A Detective at Death's Door

by H. R. F. Keating

  She found she had somehow got herself dressed. Wash and make up? No, fuck washing, fuck pink lips.

  So now it was the car.

  She realized she had tautened her mouth in a line of too fierce determination.

  All right, I’m about to follow through the decision I have made. But unless I can relax about it I’ll end up reversing out of the side-gate straight into the path of some oncoming vehicle. No, I must make myself believe this is just a customary trip down to the city centre, something I’ve done hundreds of times. The convenient way of getting from place to place, from the house over to Waterloo Gardens where Pat will be waiting for me, by the pond.

  So now, yes, scribble a note for Mrs P, leave it on the hall table in case she comes offering me camomile tea. And, thank goodness, John’s safely at work. No objections to be overcome.

  Car keys? Where are they?

  Yes, yes, all right, they’re in my bag where they’ve been ever since that hot day when John drove us to the Club to get an early swim. And I took a good swig from my second Campari soda.

  *

  Without having much of a memory of how she got there, she found herself sitting in her car looking uncomprehendingly at the controls, covered with a layer of fine dust.

  But then she thought, Start, you have to start a car.

  But will it start now? It’s been here in the garage for six weeks. I think. Six weeks or more while I’ve hardly remembered its existence. It may not start. Even if I can recall what to do.

  Think.

  Yes. Yes, it’s my new — newish — automatic. So it’s easier than the old stick-shift.

  Now, relax. Make myself. Relax, and let my interior autopilot take over.

  Then, after a blank space of time, she found the car was out in the road, headed towards the city centre. She blessed the fact that the rain had ceased and, though the trees to either side looked heavy with moisture, the road surfaces were dry. No oncoming vehicle had smashed into her, and the engine was running smoothly.

  Right then, this is easy. I can do it. I’ve done it hundreds of times, thousands even. I’m a driver. I’ve driven this car and all its predecessors. Nothing to it. As easy as walking.

  So, off we go.

  Yes. Yes, this is fine. Any traffic coming from the right? No. All clear. Go.

  Then suddenly a vehicle.

  Where? Where did it come from? I’m on the wrong side. Wrong place. I’m going to be in a crash. It’s going to hit me. Kill me. Christ, it’s gone. Gone past. On the other side. I wasn’t in the wrong lane. That brief whirr of engine noise and it’s gone. Glimpse of the driver, man with a cap. Funny how some men always wear something on their head in a car.

  And I’m still going. Going down to the city centre. To meet Pat.

  Why? Can’t think.

  Must think.

  Think, thin — Yes. Yes, Pat rang me, said he wanted to see me. Urgently. And not inside the station. In Waterloo Gardens, by the pond.

  Red light, come to a neat halt.

  Meet Pat by the pond. Circular, circular municipal pond, tarmac-surrounded. And railings, not very high, green-painted, keep children out of the water, and dogs. Ducks. A few ducks swimming round and round. But why at the pond? Why a secret meeting? And think of how in the end he suddenly banged the phone down. The phone in his office? I suppose someone —

  Jesus, the car behind hooting. Hooting at me. Oh God, yes, the light’s gone to green. What do I do? Got to go forward. Can’t think. Wait, yes, don’t think. Do. Just do.

  Yes, fine. Here am I going smoothly along again. No hassle at all. People occasionally do go into a dream when the lights seem to stay at red minute after minute. All I did. No one’s hooting now. Yes, I’m back to it. Driving. Way I’ve done for years.

  And suddenly ... the screech of brakes. Horn blasts on every side. Was that the shudder of something just biffing the car?

  My car? Me? Yes.

  Oh God, where am I?

  Deep breath. Take a deep breath. Look up, look round, I am in the city. I am near the city centre. Near Waterloo Gardens. Yes, this is Dean Street. I’m quite near the gardens. Which is where I was going. To meet Pat, Detective Superintendent Murphy, Senior Investigating Officer for the Poisoner invest — No. He’s been superseded. By Commander Rance, National Crime Squad.

