by Unknown
Yet, as much as Harp had come to rely on him, he was careful not to go overboard; Griggs, after all, was a hired hand. For the current job he simply had been told that the Grail was a priceless artifact, one of the great undiscovered treasures in the world, immensely important to Harp as a collector. That would suffice.
Harp had him sit in an opposing chair. Griggs folded his large hands on his lap.
Harp stared at him coldly. “How could this happen?”
Griggs gave an insouciant shrug. “They came back early. There’s always a chance of detection. I’m prepared for any eventuality, of course.”
“And that includes murder.”
“It does. I assumed you understood the risks of sending me on a domestic break-in.”
Harp grunted. “What about Malory?”
“I shot him and clubbed him. I didn’t think he was breathing. Besides, I set the place on fire.”
“Yet he survived.”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s on me. I should have spent another bullet.”
“And you couldn’t find the other documents?”
Griggs pointed at the folder. “Only the ones there. Maybe what you want is on his computer.”
“We’ll see. Give me a few minutes.”
Harp paged through the papers, furrowing his brow and murmuring to himself. Then he booted up the laptop and spent several minutes searching through folders and documents.
Finally, Harp said, “The Montserrat letter is extremely interesting but the rest of what I want isn’t on the computer.”
“It probably got burned up then.”
“Did you have to start a fire?”
“It’s the kind of thing burglars might do if they’ve killed someone and panicked.”
“Is it?”
Griggs ignored the question and asked his own. “Do you want me to go to Montserrat? To have a look around?”
“You? No. I might send someone who knows about these things. Or perhaps I’ll wait.”
“For what?”
“Until Malory recovers.”
“About that. There’s something I need to do,” Griggs said.
“What?”
“I need to finish the job.”
Harp looked alarmed. “You mean Malory?”
“He can identify me.”
Harp abruptly stood. “At this point the only chance of finding the Grail in my lifetime very likely lies with Arthur Malory. Perhaps Andrew Holmes told him about his discovery earlier in the evening. And even if he didn’t, if I’m right about Malory, he’ll try to find out what Holmes knew and I will be one step behind. It’s a blessing you didn’t kill him.”
Griggs stood, towering over the small man.
“He can identify me. Not you, me.”
Harp went to his desk, unlocked a drawer and stuffed several thousand pounds into a large envelope.
Griggs took the envelope and tested its weight in his hand.
“This is well and good, Dr. Harp, but it’s not going to ease my concerns.”
“What will … ease your concerns?”
“The Thames Valley police will be keen to pursue the case. They don’t get too many of these high-profile major crimes on their patch. They have two primary investigating detectives, a DI and a DS. I’ve made enquiries. They’re not bent but they’re bendable. My concerns would be eased if their feet got stuck in mud.”
“And what would that cost?”
“I’d say fifty.”
“Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money.”
“Fifty for the DI and fifty for his DS. And I wouldn’t wish to feel less valued than them.”
Harp raised his eyebrows theatrically. “I already pay you quite well.”
“I don’t recall murder being in my job description.”
Harp considered his options. “I’ll have the cash to you in the morning.”
“I’ll pass it to them through an intermediary. Everything will be on a no-names basis. And I’ll be helping the police in other ways. I took some silver from the house including an engraved cup to Holmes from some colleagues. I put the goods, anonymously, into the hands of an addict who’ll no doubt try to pawn them. When they surface it’ll reinforce the burglary story. If Malory goes on about the Grail, the police will naturally find the story bonkers anyway.”
“I leave it in your hands then.”
“I’ll still need to take care of Malory.”
Harp looked up into the tall man’s eyes. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your chance. But it will happen when I say so, not before. Is that clear?”
Griggs didn’t answer soon enough for Harp’s liking.
“I said, is that clear?”
“It’s clear.” Griggs rose from his chair. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why is the Grail so important to you? Holmes said it was just going to wind up in a museum if it’s found.”
Harp found the question jarring. Griggs had never before challenged him on anything and he certainly had never demonstrated this kind of familiarity. Had the murders unpleasantly shifted the balance between them?
He thought about how to respond and simply said, “You don’t need to know that to do your job. But I’ll tell you this: if it’s found, the Grail will never go to a museum.”
5
Arthur woke to the pleasant chirping of birds outside his bedroom window and groggily went downstairs to turn on his coffeemaker. While the brew was dripping he stepped out the back door to see how nature was getting on.
As his fractured skull, cracked rib, and irritated lungs mended, Arthur had been able to gradually up his activity level. He had always been fit—jogging, cycling, tramping the countryside with his metal detector—and recent inactivity had hardly led to decrepitude. With his doctor’s blessing, he was now doing some gardening and light jogging, still favoring his sore ribcage.
Arthur’s house was a cozy, three down, three up affair situated on a fairly busy street in Wokingham. The road noise had never bothered him because it came into play only when he needed to rise on weekdays; but staying at home for a month had set him thinking about a quieter place.
