Dead End

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. That’s very helpful. I’ll work on Wednesday, then, though the arrangements may be—’ She sighed, and then straightened her shoulders. ‘Well, I mustn’t bother you with my worries. My husband is in the drawing-room. I’ll take you to him, and then I shall have to go, if you’ll forgive me.’

  Slider got the impression Alec Coleraine had assumed his wife had gone, for he seemed startled when she appeared in the doorway, and was noticeably put out when he saw Slider behind her. He was sitting in an armchair with a book in his lap, a glass of whisky on the table beside him, and Barbra Streisand barely contained by the hi-fi. The room was large and almost aggressively comfortable, capacious chairs and sofas bloated with stuffing, a carpet so thick it looked as if it needed regular mowing, and heavy curtains at the window that would have muffled Armageddon. Every perching place had its little table to elbow, and there was a large drinks cabinet in one corner and a range of bookshelves along one wall filled with books in bright dust-jackets. This was not a room for impressing intellectuals, this was a room to slob out in, and Coleraine was slobbing out in leather house-slippers and the sort of cords and sweater Slider would have kept for best.

  ‘Mr Slider’s called in for a word with you, darling,’ Fay was saying as she ushered him in. ‘I must dash, though – you don’t mind?’

  Coleraine had stood up, courteously lowering Barbra’s blood-pressure with the remote, but he hadn’t time to assemble any words before his wife had disappeared again. Slider thought he was looking unwell, as though he was under considerable strain, which boded well for the investigation, though the human in Slider would have liked to hold back, even to leave well alone. These domestics were the devil, he thought. That nice woman would be the victim of anything that happened to Coleraine, and Radek had been an unpleasant man according to most sources, no loss to the world. If Coleraine had been driven by desperation to hurry him on his way, why should society care? It was not as if Coleraine was dangerous; he was unlikely ever to murder anyone else.

  Ah, the comfort of sloppy thinking! But being an unpleasant old gink did not cancel your right to live, and every person’s life was precious to them, whether they were universally sympatico or Noel Edmonds.

  ‘Won’t you sit down, Inspector,’ Coleraine said with an obvious effort. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘No thank you, nothing for me,’ Slider said. Coleraine resumed his seat and Slider perched on the edge of the sofa nearest him. The vast upholstered spaces behind him were clamouring for his body, but he was afraid he’d be sucked down and sink without trace if he leaned back. ‘There’s a little matter I wanted to talk to you about. I have here—’ He produced from his inside pocket the paper Christie’s had faxed through that afternoon. ‘I have here a copy of a bill for three pictures you bought back in May from Christie’s. Three oil paintings. I wonder if you could tell me what happened to them?’

  Coleraine took the paper from him with a stringless hand. It was obviously something he hadn’t expected to be asked, but there was a sick and confused look rather than honest puzzlement in his face. Whatever the story was, the pictures were part of it, Slider thought. Coleraine examined the bill for a long time, as though wondering whether he could doubt its authenticity.

  ‘Why do you want to know about these?’ he asked at last. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Just answer the question, please. Have you got the paintings here? Can I see them?’

  ‘No. No. I – I don’t keep them here,’ Coleraine said. He put a hand up to his brow as though shielding his face, like a character in an old ham movie trying to get past the patrolman without being recognised.

  ‘Oh? That’s a pity. They must be lovely paintings,’ Slider said warmly. ‘I’m very fond of Turner myself. You didn’t buy them for pleasure, then?’

  Coleraine tried to smile and thought better of it. ‘No, not really. They aren’t my kind of art. I prefer something more modern, abstract.’ There were pictures on the walls around them, all richly old-fashioned and representational. Seeing Slider looking, Coleraine hurried on, ‘No, I bought them for an investment, actually.’

  ‘A very sound investment, too,’ Slider said approvingly. ‘The chap I spoke to at Christie’s said that you got them at a very good price on a rising market. He said that you could expect to sell them again in a year’s time at quite a profit.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I hope so. Of course. But you haven’t told me why you’re asking about the paintings.’

