by John Grant
"Oh?"
"Dukes was messing around with MacGregor's wife, Zelda. Common knowledge backstage, we was told. That was what the real argument was about – not the tricks, stolen or otherwise."
This time it was me gulping down beer. From what Romford had been telling me, it seemed an open-and-shut case: Thrombosis had offed Spongini and was creating an elaborate smokescreen to muddle up the coppers.
"But all they did was identify the ring," I said, just for something to say. "That doesn't mean it was Spongini's hand the ring was actually on, does it?"
Romford looked at me in disgust. "We thought of that. Took fingerprints. Faxed 'em to the Yard. Asked 'em if they were Dukes's. Answer came back within the hour. They were Dukes's, all right. No doubt about it. He was on file because of a bit of pot twenty years ago when he was young and foolish."
He looked down at his flexing hands, then up again.
"And all this time, mark you," he said, "we had the whole place locked up tighter than a nun's ... well, you get the drift. We had trained men searching it from top to bottom, rafters to basement. Because you see there was something missing ..."
"A body," I said. Even if I hadn't known this already – that empty hopper – it'd have been pretty obvious.
"Precisely. Or even a man with one hand missing, 'cept people tend to make a hell of a lot of a fuss if someone chops a hand off of them, you know. And that hand was fresh – it was still bleeding when MacGregor hoicked it out of the hat. So it was really a body we was after. A corpse. A stiff. Anything. But not a whisper."
"You interviewed everyone, I assume?"
"Everyone. Started with the Finns – they're from Belfast, by the way, Finns ain't what they used to be, I said to Sergeant Mutton – and worked our way on downwards. Me and Mutton tackled all the interviewing ourselves, we did. Had to let them go in the end, every last one of them. No one knew nothing. Well, maybe ..."
"There's a lot of room in that 'maybe,' my friend."
"Well" – he let the word hang for a few moments, shifting his gaze towards where two drunks were trying to get it together to score a game of darts – "maybe, on reflecting on it, there was something. Zelda."
"The Mighty Thrombosis's wife?"
"'Xactly. The lady herself. She seemed to be in shock – seemed to be – so it was no picnic trying to get much sense out of her, but the missus told me afterwards over the cocoa that Zelda appeared a deal less disorientated than you'd have expected when she came out of her faint. If it was a faint."
"So you think she might have known something about it? Might have been warned it was going to happen?"
"Yes. Except that only makes matters worse. 'Cause Dukes was her hanky-panky merchant. So if she'd known about things aforehand she'd have done her best to stop 'em, and if she didn't know about them then she'd have been more in shock, not less."
"Maybe she'd fallen out with him? You know, when the slap and tickle has to stop sort of thing?"
"She said she hadn't. She was totally open about the whole affair, said her husband was" – Romford's eyes glazed briefly, as if he were reading from invisible notes – "was a 'right bastard, brute and utter plonker, used to play practical jokes on me when he'd got a few inside him, which was most of the time, wish it was his head came out of that hat, not Gerry's hand, no wonder I looked elsewhere for virile masculine affections, officer, and found them in the brawny arms of my svelte-thewed lover.'" He looked glum. "Or words to that effect. Quite a lot of 'em."
"Which means that the only person you know about with a motive to kill Dukes was The Mighty Thrombosis? The whole business with the severed hand was just a smokescreen, a bluff? The only person who could have got the hand into the hat was MacGregor himself?"
"'Sright." Romford looked gloomier than ever. I wondered how many pints he'd sunk before I'd got to the Heart & Sickle. "So we did the only thing we could do."
"Took him into custody?"
"Yup."
"For further questioning?"
"Yup."
"And he's not talking." This time it wasn't a question.
"Yup. And you know ..." His voice trailed off on a meditative note.
"Yes?"
He rallied. "You know, I think the reason he's not talking is that he hasn't got anything to tell us. Unless he's the best actor in the world – and you never can tell with these stage johnnies, of course – he's every bit as mystified as the rest of us." Romford suddenly grinned, wearily. "Seems a bit ironical, if you get what I mean: the mystifier mystified, the conjurer out-conjured, the prestidigitator presti ... um. Oh, hell, anyway."
