Time to Kill

by Roger Ormerod

  “Where did he buy his car?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter? Please David, I’m tired.”

  “A minute. It wasn’t Wolverhampton?”

  “No, no.” She moved her hand impatiently. “Birmingham.”

  And TUK was a Wolverhampton registration.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  I think she slept a little on the way back. I didn’t try to disturb her, just drove, smooth and steady. As we turned into her drive she stirred at the rustle of the gravel. I got out and went with her into the porch.

  “David.”

  “Yes?”

  “You mustn’t be too angry.”

  It wasn’t so much anger as a slow, rumbling fury.

  “I didn’t think it showed.”

  “You’ve been driving like a maniac.”

  Had I? “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t let it make you too angry, that’s all. Don’t do something you’ll be sorry for.”

  It was so dark that I couldn’t see whether her meaning showed on her face. There was very little tone in her voice.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you, Elsa. I’d do anything not to hurt you.”

  “I know. You’re very kind to me.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  The barest pause. “Yes David, I know.” She reached out her left hand with the palm backwards. I touched it with my right.

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, David.”

  My driving was even worse on the way back.

  I got in at one-thirty. It occurred to me that it was now Friday and the inquest was to be that afternoon, and I hadn’t fixed up anything with Elsa. I’d have to phone her early in the morning. My door was on the catch again. I was getting a bit bored with it and I was tired, so I kicked open the door and went in hard and fast. It was dark, so all I did was run into the table and bark my shin on a chair.

  I went back and put the lights on. There was only me there. Somebody had tried to get in without drawing too much attention to it, and all they’d succeeded in doing was to break the lock. I wedged the door with a chair and had a good look round. Whoever it was had been discreet, once inside. I put a kettle on to boil and went through the whole place carefully. It hadn’t been searched, that much was certain. The ring of keys on top of my shirts was in exactly the same position as when I’d carefully left it. Nothing was missing, and nothing had been added, as far as I could see. Unless they’d put arsenic in my sugar.

  I brewed tea. There was no arsenic in the sugar.

  It kept me awake longer than I usually care to lie. There had to be something, and I hadn’t found it. I woke up worrying about it and went through the flat again. Still nothing.

  At around ten o’clock I drove round to Queens. Odin was on duty again but he didn’t follow me down the ramp. Our relationship had abruptly deteriorated, and he might well have expected that I’d be waiting for him with something heavy and hard. I hoped he was having difficulty in parking.

  I went up the one floor in the lift, and in the three seconds it took tried to work out an approach. Nothing came, so I took it as it happened.

  The desk was directly opposite the lift shaft. The lobby was in green, with a high wall of bottle glass bricks and swing doors of plate glass. There were tall rubber plants ranked in front of the glass bricks. A flight of open stairs began in the middle of the space, without visible means of support. Dark green leather pullman chairs were spaced around low glass-topped tables, on which were spread copies of The Times and the Tatler.

  There was a green and white terazzo floor like two skating rinks. My plastic heels made no sound and the porter looked up with a start. I bent a couple of feet and whispered: “Police.”

  He looked shocked. “Again?”

  “I’m trying to trace a car.”

  “I’m sure we haven’t got it.”

  “TUK 703.”

  He looked blank, so I urged him a little. “You’ve probably got a book with them in.”

  Yes, he had a little book. “It belongs to Mr Crichton,” he said. “I do hope

  nothing’s happened—”

  “Does it say what it is?”

  He looked again. “A Jaguar.”

  So I’d seen Mr Crichton’s Jaguar.

  “Have you got anything down for Mr Forbes?” I asked.

  “Mr Forbes has never applied for a personal bay.”

  He was sleek and painfully correct. There were two high spots of colour on his cheeks. He seemed annoyed at something. “As far as I can tell, he used his flat very rarely.”

  “You see him often?”

  “Never sir. Not to my knowledge. His comings and goings seem to have been confined to the late evening or the early morning.”

  So that was what was niggling him. Not only had Geoff been so inconsiderate as to be murdered there, he’d also had the effrontery to use the flat for his liaisons.

  “So you know nothing about his car?”

  Square padded shoulders lifted in a dignified shrug. “He no doubt left it below. I wouldn’t know about that.”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere. I thought for a moment of asking him if he’d got reports of the lift being out of order on the Monday, but it occurred to me there was a better way to check.

  I took the lift to the top floor. Three suites taken there. I tried the first one. The woman who answered was in her fifties, very neat and tidy, and with a sharp face.

  “I’m investigating a complaint,” I told her. “About the lift.”

  She stared at me. “What about it?”

  “Did you have cause to use it between nine and nine-thirty in the evening last Monday?”

  “Now how would I remember that?”

  “If you’d had to walk up.”

  “Walk?” She looked as though I was mental. “There’s always the other lift, if one goes wrong.”

  So there I was with two lifts to contend with. I should have guessed, you’d say. Of course I should—a place the size of that. I went down to the ground floor and asked my friend at the desk.

  “Of course,” he said. “There’s a lift at each end of the building.” He looked at me pityingly. “As you might have guessed.”

