‘You guessed it might be something on those lines when you sent her along to me, didn’t you?’ said Joe. ‘Thanks a lot, Cherry.’
‘She really has got a big mouth, hasn’t she? So what’s she want you to do? Tail a broomstick?’
‘You know I can’t talk about it,’ he said primly.
‘Ah, then you did get the job. And I bet she gave you an advance? First rule of business—get them in hock to you. Great, you can pay for this. I’ve got to dash. Your Mr Bannerjee wants to see me.’
‘They’re still holding him?’
‘Yes. His boss, Charley Herringshaw, came down from Birmingham to collect Mrs Bannerjee and the kids.’
‘That was nice of him. Have they left by now?’ said Joe, remembering the little boy’s bull.
‘I expect so. Herringshaw was going to see Bannerjee first. I fixed it up. And you know what? He actually gave me a retainer cheque upfront.’
‘He sounds a real generous kind of fellow,’ said Joe.
He meant nothing by it, but Butcher shot him one of those sharp glances she saved for when he said something she thought was clever. As usual, he couldn’t see why.
He went on, ‘Anyway, that means you’re still on the payroll. Good. You can pay for your own lunch.’
‘Don’t be silly, Sixsmith. I’ve got better things to do with my money than give it to Miss Irma.’
She gathered her things together and stood up.
‘Hey, don’t go,’ protested Joe. ‘I got the kid’s bull in the car …’
But she was on her way with a flamboyant wave, partly of farewell, partly to indicate to Miss Irma that her bill was taken care of.
Joe ate his flan slowly, chewing each mouthful thirty-two times, one for each tooth, like he’d been taught. It was good nosh, better than the burgers at the Glit anyway, but the tea was lousy. He stirred the pot in an effort to get a bit more strength into it, then tried an extra spoonful of sugar in his cup to give it some body. His experimentation drew Miss Irma’s wrathful gaze, but before she could take any retaliatory action, a new arrival, wearing enough bullion to ballast a galleon, paused at Joe’s table and said piercingly, ‘I say, you’re that detective chappie, aren’t you? What on earth are you doing here?’
It was Mrs Rathbone, Andover’s nosey neighbour, still clearly taking him for a CID officer.
Joe put his finger to his lips and shushed her imperiously. For a second she looked ready to be offended, then enlightenment crazed her pancake make-up and she cried, ‘Oh, I see. You’re here on a case!’
She pulled out a chair, sat down, looked all round the dining-room, then leaning close to him, hissed in a voice only marginally moderated, ‘Which one is it you’re watching?’
No one actually made a run for it, though there were undoubtedly a few twitches, possibly more of indignation than alarm. But a pretty young woman with fluffy yellow hair and a striped blouse who’d been having her ear beaten by her older companion turned so sharply she knocked her water glass over. Miss Irma rushed forward to repair the damage, casting an accusatory glance at Joe’s table to make it quite clear whose fault it was.
‘Can’t tell you that, Mrs Rathbone,’ said Sixsmith.
‘No? Oh, all right. But you can tell me if there are any developments in that business next door. I’ve a right to know about that, surely. Have you caught him yet?’
‘Rocca? No, not yet,’ said Sixsmith.
‘You’re taking your time, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Not that I’m surprised, using a dreadful photograph like that. Surely there must have been a better one?’
‘Why do you say that, ma’am?’ asked Joe.
‘Come on. A vain creature like that. Why, the house must have been full of photos of him!’
Sixsmith considered this. It wasn’t a bad point.
‘Maybe he removed them all to make it more difficult to identify him?’ he suggested.
‘That would mean it was planned,’ she said. ‘Did it look like it was planned to you? No, typical Mediterranean crime of passion. They’re all mentally unstable, you know. It’s the sun. What other explanation could there be?’
‘He could have done it for the money,’ suggested Joe.
‘What money?’
