Dying to Read

by John Elliott

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ he said without a trace of sarcasm, squeezing Hamish’s arm as he passed by. It was all very touchy feely and literally hands on. Very strange MO as Hamish had found to begin with, but one got used to it on his team although others, including the whole of uniform, raised their eyes to heaven and looked askance.

  ‘Augustin Cox,’ Jerzy continued the briefing, ‘born Willesden 1976 only child. Father, Henry Cox, travelling salesman. Mother, Inez,’ he squinted at the printout he was holding, ‘Peralta. Uruguayan. Seamstress. Is there a call for that nowadays, Pat?’

  ‘I think we’d say machinist, guv.’ She offered Hamish a trickle of Tic-Tacs from the box she was holding and when he refused made a face before pouring herself a substantial refill into her cupped palm.

  ‘Both deceased. Cox’s NI number verified. Rent more or less paid up to the date we think he was still alive. Work record patchy. Driving licence number provided by Swansea. No mobile phone, credit card or passport on the premises. Possibly taken by the killer as were the contents of his wallet. We need to get cracking on these. At the moment associates unknown apart from LR on the calendar if the initials refer to a person. At this stage identification of the body circumstantial and because of its decomposed state likely to remain so. Sexual orientation unknown. Lifestyle shadowy. Liked Latin dance music, annoyed the hell out of the neighbours with noise at unsocial hours. Tidy, perhaps a bit of a control freak. As far as we know no signs of forced entry before the door was battered down and the body discovered. Therefore, our starting supposition is that the killer was invited in or had their own key. As often lots to do.’

  ‘Hairbrush picture, guv.’

  ‘Yes. It may be something. We’ll check it out, and Pat please spare the guvs. Try and limit them to no more than four a day. You’d make me a happier man.’

  ‘Understood gu.’ Pat stopped. ‘Turo if you prefer. It’s habit.’ She clicked the top of the Tic-Tac lid shut.

  ‘How long have we worked together? Turostowski or Jerzy is not that hard to say. I’m near retirement. I’ll soon be gone and my replacement might be even more difficult to pronounce. I just think we can be ourselves a bit more without all the guvs and skippers and the like. Why don’t we suck it and see?’

  ‘Is this the flavour of the month from your seminar yesterday? Another new look at our organisational culture?’

  ‘No, Pat. It’s not any kind of culture. Organisational or otherwise. I just thought a bit more self expression wouldn’t go amiss within the bounds of decency, of course. Hamish, you and I will talk to the dog keeper and her spouse. Pat continue digging here. We’ll get together late afternoon.’

  On the drive to Bedfont Hamish wondered just how self expressive he wanted to be. Sixty percent in the job and the rest out of it was up until now how he had always tried to play it. He’d seen plenty of those who had become so totally engrossed in their work they had ceased to exist as private persons. Addicted to crime and criminals, combined with the seductive so-called camaraderie of their team, they became caricatures of themselves living half in the real world half in the fictional world of TV cops. Others were simply time fillers, passing the buck at every opportunity until they could clock off and resume being the other more meaningful person they prided themselves on being. Hamish had sought the middle way. Not always successfully he had to admit. His failure with Eunice had been a painful case in point. Let’s take this opportunity to settle the drift, he thought. Grab the bull by the horns. Why not give it a go? ‘Jerzy, how do you see self expression?’ he said.

  The DI smiled. ‘A bit timid isn’t it, Hamish? Waiting to see how the boss defines the guidelines. You’re not me and I’m certainly not you. For instance I’m a happily married man. A paterfamilias as they used to say. Uxorious is the word I’d use to describe myself. You on the other hand are still setting out. Your life isn’t fixed yet. Therefore our expressions of self are different. I know mine. You still have to experiment with yours.’ He broke off his explanation. ‘Let’s pay a visit to the crime scene first. I want to get the feel.’

  This time when Hamish stopped the car there was a group of Pat’s missing urchins lounging around a red moped with their anorak hoods pulled over their heads. Jerzy strolled towards them his billowing jacket in the swirling breeze adding to his normal bulk. Hamish watched their brief conversation. It’s all in the body language, he thought admiringly. It disarms people. Even these kids don’t quite know how to take him.

