Students of my methods will know that when it comes to the denouement, I favour the scattergun approach. It is the crime-solving equivalent of letting the fox loose in the chicken coop. There will be attempts at flight, and somewhere along the line eggs will be laid in blind panic. I wouldn't start at the beginning; I would start near the end and work backwards, forwards, sideways and into different dimensions, and after everything had been examined and dissected I would be left with the answers.
I thanked DI Robinson for his intervention. Then: 'And as we're already with you, maybe you could tell us where you have just spent the night?'
'I think you have a pretty good idea.'
'Why do you think that?'
'Because there aren't many tip-offs that come direct to my personal mobile phone. And also, this was found at the scene.' He reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a paperback book. It was Rolo's copy of Looking for Rachel Wallace. 'He had it in his back pocket. You didn't find it when you searched him?'
'No,' I said, before quickly adding, 'We didn't search him. We weren't even there. And that isn't the point.
Tell us what you found at the murder scene, Detective Inspector.'
'We found the body of Raymond Buchannon, aka Rolo, a semi-notorious east Belfast bouncer and muscle for hire. He had been shot to death and partially buried.'
'And the other body?'
'Other body?'
I smiled knowingly. 'Come, Detective Inspector, we're not holding anything back here. Tell us about the other body.'
'There was no other body.'
'If you want to be pedantic, then, the remains of the other body.'
'Nope.'
'In the fire, the remains of Arabella Wogan!'
My audience murmured.
'Nope.'
'Detective Inspector, are you telling me that a man of your experience did not think to have the ashes of the fire examined?'
'Nope.'
'Nope you didn't?'
'Nope I did. And I'll tell you what was found. Ash from the wood that was burned and certain chemical residues that have yet to be analysed but that will probably turn out to be petrol or some other fuel used to ignite the fire.'
'No bones? No skull?'
'Nope.'
'You're certain?'
'Yes. No evidence of human remains whatsoever. In the vicinity of the fire, however, I did find evidence that marijuana had been smoked. I also found a bag of Ecstasy tablets. I found footprints that I believe I can trace directly to footwear belonging to you, to your sidekick and your sidekick's sidekick. And of course the aforementioned book, which again ties the deceased to you and to this shop, in particular the sticker featuring your logo that you affixed over the actual price, increasing it by two pounds.'
'It's a collector's item,' I said. 'And you deduce from this evidence?'
'One might easily deduce that a drug-fuelled party was taking place in the woods, an argument broke out, Rolo Buchannon was shot, and in your panic to get away, you failed to properly hide the body or remove the evidence of your presence at the scene or indeed of your use of illegal drugs.'
All eyes turned to me.
'And is that what you think?'
'I think there's a fair chance that I could get as far as a trial based on circumstantial evidence alone, and in days gone by I might have, but having dealt with you before, I know that things are rarely as they first appear and that you will most likely have some unlikely explanation up your sleeve. I will listen with interest.'
I regarded my audience. 'Do you hear that? Some unlikely explanation. That is what you are going to hear today, ladies and gentlemen, an unlikely, surreal, complex tale of deceit and fabrication that starts with the death of Arabella Wogan.'
Dr Yes was immediately on his feet. 'Arabella Wogan is not dead! She was alive when she left my clinic and there is nothing to suggest that she has since passed away!'
'She's in Brazil!' Pearl shouted. 'Or Portugal!'
'We have no evidence of that,' I said.
'You have no evidence she isn't!'
I shook my head. 'Well that's just where you're wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, for your information, this is Pearl, Pearl Knecklass . . .' Immediately there were sniggers from the back row. 'Pearl works with Dr Yeschenkov and is a director of his clinic. Pearl, I have very good contacts in the travel industry.' There was no need to tell anyone that it was one of my customers, Derek who worked in Co-op Travel. 'I am assured that no Arabella Wogan has travelled to Portugal or Brazil in the past six months.'
'That's because they weren't married.'
'What?'