‘I thought you said yesterday the old man was rich …’
‘Oh yes, no doubt of it. But there’s no way any of that money’s going to come anywhere near Rocca. You don’t imagine he wasn’t forever pestering Mr Tomassetti for cash to put him back in business, do you? The old man was too sharp for that. And he took the precaution of making it clear that when he died, Maria would only get her share of his money in trust, providing an income for life but with no access to capital which would be preserved for her children if she ever had any.’
Sixsmith digested this and his flan together, then said, ‘For someone who didn’t approve of your neighbours, you know a lot about their affairs, Mrs Rathbone.’
‘I hope you’re not being impertinent,’ she said sharply.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Joe. ‘Just curious.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘let me put it like this. I have learnt in life that you can never know too much about people, especially people you do not wish to know. I spoke to the old lady quite a lot. She was of her kind a not unpleasant old soul. She reminded me of an Italian cook my family had during the war, a refugee of some kind, always ready to talk incessantly of her family at the slightest provocation. So believe me, Constable or whatever you are, there was no way for Rocca to profit from the death of anyone in that house. No, he simply went mad. Ah, here comes my friend. I’ll leave you to your stake-out.’
‘It’s a flan,’ said Joe as Mrs Rathbone rose to join a stout party as heavily bejewelled as she was gilded.
Joe called for his bill. Miss Irma clearly didn’t trust her staff with money and you paid her personally as you left. The yellow-haired woman was in front of Joe at the seat of custom. As her companion paid the bill he heard the younger woman say, ‘Thank you, Auntie.’
‘That’s all right. Now you take care of yourself, Debbie. And keep your distance, that’s my advice till you see how things work out. There’ll be talk talk talk, more noise than the airport, but if you do your work and say nothing, then at least no one will be able to talk about you.’
‘Yes, Auntie.’
Joe paid and followed them out.
On the pavement, the women parted, the older one heading left towards the station, the younger one right towards the shopping centre. Joe was going this way also and he fell into step behind her. After fifty yards or so, she glanced over her shoulder, then turned sharply into Boots. Joe was reminded that he wanted some soap and toothpaste, so he turned in too. He glimpsed the woman in the striped blouse in the cosmetics section, but by the time he made his purchases, she had disappeared.
He went out of a side exit into Dartle Street which ran down to the glass and concrete cube which housed the Central Library. The yellow hair was bobbing along about thirty yards ahead of him. Once more she glanced back. Then she accelerated and quickly put another ten yards between them. Ahead of her a police car drew in to the kerb. A fat young constable got out, stretched in the sunlight and yawned, then made his way purposefully across the pavement towards the Togo To-go Sandwich Bar. Before he reached it the girl with yellow hair seized his arm and spoke urgently. The policeman said something to her, she shook her head, then hurried on. When Joe reached the car, he found his way barred by the constable.
‘Just hang about, sunshine,’ said the young man as Joe tried to sidestep. ‘I want a word with you.’
‘What word’s that, Officer?’ said Joe politely.
‘Do you know that young lady?’
‘The one with yellow hair? No.’
‘Ah, but you know she’s got yellow hair,’ said the constable.
It wasn’t often Joe met someone whose powers of deduction he felt immediately were inferior to his own.
‘That’s because I can see t
hat it’s yellow,’ he said.
‘Don’t you try to be smart with me, sunshine,’ said the man aggressively. ‘Let’s be having some details, shall we? You got any ID?’
‘What’s this all about, Officer?’ said Joe.
‘It’s about you following that young lady,’ came the reply. ‘She’s made a complaint that you’re molesting her.’
Joe could see the girl with yellow hair further down the street. She’d stopped and was looking back. And now she vanished into a pale pink office building.
‘I think you must be mistaken,’ he said, ‘or else she’s mistaken. Where is she, anyway?’
The constable looked round, then turned back to Joe, his face aglow with indignation, as though suspecting he’d vaporized her.
‘You’ll have got her name and address?’ said Joe, confident that the young man hadn’t written anything down.
The constable pushed his face very close and said, ‘I asked for ID, sunshine.’
‘What’s holding the grub up?’ said an irritated voice. ‘Oh, it’s you, Joe. Not reporting another mass murder, I hope?’
