Headcase

by Peter Helton

  Since I was here by special invitation I parked the DS in a vacant slot smack in front of Manvers Street police station. Wedged as it was between St John’s and the Manvers Street Baptist churches the thing could never be anything but an eyesore. When it was built in the sixties it must have looked menacingly modern and efficient. Today, despite its recent renovation, it looked fit only for dynamiting.

  As soon as I’d been buzzed in I could feel that the air conditioning was either on the blink or had been turned off due to another economy drive. Whatever it was, the atmosphere in the building was cloying and, along with probably everyone else in the station, I couldn’t think of a worse place to be on a hot summer’s day. A perspiring sergeant invited me to wait for Needham where he could keep an eye on me from behind his desk, on a moulded plastic chair (painful) next to a watercooler (empty).

  I had expected Needham to keep me waiting around a while and then grill me on medium heat in one of the bleak interview rooms but he appeared after five minutes.

  “Let’s get out of here and find a pub,” he suggested grimly. He looked worn and disgruntled. The first few days of any murder investigation are pretty hectic, so two dead bodies in so many days had piled the pressure on the Superintendent and it showed. The one crisp thing about him was his immaculate shirt, of which he kept several in his office.

  “There isn’t a decent pub within a mile of here, Mike,” I reminded him.

  “Don’t I know it. Let’s make it Garfunkle’s then, in the old Empire Hotel, at least we might get some air.”

  We were lucky with a table on the terrace and Mike dropped heavily into a plastic chair behind his pint of industrial bitter while I sat down more delicately with my Stella. The journey back hadn’t been kind to my behind.

  “Dave surfaced yesterday, in lock number ten of the Kennet-and-Avon in Widcombe. A family on a rented narrow boat found his body nudging the gate early in the morning. Really made their holiday.”

  “Has the autopsy been done yet?”

  “No, but there were no visible marks on the body. Could be a simple drowning.” Needham’s present drinking style gave a fair illustration of the dangers of drowning — he drained his pint in a couple of swigs. “Another one?” I offered.

  “No, I’d better not. But thanks, Chris.”

  “So what’s the assumption? Accident? Suicide? You think there’s a connection between Jenny’s death and Dave’s?”

  “Oh, there’s a connection all right. We found what we think is the weapon used to kill Jenny Kickaldy when we drained and dredged the lock this morning. It’s a sharpening steel with a horn handle. Gordon Hines, you know, the bloke who’s looking after Somerset Lodge at the moment, identified it as belonging to the house.”

  I remembered the rifled length of steel, had used it many times myself. A perfect impromptu weapon. I also remembered having promised to do the cooking at Somerset Lodge until Gordon found someone to take

  Jenny’s place.

  “So you reckon Dave killed Jenny, then tried to throw away the murder weapon and fell in after it.”

  “Either that or suicide. He became lucid long enough to realize what he had done and drowned himself. At least that’s what I’m hoping it’ll turn out to be. The last thing I need is two separate perpetrators. That’s the stuff of nightmares.”

  “You have a time of death yet?”

  “Are you kidding? Prof Myers said wet ones are notoriously difficult and walked off in a huff. He’ll come through in the end of course. And when he does we’ll go over your movements in such loving detail, by the time we’re through I’ll know when you breathed in and out.”

  So the slow roasting was still to come. Needham shook his head and let out a groan.

  “Be right back.” When he returned he was carrying two pints, one of them a Stella. “What the hell,” he said. “The last one simply evaporated.”

  “Cheers, Mike. So why am I here?”

  “Because the Assistant Chief Constable won’t let me let you take holidays in Cornwall with two bodies on the slab, while you’re a witness as well as a suspect. Can you believe that? Personally I’d much rather you were at Land’s End where you can’t stick your nose where it’s not wanted. Sorry about your holiday.”

  I was thinking that it hadn’t exactly been the restful break I’d had in mind but kept that to myself.

  “Who identified the body?” I asked instead.

  “Dave’s parents. Poor sods didn’t have far to go, they live right by the Royal United.”

