A Detective in Love

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘DI,’ she said to Anselm. ‘I’d like a word. Go and sit in the car out of the cold. And, Sergeant, take this back to Levenham and get it sent to Forensics in Birchester.’

  She handed back the javelin, turned and strode towards the car, with Anselm a yard or so in front of her looking, from the way he was uneasily holding himself, as if he wanted nothing more than to turn round to see her face.

  Like Orpheus, she thought, rescuing his wife from Hell on condition he didn’t look back at her. But, lovesick fool, Orpheus did. Oh, yes, and this is another thing I owe to one of John’s little bits of paper: back from Hell himself, poor handsome Orpheus was so grief-stricken he enraged all the women round by paying them no attention. And, in an orgy, they tore him to pieces. Another victim of deadly Eros.

  But Anselm had better not turn round now. Because he won’t see his loved one. He’ll see the Hard Detective who wants to find out what he makes of the idea, the nebulous idea, that’s hovering just outside her head.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Harriet got into the car, fired up the engine for warmth and turned to Anselm as he settled into the passenger’s seat, her face fixed in deliberate neutrality.

  ‘Listen, DI,’ she said.

  Beside her, she saw Anselm change in a moment from would-be soft and eager lover into impassive police officer.

  ‘Listen, I was thinking just now about what exactly must have happened down by the river there when Bubbles was killed. We know for certain now that what killed her was that javelin Sgt Wintercombe is driving off with this minute. And I think I know how the person who used it brought it here, and took it away afterwards. I think it was in a canoe, which is why they were able to go unseen. I think the level of water in the Leven back then would have made such a trip just possible. What do you say?’

  Anselm thought for a little.

  ‘Yes. Yes, ma’am. Trying to recollect as accurately as I can, I’d say there was still enough water to get a canoe along then, maybe with it getting stuck from time to time. But possible, yes, if whoever was in it wasn’t some big fatty.’

  ‘Right. So a canoe. Or a kayak?’

  ‘Yeah, a kayak would be just as good. I’ve quite often rowed one, you know, at the Water Sports Centre.’

  ‘Yes, you told me once that you had. Isn’t the bailiff there one of your neighbours?’

  ‘George Green? Yes, he is.’

  ‘All right. Now, who in Levenham would be particularly skilled with a kayak?’

  Anselm frowned.

  ‘Hard to say, ma’am. There’s George, of course. He’s pretty good in a canoe, though he’s a bit weighty. And there’s quite a few blokes might take one out in the summer, for fun really. But I don’t think there are any what you might call regular sports users, not outside of the Grammar. The boys there do kayak racing once a week nowadays, so Jonathan tells me.’

  ‘Ah yes. So would he be some sort of expert in a kayak?’

  ‘Jonathan? Yes. Yes, I think that’s one of the sports he trains for, though he’s not the school champ. That’s George Green’s son, the lad who tore up your autograph. Remember?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I do. Jonathan’s friend.’

  ‘Well, they’re not exactly friends, him and Jonathan. Thing is, Gary —’

  ‘That’s his name? Gary?’

  ‘That’s him. But, you see, it’s just because he lives next door but one to us and is much the same age as Jonathan, or a bit older, so they were more or less told they were friends. But I don’t think, in fact, Jonathan much likes Gary, even though they sort of muck around together. Kids can be like that.’

  ‘Good, DI. Yes, true enough.’

  Yes, she thought, nothing wrong with Anselm’s brains, or his perceptions. He could go far in the police.

  ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘let me put something else to you.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Do you remember something I logged some time ago, more details of what I’d been told by Fiona Diplock about Bubbles saying something about how she’d been accosted, or attacked — she wasn’t explicit — by someone near the boathouse, just over there, shortly before she was killed?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I remember. I’ve sometimes wondered about it. But there didn’t seem to be any way of finding out more about what happened then, not with Bubbles being dead.’

  ‘Exactly. But do you remember, too, that Bubbles never said whether this assailant was a man or woman?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Though I don’t really see it as a woman.’

  ‘No?’

  She took in a breath.

  ‘But do you see it as a boy? As a young male?’

  A look of blank bewilderment.

  ‘Yes, a boy,’ Harriet said. ‘And remember this. On that day when I gave Jonathan my autograph he said to us that the whole school was mad on her. Mad about Bubbles.’

  The look of bewilderment on Anselm’s broad face began to change.

  ‘But you can’t ... ’ he said. ‘Ma’am, are you really saying the person who killed Bubbles was a boy, a boy at the Grammar? It’s not — it isn’t Jonathan?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. But just think about it. Didn’t you say just now that a kayak, or a canoe, could have got along the Leven if whoever was in it wasn’t some big fatty?’

  Anselm thought.

  ‘But who then?’ he said. ‘How can we find one boy out of, I don’t know, a hundred and fifty possibles at the Grammar?’

  ‘I’ll tell you how. Or how, if I’m right about all this.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Think. When I gave Jonathan my autograph and he suggested to Gary Green, his so-called friend, that he should get one, too, how did Gary react? He didn’t want my autograph, did he? He really objected to the whole idea, and, when he’d been more or less made to produce a sheet of paper, he screwed it up in a rage the first moment he could and threw it in the gutter. Didn’t he?’

  ‘Well, yes, I told you I’d seen him do that.’

  ‘All right. But I dare say you were too busy then thinking about Old Rowley to take much notice. Yes? But now look again at what Gary did. Wasn’t that really very odd behaviour for a boy? Actually to scrunch up that sheet almost at once, and deliberately to throw it in the gutter? Doesn’t that actually indicate he was under psychological pressure of some sort? Heavy psychological pressure?’