The stout constable looked perplexedly at Sergeant Brightman who was emerging from the car and said, ‘You know Nelson Mandela here, do you, Sarge?’
‘Old friends. This is Joe Sixsmith, Luton’s answer to Philip Marlowe. Joe, meet Dean Forton, the Force’s answer to Nero Wolfe. What’s the hold-up here, son?’
‘There’s been a complaint. Harassing a girl,’ said Forton.
‘Joe? You’re joking. He’d not know how. And what girl?’
Sixsmith, almost as offended by Brightman’s defence as by Forton’s accusation said, ‘Look, I’m on my way to the library. I can’t help it if some hysterical woman is walking that way too.’
‘Library? You’ll be telling us you can read next,’ sneered Forton.
‘OK, Dean, that’s enough,’ said Brightman. ‘You going to get those sandwiches or not?’
Muttering, the stout young man headed into the sandwich bar.
‘You be careful now, Joe,’ said Brightman. ‘I know it shouldn’t be this way, but it’s easy for a chap like you to give the wrong impression.’
Sixsmith glanced at his reflection in the bar window and wondered how anyone with normal eyesight could turn that slight, balding, round-shouldered figure into a mad sex predator.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ he said. ‘See you, Sarge.’
When he reached the pink building, he glanced at the plaque listing the firms which had offices here. One caught his eye and he paused to study it.
Falcon Insurance. Andover’s firm. And hadn’t he rung a secretary called Debbie to check if Rocca had arrived yet …?
He glanced back up the street. Forton had emerged from the sandwich bar. Brightman was sinking his teeth into a crowded baguette, but the stout lad was staring after Joe with surly suspicion.
Resisting the temptation to wave, Joe hurried on.
The library was as efficient as it looked and the Reference Assistant showed no surprise at being asked where Joe could brush up on automotive electronic firms and necromancy. He read for an hour, took a few notes, and fell asleep.
The Casa Mia dream woke him. It was better than an alarm. He looked around, shamefaced, to see if his nap had been noticed, and realized he was not a lonely sleeper. This was where the wrinklies at the other end of the social scale from the Georgian Tea-Room set came to relax.
It was little comfort to feel he hadn’t looked out of place.
He rose and headed back for the office.
It didn’t smell good. Whitey had used the grit tray, but his glut of stolen sausage had been beyond the deodorizing powers of mere grit. Joe went to the window and threw it open to let in a blast of fresh pollutant. In the street below, a small white car crawled slowly along, its driver either looking for kerb trade or checking building numbers. As the only woman in sight was a brick-built traffic warden reputed locally to be able to remove defaulting vehicles by hand, Joe guessed the latter.
The car double-parked beneath Joe’s window and two very large men got out.
He knew at once they purposed no good. If asked, he might have rationalized that men of such bulk did not travel in such discomfort to spread sweetness and light. Also they didn’t bother to close the car doors. Only cops and gangsters didn’t bother to close car doors.
The warden had spotted them. Mouth open in a predatory snarl which showed a metal tooth which it was rumoured actually grew there, she advanced towards them, her notebook held before her like a buckler, her pencil at the high port.
The men turned and looked at her. That was all. Just looked.
She hesitated. Halted. Turned with the expression of one who has recollected an urgent appointment a long way away, and set off down the street like a steroid-assisted sprinter out of the blocks.
One of the men looked up. Sixsmith jerked his head back so fast he cricked his neck.
‘Whitey,’ he hissed. ‘Not a sound! Not even a suspicion of a sound or it’s fish fingers all week.’
He went to the door and locked it. Then he retired behind his desk, sat down and held his breath.
The men must have come up the stairs very quietly because he was totally unprepared when the door handle turned. His heart jumped at the gentle movement and he let out a little gasp.
‘Mr Sixsmith. You in there, Mr Sixsmith? We got some business for you.’