  After a minute Jerzy returned, and they went through the door of Augustin’s block. ‘Only intermittent watchers alas,’ Jerzy said as they mounted the stairs. ‘They prefer larking about further down the quadrant outside the kebab joint helping the area to maintain its bad reputation. Harmless enough really depending, of course, on the eye of the beholder.’

  The smell was still there when they unlocked the door of the flat. Jerzy made a quick tour then settled himself down on the sofa in the front room. Without speaking he closed his eyes and rested his clasped hands on top of his ample belly. Hamish took the opportunity to look more closely at Augustin’s CDs. He made a note of the types of dance tunes: salsa, merengue, son, samba, tango, mambo. The combos and musicians came mostly from Latin America, Cuba and the USA. One, however, was London-based recorded live at La Perla Escondida, the Hidden Pearl as the blurb in English explained. If it still existed it shouldn’t be difficult to find. When he looked up Jerzy’s eyes were open.

  ‘He came back here from where exactly we don’t know at the moment. Try to picture him being here for any length of time.’ He paused. ‘It’s nondescript. It’s not home. In its own shabby way it’s minimal. Neither simply is it a bolthole, too tidy for that, nor I think a refuge. No. Rather it’s only a space, a kind of interim space,’ he broke off, thought for a moment then continued. ‘I feel there will be another different place. One we’ve yet to find. And Augustin. We’ve got to think about the name. Presumably his mother’s choice. I don’t see it tripping off the tongue of Henry Cox, sales rep. Do you know anything about St Augustine, Hamish?’

  ‘Apart from the name not much.’

  ‘Interesting fellow. Religious but also a philosopher. On one hand he praised the Greco-Roman approach to a rational and disciplined life that could optimistically deal with the adversity of circumstance, or as Harold Macmillan put it, “Events, dear boy.” On the other, in a Christian context, he underlined the impotence of human will. The mass of people were damned to eternal hell by an omnipotent God. Only a predestined few were saved by unmerited mercy.’

  ‘Sounds a bit like Calvin and John Knox. My grandparents are Scottish but not churchgoers. Surely a name is only a name especially if we haven’t chosen it for ourselves.’

  ‘Mm. I’m not sure of that. Our own are not English although they are synonymous with James and George. Some people called him Gus.’

  Hamish nodded. ‘Oswald Dunphy did.’

  ‘I’ve got enough for now. Next door awaits. Another part of the portrait we need. Let’s be optimistic.’

  Leonie Cesareau was a wide-hipped black woman somewhere in her late thirties or early forties. She was standing, somewhat formidably Hamish thought, in her open doorway as they approached. The mental picture of her tripping along with a dachshund on a lead struck him as incongruous, but then he did not know any dachshund owners. ‘The police is here at last,’ she yelled back into the interior before turning to address her visitors. ‘Just making sure everyone here knows we have nothing to hide. His lordship waits within.’

  Jerzy smiled his most ingratiating smile. ‘Always glad to be recognised and welcomed. I’m DI Turostowski and this is DC Ogden.’

  ‘Don’t bother with the cards. With a name like that you can’t be fibbing.’ She led the way into the front room where his lordship, so designated, Delman sat disconsolately watching Cash In The Attic on TV. He was younger, lighter-skinned and long-limbed in contrast to his ample partner. Rudy, the aforementioned dachshund, ears down, perched on
the sofa with an equally downbeat expression. ‘You one of them Polish handymen plumbers now getting in the police?’ Leonie continued.

  ‘No, madam. I proudly bear a Polish name, but I’m as London born and bred as you are.’

  Hamish quelled a surprised reaction. How had Jerzy made this assumption so quickly? Then he remembered Bert Hill not classing them as foreigners like Augustin Cox.

  His lordship chuckled. ‘He got you there. You can’t take a Stonebridge Park Harlesden accent out of a girl that easily. Let’s get this damn shit off. We ain’t got an attic never mind things worth money in it.’ He pressed the remote. The auction room disappeared from view. ‘Sit down. Leonie, honey. Get Rudy off the cushion. You know I can’t lift him ’cos the little bugger growls and tries to bite.’