'She was his common-law wife, and she used his name, but they were not married. She disclosed that when she provided her medical records prior to her treatment at the clinic. So if you were searching the travel records for Arabella Wogan, you were barking up the wrong tree. Her passport would have shown her under the name of Arabella Shaw.'
She looked smug and self-satisfied.
'See? He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about!'
It was Dr Yes, pointing at me.
They were working together, circling, throwing out jabs. There might be a few chinks in my armour of knowledge, but I knew more than they thought, and their arrogance would come back to bite them.
'Well, Doctor,' I said, 'if you're convinced I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, what's a busy man like you doing here at all? Why didn't you bring some high-powered solicitor to slap a writ for slander on me if I say something you don't like?'
'I did,' said Dr Yeschenkov. He indicated the rotund woman in the seat next to him, the woman I had mistaken for a groupie.
I am a master of self-control. I merely nodded serenely and said, 'You will not gag me. If I think you were responsible for the death of Arabella Wogan and the subsequent cover-up, I will say it.'
He was on his feet again. His solicitor was beside him. They were both shouting. They only desisted when DI Robinson strode through the audience and right up to me and said, 'Word in your ear?'
He drew closer. He whispered: 'I don't mind your little games, but let's get it moving, I can't keep these people here for ever.'
He was right. I didn't want Dr Yeschenkov storming out again if the detective inspector wasn't going to stop him.
DI Robinson returned to his place by the door. Dr
Yes and his legal eagle grumbled as they retook their seats. I glanced at Alison; she gave me the thumbs- up, but a hesitant smile.
'DI Robinson has asked me to get a move on,' I said. 'But I say to you, justice cannot be hurried, and the truth cannot be dictated by time! The truth will out, and it will out when it wants to come out!'
I had supposed it to be rousing. But they all looked at me like I was a halfwit, and several glanced at their watches.
I cleared my throat and said, 'Dr Yeschenkov, I understand your concerns, but whatever way you want to look at it, Arabella Wogan is missing. She apparently left her room at the Forum International Hotel, where she had been staying while she underwent her procedures, and then she vanished without trace. Dr Yeschenkov - did any problems arise during Arabella's treatment?'
'No, none, she was a model patient and I was very happy with her recovery. She was extremely pleased with her new look.'
'So when did you last see her?'
'On the afternoon of February the twenty-fifth, when I supervised the final removal of bandages.'
'And you discharged her then?'
'I signed off on her medical treatment, but I recommended, as I do with all of our patients, that she spend a further twenty-four hours resting before leaving the hotel. Unfortunately many patients choose not to follow my advice; they're so happy with their new appearance, they just want to show it off. I can't stop them. I believe Arabella discharged herself some time on the evening of the twenty-fifth.'
'And you haven't seen her since?'
'I have not.'
'So would you care to explain . . . this!'
As if by magic, but actually by PowerPoint, knowledgeably operated by Jeff, the photo of Dr Yeschenkov with Arabella taken by Liam Benson at the Xianth gallery in Dublin appeared on the ceiling.
Yes, the ceiling. All of the other walls were covered in books and the ceiling was the only uniformly flat surface. Everyone's head craned upwards. I would use this device sparingly, or be sued for cricked necks.
'Dr Yeschenkov with Arabella Wogan at the opening of the Xianth gallery as it appeared in the press. Were you not at this gallery?'
'Yes, I was.'
'Did you not insist on the freelance photographer Liam Benson accompanying you to the event for publicity purposes.'
'I did not insist. He was working for me.'
'Did he take this photograph?'
'Yes . . . and no.'
'Please explain.'
'It is clearly me, I remember it being taken, but this is not the woman I was standing next to. It must have been doctored.'
'It must have been doctored.'
'Yes, that's what I said. Did I not say it clearly?'
'I was repeating it for emphasis. If it was indeed doctored, the most likely explanation is that it was doctored by the photographer who took it, Liam Benson, who was employed by you. Now what other reason could there possibly be for doctoring this photograph, other than to show that Arabella was alive and well and in Dublin?'
