Gently with Love

by Alan Hunter

  ‘What put you on to Sambrooke?’

  ‘The girl was hysterical. She was out with the rest of them on the cliff. One of the patrolmen asked her some questions then Sambrooke jumped in and tried to stop him.’

  ‘So he was arrested.’

  Sinclair puffed. ‘In the first place for grievous assault on an officer. Duggie Mackay lost a tooth. That is what we are holding the laddie on now.’

  ‘But then he volunteered a statement.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Admitting the fight but denying the murder.’

  Sinclair nodded. ‘And that he has stuck to through hell and high water. I have been easy with him and tough, and as devious as a man may be. It is all one, you cannot budge him. Yet still the facts call him a liar.’

  ‘Is that your opinion?’

  Sinclair hunched his lean shoulders and took several deep pulls. ‘It is the knife,’ he said at last. ‘I cannot get over that. Though it is clean out of character, I am willing to agree.’

  ‘Have you thought that it might have been Fortuny’s?’

  ‘Aye. I put it to Sambrooke.’

  ‘Once Fortuny had a knife pulled on him. It may have given him ideas.’

  Sinclair eyed me. ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘It’s a piece of gossip that came my way.’ I didn’t think it necessary to mention that the gossip had come from Earle. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told about Fortuny but he had a character both for women and fighting. He was also a person of few scruples. He certainly had enemies besides Sambrooke.’

  Sinclair jetted smoke. ‘And you’ll be telling me?’

  I gave him a resumé of what I knew. I told him of the interrupted wedding and of Earle’s discovery of a rival in Fortuny. I enlarged on Fortuny’s character and described the episode when the knife was pulled. I touched on Verna’s machinations and the bribe she had offered Fortuny. Sinclair heard me out silently, with slow, regular draws on his pipe.

  ‘So this Fortuny had a record of violence.’

  ‘I understand he was a tough customer.’

  ‘But Sambrooke clobbered him.’

  I nodded. ‘He knew what he had to expect from Sambrooke. Sambrooke didn’t need a knife. It was Fortuny who stood at risk. And Fortuny who’d had the experience of having a knife used against him.’

  ‘Aye, and he would be expecting trouble if Sambrooke heard what he was up to.’

  ‘He must have anticipated that Sambrooke would be told. He was bound to hear of it through Alex Mackenzie.’

  Sinclair fondled his chin. ‘But it’s a queerish business, what must have gone on up there on the cliff. Because, just mark this, the wounds were behind. That could not have happened in a struggle for the knife.’

  I took a few puffs. ‘Let us try to reconstruct it. Fortuny pulls a knife on Sambrooke. Sambrooke closes with him just the same and succeeds in getting the knife away from him. Fortuny is grappling with him. He is as big as Sambrooke and his best chance is to stay in close. Sambrooke still has the knife in his hand and in the grapple it wounds Fortuny’s shoulder. Were the wounds deep?’

  ‘Just to the bone. It is the truth that they were not well directed.’

  ‘So then they could have been accidental.’

  ‘Aye, they could. The way you’re putting it.’

  ‘Let us say they were. Now Sambrooke drops the knife. He has no intention of killing Fortuny. He struggles to break Fortuny’s grip and manages to throw Fortuny off him. But Fortuny is backed towards the cliff.’ I paused. ‘Is the clifftop fenced at that point?’

  ‘Just a low sort of stone parapet. It would not stop a laddie from blundering over.’

  ‘So over he goes. Sambrooke can’t stop him, and the fall to the rocks is certainly fatal. All that Sambrooke can do now is toss the knife after him and get to hell out of there. That’s understandable. Nobody is going to believe him if he said he didn’t mean to kill Fortuny. When he has to tell his tale he admits to a fight but buttons his lip about the rest.’ I stared hard at Sinclair. ‘Doesn’t that sound credible?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re a persuasive man. And then you’ll be saying it is a matter of manslaughter, and very arguable into the bargain.’

  I couldn’t help a smile. ‘It’s an answer to the stab wounds.’

