by Laura Wilson
‘Do you know if Rutherford is planning to come here?’
‘Is he here?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘If he is, I didn’t see him. I was in there before, talking to Danny’s wife, and he wasn’t there then.’
‘Did Rutherford tell you when he’d found out about Perlmann’s death?’
‘Just before he called me, I think.’
‘Which was when?’
‘I’m not sure. He woke me up, and I came here … I don’t know.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘I don’t know that, either. Gerald didn’t want to let me in, but—’
‘Who’s Gerald?’
‘Gerald Hythe. He’s a friend of Danny’s. I think he’s a creep.’ The solicitor whose name was on the letterhead of the Porchester Building Society. That was quick. ‘He tried to shut the door in my face, but she wouldn’t let him, and then he pretended he didn’t know who I was. She kept asking me about property deals and things like that.’
So she knows something’s up, thought Stratton. ‘Were you able to help her?’
‘No, and I don’t understand. How could Danny have all this, and be …’ April shook her head. ‘She said he didn’t leave a will. I didn’t believe it, but then I could see … she only let me in because she wanted to know if I knew anything. She said people were already telephoning her, saying Danny owed them money.’
‘How did Rutherford find out that Mr Perlmann was dead, Miss Scott?’
‘He’d been trying to get in touch with Danny yesterday, so he phoned Cyril.’
‘Cyril Nash of the Condor Club?’
‘Yes. He didn’t know then, of course, but Danny’s wife phoned him later.’ When she was trying to find Laskier, thought Stratton. ‘She told him and he phoned Giles.’
Stratton opened the car door. ‘Listen, April. You can’t stay here, and I’m not at all sure you should be driving at the moment, so I’m going to ask one of my men to take you home.’
April nodded, her eyes fixed glumly on the house. ‘Danny wasn’t ever going to leave her, was he? He used to tell me he was, but it wasn’t true, was it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Stratton, ‘but I doubt it.’
‘It was only when I was in there talking to her that I realised, really. I mean, I knew he was married, but he always said that they didn’t have any … you know … and that she spent most of her time in America. He said she’d helped him in business and he stayed with her from gratitude.’
‘They all say things like that,’ said Stratton, helping her out of the car. ‘Still, you’re young and you’ll know better next time, won’t you?’
Telling Coxon to escort April outside the gates and send a car to take her back to Bryanston Mews, Stratton was about to knock on the front door when a figure came crashing through the shrubbery on the far side of the house: Rutherford, carrying a suitcase. Brodie, blowing his whistle frantically, made a lunge for him at the same time as five constables raced across the lawn from two different directions. A second later, hearing the front door open, Stratton turned to prevent Maxine Perlmann from coming into the garden, but instead of Mrs Perlmann, Jan the Polish giant appeared and launched himself at Rutherford. PC Dixon and one of the others immediately rugby-tackled him, one round his waist and the other grabbing one of his legs, but he barely seemed to notice and, as he threw punches at Rutherford, both men were flung about as if weightless.
‘Get her out of here, and for Christ’s sake get some backup,’ Stratton yelled at Coxon.
‘My God! Oh, my God!’ Stratton saw a white-faced, swollen-eyed Maxine Perlmann dressed in slacks with a bandanna round her head, standing at the front door of the house. ‘What’s happening?’
‘You,’ called Stratton, picking out the shadowy figure of a man behind her, who he assumed must be Gerald Hythe, ‘get her back inside, now, and shut the door!’
He turned round in time to see one of the giant’s flying fists hit a constable, who tottered backwards and sat down hard in a flower bed. Then, elbowing Brodie out of the way, Jan got Rutherford in a headlock. As he did so, the suitcase slid out of Rutherford’s hand, hit the gravel and exploded open, and a slew of typed documents cascaded out, getting trampled underfoot or wrapping themselves about the legs of the combatants. Stratton could see, in the ensuing mêleé, that Rutherford had made a grab for Jan’s groin. ‘Bastard! Bloody bastard! Thief!’ As Jan pulled at his hand, Rutherford’s head, aided by the policeman tugging on the rest of him, began to slip out from under Jan’s arm. Suddenly Jan bent his own head and a second later Rutherford began screaming like a stuck pig.
