Loose Head

by Jeff Keithly

  “Indeed it did!” John laughed, eyes twinkling. “The wife of the Sonoma Rugby Club’s captain practically dragged me there – said there was nothing like an English accent to charm her knickers off.”

  I winced at the imagery, but said nothing. John, however, noticed. “I see you don’t approve,” he said, smile fading. “I suppose you wouldn’t stoop so low as to fuck an opponent’s wife. And yet you had no compunctions about fucking the wife of a teammate. Curious.”

  I kept the shock off my face and carefully tamped down my anger. I was suddenly and forcefully reminded that Weathersby was one of those who had not favored my selection to the First XV, or my presence as a member of the Hastewicke Gentlemen. “Old history,” I replied conversationally. “But solely out of personal curiosity, how did you happen to hear about that?”

  “Ah, laddy.” That feral grin was back. “I have my sources, just like you do. But don’t worry.” He leant forward to whisper conspiratorially. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  Chapter 4

  My affair with Jane began one night in Belgravia, 14 years ago; it lasted just seven days. It happened this way. I went to the Park Hotel for a colleague’s retirement dinner. The Hastewicke Gentlemen were off touring Argentina, but I had been unable to accompany them, my testimony being required for the conviction of the Green Park serial rapist. The trial had reached its dramatic conclusion only that morning, and now the testimonial dinner was winding down as well.

  I went to the bar for a final pint and saw a familiar face, breathtakingly framed in a sheath of deep-blue velvet. “Jane! What a surprise! You look smashing!”

  “So do you, Dex. What brings you here?”

  “Oh, a retirement party. Nearly over, thank God. Bernie’s in South America?”

  “He is.” Her eyes shone in the dim light of the bar. I’d had just enough to drink to facilitate impure thoughts, but tried manfully to suppress them. “I was bored sitting at home – can’t find anything to read. So I decided to dress up a bit and go for a drink.” She leant forward conspiratorially; her hand rested gently on my forearm. “You won’t tell Bernie, will you?” she whispered.

  “Absolutely not – what happens when the boys are on tour stays on tour.”

  “So I’ve heard!” she said with mock outrage. “I’ve always wanted to know what really goes on on those tours of yours! All sorts of deliciously bad behavior, I’d wager! Come on, Dex, I could use a good gossip! Got any scandalous stories about Bernie?”

  “No, no, absolutely not! I’d be betraying my sacred rugby oath! Besides, you’d fall off your barstool in shock if I told you a quarter of what he’s done.”

  There was amused fascination in her eyes now. “Really?”

  “Nah. Bernie’s actually one of the most boring guys on the team. In fact, before he married you, we were sure he was gay.”

  She laughed throatily, deliciously. “Ah, Dex. You’ve always been able to make me laugh. That’s a most attractive quality in a man, did you know that? Bernie’s just lucky he met me before I met you.”

  In the awkward silence that followed we both rose slowly to our feet. “Well, I should be going,” she said, blushing fetchingly. “It was lovely to see you, Dex.”

  I touched her lightly on the arm as she turned to go. “I’d feel better if I walked you home,” I said. “Belgravia can be pretty rough this time of night.”

  “Belgravia?” Her eyes twinkled.

  “You’d be taking your life in your hands if you walked home alone. Trust me – I’m a policeman.”

  She eyed me speculatively for a moment, still smiling. “You know, funnily enough, I do trust you. All right, then.” A sudden thought occurred to her. “But what about your girlfriend?”

  “I’m without one at the moment, I’m afraid – came stag. Let me just say a quick goodbye, and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  Five minutes later we were walking down a quiet Belgrave Street, toward Belgrave Square. Jane took my arm, and we strolled in companionable silence for awhile. “Sorry you missed the tour?” she asked at length.

  “Nah. Pretty boring, really – nothing but exotic scenery, oceans of beer, the odd rugby game, total lack of responsibility...”

  “...and chasing beautiful Argentinian girls?” she asked, arching a knowing eyebrow.

  “Most of them have moustaches, and a fondness for riding crops, or so I’ve heard. Not my type, really.”

