Headcase

by Peter Helton

  “Further copies, I guess.” Alison shrugged.

  “Did you ever make any?”

  “Sure. They’d told me not to, of course, but I thought, sod them, there might be a market for that. I never left them in the studio, though, since it was clear they were a paranoid bunch. I clamped them under the beds. Quite safe. Until they burned.”

  “So it was Eels who tried to run you off the road, the week before Annis and I turned up?”

  “I bloody hope so.” Alison stopped dead for a moment, her fork hovering over a morsel of lamb on her plate. “Can’t think who else I might have pissed off…Well, not enough to nudge me over a cliff, anyway.”

  The lamb was better than anything I remembered having eaten in Morocco, only I found it difficult to start that strand of conversation again without a broadside from Annis. So I just joined in with the general mms and ahs and nodded vigorously at Tim’s evaluation of the dish as “fab”.

  Since my plaster casts made me exempt from washing up I kept Tim company by the sink while the girls got stuck into a new bottle of wine next door. Alison demonstrated once more her prodigious talent for putting the stuff away. Tim and I were glad she didn’t drink Stella. Privately, I was looking forward to the day when I’d be able to get a bottle open without asking for help. Tim had just furnished me with a fresh one.

  “One thing, though. You never explained how come you turned up at Alison’s in the first place. I’d left you finding the Saudis in Bath.”

  He gave me a sideways look. “I told you all this on the phone. But you were probably still groggy from your Class A drugs, mate. I did find the Saudis. Or rather where they’d been staying. At the Francis Hotel in Queen Square.”

  “How quaint.”

  “Indeed. Only they’d checked out that morning and taken a cab to Bristol airport. Looks like they opted for early departure.”

  “So…?”

  “So I had a beer, got a weird feeling, which I don’t usually get when I drink beer, you understand. So I bought the girls at Somerset Lodge a takeaway and followed you down. Simple as that.”

  “Cheers, Tim. And while we’re here…I don’t think I ever really thanked you for saving my life.”

  He tried hard to suppress a grin. “Annis was right, you really do need looking after.” She could talk. I went down to the cottage to rescue her. “I think we all need looking after, sometimes. And you do it very well, Tim. You saved all of us. I’m not sure how to repay a debt like that, unless you’d care to put yourself in mortal danger while I’m around. And haven’t got these.” I held up my heavy paws. “And am armed to the teeth, naturally.”

  “Well, there is one thing you could do. Urgently.”

  “Name it.”

  “Just get better, will you?”

  Was I that bad? “At what?”

  “No, just get better, get the hands sorted and go back to normal.” He gave me a pained smile. “Annis won’t sleep with me while she’s not sleeping with you. Something about not wanting to unbalance the emotional geometry of our relationships.” He flicked some lemon-scented lather against the dark window, shook his woolly head slowly. “This is so typically Annis. She’s got it all planned out, including her own rules for shagging the both of us. How come we never got a say in any of this?”

  I thought that was blindingly obvious. “She’s non-negotiable. Perhaps that’s part of the attraction.”

  “Perhaps. I still can’t believe we’re in this ménage a trois.”

  “But are we? Isn’t a ménage a trois when you’re all sleeping with each other? Or at least in the same bed. Or is that a love triangle?”

  “I was always crap at geometry,” Tim said gloomily.

  Just then the girls slid into the kitchen, Annis pushing Alison in front of her. Both were armed with full glasses of ruby-red wine.

  I know when I’m being set up. They didn’t want to rush me but didn’t want to wait another day either. So they counted the Stellas I’d drunk and considered me now sufficiently mellow to pop the one question no one had touched on yet.

  I didn’t even let them ask it. “On the condition that you buy your own wine and pay your share of the bills.”

  Alison’s eyes widened a fraction, then she shot an uncertain smile at Annis, who merely said, “Told you,” and walked out again.

  “Thanks, Chris. It won’t be forever, just until I get myself going again. You’ll hardly know I’m here.”

  I doubted that very much.

  There were other things none of us had mentioned yet.