  ‘What you’re saying is — I mean, you really think Gary Green — he’s only just twelve, you know — murdered Bubbles?’

  ‘Oh, as to his age, yes. If we’re right about that first scene down by the river, this is definitely a sex-based murder. Bubbles was never going to attack someone physically if they were just asking for her autograph. She might tell them to go away, but she wouldn’t set on them in a fury. But that’s what she told Fiona she did. She either actually kicked them or she knocked them to the ground. And your Gary’s definitely within the category of the sexually active. If he was a year or two younger, I might be as sceptical as you. But at twelve he could be well inside the bracket.’

  ‘Yes,’ Anselm said slowly. ‘Yes, it is about then that you ... Or a bit later. Start to think about girls, about having sex. I remember all right.’

  ‘So, put it all together. A boy who’s sexually active, and who could have tried it on with Bubbles. Then add this: that Gary Green, you said, was the school champion at kayak racing. And, another thing, you said the Grammar’s very keen on all sports these days? I’m willing to bet they have some javelins there, just like posh Grainham Hall.’

  ‘You’re right about that. I never did it, but I remember there was javelin-throwing even when I was a senior there.’

  ‘Right, what you could do this very minute is call somebody at the Grammar on your mobile. I dare say you know the number.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do, of course.’

  All right then, phone and find out if a javelin has ever gone missing there. It’s quite likely no one would have reported it to the police. After all, thanks to our polic
y of keeping under wraps that we believed a javelin was the weapon, no one had any particular reason to link a missing one with Bubbles’ murder.’

  Anselm phoned, talked to someone who, to begin with, made difficulties, then in response to some sharp words agreed to call back in a few minutes.

  ‘All right, we’ll soon see if a javelin went missing in June. You know, I said once it was no use looking all over England for a missing one. But here, if I turn out to be correct, is a missing one right on our doorstep. So, here’s what I want you to do as soon as we’ve had it confirmed that a javelin was missing. Go back to Levenham and have a word with young Jonathan. Find out if he noticed anything peculiar about Gary in the days towards the end of June. Don’t press it, but ask. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he says that, now he thinks about it, Gary was behaving oddly then. Probably it didn’t last long, though. It’d be my bet that, since Gary’s begun to feel we were never going to get near him, he’s been doing his best to pretend to himself that what happened never did happen.’

  Yes, the poor, wretched boy, she thought. Eros really had it in for him, even at twelve years of age. A Latin tag of John’s came into her mind. Quem Jupiter vult pedere, dementat prius. John liked it because it was usually mis-translated as Whom the gods, not Jupiter, wish to destroy, they first make mad. But, she thought, it hadn’t been gods who had made sullen little Gary Green mad, it was one god. And not Jupiter. It was a darker deity. Eros.

  ‘You could be right about making yourself forget,’ Anselm said with a sudden lightness of tone. ‘At junior school once I accidentally broke the wooden handle of a garden roller when nobody saw me. For a day or two afterwards I felt awful. But then I did just what you said. I made myself forget it had happened. I only really remembered years later.’

  She smiled at this picture of a haunted young Anselm.

  And then she ceased to smile.

  The twittering call note of Anselm’s mobile was ringing out in the confines of the car.

  A short conversation. And the answer exactly what Harriet had expected. A javelin had been missing from the sports store at the Grammar since some time last June.

  But while the little tinny voice had been clicketing on from Anselm’s mobile one half of her mind had been pursuing a different track. She had been struck suddenly by the odd thought that it now looked likely the investigation that had begun with an Eros strike here at Adam and Eve House so many months ago was about to end here on Eros’ St Valentine’s Day. Then she had run on to wondering for an instant whether the police officer sitting beside her had put a wretched Valentine’s card in the post for her.

  And then she had found a possibility, a wild, unexpected possibility, had opened up before her.

  ‘Right,’ she said to Anselm when he had briefly told her that the javelin had gone missing. ‘I want you to go straight away now and talk to Jonathan. Then, if he confirms in any way what we think about Gary Green ... Then I’m going to leave the whole of the rest of the case to you.’

  Anselm sat as still as if something scarcely credible had been brought to his ears. Then at last he spoke.

  ‘But you — you’re not going to try — you’re saying you won’t try to get the cough yourself?’

  No, she said to herself before giving him her answer. No, Anselm, I realize now this is my last chance to back out. To send you as far away from me as I can. All right, you’re as much in love with me as I still am with you. You’re besotted. That’s the word. The word for me, too. It’s all I can do, even at this moment, to keep my hands off you. But I am going to. I am going to part from you. I can’t, after all, let your career, your whole life, be ruined because of what all-powerful Eros has done to us. And, yes, I’m going to save myself, too. I’m going to save the Hard Detective. To fight another day. I’m going to part from you, Anselm. Now. Oh, yes, I tried before, and failed. But now this last chance has suddenly come about, and I’m going to take it. To grab it.

  ‘Yes, DI,’ she said, forcing herself to speak coolly as if she was issuing an everyday order. ‘I’m leaving you to conduct the whole case right up to the juvenile court. I’m bowing out. It’s best. I think it’s best.’

  Anselm, beneath his winter-reddened cheeks, was pale to fainting-point.

  Shifting in his seat, he turned towards her.

  ‘No,’ she said, her voice hard as the frosted ground outside. ‘No, this is the end. The end for us. It’s the best way. The only good way.’

  She did not add, as she wanted to with all the strength that was in her, as Eros-struck Dr Mortimer did in confessing to his 167 pictures of Bubbles, as obsessed Prudence Mackintosh might have done, as even despicable Mr Youngman might have done, But I think I’ll love you till I die.

  What the Hard Detective did say in her mind, however, was quite simply, Fuck you, Eros, fuck you.

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