  ‘You haven’t told me where they are,’ Slider countered pleasantly. ‘You don’t keep them here, you said. So where?’

  ‘At the office.’ It sounded as if he’d spoken at random, and presumably hearing the same thing himself, he hurried to justify it. ‘They’re safer there. There’s a better alarm system. I wouldn’t want them to get stolen.’

  ‘At the office? So if I come up tomorrow you can show them to me?’

  Coleraine took a desperate gulp of whisky. ‘Oh – er – no, I remember now. I sent them to be cleaned.’

  ‘So, not at the office,’ Slider said, like one questioning a very young child.

  ‘No. They’re still at the restorer’s.’

  ‘And which restorer’s would that be?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  Coleraine flashed him a look of pure hatred, like a cornered cat. ‘I didn’t mean – of course I’ve got the address somewhere.’

  ‘It would be on the receipt, I expect,’ said Slider helpfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Coleraine defiantly. He met Slider’s eyes in the full knowledge that Slider knew he was lying.

  ‘So perhaps you’d like to show me the receipt, then?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure I still have it. I might have lost it.’

  Slider stood up abruptly. ‘Oh, come on, Mr Coleraine. This is getting silly. One and a quarter million pounds’ worth of paintings, and you can’t remember where you sent them and you’re not sure if you still have the receipt?’ He walked over to the mantelpiece and leaned an elbow on it, looking down at his wriggling victim. ‘I may as well put you out of your misery and tell you that I know where those paintings are.’

  ‘I doubt that you do,’ Coleraine said, with a resurgence of spirit.

  Slider smiled. ‘I’ve got them.’

  The whisky lapped up the side of his glass, and Coleraine put it down carefully. ‘You’ve got them?’

  ‘Yup.’ Slider nodded. ‘We recovered them as part of a burglary haul, including some other items stolen from your house, here, during a break-in in June. You reported the break-in to the police, but you didn’t mention the pictures. Why?’

  Coleraine looked as though he was not going to answer, but at last, licking his lips, he said, ‘I had my reasons.’

  ‘Well, do share them with me. Because if you didn’t report the pictures stolen, you couldn’t claim for them on the insurance, or hope to get them back. Now money may not be everything, but I’ve never met a man so willing to chuck away one and a quarter million for want of a few words to the police.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you anything,’ Coleraine said sulkily.

  ‘Not yet you don’t. This is just a friendly chat we’re having. But I do advise you to confide in me now rather than later.’

  Coleraine thought for some time, staring into the middle distance. He looked very unwell. At last he lifted his eyes to Slider and said with almost childish defiance, ‘They weren’t insured. The premiums would have been astronomical. So I couldn’t have claimed on the insurance anyway.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police they’d been stolen? How did you hope to get them back otherwise?’ Coleraine didn’t answer, only shook his head in a hopeless sort of way, looking down at the carpet. ‘Where did you get the money to buy them in the first place? That’s a lot of spare money to have lying around. Is there something you ought to be telling me about that?’

  He glanced up. ‘I’ve nothi
ng more to say to you,’ he said, setting his mouth into a hard line. ‘My money is my private business.’

  Prevarication is the thief of time. Slider looked at him wearily for a moment, and then looked away, fiddling idly with the things on the mantelpiece – an eclectic assemblage, fit for one of those Sunday supplement articles. The View from My Mantelpiece. ‘Mr Coleraine, I’m bound to say that you haven’t said anything to satisfy my curiosity about this business. In fact, rather the opposite. When people behave in an uncharacteristic way, there’s usually a good reason, or perhaps I should say a bad reason, especially where large sums of money are involved—’ He broke off. One of the things on the mantelpiece, which now came to his exploring fingers, was a length of black silk line wound around a brass spool. The presence beside it of a clear-plastic topped case of fishing-flies told him what it was doing there, but the interesting thing to Slider was that the brass spool was a spent .38 cartridge case. He picked it up.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  Coleraine looked up. ‘It’s fly-line.’ He seemed surprised at the question. ‘I go trout fishing. It’s a hobby of mine.’

