Boiling Point

by Frank Lean

  ‘A couple of brand-new bikes and all the trimmings are hardly the same as ice cream. You’re trying to make some kind of statement, aren’t you?’

  ‘Janine, you’re twisted. I don’t analyse every action for significance as minutely as you do. I wanted to take them for a ride and I bought them the gear and we went. Full stop, end of story.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that. You’ve never had a sudden rush of blood to your head like this before and you still haven’t told me why you threw a wobbler yesterday.’

  ‘I didn’t throw a wobbler, and maybe I want to be generous to your children because I won’t ever get the opportunity to be generous to my own.’

  ‘I’ve never said I wouldn’t like another child,’ she said angrily, ‘but if you’re expecting white weddings, bridesmaids and all that crap, you can stuff it.’

  ‘You misunderstand me. I don’t mean . . . I’ve already got two children and someone’s put them in danger.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ she said hotly.

  ‘Dee Elsworth. I’m the father of her twin sons . . .’

  ‘The banker’s wife who gave you the Lowry . . .’ She started laughing. ‘Oh, Dave, this is too much. What was it? What did they call it? A stud fee?’

  ‘It was nothing like that, but you’d never understand. Brandon Carlyle has threatened to expose Dee and to have her garden dug up where those two men who tried to kill me and rape her are buried. Someone’s opened her big mouth about something that was supposed to be secret.’

  ‘I see! You think I’ve told someone what you told me. How dare you!’

  ‘Well, haven’t you? It could hardly have been Dee.’

  ‘This is so nice. This is lovely. Dave Cunane’s big secret is out in the open, so naturally it must be me who told the world? There must be a thousand ways Carlyle could have discovered your guilty secret.’

  ‘It’s not a guilty secret. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of and if he didn’t learn about it through you, how did he learn it?’

  By way of reply Janine picked up a plate one of the children had left in the room and hurled it at the wall. Then she stormed off into the bathroom and I heard the sound of running water.

  ‘Bloody men!’ she swore when she came back. ‘One of those animatronic apes at the Rainforest Café that Lloyd was burbling about has more sensitivity than either you or Henry Talbot put together. I’ve never mentioned your feeble little adventure to another soul, not even my mother . . .’

  ‘All right! All right!’ I shouted, jumping to my feet. ‘Men are bloody useless! Of course we are. It’s our nature. Someone like you could never make a mistake, could you, Janine? Of course, you’re not the one who shouted that I was a killer in Marti King’s hearing that day at my office. That couldn’t have been you, could it?’

  ‘So that’s it? That’s the charge? That’s what all this face-pulling and lip-curling is about?’ she said, giving a pretty fair impression of incredulity. ‘I plead guilty and proud of it. If you’d wanted to keep your shady past that secret you should never have said a word to me in the first place. How was I to know that poor little rich Marti was earwigging?’

  ‘I may have a shady past but now I’ve got to live with your big gob, haven’t I? And while we’re being so graphic about each other’s faults, why don’t you admit that you’re as neurotic as hell? If you think I set out to buy your children’s affection you’re crazy. I’d never do that. I’d never need to.’

  The confrontation had brought us face to face. Whatever Janine believed, I’m not a man who lets his fists do the talking for him, but I’d said plenty and I didn’t trust myself to go on. I turned and started towards the door.

  ‘Taking your bat and ball home because I won’t play by your rules, are you, Dave?’ Janine asked quietly. ‘Don’t go. I haven’t finished with you yet. We’ve got to fix up about this holiday. Half-term starts next week and I want Jenny to be able to tell the Blessed Miss Seagrave what her arrangements are.’

  I stayed where I was, breathing heavily. To say I was flabbergasted at her change of tack was incorrect. I don’t think I had any flabber left to be gasted.

  ‘Don’t shout again, you’ll waken the children,’ Janine warned.

  ‘Smashing perfectly good plates is OK, I suppose?’ I commented mildly.

  ‘Christ, Dave,’ she said with a smile. ‘You’ve got them both so tired they’ll sleep till doomsday. I don’t know how Miss Seagrave will cope if Jenny’s late for school. She’s the register monitor.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Come here, stud,’ she said.