  Oh, and, God damn it, I drifted into the other lane. That’s what all the hooting’s about. Have I been in a crash? A shunt? Can’t hear the engine. Yes, I sort of knew something was wrong. No sound from the engine. It’s come to a stop. I’m stuck here, in the wrong place. Christ, what am I going to do?

  Think. Think what’s gone wrong if the engine isn’t going. Don’t know. Can’t work it out.

  Oh, stop that bloody hooting, can’t you?

  Start up? Start up again? Try.

  Yes. Yes, yes, yes. It’s going. I got it right. Engine had just cut out. And, yes, if I’m quick I can nip back into my right stream. Before some idiot comes shouting in at my window.

  Now.

  Into forward. There’s the gap. Take it easy. And, yes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pat, a solitary, bulky, bright blue-suited shape, glancing about almost furtively, had planted himself within a foot of the glinting sun-lit water of the railings-surrounded pond. Evidently spotting Harriet the moment she came within sight, he gave her at once the merest hint of a nod and strode off deeper into the gardens.

  Her nerves still jangling from her nightmare drive, Harriet realized that he wanted her to follow, though at once she found he was setting a pace she could hardly keep up. The upper part of her right arm had begun to jerk uncontrollably. She longed to see a bench where she could sit down.

  In a whirl of fruitless questions she asked herself what Pat was up to.

  Trust him, trust him. It’s all I can do to batten down the tumult in my mind.

  But at last, when she had begun to be afraid that at any moment she would lose sight of him altogether, he turned abruptly off the dusty-looking tarmac path and plunged, shouldering his way, into a stand of clustered pine trees.

  There, in the damp shelter they afforded, Harriet at last came face-to-face with him, and found the muscular jerking in her arm ceased.

  He spoke before she could formulate any of the questions she wanted to ask.

  ‘Harriet, sorry about all that. Truth to tell, it’s that bugger Rance. He’s sitting there just waiting for his imaginary witchy friend to tell him where that famous million pounds is to be put for her to pick up. Then he’s all set to mount his wonderful ambush and show the world what clever sods the NCS are. And in the meanwhile he’s doing damn all about stopping another poor soul being murdered, just amusing himself criticizing everything I’ve done since the day your man saved your life with that Agatha Christie book of his.’

  Harriet blinked in astonishment. She had never thought to see stolid Pat so hassled.

  ‘And that’s why we’re meeting here?’ she asked. ‘Skulking under these trees? Pat, I’ve just had the most god-awful drive down here, the first time I’ve had the car out since ... well, since. Pat, I want to sit down. I must sit down.’

  ‘Ah, dear God, I was forgetting. I was forgetting altogether. To hell with spying Rance, there’s a nice bench we passed; In memory of Mrs Alexander Walker MBE who loved these gardens. Come along.’

  *

  Seated on the bench, with the metal plaque to Mrs Walker digging a little uncomfortably into her back, Harriet heard at last why in particular Pat had summoned her so urgently.

  ‘This is the way of it. You know the storm we had last night?’

  ‘Did we? I must have slept through it, though I do remember I had another of my nightmares, probably caused by the noise.’

  ‘Well, if you slept through it, I did not. It woke me up. Woke me up to what I’d failed entirely to put in hand because bloody Rance had vetoed it. As I lay listening to the rain coming down cats and dogs, what suddenly entered my head was that this’d be no time t
o have a half-naked WDC lying out by the Majestic Club pool.’

  ‘And so ... so you want to do that now, now it’s a reasonably sunny day again?’

  ‘No, I’ve done it. I arranged it all first thing this morning, before himself was there at all in the Murder Room, as he calls it. Still eating his big breakfast at the Hilton hotel, I dare say. You know the whole lot of that team of his has moved in there? Doing themselves damn well, at the expense of Greater Birchester Police no doubt.’

  ‘But your reconstruction? What did you find? How I wish I’d been there.’