‘He’s got his ear!’ yelled Brodie. ‘He’s biting off his ear!’
Apparently unaware of the truncheon blows raining down on his bowed head and shoulders, Jan held on for what must have been about thirty seconds but seemed a lot longer, as two constables tried to pull him away and Rutherford carried on bellowing. Then Jan lifted his head so that Stratton saw the blood around his mouth and on his chin before he leant forward and spat something red and fleshy towards the edge of the lawn. As he did so, one of the men swung his truncheon, like a golf club, squarely at the backs of his knees and another three ploughed into him from behind, so that he ended up face down on the grass with four constables sitting on top of him, surrounded by pieces of paper and spitting out a stream of what Stratton assumed to be Polish obscenities.
‘Well done,’ shouted Stratton over the din. ‘Cuff him.’ He turned his attention to Rutherford who, still screaming, was now struggling in the grip of PC Brodie, blood streaming down the side of his face and onto his white shirt.
‘The fucker tried to kill me,’ he gasped.
‘Yes,’ said Stratton, ‘we saw. We also saw you trying to make a run for it with that lot.’ He gestured towards the papers, some of which had now fluttered beneath the hedge and into the carefully tended flower beds.
Coxon appeared at his elbow. ‘Van’s on its way, sir. The girl’s in the car outside.’
‘Good. Knock on the door and ask for some towels to mop this one up, will you?’
Turning back to Rutherford, he said, ‘Now, where were you off to in such a hurry?’
‘I just’ – Rutherford tried to jerk away from Brodie – ‘came to collect what’s mine.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ said Stratton. ‘In the meantime, you’re under arrest.’
‘What for?’
‘Breaking and entering, being in possession of stolen property and anything else I can think of,’ said Stratton grimly.
‘You can’t, you jumped-up little—’
‘I just did,’ said Stratton.
‘Get your hands off me,’ Rutherford snarled at Brodie, trying to elbow him in the ribs.
‘Less of it,’ said Stratton, ‘or I’ll have you for resisting arrest as well.’
‘You can’t—’
‘Oh yes I can.’
Coxon appeared from the house bearing a stack of towels like a chambermaid.
‘Good.’ Stratton took the top one. ‘Go out and call for an ambulance, will you? And after that you can make a start on clearing up all these bits of paper.’ To Rutherford he said, ‘I’m going to hold this towel to your ear and try to stop the blood, so if I were you I’d keep still.’
Rutherford tried not to wince as Stratton gently pressed the towel to the ragged remains of his right ear. ‘Where’s your car?’ he asked.
‘I’m not answering any more questions.’
‘Aren’t you?’ said Stratton. ‘That’s a pity.’ He pressed down hard on the towel so that Rutherford gave a yell of pain.
‘I parked down there, round the corner.’
‘Which road?’
‘I don’t know the name. Right and right again.’
‘Thank you, Mr Rutherford. That’s most cooperative. Now, if PC Brodie can just take your keys …’
Stratton and Brodie stood in silence after that, Rutherford sagging
dejectedly between them, as they waited for the vehicles to arrive. On the lawn Jan, handcuffed and pinned down by policemen, continued to thrash and bellow incomprehensibly, throwing in a ‘bloody bastard’ now and then for good measure.
CHAPTER FIFTY
‘Should we have given them this, sir,’ said Dixon, ‘or is it evidence?’
Rutherford, clutching a towel to his still-bleeding head with one hand and handcuffed to Brodie by the other, had been escorted to the ambulance and driven away. Jan, still shouting, had been carted off in the opposite direction by a Black Maria, and Dixon and Stratton were looking down at the cartilage and flesh that had been Rutherford’s right ear and was now a thick red curl on the edge of the lawn. ‘I mean,’ Dixon continued, ‘couldn’t they reattach it?’
‘No idea,’ said Stratton, who was strongly tempted to kick the thing into the nearest bush and forget all about it. ‘I suppose we’d better send it after him. Why don’t you knock on the door again and ask Mrs Perlmann if she’s got a Tupperware box?’