  ‘True. And I could almost see it happening. But would you not think it strange, with this wrestling for the knife, that Sambrooke has no cuts on his fingers?’

  ‘He has none?’

  ‘Not a scratch.’

  ‘It is possible to take a knife without them.’

  ‘Aye, it is. Only it’s a great pity that this case should be one of the exceptions. Then again his knuckles are skinned, and the body was bruised about the face. Sambrooke would not have been standing off and hitting him if Fortuny was coming in with a knife.’

  ‘He may have produced the knife later.’

  ‘Aye. There are doubtless ways of looking at it.’

  ‘You’re not convinced.’

  ‘I am an open-minded man. I am ready for just any fair submission.’

  I struck a fresh light for my pipe and after a pause Sinclair did the same. We sat puffing and silently regarding each other through the heavy wreaths of smoke.

  ‘You had best let me talk to Sambrooke,’ I said.

  Sinclair nodded. ‘So I am thinking.’

  ‘We have got to get that knife on the table.’

  ‘It would be a most material step forward.’

  ‘If it was his there is no more to be said.’

  ‘Aye. It is a case for a good lawyer.’

  ‘I’m trusting that it wasn’t.’

  ‘Which I am aware of.’

  He reached forward and pressed a button on his desk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EARLE WAS BROUGHT in. He shuffled through the door in shoes from which the laces had been removed, and his clothes, the same in which he had been arrested, had a grubby, forlorn appearance. His hair was untidy and his pale face bore an expression of brooding resentment; under his right eye there was a bruise and one of his ears was swollen and inflamed. He looked a desperado. He might well have taken his place in any line-up of convicted criminals. The once-engaging chubbiness of his cheeks suggested now only infantile callousness. He caught sight of me; he stared sourly. Then his eyes dropped from mine.

  ‘Sit down. laddie,’ Sinclair said dryly. ‘I’m thinking you know the Chief Superintendent.’

  Earle slouched to the only other chair and slumped on it with affected disdain. Sinclair dismissed the constable who had attended him with an order for coffee and sandwiches. He scraped out his pipe and laid it before him; he took several small ranging looks at Earle. At last he sighed heavily and pushed back his chair from the desk.

  ‘Laddie, you may be fighting me, but you’ll be canny not to fight the Chief Super. He’s all for getting you out of this with never a scratch on your record. He’s come a weary way to see you, so you will not be demeaning yourself by showing gratitude. And though it’s against all my judicial principles I am going to let you have a crack in private. What do you say?’

  Earle raised his eyes. They were bloodshot and darkened with fatigue. I had no doubt that already he had spent many hours under continual interrogation. His voice was hoarse.

  ‘I didn’t ask to see him.’

  Anger flickered in Sinclair’s gaze. ‘No more you did. And no more would I have sent for him if you had asked me till your face was black. But for all that he has come, whether you deserve such a friend or no, and he has prevailed upon me to let him talk to you, and that is what you will be doing.’

  ‘What’s the use, fella? He can’t help me.’

  ‘Aye, and I am thinking much the same.’

  ‘I’m through with talking, I want to sleep. Just lock me up again in the roundhouse.’

  ‘You will talk to the Chief Super.’

  Earle flared. ‘Nobody can make me.’

  ‘If you are too ashamed yo
u will just listen. But by the stars you will do that.’

  Earle glowered at him, but said nothing. His mouth was set in a bitter drag. I wondered just how tough Sinclair had been with him. Earle was getting to react like a criminal.

  ‘Earle, I’m not here officially,’ I said quietly. ‘I heard the news about Fortuny from Verna. Alex rang her and she rang me. Of course she wanted to be with Anne.’

  Earle’s eyes snapped at me. ‘Verna.’

  ‘She drove up with me yesterday from Blockford.’

  ‘I don’t want to see her.’

  ‘She’s going to Anne. But she wanted me to tell you she was on your side.’

  ‘Fella, I don’t want her on my side.’

  ‘I think Verna is feeling pretty guilty.’

  Earle sat up and faced me. ‘She has a right to feel guilty. She’s the key to this whole goddamn mess.’

