But it was a problem I would have to wait to deal with. Until eight-ten or eight-fifteen, if my calculations were right.
I walked the length of the narrow street and took a right turn, which meant I was now walking parallel to the one I had originally come down. My orienteering was right and I came back onto the street the Ellis house was on, but a block farther away on the other side, now looking at the back of the unmarked police Cambridge.
I checked my watch. Eight-fifteen. Maybe I was out of luck.
With a lot of time on my hands, I had lain in the barge and thought over every detail and every moment of the last three weeks. I remembered the only time I had visited the Ellis house, catching Pamela Ellis on her way out to her religiously-observed bridge night. And that was when I had gotten the idea.
But, as I stood cooling my heels on the street corner, she was yet to leave the house. There was always the chance that her current state of grief and fear had curtailed Pamela Ellis’s bridge-playing activities. But, even at a time like this, a rubber or two of bridge would be the one distraction I would put my money on Pamela Ellis indulging in.
I waited another five minutes, then ten, and decided I was not going to get the opportunity I had hoped for. My other concern was that hanging around on a dark street corner in Bearsden was a whole lot more conspicuous than in other parts of the city — like neighbouring Maryhill, where it was positively encouraged — and I had already been there for ten minutes.
I was just about to give up when I saw the maroon gleam of Ellis’s Daimler Conquest glide out of the drive. The big question now was whether the coppers in the Cambridge had been told to keep eyes on the house or on its occupant.
‘Come on, boys…’ I urged them near silently and through tight teeth. After what seemed an age, they started up and peeled off from the kerb, following the Conquest along the street and out of sight.
I decided against the high rear wall, instead striding confidently along the street, not slowing my pace as I reached the open drive gate of the Ellis house, where I wheeled breezily into and up the drive. Nothing tentative.
Without breaking pace I walked along the path at the side of the house and into the back garden. The high wall that I had checked out at the end of the garden shielded me from being seen from the large house across the way, but the neighbouring house to my left had a much better view of the rear garden. Fortunately, there were no exterior lights left on which, while encumbering my progress and colouring my language as I tripped over a plant pot, offered me added concealment.
A largish lean-to shed was doing its leaning-to against the boundary wall between the Ellis home and its immediate neighbour. I remembered what Pamela Ellis had said about the shed being her husband’s refuge and his constant complaining about her leaving it unlocked. I tried the handle. Without her husband to reproach her, she had left the door unlocked and I slipped into the shed, using my penlight to check its contents. Even if I found nothing to help me break into the house, the way every screw, nail and tool in the shed was boxed, jarred, arranged by size and labelled gave me hope for my ultimate mission. It was the rigorous, all-or-nothing organization of someone afraid of their own internal chaos, just as Pamela Ellis had described her husband.
Ellis had been an ordnance handler and bomb-disposal NCO in the army, and had then worked his way up the commercial ranks of the demolition business. Exactitude wasn’t just a quirk that gave you an advantage; absolute precision was essential and Ellis had obviously applied it to every aspect of his life.
An old, heavy, double-pedestal desk was used as a workbench with the shelves above it. To one side was a massive-looking chest, made of the same dark wood as the desk. I rummaged through tools in the desk drawer until I found a long, narrow chisel.
Before I headed back out, I cast my torch around the shed once more. I was about to break into a house, a home, yet I felt a greater sense of having intruded here, in this lean-to garden shed. This confined environment was the extension of one man’s personality, of his mind, of his particular way of seeing the world. Right at the start of all of this nonsense, I had quizzed Pamela Ellis to try to get a handle on her husband’s character; I would have been better rummaging through these drawers and shelves.
Then I thought of Ellis’s eyes searching mine, just before the light went out of them. About his final moment being shared with me.
I stepped out of the shed just as a figure walked past the mouth of the drive. I ducked around the side of the shed and into the shadows just as a dog began to bark in my direction. For a split second I wondered if the ever-vigilant Maisie McCardle and her ugly pug had a city-wide beat, before a male voice ill-temperedly told his dog to shut up and come on. I waited a moment to make sure the dog-walker was well along the street before crossing the path to the back of the house.
I found two doors into the rear of the building, both locked. The first looked like it led into some kind of pantry or boot room, so I gave up on that one, fearing that it may lead to a second time-consuming locked door. The other door led directly into the kitchen. It too was locked, so I eased the chisel in between the door and its jamb, slowly and steadily leaning my weight against the chisel until I was rewarded with a splintering crack and the door flew inwards. I shot an arm out and caught it before it crashed into something and made more even noise than I had already made. I paused for a moment, listening so hard I thought my ears would bleed, watching the house next door for lights coming on.
No lights, no dogs barking, no footsteps on the drive. Once I was convinced that no one had heard me, I slipped into the kitchen and drew the door closed behind me. Laying the chisel down on the kitchen table, I made a mental note to pick it up on the way out and return it to the garden shed. The damage to the back door would make it obvious that the house had been broken into, or at least someone had attempted to break in, but I wanted to leave as few traces of my presence as possible. After all, the police would be able to hazard a pretty good guess at who the burglar had been.
