The Drowned Man

by David Whellams

  “Câlice. What are you going to do with that?”

  “Very likely nothing,” Peter said. By the weight of it, he could tell that the cheap Lorcin pistol was fully loaded. He guessed that Alida Nahvi had taken it from the hooker, or perhaps bought it from a street dealer somewhere in the States. It was unlikely that Alida had done any maintenance, but nor were there signs that the gun had been dunked in the Anacostia River. Peter removed a round and saw that it contained a standard-calibre load. He did not like the fact that the pistol was chrome-plated and would reflect light. It would fire if he needed it to, but hitting anything vital with the .380 was sketchy beyond a few inches.

  “What do you want me to do?” Pascal said.

  The weapon excited the professor. A good reason to keep civilians away from a potential crime scene, Peter reflected.

  “What’s the address?”

  “It’s 336 Carleton Way. What can I do to help?”

  Peter pocketed the gun and got out of the car. He ignored his friend’s question and began ambling down the sidewalk. Pascal hissed, his voice loud enough to alarm any dog walker, “Should I lock the car?”

  Peter spread his hands palms up; he had no time for rhetorical questions. Pascal clicked the locks with his remote and they walked in tandem along the street. Pascal might have been familiar with the house and the neighbourhood but he acted like an amateur. He looked around nervously, goofier than a lost tourist. Peter feared a patrolling police officer or private security guard noticing them. He picked up the pace.

  As they arrived at the gate to the big house, which Peter judged to have been built in the early 1900s, Renaud faltered. “Shouldn’t we wait for Deroche and his cavalry?”

  In a flat voice Peter said, “I didn’t call him. Between you and me, I’m not giving the inspector an excuse to shoot a separatist and then claim he thought he was a mafia hit man.” The last thing he wanted was Deroche’s entire organized crime squad descending on Seep’s home.

  Pascal Renaud saw that his companion was determined to handle this situation solo, and that rescue by the local gendarmes was far from his mind. To his credit, Renaud suppressed his fear and merely said, “Is the girl in there?”

  “I’m guessing not,” Peter replied. “She was there, for certain, but she would be crazy to stick around.”

  “Do you think Seep is dead?” Renaud persisted. “Why did she come here at all?”

  “For the third letter. And other reasons.”

  Peter could make out Pascal’s face by the diffuse glow of a street lamp and marked the concern and confusion in his eyes. Seep was his enemy but violence wasn’t an acceptable tactic in academic wars.

  He eased past the iron gate and started up the long path to the stone front steps.

  “What do you want me to do?” Pascal whispered. Darkness veiled the professor’s face but Peter sensed his rising panic.

  “I’m going to try the front. If it’s locked, I’ll use the back. You stay here.”

  Pascal’s antennae were fully engaged and he understood immediately why Peter was taking the bold approach: he expected that Alida Nahvi had left the oak-and-iron front door unlocked.

  They were on the top step now. “When we get inside,” Peter said, “point me to the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. I need you to do that.”

  Instead of responding with another stage whisper, or some hand signal, Renaud reached around Peter and turned the knob. The door swung inward.

  Peter gestured to Pascal to take off his shoes. He did the same and they tiptoed down the hallway on the runner, Peter leading so that he could be the one to choose which of the several rooms to penetrate.

  The house was what estate agents in Britain called a strict centre-hall plan: the corridor they were in ran almost to the kitchen at the back of the house; the living room waited on their right, the dining room on the left. Peter lingered, listened, heard nothing; he began to absorb the layout of the ground floor. Alida had left the front door unlocked. She had meant him to enter this way.

  To the left or the right? The next provocation would come soon and he would have to be in position. Peter had no plan to use the gun. It had feeble stopping power at any distance. The girl had left it for him to show that she was not returning to Seep’s mansion.

  Yet the question still haunted him: could Alida be inside? How much danger waited in the farthest rooms? Peter’s thoughts roiled in anticipation of what he might find. Did her gift of the gun mean that she wasn’t leaving him a corpse? He kept the weapon in his pocket. Seep could be anywhere in the house, tied up in the master bedroom, perhaps, although Peter didn’t think that was Alida’s style. Alida Nahvi had a sadistic streak but sexual humiliation was not her way. A criminal psychologist, he knew, likely wouldn’t have bought into that distinction.

