Death Penalties
Page 27
Tess turned to Adrian. ‘You seemed to know “Archie” was a phoney.’
‘Oh, I did,’ Adrian agreed. ‘But only after I’d flown to Italy and tracked down Dolly McMurdo herself. When I saw what you had done at the mansion I knew there was nothing wrong with your work or your ideas, so there had to be something wrong with him. When I finally found her in her little “hideaway” – my God, Tess, you should have seen the frescoes in that place – she told me flatly that she had no nephew named Archie or anything else. I came back all full of my news, only to find it was old news.’ He sighed. ‘I felt quite miffed when you all turned on me.’
‘And promptly went into a sulk,’ John said, wincing as the ambulanceman bound his wound.
‘I am a sensitive creature,’ Adrian said, but his eyes were twinkling as he spoke.
Abbott wanted to finish this now. ‘Time was passing. Kobalski was waiting for Hendricks when he came back this morning. When Hendricks learned Max had gone missing, Kobalski leaned on him. Hendricks was frightened – he had begun to realize the kind of people he’d so lightly taken on as “clients”, and that they had no compunction about killing even useful people if they wanted to make a point. Fear for his own safety finally overcame his better judgement, as well as any finer feelings he might have had about you and the boy. When he came over, he knew Kobalski was watching outside, waiting for a chance to get you out of the way.’
‘And I gave it to him,’ Tess said, contritely. ‘By leaving the house and going out to look for Max myself.’
‘Come on, in you get,’ the ambulanceman said, taking hold of John Soame’s good arm. Soame staggered slightly as he got up, and they supported him out of the hall and through the gate to the waiting ambulance.
Adrian looked at Tess, who was staring at the floor. ‘He followed you,’ he said, softly. ‘He knew you wanted to look for Max, but he didn’t want you to be alone.’
Nightingale cleared his throat. ‘Soame saw Kobalski go into the house after you, and managed to ring us from a box on the corner. We told him to just watch and wait, but he went in. When you went over the wall Kobalski knocked him out and went after you. As soon as he came to he went after Kobalski, even though he knew the man was a killer. He was over the wall by the time we arrived – he wouldn’t wait – so all we could do was contact London Transport and get them to turn off the power. After that it was just a matter of covering all the stations to which you had access – including this one.’
Tess looked at them, and then towards the gate.
‘Go on, Tess. Mrs Grimble and I will look after Max,’ Adrian said, encouragingly. ‘And you should have that ankle strapped.’
Tess stood up.
The ambulance doors banged shut and the vehicle swayed as the driver got in and engaged gears to drive away. John Soame opened his eyes when Tess sat down beside him. ‘What about Max?’ he asked.
‘Mrs Grimble will feed him bangers and mash and Adrian will tell him all about what he missed.’ She cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Thanks for saving my life, by the way.’
He shrugged, his half-moon smile curling up in his pale face. ‘Thanks for saving mine,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh . . . it’s hard to explain. You see, last spring I had a nervous breakdown.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Oh?’ He seemed surprised, but not embarrassed. ‘Well, it happens to a lot of people, I guess. They got me functioning again – I could walk and talk just like a real person.’ He smiled wryly. ‘But I simply felt dead inside. I couldn’t seem to care about anything or anyone. I hoped coming to London, a change of work and scene, might help. At first it didn’t make a bit of difference. And then Adrian suggested our “arrangement”.’ He managed another smile. ‘I won’t say it’s been relaxing, exactly, but it has stopped me thinking only about myself. And I don’t think I’ve felt so alive for years. You did that. You and Max.’
‘And the beautiful Julia?’ Tess asked before she could stop herself.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘What’s my niece got to do with it?’
She stared back. ‘Julia’s your niece?’
‘Yes, of course. My ex-wife wasn’t Adrian’s only sister, you know, and they’re all pretty overwhelming. Is it any wonder he turned out the way he has? Julia is not only my niece, she is a very intelligent girl who is reading medicine at Barts, and whose parents have several other children to support. I’m helping to finance her – hence my present extreme poverty – and in return she’s helping me do my research. What did you think she—’ He paused. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘Well, she was wearing your dressing-gown.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, she was. And it was raining that night, if you recall. She had got her clothes soaked by a passing taxi and was drying them in front of my gas fire. You ran off before I could introduce you.’ He sighed. ‘She’s just broken up with her boyfriend – I’d been hearing all the gory details of a broken heart. Poor girl can’t move into her new place until the end of the week. She’ll have to stay with us until then.’ He started to put his good arm around her, then paused.
‘You did call me “darling” that night, didn’t you?’ he asked, warily.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I did.’
He looked relieved. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. He pulled her close, bent his head to kiss her, then slid slowly off the seat in a dead faint instead.
The ambulanceman, who had been listening and watching with great interest, stared down at him and sighed. ‘I was expecting that,’ he said, resignedly. ‘These intellectual types are all alike, aren’t they?’
Tess smiled as she knelt to help him lift John onto the stretcher. ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘Not quite.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Nightingale stood on the pavement, watching the ambulance pull away. People were still pausing to stare, clotting on either side of the precipitately revealed Tube station. A few ignored the broken boards and thick dust, and were trying to buy tickets. Accustomed to stations that were vandalized, dilapidated, or in the throes of renovation, they assumed this was a functioning station, and did not like being told to move on. The man from London Transport looked on the verge of either strike action or a magnificent tantrum.
The fog was still with them, now visible only in lamplight and headlight beams, and Nightingale could feel the damp cold penetrating his jacket. ‘Move these people on, will you?’ he asked one of the uniformed officers. ‘That poor sod from London Transport is going under for the third time. And get somebody to call 55 Broadway, they’ll need to send a crew to board up the place again.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the constable said, and moved off to do the usual six things at once.
