‘This is the worst of my dream,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure when I wake up if I feel like I do simply because I’ve found the bodies or whether it’s because I’m the one who killed them!’
Joe glanced at his watch.
‘Will your brother-in-law come up for you or will he be looking for you outside the building?’ he asked.
‘He’ll wait outside. I’ll see if he’s there, shall I?’
Andover came round the desk to look out of the window.
Joe, who didn’t fancy being outflanked, stood up too and sauntered to his filing cabinet.
‘Can’t see him,’ said Andover. ‘I hope he hasn’t got held up at Biggleswade.’
It was on the tip of Joe’s tongue to say, no, Mr Rocca had arrived home about half an hour ago. But on second thoughts it didn’t seem a good idea to let on he’d brought the police into it.
He pulled open a drawer of the cabinet in the interests of verisimilitude and said as he examined its contents (two tins of cat food and a tennis ball), ‘Why’d you come to me, Mr Andover? Why not go to the cops?’
‘You’re joking. They’d just laugh at me,’ said Andover.
Joe thought of DS Chivers and couldn’t disagree.
‘But I had to talk to someone professionally,’ Andover went on. ‘I don’t mean a shrink. Someone who’d take what I said seriously, and maybe investigate, not just prescribe a lot of pills … but it had to be someone truly sympathetic …’
‘Like a primitive, you mean?’ said Joe, recalling their first exchange.
‘Look, I didn’t mean anything. I’m not racist. I married into an Italian family, for God’s sake! It’s just you once did some work for our Claims people and I remembered what they said about you …’
It had been a last-minute job. A negligence case against a private clinic by a man who’d ended up in a wheelchair after a simple cosmetic operation had left Falcon facing a million pound payout. Suspecting, or at least hoping for fraud, they had decided to keep a close watch on the patient. Then the claims investigator concerned had fallen off a ladder and, needing a replacement in a hurry, Falcon had hired Joe. He, however, between the briefing and his office, had contrived to lose the file.
Reluctant to admit his incompetence, he had managed to recall not the patient’s details, but the name and address of the doctor who’d performed the operation. Thinking to bluff the other essential details out of her, he’d called at her house in the Bedfordshire countryside. When there was no reply to his knock, he’d wandered round the back in case she was in the garden and found that indeed she was, being humped in a hammock by a large red-headed man, whose temper proved as fiery as his hair. Joe had fled to his car, literally falling in, and the first thing he saw from his worm’s eye view was the lost file under the seat. There was a photo of the suspect patient pinned to it. He was a large man with red hair.
It had been a nice scam. The lady doctor had made the right incisions, coached the guy in his responses, fixed him up with drugs to help fool the insurance experts, and told her sympathetic colleagues that it had all been too much for her and she was emigrating to Australia to start afresh.
‘So I came recommended,’ said Joe.
‘Sort of,’ said Andover. ‘Some people said you were just lucky. But one or two reckoned there had to be something else, something intuitive, a kind of natural instinct that made you head straight for the doctor. I mean, no one else would have dreamt of suspecting her, not in a million years. So when I got to wondering who I could talk to about investigating dreams, not any Freudian crap, but the sort of dreaming which was like a real world you could move in, maybe manipulate, all I could come up with was you.’
He spoke with a resigned bitterness which wasn’t very complimentary, but Joe was not about to be offended. In fact he was starting to feel rather sorry for the guy, which wasn’t all that clever, seeing that there was no honest way to make a client out of him, even if sight of Joe hadn’t put him off the idea.
‘Mr Andover, I’m sorry, I’m strictly a wideawake PI. Could be what you really need is a travel agent, take a nice holiday. Now if you don’t mind I’m closing shop, time to head home for my tea …’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’ve been foolish. It was just that I nodded off after lunch today and I had the dream with such intensity, I had to do something … Where on earth is Carlo?’
‘Perhaps he’s having trouble parking?’ suggested Joe.
‘Not Carlo. He still drives and parks like he was in Rome. He’d be right out there in the street if he was coming. Mind if I call my office?’
