A Victim Must Be Found
Page 25
Savas sat deep in his end of a leather couch, with his arms folded expectantly. They seemed to be challenging me to make more incriminating disclosures. If he wasn’t going to buy what I’d just said about Tallon’s murder, then I was going to hear more about removing that bracelet from the spilled coffee on Pambos’s desk. I hoped that I still had his curiosity aroused. He’d want to see how this story all tied up together. Then he’d bring out his handcuffs for me. I decided that I probably deserved it anyway.
“With Tallon safely dead,” I went on, “Miles had thought that he could operate more easily. While pretending to be administering the estate, Miles could go on to broader and broader crimes, without any inventory to rein him in. Then along comes Pambos and threatens to blow the whistle on more than even he suspected. Kiriakis only knew about a few Lambs on loan being held and not returned by … by several of our leading citizens. But Miles couldn’t afford to have anybody snooping around for any reason at all. When Pambos threatened to go public and perhaps cause an investigation into either the disposal of the collection or the death of Tallon or both, Miles had to act fast. He went to see Pambos last Tuesday night and killed him with his own antique paper-knife. He put a button from Mary MacCulloch’s jacket in Pambos’s hand, hoping that that would throw the blame in her direction. But the NRP aren’t taken in by such desperate tricks.”
“So Tallon first thought he’d blow the whistle on Miles and then Pambos tried the same thing?” Bill asked, although it came out as a statement of fact.
“That’s right. Tallon may have been eccentric, but he wasn’t retarded. He may have been a chaotic administrator, but he knew his pictures when he saw them, and when they went missing, he began to ask questions.”
“And what about Tallon’s list? The list Kiriakis got you to look for?”
“That’s right, Mr. Abraham, it all started with that list. Pambos came to me and told me he thought that it had been stolen by one of the people whose names appeared on it. He thought that it might be Alex Favell or Peter MacCulloch or you. The fact is, there was no list.”
“What?” This from most of the people present.
“There was no list,” I repeated.
“But why did Kiriakis …?” Jonah began.
“You mean he was bluffing?” demanded Favell, showing an unfeeling animus towards the late Charalambous Kiriakis.
“There never was such a list. None of your names were ever given in writing to Pambos. Names passed in conversation are hearsay. Pambos only had his memory of a conversation with Tallon. In court that’s less than nothing. So he needed the list. He just needed a hook to get me involved. He hoped that I would uncover the rest of the plot, while looking for the invisible list. After all, Pambos couldn’t start throwing accusations around about what he suspected but couldn’t prove. He needed me to take the heat, to act as a sort of lightning rod.”
Favell and MacCulloch were exchanging words that I couldn’t hear. It was one of the few times I’d seen them speak. They’d both been outwitted by their own guilt. Linda Kiriakis was smiling to herself. When I caught her at it, she turned to me:
“Funny,” she said, “it’s too bad Pambos didn’t live to see you crack this case open. I think he would have got a kick out of the way all the grubs and worms started wiggling once you lifted up the stone.”
“It was an expensive rock for Pambos, Linda,” I said. “But maybe he would have approved the results even though it cost him life. I wouldn’t be surprised if his generalship of this whole business is as impressive as some of the baffles fought by his hero Napoleon.”
TWENTY-SIX
It was an hour later. Chris Savas, Bill Palmer, Anna Abraham and I were sitting looking at placemats in a hamburger place at Turner’s Corners. The placemats offered all sorts of information for no extra charge. Mine showed the whirling planets dramatically orbiting the sun with all their spots, rings and moons neatly labelled. Anna’s showed a variety of mixed drinks and what sort of glasses they are served in. I didn’t see the mats in front of Savas and Palmer clearly. We all ordered hamburgers and coffee. They were hot and tasty when they came, and now, half-eaten and getting cold, they made the hour seem even later than it was. We had been talking about the case, of course. Everybody was praising the late, great Charalambous Kiriakis. Partly because I remembered Pambos as a friend and partly because he was my employer of record in the first instance, I kept my mouth shut. Tributes were heard from Savas and from Bill, who was probably going to write up the case for the Beacon. Anna and I kept quiet. She hadn’t known Pambos well, had never known his late-night sessions with Napoleon.
“What are you being so quiet for?’ Savas demanded, taking another sip from his coffee cup. I shrugged.
