Dead End

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Did he keep it loaded as well?’

  ‘Of course. What use is an unloaded gun?’ He pulled the drawer further out and bent to peer in. ‘That’s funny. He must have moved it.’

  ‘The gun isn’t there?’

  ‘No. Here’s the ammunition, all right, but—’ He pulled out a box, old, softened, grimed with time, the lettering rubbed and faded: DC 43. Slowly, painstakingly, he searched every drawer. ‘I can’t find it. He must have put it somewhere else. I wonder why?’ He straightened up, frowning at Slider. ‘Is it important? Will we have to search the house?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Slider said. ‘Do you remember when you last saw it?’

  A sort of bleak dawn suffused Buster’s face, and his mouth sagged like a baby’s who had just been given a spoonful of spinach. ‘Oh my goodness, you don’t mean—? Are you saying that it was his own gun? That someone shot him with his own gun?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, but it looks that way.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s terrible!’ He gaped with dismay. ‘What a mean, awful thing to do! I had no idea! It never occurred to me that—’ He shook his head agitated by the enormity of it. Humankind is so strange, Slider thought. Amid all the butchery of war, the fact that someone was shot on Christmas Day will be held up as the nadir of depravity. Forty-eight hours later it would be ho-hum just another body.

  ‘If someone did steal Sir Stefan’s revolver,’ Slider prompted him, ‘it would be useful if you could remember when you last saw it in its usual drawer.’

  ‘To give you a terminus a quo, yes, I see,’ Buster said helpfully. Blimey, the education you get on this job, Slider marvelled. Better than going to grammar school. ‘But we haven’t been burgled, you know. And Sir Stefan can’t have missed it, or he’d certainly have mentioned it to me.’

  ‘So it must have been taken by a visitor to the house – unless he lent it to someone?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t do that. He was very careful with it. He would never let Marcus touch it, for instance, however much he begged. You know how fascinated little boys are with guns.’

  ‘Unfortunately, as it wasn’t kept locked away, anyone who came to the house and was left alone for a few moments could have taken it. Do you remember when you last saw it?’

  ‘Wait, wait, let me think. I’m sure it was—’ Keaton folded one arm across his chest, rested the other elbow on it, and cradled his jaw in deep thought. At last his face brightened. ‘Yes, of course, I knew there was something! It was on Sunday afternoon when I brought him his tea. He usually has it in here, and when I came in with the tray he was sitting at his desk cleaning it – the gun, I mean. I remember because I don’t like the smell of the oil, and I was going to say something to him about being careful not to spill any on the carpet, but in the end I didn’t because he’d been a bit on edge and I didn’t want to start a quarrel.’ He looked at Slider hopefully, as though for praise. ‘Sunday afternoon, definitely.’

  ‘Very good,’ Slider said. ‘Now if you could think very carefully and tell me everyone who called at the house between then and Wednesday.’

  ‘Oh, but no-one came,’ he said quickly. ‘We don’t have callers of that sort.’

  ‘Of what sort?’ Slider asked in private amusement. Was he visualising swarthy villains in masks ringing the doorbell and saying, ‘Burglar, sir, come to nick your gun. All right if I go up?’

  ‘Well, of any sort really. Nobody comes here – or at least, no-one gets let in, because we have people collecting and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Mr Coleraine told me that he called on Tuesday to see his father-in-law.’

  Enlightenment transformed Keaton’s face. For a moment he looked almost happy. ‘Oh, family, you mean? Naturally I didn’t think you meant anyone we knew. Certainly Alec was here on Tuesday morning.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘It would be about half past nine. I was annoyed that he called so early, but he said he was on his way to work.’

  ‘You let him in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Did you show him upstairs, or did he go up alone, what?’

  ‘I accompanied him to the drawing-room, and then went to fetch Sir Stefan. He was still in his bedroom. He doesn’t get up early unless he has an engagement.’

  ‘So Mr Coleraine was left alone down here for some minutes?’

  Buster’s eyes widened. ‘You surely aren’t suggesting—!’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I have to make a note of every possibility, even if only to eliminate it.’