  Dave had parents living in Bath? This inconspicuous item of news somehow shocked me, but why? I had never thought of Dave even having parents. As far as I was aware they had never visited him at Somerset Lodge. Come to think of it, I had never seen anybody visiting anyone at Somerset Lodge. All the residents seemed to exist only as singular units, alone, with little history apart from their psychiatric one. If you had asked Dave where he originally came from he probably would have told you the name of the first psychiatric institution he had spent time in. Even Gavin, who was only twenty-two…The first thing that sprang to my mind was that I must ask Jenny about it sometime. Suddenly I felt curiously alone myself. Though not as alone as Jenny must have felt in those last moments when the blows rained down on her head.

  I drained my Stella and set the empty glass carefully in front of me because just now I felt like flinging it across the wrought-iron barrier into the traffic circulating on Orange

  Grove. With a kind of relief I realized that I was angry. I had, as they say, snapped out of it.

  “Are we finished here, Mike? I’ve got things to do now.”

  “For the time being yes. But stick around in Bath.”

  “So who else is on your hit list?” I asked on the way back to the station.

  “Anyone connected with Somerset Lodge. It does look likely that Dave did his nut, killed Jenny and then chucked himself in the canal. Now it’s wait and see if we find any forensic on him to link him with Jenny or vice versa. Don’t forget though, Gavin Backhaus is still missing. Perhaps they did it together. I’m keeping an open mind.”

  I didn’t say that he only kept an open mind in the hope an original idea might come flying in one day. I also didn’t offer to eat my hat if the shy Gavin and the ever-pacing Dave had killed Jenny together. Or had done anything together for that matter. Gavin was a follower, that was true. When he first arrived at Somerset Lodge he silently followed Dave wherever his pacing took him but Dave would have none of that. Jenny suspected that he secretly despised the spotty youth and wouldn’t give him the time of day. So why was Gavin missing? Was he alive or would he turn up in lock number seven or eight?

  None of these thoughts were very conducive to making the kind of choices in the supermarket that would lead to an edible meal later on. Finding myself contemplating plastic-wrapped mincemeat, quietly oozing blood on a cooler shelf, I quickly turned away. Who wanted to cook in this weather anyway? I came away with salad leaves, feta cheese (Greek, not the horrible French stuff) and a handful of crevettes. Supper would take exactly two minutes to prepare tonight.

  Standing in the middle of my kitchen I thought how quiet Mill House seemed, unusually quiet, even for an empty house. The faint electronic bleeping of my answering machine far away in the attic office only helped to enhance the sense of silent hollowness. I opened the kitchen door wide and chucked some water on the suffering herb garden, then climbed up to my office. All my messages were from Simon. I’d forgotten him and the Saudis. The first message was enthusiastic and polite: Messrs Nadeem Khawaja and Salah Ahmet Al-Omari had chosen a staggering nine paintings from the photographs. He gave the titles. Could I bring them around asap. The formality of the phone call probably meant the buyers were at the gallery at the time. The next one was a lot more urgent and all the others were apoplectic silences followed by the crash of the receiver being slammed down, which spoke eloquently of my popularity rating at Simon Paris Fine Art. Guessing that Simon had shut up shop for th
e day I left a palliative message, promising delivery first thing in the morning. Then I rang Tim and invited him over for supper.

  “What’s on the menu?” he asked suspiciously. I told him.

  “Rabbit food. Stick the barbecue on, I’ll bring the rest. Half an hour.”

  I was on my way down when I heard a thud. Followed by a rustling sound. Followed by silence. When I heard the noise I had stopped on the stairs, now I had to prise my hand loose from the banister. I’ve never played the hero. As a private investigator you take calculated risks but stay alert, that way you get thumped less. But being jumpy is definitely not in the manual. Being jumpy invites trouble. And I had jumped in my own house, which was more worrying still. I stuck my hands in my pockets and made myself saunter into the kitchen, from where I thought the sound had come. It had. My shopping bag had slumped off the table and emptied itself over the floor, presumably without anyone’s help. Never having worked out how to kick myself I kicked the table instead and got on with preparing the salad and the barbecue. By the time Tim arrived with a couple of carrier bags the coals had burned down nicely. I set an armful of Stellas in a bucket of ice (“saves us running to and fro”) and Tim started throwing food on the barbecue: marinated chicken, spare ribs (Cajun and Chinese), lamb kebabs and steak.

