A Murder of Magpies

by Flanders, Judith

  He nodded, as though this were the kind of thing he dealt with every week—vacuum the sitting room, prevent robbery, put the rubbish out. “Thank you, Miss Clair. It was good of you to think of me.”

  I blushed. I hadn’t thought of him at all. “It’s probably not serious, and nothing will happen, but we all ought to be alert.” I wrote down Inspector Field’s number. I wasn’t sure if it was something I should be giving out, but it would be better than dialing 999. An old man hearing things go bump in the night might not make the emergency services leap on to their white chargers.

  In passing, I also tapped at Kay and Anthony’s door. No answer. I didn’t want to knock more loudly, because of Bim. Anthony might be at home, even if Kay was out. When work was scarce, which it often was, she did stints as a cigarette girl for some company that arranged City functions. They always ended at about three in the morning, but the tips were good and it kept Bim in apple juice.

  I would slip a note under their door before I left for work in the morning. After the “workmen” incident, they wouldn’t let anyone in without my say-so. I continued downstairs, groping for the banister. How could two bulbs be out at the same time? I stopped dead halfway down the last flight. Never mind how could two bulbs be out, how could I be so stupid? Here we were, all expecting my flat to be burgled, and I was prancing about in the dark, mumbling, “Wouldn’t you know it, there’s never a lightbulb when you need one.” I stood there, trying to figure out what to do. I could hardly ring my own phone and suggest to the burglars that they might like to leave now, as I was on my way.

  I turned to go back up to Mr. Rudiger. I’d use his phone to call Inspector Field. I had a mobile but it was, naturally, in my flat—I hadn’t seen any reason to take it to my mother’s. I’d only gone up two steps when the hair on the back of my head lifted. Someone was standing on the landing. I couldn’t see him, or hear him, but I knew he was there. He’d watched me walk up to the top, and he’d let me pass back down.

  Now what?

  I found out, all too soon.

  * * *

  I focused on the tree that grew outside my sitting room window. There was something odd about it. It had shrunk. And the window had suddenly decided it had curtains. Why was I sleeping on the sofa anyway? I heard a step behind me, and the door closed. I remembered the stairway and tried to sit up and turn quickly, but a light inside my head exploded, and I dropped back onto the cushions.

  “Gently. You’re fine, but you’ve had a knock.” It was Inspector Field. How had he got into my sitting room? How had I?

  Mr. Rudiger came into my line of sight with a glass of water. “Here. Just a sip.”

  This wasn’t my sitting room, it was his, and the tree had shrunk because I was looking out from the second story. I took the water but my hand was shaking and it slopped out over what had, until the last hour, been my best suit. I pushed myself up on one elbow and looked down at myself. There was blood all over the front of my jacket, and one elbow and both knees were ripped. Damn. Now I’d have to go shopping with Kit.

  Kit. Oh God.

  “What happened?” I tried to stay calm, but my voice was shaking, to match my hands. I was going to cry, too, which was really embarrassing.

  Mr. Rudiger sat me up and put a cushion behind me. He took away the glass, tipped out most of what I hadn’t spilled into a nearby plant, and gave it back to me. “Here, sip slowly.” He held a tissue in front of my nose and said, like a particularly fond mother, “Blow.” His face showed no more surprise than it had when I’d first come upstairs with my news.

  His impassivity and briskness, not to mention the tissue, steadied me. “I’m all right now.” I think I persuaded myself. “What happened? And when? What time is it?”

  Inspector Field pulled up a chair. “I’ve just got here. You weren’t unconscious for long. You were lucky. Whoever was inside your flat must have posted a lookout. He only wanted to make sure you didn’t see anybody. What I don’t understand is that you were knocked on the head, and then for some reason they also pushed you down the front stairs on to the pavement as well. That seems excessive, and it reduced their chances of getting away quietly.”

  I was embarrassed. “Um. Well. I realized somebody was there, so as he came toward me I was ready, and I kneed him in the balls and hit him over the head with a Hornby engine Bim had left on the stairs. I’m not sure if the train connected, but my knee definitely did. That might have annoyed him enough to push me.”