“He was a wonderful little guy,” I said. “The day before he was murdered, he helped me unpack all my worldly goods. Without him, Miles would have got away with murder.”
“You say it, but you don’t say it like you believe it,” Chris said.
“Aw, he’s just tired, aren’t you, Benny?” said Bill, with his eye on Anna.
“Yeah, I’m tired. I’ll be glad to see my bed.”
“Wait a minute!” Chris said. “You’ve still got some explaining to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like where you got the idea that you can lift things from the scene of a murder investigation and get away with it. Like why you didn’t come forward with that goddamned medical alert bracelet before tonight. Like how you found out that the bracelet wasn’t with Tallon’s other stuff when he arrived at the General.”
“Yeah, Benny, you’ve been scant with the details,” Bill said.
“Okay, okay! I plead guilty to having slipped that bracelet into my pocket. But I did it when I heard Anna’s father coming back into the office. For all I knew it was the criminal returning to the scene of his crime. And since nobody puts a medical alert bracelet into a coffee cup for fun, I got the idea that it was something important to Pambos, something he didn’t want the murderer to find. After that, it just slipped my mind. I didn’t come across it again until I changed my pants. And by that time, Chris, you’d warned me to stay clear of this business.” It was as lame an excuse as I’d ever heard, but I had to go with it because I couldn’t think of anything smarter.
“Oh, great!” Savas groaned. “It’s all my fault!” Anna and Bill smiled and Chris dropped the matter of my culpability. “So, what about the hospital? Having removed evidence from the crime scene, you went on to break Regulation 865 of the Public Hospital Act which regulates access to medical records.”
“Come on, Chris! I saw the records because I had authorization from Tallon’s brother. I had it in writing yet. Don’t give me a hard time.”
“You must have turned on the charm. I’ve drunk a lot of hospital coffee waiting around trying to see records.”
“Well you didn’t go to school with Alison Simmers. She’s a clerk in Medical Records and was once sweet on my brother.”
“You sure it was your brother?” Anna wanted to know.
“She had blonde braids and an elephant bell. She was irresistible in grade five.” Anna shared a look with Bill Palmer.
“Well, Benny,” Chris said, “if you get out of this case a free man, I’ll be surprised. What with withholding evidence and slashing tires …”
“That was just poetic justice. He slashed mind”
“You got proof for that too, Benny?”
“What do you have to do to get the waiter’s attention?” I said.
“Try setting the napkin on fire,” Bill suggested. It proved unnecessary and with fresh coffee all round, we got along better. Bill was looking at me funny. “Tell us, Benny. There’s something on your mind that you’re not saying.”
“What are you, a mind-reader all of a sudden? I told you everything.”
“You told us almost everything. There’s something else.”
“Bill, get off my back. What have you been smoking?”
“You�
��re right,” Chris said. “I can see it in his eyes. Come on, Benny. What are you holding back?”
“It has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Spill it,” Chris insisted, and I felt some pressure on my arm from the Abraham connection.
“It has to do with Pambos, right?” Bill guessed.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with why he was killed. It’s something extra, something that doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“Come on!”
“Christ, Chris, I liked the guy! I saw him lying in his own blood! He brought me into this in the first place. I don’t want to …”
“It has to do with Guenyeli, I’ll bet,” Bill Palmer said. Nobody said anything after that. Anna was waiting for a translation, while Chris was searching his memory for that familiar name.
“What’s Guenyeli?” Anna asked at length.
“It’s a village in Cyprus,” Chris said slowly, as though the place was gradually coming into focus. “A Turkish village on the road from Nicosia to Kyrenia.” After that, he looked at me, still puzzled like the others, and so I told them.
“Pambos had a brother who was killed by the Turks outside that village back in the 1950s. Michael, his name was. The British picked him up with a bunch of young Greeks and let them off in the fields behind Guenyeli. The Turks were waiting for them with knives and axes and clubs. Nine were killed. Bill, here, covered it for the Times of Cyprus. Later, here in Canada, another of Pambos’s brothers was killed. This one had got in with the mob. He had always rebelled against authority, the injustice of it all, and came to a bad end. Now Pambos was more subtle. He set about trying to find out who was behind the massacre at Guenyeli. Bill here told him after a lot of prodding.
