling to catch the after-theatre crowd. ‘Just like Melbourne,’ Archie said, moving her around a puddle.

  She glanced sideways at him. ‘I thought you said you came from Sydney.’

  ‘Oh, sure, but I grew up in Melbourne,’ he said.

  As they passed the open mouth of a dark and noisome alley, there was a sudden clatter of bins and a shout. A few yards within, two men were grappling together in a drunken argument.

  One knocked the other down and stood over him, shouting obscenities. The reek of alcohol blended with the stench of dirt and decaying garbage as the fallen man struggled up from a heap of split black plastic sacks, shouting in turn, waving his arms. He glanced towards the mouth of the alley and saw them. Abruptly his venom was turned on them rather than his more recent adversary.

  ‘Come on, this is no place for you,’ Archie said.

  As they moved on hurriedly, the man leaned down, picked something up, and hurled it towards them. ‘Piss off, piss off!’ he shouted. ‘Mind your own effing business!’

  ‘Jesus, it’s a rat!’ Archie exclaimed, as the small black missile fell at their feet and began to twitch.

  ‘No, it isn’t, it’s a cat,’ Tess said, stooping down to pick it up. ‘A kitten,’ she amended, as the tiny, soaking wet little body squirmed and mewed in her hands.

  ‘Cripes, it’s filthy,’ Archie said, with distaste, pulling her away as the man began to come towards them. ‘Drop it and come on.’

  ‘No, he’ll hurt it. He’s a vile man,’ Tess said, blurrily, allowing herself to be propelled along the pavement towards the lights of the avenue ahead, but still clutching the squirming, mewling little body. ‘Throwing this poor defenceless animal at us like that. He could have killed it. Ouch.’ Needle claws had dug into her hand as the kitten sought freedom.

  ‘Defenceless, hell. It’s probably covered with fleas,’ Archie said. ‘Oh, for crying out loud, let it go. We can’t take a cat into a bar.’

  ‘We’re not going to a bar,’ Tess said. She opened her briefcase and carefully inserted the bedraggled kitten, closing the bag gently over its spiky, muddy, reeking head.

  ‘But it’s only a little after ten,’ Archie said, in some consternation.

  ‘Time to go home,’ Tess said, carefully.

  ‘Oh,’ Archie said, as if a light were dawning. ‘Oh. Right. Got
you. Home it is.’ He seemed pleased suddenly, she couldn’t imagine why. She’d had far too much wine. Her throat was sore from talking so much, and her feet hurt. Maybe his feet hurt, too.

  She came to a different conclusion in the taxi.

  All traces of the wine, the cocktails, and the candlelight were dissipated from Tess’s brain as Archie McMurdo made his expectations plain. ‘No, Archie, please—’ Tess protested in a low but audible voice, prying away his busy hands and leaning back from his looming face, which cut off the light and made her feel trapped and claustrophobic.

  He glared at her for a moment, then pushed her away abruptly. ‘I thought Yank women were liberated,’ he said.

  ‘Not all of us,’ she snapped. ‘And liberated doesn’t mean—’

  ‘Leave it out,’ Archie said brusquely, and turned to stare out of the window. His Australian accent, softened during the tea and dinner interludes, had reappeared under the influence of this apparently unexpected and certainly unwelcome wound to his self-esteem.

  ‘It’s just that—’

  ‘I know, I know, you’re not that kind of sheila,’ Archie said, turning back to face her and leaning into the corner of the seat. ‘Forget it. I didn’t read you clear, all right? Let’s leave it at that.’

  ‘I did enjoy this evening with you,’ she said, quietly.

  He patted her hand in an avuncular manner. ‘Well, that’s good, girl, that’s fine. Glad to have been of service, as they say.’

  And he spoke no more during the rest of the journey through the gleaming streets. Window displays and traffic lights reflected off the wet asphalt and made puddles of colour on the pavements, but once they’d left the theatre district there were few pedestrians about to appreciate the rainbowed duplication. The bright rectangles containing heaped merchandise or mannequins frozen in fashionable poses became fewer and fewer, the gaps between them longer, until only the occasional gleam from restaurants, pubs and late-night takeaways lent warmth to the grey, slanting shafts of rain and the patent-leather sheen of the road. Other cars, secret and sleek, moved beside them, occasionally punctuated by the red wall of a bus or the half-seen and indecipherable lettering on the side of a passing lorry. In front, the driver was listening to a radio phone-in on the decline of public morals, but in the dark cube of the rear seat there was only an intermittent squeak and scrabble from within Tess’s briefcase.