He picked up the phone and dialled without waiting for an answer.
‘Debbie? Hello. It’s me. My brother-in-law been in yet? Thank you.’
‘Damn the man,’ he said putting the phone down. ‘I can’t afford to be late tonight. Gina and I are going to the theatre …’ He looked at Joe speculatively. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be going my way, Sixsmith?’
Joe sighed. He was, vaguely, in so far as the concrete blockhouses of the Rasselas Estate were within mortar-bombing distance of the mock-Tudor villas of Coningsby Rise.
‘Come on,’ he said.
The old Morris Oxford had a few rattles and squeaks, but none of them to do with the engine. An aptitude for crosswords Joe might not have, but when it came to machinery, he could make an engine purr like Whitey in anticipation of a fish supper.
Casa Mia was impressive, even in an area that reeked of Gold Cards and overdrafts. Maybe it was the bold decision to abandon the traditional black and white half-timbering and go for scarlet and gold that made it stand out. Must be money in the insurance game, thought Joe. Though not enough left over to spend on a decent tailor?
‘There’s room to turn at the top of the drive,’ said Andover.
Joe drove in. No sign of any other car, so presumably Carlo Rocca had set out to pick up his brother-in-law. Tough.
Andover got out by the classically porticoed porch which looked like it had been recently stuck on to the studded oak front door.
‘Like a drink?’ he said.
‘No, thanks,’ said Joe firmly.
‘OK. Thanks for the lift. ’Bye.’
Andover went inside. Joe carefully negotiated the ornamental cherry which marked the hub of the turning circle in the gravelled drive.
Ahead was the gateway. Behind, he hoped forever, was Mr Andover and his crazy dreams. He noticed that someone had recently done a racing start here, scattering gravel all over the elegant lawn.
‘Mr Sixsmith!’
He heard his name screamed. In the mirror he saw Andover rush out of the house, waving his arms and staggering like a closing time drunk.
It felt like it might be a good time to follow the example laid out before him and burn rubber.
Instead he stopped, said to Whitey who’d reclaimed the passenger seat reluctantly given up to Andover, ‘You stay still,’ and got out.
Andover was leaning against the cherry tree, his face so pale his freckles stood out like raisins in bread dough.
‘Inside,’ he gasped, then, as if in visual aid, he was violently sick.
Joe went towards the house, not hurrying. He had little doubt what he was going to find and it wasn’t something you hurried to. Also he felt his limbs were moving with the strange slow floating action of a man in a dream. Someone else’s dream.
The front door opened into a panelled vestibule, tailor made for sporting prints and an elephant-foot umbrella stand.
Instead, the walls were lined with photos of bright Mediterranean scenes framed in white plastic, and the only thing on the floor was a woman’s body. Her throat had been slit, more than slit, almost severed, and the handle of the fatal knife still protruded from the gaping wound.
There were open doors to the left and the right. The one on the left led into a kitchen. On the floor were strewn the shards of a china teapot in a broad pool of pale amber tea.
Gingerly Joe stepped over the body so he c
ould see through the doorway on the right. It led into a lounge, and he was glad his sense of professional procedure gave him a reason for not crossing the threshold.
There were three more bodies here, an elderly couple and a youngish woman. The couple were slumped against each other on a garishly upholstered sofa. The woman lay on her side by a low table on which stood four cups and saucers, and a half-eaten Victoria sponge.
All three had had their throats cut.
Sixsmith turned back to the hallway. By the main door was a wall phone, with a fixed mouthpiece and separate earphone, like the ones reporters use in the old American movies. Carefully cloaking his fingers with his handkerchief (something else he’d seen in the movies), Joe dialled the police.
‘DS Chivers, please.’
‘Sorry, the Sergeant’s out on a call, sir. Can I help?’
‘I’m at a house called Casa Mia, number twenty-one Coningsby Rise—’
‘Hold on, sir. We’ve had that call already, that’s where the Sergeant’s gone. He should be with you any time now.’
‘This is real service,’ said Joe.
He stepped out into the fresh air and drew in a deep breath.