“On his trip to England with Linda, Pambos went down to Kent, where the British officer who had ordered the Guenyeli massacre was then living in retirement near the coast. Maybe you noticed, Bill, what an expert he was on the coast between Dover and Deal? He was talking about possible landing places for Napoleon. He tracked Tim Bell, the officer in charge, to a house in Walmer and he watched the local pub. One night he caught up to the old man and killed him, probably with a tire iron, and left the body by the side of the road so that it would be taken for a hit-and-run case.”
“That’s terrible!” Anna said, surprising herself when the words in her mind could be heard by the rest of us. “He did that? In cold blood?”
“Yes, he did that,” I said. “But he missed his mark.”
“Uh?”
“He killed Tim Bell’s longstanding drinking crony, another retired officer, another old-timer, another Timothy, as it happened. Bell hadn’t gone drinking that night. He killed the wrong man. Then Pambos drove back to London and continued his visiting of museums and castles with his wife.”
“I guess you know what you’re talking about?” Chris asked without much steel in his voice.
“Oh, yes. I talked to Linda and Bill, here. I got curious enough to make a phone call to the police at Deal. The pub’s the Thompsons Bell. The Dover Road from the village is quiet at that time of night. Closing time. The two Tims were familiar old brothers-in-arms as they wandered back along that road. Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Bell was sick with the flu the night of the murder. He died two months later.”
“Kiriakis behaved like he was a one-man Nuremberg,” Savas said at last. “Even if it was his brother. You can’t take the law …” He didn’t finish. He knew we knew.
“Funny, to think of Pambos being both a victim and a murderer,” Bill said. “And there’s no connection. Nothing. Just his passion for getting involved, I guess. The same way he got involved with Napoleon on St. Helena and fussed about the paintings that hadn’t been returned to Tallon’s collection.”
“To be too busy is some danger,” Anna said, and I thought of Wally Lamb who’d said the same thing. I guessed it was a quotation from somewhere. It fitted Pambos like a cap.
“The very last piece of news I put on the table was the fact that Alex Favell had caught up to me on the doormat, while putting on his rubbers. He announced without looking away from his feet that some pictures had been found at home that weren’t his. He wondered whether they might belong to the Tallon estate. I suggested that he get in touch with George Tallon about it. Favell nodded like he wouldn’t have been able to come to that conclusion on his own. He thanked me and still without looking me in the eye, rushed out into the night with a clear conscience.
I didn’t bother telling them that after Jonah Abraham had waved the rest of us good-night, he went back into the house where, I suddenly remembered, Wally Lamb and Ivy were still sitting and drinking Bloody Marys. Something good may come of that too, I thought.
Chris and Bill went off in Chris’s car and I started to drive Anna back through the city to her father’s house on the hill. Neither of us said anything for a long time. The lights on the highway dulled the powers of speech. Anna snuggled up to my side of the car, making me glad I wasn’t a “four-on-the-floor” purist. Beyond the oncoming headlights, a purplish glow hung over Grantham. For a minute I thought of my old room at the City House, the last of the United Cigar Store on St. Andrew Street and Ella Beames’s coming retirement. I thought of the death sentence Pambos had pronounced on Tacos Heaven. I’d have to wait and see how accurate he was in his prophecy. “I still like him, Anna,” I said. “Is that wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. You like what you remember of the man. That doesn’t mean you approve of what he did.” We were quiet again as I came through the shoulders of a cut that led to the edge of the escarpment. After a while she said:
“He made a terrible hash of it, didn’t he? Killing the wrong man. You can’t justify that.”
“No.” We were coming down under the purple haze and into the valley of the old canal. “It’s almost worse because there was no human contact in it. No fight, no argument, no falling out.”
“An execution, that’s what it was.”
“He may have thought so. But where were the judge and jury?”
“Maybe it was Paddy Miles.”
“You believe in a complicated universe, Anna.” The Olds left the highway and came up to St. Andrew Street and its eastbound traffic. “If Major Bell had had his day in court, what would he have said?”
“‘I was trying to shorten the fighting; I was only following orders; I was doing my duty.’ I don’t know.”
“Were they both exceeding their authority? Both Paddy and Pambos?”
“Yes, I think they were. But it’s never easy, is it?”
“No, Anna, you’re right there.” It had started to rain again as I turned off St. Andrew into Court Street. We were heading into April and there was no avoiding it.
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