"What about Mrs. Thrombosis? MacGregor, I mean."
"The pheromone-packed wife? Tell you, Victor, she's got—"
"Zelda."
"—like bleeding prizewinning marrows, and an—"
"The assistant."
"—on her that'd give even Billy Graham a—"
"Get back to the point, Romford."
He shook his head, as if dazed, but soon his eyes refocused. "Ah, yes, current whereabouts of the suspect's missus. Yes." He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. "Well, we had to let her go, hadn't we? Nothing to keep her in for. No way we could book her as an accessory or anything. 'Sides, the way young Mutton was looking at her I reckoned putting her in the cells overnight might mean the end of things between him and his Sabrina."
"Or you and the missus?" I said quietly.
He flushed angrily and snorted. "Never any question of that, my lad," he said emphatically. "I've had me chances, I can tell you, but me and her we're just like lickety-split when it comes to malarking on the side, so it's none of your how's your father 'sfar as I'm concerned."
"Leaving that aside, where is she?" I persisted.
"I imagine she's still at the Old Bull Hotel," he said, clearly glad to change the subject. "That's where the concert party was booked in – her and him and the bloody Irish Finns. Finns ain't what they—"
"You said that."
"Yes, I did. How'd you know? To Sergeant Mutton, in point of fact ..."
The beer was beginning to take its toll. Most of the people who live and work in Cadaver-in-the-Offing flinch if I as much as go near them, but Romford didn't react at all when I put my hand over his and leaned forward to look him close-up in the eyes.
"I'm willing to bet you a month's salary that you won't find her in the Old Bull," I hissed. "You ask me, she's hopped it. Her and The Even Mightier Spongini together, is my guess."
"You think he's alive?"
"I know he's alive. Unless he got run over by a car or gored by an escaped bull afterwards, he's as alive as you or me. Probably more alive than you, right now."
"But that doesn't make sense! If he'd a been there we'd have found him. I tell you, we searched the whole of St Boniface's Church Hall until there wasn't anything left to search. And no one could have got out of there – we'd got it sealed off tighter'n a nun's—"
"He walked out in full view of your officers," I said.
"Impossible! We interviewed every single member of the audience! I even had Sergeant Mutton interview the Missus, just in case there was charges of favoritism afterwards. She didn't like that much, but the ibuprofen's doing wonders."
"You interviewed all the stage staff as well?"
"Course."
"My friend," I said, standing up and preparing to leave, "it's not my job to solve your cases for you. I'm not a character, like everyone else in Cadaver-in-the-Offing, so I can't even give you useful leads. All I am is the sweeper-upper – dirty job but somebody's got to do it, you know the drill. But what I will do, what I'm allowed to do, is offer you a hint that might prove useful to your life in general."
"Wossat?" he slurred. He'd drunk enough beer to be reaching the point of tearfulness.
"I can remind you, my friend," I said, patting the back of his hand, "of the importance of temperance."
~
It was quite late that evening when Romford, all traces of the beer gone from h
is voice, phoned me. He didn't waste any time in telling me what I already knew.
"Temperance," he said.
"Yes. And a very good thing it is."
"Makes a man think of an old Sixties/Seventies pop group, it does."
"That's what it made me think of, too." I blew on my fingernails.
"They was called the Temperance Seven. But the great gimmick about the name was that there was actually nine of 'em."
"Yes."
"The Family Brød got the nickname 'The Seven Deadly Finns' because someone liked the pun, and they kept it – used it in their advertisements – on the basis it made folk remember them."
I breathed out smugly. "When you were describing their performance to me, I realized that in fact there were only six of them. Three on the bottom row of the pyramid, two on their shoulders, and one more on the top – that makes six, not seven."
"And me a trained observer. I just never noticed it meself. Doubt you would of, either, if you'd been there. It was a hell of an act. Apart from that bit at the beginning, when the curtains opened, I couldn't rightly have told you how many of the buggers there were – it was just arms and legs and other bits everywhere. One of those cases where it's easier to see something if you're not an eye witness."
