Threats and Menaces

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘And you’re my princess.’

  They were sitting on a rug in the shade and Dory was unpacking her hamper.

  ‘Bran cereal,’ Dory said. ‘I’ve got some milk too.’

  Alice ate the bran cereal. She had been thirsty during the night and the milk was sweet.

  ‘Anyway…’

  Dory had a habit of emphasizing some words and adding a deep sigh as though she had been pondering deeply — which she had.

  ‘Anyway… he doesn’t come up to the roof very often these days because he’s got arthritis.’

  ‘My gran’father, he had arthritis.’

  ‘And then there’s Ralph. He’s the gardener. He looks after gardens in flats and places. He’s not very nice.’

  ‘Ralph… maybe I know that name.’

  ‘He’s got a pony tail.’

  ‘Maybe I seen that man.’

  ‘Where?’

  She frowned. ‘Maybe… in the park.’

  ‘Anyway… You’re nothing to do with Ralph. It’s not his business. He’s frightened of me. Of what I’ll say to my mother. I can have him sacked if I want to. And then there’s Trevor. He’s the porter. But he never comes up here. OK?’

  ‘OK. Whatever you say.’ The great river was holding her up, bearing her along with the current. She picked up the binoculars. ‘You look at me with these? That is very strange for me.’

  Dory saw beyond the swollen eye. She smiled. Princess Alisha, full of Eastern promise.

  ‘You were in the cave of the Wizard of the North. That’s what I pretended. You know what I called you? The Princess of the Pavement People. I’m writing a story about that. And I could sometimes see you when you opened the curtains down in the basement.’ ‘Sometimes I look up and…’ She stopped suddenly and a dawning realization came into her eyes. ‘Sometimes I see up here… Where you stand when you lookin’ at me?’

  ‘Over there, by the parapet.’

  ‘I think I see you also. You know what I call you? I call you Diamond.’

  ‘Diamond?’

  ‘Is because of the sun. Is flashing on the glasses.’

  ‘You mean like a mirror?’

  ‘Just like that. When I was little girl we play with mirror in the sun. And we learn poem, “Twinkle… twinkle… little star. How I wonder what you are…”’

  ‘I know that one,’ Dory said. ‘“Loftily poised in ether capacious…”’

  ‘Please… what is that?’

  ‘My father taught it to me. Go on. You say yours and I’ll say mine.’

  Alice was confused.

  ‘Just say the first line.’

  ‘“Twinkle, twinkle little star.”’

  ‘Now me. “Scintillate, scintillate globule vivific…” Now you.’

  ‘“How I wonder what you are.”’

  ‘Now me. “Fain would I fathom your nature specific.” Next line.’ ‘“Up above the world so high…”’

  ‘“Loftily poised in ether capacious… Go on.’

  ‘“Like a diamond in the sky.”’

  ‘“Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous”. See? Isn’t it lovely?’ ‘Is very difficult,’ Alice said.

  ‘I’ll teach you. We’ve got lots of time.’

  ‘How long can I stay?’

  ‘Forever.’

  ‘Forever is a long, long time.’

  ‘Or anyway until they arrest the man.’

  ‘What man is that?’

  ‘The one who beat you. I saw him. With these.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was now the middle of a close, muggy London afternoon, and the house at the end of Selbourne Square was the centre of considerable activity. The police truck, its blue lights still flashing, stood where it had that morning. So did the Mercedes. But there were several other police cars, their lights also flashing. And there were police tapes fluttering in a slight breeze which only seemed to stir the hot, fume-filled air.

  But the fumes of London’s traffic were Chanel No. 5 compared to the smell inside the house.

  Macrae and Silver had been there for four hours and Leo was feeling ill. The stench of the decomposing body they had found in the kitchen seemed to have penetrated his clothing and clogged the back of his throat.

  A woman police photographer had worn a mask, as had the doctor, who had arrived to pronounce the corpse well and truly dead.