  28

  I THOUGHT THE weekend had been heavy but it wasn’t until I was arrested on Monday morning that the roof really fell in.

  I suppose it was considerate of the Cheshire Constabulary to send plainclothesmen round to my office rather than the traditional Black Maria to Thornleigh Court, and they did say that I was only going to be assisting them in their enquiries, but nevertheless they hauled me off to Wilmslow police station. It amounted to arrest. Being grilled by the police these days is like slamming into a rubber wall. They’re all so polite. ‘Assisting’ or being compelled, I came to a full stop and was left under no illusion that I could get up and walk out.

  Not that I wanted to. I wanted answers about the brutal murder of Sam Levy just as much as they did.

  Sam had been found on Sunday evening by the hairdresser who called every week to cut and tint his hair. The old man was lashed to a chair and had been brutally beaten. Death appeared to be due to heart failure or sheer terror. The house was ransacked from top to bottom. To the police it looked like a burglary that had gone wrong – that was until they found my fingerprints in several rooms. Then their busy minds set to work on other scenarios.

  I spent most of an exhausting day fending off their questions. There was enough information on offer to divert their suspicions. Angelina of course was right up there with me as a prime suspect, and apparently she’d pulled another disappearing stunt which made her slightly more favourite than me. As the afternoon wore on, though, I detected a shift in emphasis away from myself and Angelina . . . Had Mr Levy ever expressed any fears of burglary? Had he revealed to me that he kept considerable amounts of money on the premises? I told them about Leah’s pearls. It was safe enough to assume that they were somewhere in the house. Other visitors must have been as able to guess that as I was.

  The questions went on relentlessly. What did I know about the sex cruises to Thailand and the Philippines that Mr Levy had started taking soon after his sister’s death? Had he mentioned any unsavoury characters trying to blackmail him? Had I tried to blackmail him? Who were the people who had arranged his marriage? What money had changed hands? What had happened on the honeymoon trip round the Irish race courses? Did I know of any Irish extortionists who might have learned of Mr Levy’s wealth?

  I gave out what I knew and gleaned what I could.

  It was late in the afternoon before they let me go. There had been a similar murder of a wealthy recluse in South Cheshire three months previously. A Liverpool gang was suspected. Why, I don’t know, except that it’s an article of faith among the Cheshire police that the worst crimes on their patch are down to Liverpudlians. The Carlyle name was never mentioned. Nothing was said about the Olley murder. So I felt under no obligation to volunteer information about either. In the light of Brandon Carlyle’s threat, doing so might have compromised Dee Elsworth, her children and myself – compromised us more fatally and permanently than a spot of embarrassment at some article in a Sunday paper could have done.

  All the way back to Chorlton I tried to argue myself into believing the Liverpool gang hypothesis. I tried and I failed. There were just too many coincidences piling up one on top of the other. Olley just happened to have been killed outside my door at a time when Marti was supposed to be paying me a visit. The very next day Sam Levy, friend of the Carlyles, chose to send me on a convenient trip east of Suez to retrieve his wife. Worst of al
l, Sam had managed to get himself killed after starting to tell me all about the murky dealings of the Carlyle family.

  Janine was standing at the open door of my flat when I got back to Thornleigh Court. The phone was ringing in the room behind her.

  ‘It’s been like this all afternoon,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Like what?’ I said irritably.

  ‘The police left your door open when they carted some of your clothes away.’

  ‘That’s all right, I gave them the key to get in. The clothes will be back as soon as they establish that they’re not covered in Sam Levy’s blood.’

  ‘That old man? They think you killed him?’ she asked in astonishment.

  ‘No. It’s what the police call “eliminating a suspect from their enquiries”. Naturally when they find my fingerprints in someone’s house the first thing they think is that a sleazy private eye like me would be bound to knock off one of his clients.’

  ‘Stupid pigs!’ she said surprisingly. I was warmed by the idea that someone was on my side.

  ‘So what else has happened?’

  ‘That phone, it’s been driving me mad. It keeps on ringing but when I answer it whoever’s on the other end puts it down.’