  ‘No, I meant, what’s this it’s wound onto?’ Slider asked.

  Coleraine frowned. ‘Well, what does it look like? It’s a cartridge case. I’ve had it for years. I’ve always kept my spare line on it. I make my own flies, you see.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ Slider asked quietly. Why didn’t detectives carry magnifying glasses? Come back, Lord Peter, all is forgiven! But there was a pair of reading glasses lying on the table by Coleraine’s chair, and he stepped across and picked them up, and took them, with the cartridge, to the light.

  ‘You do ask the most peculiar questions,’ Coleraine was saying, sounding half peevish, half relieved. Evidently he liked this line of questioning better than the last, anyway. ‘My father-in-law gave it to me, as a matter of fact, years and years ago. We were in his study talking about fishing, and the subject of making flies came up, and he took it out of his drawer and gave it to me. He said he always kept his line wound on one.’

  ‘Did he have a gun, then?’ Slider asked, angling the glasses to get the best magnification.

  ‘Only his old war-time revolver. Souvenir. He fought on our side, you know. I don’t know if he’s still got it. The last time I saw it was when Marcus was a boy, and the old man showed it to him. That’s got to be ten, twelve years ago.’

  Ah yes, there it was, just above the rim: little stamped letters, DC 43. If it was a coincidence, it was going to make the Guinness Book of Records.

  ‘Do you mind if I borrow this?’ he asked politely.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I could have been a Judge,

  only I never had the Latin

  ‘Hello, Bill?’

  Slider’s heart, and sundry adjacent organs, lifted at the sound of the voice. ‘My dreams come true,’ he said. ‘How often I’ve picked up the phone hoping to hear those very words.’

  ‘Stop messing around,’ Joanna said sternly. ‘You won’t be so happy when you know what I’ve phoned about.’

  ‘I’ll get used to it,’ he promised eagerly.

  ‘Oh shut up. Look, I’ve had a phone call from Bob Preston. He was terribly upset. Apparently some of your blokes went round to his house, asking him and his family questions about Radek. Poor old Bob was in pieces, thinking you suspect him. He phoned me up to ask if I knew anything. What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s just routine questioning,’ Slider said warily. She sounded really annoyed. ‘You know the form.’

  ‘But you can’t really be suspecting Bob,’ she said wildly. ‘He’s a trumpet player, for God’s sake!’

  ‘That makes him immune from suspicion, does it?’

  ‘Yes. And trombone players,’ she said defiantly. ‘You can’t suspect the brass section. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh look, you know the form. We have to ask everyone, even if it’s just to eliminate them.’

  ‘You didn’t ask me.’

  ‘You didn’t have a motive.’

  ‘You think being sacked is a motive for murder?’

  ‘Look, it’s just routine—’

  ‘It isn’t routine to him or his wife or his daughters. They’re really upset. And they’re worried that it’s going to get about to the neighbours and the other kids in their kids’ school, and people are going to start saying there’s no smoke without fire. Did you have to go trampling over his life like that? Haven’t your people got anything better to do?’

  He heard her hear herself say it, so he didn’t follow it up. Instead he said, ‘They won’t be bothered any more. You know that we had nothing physical to go on. All we could do was look at motive. A man’s been killed, you know. We have to be thorough.’

  There was a pause, and when she spoke again her voice was defiant with contrition. ‘Well I tell you one thing, Bill Slider, you were on the wrong track with Bob. No person who spends their entire life playing a musical instrument would ever commit murder – not even an oboist.’

  It was an attempt at a joke, and he felt a surge of tenderness fit to melt his buttons. ‘Jo—’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ she said as if he had argued the point, ‘it wasn’t a musician who killed Radek. You mark my words. You’ll see I’m right.’

  ‘I hope you are,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve definitely cleared Bob?’ she asked after a pause.