  We had reached the square. We strolled past the Bahraini embassy, the Spiritualist Society of Great Britain. A full moon ghosted through the clouds above the leafy oasis of the square itself. We were nearly to her door when she asked, “And what is your type, then?”

  Good question, that, I had to admit. “I’m still working that out. Sometimes it seems as if all of the good ones are already taken.”

  We were at her gate, now; beyond the delicate wrought iron, the gardens lay silvered by moonlight. She took my hand, then stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek. “You’re sweet, Dex.” I felt my heart beating unreasonably fast, despite my best intentions. She drew back and looked at me, still holding my hand, a slow smile on her face. “But so serious. Now what are you thinking?”

  I decided to be honest. “What a shame it was that Bernie met you before I did.”

  She came closer then. What was my arm doing around her waist? Then she tilted up her face, and I kissed her. Her arm was around my neck; her fingers tangled in my hair. She opened her mouth and her tongue brushed mine, like an electric shock. Then she broke away.

  “Jane, I’m...” She touched a cautioning finger to my lips, turned and punched in the code to open the gate, then took my hand and drew me inside, into the deep shadows beneath an ancient elm. I took her in my arms and kissed her again, as if I meant it this time. Her hands caressed the small of my back, then ventured lower. I touched her bare shoulders gently, like one in a trance, then moved more purposefully. As I cupped her buttocks, she gave a small moan. Her hands found my zipper; I felt her breath, warm and sweet, on my ear as she freed my rock-hard shaft. I allowed my hands to travel lower, under her dress, slowly slid her panties down to mid-thigh. Her breathing came harder; she shoved me back against the elm and unbuckled my belt. Her knickers slithered silkily down her calves; my trousers soon joined them on the ground. She hopped up and wrapped her legs around my waist, and now it was her back to the tree. I felt her shaking. “Why are you laughing?” I whispered.

  “Try not to give me splinters,” she breathed, and reached down to guide me into her silken warmth.

  We were together every night for a week, and every night was like Christmas when you’re a kid. Every night, she showed another facet of herself to me, another endearing quirk, another surprising appetite, another unexpected gentleness. And then finally, on the seventh night, as we lay abed in my flat in Barklay Mews, absolutely knackered with sex, she gently touched my cheek. “Dex,” she said.

  I looked up, and in her face, I saw my doom. “What is it, my love?” I asked, awed by the sadness I saw there.

  “I’ll never forget the time we’ve had. But I can’t go on like this. It’s tearing me apart.”

  “But...” I began.

  “Dex.” There were tears in her eyes now; I couldn’t stand that. “We must stop.”

  And that was that. Except for several hours of pathetic begging on my part, of course. She had gone back to Bernie; I’d gone back to the job, and to my intermittent brief and unsatisfying encounters with the opposite sex. Brief, because there was something within me that I always held back. Unsatisfying, because none of them were her.

  Sometimes it was torture, seeing Jane as often as I did. But I had gradually come to accept it as a reality I couldn’t change. To be sure, she still possessed me, and every so often, when I caught her eye at some rugby do, I flattered myself that I saw a longing there. Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all? Perhaps, at least for the masochistically-inclined.

  II

  I was in the midst of an int
eresting dream involving Kylie Minogue and the gigantic inflatable castle I had rented for my niece’s birthday party when I suddenly became conscious that a telephone was ringing somewhere nearby. I cracked open an eyelid that felt as if it had been dipped in sand; the glowing digits of my bedside alarm showed 4:17.

  No hope for it; Kylie was gone for good. I groped for the phone. “Reed,” I rasped resentfully.

  “Dex. Wake up, you, lazy bastard.” It was my partner, on his mobile.

  “Brian. What’s on?”

  “There’s been a murder. Get dressed and come down.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Five minutes away – I’ll pick you up.”

  “Right. Where are we going?”

  There was a pause. “Penhurst House.”

  My sleep-addled brain took a moment to absorb this. “Penhurst House. I’ve just come from there.”

  “Yes, I know. It’s Weathersby. Lord Southampton.”

  “What happened?”

