The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 5)

by Paul Charles

  Taylor okayed Judy Dillon’s remains to be replaced in a body bag and as he squeezed past Irvine to leave the small room he called across to Kennedy, ‘I’ll give you a shout with the results later.’

  ‘Fine,’ Kennedy replied absently, waving his friend goodbye. He then turned to DS Irvine and asked, ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘The upstairs neighbour,’ Irvine replied, checking his notes. ‘A Mr Bill Cunningham. He says he was woken from his sleep by noise from downstairs. He said he couldn’t be sure if what he was hearing were groans of pain or pleasure. That’s why he thought it all might be a dream. Some time later the groans sounded more like someone in trouble. Again he thought he was dreaming, then he was woken for sure by someone causing havoc below. It went on for several minutes. He thought it might be a lover’s tiff. Usual thing, he didn’t want to interfere. Then several more minutes of noises, quiet for a few moments, then someone walking down the hallway, then the front door opening and closing. He waited a few minutes but couldn’t hear any further activity. He thought everything was okay again so he tried to get back to sleep but he couldn’t. He was troubled, he said. He didn’t want to be accused of being an interfering busy-body. He said neighbours never thanked you for it. They tell you to mind your own business and, he claimed, never politely. But tonight he said he had a bad feeling and he’d never have forgiven himself if he’d not called us. So he rang shortly before three in the morning, sir.’

  ‘And here we all are, James,’ Kennedy said, surveying the SoC people on their hands and knees, tweezers in hand, searching for something, anything, just as long as they could stick it into their little plastic bags and label them up.

  Kennedy hoped they were going to put some vital evidence into these little bags. If, as Dr Taylor suspected, this was not a planned murder, then there must surely be something within the reach of a pair of tweezers that could lead Kennedy and his team to the murderer.

  Chapter 32

  ON THAT Thursday morning, Kennedy walked the short distance from Dillon’s flat to North Bridge House along tree-lined streets wet with rain. As he avoided a water-logged mess on the pavement, he wondered whether, as the original inhabitants of what was now the headquarters of Camden Town CID were monks who had kept goats, goat-do-do was as big as hazard then, as dog do-do is now.

  He pulled up the collar of his Crombie to shelter him from the cold, dark and lonely November morning. For the first time since he’d left ann rea in his bed, four hours earlier, he thought about her. He thought about them, him and her. What a weird relationship it had turned out to be.

  Would he have bothered chasing her in the first place if he’d known how it was going to turn out? But where exactly were they now? Yesterday he would have described the relationship as in the dumper. But was it now back on again? And if so, what level were they now on? Physical seemed to be the operative word. At this time in their lives Kennedy and ann rea were enjoying a very physical relationship. Kennedy wasn’t complaining. Oh no! He was counting his blessings.

  During the ‘off’ sections of their on/off relationship, Kennedy was convinced that he had slept with a woman for the last time. He was convinced there would be no one after ann rea; that he wouldn’t want anyone other than her. But he felt deeply disappointed by her inability to conduct or finish a relationship, and he suspected that this might have had some bearing on his thinking.

  But the more regular their periods of inactivity became, the more he found himself regretting the times they could have made love and hadn’t. If you’d have told him, when he was first chasing her, that there were occasions in the future when he and ann rea would be in bed together and would not be making love, he would have said, with one hundred per cent conviction ‘No way!’. Exclamation mark and all.

  It had happened, though. They had been together several times when, for one reason or another, they hadn’t made love. He found himself recalling each and every one of those occasions. Had he known what was going to happen, had his crystal ball been working then he would surely have taken better advantage of the situation each and every time. If Kennedy were now to enjoy a loveless life then he would need a reserve of memories to see him through the lonely times.

  Perhaps last night had been an opportunity to add another to the memory bank. What an addition it was, too. If that had been the final one, then that was fine, because there were few, if any, lovemaking sessions which had been better. The fact that there was no border between dream and reality made his reality open to interpretation. Then he had a thought. ann rea had asked him only a couple of days before if he’d wanted to have a child with her. Was that what this was all about?