  ‘Yes. He won’t be bothered again.’

  ‘Because you don’t realise how frightened ordinary people are by the law. Most ordinary people never open their door to find a copper standing there. It’s like being invaded by aliens from Mars.’

  ‘Of course I realise. Don’t you think I know how I’m looked at? Do you think I like being a Martian?’

  He spoke more warmly than he meant, and she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ There was an awkward silence. The real issue came thrusting upwards again. He had to say something. ‘Jo, can we meet? I need to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘If I could answer that on the phone I wouldn’t need to meet you, would I?’

  ‘I suppose not. Oh, Bill, I don’t know. It won’t do any good, you know. It’s over between us.’

  ‘It isn’t. If it were, you wouldn’t be on the phone now, getting mad at me.’

  ‘You were my friend once. I could get mad at you,’ she said.

  ‘I still am your friend. Whatever happens, you can’t say there’s nothing between us. Let me see you and talk to you, just that at least.’

  There was a long silence, and he had no idea whether she was going to say yes or no. He thought probably she didn’t know either. Then at last she said reluctantly, ‘I’m off tomorrow night, as it happens.’

  Relief rushed straight to his trousers. ‘All right. Good. Wonderful. Look, I should be able to get away around six, half past six. I’ll come round to your place, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ she said, but on a dying cadence, as if the idea didn’t exactly thrill her. But she’d said she’d see him. It was a start.

  Slider was astonished by the change in Poor Old Buster. When he had first seen him he had been dapper, spry, with the alertness and movements of a man in his fifties; now, only a few days later, he had shuffled to answer the door like an octogenarian, and climbed the stairs ahead of Slider slowly, pulling himself up by the banisters. Here in the drawing-room he sat in the armchair with his hands in his lap, utterly immobile, like an old man in a home waiting to die, his eyes blank, his muscles slack, his clothes crumpled, his previously firm face seeming somehow untidy with grief. Here, if anywhere, was the justification for Radek’s life. If even one person mourned him as deeply as Keaton, he could not have been without worth.

  ‘Mr Keaton, I’m sorry to bother you again,’ Slider began.

  Keaton sighed and said with an obvious effort, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve nothing else to do.’

  ‘Are you ma
naging all right?’ Slider enquired gently.

  ‘Managing?’

  ‘Cooking and shopping and so on.’

  ‘Oh – that.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing I want. I have nothing to live for now.’

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t say that,’ Slider protested, and Keaton lifted dull eyes to him.

  ‘It’s a statement of fact. How can I help you?’

  ‘I understand from Mr Coleraine that Sir Stefan had a gun – a revolver, in fact.’

  ‘Yes,’ Keaton said, without any particular emphasis. ‘It was the one he used during the war. He kept it as a souvenir.’

  ‘Do you know where he kept it?’

  ‘In the drawer of his desk, in his study.’

  ‘May I see it, please?’

  Keaton got up with an effort, pushing himself with his hands on the chair arms. The study was across the hall from the drawing-room, a large and handsome room furnished with desk, chair, map-table, a large leather sofa, and a handsome range of bookshelves, several shelves of which were dedicated to leather-bound music scores. There was also a baby-grand piano, and over by the window a magnificent mahogany and brass music stand. Seeing Slider notice it, Keaton said, ‘He used to work here. People don’t understand how many hours of preparation and practice went into his performances.’

  Slider nodded sympathetically. Performances seemed an odd choice of word, until he noticed that opposite the music stand, fixed to the wall, was a full-length mirror. He actually practised his arm-waving then, Slider thought with wry amusement; watched himself in the mirror. He would love to tell Joanna that.

  Keaton had shuffled over to the desk, and now opened the top left-hand drawer. ‘He kept it in here,’ he said.

  Slider moved to his side. ‘Wasn’t the drawer usually kept locked?’

  ‘Oh no. It wouldn’t have been any use against burglars if he’d had to unlock a drawer to get at it,’ Keaton said, as though it were obvious logic.