  ‘She told me about it. It was reprehensible. She didn’t want to face you till you’d cooled down. But she’s sorry. She acted very stupidly. She was just trying to do her best for Anne.’

  ‘For Anne!’

  ‘She doesn’t understand Anne. You mustn’t expect too much of people.’

  ‘That woman had better keep away from me for ever.’

  ‘Now she’s sorry. She wants to make amends.’

  Earle scrubbed his fingers through his tousled hair. I ventured a sidelong glance at Sinclair. He was watching Earle with an appraising eye and no expression on his long features.

  ‘Earle, I think perhaps I can help you.’

  ‘Fella, there’s no way out of this mess.’

  ‘I shall need to hear your side of the story. I’ve only heard it from other people till now.’

  ‘It won’t do any good.’

  ‘Once I have the facts I can see better how it fits together. I start with an advantage. We’re acquainted. I knew you before this jam happened.’

  ‘You’ll be wasting your time.’

  ‘Then I shall go to Kyleness and see if I can fill in the picture there. I’ll be talking to Colin’s people, of course. And Alex. And Anne.’

  His fists clenched. ‘They all think I did it.’

  ‘That’s just the impression you had at the time.’

  ‘No. Do you think I think I couldn’t tell?’

  ‘I doubt whether anyone was thinking very clearly.’

  ‘That’s talking crazy.’ He banged his fists together. ‘OK – if you want to tease the animal. I guess I’ve been through it enough times now, I could turn on the record in my sleep.’

  Sinclair rose softly. ‘That’s sensible,’ he said. ‘Now you’re behaving like a douce laddie. It is a wise man who kens his friends and takes a counsel when it is offered. I will just be hastening them on with the coffee, and you ken you can smoke if you wish it. There is just no hurry at all. You press the button on the desk when you need me.’

  He took silent, exaggerated steps to the door, which just then was opened by the constable, with a tray. Sinclair slid round it, his body vanished, but for a moment his face remained. He winked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I TOOK SINCLAIR’S seat at the desk – the other two chairs were less luxurious – and poured the coffee, which had been supplied in a generous earthenware jug. With it had come a stack of beef sandwiches: I divided the pile into two. Earle dragged his chair to the desk ungraciously but wasted no time in beginning on the sandwiches. I let him eat undisturbed. I wanted to give him time to begin feeling more normal. The effect of interrogation and incarceration is to make the world outside seem distant and shadowy. The only people one sees are enemies and their attitude that of condemnation. With Earle I needed to break through this, to let him feel himself a person again. So we ate silently; I wondered whether Verna had braved the rain and found her way to a hotel.

  Earle’s thoughts apparently were also on Verna and when he had finished eating he returned to the subject. In a slightly less edgy voice he said:

  ‘I’ll bet it was Verna who got you up here.’

  I grinned over my coffee. ‘She was instrumental, I have to admit.’

  ‘I can imagine. And I’ll bet it was the first time you had heard from her for six months.’

  ‘Eight, for the record.’

  ‘She’s seeing it like this, fella. She’s one down and one to play. If it wasn’t for that I could rot for ever. That’s all the use I am to Verna.’

  I chuckled. ‘I seem to remember you had a different opinion of her once.’

  Earle jerked his head. ‘I guess I must have had some stardust in my eyes. But that was a thousand years ago. It’s like on the other side of the moon. I was someone else. Now I’m nobody. I just walk and talk but there’s nothing inside.’

  ‘You have had what is described as a traumatic experience.’

  ‘That’s only noises and you know it. I’m knackered. I can never get back to where I was last June. One day the stuffing dropped clean out of me. Christ, I don’t know who I am.’

  I shrugged. ‘Then you’re in the same position as the rest of us.’

  ‘Yeah?’ His grey eyes admonished mine.

  ‘We don’t know who we are. We simply walk and talk with nothing inside.’

  ‘That’s poppycock.’

  ‘No it isn’t. Nobody can grasp their own identity. They build an image of themselves as a practical utility. But it’s only a fiction. The reality is the emptiness that seems to bother you. You go searching for an object where the only object is the search.’