  Ousted by Alison from his usual bed in the spare room under the roof, Tim was snoring under a well-worn blanket on the sofa nearest the fire, which had burnt down to a quiet glow now. My old-fashioned alarm clock ticktocked noisily beside him on the floor. He had to be up long before us painters to get to work at Bath Uni in the morning. I stuck a yellow post-it note on his forehead, reminding him that I still needed to know who owned Somerset Lodge. Jenny’s killer was still out there.

  As I was about to enter my room, not looking forward to the two-finger exercise in undressing, Annis stuck her head round her door. “Want any help?” she whispered.

  And why not. In my room she proceeded to gently but methodically render me naked, then added the pyjamas she’d been wearing to the pile of clothes on the floor and slid into bed with me. “Now make love to me,” she asked matter-of-factly. So I did. Look, no hands.

  CHAPTER X

  If nothing else, the weather improved. The unseasonable heat, combined with the later downpours, had encouraged a profusion of all things green in the valley. The meadow behind the house had got out of hand again. Now, five of my neighbour’s black-faced sheep were employed in cropping it back into shape, moving lazily away from me whenever I approached.

  Mine was a restless convalescence. Finding lumps of heavy plaster at the end of my wrists each morning seemed to me a greater hardship than finding no hands at all. The blasted things had to be kept reasonably clean and, what was worse, dry, which meant I was barred from even the most basic kitchen activities. I’d often admired people who paint with their feet or mouth but somehow sensed my heart wouldn’t be in it. So I avoided the kitchen as well as the studio, where Alison had now installed herself. Together with Annis she made countless expeditions to every art shop in the area to replace her lost materials and ordered armfuls from specialists in London and Cornwall. Their combined enthusiasm at Alison’s new start left me more restless than ever.

  Since I couldn’t find my thinking cap I put on my grumpy hat instead, ordered in Stella in tins, which I didn’t like but could open with my broken paws. I took to ghosting about the place, kicking at stones in the yard and the rusting junk in the outbuildings like a grounded teenager. All Aqua business was on hold (we weren’t accepting any new business at the moment, was the message), not that anything of particular interest was offered, for which I was grateful. One morning a letter arrived from the Culverhouse Trust, thanking me for my help in looking after Somerset Lodge during “difficult times”. They had made “alternative arrangements” now and wished me a speedy recovery. Enclosed was a cheque for my troubles. I hadn’t expected any remuneration, but couldn’t resist a swift calculation (on my calculator, I can’t count past ten). It revealed that my troubles worked out roughly at the staggering rate of £3.50 per hour. Jenny’s assessment of the Trust’s committee as tight-fisted had been kind. I got Annis to return the cheque in official Aqua stationery.

  Virginia Dufossee’s letter did nothing to cheer me up either. The note that accompanied her cheque (rather more painful to sign than the Trust’s, I imagined) reiterated her hope that the matter would now be resolved discreetly. Perhaps she had a point. Car wrecks, shootings, fires and sudden death wasn’t exactly what I’d promised when I took on the case. Not a single line about art theft had reached the press, locally or nationally, so I could only assume the Dufossees were writing the paintings off as a dead loss. Money, I gratefully noted, wasn’t everything
to everyone at Starfall House.

  July had settled into the familiar routine of sunshine and showers by the time I got my hands back. Or rather what was left of them. I certainly didn’t recognize the bleached, withered and unbending sticks that trembled where my fingers had been. They felt as useless as they’d been when still encased in lumps of plaster and I reckoned the firm handshake of a toddler would bring me to my knees. Plenty of moisturizer, I was informed by the nurse, and gentle exercises would soon restore them. I was furnished with a small, squidgy rubber ball with which to exercise my withered hands and sent on my way.

  As soon as I could grab on to anything with confidence I walked into the studio, whipped the huge monstrosity from my easel and flung it out of the door. Therapeutic it might have been, a painting it would never be. Without looking up from her own work

  Annis said quietly, “Thank the gods for that.” I plonked a ready-stretched canvas in its place and breathed a sigh of relief: one blank canvas is worth a hundred bad paintings. Before I got far into contemplating what could possibly replace the nightmare vision I had just expelled, reality broke in with a hiss of air-brakes and a blast on a car horn. Jake was backing his filthy transporter into the yard, with my gleaming black DS on the back. It was only the realization that Superintendent Needham’s grey saloon was right behind him that stopped me from skipping down the meadow like a little boy. Needham and Jake were already laughing at something, at my expense, no doubt, when I got there.

