Time to Kill

by Roger Ormerod

  I recalled that now Elsa had a key to my palatial apartment, and I hadn’t asked for it back. She hadn’t offered it.

  For the moment I stood at the top of the five steps down to the pavement. It was one of those bright October days that might turn out warm. The air was still carrying the memory of the morning’s fog. Over on the main road the traffic roared and belted out fumes.

  There was no orange Mini in sight. Perhaps Odin Breeze had overslept.

  I looked at my car with distaste. I knew how it would be. One of these days I’d need it to start first touch and it would have a fit of the sulks and refuse. It would have to go. Definitely. I decided to walk. It’s only a mile from my place.

  Vantage was in his room and had said he’d ring when he wanted me. I went and sat with Crewse and tried to pump him on how far they’d got on the case, but he wasn’t letting anything go. It occurred to me that he might not know. Then he mumbled something about records and slid out of the room and there wasn’t anything to do after that except read a copy of yesterday’s Times and wonder what the shares were doing today. There was a letter about Police brutality. I’d nearly read it when the buzzer went. Vantage wanted me.

  He had got the Commissioner sitting beside him at his desk, so I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant. We hardly ever see him. He’s around sixty and tough as nails, and always looks as though he’s ridden into town on his hunter with his pack of hounds at his heels. I’d never even seen him smile, but I don’t suppose he’d got anything to smile at. He certainly looked grim enough that morning, and I wondered if he’d been reading about Police brutality.

  Vantage had obviously managed to get some sleep. He gave me a smile so thin you couldn’t have posted a stamp in it and looked down at his papers.

  “Sit down Mallin, will you,” said Vantage.

  I did so, awkwardly, trying not to take my eyes off them.

  “You’ve met the Commissioner?”

  I said I had. We exchanged distant nods. I think I smiled, but my mouth was stiff.

  “Just a few points,” said Vantage, not meeting my eyes. “A few details it would be pleasant to clear up.”

  “Of course, sir.” I was willing to go along with anything.

  “I take it you got nowhere with your time schedule?”

  “I’ve chopped it down. Maybe if he’d worked fast...”

  “Ah yes.” Vantage glanced at the Commissioner, who pursed his lips and glanced at his finger tips.

  “The main difficulty,” I said, “is over the lift doors.”

  “They do present a problem.”

  “I timed my snooker break at one minute and twenty seconds.” I was plugging at it in the face of acute disinterest.

  “Did you?” Vantage shuffled through some papers, and came up with, “we’d have gone as far as a minute and a half.”

  “Not as long as that,” I persisted.

  “You think not?” said Vantage quietly. He made an amendment. He looked up. “And what did you work out with the lift?”

  “There’s a rubber wedge thing...” I stopped, wondering what I’d done with the one I’d experimented with. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen it since that time. I cast my mind back. Then I remembered. I’d left the cage door wedged open with it! I had a sudden mental picture of technicians swarming all over the equipment, looking for the fault...I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Do you find it amusing?” said the Commissioner nastily.

  “No sir. I’m sorry. It was something else.”

  Vantage frowned. He gave me a glare that should have petrified me. But it isn’t my fault I get these mental pictures.

  “Do try to keep your mind on what we’re saying, Mallin. Now...a rubber wedge, you said.”

  “You get them at the ironmongers. They’re small enough to hide in a jacket pocket, but you can wedge the lift doors open with one, and hold the cage on any floor you want.”

  He eyed me with interest. “We hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It knocks quite a few seconds off it. You can get up to the third floor from number one table in eighteen seconds.”

  “Interesting.” Vantage glanced sideways. “Commissioner?”

  “Oh...yes.” He dragged his mind painfully from saddle leather and stirrups. “I quite agree.” Then his cold, fishy eye was on me, and I wondered if he was as vague as he pretended.

  “But all the same,” said Vantage, “not enough time for Kyle. We’ve taken a great number of statements, and it’s quite clear that he never left the room for more than one minute and twenty seconds for the whole period between nine and eleven.”

  “The coincidence, sir! It’s just not acceptable. That Kyle was there, in that building, at the time Geoff was killed.”

  Vantage was looking at me, looking and waiting. It was as though I’d made a mistake and he was giving me a chance to retract. As I didn’t, he picked it up.

  “But it would not be a coincidence if he was brought there.”

  They had got me there, stuck in that blasted chair, just to throw things at me and watch how they bounced.

  “You can’t believe that,” I protested. “It’s only what Kyle says.”

  “But he has said it, so we must consider it.”

  There was a small, hot silence. I was becoming aware that I had made a mistake wearing the white shirt. The collar was beginning to feel a little tight. He started on another tack.

  “You say you didn’t know that Forbes had that flat at Queens?”

  “It was a complete surprise to me.”

  “Then you couldn’t know he was there?” He paused as I stared. “So that if you’d arranged to meet him at his place—shall we call it?—his place, you’d have meant the flat at Edgbaston?”

  I couldn’t see what he was getting at. “That’s what I’d have meant.” He looked dubious. “If I’d arranged to meet him.”

  “So you hadn’t?”

  “Of course not.” I looked from one blank face to the other. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Mr Vantage.”