  Inspector Field looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek. “It might be a good idea not to annoy any more people with coshes,” he advised solemnly. “They get cross, you know. If I’d thought you’d get involved, I would never have—” He broke off, shaking his head, and stood up. “I’ll just wait for the ambulance. Then I’ll join my colleagues downstairs to see what’s been going on there.” He stared at me for a minute, apparently wondering what other trouble I could get up to in the ambulance.

  The thought of my flat, and what it most probably looked like, made me want to cry again, and once a night was enough. So I said mutinously, “I don’t need an ambulance. I’m fine.” I sounded about Bim’s age, but slightly less bright.

  Mr. Rudiger, to my surprise, broke in. “You’re very far from fine. You have to make sure you haven’t got a concussion, you have to have your cuts and scrapes cleaned, and if someone can stop your nosebleed, it would make me happier about you sleeping in my spare room tonight.”

  My nose? I wiped my hand across my face. I was such a mess I hadn’t even thought to wonder where the blood was coming from. Sure enough, my nose was bleeding, and from long experience I knew it would go on doing so until I got it cauterized. It happened often enough for no reason at all—I had to go and get it dealt with at least once every two or three years. I began to take stock. A roaring headache, but no blinding lights, no fuzzy vision. I probably wasn’t concussed, but checking was reasonable enough, even though I didn’t want to be reasonable. I wanted to bite somebody. That would probably be poor tactics so instead I argued, with the false civility all girls internalize before they’re twelve. “I can’t possibly stay here, Mr. Rudiger. Thank you, but I’ve caused enough trouble.”

  He gave me a wintry little smile, not fooled for a minute. “Trouble, yes, but not intentionally, and I don’t see how you can stay downstairs.”

  “Why? What? What’s happened downstairs?” I was agitated again.

  Inspector Field returned from the phone, where he’d been having a low-voiced conversation. “Nothing much. The door’s been broken open with a tire iron. It’s messy, and it won’t lock for the moment, but there’s nothing too serious inside, mostly just things pulled out of cupboards. It looks like they were going to make it appear to be a robbery—all your electrical goods are by the door. Once you came home early, there was no point so they’ve left everything. Of course, we won’t really know until you’ve been down to look, but—” He pushed me back on the sofa, disregarding my attempts to extricate myself from Mr. Rudiger’s blanket. “No. We need to dust for prints, and the photographer has only just arrived, and we’re going to make the place even more untidy for the moment. The ambulance is here. I’m going to take you downstairs, but you are not to go into your flat. Do you understand me?”

  I was feeling mutinous again.

  “I mean it. A constable will go with you, and bring you home if the hospital doesn’t want to keep you for observation. If they release you, then you are coming straight up here. I’ll bring up some clean clothes, and and then that’s it. You’re out of the game. Understood?”

  I sighed theatrically. I was really far too knocked about to start going through a ransacked flat, but I was damned if I was going to be bossed around without some sort of protest.

  Both men appeared unmoved. My drama queen routine needed work.

  5

  Mr. Rudiger called my mother while I was at the hospital—he and Inspector Field were plotting behind my back, and I guess they decided that He
lena would be a nice old duck who could look after me. She arrived in the Casualty department, terrorized the nurse who was cauterizing my nose, reminded the registrar that his wife had appeared against her in a court action the year before, told the constable his shirt was untucked at the back, and all in all had the place whipped into shape in about thirty seconds flat. By the time the registrar agreed that no, I didn’t need to stay in overnight, the entire staff had that glazed, deer-in-the-headlights look that my mother can induce at will.

  Mr. Rudiger, by contrast, appeared gently amused by her and, even more oddly, she quite clearly approved of him. My mother never approves of people who don’t have jobs and stay at home for what she refers to dismissively as “no reason,” even if they are well past retirement age, as Mr. Rudiger plainly was, at least chronologically. It was now nearly four in the morning and I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for about a week. Mr. Rudiger and my mother on the other hand were both irritatingly chipper. They’d agreed, without reference to me, that it was better for me to stay at Mr. Rudiger’s so I could go through my apartment with the police in the morning. I didn’t care where I was, as long as people stopped talking at me and let me go to bed.