  “One French antique patched up for another round of abuse,” Jake commented when the car was standing on terra firma in the yard.

  I couldn’t restrain myself from lovingly running my hand across the elegant curve of its roof.

  “How touching. He’s going to kiss it next.” Needham sighed impatiently. Jake just shrugged his square shoulders: he’d come across car-nutters worse even than me. He intoned an unbelieving “Yeah yeah yeah” when I promised prompt cash payment for his miracle work and left us standing in a blue cloud of exhaust as he thundered back into the countryside.

  Needham looked around him with one hand in his pocket and squinted into a sudden shaft of sunlight. He wasn’t wearing his jacket and carried nothing more sinister than his old-fashioned lump of a mobile, yet I didn’t get the impression that he was here to socialize. So I came straight to the point: “Coffee, Mike?”

  He considered it and appeared to lighten up. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any decaf here?”

  “Not a chance, Mike.”

  “In that case, yes please.” He even followed me into the kitchen and watched me make it, sniffing the beans I poured into the mill. Had he lost even more weight or was that an optical illusion? Whatever, the poor sod had been given doctor’s orders. Naturally the doc never told him to get a less stressful job, just to make sure he wasn’t enjoying his coffee while he got stressed out.

  “Drop of milk, two sweeteners,” he begged next.

  “Sorry, only real poisons in this kitchen.” I pushed the sugar bowl across.

  “Ah well,” he beamed, “it’ll have to do.” And shovelled in as much sugar as he could possibly balance on a couple of teaspoons. Once lowered into a wicker chair on the veranda he groaned as he took his first sip. Forbidden pleasures.

  “Glad to see you looking so well,” he opened procedures. “You had a bit of a torrid time in Cornwall, we hear.”

  “Only because some incompetent clown in a noddy car convinced himself the cottage was safe and empty without even bothering to check it out.”

  “Eels had driven all the cars to a lay-by up the road,” Needham explained smilingly. “The cottage was dark, securely locked and there was no answer.” He hadn’t made superintendent by apologizing for his mistakes.

  “I told you the man was armed and dangerous and you sent the village plod round there. Which makes me think that perhaps you didn’t pass on the entire message?”

  He tried to put on his inscrutable face but gave up on it halfway through the process. “Well…”

  I knew what he wasn’t saying. You can get a bad reputation for overreacting by sending armed response units on wild goose chases, which Mike had obviously thought this was. It wasn’t even his force and they didn’t come cheap etc. etc. It had been his call and, as it turned out, a bad one.

  “We’re talking triple murder here, had it not been for Tim Bigwood turning up.”

  “A most fortuitous RTA, I must say.”

  “More like a CTA. Cliff Top Accident.”

  “Quite.”

  I had called Needham on his mobile that day, which naturally wasn’t monitored. So he could pretend never to have heard that Eely was armed and dangerous and Tim’s driving stunt would go down as a Road Traffic Accident. Horse trading was over.

  “So what else can I do for you?”

  “Another one of these would be great.” He held out his empty mug. “And you can go back to spying on wayward husbands and finding mispers. I still can’t believe you even thought of getting those paintings back without us. And of course you buggered it up, by all accounts. Do yourself a favour and stick to what you’re good at. Like making coffee.”

  Needham knew how to hit a raw nerve. The paintings were lost. I had buggered it up. No one had told Needham though that the paintings were fakes in the first place. Which of course was good news for Alison.

  “What about Jenny?” I insisted.

  “Oh, of course, you’ve been convalescing. The post-mortem on David Cocksley was finally done. The coroner’s verdict was death by misadventure which, as you know, covers a lot of sins, including suicide.” He padded after me into the kitchen to watch me brew up another caffeine hit for him. “There’ve been no sightings of Gavin. He might still turn up of course. Or more likely his body.”

  Had I forgotten to mention I’d found and lost Gavin at his friend’s place in Milsom Street? Must’ve.