  “Tim, did I mention it was just you and me?”

  Tim sprawled on a wicker chair in the evening sunshine. “Yup, you did.” He flipped open a couple of Stellas. “Can’t have a decent session on nothing but a handful of lollo rosso and a couple of crustaceans, mate. So how was Cornwall?”

  I left out nothing, not even the pitiful state of my behind, then told him about the news from Needham.

  “Two murders. Tricky. What do you think, Chris?”

  “I don’t know. Gavin is still missing. And where’s the motive? Needham seems to assume that mentally ill people don’t need a motive, they’re mad and that’s that. But Dave liked Jenny, they got on very well, and he wasn’t the impulsive type. He’d think and pace and then pace some more before he’d make even the decision to make a decision.”

  “From what you told me he’d been pacing for quite a few years. Could have finally made up his mind. What about Gavin? Is he alive, d’you reckon?”

  “I’m asking myself that. Problem is I can’t really say I know him. He can’t have said more than ten words to me since he got to Somerset Lodge. Needham has his money on Dave with Gavin as a willing follower. Or his other victim. Can’t see it myself. Perhaps I’ll stick my oar in just a bit after all, preferably where our Superintendent can’t see it. By the way, did you get anything on our wandering Mr Turner?”

  Tim finished dispatching a sticky rib and licked his fingers before angling for a sheet of paper inside his jacket. Within seconds it had grease stains all over it. “I know what you’re thinking, Chris,” he headed me off. “I also mailed it to you, so you can have a nice clean printout of my report, just the way you like it. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a result. He did go wandering about. His wife phoned me, as we had agreed, as soon as he’d called to say that he was working into the afternoon on Saturday. Normally the office shuts at two. I only just made it there in time. He set off downtown, had a cappuccino at the Cafe Retro, then walked down Manvers Street, through the tunnel by the side of the railway station and across Ha’penny Bridge…”

  “In other words you lost him.”

  Tim grinned sheepishly. “My, my, you are the detective. How did you guess?”

  “Too much boring detail for a start. What went wrong?”

  “Hang on, you might still get to like it. He went along Rossiter Road, then crossed and went on to the towpath along the Kennet-and-Avon.”

  “By the locks where Dave was found?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’ve got my attention.”

  “Thought I might. Unfortunately that’s it. I hung back since there was no one else and nothing to hide behind. He went up on to the bridge where Horseshoe Walk curves around and I thought I’d be able to pick him up again on the towpath further down. But he was gone. Didn’t even leave a puff of smoke.”

  “Very inconsiderate.”

  “I thought so at the time. I hung around for a while but you’d said not to spend too much time on it, so I didn’t. Of course I didn’t know then that Dave would take his final dip right there. Do you think there’s a connection? If so, what?”

  “Beats me.” Scores of people had to have walked there over the weekend and the police were probably interviewing all they could find right now. It was just that I had heard Widcombe and Kennet-and-Avon once too often that day to let this one go.

  Tim admired the pictures of Mill House Gill had left for me at the Bathtub and promised to have them blown up cheaply at the college for me. We finished the bucket of Stellas (predictably) and all the food (incredibly). When I woke later in the night and heard faint footsteps on the stairs I knew it was only Tim, who slept over in the spare room, ghosting about for a glass of water. Of course I didn’t ask him about it, or he would have told me that he had slept through the night without waking once.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Great English Breakfast is great only if someone else plonks it in front of you. And even then only if that person lovingly grills tomatoes to perfection, fries mushrooms without getting them soggy, cooks real sausages slowly, doesn’t try to fob you off with Danish bacon, doesn’t let the beans cool down on the way to the table and has checked first how you like your eggs. I didn’t feel I’d make it alive to the nearest place where such a marvel was available. My need for resuscitation was so urgent I simply baked up some frozen petits pains and stuffed them with an indecent amount of smoked salmon, which then allowed me to reintroduce the principle of non-alcoholic beverages to my insides. Then I took stock.