  ‘But Alec wouldn’t – you can’t think he or Marcus—’

  ‘Marcus? Was Marcus with him?’

  ‘No, no, but he called on his grandfather on the Tuesday afternoon. It was inconvenient – we were just going out. But Sir Stefan saw him for a few moments in here.’

  ‘Did he leave Marcus alone for any of the time?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was downstairs. I was really annoyed because it was making us late for rehearsal, and we dislike very much to be unpunctual. Young people are so thoughtless. I told him when he arrived we were on the point of leaving, but still he kept Sir Stefan a quarter of an hour, and put him in a temper.’

  ‘In a temper? About what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told you. I was downstairs. It was just some nonsense, I expect. Marcus can be very annoying.’

  Slider nodded. ‘And who else called between Sunday teatime and Wednesday lunchtime?’

  ‘No-one else. No-one at all.’

  ‘You’re quite sure? Not friend or relative, however well trusted? Not meter-reader, plumber, double-glazing salesman, or wandering faith-healer?’

  Keaton frowned. ‘No-one. I’m quite sure. And I don’t think this is a matter for levity.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you know what Alec Coleraine called for? Did you hear his conversation with Sir Stefan?’

  ‘I wasn’t in the room. I went to make coffee. Sir Stefan wanted his coffee – Alec refused any. When I brought the tray in, things seemed rather heated. Sir Stefan was quite angry, and Alec was pleading with him.’

  ‘Do you know what about?’

  ‘I think he’d been asking for money.’ Buster’s lips folded in disapproval. ‘It wasn’t the first time. There’s always some people willing to spend what they haven’t earned.’

  Money again, Slider thought. It was coming together nicely now. ‘You think Sir Stefan refused?’

  ‘Certainly. He believed people should stand on their own feet, as he always did.’

  ‘I see. And you’re quite sure no-one else came to see Sir Stefan?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m also quite sure neither Alec nor Marcus had anything to do with his death. I know them, I’ve known them for many, many years. It is simply not in them to do such a thing. In fact—’ He hesitated, something visibly working through his mind.

  ‘Yes?’ Slider prompted. ‘You’ve thought of something else?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and then again, more surely, ‘no. I was just going to say that in their own ways they were probably all very fond of each other. It doesn’t do to judge by appearances. People often quarrel with those they love best.’

  ‘Mr Coleraine said just the same thing to me the other day.’

  ‘Yes, yes, so you see?’ Keaton said eagerly.

  Slider smiled comfortingly. ‘I assure you I never judge by appearances. I always turn over every stone. It’s astonishing what can be under them.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Keaton said. The animation drained from his face, and he returned abruptly to the listlessness of grief.

  The drawback to being a human, Slider thought as he took his leave, was that pleasure tended to be over quite quickly, while unhappiness went on for great big indigestible lumps of time.

  Nutty Nicholls was in the front shop when Slider went through. Nutty, a burly Scot from the rain-lashed shores of the far north west, had once at a f
und-raising concert sung the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute, and was known in consequence as the copper with the coloratura, or occasionally Noballs Nicholls. The latter was manifestly unjustified, but Nicholls only smiled and took it in his stride. It was a performance practised and polished to perfection, he told Slider, in a part of the world where there was nothing else to do, and no airborne pollution to damage the vocal chords.

  He called to Slider as he passed through. ‘I’ve got a message for you, Bill. An anonymous caller, no less, leaving you an address. I’d congratulate you on a secret assignation, but by the voice it was either a bloke or the bearded lady from the fairground on the Scrubs.’

  ‘It was a bloke, and not my sort,’ Slider said, coming across for the piece of paper. On it, in Paxman’s bullish handwriting, was Coleraine’s address.

  ‘Is this to do with your murder?’ Nicholls asked, rolling his r’s superbly. ‘Is that not the son-in-law’s address?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Slider asked in amusement. Not much got past Nicholls.

  ‘I was at the fax machine when McLaren got his burglary report through. Is the son-in-law in the frame, then?’

  ‘Like a Gainsborough,’ Slider answered, and thought of Lenny Picket. But not like a Constable. ‘Is Barrington in?’