  Peter waited another minute. Pascal was no help, crouched on the hallway carpet behind him. Peter stared down the corridor and started to gain clarity. He projected his thoughts like tracers into each of the three rooms ahead and grew certain that he would find Seep tied up in one of them. Peter was seventy-one years old and had seen everything. He had killed men (about one-and-a-half per decade of service, Bartleben had once ventured). The moment he picked up the weapon from the rug in Pascal’s bedroom, he admitted to himself that he would use the pistol if necessary tonight.

  Either to save Professor Seep, or to kill him.

  There in the cold hallway, protocol and jurisdiction — all the rules — faded to the background. Alida had savaged and executed another woman out of desperation. Unlike Maddy, who was loved and was about to have a child, Alida had lived her short life in a looking-glass world populated by men who wanted to exploit her and hunt her. By her standards, holding back on killing Seep was progress, however perverse the calculation. Peter did not forgive her, and did not conjure up a scenario of redemption, but for tonight he would let her run.

  Peter concluded that the pencil torch would alert the neighbours faster than the regular lights in the mansion. As Peter, with Pascal right behind him, turned into the living room, he heard a moan from across the hall. They crossed back and Peter hit the first switch that his hand met. The central chandelier in the dining room flared on in full glory, illuminating a mahogany table and twelve chairs. Expensive flock wallpaper was almost obscured by dozens of paintings that reminded Peter of the chockablock displays in the Palazzo Pitti in Italy. There were precious works by Lemieux, Borduas, and Riopelle. Pretension was the aim but the blood-soaked fellow at the far end of the room tied to the immense mahogany sideboard destroyed the effect.

  Olivier Seep sat with his back against one leg of the sideboard, to which he was tied by what appeared to be a dog leash wrapped several times around his torso; it was knotted where he could not reach. Darkening blood formed a long ‘V’ down his torn shirtfront. He was missing several front teeth and it looked as though he had vomited the blood. A bruise had welled up on the right side of his forehead. He was semi-conscious and evidently had been drifting in and out. He could have snapped the leg of the sideboard with a forward lurch but the action would have brought the furniture and a hundred pounds of valuable china and flatware down on his trussed body.

  Renaud’s moan almost matched Seep’s as he moved around Peter to untie his helpless rival. Peter stopped him.

  “Pascal, I want you to go to the kitchen, turn on the lights, and see if any dog dishes are sitting on the floor.”

  “Dog dishes?”

  “He’s bound with a cord that might be a dog leash. Do you know if he owns a dog? The thing we don’t need is a Doberman launching itself at us.”

  “A dog? No bloody idea.”

  The cascade of blood from Seep’s mouth made it difficult to check for a pulse under his jaw but Peter tested his left wrist and found a strong beat. He would live. Peter worried for a brief moment that Alida might have killed the professor�
��s pet but concluded that this wasn’t her kind of perversity. Monitoring the entrance to the dining room, he shot a glance towards the kitchen, now brightly lit by overhead neons. Renaud looked back and shook his head. When Pascal made to return to the sideboard, Peter held up a traffic cop’s palm then moved to join his friend in the kitchen. Peter noted that the chain was on the back door. The attack would come from the front of the house. Peter crouched at the kitchen entrance to the dining area, less than six feet from the wounded man.

  The centre hallway did not connect directly to the kitchen, so the two men could not be seen from the front vestibule. The light from the chandelier in the dining area would lead the attacker that way, Peter hoped. He motioned to Pascal to extinguish the overhead in the kitchen. A further hand motion kept him quiet, although Pascal continued to watch with distress the bloody figure bound to the sideboard.

  This time Peter kept the gun at the ready. After a short while, he saw Pascal, his knees cramping, slump to the floor, back against the kitchen cupboards, inadvertently mimicking Seep in the dining room. It would only be a few minutes. There was no point in shutting off any lights; they didn’t matter now. Another five minutes passed. Peter was content to wait but he could detect his friend’s growing agitation. He had a point: calling an ambulance was the responsible thing to do.