  ‘Ach, no. You wish nothing of the sort. You’d never be up to it. I hope I don’t see you there beside that pool again, not for months yet. Not till next summer, if then. Seeing that recliner and — ’

  ‘Pat, what conclusion did you come to?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. It was simple enough. From where I was standing at the gate there, pretending to be Grant, to where DC Helen Baggot was lying on that self-same recliner, shivering away in the chill of dawn, poor girl, I couldn’t at all see what was happening on the far side of her. I couldn’t see that Campari stuff we’d put there. I couldn’t have seen any class of a hooked nose on an old woman, bent or not bent. Not if I’d had binoculars clamped to me eyeballs, I couldn’t.’

  ‘I knew Grant was making it all up,’ Harriet broke in. ‘I knew it from the moment he said nothing at all about me being there, all but naked to the world.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘So surely it’s beyond doubt now,’ she said, ‘that the Poisoner’s a man. I thought so the moment I read that letter in the Star. No woman uses words and expressions like those.’

  ‘And Commander Rance,’ Pat added sharply, ‘when he turned you out of the incident room deprived himself of what you, better than anybody, could have told him.’

  His big red face creased momentarily in a wicked smile.

  ‘Inspector Fowles at the Meads PS has pulled in Grant for me. And, out of the way over there in just a few minutes’ time, I’m going to put that fella through it. I’m going to get a full confession out of him. Then I’ll show it to Rance, and we’ll see where his imaginary witch flies off to then.’

  He gave Harriet a glance of impending triumph.

  ‘What’s more,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to be so stupid as to do it without the benefit of your eyes and ears, Detective Superintendent Martens.’

  *

  Bruce Grant proved, when it came to it, a tougher proposition than Pat Murphy had counted on. The weapon he fought back with was obstinacy.

  Facing him across the strongly lit table of the interview room at the Meads police station, Pat, with a DC from the Meads sitting silently beside him, went in two-fisted. Harriet, mouse-quiet behind Grant in the darkness beyond the pool of light, was able to watch his every expression in a small mirror which Pat had placed high up on the wall opposite. Together she and Pat had arranged a code of signals to alert him if anything unexpected struck her.

  ‘Right, Mr Grant, we meet again. And I have some news for you. Earlier today I carried out a wee experiment in the grounds of the Majestic Sports Club. I took up position just where you yourself were on gate duty that day when, you say, you saw an old woman put some liquid into Detective Superintendent Martens’ drink. The self-same recliner she was asleep on was in the exact position it had been, and DC Helen Baggot was lying on it, dressed in a bikini like the one Miss Martens had on. I stood there and I did my best to see the little wooden table beside DC Baggot with on it a dead identical glass of the Campari soda there on August bank holiday Monday.’

  No cough-mixture jokes now, Harriet registered from the darkness.

  ‘Right, I have to tell you,’ Pat went steadily on, ‘that I was entirely unable to see that glass, never mind how much we shifted it about on the wee table. I could not by any possibility have seen anyone pour anything into it. So what have you got to say to that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, that won’t do. I’m telling you that you were a bare-faced liar when you said you’d seen an old woman who looked like a witch put something into that glass. So were you lying, yes or no?’

  ‘I saw her, that’s all. Say what you like.’

  ‘I say you did not see anyone, man or woman, young or old, put anything into that glass.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘No, you did not. You could not have done. You’re a liar, Grant. A liar pure and simple.’

  ‘I’m not. And ... and there’s two who could be lying here. I say it’s you that’s a liar, detective super or not.’

  ‘No, that won’t do.’

  ‘It’ll have to do. I told you what I saw, and I’m not going to say I never did.’

  So it went on for a quarter of an hour or more. Time and again Pat put the facts to Grant, and each time Grant simply denied them. Harriet grew almost tired of looking at his sullenly stubborn features in the little tilted patch of reflective glass. There was a small band of pain across her legs where the taut edge of her chair’s seat webbing dug in at her.

