by John Gardner
‘You know Golly,’ Suzie said brightly, and Molly thought that a little odd. ‘I’ll phone you again tomorrow,’ told her. ‘You okay?’
‘Never better,’ Suzie slurred. ‘Me and my old friend Shirley Cox, here and happy.’
They had found two bottles of Gordon’s Gin and a bottle of brandy, some tonic waters and a soda syphon. Neither Suzie nor Shirley could feel any pain. It was the first time that Suzie had ever got really paralytically drunk and later she admitted that it was because she missed Tommy. He had only been away since that morning but she missed him as if he’d been away for weeks.
It was the same all through Monday. She kept saying things like, ‘I wonder what Tommy’s doing?’ Not out loud to Shirley, who was quite funny about their state on the previous night, and on Monday night they didn’t drink anything, went to bed still feeling very fragile, as Shirley put it.
***
Golly was comfortable. He had a nice cosy bed right at the top of the house: bed by the window, a dormer window poking out from the roof. Spare room in what had once been an attic.
After he’d had his fun with the girl, Golly had walked down the road, quietly, softly, smiling to himself, had a good time with the girl, she didn’t argue and try to stop him, not anything.
He gave a little hop and a skip in the darkness, up the road.
With Golly, killing a girl with the wire was no more than a means to an end — most times anyway, no more’n killing a beetle or a pretty butterfly, that was it, what the girl was, pretty butterfly.
He got to the house that Queenie had shown him. The house where there’d been this murder, these murders. Nobody about, not overlooked by anyone. Got over the gate, white gate with a name on it, K…something…K-N-I-G…Kernights, and Cottage, he knew cottage. Kernites Cottage. Vaulted over the gate and stayed on the grass to the side, the verge to the flowerbed on the right. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness a long time ago. He was good in the dark, like an owl, eh? Owl on the wing, catching mice. Voles. Came up to behind the house, back of the house, started trying the doors and windows. No luck, then a little window at the back, led into a passage by the looks of it, half-open at the top with the catch off, slid down nice, no problem and he hoisted himself up, squirmed around and was in: inside this big old house, could smell it around him, house welcoming him with the smells of tile polish and beeswax: knew those smells of old, those big round tins with the red polish in them, and the beeswax in a smaller tin.
He had to stay awake on that first night, let his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness inside.
Golly began to sing under his breath, happy because he knew that this was a murder house and it meant that the bloody lady policewoman, who’d been the cause of them shutting him away, would be bound to come back doing her investigating and that. The copper as well, the honourable one, he’d come in here also and they wouldn’t know what they were walking into.
He sang softly —
‘I had the craziest dream last night
Yes I did.
I never dreamt it could be
But there you were, humping me
I found your lips close to mine and I kissed them,
And you didn’t mind it at all.’
He giggled, his low shaking giggle, because the nice girl didn’t mind him kissing her and touching her. He’d had the craziest dream. Yeh-eh-eh-eh. Yeah-eh-eh.
Eventually they’d come to him. When he could see as it started to get light, he explored all over the house, saw the blood stains, picked out where he could sleep, nosed about, poking into cupboards and drawers everywhere: in the bedrooms, down in the dining room, ever such pretty pictures they had, liked the paintings, liked all of it, the whole house. When it got night again he knew they wouldn’t be coming, so he went up to the room he now called his bedroom and got into bed. Had a good kip. Slept like a baby. Maybe they’d come tomorrow. They’d come though, ’cos this house’d be like a magnet to them. And when they come, he’d give them what for.
*
‘Do we count today as the second or the third day?’ Suzie asked, talking to Shirley, thinking about Tommy coming home: looked forward to it and dreaded it at the same time. Knew that eventually Tommy would start talking about a wedding again and she was split in two about the wedding.
Molly telephoned in the afternoon, said they’d almost completed everything Tommy had told them to do. ‘But I had some really interesting conversations with one of the guys on the aerodrome. Must speak to the Chief about that as soon as he gets back. Just telephone me at the Falcon, Suzie.’