I started with a quick survey of the whole house, just so I would know what I was dealing with. Downstairs there was a large kitchen, a cloakroom and WC, a laundry room attached to a small vestibule — which had its own separate door to the back garden, the one I had discounted as a way into the house — the large flock-wallpapered lounge I had been in before, a dining room, the hallway leading to the front entrance vestibule and Ellis’s study. I marked the study for special attention later, once I had checked out the upstairs. The upper floor had a bathroom, two double bedrooms and a single bedroom that was little more than a large closet with a window. From what I could see in the small pool of light cast by the penlight, everywhere was furnished with the same predictable conservatism as the lounge.
The study was definitely my best bet. But there was nothing to say that Ellis hadn’t secreted information about Tanglewood somewhere less obvious; somewhere his wife wouldn’t think of looking. But I didn’t have time to turn over mattresses, dip into toilet cisterns or rifle through sock drawers. I had been accused of all kinds of crap over the last few days, none of which I had done, but this time I really had committed a crime by deliberately breaking into the Ellis home. If I were caught, it would give Dunlop all the excuse he needed to keep me locked up while he took his own sweet time to pin on me anything else he could dream up.
I was jumpy. This wasn’t the first time I had broken and entered, and the last time I had very nearly been caught in the act. Speed was of the essence and I would have to concentrate on the study. Then, if I didn’t find anything worthwhile, and I had time to spare, I would maybe look elsewhere in the house.
I came down the stairs as quickly as I could. It was a detached house, and empty, so I didn’t have to worry too much about sound, but I had to make sure the light from my penlight didn’t scan across the drawn curtains.
At least that’s what I thought.
I heard the key in the front door.
I was half way down the stairs
and froze. The stairway led into the hallway that fed from the entrance vestibule; there was no way I could get down into the hall and through to the kitchen before whoever was unlocking the front door came into the hall. I had to go back up. Which meant I would be trapped. I had closed the door from the kitchen to the garden behind me and only close examination would reveal that it had been forced, all the damage being on the outside, but if anyone tried the door handle, then it would be obvious that an unwanted guest had gained entry. And could be still in the house.
Killing the penlight, I backed up the stairs, keeping my eyes fixed on the glass panel door that led into the hall. Just as the hall light was switched on, I reached the small stair landing, where the staircase turned on itself and couldn’t be seen from the hall. I let out a long, slow, quiet breath, realizing I had held it since hearing the key in the door.
I heard footsteps in the hall, one set, high heels sounding on the parquet. I looked around the angle of the stairs and saw Pamela Ellis drop her keys onto the hall table. I braced myself for her heading towards the stairs and readied myself to make a quiet dash for the single bedroom, which looked as if it hadn’t been used for anything in some time. I’d be very unlucky if she looked in there. Another sigh of relief as she headed along the hall, away from the foot of the stairs. I congratulated myself on leaving Ellis’s study till last. She made her way into the kitchen, where, unless she had some reason for going out through the back door, she would see no evidence of my presence.
Shit. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth in a silent curse. Shit. Shit. Shit.
The chisel.
I had left the chisel in plain view on the kitchen table.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Once more I measured the distance to the front door. If I made a dash for it while Pamela Ellis was still in the kitchen, there was a chance I could make it out through the front door without her seeing. But the odds were against it and, anyway, her police escort was probably sitting patiently outside and I would run into the welcoming long arms of the law.
I heard her switch on the kitchen light, the sounds of her moving around.
Making sure I didn’t cause a single floorboard to creak, I went up the rest of the stairs two at a time, along the upper hall and into the front bedroom. Easing back the heavy drapes I checked the street. Right enough, the Austin Cambridge was back on sentinel duty. I cursed again. I tried to remember any details of the rear wall of the house, such as any drainpipes that might offer an escape route from the single bedroom; but, skulking around outside in the near pitch dark, I had been too focussed on breaking into the house to check out any ways of getting out of it from upstairs.
I made my way back to the stairs landing. I could hear Mrs Ellis was still in the kitchen. Only a matter of time before a shrill scream or shout brought the two coppers in from the street.
Then, suddenly, she switched off the kitchen light and marched back down the hall, something tucked under her arm, snapping up her keys as she passed the hall stand and walked out through the front door, slamming it behind her. She had forgotten something. That was all. I couldn’t guess how she had missed the chisel on the kitchen table, but she had.
A horrible thought seized me and I rushed back up the stairs and into the front bedroom, again checking through the carefully parted drapes. What if she had seen the chisel and was acting cool until she was out of the house and safe. Now, she could be telling the coppers what she’d found and her belief that the burglar was still in the building.
Instead, she climbed back into the Daimler and drove off. When the Cambridge took off after her, I realized that they had had their engine running all the time she’d been in the house.
I watched for a while longer, ready to sprint down the stairs and out the back door, down the dark garden and over the high wall, broken glass or not, if I saw either car return. After five minutes that passed like five hours, I went back downstairs. I was aware that my heart was still pounding away and I felt sick. I was a pretty cool customer at the best of times, and I had talked, fought or run my way out of a lot of sticky situations, but now the stakes were higher than they had ever been.
