I closed the window carefully and drew the curtains. It was obvious that I was not going to be able to get to bed as soon as my body was shouting for. For some reason somebody had broken in, and I couldn’t relax until I knew why. I set out on a tour of the room, carefully sliding out drawers and gently probing for a clue. But I didn’t know whether the intruder had come to leave something or take something. If he’d come to take, I was obviously not going to be able to decide what, because I hadn’t known what was there before. Not accurately. I’d been in the flat before, but my observation was not good enough to re-present an accurate mental picture.
The clock on the mantel tinkled the hour. I decided I was wasting good sleeping time, and reached for the whisky bottle for a nightcap. And stopped.
There were bottles of scotch and brandy, two syphons of soda water, a bottle of gin, and one of Cointreau. For a moment I thought my weary brain was playing-up, that I was hallucinating. It was as though I’d been there before. Then I got it. The mental picture was of the flat at Queens. It was the same combination.
I lowered my hand without touching the bottle. The brand of scotch was the same as at Queens; the brandy had the same label. The gin was Hollands, and the bottle of Cointreau was half empty. There was an itching in the back of my mind and I suddenly became giddy at the shock of realization.
Slowly, almost with trepidation, I went to have a look at the LP sleeves. There were several complete recordings of famous musical shows, but amongst them were Geoff’s Bach, his Beethoven, his Brahms. And scattered amongst them were Elsa’s Stravinsky, Petroushka and his symphony in C major, and some Ravel—La Valse, Daphnis and Chloe. They were the same recordings as at Queens.
I touched nothing. I knew that none of Elsa’s prints would be on the sleeves or the bottles. Geoff’s maybe, but not Elsa’s.
I knew how Kyle had done it.
The double chime of the door bell jerked me to a halt. I stood still. It sounded again. I remembered the open window and its balcony, the easy drop to the garage roof. But if this was Vantage I would be happy to see him, I realized with a shock, because now I could prove it. I went to the door and opened it.
Odin Breeze said: “Morning, Mr Mallin.”
He had a half-embarrassed smile on his face and looked unshaven. Even Odin wasn’t up to grins at that time of the morning. He didn’t look particularly dangerous, so I stepped back to let him in. There wasn’t much I could have stopped him with, anyway. Odin did not look like the sort of person who would be standing in front of the man who’d killed his girl, so perhaps he didn’t know she was dead.
“What the hell’re you doing here?”
He walked in, looked round appraisingly. He was a tired man, but not as deep in the depths as I was.
“Picked you up at Queens,” he said.
“Picked me up? You’ve been hunting for me then?”
He nodded, standing like a young oak in the middle of the Turkey rug. “Mr Kyle said.”
“All right, so you’ve found me. Why don’t you go ahead and phone him? Tell him you’ve found me, and what next?”
“I phoned him.”
There was something queer about his attitude, standing there with his great shoulders hunched and his head looping from side to side. I watched him, fascinated, as he began to move around, giving the place his ample appreciation. He reached the drinks cupboard and paused.
“Don’t touch the drinks,” I said.
Then his grin appeared. He was like an overgrown, naughty child, determined to do what is forbidden. He reached over one monstrous fist and picked up the bottle of Hollands. It looked like a tube of toothpaste in his hand. He glanced at the label. Then he hurled the bottle at the fireplace.
It smashed against the electric fire and sent it skittering sideways, falling face down on the hearth. He picked up the whisky bottle.
“Stop it, you big ape,” I howled.
He didn’t look at me, but poised the bottle. I flew at him and he swept out his left arm contemptuously, and sent me spinning away. I fell on the settee. Pain doubled me up. The whisky bottle smashed the ormolu clock and spirit splashed up the wall.
One of the Dresden figurines had lost an arm and some cherries. I could not find anything left in me to tackle him with, and watched while he tossed the brandy at the wall, watched while he twirled the Cointreau before sending it after the others. There was a bitter-sweet smell of spirits in the air.
He started in on the LPs. I knew then what he was doing and why.