  Brian sighed. He didn’t like delivering bad news. “Somebody blew his head off. With an elephant gun.”

  III

  By the time we arrived, Penhurst House had been transformed from a quiet urban oasis into a circus – police cars, forensic vans, half a dozen TV crews, lights blazing – with the neighborhood for an audience. It isn’t every day that the quiet predawn of Notting Hill is shattered by the thunderous report of an elephant gun. John’s neighbors stood about in nervous herds, like sheep when there’s a horny Scotsman about, their faces reflecting the lively mix of horror and fascination that generally accompanies a good murder.

  We were met at the door by the on-call CSM, Dr. Michael Uduk, who looked as shell-shocked as I’ve ever seen him. Which was saying something, considering the fact that he had come to us from the Soweto coroner’s office, and had performed post-mortems on many of the worst victims of the ferocious racial and tribal violence that rocked South Africa in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Normally Dr. Mike was a cheerful soul, who took the gruesome nature of his duties in stride. This morning he shook hands with us solemnly, all trace of his habitually sanguine demeanor gone. “Brian, Dex. We’re in the study.”

  We followed him through the entryway, past the great hall, so recently ablaze with light and laughter, now dark and quiet as the tomb. Arriving at the study door, I gave old Caligula a pat on the head, then pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves, ducked under the crime scene tape sealing the doorway, and steeled myself for what lay ahead.

  John Weathersby was the center of attention in death as he so often was in life, surrounded by a half-dozen forensic technicians, all busily photographing, measuring, sketching and dusting for fingerprints. Lord Southampton was a man of tremendous appetites, a throwback to previous generations of English nobility, always larger than life. He seemed smaller now – about 10 inches smaller, to be precise.

  Weathersby lay on his back, near the other door in the center of the opposite wall. All except his head – that was in the corner, some 10 or 12 feet away. Coagulating blood dripped with syrupy languor from the frame of a fine old Constable landscape on the wall above, and drenched the lush Persian carpet beneath the body in a ghastly halo three or four feet in circumference. The position of the body suggested that someone had shot him as soon as he came through the door. The instrument of death, Finch-Hatton’s .450/.500, leaned against John’s desk. A white cashmere scarf lay beside it on the floor.

  A couple of the forensic boys were minutely examining the French doors leading out to the common garden behind the desk; I could see that the lock had already been dusted for fingerprints. Other techs were checking the carpets for shoe-prints and soil residue, while yet another team scanned the desk, where the shot had come from, for any stray bits of DNA. It was worth checking; if the killer had been a passionate sort, and delivered a parting soliloquy, he might have left traces of spittle, hair or fibre behind.

  I moved forward for a better look at the body, careful not to touch anything. John still wore his white shirt from last night; it was open at the neck and his black tie lay next to him on the carpet. Both were drenched in blood. His neck now ended abruptly in a ragged magenta plateau of splintered bone and torn muscle. The elephant gun’s gargantuan slug had taken him on the point of the chin and completely torn his head off. I turned away, ostensibly to study the fist-sized bullet-hole in the plaster of the wall, but actually to grope for the professional detachment this savage crime demanded. I hadn’t always liked John, and we hadn’t parted on the best of terms. But this was ferocity on a prehistoric scale. Who could have hated him enough for this?

  I sensed Brian’s mammoth and comforting presence beside me; for such a large man, he moves very quietly when he wants to. “All right?” he murmured. “He was a friend?”

  I took a calming breath, focused. “A teammate. What do you have?”

  He consulted his notebook, but we both knew it was for form only – all of the relevant facts were already filed away behind Brian’s capacious forehead. “The staff heard the shot at 3:01. Thought a bloody bomb had gone off. They searched the house, and the housekeeper, a Mrs. Chatham, found him here. They touched nothing in the room. Housekeeper says the French doors were open. Forensic say the alarm was bypassed – quite a professional job of it, too – and the lock was forced from the outside. The bullet went through at least two walls – the FSS boys’re still looking for it. Housekeeper says Weathersby had gone up to his room after seeing off the last of his guests around 1:30 a.m., but she heard him come downstairs again just before the... hullo, this is interesting.”