It was his first house and suited him in a Goldilocks way: not too large, not too small. He used the smallest bedroom as an office and furnished the downstairs with legacy furniture. His parents were gone, both in their sixties, his father, Arthur Sr., from heart disease, his mother from cancer. Now with his parents dead and no sibs to share memories he liked the familiarity of having the same sitting and dining room pieces he’d grown up with. He filled the bookcases with the volumes his father had collected: history, geology, archaeology, and travel books as well as a nice collection of Arthurian material that he supplemented from time to time with his own purchases.
Periodically he shared his house with a girlfriend but only to a point. He had never been engaged, never opted for full cohabitation, and as his friends pointed out, he was chronically tepid on the commitment side. His last girlfriend was even blunter on breakup day.
“You’re a bloody narcissist, Arthur, did you know that?” she’d ranted.
“Is it narcissistic to be passionate about my work and my hobbies?” he’d replied.
“Yes! When it trumps what I want at every turn!”
“I’m sorry I didn’t fancy taking a Caribbean cruise. Not my scene, I’m afraid.”
“The only thing that matters is your scene. I’m sorry, but digging for treasure in a muddy field and listening to all your boring King Arthur friends—those aren’t my scenes.”
Arthur had stared at her coldly and had responded, to his later regret, “Perhaps it would have been different if I were in love with you.”
And with that her parting words had been deservedly unpleasant.
From the garden Arthur heard his doorbell ringing. He wiped his shoes and went back through the house snatching the cricket bat by the door and using his newly installed peephole before putting the bat down and opening up. It was
DI Hobbs, very much his dour self.
“Do you have a minute for me, Mr. Malory?”
“Come in. Coffee? I’ve got a pot on.”
“Thank you, no.”
They passed into Arthur’s sitting room. Hobbs kept his raincoat on and looked around.
“Nice place you’ve got,” Hobbs said.
“Thank you.”
The detective inspector noticed a rose-colored kerosene lamp on the sideboard and picked it up.
“This is nice. Antique?”
“No, it’s modern, actually. Handy for the odd power failure. How can I help you?”
Hobbs put the piece back down. “We’ve been investigating a series of burglaries in and around Oxford and I wanted to show you some photos of potential suspects to see if one of them might be your attacker.”
Arthur put his coffee mug down, shaking his head. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. This wasn’t a burglary.”
“I appreciate that and we’ve taken note of your official statements. However, we have to operate on facts. Forensically, we are now convinced that Professor Holmes’ house was subjected to a burglary. There have been other break-ins at the university. We are operating under the theory that the perpetrator may have been responsible for the earlier burglary at his university office and gained knowledge of his home address at that time.”
“Look, I—” Arthur began but Hobbs cut him off.
“And furthermore, an antiques dealer in Reading received some suspicious silver items and called the police. They clearly belonged to Professor Holmes. We identified the man who tried to sell them, a drug addict who was in a treatment facility the night of the murders. He obtained the goods from a lowlife who got them from another lowlife. That daisy chain of scum has led us nowhere useful at this time but reinforces our view that this was, at its roots, a burglary.”
“You continue to ignore the Grail,” Arthur said. He didn’t sound frustrated, just weary.
“Candidly, I find the notion that this heinous crime is related to some kind of pursuit of the Holy Grail, well, fanciful. It’s not what you may wish to hear but it is the truth. Now will you please review these photos of burglary suspects? They include photos of the aforementioned drug addicts.”
Arthur sighed and scanned the photographs. It came as no surprise that none was his man.
“It must be clear to you that not one of these bears the slightest resemblance to the police sketch,” Arthur said.
“I understand. We did print the sketch in the newspapers, as you know, and have received no credible leads as a result.”
“You’re basically saying you completely doubt my account of the night?”
“I’m only continuing to say that you took a nasty blow to your head.”
“Did you at least look for evidence that someone tapped my phones or Andrew Holmes’?”
“We did, actually. There was nothing.”
“Fine, all right,” Arthur said testily. “If you’ll excuse me I’ve got things to do.”
Hobbs made for the door but paused to take note of the cricket bat.
“Do you still think you’re being watched, Mr. Malory?”
“Why bother telling you what I think?”
“Very well, then. You’ve got my card if you wish to speak with me.”
#
After a day of gardening Arthur decided to take advantage of some residual energy. He donned his running gear and headed out into the cool darkness. There were few passing cars on his road but he stuck to the sidewalks anyway out of an abundance of caution. His favorite place for an easy jog these days was the recreation ground near Langborough Road, a short distance away.
His side throbbed with every strike of his left heel but he tried to tune out the discomfort and concentrate on the simple sweetness of the night air.
As he turned onto Fairview Road, he was vaguely aware of a car approaching from his rear so he clung to the sidewalk. He had to cross Fairview to get to the grounds, an easy task even during the day as it was a quiet little road. Ahead no cars were coming and the car from the rear no longer seemed to be about. But as he reached the middle of the road, he heard the roar of a motor and saw a flood of headlights.
A large car was coming fast and wasn’t braking.
Arthur glanced over his shoulder. All he could see were headlights like the bright eyes of a nocturnal predator.