  The traditional blunt instrument, an aluminium meat tenderizing mallet, had been found near the body. It had been bagged and tagged and was already on its way to the forensic laboratories.

  Only the uniformed officers, who now had the task of making the house secure, and a fingerprinting team who were dusting for latents, seemed unaffected by the grisly exhibit which stretched face down on the floor. Indeed several had been eyeing the woman photographer, and Leo assumed they were not thinking of shutter speeds.

  When he had first joined the Force he had been badly affected by dead bodies, but these, like many things that might earlier have shaken him, had become part of his daily furniture. He hadn’t got used to smells though.

  Just a few hours before, he and Macrae had been sitting in Adrienne Marvell’s cool and elegant drawing-room talking about burglary. Here he was in a stinking kitchen and the subject was murder.

  To Macrae the body and the stink had come like manna from heaven. Leo remembered someone once saying to him that you only had to give Macrae a good murder to make him happy.

  This one shouldn’t have been Macrae’s anyway — except that he wanted it. Leo had heard him on the phone arguing with Detective Superintendent Wilson who was about to dispatch a different team. And then someone, a uniformed officer, had mentioned the address on his radio and it had rung a bell with Leo and he had looked at his notes — and there it was. This house too had been burgled. It was on their list of visits.

  What had delayed Leo was the fact that this address, like so many in London, wasn’t logical. Although it was on the square, albeit the corner, the address was Selbourne Street.

  He’d held the notes in front of Macrae’s face as he was talking and the big man had read and talked at the same time and then raised his thumb to Leo.

  ‘It’s part of our investigation, Les,’ he had said immediately. ‘Reported theft of money. Yes… Aye… In gold.’ He squinted at the notes. ‘Krugerrand. Thirty thousand quid’s worth. Aye. Whoever robbed him in the first place could have come back for more. Right… Right…’

  He put down the phone. Leo saw him smile, something he hadn’t seen for some time. Macrae was back in the business he liked best.

  Leo heard a booming laugh — unnerving in the circumstances — and the Home Office pathologist arrived.

  He was a large plump man with a mane of white hair and a ruddy Pickwickian face.

  ‘Good day to you all,’ he said in a strong Irish accent.

  ‘Dr Nolan?’ Macrae said.

  ‘The very same.’ He shook hands. ‘Have we been in harness before?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Macrae… Donegal family, is it?’

  ‘Scottish.’

  ‘Oh, well, we cannot have everything in this life.’ He peered down at the corpse. ‘That man is genuinely deceased.’ He turned to the room. ‘Well, now, which of you good lads has got something to smoke. Come on, Macrae, you look like a smoker.’

  ‘Only cigars.’

  ‘Splendid. Let’s have one.’

  Grudgingly Macrae gave him a slim panatella.

  ‘Helps to kill the smell,’ Dr Nolan said. ‘Where’s the dog?’ He pointed to the rumpled blankets in the corner.

  ‘Wherever it is it’s not here,’ Macrae said.

  Dr Nolan shrugged. ‘Right, then, let’s see if any of my little friends are about.’

  From the capacious side pocket of a misshapen linen jacket he took out a slender black Maga-lite torch and began to examine the body.

  ‘Now then,’ he said to the group as a whole, as though he was a surgeon about to disect a cadaver for a ro
om full of students. ‘Now then… the same questions always come up… How did the gentleman…’ He moved some pieces of clothing, turning them one way then the other. ‘How did the deceased die… and how long… has he been dead… Yes? Well, now…’ He began to turn the body over. ‘Ah…’ He looked closer. ‘There they are…’

  He took a magnifying glass and a penknife from his pocket. He opened the blade, lifted something small and white on to it and walked across to the window.

  ‘D’you see that, Macrae?’

  Macrae turned away. He knew what was coming.

  ‘A voice from the dead you might say… Calliphora erythroce-phalus. To you, Macrae, the common or garden maggot of the bluebottle fly. D’you know anything about maggots?’