  Peter took the moment to revisit Alida’s appearance at the townhouse. He understood Alida’s cryptic parting words: “I have the last two letters.” Alida had stolen the Williams–Thompson document from Greenwell the night of the killing. She had tracked down Seep and stolen the Booth–Williams letter to complete the set. Now she possessed all three letters.

  Peter heard the sound from the direction of the front door. He stood up in his stocking feet. He waved to Pascal to remain still. Peter shifted to the dining room from the kitchen and took a position in front of Seep’s crumpled figure. He concealed the gun by holding it below table level.

  Dunning Malloway, pistol in his right hand, squinted against the chandelier’s glare as he entered from the hallway. Peter remembered the two pairs of shoes in the vestibule; the intruder would be fully alert to the threat from two men. Malloway was sweating but otherwise was composed. He seemed puzzled by Peter, but not angry or particularly focused on him.

  Peter knew that the massive dining room table and his own upper body blocked Malloway’s view of Seep. Perhaps the younger man heard a sound or smelled the blood, but he did not hesitate further. He raised his .38 and, striking a duellist’s stance, aimed it down the length of the polished table.

  CHAPTER 42

  They sat in the car in the rain and stared at the back of the Violet Care Home.

  “Joe hasn’t been here,” Maddy said, almost disappointed.

  The crumbling asphalt parking area contained only a few staff cars, including a Vauxhall, which displayed a “Visiting Chaplain” card in the side window. The rear door of the institution appeared firmly locked, the whole building tranquil.

  “We guessed wrong,” Michael said. But he wasn’t entirely displeased. Husband and wife had argued about whether to come down to Henley at all. “If Joe Carpenter is spinning out of control, the Thames Valley Police should handle it,” he had said.

  “They won’t consent to posting a constable here for hours at a time,” was Maddy’s retort.

  Michael refrained from asking whether he and Maddy themselves would end up stationed outside Avril Nahri’s place the whole day. His wife was playing detective and was determined to impress her father-in-law, though Michael kept that opinion to himself. Instead, he deferred to her obsession with the Carpenter case, as Maddy knew he would. An hour after the panic call from Carole Carpenter they were on their way from Leeds to Henley-on-Thames.

  They agreed that Maddy would investigate the Violet Care facility while Michael took Jasper for a pee on the grass fringe of the parking lot. Maddy had to walk around to the front of the home in order to gain access. She returned in twenty minutes. The drizzle had increased and Michael was waiting inside the car with the damp dog.

  “There’s been nothing,” she reported. “Security seems pretty good. A lot of it to keep the residents in, but they’re confident that anyone intent on causing a disturbance will be stopped at the door. A buzz-in is required to get past the first gate. And all the security stuff we both know well.”

  They both managed difficult people, inmates in his job, wife batterers in hers. He had been through two hostage-takings at regional prisons; she had been present the night a vengeful husband broke into a hostel where his wife had taken refuge and stabbed two staff members.

  Maddy rushed out the passenger side, went over to the grass verge and threw up. Back in the car, she said, “I’m calling Peter.”

  Michael’s action was counterintuitive, a bit unreal to him. He reached over and covered Maddy’s cell phone with his hand. “No.”

  He had been the cautious one until now, ardent to protect his pregnant wife, while sceptical that they would find anything at all in Henley or Shiplake. Ambivalent, he had even agreed to bring Jasper, thus making the trip a family excursion. But now he saw that Maddy, who had spent so many hours chasing down Alida, remained serious. She sat next to him, holding back nausea, her hair soaked. If she was this obsessed, let this husband-and-wife adventure play out, Michael ruled.

  Besides, Jasper, panting in the back seat, was proxy for her master, Chief Inspector Peter Cammon, father and father-in-law. She leaned forward between the seats, ready for their next adventure. Peter would have been proud to know that Michael and Maddy felt his presence in the car.

  “No, Maddy, we’re going to Shiplake.”