Andover was sitting with his back against one of the porch pillars, his head slumped on his chest.
‘You OK?’
The head jerked in what could have been an affirmative.
‘Good,’ said Joe, then walked across to the cherry tree, where he was following Andover’s earlier example when the first police car screamed up the drive.
CHAPTER 2
It seemed that four bodies got you more than a sergeant, which was just as well.
Chivers, first on the scene, clearly saw Joe Sixsmith as a prime mover in all this mayhem. In fact it turned out that when he was passed details of the phone call saying, ‘My name is Stephen Andover. I have just murdered my wife and her family at 21 Coningsby Rise,’ he had wasted several minutes trying to ring Joe’s office. Once he grasped there really were four bodies in the house, he was much inclined to arrest Andover on the spot. Joe protested that the man had been in his company for the past half hour or more.
‘So we’ve got ourselves a conspiracy, have we?’ snapped Chivers illogically, and was cautioning Joe when Detective Chief Inspector ‘Willy’ Woodbine arrived.
Built like an old style pillar-box, he had a matching reputation for getting his message across. Now he listened to a résumé of the known facts, told Chivers not to be a twerp all his life, and put out a general call to pick up Carlo Rocca, age thirty-four, stocky build, with long black hair and a heavy black moustache, perhaps wearing a slouch hat and a grey topcoat with an astrakhan collar, and driving an F registered blue Ford Fiesta.
Then he went into the house presumably to look for clues.
Chivers glowered after him.
Joe said, ‘Can I go now?’
‘No you bloody well can’t! We’ll need a statement, and I’m sure that Mr Woodbine will want to question you personally. Doberley, get your useless body over here!’
Joe looked round to see Detective-Constable Dylan Doberley trying unsuccessfully to keep out of sight by pretending to search the shrubbery. Known inevitably as Dildo, Doberley was an old acquaintance of Joe’s from their co-membership of the Boyling Corner Chapel Concert Choir. Now they also had Chivers’s wrath in common.
‘Yes, Sarge?’ said Doberley.
‘You seen what’s in there, my son?’ demanded Chivers. ‘You realize they must’ve been having their throats slit while you were starting up your car? Call yourself a detective! Defective is more like it. Take a statement from Sherlock here. Then get yourself off round the neighbours and check if they saw anything suspicious, and I don’t mean you!’
Taking Joe’s statement didn’t take long as he’d already been mentally rehearsing it to keep his personal involvement down to a minimum. When they were finished Doberley said, ‘I’d better get on to the neighbours before he starts yelling again.’
Keeping out of Chivers’s way seemed a good idea, so Joe joined the detective as he walked down the drive.
‘On a short fuse today, your boss,’ he said conversationally.
‘He can blow himself up for me,’ said Doberley bitterly. ‘What’s he think I am anyway? Psychic? OK, I saw them, but they was all happy as Larry, jabbering away like they do, all arms and spaghetti bolognese—’
‘You mean they didn’t speak English?’
‘Of course they spoke English! The two young ones spoke it just like you and me. The old pair sounded a bit more foreign like, and it was when they got a bit excited, they all started spouting Iti.’
‘Excited? You didn’t tell them—?’
‘That I’d come to make sure they wasn’t dead? Don’t be stupid. I told ’em I was crime prevention come to warn them there’d been a lot of break-ins round here lately. That was enough to set them off, particularly the old boy. Right little Musso he was, wanting to know why we didn’t hang people and why he couldn’t keep his own personal machine-gun in the house. Lot of good it would have done the poor old sod. Not when your own son-in-law’s just going to walk right in and slit your throat. If it was the son-in-law did it, that is.’
Joe grinned at the sad little straw Dildo was clutching at and said, ‘He didn’t strike you as suspicious, then?’
‘No, he bloody didn’t!’ exclaimed Doberley. ‘I was just walking back to my car when this blue Fiesta turns into the drive. It stopped and he wound down the window and asked if he could help me. I guessed he was one of the family—’
‘Why?’
