The Soft Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  God knows.

  And am I wrong in wanting to know myself? Shouldn’t it be enough to find out for certain that the girl did commit the crime? Isn’t that what Verney would do? What he wants me to do? Not to fill my head with the soft man’s desire to understand, but to hold fast to the hard man’s need to know. To know the facts.

  The door opened and he watched them come filing in. Mr Withrington first, once more the bouncy aggressive figure of the morning, full presumably of heartening protein and rejuvenating wine. After him Belinda. Confidence there again, but, unless his eyes were deceiving him, only just. And, trailing behind, Baa-baa Williams, presumably equally well lunched.

  They took their places. He switched on the tape, repeated the statutory warning.

  And directed at Belinda a squarely uncompromising gaze.

  ‘Now, remembering what I told you about your not being obliged to say anything that may incriminate you, let me ask you this: what was it really for, all the whisky you poured down your throat very shortly before Professor Unwala was murdered?’

  The shot went home. He could see it. But after one faltering instant she found that precarious confidence again.

  ‘I told you before. It was just a dare. Show wimpy Alec how to drink. And, even though this naughty girl’s under age, you’re not going to throw me in your stinking prison for that, are you, Mr Policeman?’

  All right. Remarkable what a glass of wine can do in re-inflating the ego. But that’s not going to work for long. Not if I have anything to do with it.

  ‘No, Belinda, I’m not going to send you to prison or anywhere else. For that. But I am going to tell you something our investigation’s come up with that’s not been in the papers. It’s this. When we subjected the garden at twelve Percival Road to what we call a fingertip search we discovered, first of all, the imprint of a trainer, size seven.’

  He left it there, sure that the implications of first of all would be fizzling away in her mind. What was going to come after the first?

  ‘All right,’ she said, cockiness plainly already undermined by tiny dartings of fear. ‘All right, I wear trainers. Wear ‘em most of the time. Who doesn’t? And, yes, I’m size seven. Like most of the girls and half the boys in my year at Harrison. So what you going to make of that?’

  ‘For the moment, nothing. But, I should warn you, we may want at some time to examine all the pairs of trainers you have.’

  Baa-baa stepping in, with put-on infinite weariness.

  ‘Mr Benholme, are you saying that my client was wearing shoes that left a footprint indicating she committed this murder? Because if so—’

  ‘No, Mr Williams. All I am saying is that we need to eliminate, if we can, a footmark we found in the garden there.’

  ‘If you say so, Mr Benholme.’

  ‘But Belinda, I mentioned there were two discoveries made in the garden. Yes?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  But now fear was plain to be seen, flickering in her blue, blue eyes.

  ‘But I did, Belinda. I said we had discovered two things that might indicate that you were there in the garden. Two things that need explaining. The first was the footmark made by a trainer such as you might have been wearing. Only might, of course. But the second needs more explanation. It is that someone vomited there in the garden. Vomited only some twenty-four hours before we carried out our fingertip search. And that vomit, so our forensic laboratory reports say, contained a significant amount of whisky.’

  ‘So what?’ she answered.

  But not quickly enough.

  ‘What indeed? Now, supposing I go on to tell you that the witness who sold you whisky last Monday evening recalls what brand it was you bought. Or, to be precise, the half-bottle of Teacher’s Alec Gaffney bought for you.’

  He saw yet another flick of fear in those blue eyes.

  ‘And suppose I go on to say that this brand of whisky, Teacher’s, differs minutely from any other brand. And that our forensic scientists are very clever people indeed, quite capable of analysing whisky.’

  This should be it. It really should. The last, hard blow.

  She was silent.

  Thinking, thinking and thinking how she could, even now, escape from the tightening circle?

  At last she spoke. A muttered response.

  All right, I may have puked there in the garden. I’m not saying I did, mind. But even if that was me it doesn’t mean I killed the old man, does it?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t. You could, of course, have been there in the house and seen him killed and then started running away and been caught by the horror of what had happened.’