  “I think you will.” He passed on quickly before I could interrupt. “You didn’t phone him that evening?”

  “I tried. Elsa—his wife—said he was in town.”

  “Which would mean the flat in Edgbaston?”

  “Yes sir. I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand.”

  His central heating was on too high. He went on:

  “But there was no reply from the Edgbaston flat?”

  “No sir.”

  “So you didn’t manage to reach him?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. What is this, sir?”

  “Left a note, say?”

  “I left no notes.”

  He paused, reached over to the front of his desk, and picked up a slip of paper. He looked at it, glanced at the Commissioner. He held it out to me. I took it and looked at it. In my own writing was:

  Your place at ten. Dave.

  For a long time I stared at it. “Well?”

  “It’s my handwriting.” I tried desperately to pull myself together. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the breast pocket of the suit Forbes was wearing.”

  My mind was racing, and only years of training retained a small portion of my brain for the business in hand. “Prints?”

  “No.” He waited for me to carry it on.

  “Not even Geoff’s?”

  He smiled. “Not even his.”

  But there could be dozens of explanations for that, the simplest that he’d been wearing gloves when he’d read it. That was Vantage’s point of view. From mine—I simply hadn’t sent it. But I couldn’t even remember having written it.

  “I didn’t send this, sir.”

  “We’d hardly expect you to say you had.”

  He was smoothly calling me a liar. The Commissioner was nodding as though he completely agreed with something he didn’t understand.

  “Tell me again,” said Vantage. “We’ll have to get it very clear. You said
that in the whole evening you played only that one extended break?”

  “We’ve had all that.”

  “So it follows that Kyle had all the breaks.”

  I was ahead of him, scrambling for it.

  “And,” went on Vantage, before I could say anything, “you’ve shown me that it’s possible to get from the table to the flat in thirty seconds. A little over, perhaps. It is also conceivable that around ten o’clock you would have the...satisfaction shall we say...of watching Kyle settle in to another break, and you’d know from watching his play that he’d be settled in there for two...” He raised his eyebrows in polite query. “Maybe three minutes, say.”

  “You can’t be meaning this.”

  “And it is only necessary to step back from the table a few feet to be absolutely lost in the shadows...”

  “You can’t—” I tried to force my way through.

  “...especially with a crowd round the table watching Kyle.”

  My chair spun across the room. I was at his desk, leaning over it. “Don’t you see—”

  “Sit down, Mallin.”

  There is a point in every interrogation when Vantage becomes icily cool and precise. It’s when he’s got his teeth in. His eyes met mine, and it was like walking into a wall. Some of yesterday’s grey tinge still clung to the corners of his mouth. They did not move either up or down.

  The Commissioner spoke. It was in the sad, resigned voice he’d used for describing the destruction of a fox.

  “I think you’d better sit down, don’t you.”

  But I had no intention of retrieving the chair from where it had splintered a pane in Vantage’s bookcase. I stuck my hands in my trousers pockets and walked around, all the time cursing myself for an inability to appear calm—and innocent.

  “I’m suggesting,” said Vantage, “that you made an appointment to see Forbes at his Queens flat. That you went there at ten...”

  “Waving a foot of naked steel?” I demanded angrily.

  “...that you went there at ten as arranged.”

  He stopped. Looked at me. I caught myself on the ball of one foot. He was unwilling to take it to the next obvious step—that I killed him.

  “But he sent down a message for me to go up at eleven. He couldn’t even have known I was there.”

  Vantage picked up his ball-point and poised it between the fingers of both hands in front of his nose.

  “I’m suggesting that he came in at half past nine, looked in at the billiard hall...knowing you play snooker yourself...”

  The Commissioner stirred himself. “Heard you won the Police championship this year,” he commented. “Good man. Keep it up.”

  So now we knew what to expect from the Commissioner!

  “...of some promise,” said Vantage sourly. “It’s conceivable that you’d go there early and play a few games until ten. Forbes could reasonably expect you to do so, at least sufficiently to cause him to put his head inside the door.” He was squinting at the pen in front of his nose, measuring his words.

  “Then why would he change it to eleven?”

  “It may even be,” Vantage said in polite surprise as the thought came to him, “that he had reason to see an enemy in yourself. That he was suspicious.”

  “That’s complete rubbish.”

  “And he’d need time to sort it out.”

  There was a silence. In the outer office they were pushing furniture around, or something. It’s unusual to hear a sergeant shouting at his Superintendent and Commissioner, so maybe they were drowning my embarrassment.

  I took a deep breath. There was an ace I could play.

  “If that was the case...if, mind you...why’d he tell the porter to phone down at ten to eleven? By that time it’d be too late, if I was intending to go up at ten.”

  He bent the ball-point gently. It snapped, and a brief frown flashed between his eyes, regret at the expenditure of so much emotion.

  “We believe the porter was asked to ring down at ten minutes to ten, and simply made a mistake.”

  “You talked to him. Jenkins didn’t make any mistake.”