  “Dave Cocksley killed Jenny Kickaldy in a moment of diminished responsibility and jumped into the lock. We found Jenny’s blood on his clothing. Not much, but hey. When he became lucid, realized what he had done, he jumped into the lock, still carrying the murder weapon. Voila.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not one bit.” Needham didn’t even look embarrassed.

  “What about Matt and the Chapwin girl? Your intruder scenario? Did you find them? Did you interview them?”

  Needham simply shrugged, never taking his eyes off the all-important cafetiere.

  “You’re burying the case,” I said, deflated. “I knew you would eventually.”

  “I’m doing no such thing. The case will be reopened if new evidence comes to light. But none will, take my word for it. Matt Hilleker went back there for some easy thieving but not to kill the housekeeper. And forensics decided the Lisa Chapwin print was ancient. She did a runner from her place but so what? According to her social worker she goes walkabout frequently. She’s unstable. She’s entitled to behave idiotically. It means nothing. We’ve got a suicide and a murder weapon. End of story. Meanwhile I’ve got plenty on my desk to be getting on with, believe me. We’ve got a missing boy, possible abduction, and a bloke who forces his way into cars and sexually assaults the women drivers. And you know what Bath is like. A girl gets raped in Henrietta Park in broad daylight and ten dog walkers file past without seeing a damn thing. But someone claps their hand at a seagull crapping on his car and our switchboard gets jammed.”

  I shoved another coffee at him which he started sipping quickly, sensing that our chat was rapidly coming to an end.

  “You wouldn’t know by any chance who the Culverhouse Trust found as a replacement for Jenny?” I asked. “They sent me a letter, saying they had made alternative arrangements.”

  Needham smiled unprettily. “You really have been out of the loop. Yeah, they made alternative arrangements all right. They closed Somerset Lodge down. And none too soon, if you ask me.”

  I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been but I was. “And the residents?”
/>
  “How should I know, Chris? Presumably they found them somewhere else to stay. Does it matter? Right! I’m off. Thanks for the coffee.”

  I followed him out of the yard. The sun had burned away most of the cloud. A fine summer’s day.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot.” Needham wheeled round and gave me a hard look. “But not quite. Your gun. Hand it over.” He wriggled a crooked finger at me: give.

  “Didn’t I tell you? That’s at the bottom of the sea. It went over the cliff in the melee in Cornwall.”

  He gave me a long stare, his face twelve inches from mine. I tried hard to look sincere. What I could never figure out was how serious Needham was about my gun.

  “Did it fuck,” he finally concluded. But he had other fish to fry today. I opened his car door for him.

  “If I don’t hear from you for a while, Chris,” he said from behind the steering wheel, “I really won’t complain.” He nearly ran over my foot as he floored the gas.

  What had Annis said? Blokey competition? Somehow I was left feeling that most of this round had gone to Needham. I consoled myself with the fact that it wasn’t me who was driving back to canteen food and plastic cups of decaf.

  It was a gorgeous July day, and if I got my skates on I’d still catch the fishmonger at Twerton Market. I slid behind the wheel of the DS with a sigh of satisfaction. At least I had managed to hang on to my revolver. I bent down to pat it in its secret holder under the dashboard. It wasn’t there. I stuck my head under it — the space where it should have been was empty. There was a scrabbling moment of panic until I took hold of my senses and opened the glove box. There it was, black and heavy in its holder, wrapped in a note from Jake: Did no one ever tell you that welding and bullets don’t mix?!! Followed by a few interesting invectives I’d never seen written down before. Also in the glove box was the pack of Camels I’d bought that day on my way to Cornwall. I opened it: someone had smoked all but two of them. I congratulated myself: I hadn’t smoked a single cigarette since that day. I returned the Webley to its secret hiding place under the dash and drove gingerly up the rutted track, listening for any complaints from the car. There were none. As I turned on to the single-track road that bisects the valley I had to slam on the brakes to avoid colliding with a step-through moped driven in a wobbly fashion past the entrance to the turn-off. The rider appeared to consist of two balls, the helmet and his massive body. He was either fat or wrapped in twelve layers of protective gear. The way he rode the thing, he’d need all the protection he could get. Before I realized it I had reached into the glove box and lit a Camel to recover from the shock. It was bliss. Then I drove carefully into Bath and up into Twerton.