  My Existential Fear Factor only ran at about 5/10 and the General Decrepitude Index was surprisingly low but my Accumulated Guilt Quotient was going through the roof. I had promised Simon the paintings for first thing in the morning which, by anyone’s definition, was several hours ago. Severe grovelling would be required later. But first I rang Gordon Hines to make good my promise to look after the house and kitchen at Somerset Lodge. He said he would meet me for lunch at a place called Bonghy-Bo.

  A hectic hour later, with the hastily bubble-wrapped paintings squeezed into every corner of the car, I parked the DS in Catherine Place, then ran at full tilt down Margaret’s Buildings, less to save time than to appear sufficiently breathless when I burst into Simon Paris Fine Art, excuses at the ready. My prayers had been answered, Simon had company, so he couldn’t savage me there and then. He was on the phone and hung up as soon as I came in.

  “I was just ringing you at home. Glad you could join us,” he said pleasantly, but the look he flashed me bounced off my head like a Carl Andre firebrick.

  I had never met the buyers whom Simon and I had, for shorthand, always referred to as “the Saudis”. Simon introduced us with some ceremony.

  “Salah Ahmet Al-Omari, Mr Nadeem Khawaja, may I introduce the artist, Chris Honeysett.”

  Al-Omari and I exchanged pleased-to-meet-yous while Nadeem responded with a barely noticeable inclination of the head. Both looked undeniably Arab, yet wore sharp Western business suits. Apart from that they couldn’t have looked more different. Nadeem suffered from a full moustache combined with designer stubble on the rest of his broad face. His suit strained to contain the kind of muscles only genetics combined with slavish attendance at the gym can produce. Al-Omari by contrast sported the sharpest little salt and pepper beard I had ever seen, and while slight as well as shorter than all of us his regal bearing marked him out as being in charge, an impression which got stronger when he addressed me.

  “I do admire your work and am pleased to make your acquaintance at last. Unfortunately time is short or I should take great pleasure in conversing with you on the subject of the inspiration behind the individual works I have purchased. Perhaps we shall succeed in doi
ng so on another occasion. Nadeem will assist you, we have a suitable vehicle nearby.”

  Simon merely smiled serenely. It was the gallery assistant’s day off, but this didn’t mean he was going to start shifting paintings around. The suitable vehicle turned out to be a black luxury van with blue windows. Since it was also parked in the leafy little square Nadeem and I made light work of shifting the canvases and securing them upright in the back. When I’d asked Nadeem where his vehicle was he’d merely pointed and didn’t say a word there and back to the gallery. Whether it was lack of English, natural reserve or contempt for art and artists I found hard to fathom, though he handled the paintings with a delicacy I hadn’t expected of him. Not many people know how to carry paintings. He didn’t re-enter the gallery either but stayed outside as if he knew that Al-Omari would leave as soon as we returned, which he did. He shook my hand again, said, “I thank you,” and walked off quickly with Nadeem up Margaret’s Buildings.

  I felt like doing the same but decided to face the music.

  “One minute later and I’d have throttled you, you realize that?” was Simon’s opening shot. “Those gentlemen spent hours hanging around because you wouldn’t come through with the goods. I even drove them up to your house yesterday morning thinking you might be working in the studio or simply be too drunk to come to the phone, both of which was equally likely of course. Not a sign of you or Annis, it was most embarrassing. God knows I try, Chris, but you don’t make it easy sometimes.” He followed this up with a few reminiscences of my past misdeeds while I studied my own canvases on the walls, discovering a flaw here, a missed opportunity there. I really shouldn’t look at my work once it’s been framed …

  “Where exactly are they from?” I interrupted his flow.

  “I haven’t got the foggiest, Chris. I believe they mentioned Saudi Arabia when they first showed up. What does it matter?”

  I wasn’t sure it did, I just wanted to change the subject. “You’ve been paid?”