  I let it pass and went to sit down in one of the chairs in the lobby. I gave it some thought, and decided the second lift made no difference. I started again on the enquiries.

  I rang at twenty-three doors and spoke to nineteen people. Five of these remembered the evening of Monday, and had reason to try the billiard hall lift between nine and nine-thirty. They remembered it because it had been out-of-order and they’d had to walk all the way through the building to the other lift. When I asked on what floor it was stuck they said they didn’t know because the indicator wasn’t working either. As near as I could time it, the earliest was about five minutes past nine, the latest nine-thirty. “Or maybe a minute or so before,” he said.

  So one thing was certain, that if Jenkins was killed to prevent him from giving information about the lift being out-of-order, it was a pretty clumsy thing, and it hadn’t worked.

  I shuttled down to the basement for the Oxford, and swung up the ramp so fast that I caught Odin in an awkward situation. He was discussing the weather or something with a traffic warden. So I had no company when I reached the Edgbaston flat.

  There was a six foot wall all round the block, with only one entrance. The gates had gone years ago, but the trees were still there, fighting the traffic fumes. I drove under their bare branches and out into a vista of lawns and evergreens that made you wonder whether you were still in the city. The building was solid and squat, only three floors, with round the back the garages that had been stables. From this spacious residence the Judge at one time drove in his carriage and four plumed horses to the Assizes. It had all been converted into six sedate and affluent flats.

  I left the car in the front and walked round to try and find the janitor. I didn’t find him. I didn’t need to.

  One of the d
oors to the garages was up-and-over, and squatting on the concrete was Geoff’s Jaguar. I checked. It was unlocked and he’d left his keys in the ignition.

  I drove away quite calmly to the nearest phone box, called Vantage, and got Crewse.

  “You can’t speak to him just now.” I didn’t argue. “Did you check his car for prints?”

  “Whose? Forbes’s? Yes. Now Dave—”

  “What’d you find?”

  “His of course. Nobody else’s.”

  I paused and thought about it, my mind still a turmoil of anger. “Let me speak to Vantage.”

  “I told you—”

  “Put him on, Crewse, blast you.” “If you don’t hang up, I shall.”

  I beat him to it, and walked across to my car on stiff legs.

  Although I was on suspension I used the car park at the back, and trotted up the rear staircase before anybody could register it was me. Crewse had got the phone to his ear.

  “I hung up,” I told him, and walked past, leaving him poised between the phone and the finger he’d reached out to hold me.

  Vantage was standing with his legs wide apart, smoking and looking out of the window. He whirled round because I hadn’t been too easy with the door.

  “What does this mean?”

  “When did you find the car?”

  “I’m not going to let you come bursting in here like this.” He took two steps over to his desk and stabbed out his cigarette. “Where’s Crewse? Crewse!”

  He walked towards the door. I moved one pace sideways so that I stood directly in his path. He stopped. He was pale. Behind me Crewse appeared in the doorway—I felt him there.

  “When did you find his car?” I repeated.

  Vantage stared into my eyes. He spoke quietly without looking away.

  “Never mind, Crewse. Shut the door behind you.”

  It shut with a click. He went and stood behind his desk, then leaned forwards, spreading his fingers on the surface.

  “You’re not doing yourself any good,” he said.

  “You’re not doing me any, either.”

  He looked bored and tired. “We’ll make this informal, shall we? Then I shan’t need to put in a report. Sit down.”

  “I’ll stand. When did you find his car?”

  He sat down, laced his fingers, and put the result on his blotting pad. “Tuesday afternoon, I think it was.”

  “So all the time you had me here, tossing around your suspensions, you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That Geoff walked from Edgbaston to Queens.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I realized he could have done so.”

  “It’s just the sort of thing he would have done. He liked a walk through town, in the evening.”

  I could see him doing it, his eyes to every detail, every face, wondering what was behind each façade.

  “It was raining.”

  “Then he’d get wet. Geoff never minded the rain.”

  Vantage smiled. “His coat was dry.”

  “It’d had time to dry. The central heating was high.”

  “You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you, Mallin? No, let me say it.” He looked down at his blotter, waiting for me to let him say it. I went to look at the bleak prospect outside. “What point do you wish to make? Why is it so important to you that he could have walked?”

  I tossed it over one shoulder. “The porter said he came up from the basement.”

  “Perhaps Jenkins made a mistake.”

  “Another? How many bloody mistakes are you giving him? He seems to have paid for them.”

  “Or perhaps Forbes did come up from the basement.”

  “Why’d he do that?” I demanded. I was out of cigarettes and flapped my pockets angrily. “He’d have to walk past the main entrance to get to the ramp of the car park.”

  Vantage shoved over a cigarette box and flipped open the lid. “He looked in to see if you were there.”

  Our eyes met as I reached for a cigarette. “That might be feasible if he’d driven there. Oh come off it, Super, you’re stretching it too far.” I lit the cigarette.

  “Or maybe,” said Vantage, “he did drive over. It was raining. Most likely he’d drive over.”