  ‘One-four-seven-one?’

  ‘Number withheld.’

  The phone was still ringing. I picked it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Cunane, ring this number from a public call box,’ Tony Hefflin ordered before rattling off a number and then disconnecting.

  ‘Carlyle,’ I told Janine.

  I made the call from the street.

  ‘What have you told them?’ were Brandon Carlyle’s first words.

  ‘What should I have told them?’ I said angrily. ‘Ask your tame bent copper. If I’d said anything you’d have police cars parked all over your lovely flower beds by now.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Mr Cunane,’ Brandon said. All the breezy self-confidence had vanished from his voice.

  ‘I’ll bet you do,’ I muttered.

  ‘I had nothing to do with Sam’s death. You’ve got to believe me. I’m sorry I threatened you but I can’t have folk scrabbling round for muck. I thought you were going to exploit Sam’s little weakness to dig up some dirt.’

  ‘So there’s dirt to be dug?’

  ‘Not like you think. I’ve been in business for forty years. There’s bound to be something that interested parties like that toe-rag Harrow could use to smear me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say anything, would I? Not with you threatening to expose my own lurid past.’

  ‘Look, I’ll level with you, Cunane. That was a bluff. Tony Hefflin told me that there’d been an investigation to find if you’d had anything to do with that pair disappearing, and the kids . . . well, I happen to know that Harold Elsworth is infertile. He booked into a clinic that I have an interest in. So if she didn’t have the kids by you she had them by someone else.’

  I felt myself going hot and cold. So Harold Elsworth knew that he couldn’t be the father of Dee’s children . . . My throat was too dry to speak but I needn’t have worried. Brandon Carlyle had enough to say for both of us. ‘Honestly, Cunane, I’m grateful to you. I’d feel happier if you’d let me show my gratitude in a tangible way.’

  ‘You’d feel happier if you could pay me off, then you’d think I was in your pocket.’

  ‘If you can tell me what the hell’s wrong with money changing hands I’ll buy you a bloody brass clock,’ he blathered. ‘What do you think makes the world go round? And it’s not as if we don’t owe you. First our Charlie, and now me.’

  I hung up. I felt as if I was suffocating. Was there anything this appalling family didn’t know about? I loosened my tie and hurried across the road to the flats. A brand-new four-wheel drive was parked close to the entrance. It didn’t belong to any of the residents, but I found out soon enough who the owner was.

  ‘David, my old son, returned to us like the prodigal from his husks among the cities of the Plain,’ the plummy voice of Clyde Harrow boomed as soon as I went into Janine’s flat. She and the two children were seated and looking at the roly-poly TV personality with the fixed gaze of rabbits waiting for a cobra to strike.

  ‘Uh, Dave, you know Clyde,’ Janine muttered awkwardly.

  ‘To know him is not to love him,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Ah now, young master, don’t be harsh. I was in danger of becoming half in love with easeful Death until I bethought myself of this good lady. Believe me I had no idea that you and she were en famille, as it were, when I invited her to accompany me to the annual award show. I merely called this evening to see if she cares to respond affirmatively to my humble invitation. There’s just the faintest ghost of a chance that I may be in the running for an award myself, and one feels so gauche if one hasn’t a lovely lady at one’s side on these occasions.’

  Janine and I exchanged a glance. Her expression was unreadable.

  ‘Ah, well . . . erm, Clyde,’ she said blushing. I looked in astonishment. I’d never really seen Janine blush before.

  ‘Go, Janine,’ I said when I found where I’d left my tongue in my cheek. ‘You might get a good story out of it. I’ll look after the children.’

  ‘Am I to take it that these splendid children, these delights come among us trailing clouds of glory, are the products of your union?’

  ‘Clyde, I won’t be able to come. It’ll mean a night in London,’ Janine interjected. I could hardly cope with the surprise that she hadn’t blown Clyde out already, so I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘But the young master has given his connubial consent and you have it on the word of a Harrow that there will be nothing untoward.’ Clyde gazed at Janine with a rapt expression on his clownish face. I couldn’t have trusted him less.