Abbott joined him, looking amused. ‘We located Carter. He is a curate at St Winifred’s. Or was. When we found him he was in bed with the vicar’s wife, the vicar being out at his regular Monday karate class. So much for the worry that Carter was some kind of paedophile. I tell you, Tim, the Church is not what it was.’
‘No,’ Tim agreed.
‘And we could have discounted Walter Briggs from three o’clock yesterday afternoon. He’s been in the Hampstead lock-up since then, taken there after some kind of domestic punch-up with his son concerning a bottle of ten-year-old brandy that had been reserved for some important guests.’
‘Thus we spread our largesse throughout the population,’ Tim said. ‘Bringing joy into every life we touch.’
Abbott ignored the sarcastic tone. ‘Well, clearing this Leland thing up ought to look good on your record,’ he said.
‘I wonder,’ Tim said. ‘They aren’t going to like the expense sheet – getting London Transport to turn off the juice on the Underground line, then having to send in extra men to handle the traffic jams as people poured out looking for buses, ripping open this place, mounting a search for the boy
– they’ll go raving mad.’ He sighed. ‘And all because one old cop was curious about one man who died too soon.’
Abbott looked at him. ‘Everybody dies too soon,’ he said, gently.
‘Yes. But if Roger Leland had lived even a day longer, it would all have been different. I like to think he’d decided to come to us.’
‘He might have come up with some other scheme,’ Abbott said. ‘Something not quite so noble.’
‘I prefer my version. We do know that, at the last minute, he did his best. I hope the boy eventually realizes that.’ He shook his head. ‘Funny, the way Max hung on to those stamps. He showed them to me when we got back to the house. Very boring, not even attractive pictures on them. And worth all that money. Disgusting, really.’
‘You mean, when you think of all the starving children in India?’ Abbott asked, trying to raise a smile.
‘Something like that.’
Abbott looked at him, recognizing the tone of voice, the slump of the shoulders, the emptiness. It always happened, every time, to everyone, at the end of the long, long run. There was nothing anybody could do, except ride it out. ‘Go home,’ he said, quietly, wishing it didn’t sound so banal. ‘Put your feet up, have a drink, let it all go. Just let it run out the ends of your fingers, Tim. It’s the only way.’
But Nightingale didn’t answer, and Abbott knew there was nothing he could do for him now.
Maybe later.
Maybe tomorrow.
But not now.
Tim stood looking at the grimy street and the passing people. There weren’t that many now – it was past the rush hour – but they looked whey-faced and weary. Their feet made a sullen, shuffling sound on the pavement. Their eyes were down, their expressions blank.
He felt the weight of the crowd, and it crushed him.
You don’t see me, he thought. You don’t want to see me. I only come bringing trouble, after all. I walk through people’s lives and out the other side, trailing disaster. I picked up a thread of Ivor Peters’ life because I thought it would be exciting, because I thought I was doing the right thing. How many people are destroyed each day by someone like me, trying to do the right thing? And what difference did I make, in the end? Five years from now, none of them will remember my name.
Abbott will go home to his hills.
Chief Inspector Spry will come back and growl at everyone for a few years, then retire, glad to be out of it.
Murray will make sergeant.
Hendricks will soon be running whatever gaol he lands up in.
Kobalski will get a smart lawyer and probably be deported.
Sherry will marry her stockbroker.
Tess Leland will marry Professor Soame.
Maybe Max will even grow up to be prime minister.
After a brief interlude, they will all continue as before.
I won’t have changed them.
But they will have changed me, because I can’t turn them out. They stay within me, because I can’t forget. And gradually I will be so full of them that there will be no room for me.
He looked at Abbott, now deploying the uniformed men to various tasks, clearing up the mess, tidying up the details, probably already planning the report he’d write tomorrow. He looked so calm, so controlled, so damned able. How do you get through it? he wondered. You’re standing there, scratching your ear, looking up the street, listening to Murray telling a joke and you’re smiling. How did you learn to pretend it doesn’t matter? Where do I sign up for the course?
Because there will be other cases, other victims, other villains. The city breeds them, and it is breeding them into me, too. Any one of these people walking by me now could be part of my next case. What will I be like when I’ve absorbed all the pain and the anger and the sorrow and the evil this city can create? Do I really want to be that man?
He glanced at his reflection in the darkened window of a nearby chemist. His shadowy self looked attenuated, hollow, and misshapen.
He turned away.
ebreak
Paula Gosling
Paula Gosling was born in Detroit and moved to England in 1964, where she has lived ever since. She worked as a copywriter and a freelance copy consultant before becoming a full time writer in 1979. Since then she has published close to twenty novels and has served as the Crime Writers’ Association Chairman. Her debut novel, A Running Duck, won the John Creasey Award and has been adapted into the films Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone, and Fair Game, starring Cindy Crawford. The first novel in her popular Jack Stryker Series, A Monkey Puzzle, also won the Golden Dagger award for the best crime novel of 1985.
ebreak
Bello
hidden talent rediscovered
Bello is a digital-only imprint of Pan Macmillan,
established to breathe new life into previously
published, classic books.
At Bello we believe in the timeless power
of the imagination, of a good story, narrative
and entertainment, and we want to use digital
technology to ensure that many more readers
can enjoy these books into the future.
We publish in ebook and print-on-demand formats
to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.
www.panmacmillan.com/imprint-publishers/bello
ebreak
First published 1991 by Scribners
This edition first published 2018 by Bello
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-6079-1 EPUB
Copyright © Paula Gosling 1991
The right of Paula Gosling to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Ellipsis, Glasgow
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than
that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books
and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and
news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters
so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.