Suzie said of course. Yes of course she’d do that.
Molly was still there at the other end, saying nothing until, ‘You any idea, Suzie? Any idea where he’s gone?’
‘Not a clue. Not even a clue to a clue, but he did say he might know. Might know who’d killed the Ascolis when he got back.’
‘Oh. Oh, really?’
And he came back.
About half past eight that evening, when they’d had supper and given up any hope of him getting back that night.
Suzie, sitting in the kitchen eating a bit of bread and cheese — they’d had some fried rashers and chips that Shirley had made — ‘You make the best really rinky-dink chips, Shirl.’ Heard the key in the door, heard it open, got up, walked to the kitchen door, and —
‘Dad’s back,’ said Tommy looking bigger than ever.
She threw herself at him, and knew that, whatever it was, the news wasn’t brilliant.
Chapter Eighteen
Tommy wanted coffee but Suzie wanted to know what was going on. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she demanded, her voice slightly on the hoydenish side, grating, unladylike, her mum would have called it. In return she got one of his infuriating smiles.
‘Coffee,’ he said, opening his case and handing her a packet of the real thing so she got out the percolator and dusted it down. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked again but Shirley kept quiet, wasn’t supposed to know that her friend Suzie had this thing going with the Chief: very obvious now.
At last he said, ‘I’ve been visiting, been to see Pip Ascoli. Fillipo, Max’s loony brother.’
‘But he’s — ‘
‘Yes. He’s supposed to be in Switzerland. Hospital called Alpenruhe, ten miles south of Thun: like the bloody castle in Thun, resonance of Dracula there. You ever been, heart? You stand in front of the Rathaus — Town Hall — and look up and you could be in Dracula country, castle looming over everything. Could be Frankenstein even.’
‘And you’ve been there? Couldn’t you have rung them, what’re they called?’
‘Not quite the same as being there, heart. Sisters of Compassion. Spend their time working with nutters. Needed to look them all in the eye, Pip included.’
‘How? How’ve you been there?’ As though she couldn’t comprehend the logistics.
He told them the story, sipping freshly brewed coffee and saying the Swiss still did the food wonderfully, absolute knockout. ‘Don’t realize how much we’re missing.’ He had pulled strings, at the War Office, at the Yard, at the Home Office and Foreign Office. An aircraft went out to Lisbon about three times a week — sometimes twice, sometimes four a week, depended. He had got himself a seat on Sunday’s flight. ‘Not exactly an easy thing to do.’ Connected with other flights including a Swiss aircraft to Zurich — ‘Damn great Ford Trimotor, full of shady-looking customers, spivs, spies and such.’
It was Tommy’s first time in an aircraft with more than one engine. ‘A Lockheed Hudson out of Northolt and then the Swiss plane from Lisbon. Those films have got it wrong by the way. In the cinema you see everyone sitting and chatting, talking to each other. Rubbish, can’t hear yourself think. The waitresses have to scream at you. Oh, and the wings flap: move. Snap off if they didn’t I suppose. Flew over part of Italy to get into Switzerland. Then took one of the Swiss toy-town trains to Bern, then on to Thun, they’re bloody good the Swiss railways. I’d forgotten how good, eat your lunch off
the station platforms. Meticulous the Swiss.’ He laughed. ‘Stayed at a nice little place, the Falken, down by the river, lovely. Interesting, eh? Same as where we’re staying in Taddmarten, but chalk and cheese. Fed me damn great veal steaks on spaghetti — four-course meal and splendid. Much as you wanted. Then I rang the Alpenruhe, Peace of the Mountains — though you’re miles away from any mountains, they glower at you from a distance. The nun who answered the telephone said I’d needed to see Mother Brigitta, Chief Nun, sort of Commissioner of Compassion. Got a car to take me next day, Monday. Yesterday.’
The convent turned out to be as creepy as Willoughby Sands had described it — ‘Lot of gargoyles, cloisters. Inside, it was a hospital with bars and damn great steel shutters and doors, smell of polish and that stink you get in hospitals: embalming fluid. They called it a Clinic, but what’s in a name?’