Imagining a litany of complaints including words like ‘fiasco’ and ‘the Keystone Kops’, he felt in his pockets for his handkerchief. Remembering that he’d given it to Gloria, he called out to Coxon who was grovelling about in the bushes after the remaining bits of paper. ‘Have you got a clean handkerchief?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘May I borrow it?’
‘Of course, sir.’
Coxon lingered as Stratton spread out the white cotton square and, squatting down, covered Rutherford’s ear with it in order to lift it up. It felt, through the handkerchief, as though it were made of hard rubber, and he kept the fabric bundled up so as not to have to look at the thing inside. Coxon stared at the smears of dried blood on the handkerchief and said, ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I definitely don’t want it back.’
When Rutherford’s suitcase, now piled haphazardly with pieces of paper which had variously been crumpled, trodden on or smeared with earth, was stowed in one of the police cars and Stratton had given instructions for the Bentley to be impounded, he decided it was high time he spoke to Maxine Perlmann.
A maid showed him into a large hall with a high ceiling and plenty of gilt-framed mirrors and ornate furniture, all sparkling and shining in the morning sun. Remembering what Laskier said about Perlmann buying things from Sotheby’s, Stratton concluded that they must be antiques although – perhaps because of the surroundings – they did not quite have the same look of belonging as the things in the Rutherfords’ house. Winnington Road was definitely, in its ostentatiousness, nouveau riche – and certainly a world away from the cramped and squalid quarters of Perlmann’s tenants.
Somewhere in the background a telephone was ringing, shrill and insistent. He could still hear it, but more faintly, when the maid took him through to an enormous, airy sitting room. There was more fancy furniture here, and through the French windows he could see a vast and beautifully kept garden with a tennis court at the end of it.
After several minutes, Maxine Perlmann appeared. She’d done her best to camouflage her pale face and red eyes with a coating of make-up, but she moved woodenly, as if grief and shock had made her rigid. Without looking at Stratton, she seated herself on the sofa. Beside her, holding tight to her elbow, was a man – Hythe, presumably – for whom the word ‘seedy’ might have been invented. He looks like a creep all right, thought Stratton, remembering what April Scott had said. With scruffy clothes, lank, over-long hair and protruding teeth, there was something indefinably murky about him and Stratton had a feeling that, close to, he might smell of mildew.
‘DI Stratton. We met yesterday, Mrs Perlmann, at—’
‘Yes,’ said Maxine Perlmann, her voice wobbling with accusation. ‘Then he took a turn for the worse. Until you came, the doctors thought he was going to get better.’
‘I’m sorry if anything I said distressed him, Mrs Perlmann,’ said Stratton, taken aback, ‘but he wanted to see me. And I’m afraid I do have to ask you some questions now, but I shall try to keep it as brief as I can. So if you wouldn’t mind leaving us, Mr Hythe …’
Hythe remained seated. ‘You know my name, I see. I imagine Miss Scott must have told you. The stupid female was still sitting in the car an hour after I turfed her out. Pretending she’d gone into a trance or something.’
‘People do strange things when they’ve had a shock, Mr Hythe. I’d like a word with you later, if I may, but for now—’
‘Mrs Perlmann has asked me to remain. I shall be acting for her.’
‘Is that so?’ Stratton asked Maxine Perlmann, who nodded, her mouth in a firm line as if she didn’t trust herself to speak. As Stratton was fishing out his notebook, she burst out, almost shouting, ‘I need to talk to Stefan, but I can’t get hold of him. When I rang to tell him about Danny he hung up on me and now he’s not answering the phone. I’d only been back from the hospital half an hour when people started phoning up, saying Danny owed them money. After you left in the morning, he was obsessed with talking to Stefan – he’s the only one who knows everything and he’s supposed to be Danny’s friend and he can’t even—’
‘Mrs Perlmann.’ Stratton held up a hand. ‘If you’ll allow me, I can explain about Mr Laskier.’
Mrs Perlmann sat and nodded at intervals as Stratton described what had happened at Maxine’s. Hythe, he noticed, looked sour, and he had a strong suspicion that when she had told the man her version of events he, sensing advantage, had proceeded to tell her that Laskier was not to be trusted.
