A Detective in Love

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘We think you went early one morning in June, a few days before Bubbles Xingara was killed, down to the Leven by Adam and Eve House, and waited there for her to come back from her run. And then ... Then what did you do? Did you try to kiss her? And she ––what? — gave you a good kick, sent you sprawling, showed you all too plainly she didn’t want anything of that sort. So you came back later, carrying a javelin you had somehow got hold of, even if you just thought it was a long stick with a sharp point. And, because she hadn’t let you make love to her, you thrust that long weapon — did you think it was your prick, Brewer? –– deep into her throat. Were you aiming for her mouth, Brewer? The lips she wouldn’t let you kiss? Were you? Were you?’

  ‘No, no, no, no. No, never. Never. I wasn’t there ever. I didn’t do that.’

  ‘You expect us to believe you? When, as soon as you heard Bubbles’ body had been found, you dropped everything and tried to get out of the country? You really expect us to believe you weren’t there at all at Adam and Eve House?’

  ‘I was there.’

  Ah, at last. At last the cough.

  Yet, even as the triumphant thought bloomed in her mind, she felt an inkling of doubt. A tiny question mark in one corner of the page. Something not quite right. Perhaps it was the sudden picture of Grant Brewer walking towards the murder scene carrying that long, eight-foot, pointed spear. Hard exactly to see.

  Brewer, opposite her, sat blinking.

  Then, with a curious dipping of his head somehow like a swimming bird gathering up a floating morsel, he spoke again.

  ‘I was there. But not down by the river. I was never down there. It was when she first came to the house, when she bought it, and I was working on the roof. An’ ... An’ she was nice to me when she met me going up and down. She spoke to me. Morning, Grant, she said.’

  He seemed to think he had told them enough, and Harriet began to feel that perhaps he had. Or perhaps not.

  ‘So it was then that you fell in love with her?’

  Oh, Eros, Eros, she thought, how many others have you hurled down to their deaths, or to the living death of a life sentence?

  ‘She was lovely. She smiled.’

  ‘And that was all? She smiled for you?’

  ‘I never did it. I never.’

  Now, she abruptly realized, they had arrived at the last chance. The boy had denied being at Adam and Eve House when Bubbles had been murdered, and certainly it looked somehow unlikely that someone, who in all probability had never known what a javelin was, had carried one there and killed her with it. More, he had said, not unconvincingly, that his whole relationship with Bubbles lay in responding to her careless smiles. But wasn’t the boy, even now, doing what any murderer would do, as long as they could keep it up? Deny everything, time and again.

  So, one last banging-out attempt.

  ‘Right. Out at Adam and Eve House, when you were working there, Bubbles smiled for you. She smiled, and you smiled back. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You wanted to make love to her, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. No, I couldn’t. Me ... and her. I — I’d never — I couldn’t make myself even talk to her, could I?’

  And then she saw it. Grant Brewer might be daring up on the high roofs of buildings, but that was the sole daring he could rise to. He hadn’t had the courage to speak so much as a word when carefree Bubbles, flashing by, gave him one of her cheerful smiles, the smiles she bestowed on everyone.

  ‘So,’ she said, almost wearily, ‘you in fact seldom even exchanged a word with Bubbles Xingara?’

  ‘No. No. How could I? With her? Bubbles?’

  ‘And you weren’t at Adam and Eve House early one June morning when Bubbles was coming back from her run, and you didn’t accost her then?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t of. I — I wouldn’t of dared.’

  ‘The first you heard of Bubbles’ murder was when, up on that roof in Chapeltown, the radio was on at your meal-break —’

  ‘Yes, yes. Then. Then, and I — I had to go. Get away.’

  And you did not, on the morning of June the twentieth last, go to Adam and Eve House carrying an offensive weapon, namely one athletics javelin?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  The simple total denial. And believable now.

  *

  Back in her office, Harriet refused to let herself think again about Anselm, even though there had been no opportunity to indicate by a touch of a hand, or the quickest of looks, that his time of exile was at an end.

  She sat down and began to go through the messages and memos she ought to have dealt with earlier. She saw the task as anaesthesia. Sooner or later she would have to decide what to do about Anselm. But not yet. First must come the fact that, once more, her inquiry was back to the bogged-down state she had snarled over at her briefing.

  But the first sheet of paper she picked up — it was, yes, oily with the sweat her hands had planted on it when she had forced herself to go down to question Grant Brewer — turned out to be a message from the Leven Vale Chief Constable.

  Detective Superintendent Martens. Please see me at your earliest convenience. And a squiggle of initials.

  She felt a flush of shame. A request from a much senior officer, in such definite terms, ought not to have been neglected.

  She picked up her phone and asked Mr Tarlington’s secretary whether he was free to see her.

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Martens. Yes, he’s been waiting for you.’

  She hurried down to her car, drove the short distance to Leven Vale Police headquarters in an old mansion about a mile out of the town. Mr Tarlington, in uniform as always, sitting upright, dwarfed by his desk, face set, sticking-out ears redder than ever, gave her a sharp look through his perched-on rimless glasses.

  Ah, Miss Martens. Yes, I wanted to see you. A matter, let me say, of some immediacy.’