Mother Brigitta welcomed him. He could not even guess at her age, smooth face, wrapped up in black habit with a white gown over it. ‘Catching the blood, I suppose. Had clear grey eyes, looked into your soul. Didn’t feel comfortable with her but I don’t know why. Spoke faultless English. Supremely confident. God’s got his hands full with that one.’
‘You’re a policeman,’ she began. ‘From England. I suppose it’s something to do with the Ascoli family. We’ve been praying for their souls.’ Which surprised Tommy. ‘Oh, we get news here, and we know a lot about the world — the physical world. We’ve a sister house in Paris and there’s another just outside Salisbury in England. I often think of us as God’s secret agents, the Almighty’s spies. Now what do you wish to know?’
Tommy asked if it would be possible to speak to Pip Ascoli, and she said this would not be practicable as he wasn’t there, in the clinic, and Tommy blew his top. ‘Think I shouted at her, but she just sat and looked at me as if she was reading off a list of my sins. Make a damned good inquisitor.’
It turned out that Pip had been taken from the good sisters’ care in the late summer of 1938, then brought back in mid-September. ‘Max Ascoli didn’t want his brother far away from the family in time of war, and we all thought war was inevitable in ’38.’
It had been Willoughby Sands who had come out and taken him back to England. They sent a Sister Rachel back with him. ‘She was bound for our English house, so it was convenient for her to go with them.’
‘And Willoughby Sands brought him back?’
‘No. Sir Willoughby had visited at least once a year for a long time. We had a standing joke about his weight. But it was Max Ascoli who brought him back, and Max Ascoli who took him to England again the following year. Late August, 1939.’
‘Was this safe, taking Pip out of your care?’
‘Personally I didn’t think it was safe. Neither did Dr Gaspard, who had worked with Pip for many years. The doctor did everything possible, though. He sent very full notes so that doctors in the UK would know the severity of Pip’s illness. He also made absolutely certain that Max could get the drugs necessary to control him. There was little danger if Pip was kept on the soporifics and tranquillizers. He was able to function, walk, think and talk — after all, he was highly intelligent. But as for it being safe. Well…’ She flapped her arms in a controlled gesture that said, What can you do? ‘Max Ascoli promised that Pip would be taken back to our Salisbury house if there was any problem. I didn’t like to remind him that if there was a problem it would probably be too late. If you’re looking for him, perhaps you should start there.’
‘Even gave me the phone number,’ Tommy said in the present, here in Suzie’s flat. ‘Looked in at the Yard on my way here, phoned them. No dice.’
Naturally, Tommy asked Mother Brigitta about how Pip had been doing. ‘Was there any change? He getting better?’
It depended what was meant by better. ‘Sounded like that egghead on the wireless, Professor Joad.’ Joad appeared on a BBC programme called The Brain’s Trust — named after Roosevelt’s description of his advisers. Joad often began his answers to difficult questions by saying — ‘It depends what you mean by…?’ Tommy called him a ‘pedantic little bugger’.
Mother Brigitta had then launched into a long explanation of Pip Ascoli’s problems’. As she called them.
‘Bit of an understatement if you ask me.’ Tommy pulled a face.
‘I was a novice when he was first brought here,’ she told him. ‘So, one way or another I’ve been with him for a very long time. In the beginning it really was a matter of restraints, keeping him locked up, arms and legs manacled for a lot of the time, in a most secure environment. He was dosed with different kinds of tranquillizer as well.’
Shades of Golly Goldfinch, Tommy thought.
‘He was that dangerous?’
‘Undoubtedly, and the biblical “soft answer turneth away wrath” didn’t work either. But we made progress. Dr Gaspard is advanced, uses radical methods: he’s farsighted and has tried many things. He sat with Pip for hours, trying to analyse him. By the mid-thirties we didn’t need the restraints all the time. Only when he became upset, and we learned the warning signs.’