  Macrae did not reply. His face had darkened with displeasure.

  ‘You’re not queasy, are you? A big copper like you! Anyway, they’re worth a study. The lifecycle of the bluebottle is simple, almost prosaic; a blameless existence, you might say — of course we don’t like them when they land in our porridge. But give the buggers a nice corpse and a warm summer’s day and they’ll be in here to lay their eggs before you can say knife.’

  He turned the body completely over and Leo winced at the sight of the wounds on the face and head. Macrae moved further away as Dr Nolan fossicked about with his knife and his torch, talking all the while from the corner of his mouth as he puffed at the cigar.

  ‘These little friends of mine… often give the answer to that question about the time of death because we know that the eggs are laid in daylight, usually in sunlight… and in warm weather they hatch on the first day… and the tiny first maggot sheds its skin after eight to fourteen hours and the second stage after a further two or three days… and the third stage, the one the fisherman’s after for his bait, feeds for five or six days then goes into a pupa case…

  ‘So my answer to that question, Macrae, is that this gentleman here has been dead a good twenty-four hours and maybe a little bit more.’

  *

  ‘You know stories that begin “once upon a time”?’ Alice said.

  ‘Of course,’ Dory said.

  ‘Well, that is my story. Once upon a time, my mother and my father, they have money. In my country, people with money, they go to school and they speak Spanish. But others, no. They speak their own. You know how many islands there are? Hundreds and hundreds, maybe a thousand. If you travel all your life you never going to see them all.’

  Was this the Eastern Promise, Dory wondered.

  To be quite honest she didn’t really care about islands, although a thousand did seem excessive. But Alice did not seem to want to talk about the man who had given her the black eye. Instead she wanted to talk about languages and islands and typhoons and things like that.

  Dory was restless in the hot, muggy air.

  ‘I’ll show you London,’ she said.

  Alice followed her to the far side of the roof. ‘That’s the Post Office Tower,’ Dory said. ‘At night it has lights. And that tall building is the Inn on the Park. Max — that’s my father — he goes to see people there. You went to the park over there. No, no, there.’ She was moving along the parapet. ‘That’s the Royal Lancaster Hotel. I’ve been there with Max.’

  She stopped abruptly.

  ‘There’s something… there’s a police lorry… and two police cars… and they’re outside your house.’

  Alice hung back. Her face was set, her body like a statue.

  ‘I know why,’ Dory said.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘He’s called them in to find you.’ She smiled. ‘But they’ll never find you here.’

  *

  Dr Nolan had gone, so had the body. All that remained of it in the kitchen was the smell and the chalk marks on the floor.

  Macrae and Silver had split up and were searching the rooms. Leo was standing in front of a desk in the study. He tried the drawers. All were locked except one.

  ‘When in doubt take it out,’ he said, half aloud.

  He removed the complete drawer and examined it. The key was where he had hoped it would be, taped to the back.

  He had learned this from other drawers in other desks. The owners thought they were brilliant. The trouble was that most people thought they were brilliant at hiding things.

  He used the key to open the other drawers then called Macrae and the two of them went through the papers. An hour later they were beginning to have just enough information to ask themselves some questions.

  They had found three passports. Two were in the name of Sadeq. One was Kuwaiti, the other Saudi.

  ‘All right, laddie,’ Macrae said. ‘What have we got? Arab gent called Sadeq dead on the kitchen floor. One passport describes him as a businessman, the other as a director. Neither description is worth a light.’

  ‘There’s a whole file of letters,’ Leo said. ‘Calls himself an “adviser” in one. There’s another from a company thanking him for lunch. Company makes electronics.’

  ‘Right. Could be an adviser on telecommunications. Could be an adviser on stereo sound. Could also be some kind of middle man.’

  ‘Guidance systems?’ Leo said. ‘They all seem mixed up in arms or allied trades.’