  ‘Yes, sir? I’m sorry. An urgent interrogation.’

  The eyes behind the glinting spectacles lit up.

  ‘It’s brought a result?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir. It was a young man, a roofer, who abruptly left his job the moment he heard about Miss Xingara’s death. However, under pressure he proved to have been simply scared, because some time ago he’d had a conviction for indecent assault and he had been working at Adam and Eve House when Miss Xingara first bought it.’

  ‘Nothing to it then? You’re sure?’

  I wouldn’t have told you if I hadn’t been sure, would I?

  But all she said was, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Now, what I wanted to see you about was this: I had a meeting yesterday with my Police Authority, who were yet more concerned than myself at the rate of expenditure on your inquiry. We have already well exceeded our budget for the whole of this year, and there are still three months to go. I’ve been looking at the figures for overtime expenditure. Frankly, they’re horrifying. They have to be reduced, Miss Martens. Drastically reduced.’

  ‘I understand your concern, sir, and your Police Authority’s. But the fact remains that Bubbles Xingara was a nationally known figure, an internationally known one. The public expects a result, and goes on expecting one. Not a week passes, as you must very well know, without some reference in the press somewhere to her murder. To be blunt, a reference as often as not to our lack of progress. I attempt to keep expenditure down. Of course I do. But in a situation like this every line of inquiry has to be traced to its very end.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I know. I know all that, Miss Martens. But the fact remains the Leven Vale Police cannot afford the demands you have been making.’

  He produced a smile that was more like a grimace.

  ‘You know, sometimes I find myself wishing that it had been one of my officers who had first come across that body and that he had had sense enough to carry it across the Leven and dump it in Greater Birchester Police territory. Only a few yards away.’

  ‘I understand, sir. But let me point out you have had a great deal of assistance from our side. T
here’s not only myself but DI Anderson, a very experienced and efficient officer, as well as almost half the team of detectives deployed.’

  ‘That’s as may be, Miss Martens. That’s as may be. But, say what you will, my Authority is demanding that less be spent.’

  ‘So what do you propose, sir? Specifically?’

  Put the ball into his court — as powerfully as the Brit with the Hit had ever done.

  Mr Tarlington looked down at the desk in front of him. And then looked up.

  ‘Well, what I have had in mind for some time, Miss Martens, is this. That ... That you should return to Birchester — I’ve had a word in fact with your Chief Constable — and take up purely administrative duties there, so that you can still exercise a general supervision over the Xingara investigation. We will, of course, retain DI Anderson, an officer as you say of impressive efficiency, in day-to-day charge here.’

  Handy Andy, Harriet thought. Shouldn’t have put in that anodyne experienced and efficient. Only true on the surface. I’ve always thought Anselm, despite his failures, the better man. So, put his name forward? Give him the boost he deserves, and I’d like him to have?

  But, no. No, I can’t be seen to be favouring him, not when Handy Andy’s there with his tale of trousers-down all ready to spill.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ she said out loud. ‘If that’s your decision.’

  The Leven Vale Chief Constable must have heard the note of something like anger under her terse reply.

  This was, in fact, much more of a step-down than the vague idea about her working from Birchester which he had earlier put forward.

  He shifted to left and right in his high-backed chair.

  ‘Of course, Miss Martens,’ he said hastily, ‘I see you still as very much in the driving seat of the inquiry. Your work with us much appreciated. Much appreciated. The Hard Detective, you know.’ His twisted teeth appeared in a sort of grin. ‘It goes without saying, absolutely, that you must be available to come back at a moment’s notice should any strong new lead emerge.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  What was my first thought, Harriet said to herself, looking back, when I heard that, in effect, I was to be taken off the inquiry? That I had to all intents and purposes failed with it? Anselm, I had thought at once. I’m to be taken away from Anselm. Will I ever see him again? Will I? Is this after all the end of everything?

  Then, immediately, she had pulled herself together. Of course, she could see Anselm, if she wanted to. And she did. She did. She was not being banished from some fairy kingdom; she was being sent back from Levenham, to Birchester, not much more than twenty miles away. There would be nothing really to prevent her driving over to Anselm. She could make the journey inside half an hour. She could make it every single day.

  She let a wry grin distort her face.

  Administrative duties. In other words, not much to do. There would be plenty of chances to get hold of Anselm, put him in her car and drive ... Drive to somewhere where they could make love, make love as often and as freely as they could ever want. Why not? Eros rules, OK.

  And at the same time a parallel thought slid into her mind. Now I’ll see more of John. That’ll be nice. Long chats in the evening, gossip about life at the nerve-hub of the mighty Majestic. Those stuffed pockets of his yielding more scraps of the wisdom of the ages, hastily noted down. I shall even be able to relieve him of some of the household duties he’s been so good about doing while I’ve been spending almost the whole of every day in bloody Levenham.

  And the twins’ll be back for Christmas. We’ll be able for once to have a full family gathering. Must look out that pudding recipe I clipped from The Times all those years ago.