I grunted agreement. Whoever said seeing is believing was talking out of his elbow.
"We weren't much interested in those bloody Irish Finns, so Mutton just interviewed 'em in a bunch. 'Seven Deadly Finns,' he was told, so he made sure there was seven of 'em and let 'em go. Never thought anything of it, until I asked him after I left the pub, but, yes, a couple of 'em kept their hands in their pockets the whole time."
"Except that one of them, we now know, was a hand short."
"Precisement, as the Frogs say."
"Where did you catch up with Spongini ... Dukes?"
"At the Old Bull Hotel, done his packing and sitting on the suitcase, all neat and ready to do a runner from the country with Zelda tonight, after dark. It was him and her planned the whole thing. She cut off his hand for him while The Mighty Thrombosis was doing all his puffs of smoke and things, then they cauterized his wrist on the backstage stove. They'd already coldbloodedly killed, cooked and eaten the tyrannosaur. She was the one got the hand into the top hat – stupid of me to think that MacGregor would be the one to set up his own props. The idea was to make old Thrombosis look bad in our eyes for just long enough that we'd keep him in the nick until safely after the young lovers had fled the coop. The Finns were in on it as well, of course – Zelda and Dukes ain't the only folks on the circuit who can't stand The Mighty Thrombosis: he's made enemies all over the place."
Romford paused, then: "Here! How did you know we found him?"
"I sneaked an extra look in the hoppers just now."
"Oh, um, yes, well, Dave Knuckle was still in town for Smack My Butt, Babe so I took him along with me to help make the arrest. And he, er, got a bit carried away during the interrogation ..."
Ho hum. After all this time, I could read the marks of Knuckle's knuckles like an open book, and this particular book hadn't been in his handwriting. Romford had obviously been very angry indeed: the worst he could have charged Spongini with was conspiring to waste police time, or something – same as Zelda, same as the Family Brød. A man can do what he wants to with his own hand. But I let it pass.
"Dukes must have loved Zelda very much indeed," I said ruefully.
"A lot more than she loved him," Romford said forcefully. "He told us before he ... um, before Knuckle got out of hand, as it were ... told us that she'd been due back at the hotel to pick him up a couple of hours before we got there, and he was beginning to think she wasn't coming for him after all. So we hung about another couple of hours after that, and still no sign of her. Reckon she's scarpered – double-crossed him, got rid of both the men in her life in one swell foop" – hm, still a trace of the day's drinking – "and then scarpered over the hills and far away. I've put an alert out to the ports and airports, but I think we've missed her. And no one's going to issue an extradition order for what she's done – not for this. Bloody women."
We said a few more things on that subject before he finally put the phone down. I noticed he hadn't at any point said thanks to me for sorting his case out for him.
So I didn't feel at all guilty about not telling him the rest of it – not that I would have, anyway.
"Is he convinced?" said Zelda behind me just as I lowered the receiver.
"Yes. Case closed, darling. He's satisfied – is washing his hands of the whole thing." I turned to kiss her.
"Poor Gerry," she said. "Poor, foolish Gerry."
She'd liked Spongini well enough, but he'd been yesterday's news for quite a while now ... ever since I'd met her the last time The Mighty Thrombosis had been doing a gig in Cadaver-in-the-Offing, in fact, during the course of Miss Grimthorpe's The Kat who Killed the Konjurers. I was sorry that he'd died, but – hell – he'd be as good as new again in a few days. The plan had been that Romford caught up with him, all right, then took him into custody for a couple of days until he, too, proved to be only a minor player in the game. Meanwhile, of course, Zelda wasn't to flee the country but to come to the one place nobody in Cadaver-in-the-Offing would ever dream of looking.
The cottage of the man they all walk around as if he were a dog turd on the pavement. We could live here together all the rest of our lives, if we wanted to, and no one would ever know. In a few years' time, though, I reckon we'll up sticks and go somewhere else – I mean, my job has its advantages, but I've always dreamt of trying out my chances in the movies ...
So I take Zelda in my arms. We're free at last, and there's a traditional way of celebrating things like this.