  ‘Yes. Well, it could’ve been something like that, couldn’t it?’

  ‘But it wasn’t, was it? It wasn’t like that at all.’

  He waited. Would this be the moment?

  But then in her eyes he saw, if not wholly restored confidence, the fear at least subsiding. So, after all, he’d missed. It had been a sharp blow. But she had managed at the last instant to draw back from it.

  ‘You can’t prove anything of that. You can’t. I don’t want to answer any more of your questions. You said I wasn’t obliged to say anything incriminating. Well, I’m not going to say anything any more. You can ask and ask but I won’t.’

  And, of course, the cavalry, in the shape of Baa-baa Williams, came riding up.

  ‘I don’t have to point out to you, Mr Benholme, I’m sure, that what my client has just said is no more than the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’ he answered, unable to restrain his bitterness. ‘It seems to me that the truth is the last thing we’ve been hearing here today.’

  He had had her. She had been a gaffed fish. She had admitted being in the garden, had admitted vomiting there. And then, when the final question was ready to be put to her - All right, you were in that room when Professor Unwala was killed, but who was with you, Belinda? Who? I suggest no one else was there, no one - battered by one hard blow too many she had taken refuge behind that legal safeguard.

  The hard man had failed.

  Then a thought came tiptoeing into his head. If the hard man had failed, might the soft man succeed?

  Give Jumbo, sitting placidly beside him, silent through the whole of the interview so far, that nudge under the table that would tell him to try the other way? The kindness way? And he’d do it well, old Jumbo.

  No. No, there was someone else who could do it better. There was soft-as-a-duck’s-arse Benholme.

  He leant gently forward.

  ‘Look, Belinda, I know how you feel. It’s almost as if I was sitting on your side of this table. I know I’d do just what you’re doing, if I felt I’d been pressured too hard, pressured too long. But I’d know, as I feel you do, too, deep in your heart, that the way out doesn’t lie along that path. You know, don’t you, really, that the way out of this terrible mess you’re in is, in the end, to admit to yourself you are in that mess. The only way out is simply to tell the truth, isn’t it?’

  Would it work? If his own truthfulness, the truthfulness he had brought to the questioning now at last, as he could not have stopped himself doing, meant anything it would work. It would.

  And he saw that it had. Not completely. But it was beginning to. There had been a quick look that had said Can I trust you? Will you help me? Really help me?

  He answered to himself, to Soft-as-a-Duck’s-Arse, yes, I can help her. Tough nut though she seems, she’s still only a kid. The girl my kid Conor felt the flush of adolescent love for. The girl who did, once, respond to that with equal simplicity, equal innocence. So, yes, I can help her. But how? How exactly? What’s the key to turn that final tumbler in the lock?

  Think. Yes, I must get into her mind. I used to pride myself on doing that. I can do it now. Say to myself What was she thinking as she went up to that house, in the fog last Monday evening?

  She must have gone there for some purpose. And, yes, of course, that must be linked to her friend, Alec. Alec with her in Sandymount in t
he time just before the murder, buying her whisky to give her courage. Alec inside that house only a few days earlier. So did he see something there that told him there was money to be got? Belinda’s a greedy little beast. She might very well have wanted to follow up whatever Alec had told her. The Hampton Hoard? No. No, Alec couldn’t have found out anything about that as he’d been trying to put that mouse back in its cage, as it had escaped again, as he had finally caught it and then had had to grope down behind the sofa for Professor Unwala’s specta—

  Wait.

  Something stirred in the back of his mind. What was it? Something obscurely connected to Alec groping. Groping. Yes. Had it been …? Could it have been that while Alec was groping for the glasses, he was, yes, being groped himself?

  What was it Alec told us Professor Unwala had said when I asked, to help the boy out, if he’d been thanked? Yes, he told us the old man had said I hope this won’t ever happen again. And, come to think of it, that’s not quite what anyone would say to a boy who’d helped him retrieve an escaped mouse. Not with that ever in the phrase. Yes, the old man might have apologized for the trouble his mouse had caused. But at most he would have said something like I trust it won’t happen again.