'I don't know.'
'I spoke to Liam Benson shortly before he was murdered. He was a frightened man, Dr Yeschenkov, and mostly he seemed to be frightened of you.'
'That's just ridiculous. We had a perfectly cordial, professional relationship.'
'Is it not true that you were furious when this photograph appeared in the press?'
'I was upset, yes.'
'You're a wealthy man, Dr Yeschenkov, perhaps a powerful man. If you were completely certain that this photograph was doctored, why did you not find out how it came to be doctored? Why did you not bring down the full weight of your legal representative upon whoever was responsible?' I looked at his legal representative. 'I don't mean your full weight . . . your weight is quite . . . normal . . . The only reasonable explanation I can come up with, Dr Yeschenkov, is that you were aware it was doctored, and you wanted it published so that you could point to it and say, look, Arabella was alive and in Dublin, so how can she have died as a result of one of my operations? I put it to you, sir, that you knew that she was dead and you were doing nothing short of staging an elaborate sleight of hand! In short, a cover- up!'
His legal representative was on her fat feet. She said, 'Sir, we are going to sue you for every penny you have.'
* * *
Chapter 38
By the look of her, every penny I had would not even begin to pay for Dr Yeschenkov's solicitor's usual breakfast. If she'd been worth her salt, she should probably have removed her client from No Alibis as soon as she issued her threat. That she did not was entirely down to my brilliance in immediately changing the subject through a simple nod in Jeff's direction. Another photograph appeared on the ceiling. Everyone looked up. This time it was of a very tall, very thin man, carrying a hatbox, and entering the Yeschenkov Clinic.
'Do you recognise him?' I asked.
Dr Yes's solicitor put a hand on his arm and shook her head. But he ignored her. 'No . . .' he said. 'What has he got to do with anything?'
'His name is Buddy Wailer. He's entering your clinic, but you don't recognise him?'
'No . . . I . . . it's a busy clinic, I can't account for all the comings and . . . should I ...?’
He was intrigued. Or he was stalling. Or he was lying. I glanced at Pearl. She was studying me intently.
I said, 'What he most certainly is is a murderer.'
There was a ripple, a murmur, a communal bleat from the audience. DI Robinson moved up and down on the balls of his feet, a sure sign of his interest..
'So let me tell you, let me tell you all about Buddy Wailer, and how we came by him.'
The only way to do that was to describe how we had become involved in the case in the first place. How the revered Augustine Wogan had come to my shop begging me to help him, having narrowly escaped being shot just outside. How he suspected Dr Yeschenkov of covering up his wife Arabella's death. I detailed my meeting with Pearl and how she came to be the only person outside of Alison and Jeff who knew where he was staying, and how there was something suspicious about his suicide. I repeated my theory about the V-cut on the cigar found in Augustine's mouth, which drew an eye-rolling he's lost it now reaction from Dr Yes and nothing at all from Pearl. (Later Alison would say, 'How could you tell? She's had so much Botox, she's half fucking Friesian.') They paid a little bit more attention when I related the discovery of the V-cutter in Arabella's room at the Forum Hotel, and this developed into at least a modicum of respect as I described how we had traced the V-cutter to the Las Vegas cigar stall operated by Manuel Gerardo Ramiro Alfonzo Aurelio Enrique Zapata Quetzalcoatl and the fear that had come into his voice when he realised that it was Buddy Wailer who had purchased the device. When I had recounted how Manuel Gerardo Ramiro Alfonzo Aurelio Enrique Zapata Quetzalcoatl's friend had secretly entered Buddy's room and looked inside the hatbox, and what he had found, my audience looked suitably horrified.
'In the immortal words of Manuel Gerardo Ramiro Alfonzo Aurelio Enrique Zapata Quetzalcoatl: Buddy Wailer, he whacks people, that's what he does.'
Abruptly Pearl laughed. Everyone looked at her. She bowed her head and shook it. She wiped a tear away.