  Nutty shook his head. ‘Not back yet. That man is developing a dangerously high tolerance of lunch.’

  ‘Do you think it’s lunch? It strikes me he’s not firing on all cylinders these days.’

  Nicholls cocked an eye at him. ‘You think he’s heading for a breakdown? I’ve been wondering myself. D’you know he was down here this morning looking through the waste-paper baskets?’

  ‘Did he find what he was looking for?’

  ‘He found a couple of paper clips in the charge room, and went straight into circuit overload. Paxman told me about it. Result is we’ve got a new ukase wet from the press.’ He gestured towards a memo lying in the in-basket. ‘To all departments: paper clips are not to be thrown away but must be kept and re-used. Department supervisors must make regular checks of the waste-paper baskets to see that this instruction is being followed.’

  Slider shook his head sadly. ‘He’s just playing for popularity. Taking the easy course.’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ Nutty went on. ‘All that business over the chip-shop murders – Home Office, Foreign Office and everyone else asking him searching questions – and then you not taking your transfer. Every time he comes in to the office the sight of you rubs his face in it.’

  ‘You think it’s my fault, do you?’ Slider protested.

  ‘If you mean to sup with the devil, you need a long spoon,’ Nicholls said with Highland inscrutability. ‘You had troubles enough, but he’d four times as many. He’d yours times his.’

  ‘That’s what bosses are for.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Nutty tranquilly. ‘I’m just mentioning.’

  The last thing in the world Slider wanted at the moment was to be induced to feel sorry for Mad Ivan Barrington: it came in even behind being trapped in a lift with a man who’d done his own conveyancing. He turned away, and then turned back to say, ‘Oh, and I have got an assignation, as it happens. I’m having tea with a lady.’

  Nutty grinned. ‘You English!’

  ‘The trouble with revolvers is that the cartridge cases are carried away in the chamber, so until we find the gun we can’t be absolutely sure of a match,’ said Swilley.

  ‘This obsession with guns is just penis envy you know, Norma,’ Atherton pointed out.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she replied.

  ‘If you’ve got ’em, clang ’em,’ said Anderson.

  ‘You’re all morons,’ Norma said kindly.

  She was perched on her desk resting her weight on her hands like a 1950s Coca-Cola girl. Normally this would have had Mackay dribbling at her feet, but in emulation of his old oppo, Hunt, he had recently bought a Golf GTI, and his lusts had all been diverted into motor-mechanical channels. Now all that passed through his mind was the extra pair of Bosch halogen superspots he’d set his heart on. ‘It’s a pretty fair bet we’re onto the right gun, though,’ he said. ‘The same sort of ammo, and not your everyday brand either. Radek’s shooter was kept loaded and in an unlocked drawer, where Coleraine knew where it was, and he was in the house and left alone for long enough to nick it.’

  ‘It’s a good start,’ Slider said, ‘but it’s not proof. Norma’s right, we’ve got to find that gun – and that means we’ve got to find where the killer went after the shooting. What’s the latest on that?’

  ‘We’ve got various reports to follow up,’ Beevers said, referring to his papers. ‘A woman saw a man in a duffel coat looking very nervous coming out of Queensway tube at about three o’clock. He turned left and went on up Queensway. She said he was youngish and medium height with light-coloured hair. But he didn’t have a hat on.’

  ‘All the better to recognise him without,’ Atherton said, ‘supposing it’s our man.’

  ‘Supposing,’ said Beevers. ‘Then there’s a man with a hat and light brown coat who came running out of Bond Street tube at about twenty past three, but the witness doesn’t know if it was a duffel coat or not. He ran across the road – almost getting himself knocked down, according to witness – and up James Street. And there was a fair-haired man acting suspiciously at White City outside the BBC centre—’

  ‘Isn’t there always?’ Slider said.

  ‘Probably Jimmy Saville,’ said Anderson.

  ‘—again at about three o’clock, but not wearing a coat or hat, though he was carrying a large carrier bag, so they could have been inside it. He was sweating and looked nervous. Hung around for a bit and then jumped on a seventy-two bus heading north when it stopped at the crossing.’ He turned the pages back. ‘The Anti-terrorist Squad got that report as well. Those three are the most promising. There’s dozens of others, of course – men, women, hats, coats, parcels, and every tube station on the Underground.’

