by Iona Whishaw
O’Brien picked up the phone to call upstairs. When Ames answered, O’Brien started to say, “Ames,” but corrected himself—the kid had earned his stripes after all. “Sergeant, I think I may have something here. I went back to the file room with one of the boys because I thought it could use a sweep and a dusting. For good measure I had him make sure all the files were in order, not that anyone goes in there much, especially for the pre-war files. Anyway, he found a ’35 file in the ’33 section. An assault report. The officer had written the name of the alleged assailant, then crossed it out. It apparently didn’t pan out. Someone wrote ‘no foundation’ and signed it off.”
“I’ll be right down,” Ames said.
“I hoped you’d say that,” O’Brien murmured as he hung up the phone and settled his bulk more comfortably on his chair. He adjusted his glasses to see if he could remember whose signature that was. He could hear Ames clattering down the stairs. Oh, to be a young eager beaver, he thought, with no envy whatsoever.
“Let’s see,” Ames said, holding out his hand. There it was. “Tina Van Eyck, aged sixteen, reported assault by local man B. Watts. No parent, no corroboration, no foundation.” “Who is this?” he asked, pointing at the scribble that constituted the signature.
“I was just trying to figure that out. I recognize the signature, but I just can’t remember who it belonged to.”
Ames peered at it closely. “It certainly isn’t Mac anything. Miss Van Eyck thought the name was Scottish. This is just a scribble. And whoever it was didn’t bother printing his name where he was supposed to.”
“I’ll mull it over. It might come to me. I hope not in the middle of the night. I like my sleep.”
Ames smiled briefly. O’Brien liked all the comforts. “I wonder why it was misfiled like that?”
“Well, that anyone could do,” O’Brien pointed out. “It wasn’t the only one. Nothing so bad as two years, but there were a couple that needed re-filing. That room has terrible lighting.”
“Thanks. This is something, anyway.” Ames started back up the stairs when he heard O’Brien exclaim.
“No, hold up.”
When he turned around O’Brien was looking at the signature again.
“That’s Paul. It’s gotta be.”
“Paul?” asked Ames, coming back down.
“Sergeant Galloway. I told you about him. Took Darling under his wing when he came here.”
“What was he like?” Ames asked. He’d certainly ignored a genuine assault report.
“He was okay. He had a thing about not wasting police time. Worked hard. Unmarried, so he had nothing to go home to. He probably annoyed more than one member of the public because, when he got his teeth on the bit, he’d really go at it till he got his man. Good rate of conviction.”
“Why did he leave? When did he leave?”
“He left in ’37. As to why, your guess is as good as mine. Said it was too cold and too small. Knowing him, I’m guessing he didn’t find the women glamorous enough. Ambitious fellow, all the way around.”
“He doesn’t sound like the sort of person Inspector Darling would take to,” Ames said doubtfully.
“That’s true enough. I don’t think Darling picked up too many of his habits. But he was younger and wanted to do a good job, and Sergeant Galloway seemed to really like him. But he was like a pit bull when he thought he had someone.”
“A zealous cop like that could make mistakes,” Ames said. He was thinking of his own recent myopia.
“No, he was pretty solid. Wait. I mistake me. There was an arson conviction that got turned over after he left. I think there was another fire, and Darling in his usual plodding way found the right guy. But the evidence looked good enough. No one would blame Galloway for that mistake.”
Ames sat thoughtfully at his desk, blaming Galloway for his mistake with Tina. He wondered if he should try to reach Darling and ask him about the guy—but he knew that if he did, he’d get an earful about interfering with Lane and Darling’s honeymoon yet again. On the other hand, Tina had been ill-treated and he, at least, could right justice, even if only a little, after stumbling about making such a mess of it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You’re all I need,” Darling said with asperity into the phone. “Now what do you want?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I couldn’t think of another way,” Ames said.
“Waiting till I got back? Solving it yourself? Putting O’Brien or Terrell on to it? Your lack of imagination is astounding. We are back in less than a week. What couldn’t wait?”