  “Jenkins was an eager man. You could see he loved his uniform. He was only too ready to oblige. You heard him—he glanced at the clock when the instructions were given. But it is possible to be too eager. I suggest that he could well have been looking at the clock before the message had fully registered in his mind, that he made a mistake and he was actually asked to ring down at ten minutes to ten.”

  I spoke tenderly, using careful words because I didn’t want there to be any doubt about the reply. “How is Jenkins? Has he recovered? Can he make a statement?”

  Vantage sighed. “Jenkins died at three o’clock this morning.”

  So there it was. Jenkins wasn’t going to be around to tell us if there’d been any complaints about the lift. Or to deny he’d made a mistake about the time of the message. Jenkins had only made one large error: he had been porter on duty that night.

  Vantage was talking again, pressing on with it.

  “It was good of you to tell me about the rubber wedge. I hadn’t thought about that. But you’ll realize, of course, that if Kyle could have used such a device, you could too.”

  I felt cold. “Are you charging me, sir?”

  “I am not.” He was ferreting inside his drawer, presumably searching for another ball-point. He tossed his head up for a moment. “But I must ask you to make yourself available.”

  “I am available,” I snapped.

  “And I think it’s best that you should be relieved from duty.”

  The Commissioner blinked. I think his only purpose for being there was to pass on that instruction, and he’d missed it.

  “Yes, I think so,” he said.

  “I’m not on duty,” I told him angrily.

  I walked out of there. Crewse had moved his desk a couple of feet. I offered to help him move it back. He smiled vaguely, so I let it go.

  Nobody said anything to me on the way out. Very few lifted their heads. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I would not be going back. And they’d had no time for a whip-round for a retiring present. Oh well—my mantel would have to continue clockless.

  It was hot outside.

  7

  We had plunged into one of those hot October spells which we seem to get every year, and every year is so surprising. The sky was clear, simmering blue, the pavements vibrating. The Cheviot tweed was definitely a mistake.

  I walked up Colmore Row and down New Street. Spring dresses had suddenly reappeared. The air was still, the traffic stench was heavy.

  Half way along Corporation Street I remembered when I had written the note. It was the one I had sent Kyle on the evening we arrested him. If I wanted any proof that Kyle had killed Geoff, this was it. It was infuriating that he was being able to use against me everything that I did.

  I had coffee and thought about it some more. It seemed unlikely that Kyle would have hired himself a killer, but I had to give it some consideration. I walked back to my flat.

  The car started first touch and I drove to the prison in Winson Green. To the people in the office there I was still Sergeant Mallin, so they threw open their records for me, gave me an empty table, and left me to it.

  During his period inside Kyle had shared his cell with four different men. They were, in sequence, a conman, a rapist, an embezzler and a petty thief who had tried to make the big time and had failed. None sounded as though he could have been hired by Kyle. So I started again and searched the lists for any killer Kyle might have had opportunity to meet.

  An hour later I had three names, three men who might commit a murder for money. I thanked everybody and left. Three men. I dropped into a phone box and called Central Office. Crewse was affable. There was nobody else I could have tried.

  “Matthewson, Peek and Spinetti,” I said.

  Crewse sounded bored. “I know. You should’ve phoned me first. We’ve been through all that. Matthewson’s in hospital in Liverpoo
l. Peek’s inside again. They’ve got him at Wandsworth.”

  “Spinetti?”

  “Spinetti’s dead. He was killed in a brawl two months ago.”

  I said thanks very much and rang off.

  Everything that happened only strengthened my conviction that Kyle had done it, and had done it alone. Nothing indicated a professional. Now I had to assume a six-year-old note from me to Kyle had been slipped into Geoff’s breast pocket. After he was dead? It would have to be. I could see it clearly, Geoff writhing on the floor, trying to drag himself to his feet. Was anybody going to reach over, at that time, and slip a note into his pocket? It seemed unlikely. Quite apart from the danger of getting blood on himself, nobody would take the risk of coming that close to somebody like Geoff, even though he was dying.

  I saw, rather, somebody who would wait until the death struggles had finished. Somebody standing there, the weapon ready in his hand, waiting for Geoff to die. No, not a professional. Even if he could be persuaded to use a knife, no professional would hang around, waiting, watching, when another stab would finish the job.

  But Kyle—I could see him standing there, enjoying it. Some minutes, the doctor had said. Geoff would have clung to life with all his strength. He had crawled twenty feet from where he was struck down, and died at the foot of the three steps. It had to be Kyle. Some minutes!

  But Lord, I’d been working in seconds, not minutes.

  I went back to my place to check what food I’d got in. There wasn’t much, so I went round to Franelli’s for a meal, then wondered if I should phone Elsa. But she’d be sure to ask if I’d got anywhere. I didn’t want to tell her where I was getting.

  Odin’s Mini was parked opposite mine. I looked around but I couldn’t see him. There was a pub a little way down the street on the other side, so I tried there, and he was at the bar putting down pints of bitter.

  “You’re neglecting your duties,” I said.

  He shrugged. “What’re you having?” I suppressed the urge for a double whisky. “Half of the same.”

  He signalled the girl, whom he seemed to know well. But Odin was the sort of man who knows everybody inside a few seconds.

  “A pint of bitter, love,” he said.