  Mission accomplished they all sat down with Rudy now happily cosseted on Leonie’s lap. ‘I believe you and Rudy had a run in with the late Mr Cox,’ said Jerzy. ‘Not a dog lover.’

  Delman snorted. ‘Man was a waste of space never mind how he treated a dog. No courtesy. No trying to get along in any way. I nearly laid one on him, but she here likes to keep the law. So I simply told him don’t let me see the sun drop on you. Keep out of our way and our sight. Then that’s more or less what happened. He didn’t rile us no more.’

  ‘The last time either of you saw or heard him would be useful,’ said Jerzy placidly, ignoring for the moment their knowledge of the lighted wad of newspapers Delman had pushed through the letterbox.

  The couple looked at each other. ‘I’m no good with dates,’ Delman said. ‘The Rudy thing. I can’t think afterwards.’

  Leonie said, ‘I saw him occasionally later when I come back from work. I didn’t tell you, sugar, ’cos I know how you get.’ Delman raised his open palms in protest but said nothing. ‘And it’s strange after what’s happened to him. He was different. I,’ she stopped.

  Delman was about to speak, but Jerzy held up his hand so that Leonie could continue.

  ‘I guess he might have been a night person ’cos he was lighter in body somehow. I’m not explaining it very well, but he walked kind of easy and spoke as if everything was okay between us. You know as if his temper with Rudy was all forgotten. He told me he’d been dancing somewhere down Stockwell way. He was quite flirtatious. He said, “Let me take you to your door. You need somebody looking after you round here.” I guess the date would be around the middle of March.’

  ‘Was he high? Had he been drinking?’ Jerzy asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t say so. Listen we didn’t walk real close together. I’ve got my man. I don’t need no puny white guy.’

  La Perla Escondida, Hamish thought. That’s where he might have been.

  ‘I believe you talked with Mr Cox in the Job Centre,’ Jerzy said to Delman.

  ‘Yeah.’ Delman still gave Leonie a funny look. ‘Mumbled something about going to work in a hotel. I told him what you do don’t mean shit to me. Stay away from us and quit making that rumpus while I’m trying to get some kip. He hauled off. He knew not to mess with me after I sorted him out with Rudy.’

  ‘Mr Hill mentioned to my colleague here that you knew he had worked before at Hayes. Something to do with packaging.’

  ‘Hayes. She told me that. She tells me some things. Things of no importance. Others she keeps to herself.’ Delman glowered at Leonie.

  Leonie sighed. ‘This is what I put up with. You pass the time of day and all too soon you should have kept your trap shut. Somebody said he worked there. I don’t remember who. He never said to me he had so it might have been a mistake.’

  Once outside the interview over, Jerzy stopped and looked down over the parapet to the courtyard and their car below. ‘Transport,’ he said. ‘I’m wondering how the deceased got about. No mention of a car, van or bike from the neighbours. A commuter, a walker, a night bus rider? It doesn’t make sense out here.’ A helmeted figure started the red moped below and drove off.

  ‘How could he have been left so long? That’s still what bothers me,’ Hamish said. ‘No friend or intimate. The neighbours waiting glad of the sudden quiet, but the smell surely? The flies. I know it happens. I’ve seen it before but for somebody in their thirties.’

  ‘The flies were on the inside. Acts of humanity have their gaps. People fall down pits of their own privacy. Stop me, I’m beginning to sound like St Augustine. We need a good brew of tea and a salt beef sandwich, Hamish, but where will we find them in this fast food outlet opportunity?’

  ‘Back to the factory?’

  Jerzy smiled. ‘You’re right. A good suggestion. As police officers and human beings we can always go back to the factory and then go home. My corns tell me though that Augustin Cox didn’t just live here. He had some place else, and when we find that, well we’ll know that little bit more about him and perhaps the identity of his killer and the motive. Lead on MacDuff.’