Ames plunged in, bringing Darling up to date with the developments, especially as they involved Tina Van Eyck, which, in spite of himself, Darling found interesting. “So, I went on a search for the file and I couldn’t find it, but O’Brien found it misfiled. It turns out she had reported the assault to someone called Galloway who dismissed her out of hand. I think you knew him, before he left. I just wondered if he ever mentioned the case, or if there’s anything you could tell me about him. Why did he leave here?”
Darling’s mouth worked. He’d been thinking quite a lot about Galloway himself. He too, given what he knew now, wondered if there was anything more to Galloway’s abrupt departure in ’37.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Ames, I’m here. Off the top, I can tell you he never spoke of the case. I am heartily sorry he would have dismissed a report of a violent assault. Was she . . .” but he wasn’t able to finish his question.
“Yes, sir,” Ames said shortly.
“And this is related to your current investigation?”
“Yes. The man involved has been murdered.”
“I see. Do you think Miss Van Eyck is implicated?”
Ames felt the air go out of him. This was really the crux of what he thought of as his own misdeeds. “I honestly don’t think so, but I’ve been very determined to not let the fact that I know her blind me. It was a decade ago, but he’s been up to no good recently, apparently planning to run off with a local high-school girl. I just feel awfully bad because I had to question Tina, and I wasn’t at my best. I should have let Terrell do it. He’s good and he has no stake in this, if you see what I mean. Now I just feel I owe it to her to get to the bottom of it.”
“Ah. I gather she’s not talking to you, then. It’s a rotten thing to have happened to her, and having you blundering around being officious must have compounded the offence.”
“It didn’t help,” Ames admitted. “We did have one lead about a woman fitting her description, but it turned out to be someone else. It doesn’t put her right out of the picture, I suppose, but it’s becoming less likely.”
“I wish I could help. I can tell you this,” Darling said, “if she’d seen any other policeman in our force, she’d have been treated differently. At least, I hope so. She just had bad luck.” Darling hesitated, looking through the bedroom curtain at the hotel guests strolling in the garden. The sun had finally warmed the place up, and the guests were in summer clothes again. Should he tell Ames he had Paul Galloway right to hand? He was vaguely aware of some embarrassment at his having chosen Tucson for their honeymoon partly on the basis of Galloway having been an old comrade. A comrade with clay feet.
“Look, Ames, keep your eye on the prize here. You’re trying to find out who killed Watts. I can tell you for absolutely certain it wasn’t Galloway, however repellent he is. As it happens, he is the assistant chief of police here in Tucson and has been here the whole time. So, who have you got lined up?”
“He’s there, sir? How is it that—”
“Never mind. He just is.”
“I see.” He didn’t. “Well, there’s the father of the teenaged girl and—”
“No, Ames, a rhetorical question. I don’t actually want to know. I’m on my honeymoon. You and Terrell can run along and sort it.”
“Yes, sir.�
�� Before he could stop himself, Ames added, “Did you used to gamble sir?”
“Certainly not.”
“O’Brien told me that Sergeant Galloway seemed to be an okay guy who stood people drinks after work and gambled a bit. I was wondering, if you played cards with him anytime, you might know who else he played with. I’m wondering if he played cards with the dead guy. When he was still alive, obviously.”
Darling almost smiled at his end of the line. This was how he did it, he thought. Ames bumbled around and then asked an interesting question.
“Sorry, I can’t help you. I really never took to it. But it’s not the dimmest question you ever asked, I’ll say that.”
Darling hung up the phone and tapped his fingers on it thoughtfully. Galloway was an absolute ass—that was plain and had been all along. So, why had he left Nelson so suddenly in ’37? Just the weather?
Darling went back to the pool to join Lane, his mind full of grim thoughts about how much more disreputable Galloway could prove to be. He found her looking contentedly into middle distance, her book closed on the table next to her.