“Stop it,” I gasped. “Odin, stop it and listen.”
But Odin wasn’t listening to anything. I wished then I’d searched the place thoroughly, then I’d know where Geoff had kept his thirty-eight Colt. I knew he’d owned one, but he could have kept it anywhere. Frantically, bent over with the pain, I began to struggle round the room, pulling open drawers and swinging cupboard doors wide.
He had got all the record sleeves off and was tearing them up. He was making a pile of them in the grate, which the broken fire had revealed. Nothing was going to stop him but a bullet in the guts. The gun wasn’t in the lounge. I didn’t even know it was in the flat. I staggered into the bedroom. Two drawers at the base of the wardrobe. Nothing but clothes. The dressing table—no, too feminine. But all the same I scattered the drawers out. There was a cupboard beside the tallboy. I lurched to it, yanking the drawers out on to the floor.
It was in the third drawer down. I didn’t have time to check it was loaded as I reeled back into the lounge.
He was kneeling in front of the fireplace, a matchbox in his hands, and he’d piled the naked discs on top of the torn covers.
“Lay off,” I shouted. It turned out to be loaded, and I put a bullet in the wall.
He twisted towards me, shocked surprise on his face. The match was lit in his right hand. He dropped it in the fireplace and stood up, slowly, looking pitiful and bewildered. Behind him the flames caught in the spirit-soaked fireplace. They licked greedily up the wall, the empty, cool flames of spirit.
“You don’t have to do that, Mr Mallin.”
But I very nearly did it. Rage tightened my finger on the trigger. But it was too late to kill Odin Breeze.
Across the room the phone began to ring.
“Let it ring,” I said.
Slowly, as though manipulated, he walked across to the phone.
“Let it ring,” I shouted, but he ignored me and picked it up. He listened. I sat down, the gun resting on my knee. Let him listen. He put down the handset, his eyes on me.
His eyes seemed to have retreated into deep hollows. The hard line round his jaw caught dying flickers from the flames over the mantel. His shoulders drooped forward and his arms hung loose at his sides. Then he came at me. There was naked hatred in his face. Sometime he’d have to find out about Margie Dee. This was as good a time as any, I suppose.
I sent the settee rolling over and back, so that it tumbled me out on the carpet behind. Odin gave a howl and pounded after me. With his right hand he caught one caster of the settee and spun it across the room. I scrambled away, shouting at him. I should have blasted him. He came at me. I got behind a table, but he plucked it up and tossed it at me.
“Cut it out!” I shouted, but he was mad with it. I rolled the drinks cupboard down on to the floor under his feet, and pain shot through me. I stopped, gasping. He came round the cupboard, hands reaching for me, fingers clawed.
I fired once, almost blind with pain—all I could think to do. He stopped, amazement on his face. There was blood growing in a stream down his neck from the groove I’d put over his ear. He put a hand to it, and swayed for a moment. I stood in front of him, bent over and choking. If he’d come at me again I’d have had to kill him. I would never live through any clawing assault from those hands.
“Damn you, sit down.”
He looked at me numbly.
“Sit down,” I whispered, “or I’ll blow your head off.”
He looked consideringly down the
bore of the gun, and backed away. I could have sighed with relief, only I thought maybe a sigh would break me in two. I watched as he looped over to an easy chair, and sat poised, set to pounce at any sign of relaxation from me. Considering that I was due to pass out at any second, he might not have long to wait.
“You killed Margie,” he said woodenly.
I was trying to get over to the other chair. I made it. “Is that what he told you?”
“Margie’s dead.”
“I know she’s dead,” I told him. “I found her.” He made a movement. I lifted the gun’s muzzle an inch, and he subsided. “Kyle killed Margie, he had to. The same as Jenkins. They were the two who knew.”
He looked dazed. I paused. I could have used a small portion of the liquor he’d spread around.
“The same as he killed Geoff Forbes,” I added.
“You did it. You did that. Mr Kyle told me.”
“Mr Kyle,” I informed him, “has said some very funny things. What happened this morning?”