‘Because he would hardly have asked otherwise,’ said Dildo in exasperation. ‘How do you earn a living, Joe? Also he spoke with a bit of an accent and he looked foreign with that shaggy moustache and slouch hat. I asked him who he was, naturally, and he told me, and I told him who I was, but I didn’t shoot him the crime prevention line.’
‘Why not?’ asked Joe.
‘I thought: He doesn’t look like he’d scare easy; so I asked about Andover, had he been acting funny recently? And that got him going, all this stuff about crazy dreams and so forth. And that was it.’
He laughed without humour.
‘Know what the last thing I said to him was, Joe? I said it would probably be better if he didn’t mention this to the ladies or the old folk, as there was no need to frighten them unnecessarily! Oh no, he said. He wouldn’t do anything to frighten ’em. Then he went in and did that!’
‘Like you say, Dildo, we can’t be absolutely sure,’ said Joe.
‘No? What do you want?’ said the DC, abandoning hope. ‘The angel of the Lord in triplicate? Here, you’d better disappear now, Joe, and let me get on.’
Immersed in their conversation, they had turned into the driveway nearest Casa Mia and were approaching a not dissimilar mock-Tudor villa, only this one was traditionally coloured and called The Pines. Sixsmith could see why Doberley wouldn’t want to have to explain his presence either to the householder or, worse, to Chivers. Unfortunately their approach must have been monitored, for now the door opened and a woman came to meet them.
She was in her fifties, tall and angular, with expensively coiffured grey hair and a horsey face that looked like it had been worked on by a good picture restorer.
‘Hello,’ she cried in the piercing voice of one who expects her own way but isn’t so absolutely certain of personal desert that she can be quiet about it. ‘Police, is it?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Detective-Constable Doberley, ma’am,’ said Dildo, making a chess knight’s move forward in an effort to conceal Joe. ‘Just a couple of questions, if you would, Mrs … er …?’
‘Rathbone. Julia Rathbone. Is it about next door?’
‘That’s right, ma’am.’
‘Ah. I thought it would be.’
Sixsmith, not wanting to embarrass his fellow chorister but feeling it would look suspicious if he just took off back down the drive, moved sideways towards a grey Volvo parked in front of the garag
e and started examining it with that air of suppressed shock policemen usually adopted when checking his Morris.
‘Why’d you think that, ma’am?’ asked Doberley.
‘Because I saw your cars arrive, naturally. But besides that, I’ve always said it would end in tears ever since they moved in.’
‘You mean the Andovers?’
‘No, of course not. He’s all right, not quite top drawer, of course, but at least he’s English and knows his manners. Can’t imagine how he got mixed up with his wife, Gina, isn’t it? If they’d met on holiday, perhaps … I mean she’s just so … colourful, like one of those ornaments that look so delightful in Andalucia but when you get them home, it’s straight into the attic. Can’t do that with a wife, of course, not unless you’re called Rochester. But it appears she was born over here, in Tring, I believe, and that’s where he met her, so it can’t be down to sunstroke and vino, can it?’
Dildo Doberley, with a single-mindedness Joe admired, kept hold of the original thread which had led him into this verbal tangle.
‘So why would it end in tears, Mrs Rathbone?’
‘When the other came. That Rocca. My dear man, one look at him and you knew here was trouble. Do you know, he once told me if ever I was thinking of changing my hi-fi, to let him know and he’d fix me up with the best bargain I’d get in Bedfordshire. Well, I knew what that meant, back of a lorry stuff. No, thanks, I said. And he’s still undischarged, you know, and likely to stay so from what I’ve seen.’
There was a great deal more of this. Doberley stuck to his guns manfully and what it boiled down to in his notebook, or would have done if Joe Sixsmith had been making the notes, was that the real money in the family derived from old Tomassetti. He’d built up a thriving business in the fur trade with outlets all over Beds, Bucks, and Herts, till seeing that public opinion was moving strongly against wearing dead animals, he’d sold up, retired, and bought Casa Mia, inviting his eldest daughter and her husband, Stephen Andover, to join them there with the understanding that the house would pass to them after his death.
Blood Sympathy Page 2