  No, the words Alec repeated, and had been so pleased with himself for repeating, had been what Professor Unwala had actually said. Surely they had. And he had said them, in shame, after having fallen for the temptation of mildly molesting Alec bending down to reach the floor behind the sofa. I hope this won’t ever happen again.

  And, yes, yes, yes, the pair of them, Belinda and Alec, discussing the incident, joking about it, had gone on to concoct a plan to blackmail old Unwala. They had. They had. And, yes again, Alec, the boy Belinda now despised, had not had the guts to go and make his demands himself. So she had said she would. And had swigged back that whisky to give her some final courage.

  Yes, that’s it. I know now.

  ‘Belinda,’ he said, ‘let me tell you what I think happened. Your friend Alec didn’t have the courage. So it was you, liquored up to give yourself confidence, who went into the house, making some excuse - yes, I think you probably told the old man you’d been taken short—’

  In her eyes he saw the instantly responsive flicker.

  ‘Yes, you told him you needed the toilet and then, when you were inside, you simply said that he had abused - was that the word you—’

  Now it was more than a responsive flicker. It was a gasp of admission that she was hearing the truth.

  He went remorselessly on.

  ‘You said to him that he had abused your friend Alec, and that you were giving him one chance before you told the police. You said if he paid you a substantial sum to show he was truly sorry you would let him off? Yes?’

  Yes. He saw the silent answer.

  ‘But Professor Unwala was not the soft touch you thought he’d be. He was a man of determination. And of compassion. He was not going to let you ruin your life by letting you believe blackmail was something you get away with. So he said he was going to tell your parents what you had tried to do. And that was when you shouted at him, You black bastard. You were full of whisky rage. You snatched up that bat and you hit him. Once was enough, wasn’t it? Once?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was the tiniest whisper.

  ‘Yes, Belinda?’

  ‘Yes, it was like that. Just like that. I did do it. I - I didn’t mean to. But he was so - so - so like a rock, standing there, that I lost my temper. A rage. It swept over me. Yes, you’ve got it right, Mr Benholme. That’s what happened. You’re right. It’s like— It’s like you were in my mind, there when it - when I - and you - you understood.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Toffs and Tarts. Bob Carter’s postponed fortieth birthday party had been combined now with the customary celebration of a result in a major case. And he had agreed to go. An absurd decision. He could with justice have pleaded that with Conor still a Missing-from-Home, a misper, he was hardly in the mood. But when Bob had asked if he was coming he had at once said yes. He knew why. At the start of the inquiry he had made a terrible error. Letting his dislike of police piss-ups and all that they stood for come to the forefront of his mind, he had banged out his decision to cancel the party. And that might well have lost them their success. So, by way of compensation, he knew he should go now. There would be other major inquiries, and, if they were led by someone seen as soft and unpopular, it could be disastrous.

  So, though softness had paid off in the end in the Unwala case, he ought to join in the celebrations, and keep that under his hat. The lads and lasses would not let what had actually happened interfere with their unthinking belief that detective determination always wins.

  Well, let them. It was enough that he knew what he knew.

  Not that he felt there was anything really to celebrate in his success. A silly, greedy, misguided girl had brought ruin on herself and misery to her parents, had had her name splashed in all the papers, Nobel Murder: Girl, 17, in Court. It was hardly something, however much poor little Professor Unwala had been ‘avenged’, to call for an evening of drunkenness and post-party fornication. But there it was.

  But he had said he would go to the party, and, whatever second thoughts he had, go he must.

  Only there was the question of an outfit. A Toff’s outfit. He certainly possessed nothing suitable himself. Just wearing his old DJ would only label him as being even more out of it than if he had stayed away. And, damn it, even if there were any outfits left for hire after every other male in the CID had had his pick, he would resent every penny he would have to pay.