  Earle was silent for a moment. ‘You mean I’m nothing anyway?’

  ‘I mean you are nothing you can grasp. You weren’t then and you aren’t now. You are simply free of a fixed identity. It isn’t something you can keep or lose. The whole concept is superfluous. All you need do is to turn your back.’

  He gazed at me. ‘That’s too easy!’

  ‘Which doubtless is why most people never try it.’

  ‘You’re saying nothing I’ve ever been is me?’

  ‘As much as you want it to be, and no more.’

  He sat quite still, his eyes fascinated. A little of the hangdog look had left him. I imagined that Earle had not yet met with the Buddhist metaphysic and that temporarily it was jolting him from his compulsive occupations. Suddenly, he had glimpsed that they were strangely irrelevant. But his unripe enlightenment faded again.

  ‘I’m still left with the consequences, fella.’

  ‘Perhaps now we have had lunch we can look into that.’

  ‘I’m guilty as hell.’

  ‘Is that a confession?’

  He hunched his shoulders and reached for his cup.

  ‘Let’s take it in order, Earle,’ I said. ‘I want you to go back to the beginning. Verna told Alex that Fortuny was going to marry Anne. Then Alex passed it on. Tell me about that.’

  Earle took a long swig of coffee. ‘Well, I was in the top studios,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working on a new magazine programme, I haven’t seen much of Alex of late. He came up, it was first thing. He said he had something urgent to tell me. I’ve got an office I use and we went in there. He told me that if I still loved Anne I had better get up here.’

  ‘He made that suggestion?’

  Earle nodded. ‘But I didn’t need much shoving. Once I’d heard what was going on I was ready to jump out of the window.’

  ‘He told you that Anne had had Fortuny’s baby.’

  Earle’s face was grim. ‘Right.’

  ‘That Verna had kept in touch with Fortuny.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That she had persuaded him to marry Anne.’

  Earle’s fists were clenching tight. ‘He told me how she’d persuaded him. Like one hundred grand in tobacco shares. I’ll tell you one thing about Verna. She had that louse weighed up to a cent.’

  ‘Alex quoted the actual figure.’

  ‘One hundred grand. The rest of Verna’s loot is invested in property. She let on to Alex that she was staking Fortuny and he got ou
t of her with what.’

  Which made Verna a liar, and set me wondering why she had told this particular lie.

  ‘Did Alex say anything else about the money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he did urge you to go to Kyleness.’

  ‘He said that if I didn’t get up there fast Fortuny would pressure Anne into accepting him.’

  ‘Did you believe that?’

  Earle rolled his shoulders. ‘Christ, how did I know what to believe? She’d had his baby. Verna was carrying the torch for him. I hadn’t heard from Anne for nearly a year. If she was the same Anne that I used to know she wouldn’t have let Fortuny through the door, but was she the same? I didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure I had ever known her.’

  ‘She’s the same.’

  ‘I know that now.’ He drew breath in a deep sigh. ‘But it’s too late again. She’s sure I killed him. Just beating the rap won’t make any difference.’

  I shook my head. ‘Just keep on trusting her.’

  ‘I wish I knew how to believe that.’

  ‘I can trust her. Why not you?’

  He sat staring over his knees at Sinclair’s linoleum.

  I poured the last of the coffee: it was strong and very sweet. Sinclair had given Earle permission to smoke and at a venture I pulled open a desk drawer and found a pack of Manikins. I gave one to Earle. He took it mechanically; I reached across with a light. There were plasters on three of his fingers and his hands looked puffy and bruised.

  ‘Did Alex offer to go with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He mentioned nothing about going up too?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Earle hesitated. ‘But with the state I was in he might have said something and I didn’t notice it.’

  ‘He must have left soon afterwards.’

  ‘I’d reckon so.’

  ‘Verna says he hoped to catch you on the road.’

  ‘I drove like smoke. I just kept going till I was whacked and knew I couldn’t make it.’

  ‘Where did that happen?’

  ‘At Pitlochry. I got a room at the Hydro.’

  ‘Alex was driving a sports car.’

  ‘So what? I was busting ninety a lot of the time.’