  Mr. Rudiger showed me into a room that looked like a piece of Central Europe bodily transported: a gleaming wooden floor with a hook rug, white walls, dark wooden furniture, and a child’s wooden bed, with a duvet with a homemade patchwork cover on it. It was like being Goldilocks in the Three Bears’ house, and it was wonderfully comforting. I dozed off to the sound of adult voices murmuring down the hall. It only needed a nightlight to make my reversion to childhood complete.

  In the morning the gray, watery light coming through white cotton curtains with red ducks on them woke me gently. I got out of bed, finding myself in a peculiar, crouched-over position that was all that my now-stiffened muscles would permit. In all the books I’d ever read, Our Hero is brutally assaulted, tied up for seventy-two hours, frequently being hung by his ankles in the process. When he frees himself by gnawing through the ropes, he stops only for a quick drink, and then charges straight off after the villains. Another cherished illusion gone. It was plain to me now that what Our Hero would really do was lie in bed and moan gently. That seemed sensible, so I lay down again and did that for a while. Then I shuffled off to the bathroom and soaked my muscles until they at least let me stand upright.

  I’d been aware of Mr. Rudiger moving around earlier, and when I reached the kitchen he had a cup of coffee ready for me, and was placidly eating cereal and listening to the news on the radio. He nodded, and let me drink in silence, for which I was grateful. Then, “Inspector Field said he’ll be here at ten to go through the flat with you. Also, will you call your mother? She’s worried.”

  Worried? She was probably wondering why I wasn’t at work. Which reminded me: If I moved quickly, I could leave a message on Miranda’s voice mail at the office saying I was ill before she got in. I didn’t think I could really deal with explaining what was happening just at the moment, although David and, more particularly, Selden’s, were going to have to know soon that things were escalating. Robert Marks was going to be disgusted: He hadn’t gone into the law to deal with criminals. David, I rather suspected, would be secretly jealous that this Boys’ Own episode was happening to me. Whatever the case, all of publishing London would have heard the news ten minutes after I spoke to the office, and I couldn’t face it right now.

  Naturally my mother was already at her office, despite the fact that she couldn’t have got home much before five.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, moving on before I had time to answer. “Pavel says—”

  “Who?”

  “Pavel Rudiger. Why didn’t you tell me what a delightful man he is? Such a distinguished career.” I couldn’t bring myself to ask what that was. She’d spent an hour with him and had learned more than I’d found out in over fifteen years. I’d known his first name, I supposed, but I never would have thought to have used it.

  “Pavel says that he’s happy to have you stay with him until you get your door fixed. Do you want to, or would you rather stay with me? It will be easier for you to sort out locksmiths and so on from there.” She’d already made up my mind. “Inspector Field will bring you over here at lunchtime to go through what we know.” Well, that was all right, then, she had sorted out the CID, too. There was really nothing for me to do but make affirmative noises and hang up. So that is what I did.

  Mr. Rudiger had watched my side of the call wearing that look I was getting to know, the one where someone was telling him slightly amusing stories just out of my earshot.

  “Helena is a formidable woman,” was all he said.

  I didn’t feel the need to answer that one.

  “It’s lucky she’s on our side.”

  Our? I was oddly cheered by his assumption that he was part of whatever was going on. I smiled and rolled my eyes in a tell-me-about-it look, which he enjoyed as much as he’d enjoyed my mother.

  When Inspector Field arrived Mr. Rudiger waved me out like a proud parent seeing his child off to her first day in kindergarten—he was happy to be part of the action, but not to the extent of going past his front door.

  It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Everything had been pulled out of every cupboard, and off every shelf, but I figured I could look on it as a sort of enforced spring cleaning. I said so, but only got a slightly startled look in return. I guess I did sound a bit like Pollyanna after Vesuvius erupted—“Oh goody, it’s T-shirt weather!”