  Kennedy had just tuned into this thought when he arrived at the steps of North Bridge House. He was surprised when entering the reception area to find Josef Jones waiting for him.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you, urgently,’ Jones announced immediately. He was dressed in his usual four-button, two-piece black suit and white shirt, top shirt button done-up, but no tie.

  ‘Sure,’ Kennedy said pleasantly. ‘Come on through.’

  ‘Ahm, I’d like to make this official. You know, with a witness and a tape recorder type of scene,’ Josef announced. The few people in the reception turned to stare at the smartly-dressed young man with the sinister voice.

  ‘Oh?’ Kennedy replied, slightly taken aback. He opened the buttons of his Crombie and continued. ‘That’s fine. Should we also send for your solicitor, Josef?’

  ‘Crikey, no, inspector.’ Josef smiled clumsily. ‘It’s not a confession or anything like that. It’s just a piece of information really. I just think we should keep it all official.’

  ‘By all means, Josef,’ Kennedy began. ‘Tell you what, you wait here, Sergeant Flynn and I will go and set everything up. Round up a witness or two.’

  *

  ‘For the record,’ Kennedy announced to the microphone, which was suspended like a giant dead daddy longlegs from the ceiling, ‘we are here to interview Josef Jones. He has some information he wishes to volunteer. Josef, would you confirm, for the record, your name and address and the fact that we’ve read you your rights and offered you a solicitor.’

  ‘I’m Josef Evan Jones of Kentish Town and I’m here of my own free will to give the police some information I think may be relevant to them in a case they are currently investigating. I—’

  ‘Don’t get carried away just yet, Josef.’ Kennedy felt he should interrupt the young man in case he gave away the entire plot of the movie before they’d a chance to roll the opening credits. ‘Those present are myself, Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy and…’

  ‘Detective Sergeant James Irvine,’ the DS announced in the space Kennedy had left.

  ‘I wanted to tell you—’ Jones made a second attempt to tell his story.

  ‘Sorry, Josef, could you also please confirm that you have been offered, and declined, a solicitor.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Jones cleared his throat, he was clearly bursting to start. ‘I can also confirm that I was offered the services of a solicitor. I was further advised that if I couldn’t afford one the court would appoint one for me. Now can I start?’

  ‘Yes, Josef,’ Kennedy said in his usual soft, quiet calm voice. ‘Please tell us what you need to tell us.’

  ‘Phew,’ Jones blew air through his lips, ‘I thought we’d never get started. I wanted to tell you that I saw Judy Dillon yesterday evening.’

  Now that was worth waiting for, Kennedy thought, and worth getting down correctly.

  ‘Tell us more,’ Kennedy said, no more formalities to lay out before the young man.

  ‘Ah, I saw her yesterday evening. We were in her flat.’ Josef whined.

  ‘Okay. I assume you realise the relevance of this?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘Of course I do. I know she’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know that, Josef?’

  ‘I went back to her flat this morning and saw all the police there. A neighbour told me that you’d taken Judy
’s body away in the middle of the night,’ Josef replied innocently.

  ‘Okay,’ Kennedy continued. Irvine and the tape recorder listened on. ‘Let’s go back to yesterday. What time did you see Judy?’

  ‘Let’s see now, I went round to her flat about…must have been after ten o’clock last night,’ Jones replied.

  ‘Why did you go round to see her?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘Oh, you know. I was missing Esther. We’re all missing Esther. It’s a hard time for all of us.’

  ‘Did she invite you round or did you just drop in?’ Kennedy continued.

  ‘Well, a bit of both really.’

  ‘Come again?’ Kennedy said.