He felt them listening. Through the open window he could hear traffic. Then the familiar scream of a jet passing. Like most Lutonians he could easily differentiate the noise of takeoff from descent. This one was on its way somewhere exotic. He wished he was on it, even seated in the smoking section next to an airsick Nazi with a recalcitrant child.
Beyond the door he could hear nothing. Nothing but that listening silence.
Or perhaps he was just inventing the listening. Perhaps they had gone. Did he dare to rise and peep through the window in hope of seeing the little white car move away?
He had almost persuaded himself he did, almost signalled his muscles to make the effort, when the phone rang.
He shrieked, just a little, not enough to be heard above the shrilling bell, even if they were still listening. He stared helplessly at the phone, longing to answer it and yell for help; but knowing that to do so would let the listeners know he was still inside.
In any case, with his luck, it would probably be a double-glazing phone shot.
He had a sense of something moving at the door, but his eye couldn’t pin it down. Then he spotted the point of a thin-bladed knife probing through the crack beneath the lock. It was raised, withdrawn, pushed forward again. And the door swung smoothly open.
Joe grabbed at the phone.
‘Hello!’ he yelled as the two men came in. The first wore a grey suit and had the blank look of a punch-drunk prize fighter. The second wore a blue suit and had the look of the prize fighter who’d punched the other drunk.
‘DS Chivers here,’ said the phone.
Never had a name sounded sweeter in Joe’s ears.
‘Hello, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Nice to hear from you, Sergeant.’
‘What is it with you, Sixsmith?’ said Chivers. ‘Every time I talk to you on the phone, you start bellowing my rank. Not trying to be funny, I hope?’
‘No, of course not, Sergeant,’ said Joe.
The man in blue had come round the desk and was pressing his ear so close to the phone Joe could smell Scotch and aftershave, though which he drank and which splashed on was impossible to say. His arm was draped in an apparently friendly fashion round Joe’s shoulders. It felt like it had dropped off a marble statue.
The moment to cry for help was past.
Joe said faintly, ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’
‘Just stay put,’ said the blessed Chivers. ‘I’m on my way to see you and I don’t want a wasted journey.’
The phone went dead.
The man in grey after pulling open the fil
ing cabinet drawers in a desultory fashion had stepped into the washroom and was combing his well-oiled hair in the mottled mirror.
‘Filth?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said the man in blue. ‘And on its way. I was thinking, with Joe being so busy, maybe we should see him later.’
‘See him later,’ said Grey, who didn’t seem to be a very original conversationalist.
‘That’s right,’ said Blue. ‘When it’s more convenient. That’s a nice cat, Joe. Like cats, do you?’
He was looking down at Whitey who had raised his head from the drawer to complain about the noise, then, like the traffic warden, changed his mind.
‘Must like cats,’ said Grey. ‘Else he’d not put up with the pong.’
‘The pong?’ Blue sniffed. ‘Oh, that’s the cat, is it?’
Both men laughed.
Joe, with the boldness of one who knows that each passing second brings a detective-sergeant closer, demanded, ‘What do you want?’
‘What do we want?’ said Blue.
‘What do we want?’ said Grey.
They looked at each other and laughed again.
‘Help, Joe. That’s what people pay you for, isn’t it?’ said Blue. ‘That’s what we’ve come for. For help. But we’ll catch you later. Goodbye now, Joe.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Grey.
They went out of the door, closing it gently behind them.
Joe shuddered and went slack in his chair.
The door opened again. Blue’s voice said, ‘You want to take care of that cat, Joe. Keep it off the road. Dangerous place, roads, for cats.’
And Grey’s voice said, ‘That’s right. Dangerous place. For cats.’
The door closed again.
CHAPTER 8
A good private eye would have made sure he got the terrible twins’ car number.
A good citizen would have reported their activities to the police at the earliest opportunity.
Joe did neither, the first because by the time his limp limbs resumed normal service, the little white car was long gone, the second because by the time Chivers arrived, Joe’s fractured nerves were beginning to knit together again, aided by a couple of pints of sugar-saturated tea and The Times crossword puzzle.
Blood Sympathy Page 7