“Finished it, have you?” he asked, settling onto the deck chair.
“I have. I shall have to go find another, though I won’t find another Dorothy L. Sayers, which is sad, because it’s what I’m in the mood for now. Actually, I’d better find something short and snappy. Our Arizona idyll is almost over. Who was on the telephone? I admit I keep expecting your chum Galloway to call up and shout angry questions about where his wife is.”
“It was Ames, but funnily enough, Galloway did come into it.”
Lane sat up and looked at him. “He never! How?”
Darling related what he had learned from Ames. “I bet poor Amesy could use the Winslow shoulder to cry on just now. Tina’s is very cold at the moment, and he feels, not without reason, that he’s made a mess of everything.”
“Poor Tina! An experience like that at sixteen and having to soldier through it for the rest of her life only to have it all exposed in this horrible way. No wonder she’s angry; she has felt no control over any of it, either then or now.”
“Is that what is making her angry, do you think? Having no control, not just Ames’s inept approach to the whole thing? I never considered that,” Darling said thoughtfully.
“It would make me angry. In fact, I’d say not having control of their own lives in general is what makes women angry. Into every woman’s life a bungling official must fall, but not being able to be in charge of how she gets to deal with it must be absolutely infuriating. And in Tina’s case, she was barely out of childhood, and has spent all those years finding a way to live with this horrible experience, and then it all comes spilling out for everyone to see.”
Darling was silent, digesting this. It was a new, discomfiting thought to him. How much control men had of their own lives, and those of others, and how little many women had by contrast. Lane had worked hard to regain control of her life, from her family, from British Intelligence, from her manipulative wartime lover, Angus Dunn. He felt a flush of gratitude at her agreeing to give up any measure of her independence to marry him, for suddenly it seemed the greatest gift he’d ever received.
“A man like Galloway,” Lane said, interrupting Darling’s thoughts, “abuses his wife, dismisses the suffering of a young girl. That is the stuff of a bad man. I wonder, don’t you know, if there’s more. What’s on those photos Priscilla took? I almost can’t imagine how a man who behaves that way toward women could be honest. If he already believes he has a right to behave that way to his wife, he must believe he has the right to other things as well—the petty cash, for example, or anything in his police station or even his town.”
“Can I interject into this brilliant analysis, that I love you?”
She smiled. “You always say that.”
“I always mean it, now more than ever. I’ve been wondering something similar,” Darling said. “I’ve been wondering why he really left Nelson. Looking back, his departure now seems somewhat precipitous—though I may be imagining that because of what I’m learning. Ames may have stumbled, in his puppy dog way, into a useful thought: he wondered if Galloway’s gambling was an issue and if the thoroughly repellent man who is now the corpse in the case Ames is working gambled with him.”
“That might account for why Galloway sent Tina off with a flea in her ear.”
“Exactly. I still can’t get over how spectacularly wrong I was about him. How could I, even as young and callow as I was, be fooled by a slick, arrogant man like that?”
“Darling, I wouldn’t spend a single calorie worrying about that. You are with a woman who wasted years on a man just like that. I think it’s a good indication that being dazzled and fooled can happen to anybody. In fact,” she said, brightening, “anybody who is young and optimistic and wants to believe only the good in the world. The trick, I think, is not to be embittered by the experience, but to be able—though older, sadder, wiser—to still love someone and be optimistic in their company.”
“Is that you saying you love me?”
“It could well be,” she said, getting up and kissing him gently on the top of the head. “I’m going to take this book back and look for a quick Agatha Christie. Then I think we should consider going somewhere in town for a bit of a sight-see and some lunch at one of these Mexican places. We’ve not much time left here.”
Terrell and Ames were at a window booth at the café.
“I can see why you always get the grilled ham and cheese sandwich. It’s hard to beat,” Terrell said, making rapid inroads on his. He was looking forward to April coming to tell them what sort of pie they had on today.