  ‘Well, I’d been speaking to her earlier in the day and she’d said if I wanted to, I could come around and see her any time. We had a nice chat about Esther, you see. It was very friendly, very non-competitive. We fans are always trying to get one up on each other and now there’s really no point. I think Judy was completely misunderstood. Because of her weight and that, people tended to assume there wasn’t much going on. But she was a very bright girl, very well read. You can see why Esther would hire someone like Judy to look after her children. You know she’d be happy that they’d grow up in an atmosphere of books and things. Anyway, for the first time I saw another side to her. She’d usually be quite coarse and hard but I think that’s because she was always on the defensive because of her weight. You are often either a “look at me I’m such a jolly fat person” or else you’re hard and have a chip on your shoulder. I always thought she was hard and one-dimensional. Quite frankly I used to think she was completely useless. About as useful as a stylist with Abba.’

  Jones stopped to laugh at his own joke. When it became obvious the police weren’t getting it he said, ‘You know, Abba, the Swedish group, renowned for their poppy songs but not for their dress sense.’

  ‘I got it, Josef.’ Kennedy replied deadpan. ‘But, anyway, what did you and Judy do round at her flat yesterday evening?’

  ‘We listened to Esther’s records. We talked about the old days, we watched a few videos of Esther’s rare television appearances. We discussed her lyrics. Judy had a few signed sets of lyrics she showed me. I never knew they existed. She didn’t want to sell them. I told her she’d probably get a fortune for them from someone in America now.’

  Jones stopped talking for a minute, appearing remorseful. ‘You know what she said?’ he started in his high-pitched whine. It was hard to tell, because of the texture of his voice, if he was being emotional or not. ‘She said that the lyrics were worth nothing to her because she’d never ever sell them. She’d keep them forever, no matter what she was offered.’

  Near-quiet reigned in the interview room. The only noises beneath the white-washed high ceiling were the ticking of the clock on the wall, the gentle hum of the tape recorder and the faint buzz of the neon strip lights.

  ‘And that was it? That was all you did? Just talked, listened to music and looked through her collection of Esther’s signed lyric sheets?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘No, we had some wine and…and…then we made love.’

  Kennedy and Irvine looked at each other in disbelief.

  ‘Then you made love?’ Irvine stammered, his first question of the interview.

  ‘Well, yes. I mean, it wasn’t planned or anything. It just kind of happened,’ Josef admitted shyly.

  Kennedy held this thought for a few seconds. It just kind of happened. By any stretch of his imagination he couldn’t imagine how it could just kind of happen with Judy Dillon. She was probably a nice girl and all that, but Josef Jones wouldn’t have been sitting beside the nanny, talking one minute and getting naked the next.

  Who would have done what? And how? That was one of the world’s major mysteries to Kennedy – how people managed to get it together. The whole scenario was pretty preposterous when you thought about it. What we all do to each other physically and then on top of that, if that weren’t enough, what we use to do it. Come on, really! Sometimes, Kennedy wondered how mankind had managed to last so long. Other times – usually when he was with ann rea as in with ann rea – he wondered how the population managed to stay so low.

  ‘Really?’ was the only word Kennedy could find to say and, in saying it, he returned to the broadest Ulster accent he’d ever used.

  ‘Yes. Really!’ Jones replied in a high-pitched indignant whine.

  ‘No, it’s just…’ Kennedy was flustered now, aware that the recorder was catching every word and inflection. ‘It’s just that the last time we spoke, well…you betrayed none of this affection, where did it all suddenly come from, Josef?’

  ‘Grief,’ Jones replied. ‘It came from our united grief. We’d both lost a very important part of our lives. I shared something special with Esther. She hadn’t been with too many men in her life, you know. She wasn’t like some of the slags in the music business. She wanted me. She picked me to spend time with. I was special to her. I cared for her more than that ass Yeats ever cared and now he’ll get control of everything. Bit by bit he’ll start to rewrite history. In ten years’ time people like Judy and myself… Oh feck!’

  Jones checked himself at what he was about to say. ‘You know what I was about to say. I was about to say that in ten years’ time even people like Judy and me will doubt our memories of Esther. Then it hit me, Judy’s gone, she’s not going to be with us in ten years’ time.’