  The rain seemed to be on a cycle; it returned in shimmering veils, as if bent on submerging cars and pedestrians alike. At the assisted living home the story repeated itself: only a dozen cars in the car park and no recent in-and-out traffic. The building seemed battened down to the Cammons. Residents of old-folks’ homes eat early and without doubt the elderly residents had already been led off for their afternoon naps. Maddy had her husband drop her by the side door so that he could take the sedan somewhere out of plain view. The rain faded again as Michael pulled over by the long, curving driveway and let Jasper run off leash in the nearby copse of sumacs and poplars. The home was out of sight around the curve. He spent fifteen minutes looking without much interest at the sodden trees. Jasper, free at last, ran through the mucky forest bed until Michael was forced to enter the wood to find her. He dragged her out of a ditch and bundled her into the back seat of the sedan. Her stench forced him to wind down the driver-side window a few inches.

  Michael got out and strode along the mucky access road towards the residence. Still out of view of Maddy, he heard someone say, distinctly, “I’ve seen you.”

  He halted. There was no one on the roadway or in the woods. Some strange thermal inversion had caused the voice to bounce off the underside of the cloud bank and reach him seventy yards away. As he crept around the final curve, the clouds broke and allowed a shaft of sunlight through. Fog steamed off the asphalt and hung three feet from the ground. Outside the side door of the residence, Maddy was standing still, facing Joe Carpenter through the haze. Joe was pointing a large handgun directly at her breastbone.

  Tommy Verden lived much closer to Henley-on-Thames than Michael and Maddy did but he had to fight his way out of the London suburbs that morning. He brought the Mercedes, the company car and the one he savoured driving. It won some respect from other vehicles and he made progress through the morning rush. Peter’s message had been a little too brief in that it left Tommy unclear about what Joe Carpenter hoped to achieve by threatening Alida Nahvi’s family. Like Michael and Maddy, Verden set his Sat Nav for the sister’s place first — having obtained the location from Bartleben’s assistant — since Avril was supposedly Carpenter’s primary target. By late morning he reached the car park of the Violet Care Home. Peering through the pelt
ing rain he sized up the situation, and without stopping the Mercedes decided that all was normal here; the car park was a still life and the building an adequate fortress. His sense of urgency grew. He quickly reset the Sat Nav for Shiplake. On the last stretch before the nursing home he took his Glock out of its special case and positioned it on the passenger seat.

  The long driveway up to the building appeared quiet but the heavy rain had given way to a hovering blanket of steam and it was impossible for Tommy to discern the layout of the grounds, let alone be sure that no shooter was skulking about. There was a familiar figure up ahead, just at the curve, but it wasn’t Joe Carpenter.

  Michael turned at the purr of the approaching Mercedes. He hadn’t yet seen the car, but in a state of uprooted amazement recognized the purr of the engine. It was a sound from his childhood at the cottage, the floating chariot — or its modern replacement — driven by the man they called Uncle Tommy. For Michael and Sarah, Tommy had always been the family protector. Michael crept back around the curve, sure that Joe Carpenter had not yet seen him. He waved to Tommy to halt, worried that Joe might hear the big car. The older man caught the fear on the other’s face; he immediately got out of the Mercedes and beckoned to Michael. When Jasper, in the Saab, saw her temporary master walking away, she began to whimper. Tommy opened the back door of the Mercedes.

  “Bring the mutt back here,” he hissed.

  Though there was little time, Michael followed Tommy’s instructions and opened the Saab to let Jasper into the road. The retriever vaulted over the front seat and scampered onto the muddy path before Michael could grab her. Tommy, his disgust ill concealed, ushered the dog into the luxurious interior of the E-Class Mercedes and closed the door.

  “Tommy —”

  “Who cares about upholstery?” Verden said. The Mercedes stood farther from the nursing home than the Saab, and maybe a barking dog wouldn’t be audible at that distance. He shook his head and put the Glock in his jacket pocket. Michael was supposed to be the moderate, sane one in the Cammon family and now here he was bringing his mutt to a potential shootout. The Cammon girls were usually the wild ones. Sarah was so independent that every move in her life seemed made out of contrariness. Joan ruled the roost and was tougher than Peter (Tommy liked that very much). Maddy was cut from the same cloth and he had no doubt that she was the leader in this adventure. Michael, in his view, was lucky to have her; she was family now and no different than the other “kids.”