  “Then how did it get back—”

  “Somebody drove it. The keys were in.”

  Our eyes met again. The corners of his were crinkling, so I suppose there was a smile in there somewhere, and I saw abruptly where he’d led me.

  “Who,” I asked casually, like somebody hypnotized, “would do that?”

  He came to his feet, spread himself a little. “Somebody who thought he might need just the argument you’re putting forward.”

  I crushed three quarters of the cigarette into his ashtray. Vantage was good. Too good for me. I turned round and walked out. I don’t remember what Crewse was doing.

  It was well after lunch time and I wasn’t feeling much like eating. I bought a new Yale lock for my door, then remembered the inquest, so I dropped into the nearest phone box and rang Elsa. There was no reply. I rang Crewse and asked him what time the inquest was. He said it was two-thirty, and that they were going there now.

  I drove round to the Coroner’s office, and looked round the courtroom for Elsa. She wasn’t there, but just then she came in from a side door with a tall, grave man who turned out to be the Coroner’s clerk. I went over to join her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what, David?”

  “I should have phoned. I could have driven over to fetch you.”

  But I’d been too busy chasing up dead ends and sticking my neck out further and further.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I took her elbow and led her to the front. I don’t know whether she had slept, but it didn’t seem so. There were deep dark circles under her eyes and her lips were almost colourless. We sat and waited for the Coroner and said nothing. I fidgeted and wished I could smoke.

  The whole thing was a formality we could have done well without. It wouldn’t have mattered what verdict was recorded. If they’d come up with ‘accident’ or ‘suicide’, Vantage would have ignored it and gone right ahead. Come to that, if they’d brought in ‘murder by Dave Mallin’ he’d probably have smiled thinly and watched me walk out. But the verdict was: murder by person unknown.

  There were a number of newsmen there. They clamoured a little after Elsa as we left, and I said she’d got nothing to say. I was looking for a fight. Any of them would have done. But maybe it got across because they let us through, and I left them in a bunch around Vantage.

  We went and sat in the Rover. “I should have phoned.”

  “I did expect to hear...” she said gently.

  “I’m sorry. I was too busy with my own blasted affairs.” I looked at the keys she had just slipped into the ignition. “Why don’t you stay in town? At the Edgbaston flat.”

  “It’d be too lonely,” she said. “I don’t like to be alone.”

  I nearly fumbled in with God knows what offer. She didn’t like to be alone and I was aching for her company, and it was all going to waste.

  “Some hotel then. You don’t want to drive back now.”

  She gave me a weary smile. “There’s the funeral tomorrow...”

  “I’ll be down. What time?”

  “At three. You’ll be down, David?”

  “Of course I will.” But all the same, she could stay overnight. We could have a quiet meal somewhere and maybe go round to my place and listen to something gentle and soothing like Mozart. No harm in that, was there?

  “There’s a solicitor coming to see me tomorrow. There’ll be so much to listen to and arrange. Legal stuff. Oh, I don’t know.” She looked at me again. “I’ll need your advice.”

  “That’s what the solicitor’s for.”

  “I’d like you there, all the same.”

  She would be a very rich woman, and if she sold out her holdings a very independent one. And I was expected to be there, and
watch her drifting further away from me on the tide.

  “I’ll be there. But Elsa, you shouldn’t drive back now.”

  “It’ll give me something to occupy my mind.”

  I could see I was going to have another dull evening; worse than that, a worrying one. Now I was going to have to be concerned about Elsa. It was a surprising thought. Up to now there’d always been Geoff around to be concerned about her, protect her, circle round keeping off the herd. All I’d had to do was be in love with her and try to go on living. Now I was pitched in there, still loving her, but having the responsibility, and with no hint from her, not a suggestion, that I might ever expect any reciprocation from her.

  “But you don’t need to go right now.”

  She inclined her head and agreed. She didn’t have to.

  We left my car where it was and she drove us to the multi-storey on the Ringway, then we went and shared a pot of tea and a plate of fancy cakes. She was way, way down. Just a couple of wrong words from me and she’d have been in tears. Or right ones, maybe.

  “I found the Jaguar,” I tried.

  “Did you, David?”

  “He’d left it round at the other flat.”

  She was stirring the bottom out of her cup. “The other one?”

  The spoon paused, went on. She was refusing to accept the existence of Geoff’s flat at Queens.

  “At Edgbaston.”

  “It does seem a logical thing for him to have done.”

  After that I had no conversation. I stared at a billhead advertising the concert season of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. They were doing a Stravinsky Symphony in December. I said nothing.

  We picked up the Rover. She offered to run me back to my Oxford but I said I’d walk. I’m like Geoff, I like a walk through the city. We said goodbye, then I walked down into Corporation Street and ordered a wreath.

  The thought of simply returning to the flatlet was appalling. All of a sudden I decided that you can’t listen to Mozart alone. It was becoming dark, with heavy, blustering clouds. Working on the assumption that Kyle would be playing snooker somewhere, I decided it was a good time to pay him a visit. So I went.