  ‘So you and Judy got together because of your mutual grief?’ Irvine asked. Kennedy sensed a spot of lip-biting.

  ‘Yes. I’d have to say simply and honestly, yes. I didn’t go round with the intention of making love to her. As I say, it just happened and neither of us regretted it,’ Jones said.

  ‘How much time did you spend at Judy’s flat, yesterday evening?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘A few hours, I’d say.’

  ‘What? Say, two hours? Three hours? Just how many hours, Josef?’ Irvine continued.

  ‘Maximum of two and a half, I’d say.’

  ‘Ahm, I know this is a delicate question and I hope you won’t take offence but can I ask you how many times you made love during that two and a half hours?’ Kennedy elected himself to ask the question both he and his DS were leading up to.

  ‘Pl-ea-se!’ Jones screeched. There wasn’t much variation from his normal tone; he was just an octave higher.

  ‘I know, call me insensitive if you must, but it is important, Josef,’ Kennedy said by way of explanation.

  ‘Why just once of course,’ Jones admitted.

  ‘Okay. Okay. We’ve got that part out of the way now. You came round about seven thirty and left about ten then?’ Kennedy asked, hoping to move right along.

  ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

  ‘And when you left, did you see anyone else loitering around?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anything suspicious?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Tell me, Josef. This love making between you and Judy, did it happen at the beginning of the two and one half hours or did it happen at the end?’ Kennedy asked, swinging back to pick up a few stragglers.

  ‘Towards the end, I suppose.’

  ‘And, ahm, did you have a drink of anything?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘We’d some wine.’

  ‘A little wine, a lot of wine?’ Kennedy pushed.

  ‘Sorry? What does that matter?’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to forgive me, Josef, but the way I see it, you’re a well-dressed, handsome young man. You are, I believe, what your contemporaries would define as “cool”. So you’re not exactly short of women friends now, are you? You admitted to us you’ve been to bed with Esther Bluewood. Now with the greatest respect, Judy Dillon was no Esther Bluewood—’

  ‘Some of us hide our beauty within, detective,’ Josef said, cutting across Kennedy’s flow.

  ‘Exactly, Josef; that’s my point exactly. I would agree with you that Judy probably did conceal her beauty. Now a
little drop of wine might possibly have loosened both of you up. Can you see what I’m getting at here?’ Kennedy asked, grateful for the lifeline.

  ‘I had a few glasses of wine. I was merry. Yes. I wasn’t drunk.’

  ‘I have another question I need to ask you, Josef. Again, it’s not meant to upset you,’ Kennedy said, hiking his shoulders into a ‘Can I ask the question?’ pose.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ahm, did you wear any kind of protection?’

  ‘This is unbearable. Ple-ase don’t forget I came in here of my own free will to give you information I thought might be helpful to your inquiry.’

  ‘Exactly, Josef,’ Kennedy said, ‘and the answer to this question will give us a vital piece of information. I need to know the answer, so that when Dr Taylor is carrying out his autopsy… Well, you know…?’

  ‘No. I did not wear any protection. As I said, it wasn’t a planned romantic interlude. It just happened, and that’s that,’ Josef said. Kennedy half expected him to dust off his hands in a classic Stan Laurel action, as his high-pitched whine continued, ‘And now gentlemen, I don’t believe I have any more information I have to give you. If that’s okay, I’d like to—’

  ‘Why yes, of course, Josef. If you’d like to leave, you’ve always been free to do so,’ Kennedy said, as much for the tape recorder as for Josef.

  Josef rose from the table as if to go.

  ‘But,’ Kennedy began, ‘I do have one final question for you.’

  Josef flopped despondently back into his chair.

  ‘What did you do after you left Judy Dillon’s flat?’

  ‘I wandered around Camden Town for a while. It’s top you know, Camden Town at nighttime. Such a blast! I caught the twenty-nine bus and I was home about eleven thirty or so.’