  ‘Could be anything.’ He picked up the third passport. ‘Philippines.’ He flicked over a page and stopped. ‘Not bad… Usually a passport photo makes you look like death. But she’s not bad. Alice Mendoza. Twenty-six. Born Manila.’

  ‘Sounds Spanish,’ Leo said.

  ‘Weren’t the Philippines Spanish?’

  ‘I know the Japanese had them during the war. John Wayne retook them single-handed.’

  Macrae abruptly left the room and Silver followed him down to the kitchen. He looked down at the blankets.

  ‘That bloody Irish comic thought these were dog blankets.’

  ‘You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  He went down on one knee. There were brown stains on a blanket and a pillow.

  ‘Get these looked at,’ he said to one of the forensic officers. ‘It could be blood.’

  Leo said, ‘D’you think this could be Alice Mendoza’s bed?’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  Macrae went into the garden and breathed deeply. ‘You never know when you’re well off. Doesn’t petrol smell lovely?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Leo, don’t you think you should concrete it or something?’ Zoe said.

  ‘What’s the or something?’

  He was working on the roof garden and was sweating in the evening heat.

  ‘How should I know? I’m only a girl.’

  ‘You start pouring concrete on to a flat roof and the whole thing’s going to end up on our bed. Chimney pots and all.’

  ‘Am I always going to have to take off my shoes?’

  ‘And most other things too. I’m going to be like an Egyptian pasha and this is going to be my harem. If you want to come up here you’re going to have to pay with your white Christian body.’

  ‘Wow! Wait till I tell your mother what you said. What are those?’

  ‘Pansies.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound as though I’m going to be in much danger.’

  Leo had put down squares of beige grass matting and arranged the window-boxes around their periphery. On the matting were two deck chairs, an umbrella, and a small plastic table.

  He stepped back and looked at his handiwork. ‘It’s not exactly the south of France, is it?’

  ‘It’s Pimlico. And it’s ours. Oh, Leopold, it’s beautiful and so are you.’

  ‘OK. Go and slip into something loose and bring up a bottle and I’ll finish planting the flowers.’

  He finished the flowers and watered them and Zoe came back with a bottle of cold white wine. She had put on one of Leo’s long T-shirts and nothing else and looked like a dark and beautiful child.

  ‘A couple of shrubs,’ Leo said. A barbecue. And that’s i
t.’

  ‘Someone’ll ring the fire brigade if we start cooking up here.’ She kissed him and flopped into one of the deck chairs. ‘I bet we have the nicest time of anyone.’

  ‘Don’t be smug.’

  ‘Well, better than Macrae anyway.’

  ‘Everyone has a better time than Macrae.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Macrae.’

  He sat down in the other deck chair and told her about the murder of the Arab and the stained blankets and the passports.

  ‘They’re all over the place,’ Zoe said.

  ‘Who, female killers?’

  ‘No, Filipina domestic servants. My boss’s wife has had a couple. You want me to find out about them? I mean how you get them?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll impress the hell out of Macrae.’

  *

  A little later that evening Macrae would have been found sitting in his elderly Rover in a narrow street in West London. He was watching a black cab parked about half-way down. Without its sign lit it looked as unwelcoming as a dead fire.

  According to Macrae’s information Roger Gammon was working nights. He lit a slim panatella and settled back to wait. The air was hot and heavy and he was damp with sweat.

  In the past few hours he had been through an experience which had both shamed and frightened him.

  After leaving the murder house and reporting to Les Wilson at Cannon Row, he had driven home to Battersea, stopped at the Blind Pig for a quick one, made it a quick two, and had then gone home.

  As he drove up the street he saw that the lights in his house were on and the front door was open. He double-parked and was getting out of the car when Frenchy came running along the pavement.

  ‘George.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘George —!’

  He grabbed her, turned her round, and pushed her back into the house.

  ‘George —!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, what?'

  ‘Margaret. Bobby.’

  ‘What about them?’

  Even as he asked the question he felt the acid contents of his stomach rise and bum his throat.