  What can I see there that’ll give Pat a chink to push into? Nothing. That damned unchanging look. It says nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Fixed to one compass-point only, the magnetic north of blank denial.

  At last Pat switched to broader questions about Grant’s life. No lack of intelligence in Pat, she thought. He’s aiming to soften up the obstinate bugger. He’ll go on along this line till he judges that the ice-core of denial has gradually begun to melt. And then, bang, back will come that plain fact of the invisibility of the glass of red liquid. At that Grant will come out with a fuller answer, a more concocted denial. And he’ll get caught up in a mess of self-contradiction.

  Time went by. Patiently Pat put question after question about Grant’s life from his schooldays onwards, listened with seeming interest to the dulled replies. Harriet, almost mesmerized looking into the mirror on the far wall, kept saying to herself, wait, wait and wait till Pat judges his moment has come.

  Yet it seemed as if the waiting was to go on for ever.

  Has Pat misjudged it, she asked herself. Was there something earlier that was the right moment? A few seconds ago? Ten minutes ago? Something in one of those weary replies he should have leapt on?

  But if it was there, I didn’t see it any more than Pat.

  On went the commonplace questions, moving painstakingly from detail to detail.

  Harriet began to feel her invalid’s body yielding to dragging tiredness.

  And then ...

  It was not some indication from Grant’s latest dull reply. It was a tiny something she had seen, almost without seeing it, in the mirror. It was a tiny flick of hesitation in Grant’s right eye that told her — something in the repertoire of tell-tale signs she had acquired in interviews over the years — that a major lie was on the point of being put forward.

  She thought rapidly. What had been the last monotonously routine question Pat had asked?

  Yes. So you thought then you’d come up here to Birchester? The almost meaningless query. So why is Grant lying hard now in his answer? With, yes, rather more fluency than he’s yet shown.

  ‘It was a mate of mine in London. He’d gone to Birchester, thought it was ... thought he’d, like, try his luck here. And he got a good job. Yes, at ... at the Rovers ground. Not terrific pay, but a good crowd there. And you could go on from one thing to another. Better money each time. So he wrote to me and said why didn’t I try my luck here too.’

  And you got a job — ’

  But Pat had heard her signal. One small sharp tink with a pencil on the metal side of her chair, meaning here’s a lie, an unexpected lie.

  ‘No,’ he went on with scarcely a break in the rhythm of his questioning, ‘put it this way. If he was telling you of a good opportunity at Rovers FC, why didn’t you take it? This mate of yours never existed, did he? You came up to Birchester because you were in trouble down in London. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I —
I wasn’t in no trouble. What trouble could I — I mean, why d’you say that? It’s not fair saying I’m dodgy.’

  A very different response from the monotonous denials of plain fact that he had adopted at the start. And Pat took advantage of it.

  ‘Your mate who wrote to you didn’t exist, did he, any more than the woman in the green cloak you told the Star all about?’

  ‘Stupid lot there at the paper. Why shouldn’t I tell ‘em a bit of a tale?’

  ‘No reason, Mr Grant. But every reason why you shouldn’t have told me a tale. You were wasting police time, and that’s an offence in law. And more than that. You were sending the hunt for whoever was poisoning people left and right all over Birchester off on a wrong trail. You were endangering dozens of innocent lives. Even hundreds.’

  ‘I — ? I didn’t. I — I didn’t mean to. It was — it was just a joke.’

  On and on went the pathetic dribble of justification. But Harriet paid little attention to it. It was rubbish being swept out of the way. Now Pat, with her help, could take the hunt on the right line again, and Commander Rance would have to let him.

  She waited till Grant had been led away and then, in triumph, she told Pat what she saw as the situation now.

  But Pat stood there silent in the bright pool of light on the interview-room table, his face wearing an unreadable expression.

  ‘Pat, you’re not happy with what you learnt?’

  ‘Sure, I am. Clearing up all that business. Why wouldn’t I be happy?’

  ‘But you’re not.’

  A huge sigh.