  So there was Mike. He had known all along at the back of his mind that, once he had agreed to turn up, he would to go to Mike and ask to borrow his notorious outfit, tails, topper, monocle, white tie, artificial buttonhole, the lot. He had heard about the kit ever since he had first met Mike. Long before Vicky had set up home with him.

  It was a question now only of nerving himself up to make the request. When Vicky certainly, and even possibly Mike himself, would know that this was - no getting away from it - eating humble pie. And more. Worse. Going to Vicky’s Mike and begging a favour was saying, yes, you are Vicky’s Mike. Or, yes, Mike, Vicky is yours.

  But that was the truth, after all. Some day he’d have to acknowledge it some way or another. So why not this way? And why not now?

  To the cottage in Frogs Lane.

  Where Conor was not. Where he had not been since that terrible night when he had imagined he would find him hanged somewhere, in the toilet at the cottage, out in the foggy darkness of the garden. But where was Conor now? Anywhere. He could be anywhere. Almost certainly not in Barminster or in the county at all. Inquiries there had been as thorough as they could be. But he could well be in London, London the magnet for young people in trouble, where it was more or less hopeless to locate him, however many strings had been pulled. And it being known that DCI Benholme was the man who had resolved the Nobel murder had been more than a little helpful.

  But had brought no success.

  Time perhaps would do it. One day he might find Conor on his doorstep. Conor aged even eighteen, twenty, twenty-five. Or on Vicky’s doorstep. Or in a mortuary.

  But in the meantime life had to go on. The files landed in his in-tray. The Toffs and Tarts party was fixed up.

  ‘Oh, hi, Mike. Hoped I’d find you at home.’

  ‘Well, it’s where I am. Do anything for you? Or is it Vicky you want to see? ‘Fraid she’s out doing the big shop.’

  ‘No. No, it’s more you I wanted, actually. You see— Well, I wondered— Do I remember rightly that you’ve got your own outfit for Toffs and Tarts parties, things like that?’

  ‘Sure have. Got the lot. You ever want to be a Naughty Vicar, I’m your man.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I do want, actually. Well, not to be a Naughty Vicar, but I - I’m going to a Toffs and Tarts the boys and girls of the CID have organized, and I haven’t got any proper gear.
’

  ‘Toffs and Tarts, eh? Who’d have thought it of old Phil? But good luck to you, mate. Trust you’ll get yourself a nice bit of Tart, keep the old bed warm.’

  He took it. On the chin.

  ‘Well, you never can tell. So if I could borrow the gear…?’

  ‘Fair enough, pal. Only thing is, it’s a bit difficult to get at. It’s stashed away in a trunk in the outhouse now. No room for it indoors, not now Vicky’s moved in.’

  Go on, rub it in. Rub it in. But, I suppose, you’ve got a right to say it. To feel it. It’s the situation, after all.

  ‘I dare say I’d be able to dig it out, if you point me in the right direction.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course. Forgot you don’t really know the layout here. But you can’t miss the outhouse, straight at the bottom of the garden. Where your Conor stores his treasure-hunting thing.’

  ‘Detector.’

  The correction slipped out before he thought.

  ‘Whatever. Anyhow, go along there. There’s only the one trunk. Take your pick of whatever you fancy. Key to the place, on the hook just beside the back door. ‘Fraid I’ve got to rush. Playing Barminster Seconds this arvo.’

  ‘Right then. Well, good luck. I’ll lock up behind me when I go. And thanks very much.’

  ‘My pleasure, old man. Old Toff.’

  Laughing expansively at his own joke, Mike grabbed a blue nylon sports bag, swaggered off to his car.

  He went through to the kitchen, spotted the shed key, took it, let himself out at the back into the dingy winter-bitten garden - one cabbage, brown with frost, alone in its big weedy bed - and walked down to the outhouse.

  Key in the lock. Twist. Pull the door open. Pitch-black inside. But there had been a rubber-covered wire dangling from the house to the top of the shed roof. He hunted for a switch. Found it. A dim unshaded light bulb, but easy to see Mike’s trunk.