The warning signs were that Pip ‘took against people’, as Mother Brigitta put it. ‘You knew instantly if he didn’t like someone when he first met them, and if that person went on seeing him an incident would follow, as night follows day.’ By ‘incident’ she meant violence. ‘Also, he got sullen and moody about twenty-four hours before throwing one of his fits,’ she said, and continued, ‘I always felt that his whole life was lived through violence. It was his only answer to problems, and it came as naturally to him as breathing. If someone crossed him, if he disliked a person, if he was thwarted in any way, or just got into a mood, violence would follow: real violence, I’m not talking about the temper tantrums we get from some of our patients. With Pip it was always the hard edge, real life-and-death physical attacks. I always thought he had inherited a particularly bad gene from his family. They were not noted for being peaceful people you know.’
‘Sat up at that,’ Tommy told his two sergeants. ‘Sat up and took notice, probed a bit and found the story was that the Ascolis had been known as people who took a short cut now and again. That’s what Mother Brigitta said — “a short cut”, euphemism for being bloody gangsters. Those nuns had a tendency to look for the good side in everything, and the good in everybody. Told me Pip was a poor lost boy. Right, lost boy who stabbed a nun in the eye with a pen, which he did in Alpenruhe, made a knife out of a piece of wood, went for another nun with a cord he’d hidden away. Damned near killed the doc, Gaspard, on two occasions, went for him with a table lamp the last time. Gaspard spent a week in hospital. Came out, went to see Pip straight away and said to him, “wasn’t very nice, Pip. If you go on like that I cannot continue as your friend.”’
According to Mother Brigitta Pip wept. ‘Like a baby,’ she said, ‘sobbed for a day because the doc threatened to pull his friendship.’
Later, during the afternoon, Mother Brigit-ta talked about the family as a whole. ‘I met them all,’ she said, rather proudly, as if she collected autographs. ‘All of them, even the boy’s grandfather, old Antonio, famous man had to leave Italy because enemies threatened to kill him if he didn’t. They told him he had broken some deep and secret law. Took it seriously and left.’
So Tommy asked how she found them, the Ascolis, and she said, ‘They were charming, always brought silly gifts for us as well as the boy — as he was then. They were all charming, their women were charming, except for Max’s wife: it’s a sin to say it but Pip always acted like a rabid dog for the first few hours after she came. He was getting over that when he came back to us after the visit to England in ’38. But they all had charm, the men in particular. Immaculate, glossy. Yet…’ She paused, looked away and then said, ‘In the midst of all that smooth and polished charm I felt only a step away from steel, the old steel hand in the velvet glove. What is it Shakespeare says in another context, “Gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon”? That’s what I always felt
they were, but nearer darkness than moonlight. They were criminals, Mr Livermore, they ran criminal organizations — even when they lived in your country. They had great power, power over life and death, but God can forgive at the last. Gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.’
Then, Tommy said, she turned it around again, gave them a way out by quoting Keats—
‘Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green,
There is a budding morrow in midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen.’
Always the hope, always salvation behind the darkest act. She said the Ascolis always made excuses for poor Pip, Sammy’s boy, as they called him. They’re a family and counted him as one of them — that was why Max wanted his brother back in wartime England. ‘They closed round one of their own like a Praetorian Guard around an emperor,’ she said. ‘Would hear no evil spoken of him. They would deny him any complicity in crime. But that’s how they were, a law unto themselves.’
‘Very keen mind, that Mother Brigitta. Gave me a photograph of Pip, with his brother before he left for the last time. They look like two men who love one another — in a fraternal sense, of course. Brigitta said, “Siamese twins, yes?” and I knew what she meant. Bound together by ruthlessness in a way; joined at the soul.’
‘And where’s Pip now?’ Suzie asked.
‘Heaven alone knows, but I reckon we’ve got our murderer. All we’ve to do now is find him, and I’d like to do that without shouting it from the rooftops.’
‘So where do we start looking?’
‘Only certain places to look, heart,’ raising his head and catching Shirley’s eye, saying, ‘No good you smirking, young woman,’ which made her blush.