“Funny Galloway being in the very place the boss has gone for his honeymoon. But the inspector is right. If Galloway didn’t actually kill Watts, he’s not really relevant, except I can’t shake the question of why he dismissed Miss Van Eyck like that.”
“You’re thinking he gambled with Watts and was covering for his buddy,” Terrell said.
“Yes, exactly. But even then, it seems like a very long line between that and his being found dead a week ago. That’s more than ten years later.”
“You’re right there,” Terrell said, popping the last of his sandwich into his mouth. “He’s been lying low being a respectable husband and father, but maybe he hasn’t really changed, and sooner or later he was going to want to relive his youth or something by suddenly going after his work buddy’s daughter, Ada.”
Ames nodded. “Exactly. So in that situation, Craig Finch would possibly want to kill him, and so might his own wife for that matter.”
“But don’t forget, he decides to revisit the Van Eyck garage, wanting to know if Tina ever talked. I wish we knew why.”
“I need more coffee today. I have not been sleeping well,” Ames said, lifting his cup toward April, who was wiping the counter. “Thanks, April.”
April nodded, filling Terrell’s cup as well. “Care to know about our pies today, Constable Terrell?”
“That I would,” Terrell said.
“Apple and pumpkin.”
“Pumpkin sounds good. My gran used to make it. Let’s see how this holds up.”
“Really,” Ames said when April had retreated to fetch the pie. “You two are as obvious as the side of a barn.” And on consideration, he wondered if it wasn’t such a bad idea. He and April had had a brief relationship, which he had ended by dating Violet Harding, another disaster. He admired April, after all, but she wasn’t really for him. Maybe Terrell, an honest, kind man who so far appeared to be a darned good policeman, would be a better match.
“I’ll pop down to the rail yard and see if anyone remembers a regular card game. That at least might explain why Galloway ignored”—he almost said Tina—“Miss Van Eyck. She might appreciate knowing it wasn’t her, if you see what I mean. And who knows, maybe some of Watts’s
absences were for card games. Perhaps he cheated enough to have someone want to kill him.”
Griffin was brooding in his office. The restaurant had done good business the night before, the card games in the back room were as full as ever, but even as he was smiling and shaking hands and patting backs, he had felt the dark shadow of worry. The court case was in two days, his wife had left, and he had felt an unwelcome touch of insolence in the man he’d put in charge of keeping an eye on her. He was not used to feeling like he hadn’t quite got a hold on things.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and took out the bottle, splashing some of its golden liquid into the glass in front of him. Surprisingly, as he analyzed things with the help of the bourbon, it was Hidalgo’s behaviour that most puzzled him. Had he detected a hint of satisfaction in his spy, as if he was happy she had given him the slip? At least the court case was going to be fine. It was a nuisance to have to go sit in court, but there was no evidence, and it might even be great publicity for his business. His wife would be back. She’d always come back. She’d run out of cash. That gigolo she’d taken up with was no doubt broke, so he was no real threat. He refused to think about that slip-up. Best focus on her. Her stupidity was in leaving Holden. What the hell had she been thinking?
He gulped what was in his glass and winced. He’d come to the edge of the cliff where his control of events was shaky. His rage over her had propelled him to make his first really big mistake. He still teased at his anxiety over how near he’d come to catastrophe. Though he’d been saved by what he could only call a miracle, it was the fact that he hadn’t engineered the miracle that was causing much of the disquiet. He’d nearly banned one of his best men over it, and now, for reasons he couldn’t understand, a man he’d trusted completely, who’d never put a foot wrong—hell, he’d put him in charge of his wife, for God’s sake—had a tone he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
With a wave of anxiety, he wondered now if he should have permanently gotten rid of the guy, as reliable as he’d been over the years. He shook his head and pulled open the drawer again. The one thing he learned from his dad was that you can’t litter the place with bodies. In the long run, one of them will always come back to haunt you. He held up his glass to his dear old dad, who’d had to die so that he might live smart.