“Picked you up at Queens. Followed you here and phoned Mr Kyle.”
“And what did he tell you to do, Odin?”
He shook his head from side to side, trying to keep his mind on what we were talking about. “Come up here. Destroy the drinks and the gramophone records.”
“And then?”
“He phoned me here.”
“And told you Margie’s dead?”
“She is dead, isn’t she Mr Mallin?”
I agreed she was dead. “She was strangled, Odin.” He groaned. I waited until his eyes met mine again. “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that he didn’t tell you when you phoned him earlier? He could have told you then, instead of phoning here a quarter of an hour later to do it. Why would he do that?”
I was determined to drag his mind from his personal misery, force him to think again logically. He looked at me and shook his head numbly. I tried another approach.
“When he phoned you here, didn’t he ask you first if you’d done it?” He nodded. “That’s strange, isn’t it? Don’t you think it was because he wanted to check you’d destroyed the bottles and stuff. Think of it,” I snapped, jerking him up. “That was evidence you destroyed. With that I could’ve proved everything, so he had to make sure it was gone before he set you on me.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Of course it sounds like it.” I held it, waiting for some reason to come into his eyes. “That was all the bloody evidence I had.”
Intelligence softened the hard lines of his face and challenge sharpened his eyes. “He said you killed Mr Forbes, and that was right enough, ‘cause you had time to do it, and he didn’t.”
I’d got him thinking. I could have cheered, only I was spending all my cheering energy in keeping going.
“He had time enough for killing.”
“We were there, me and you and a dozen or so other people. We all saw him there, from nine till eleven—”
“With no time except during my one break, eh?”
“You know that was all the time there was.”
“And what,” I asked, “if I showed you that he didn’t need more than half of it? What then, Odin Breeze?”
“I don’t see how.”
“That’s because you’re assuming Geoff Forbes was killed after nine-thirty. The porter, Jenkins, saw him go up at that time. But try assuming that Jenkins didn’t. Assume Geoff was up there well before nine and was killed before nine. Then Kyle would have had all the time in the world. Just as long as he got down to the billiard hall by nine he’d be in the clear. He’d have had to get Geoff up there with some message or other at about quarter to nine, then follow him there with his cue in his hand, get inside—or more likely he was already there when Geoff arrived—and all he’d have to do was unscrew it. Geoff probably had half a second to react. Then your friend Kyle stood and watched him die, waited for him to die, probably enjoyed it, and before he went Kyle just slipped the blade inside the cue and left a years-old note of mine in Geoff’s top pocket. He left the door unlocked and took the lift down into the basement, and as far as we were concerned he was just arriving from the car park.”
I was very tired. As I spoke, the various details of it were clicking into place. I could have done with more time for thought, but I had to convince Odin.
“But,” he said, “Mr Forbes didn’t go up to the flat till half past nine. The porter saw him, and he knew him.”
“But notice the time, Odin. Nine-thirty. That was when your friend Kyle had his little time break. He’d probably had the lift doors wedged with one of those rubber things since nine o’clock. Then he set it up for me, lined all the balls up in a way I could spend a bit of time potting them, and simply walked out, picking up his coat on the way, I expect. No cue this time—”
“He gave me his cue to hold.”
“Right. So he got to the cage. Up to the ground floor, then hold the door open while he talked to Jenkins. And Jenkins never batted an eyelid, because as far as Jenkins was concerned he was talking to Geoffrey Forbes. Kyle gave his message—ring down at ten to eleven for Mr Mallin to go up—”
“Wait. Wait a sec.” I paused. “How’d he think Mr Kyle was Mr Forbes? They didn’t look anyway alike.”
“How d’you know that, Odin?”
“Mr Kyle said he was a big man, like you. He said I might have to rough him up a bit, but he was killed first. Mr Kyle said he was bigger’n you. Tougher.”
Just at that moment I was no tougher than a six year old girl. I let it pass.
“No, they weren’t anything alike. But to Jenkins that was his Mr Forbes, because it wasn’t Geoff Forbes who’d taken that flat, it was Kyle, in the name of Forbes.”