I said, 'Some people find this funny.' I gave it a Mexican twang. 'Buddy Wailer he whacks people. You've seen enough movies, maybe you've read enough books to know what that means. Well, folks, we're private detectives; as you can imagine, the idea that we might be up against a killer for hire got us pretty excited, particularly when we spotted him entering the Yeschenkov Clinic, particularly when we followed him back to the house he had rented, particularly when we broke into that house and found Arabella's head in a hatbox!'
Dr Yes's solicitor was on her feet. 'That is outrageous! You are making these claims and you are not backing any of them up with evidence!' She swivelled in a way that only a fat girl in a too tight suit can, that is, with difficulty, and pointed a thick finger at
DI Robinson. 'If anyone ought to be arrested it's this man!' she shouted, pointing back at me.
'I hear you,' Robinson said.
His eyes fixed on me. An eyebrow rose.
'If you just let me finish,' I said, 'then you will understand. I mean, you may be a solicitor, but don't you want to know?'
She glared at me. She started to say something. Dr Yes tugged at her jacket. She sighed and sat down. 'Very well,' she snapped, 'but I'm warning you
'Okay. Where were we? Oh yes. Arabella's head was in a box - and the rest of her was in a different room, lying on a bed, that's what we found. It was horrific. But before we could report it to the proper authorities, Buddy spirited them away.'
'How convenient!'
'No, not really. Madam, Mrs, whoever you are, what we always strive to be is detached. We have to stand back and analyse the facts as we know them. And in this case we just couldn't figure out why Buddy Wailer would want to keep Arabella's head. If he was someone who liked to keep trophies from his victims, then why did he only keep some and not others? Our theory had it that this was a man hired in by Dr Yes to rid him of Augustine Wogan and anyone else who knew about the cover-up. Yet if he killed Augustine and Liam Benson and Rolo, why didn't he take their heads? Why take Arabella's at all, when our theory supposed that she wasn't murdered but died because of a medical problem? And why would a professional hit man like
Buddy Wailer fail to bury his last victim properly, out in the woods? Rolo might never have been found if the hole had been a few feet deep, rather than just a couple of inches. And if he brought Arabella's body out to Tollymore to burn it, why was there no evidence of her left in the ashes of the fire at all?'
; 'Because you're making this entire thing up and you are, in fact, a nut?' Dr Yeschenkov asked.
'Legally,' said his solicitor, 'you cannot refer to him as a nut, even if he shows all the characteristics of one.'
'If either of you call my son a nut again, I'll fucking brain you,' said Mother.
I glowed. Everyone else just looked at her, because with her fairly recent stroke her diction came and went. It was particularly bad when she was angry. So what everyone else heard was: 'If etheryoucallthmyson anuth again, I'll futhingbranoo.' It meant nothing to them, but everything to me.
I drew them back to me. I said, 'I don't blame you. It does sound mad. And actually, you're quite right. We were on completely the wrong path. I realised that only last night, and like the discovery of penicillin and photography, it was entirely an accident, yet completely fortuitous. You see, when I entered Buddy Wailer's house and examined the hatbox on his bed, my hands became stained with a sticky substance, which I quickly washed off. I believed it was some bodily fluid secreted by Arabella's head. But last night, in Tollymore Forest, I also found my hands covered in a similar fluid, but with nowhere to wash it off, I did what every mother would beat you with a bamboo cane for: I wiped my hand on my trousers. It was only much later, when I was sifting through the evidence of the case, looking for something I was sure I'd missed, that I idly began picking at the dried stain on my trousers, for it had hardened into a wax-like substance.' I made a point of looking down at Pearl. 'Except it wasn't a wax-like substance. It was wax. And with that the case was solved.'
Everyone was looking at me, and then, with furrowed brows, at each other.
When I had milked it for long enough, I raised my mobile phone. I made a call. It was answered on the first ring. I said, 'It's okay to come in now.'
All eyes turned to the door.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' I said, as the very tall, very thin man appeared in the doorway, a hatbox in his hands, 'I give you the one and only Buddy Wailer!'
* * *
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