  Brian went to the desk, peered around it, then squeezed underneath. He emerged clutching a pair of cables. “Power supply and ethernet cable. But where’s the computer?” I joined him in his careful search of the desk and room. No luck; there was no computer to be found. Brian disappeared for a minute, then returned. “Mrs. Chatham says he had a state-of-the-art Mac Powerbook. But I don’t see it here.”

  I considered briefly. There had been a slim silver laptop on his desk next to the boxes of cartridges when I had been here earlier in the evening. I told Brian as much and suggested that we check his room – perhaps Weathersby had been working in bed.

  We looked, but the computer wasn’t in his bedroom. Brian shrugged. “I’ll have forensic search the house and his car. Did he have an office?”

  “I think he worked from home. But I’ll check.”

  A young detective constable, whose ruddy cheeks had earned him the nickname “Vesta,” after Swan Vesta matches, leaned against the wall in the corridor, breathing carefully. “Ah – DC Inns – just the man I wanted to see,” Brian said. “All right?”

  “Vesta” focused his blue eyes on us. “Yes, sir,” he said. “My first decapitation. Bit of a shock, I’m afraid.”

  Brian nodded sympathetically. “I’ve an important job for you, lad. You’re on CCTV patrol. Get the videos from any camera with a view of the house, both street-side and garden-side, and see what’s on them from last night.”

  It is a little-known fact that London is perhaps the most extensively-surveilled major city in the world. Virtually every square foot of the greater metropolitan area is under the unwinking gaze of a closed-circuit television camera; on the platforms of Euston Station alone, more than 250 CCTV cameras record every incident that occurs. There are even cameras inside and outside most London Transport buses. In recent years, this vast automated surveillance network had made life incalculably easier for the MPS. Though, as Brian and I were keenly aware, CCTV evidence was far from a sure bet.

  DC Inns, glad to have something to do, scurried off to begin collecting the videos. Brian and I returned to the study. Nothing had changed; the lads and lasses from forensic were taking it slowly and methodically. John Weathersby was a member of the House of Lords and had a lot of influential friends. Although it would run counter to MPS policy to treat this crime differently from any other – even a suggestion that we were giving preferential treatment to an uppe
r-class victim was taboo – there was nevertheless going to be intense pressure to get this one right, and to slap the steel bracelets on his killer, straightaway.

  The first rays of the rising sun had found John’s head, still lying in the corner where it had come to rest. His eyes bulged in horror; his lower jaw was gone, atomized by 480 grains – just over an ounce – of lead, moving at 2,000 feet per second. There were no powder burns on the face; obviously the shot had come from some distance away. That, and the position of the rifle against the desk, made any thought that he might have committed suicide a non-starter.

  Looking at John’s terrible wound, something suddenly occurred to me. I beckoned Brian over to the torso and gingerly pulled open the shirt. The purplish recoil bruise stood out lividly against his chalky skin. “What’s this?” Brian asked.

  “Recoil bruise. Showed it to me earlier tonight – he fired the rifle two days ago.”

  A sudden avaricious light gleamed in Brian’s eyes. “Ah. And when we find our murderer, chances are he’ll be wearing its twin.”

  “Possibly.” I looked over at the scarf, crumpled on the floor next to the gun, as if seeing it for the first time. “But it looks as though he may have had the sense to use a pad.”

  Brian whistled. “Clever boy. But would that be enough to absorb the recoil?”

  I smiled mirthlessly. “Only one way to find out. Flip you for it.”

  Chapter 5

  Here’s a soul-chilling thought. Or perhaps, in some cases, a comforting one. If, as you inevitably will, you form a bond of affection with even one other person in this world – a parent, child, friend, sibling, lover or spouse – no matter how passionate, indelible, constant or all-consuming your feelings may be, there will come a day when you will see that person for the very last time. Even your spouse, if you are so blessed, of 20, 30, 40 years or more. Think about that. Someone you’ve seen every day, or every week, for decades, and of a sudden, that cheerful morning conversation, that midnight caress, that weekly “How are you, mate?” phone call is the last you’ll ever receive.