  Chapter 5

  Antique Dogs and Shall We Dance

  Self expression. Well I guess this is part of mine, Hamish thought when he re-entered his flat that evening and surveyed the chaos of his chronic untidiness. Without a doubt he belonged to the Oswald Dunphy school of housekeeping only worse as he had no grumpy partner to keep him in line. The complete messy ensemble in each of his rooms was accentuated by the brilliant sunshine streaming in the windows which made a ballet company of dust motes dance provocatively in front of his eyes. ‘Very clean and tidy for a man on his own,’ Pat had said about Augustin’s gaff. He dreaded to think what she would come out with if she were ever to see this. Start now must be the order of the moment. Begin with one room at a time. The kitchen say, or as he had already completed a shift relax now and start tomorrow, or better still declare a break and start in earnest the beginning of next week. It didn’t take long for the jury to deliver its verdict. Next week it was.

  He bent down and took a bottle of beer out of the fridge. Thankfully nobody crept up behind him and hit him with the proverbial blunt instrument. Small mercies were always welcome. Like Augustin Cox his visitors were few and far between, but he was the sole key holder — if indeed someone as yet unknown had owned a spare key to the murder flat — and particular about who he invited in.

  He made a space for himself on his armchair in the front room and drank a gulp of the Czech pilsener from the bottle. Good idea, he reflected, to tidy up properly next week then get a young woman in to clean. A Polish young woman possibly. There were plenty about. She would be. He delineated her figure in his mind. Enough. This was getting pathetic. Drink your beer and behave, he told himself then remembered the lecture which had caught his eye that morning on the Cynics. He had already decided to check out the salsa club, The Hidden Pearl, later. Things probably wouldn’t liven up there until the small hours after midnight. Excessive noise, sweat and swaying female hips could easily be bearable in the name of pro-active investigation. There was plenty of time to have a pizza somewhere on the way and go to Wandsworth.

  Once installed in Pizza Express Twickenham, Hamish, a creature of pizza habit always restricting his selection between Margherita and Four Seasons, opted for Four Seasons. Faced with the possibility of eating in sequence Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter or instead tackling it as his taste-buds dictated, he decided, as he still wasn’t exactly certain which ingredients definitely stood for which stagione, Margherita would have been a simpler choice. Perhaps in future he should stick to that. After all it was the classic. The rest were interlopers or, even worse, design-your-own toppings. Each of us has our little manias, he concluded morosely. In the end he ate it more or less at random.

  Wandsworth Town Hall on Lavender Hill was easy to find. The walk from Clapham Junction station helped his digestion. By now Pat and Jerzy would be settling down after their probably different meals to another evening in with their respective families. In a way he envied them. Their lives were mapped out with secure boundaries. Consideration for others ruled their decisions. Since his break up with Eunice he had drifted, no longer finding an
chorage in his previously unreflective, being part of a couple days. Missing, not her exactly — their incompatibility had become too abrasive — but the sense of someone else who mattered, someone else who saw in him something worth nurturing. These were things he’d sooner have than not. A copper’s lot, he said to himself. Alienation, work obsession, drink, drugs, affairs, lies and self-pity go with the territory so the story went, but as the old song pointed out, it ain’t necessarily so.

  Professor Euan Donald’s lecture on the Ancient Cynics was signposted to the Lesser Hall. A scant number of people were already waiting, some like Hamish on their own mostly reading books to pass the time, while others murmured in conversation by the notice board at the door. Professionally taking them all in Hamish realised, not to his surprise, that he was the youngest present. Elderly women slightly outnumbered equally elderly and middle-aged men. He was tempted to leave. This was a mistake. What interest did he really have in Cynics either ancient or modern? He was still dithering part way down the aisle between the rows of seats when two things happened. First a tall sunburned man with cropped silver hair came out of a door on the far side of the room and mounted the platform, and secondly a moment later a young woman with a dark helmet of hair brushed past him and sat down on the first chair of the right-hand row three from the front. Those who had been standing inside the entrance moved forward to occupy some of the back rows. Hamish, too, his eyes still fixed on the back of that intriguing head, sat down on the first seat across from her.