  He contented himself with saying, “The only thing that was taken was your television. It might have been the only thing they’d got out of the house before you came home.” He was choosing his words carefully, like a man inching forward in a bog.

  I was firm, trying to close off this conversation. “I don’t have a television.”

  “I’d thought of that,” he said, still stepping delicately. “I couldn’t see where it would have been, but I rejected the idea when we piled up some of the papers from your desk and saw a television license.”

  “Yes, I have a license,” I said vaguely, trying to look as if I were thinking of something else.

  “A license. No television. Just a license.” He was determined not to phrase it as a question.

  “Look, Inspector—”

  “You’d better make it Jake. If I have to listen to sentences that start ‘Look,’ I figure we’re going to be on first-name terms sooner or later.”

  He was laughing at me again. “Look, Jake,” I continued, acidly. “I don’t have a television because I don’t watch television. But it would appear that not having a television in the twenty-first century makes you a criminal, or a psychopath, or a liar, or more likely all three. If you don’t have a license in this country, the TV licensing people send men around in little vans. Then they don’t believe the most obvious explanation, so I have to walk them through the house, opening all the cupboards to prove I don’t have any contraband portables lurking. Then they send court summonses anyway, which I have to get my mother to deal with. So its simpler just to pay for the license. It only comes to the price of a film a month.”

  He didn’t want to argue, but he seemed hypnotized into it. “You still have to pay for the films, though.”

  “No, because I don’t go to them, either. I pay the fee, and then I read the books I’d read even if I had a television sitting in the corner. It saves me being harassed, and it means I’m not marked down in some file somewhere in Swansea, or wherever TV licensing heaven is.”

  “A file?”

  I shook my head impatiently. “Data protection or no data protection, there are government and quasi-government files on all sorts of things—credit checks, professional checks, political groups, and affiliations. From the reaction I get when I say I don’t have a TV, it’s easier to believe that I’m a psychopath—you know, one of those kind that the neighbors say afterward, ‘She was very quiet, kept herself to herself.’”

/>   “No risk of your neighbors saying that.”

  I gave him what I hoped was a withering glance. He remained provokingly unwithered, so I continued, “Altogether, £145 a year is a small price to pay to not have the government drive me crazy over the fact that I don’t watch television. OK?”

  “It’s fine by me. That’s not what I’m here for.”

  I let a beat pass, so he could hear me thinking, You could have fooled me. Then, “What did you find—or not find—last night?”

  “What we’d expected. A thorough search. Do you remember if your computer was switched on when you went out?”

  “Yes, I was doing a backup.”

  “There was no sign of that, so they’ve been through it. My guess is they cloned your hard drive. Also, there were no memory sticks anywhere, and you must have had some?” He waited, and I nodded. “I thought so. Then they took those away and copied everything else. They probably didn’t know what they were looking for. It’s much more likely they were just sent in to look for manuscripts, and see what was on the computer. We heard back from the typist this morning. She had sent the manuscript from that mail shop.”

  “Really? Then why—” I waved my hand at the mess all around us.

  “It’s not just the manuscript. Our IT people think that they will have installed a keystroke recorder to keep an eye on what you’ve got, how much you know. Don’s a nice man. Do you want me to ask if he’ll sweep your system for you?”

  I was amazed. I didn’t really expect the police to perform personal computing services, but then I didn’t really expect them to talk to me as if I were human, and Inspector Field—Jake—was treating me as a colleague rather than a member of the public crossing a police barrier.

  I rescued some clean clothes from the mess on the floor, and returned to Mr. Rudiger’s to try and disguise the worst of the bruising with makeup before I went out—if Bim saw me on the stairs, he’d have nightmares. It wasn’t too difficult—concealer covers a multitude of sins, and all I needed to do was buy some fairly flamboyant green eye shadow for the unbruised eye, and it would look like I had a bad case of the 1960s, but nothing worse.