I went into the downstairs WC and washed my face, patting it dry with the towel hanging on the back of the door. Easy, Lennox. Take it easy. I went through to the study and decided it was worth the risk of switching on the desk lamp.
The desk was a square, solid job and in no way unusual. Other than the desk lamp, all that was on the desk was an ivory Bakelite telephone, one of the GPO 200 series dating from the Thirties, a clock, address book, a pen and ink set, and a leather-trimmed rectangular desk-blotter. No Tanglewood in the address book. The blotter drew my attention. The otherwise pathologically fastidious Ellis had clearly had a habit of doodling on the blotting paper. Most of the doodles were on the right hand side of the blotter, while the telephone sat to its left. My guess was that the bizarre geometric shapes and curlicued letters had been done absentmindedly while Ellis had taken phone calls. It’s funny the route the unconscious mind takes to express itself independently of the conscious, and I examined the doodles closely. Again, if there was anything significant in amongst the scribbles and doodles, it escaped me.
Then I noticed something unusual. Everything on the blotter had been harmlessly doodled and left; sometimes over-drawn with something else, but never deliberately obscured. Except in one corner, the top right. There, Ellis had scored out something he had written. I peered at it but couldn’t make much sense of it. Something beginning with a T in it, but too short to be Tanglewood. More like initials. I thought about taking my glove off, licking my thumb and trying to rub off some of the obscuring ink, but inking my own fingers to leave prints would probably offend the coppers’ union. Instead I tore the corner off the blotting paper and reshuffled the sheet within its leather holder to conceal my vandalism as much as possible.
There was a bookcase along one wall; from what I could see, most of the books were technical manuals and textbooks, mainly concerning all things related to demolition, but also a few novels — the usual stuff: Hammond Innes, Dennis Wheatley, Nevil Shute. But what caught my attention most was a huge, single-volume English-Hungarian dictionary. I slipped it out from the shelf and took it over to the table. Pamela Ellis had been right about her husband’s obsessive note-writing. The dictionary had several sheets of paper jammed into its pages. Some were small notes with one or two words scratchily scribbled onto them, some with the English translations, some not. Others were full sheets, folded neatly in two, containing hundreds of immaculately copied out grammatical rules, or perfectly declined verbs. Ellis had certainly been serious about learning his original native language. As I looked through the dictionary, I found his dedication admirable. I could speak fluent French, reasonably good Italian and some German, but in each of these languages there was some identifiable commonality, some shared rudiments, that allowed you to build a bridge from one to the other. Hungarian, as far as I could see, was somewhere out there on its own.
I looked through the notes he had made. If there was a significance to be read in any of them, it was beyond my reading. I put the dictionary back.
I spent half an hour going through Ellis’s desk drawers. I did it carefully, methodically. Fruitlessly. There was nothing. I pulled drawers out, upended his desk chair to check beneath the seat, ran my fingers over every surface to find somewhere something significant could be hidden. Nothing. There were plenty of notes, that was for sure, a diary full of appointments, the address book full of contacts, but not a single reference to anything that could not be linked to his business or social activities. The only thing that leapt out at me was how unbelievably dull his day-to-day routine had been. Again the image of the dying man in my office came to mind and I couldn’t bridge the gap between the mundane life before me on the desk and the horror and drama of its end.
I checked my watch. I had spent three-quarters of an hour going through Ellis’s stuff and, although I had made an e
ffort to do so methodically, it would take me another fifteen minutes to get everything back the way it had been. When I left, I wanted to leave no trace of where I’d been, nothing disturbed or out-of-place. The only evidence of a break-in would be the back door.
When I finished up, I felt frustrated. It had been a hell of a lot of effort and twice as much stress — and for absolutely nothing other than a torn-out doodle from a dead man’s desk blotter.
I made my way back through the kitchen, picking up the chisel on the way, and out into the garden. I closed the back door carefully, pushing some of the splintered wood back into place with my pigskin-gloved fingers. Depending on how often Pamela Ellis used her back door, it might be a day or two before the damage was noticed.
A waste of time.
I replaced the chisel in the drawer of the old desk in the garden shed. It was an odd-looking job: dense, dark wood. It had that sort of mittel-European solidity and I guessed it was Hungarian in origin, along with the heavy chest that looked like it had been hewn from the same forest. I wondered if it was some kind of heirloom passed down from Ellis’s Hungarian parents, but that didn’t make sense. From what Archie had passed on from Ferguson, the Eles family, like so many European refugees over the last hundred years, had left all their belongings and half their family behind them.
Then it struck me.
I had spent an hour in Ellis’s study scrabbling through paperwork that had told me nothing about the man. Yet the moment I had first stepped into this shed, I had had a real feeling that this was the space inhabited by his personality. It was here I should be looking. I thought again how Pamela Ellis had told me that her husband insisted that the shed was always kept locked, and how angry he got when she forgot.
Dead men and broken hearts l-4 Page 26