  ‘What do you think, Dave?’ Janine said eagerly.

  ‘Go,’ I gasped, not wanting to be the dog in the manger at their love-fest.

  This was all the invitation Clyde needed to expand and fill all available space. I must say that for once I was almost grateful to him. While I listened to his practised patter as he simultaneously entertained the children, chatted up Janine and did his best to flatter me, I didn’t have to give attention to the thought that lay like a heavy stone across the back of my skull – that the death of Sam Levy was my responsibility. On a rational level I knew it wasn’t. I told myself that it could have been an aggravated burglary as the police suspected, but guilt cut into me like a knife. I could have done something. I should have done something.

  The spell Clyde cast was eventually broken by Lloyd. ‘Mummy, I’m hungry,’ he piped up from the corner of the floor where he was lying on his stomach playing with his small collection of toy cars. ‘When are we going to have our tea?’

  ‘Aha! The voice of reality, youth is not to be denied . . . had we but world enough and time . . . but I will arise and go now,’ Clyde said.

  ‘No, stay and eat with us, I’ll put something on,’ Janine volunteered. Not for the first time that evening I goggled at her. The culinary arts were not the area of Janine’s greatest expertise. Pizza and chips or fish fingers taxed her. I can’t say I rushed to second her invitation. As we were in Janine’s living room I supposed it wasn’t my place to do that anyway.

  Clyde stood up and patted his stomach.

  ‘To be truthful, dear lady, I can feel my own gastric juices beginning to whimper for a revictualling. I see from the expression of dismay on the face of your love-sick swain here, that any call on you to feed my appetite will cause domestic problems . . .’

  ‘No, stay, Clyde,’ I countered. ‘I’m sure between our two larders we can find enough to satisfy even such a demanding appetite as yours.’

  ‘Mummy, I’m hungry,’ Lloyd reminded.

  ‘Yes, so am I,’ Jenny agreed. ‘But why has Mr Harrow said that Dave’s a sick swine? Miss Seagrave says that calling names leads to fights.’

  ‘Clyde didn’t mean that he doesn’t like Dave. He said swain, not swine,’ Janine
explained.

  ‘What’s a swain then?’ Jenny persisted.

  ‘A rustic lover,’ boomed Clyde.

  ‘Oh. But I still want something to eat.’

  ‘In that case may I suggest a takeaway meal?’ Clyde said. ‘Please allow me to supply it. I know an excellent Chinese establishment nearby which will be happy to deliver all our requirements.’

  It seemed churlish to quibble, and the next few minutes were spent in listing and ordering. Clyde went out to phone in the narrow hallway and when he returned told us he’d ordered a Chinese feast. We made small talk for twenty minutes and then a hamper full of goodies arrived. I stayed in my seat while Janine bustled off to find plates and utensils but Clyde took me to one side. He carefully positioned himself so that I was screened from Janine’s view.

  ‘Ah, dear lad, a temporary embarrassment,’ he said, smiling warmly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘By oversight I’ve come without my wallet. Could you oblige me with the necessary? I will repay you almost instantaneously.’

  I paid the delivery man. It turned out that Clyde had ordered enough for eight adults, but that was no problem because he ate as if he hadn’t seen food for days. He chewed his way remorselessly through packet after packet of prawn balls, cashew nuts, fried rice and duck’s wings, chattering all the while. The two children watched in awe and timidly nibbled their portion while Janine and I struggled to keep up with him. Food disappeared with amazing rapidity, paper and foil cartons piling up in a heap.

  ‘A true feast,’ Clyde remarked, ‘demands an appropriate beverage.’

  ‘China tea?’ I suggested.

  ‘Ha!’ Clyde sneered. ‘Ever the humorist, dear boy.’

  I went next door to plunder my wine rack. I brought back three bottles, intending to allow him to select one but he had all three open in the time it takes to turn a corkscrew. I made no protest. The food and alcohol were just what I needed to blunt my own guilt about Sam, but a little voice was whispering that Clyde Harrow never did anything without a purpose. I allowed myself to wonder what he was up to.