  ‘Well, keep at it,’ Slider said. ‘Something will come up. Let’s have videofits from those three to start with. And try them with a photograph of Coleraine, see if it tweaks any hairs.’

  ‘But guv,’ Anderson said, ‘if Coleraine did want to off the old man, surely he wouldn’t be so daft as to use Radek’s own gun, when it could be proved he knew about it and had the opportunity to nick it? And when he’s got a cartridge case from it stuck on his mantelpiece for all to see?’

  ‘He probably never thought twice about the cartridge case,’ Norma said. ‘It’d been there so long it was—’

  ‘Part of the furniture,’ Atherton supplied.

  ‘Well, it’s not that easy for your average law-abiding citizen to get hold of a gun,’ Slider said. ‘He’d have to make do with what was to hand – and it must have been tempting, lying there loaded and ready and available.’

  ‘Maybe he meant to put it back at some later stage,’ Norma suggested, ‘hoping no-one would make the connection. Not everybody knows that you can tell which gun a bullet’s been fired from.’

  ‘Let’s not forget the son in all this,’ Atherton said. ‘He knew the gun was there as well, and had just as much opportunity to steal it.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Norma objected. ‘You don’t know he was left alone.’

  ‘You don’t know he wasn’t.’

  ‘What’s his motive then?’ Mackay asked.

  ‘The same – money,’ said Atherton. ‘From the little I know about Marcus so far, he’s an immoral, selfish little tart who’d sell his granny for the gold in her teeth.’

  ‘You’ve been looking into his background, haven’t you?’ Slider intervened to impose a bit of structure on the talk. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Our Marcus is a naughty boy,’ Atherton obliged. ‘His prep school had him “could do better” – clever but lazy, not amenable to discipline and inclined to think too well of himself. The head I spoke to came over rather puzzled and a little wary
: liked the boy in spite of everything but was afraid I was going to tell him he’d gone to the bad.’

  ‘Prophetic,’ Slider nodded.

  ‘After prep school he went to Harrow by the skin of his teeth. They weren’t too keen to take him, but he’d got a scholarship; and besides, Coleraine’s mother was a Russell, and her family’s men have gone there for a hundred and fifty years or something.’

  ‘Coleraine’s godson, Henry Russell—?’ Slider remembered.

  ‘Is a second cousin, yes. He was at Harrow at the same time and presented an unhappy contrast with Marcus, which probably helped to reinforce the bad behaviour. Anyway, Marcus got sent down in the end for running an adolescent version of long firm fraud: offering to get hold of tickets for popular events – student balls and pop concerts and the like – taking the money up front and then not delivering the tickets. One of the boys complained to his father, and the balloon went up. Coleraine managed to hush it up by paying back all the boys out of his own money – Marcus had spent the lot, of course – so the school didn’t call in the police, but still insisted Marcus left. So he went to a crammer for two terms, got his A levels, just, and went to university.’

  ‘What did he study?’ Mackay asked.

  ‘Economics. I spoke to his tutor, who said that the father had wanted Marcus to read Law, but he didn’t have the grades – another source of friction. And from the first Marcus didn’t make any attempt to do the work and obey the rules. It was all gigs and girls and drunken parties – the tutor thought he’d got interested in recreational drugs too – and he was frequently in minor trouble. Nobody was surprised when he dropped out. Since then he’s set up to live in the flat in Bayswater and spend money – presumably his father’s, since he’s never done a day’s work in his life.’

  ‘Sounds like an absolute sweetie,’ Norma said sourly.

  ‘What’s his connection with Steve Murray?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘Met him at a Radek concert at the Festival Hall. Marcus was hanging around backstage hoping to tap his grandad for a few bucks; Murray was hanging round hoping Kate Apwey wouldn’t have to go off horizontal jogging with the old bugger. The two lonely lads took to each other and became friends. Reading between the lines, Murray had a supplier and Marcus was free with his money, so they were obviously made for each other.’