‘I very much doubt,’ Hythe said now, ‘that Mr Perlmann promised this negro anything. The man sounds deranged.’
‘Mr Laskier thinks it’s entirely possible that he might have done,’ said Stratton, testing his hypothesis. Maxine Perlmann looked uncertainly from one to the other.
‘Impossible,’ said Hythe. ‘In any case, the man’s a criminal, isn’t he?’ Turning to Mrs Perlmann, he continued, ‘I hate to say this, Maxine my dear …’ No you don’t, thought Stratton. ‘… I know how much Danny trusted Stefan, but we’ve all been quite worried about him. He’s not been the same since Lola died – that was his wife, Inspector, she took her own life, I’m afraid. It’s hardly surprising, and of course Danny was so loyal to his friends, he would never have said, but I know he was concerned about it.’
‘Told you, did he?’ asked Stratton.
Hythe nodded earnestly, as though he’d not heard the scepticism in Stratton’s voice. ‘Last week, in fact. He said he was thinking of trying to persuade Stefan to take a few weeks’ holiday. You may not be aware of this, Inspector, but Danny and Stefan went through a lot together during the war and Danny was like an older brother to him.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ said Stratton, ‘but when I spoke to Mr Laskier I saw no sign that he couldn’t manage. Quite the reverse, in fact. He seemed to me to know exactly what’s been going on.’ He treated Hythe to a glare, mentally adding, And I’ve got your number, chum, so don’t bugger me about.
Hythe dropped his gaze first, and turned back to Mrs Perlmann. ‘I’m only thinking about safeguarding your interests, my dear. In spite of what the Inspector seems to think, I don’t think it’s fair to burden Stefan at a time like this.’
Very clever, thought Stratton, and of course it contained more than a grain of truth. He’d had the impression, talking to Laskier, that Perlmann’s death hadn’t really sunk in – at least half the time he’d been talking about the man in the present tense. ‘Mr Perlmann was keen to talk to him, though,’ said Stratton. He turned to Maxine Perlmann.
‘Did he say anything to you before he died?’
‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly, ‘but he was frightened and in a lot of pain and most of it was in Polish so I didn’t understand, apart from a few words here and there. He mentioned Stefan, and straight after that he said, “Give him the things from the house.” ’
‘He said “Give Stefan the things” or “Give him the things”?’ asked Stratton.
; ‘ “Him.” ’
‘What things do you think he meant?’
‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me stay. I asked afterwards, but they said he hadn’t spoken again.’
‘So he didn’t say anything about Rutherford?’
‘No.’
Stratton wondered whether she knew about Mrs Rutherford, but decided this wasn’t the time to mention it. Instead, he said, ‘Can you remember what time Mr Perlmann died, Mrs Perlmann?’
‘Just after half past twelve.’
‘And when did you leave the hospital?’
‘About two o’clock, I think. I’m not sure.’
‘Were you driving?’
‘Yes. In the Rolls.’
‘And you were alone, were you?’
‘I would have telephoned my sister to come, but she’s away on holiday.’
‘Have you managed to contact her?’
‘Yes. I rang the hotel – she’s in France – and she said she’d get a flight back as soon as she can.’
‘Any other family members?’
‘My parents are both dead, and my brother lives in Australia. I haven’t been able to speak to him yet.’
‘Fair enough. So you drove home and you got here at what time?’
‘For pity’s sake,’ said Hythe. ‘She can’t be expected to remember—’
‘Approximately.’ Stratton cut across him. ‘Try to remember, Mrs Perlmann.’
‘About twenty minutes?’
‘OK. And what happened when you arrived home?’
‘Well, Bonita – that’s our maid, she lives here – was waiting up for me, and she made me a cup of tea and we sat in the kitchen for a bit, and then I thought I’d better ring Stefan, so I phoned around trying to find him.’
‘Where did you try?’
‘Home, first. There was no answer, so I called the Condor. I couldn’t imagine why he’d be there, but I thought Cyril might know.’
‘He answered the phone, did he?’
‘Yes. It rang for a long time, so I think I woke him up. I told him about Danny, and then I rang the club. I suppose I must have talked to Stefan for a couple of minutes before the phone was slammed down.’