  Then, like a deep gong stroke heralding some final ending, she found her mind abruptly filled with the poised heavyweight thought that, her Aphrodite-tangled love for Anselm blotting out everything else, it blotted out, too, the Christmas pudding. It blotted out John’s learnedly stuffed pockets, the twins’ careers at university. It was going to shatter the whole structure she had lived in for twenty years and more. She had been wedlocked. That was it. Wedlocked. And a hammer blow was going to send that lock flying into fragments.

  Now, if she put herself wholly into Anselm’s keeping, as she wanted to do, as she desired with all her force to do, she must tell John what had happened. Make her confession.

  And then ... Then it would all be over. Oh, yes, perhaps she would be at home over Christmas, would even make that pudding. But the Christmas feast would be no more than a pale mockery, however much she enjoyed John’s company, however pleased she was about Graham and Malcolm’s progress. If she loved Anselm the way she did — and she did, she did — then it would mean the ending of a whole long period of her life.

  Eros. Eros, that mighty god, would have had one more triumph. No, he had had that triumph with her. Among the millions down the long ages he had brought into the arms of Aphrodite, senseless victims, she, too, ranked.

  A twisted and ugly triumph, as twisted and ugly in its way as when someone, driven surely by the sexual demon within them, had killed bright, happy, admired Bubbles Xingara.

  Then back to her had come the realization of what Mr Tarlington’s bland gratitude really meant.

  Am I now never to be the one who finds out who killed Bubbles Xingara? Who among all the hundreds and thousands out there had had the opportunity to wield that long, sharp-pointed javelin?

  Has the Hard Detective’s time come to an end? Was I at last up against something too hard for me?

  No, damn it, I was not. If I’d been allowed more time, extra resources, I would have found that killer. It might have taken me months more. It might have taken years more. But hard work would have done it.

  Someone approached Bubbles Xingara that cloudless morning in June and thrust a javelin into her throat. That was a fact. That there was a someone. And that fact would have left other facts in its wake. All right, all the searches at Adam and Eve House had found nothing, and it was almost beyond the bounds of possibility after the passing of so many months that anything now could be found. But there were other facts than those generated by that one brutal fact of the killing itself. There was the fact that, first of all, someone had got hold of the javelin. Then there was the fact that they had actually committed the murder, and that they were a person, a real human being moving about in the real world. Someone, somewhere, would have seen them in the aftermath of that killing behaving out of character. And, although what they may have seen might have meant nothing to them at the time, at some future point something about that person’s behaviour, perhaps when they were once again struck down by dread Eros, would be markedly different. Then that someone would perhaps begin to ask why they had changed, and at last speak out about their misgivings.

  So I could have detected it, if I had been allowed to stay a hundred per cent on the case. Hard work, hard detecting, would have brought Bubbles’ killer to light, eventually. If I had been permitted to work hard.

  But now, now, what will I do? Call up Anderson from time to time and ask how things are going? A fat lot of good that will be.

  And, worse, am I soon even going to be as much on the case as I will be sitting in some backwater office at Greater Birchester Police headquarters? Because I am in love with Anselm Brent. The pillar-cloud of sexuality will be enveloping us. So twist and evade as we may, it is more than likely that before long someone in the media will get to learn about us, and both our careers will be over. Then where am I likely to be in six months’ time? A former detective superintendent who once had a triumphant career and who, copybook blotted as they put it, is now — what? — someone summoned when a new police series is coming to television to advise? Someone whose name can be used as bait in an advertisement for an anti-burglar device? Someone eking out a sort of living alongside club bouncer Anselm Brent.

  So better now to make that confession of mine to John? To act before he sees those headli
nes? To say that, like many and many another, I fell foul of the great Eros, that I’m caught in Aphrodite’s softly steel-meshed net?

  *

  The best-laid plans of mice and men, as the poet Burns is always ready to remind us, John said with a wry grin that evening, gang aft a-gley. When, as a preliminary to what she had stiffened herself to confess, Harriet had told him she would soon be working back in Birchester, the last thing she had expected was that he would have equally surprising news for her.

  ‘Well, you know our masters, mine as well as yours so it seems, think nothing of changing the course of our lives with the briefest of warnings.’

  ‘What? What’s this? Your masters have exploded some bombshell under you, too?’

  ‘They have. Another Indian one, you might say. It seems our people out there have got themselves into a jam again. And, as the one who was able to sort them out last time, I’m being sent there.’

  ‘And where exactly?’

  ‘Oh, New Delhi, of course. That’s where our office is, after all.’

  ‘So ... So, well, will you be seeing your beautiful widow, Mrs — What was her name?’

  ‘I’ve a feeling I don’t need to tell you.’

  ‘No. You’re right, actually. Burnt into my mind, sort of. Mrs Kamala Singh.’

  ‘Correct. And, no, I don’t know whether I’ll see her or not. If she gets to hear I’m in Delhi, and the news goes whizzing round in her sort of circles, then she’ll certainly expect me to call. And I suppose I will. Probably. If only because it’s the polite thing to do. But, of course, I’ll have no intention of — what? — stoking old fires. But that’s something that’ll be rather out of my hands, whether I go to see her or not. You know my theory, as you choose to call it, about that grim old god sitting up there, Eros by name.’