He did the only thing he could. He pushed off with his right foot and launched himself across the road. He heard himself yelling.
The car missed him by no more than inches.
He did a barrel roll onto his right side and landed on the grass on the verge of the recreation ground.
The car hurtled forward without slowing, made a left onto Gipsy Lane and disappeared, the sound of its motor fading.
The pain from his cracked rib took his breath away. He rolled onto his back, grimacing at the stars.
A woman came running out of Number 7. “Are you all right?” she called out.
“I think so.”
“I heard you shout,” she said, clutching a robe to her chest. “What happened?”
Arthur painfully pushed himself to a seated position. “It was a car. He almost hit me.”
“There are too many bloody stupid yobs about,” she said. “Did you get his number plate?”
“No.”
“Shall I call the police? Do you need an ambulance?”
“No, I’m all right.” He stood up, pressing against the sharp pain in his side with the flat of his hand. “I just live on Crescent Road. I’ll be fine. Are there any security cameras on this street?”
“There ought to be with all the children who use the ground but the council’s priorities are mucked up. Are you sure you’re all right? I can easily ring the police.”
“No. It would be a waste of time, I’m afraid. But thank you, you’ve been very kind.”
The woman went back inside and Arthur began to walk home, eyes darting around, ears straining to hear any approaching car.
He imagined what the driver looked like and in his mind’s eye it was the large man with the coarse face and cropped hair: the man who’d been haunting his dreams.
#
Walking into the Bear Inn was like walking into a wake. Tony Ferro spotted Arthur right away and by the time Arthur had pressed through to the crowded bar there was a pint waiting for him.
The Bear had been Holmes’ favorite not because it had the best beer in town but because it was the oldest pub in Oxford, which meant something to an historian. Besides, it was close to his College, Corpus Christi. Invariably, when the Grail Loons got together this was the venue and this night was no different—except for the painfully glaring fact that Holmes was no longer among them.
Someone had placed a photo of Holmes on the bar. It perfectly captured his quirky charm: chin thrust out, full head of bushy hair, silk bow tie, five-button suit jacket, and an ivory-handled walking stick that he had used quite a lot lately to make his wife feel less self-conscious of her cane. Somehow this stick was one of the few items to survive the fire. A neighbor—perhaps the same hero who had pulled Arthur from the fire—had found it on the sidewalk amid blackened rubble, cast there by firefighters clearing out the collapsing front rooms. Now it lay on a table in one of the pub alcoves, a forlorn object if ever there was.
Arthur tried and failed to suppress a sob at the sight of Holmes’ photo. Holmes had always liked Arthur to sit across from him at the pub so he could engage him easily. At one of the Loon meetings he had famously spouted, “With four pints in me and a good squint, looking at Arthur’s like looking at Sir Thomas Malory, the old rogue, in the flesh!” Another time he had said, “If I ever finish the book I’m writing about Sir Thomas, I’m going to have you write a foreword.”
“What would I say?” Arthur had asked.
“I don’t know.” Holmes had chuckled. “Why not something about why a fascination with King Arthur appears to be an inherited trait.”
Tony spearheaded their push through to the alcove staked out by the Grail Loons. Aaron Cosgrove stood and gave Arthur a bear hug, making him flinch from rib pain. He was an Australian, a linguist teaching at Reading with a penchant for bad jokes. “Shove over, Sandy,” he told Sandy Marina. “Make way for Arthurus Rex.”
Sandy moved beer mats and glasses to accommodate one more on the bench, gave Arthur a pat on his leg and said, “It’s good to see you looking hale and hearty.”
Arthur couldn’t stop staring at Holmes’ cane, the small ruby eyes of the whimsical dragon head dull with soot.
Sandy noticed his gaze and touched its shaft. “We asked the publican if he’d keep it here for us.”
There was no need for further explanation. That one simple sentence said it all. They would continue to meet as a group and Holmes would continue in their hearts.
“To Andrew and Anne,” Tony said, lifting his mug.
“To Andrew and Anne,” the rest chimed in.
Arthur drank half of his pint in one go, feeling positively numb that Holmes, this force of nature, was no more. The strong beer was medicinal.
There were gentle questions about Arthur’s health and state of mind. Most knew nothing more than the official account—that the three interrupted a burglary and that mayhem ensued. Arthur responded mostly with grim, monosyllabic responses and told everyone he was returning to work soon. As far as he was concerned, this evening was about Andrew and Anne.
Tony wiped at a tear before it disappeared into his moustache. His signature sweater vest bulged over his gut and in honor of the departed he wore the Corpus Christi tie Holmes had given him, a Cambridge man, as a joke one Christmas. Holmes had told him, “I’m giving you this tie to irritate you, Tony, since I know your love for Oxford has no bounds. I expect you to keep it tucked away and produce it only on the event that I should ever require a funeral.”
Aaron noticed the tie, pointed at the pub walls lined with cases of old college cravats and asked whether this specimen ought to go under glass too.
“No, I rather think I’ll keep it,” Tony said.