I saw understanding flood his face. Whatever I said now he would believe.
I said: “Two months of work to cover him for ten seconds of conversation.”
And there I’d been worrying about coincidences. The trouble had been I’d got the wrong one. The real coincidence wasn’t that Kyle was in the building. The big one, the really stunning coincidence, had been that Geoff Forbes had apparently taken a flat in the one apartment block in town that had a billiard hall in the basement. But Geoff hadn’t. Kyle had. So it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Kyle had had to have that block in order to make it work.
Kyle had taken the flat two or three months before, in the name of Forbes. Then he’d set about establishing himself as Forbes, as far as Jenkins was concerned. There would be no point in establishing it for anybody else’s benefit, only for the man he was going to speak to when the lift doors opened in front of the desk. It wouldn’t be difficult. Several trips there to ask for his mail, a few letters posted to himself to impress on Jenkins the name of Forbes. But then it occurred to Kyle that if Forbes was going to have two flats in town it might be as well for him to have a reason for the second. So Kyle gave him a reason. He used Margie Dee to take up there a few times, Forbes’s woman friend. No doubt she told Odin she was visiting her mum. All he’d need to do was to let Jenkins see her. But then it would have occurred to him that the flat was sterile. The plan was for me to find him, and it would have to seem like it was Geoff’s flat, not simply a flat in which Geoff was found dead. So Kyle had to slip in a few personal details, something that would cue me in.
“So he broke in here,” I said. It was all I could do to keep going. “He had to see one or two of the personal details that would give the Queens flat some personality. He saw the drinks and the record sleeves.”
“What he got me to destroy,” said Odin miserably.
“Not quite, Odin. Not quite. He could have made notes of what there was, and duplicated it all for the Queens flat. But then he saw he’d got something better than that. He could buy duplicates, certainly, but if he switched them—left the new stuff here and took the used stuff over there—he’d not only have the place looking right at Queens, he’d also have Geoff’s prints in the flat there. It was all so simple, and it achieved so much.”
> What it had achieved was to take over to the Queens flat Elsa’s prints as well as Geoff’s. That was what he’d done.
“So he’d got it all fixed,” I said, “before that snooker match. Kill Geoff, down to the table, provide himself with about half a minute to go up and give Jenkins the message, then straight back again and risk Jenkins noticing that the lift had gone down instead of up. That was his only risk, and as it happens the indicator wasn’t working, so he hadn’t even got that.” And for all I knew, he’d fixed that too.
I didn’t think Kyle had actually planned to frame me, only to make things difficult. I’d done it all myself, including my motive. Then, when I’d got it all neatly worked out against myself, he’d thought it a good time to plant the cue on me.
“You see, Odin, I wasn’t there in order to give him an alibi. There were plenty around who could do that.” Lord, I was having difficulty in keeping my mind on it. “What I was really there for—and essential to his plan—was to find Geoff’s body. That was why he left the message with Jenkins. It did two things, established their Mr Forbes as coming in at nine-thirty, and also made sure I went up at eleven. With the doors open I was sure to go in. Because it had to be me. Leave the body to be found by anybody else, and the plan would not work out. All they’d find would be a stranger. But I’d find Geoff Forbes, and being a policeman I’d shut everybody out, so that nobody was going to come in and say, ‘that’s not our Mr Forbes’. That was what I was there for.”
Poor Jenkins, he’d been marked down from the beginning. Not only was there the question about the lift being out-of-order from nine to nine-thirty—as it was—not only was there the query about whether the message was for ten to ten or ten to eleven, but also he was the one man in the building who could identify their Mr Forbes.
Odin was becoming restless. There was no question now of his believing me. I had him. The hatred in his eyes was not for me. “Margie?” he said. “My Margie.”
“I’m sorry, Odin, but she’d have been safe if I hadn’t found her. But she knew him as Kyle, and she’d gone up in the lift with him. So when I found her he knew he’d have to kill her.”
Time to Kill Page 14