Gigglings.
Snoggings.
Strokings.
Kissings.
Gropings.
Fondlings.
Fumblings.
Pretty soon:
Unzippings.
"Oo, Victor," she says. "Oo."
Hands quicker than the eye, that's me.
Sheep
With a heigh and a ho, my friends, let us gather us all here around the fire and sing some songs and tell some tales of the gods in their heavens. Tonight when the clouds flicker the stars shine dimly through, and the ole sole silvery moon is at the full (fool?), so the shamans (shamen?) tell me. And the flames are dancing high in the fire-pit; there's a roast thigh sizzling on the skewer all nicely waiting to crackle and chew in your mouths; and all of us have good skins to wrap our shoulders up against the teeth of the wind. With a heigh and a ho, let us thank all the gods for making life good.
No, no: I will not have your tears, Sanya; I will not have you wetting the furry mat of my chest with your sobbing. Tears are insults to the gods; temptations that may bring them back to us again, to walk among us and spit with the fire that they used to breathe. Laugh, child, laugh! Show all the wide heavens that you are in love with life, that everything is good, good, good! Tell the gods to ... stay ... where ... they ... are, up in the billowy, bollocky sky beyond the clouds: tell them that we of the wastes down here have no need of them. There, that's better, child: just a little smile and all of your faces become beautiful.
Listen while I tell you my tale.
You remember the great column of ash that Qinmeartha walked around with his lady LoChi? Yes, that's right, after the sky-dragon had been sore wounded, and had roared away, far away, into the dun west. (These, I should add, are the tales my father told to me, and his father before him.) Then we shall join Qinmeartha and LoChi, stumbling and slumming along in the Plain of Skulls, the great ashy tower a clenched fist in the sky behind them; clanking and clunking along they are, he with his sword of time-burnished aluminum and his buckler of black rubber, she with her pots and her pans, scavenged from the ruins over the years and treasured to her heart like fresh meat. Here they are, walking slowly: if you look closely into the flames you can just see them ...
As night be
gan swiftly to fall (clong! – down with a crash!) the Lord Qinmeartha turned in the angry dust and spat backwards, from where they had come, at the specter of the tower of ashes, still not out of sight despite all their day's walking. "We must stay here for the night, my lady," he said to LoChi, bowing down low like a gentleman ... in the way that gentlemen used to do in those days.
She shivered, for the passing of the column had been a time of unheard screams for her: she would have wished they could press on, until they had left even the Plain of Skulls far and almost forgotten behind them. But it was nearly dark, and there was a squalid little ugly stream, its waters slow-moving and scummy, close at hand. She said nothing, but stopped where she stood and began to unhook all the long strings of pans and other utensils swaddling her (obligatorily) fair body. Qinmeartha, for his part (oh, they say he was a fine-looking broth of a man: big and brawny, flesh and muscles a-rippling-o) – he stuck his sword firmly into the ground, its knotted handle all upthrusting to the roiling clouds (you never could see the cold stars through them in this long ago), virile and cornily defiant. Was he the last of all the defiant men?
And in moments she had the fire glittering and winking between her palms, brown water from the stream bubbling hotly in one of her oh so precious pots, while he out of habit scanned the glum horizon for wolves (there were none: even today the wolves shun the Plain of Skulls) and flexed his biceps at the icy steel of the omnipresent clouds which the moon in all its artlessness was trying to blow away. Oh, he was a vain man, was Qinmeartha: he wanted to fight all the world and make it reborn in his own image. And every night he knelt down and he prayed to the gods, commanding them to come back down to the Earth to join hands with him and help him conquer all that he had seen, to trample the beggary scarecrow people just as he had trampled his beggary scarecrow wife. "I am Qinmeartha!" he shouted every night up at the deaf clouds. "I am your master, you are my servants! Come to me as I command!"
But all the nights the heavens stayed tranquil, and the gods heard him not. But LoChi, the fair lady, yes, she smiled into the glowing flames as the tough grain stewed away – laughed in her silent wise at the clinging folly of her tormentor.
