Buch lesen: «Blood Sympathy»

CHAPTER 1

The man came in without knocking.

He was in his mid-thirties with gingerish hair and matching freckles. He wore a chain store suit that didn’t quite fit and an agitated expression that did.

He said, ‘I want to talk about killing my wife.’

Joe Sixsmith removed his feet from his desk. It wasn’t a pose a man of his size found very comfortable and he only put them there when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Clients expected to find private eyes with their feet on their desks, and as a short, black, balding, redundant lathe-operator was likely to disappoint most of their other expectations, it seemed only fair to satisfy them in this.

On the other hand, customer satisfaction could be a liability when the customer was confessing murder.

If that was what he was doing. Could be he was merely looking for a hit-man. Time for the subtle questioning.

‘Pardon?’ said Sixsmith.

‘And her sister, Maria. She’s there too.’

‘There? Where’s there?’

‘At the tea-table,’ said the man impatiently.

‘Dead?’ said Sixsmith, who liked things spelled out.

‘Of course. Aren’t you listening? They’re all dead.’

Sixsmith thought: All? and looked for a weapon. There was a Present-from-Paignton paperknife in the desk tidy. Casually he reached for it, felt the man’s eyes burning into his hand, and plucked out a ballpoint instead.

He said, ‘All?’

He could be really subtle when he wanted.

‘Yes. My parents-in-law too. Mr and Mrs Tomassetti.’

‘Could you spell that?’ said Joe, feeling a need to justify the pen.

‘Two s’s, two t’s. My sister-in-law is Maria Rocca. Two c’s. Is all this necessary?’

‘Bear with me,’ said Joe, scribbling. The pen wasn’t working so all he got were indentations, but at least it was activity which gave him space to think of something intelligent to say.

He said, ‘Is that it? I mean, are there any more? Dead, I mean?’

‘Are you trying to be funny.’

‘No, not at all. Hey, man, I’m just doing my job. I need the details, Mr …?’

The man slid his hand inside his jacket. Joe pushed his chair back till it hit the wall. The hand emerged with a card which he dropped on to the desk. Joe picked it up, then put it down again as it was easier to read out of his trembling fingers. It told him he was talking to Stephen Andover, Southern Area sales manager of Falcon Assurance with offices on Dartle Street.

Suddenly Joe’s mental darkness was lit by suspicion.

He said, ‘Mr Andover, you’re not by any chance trying to sell me insurance?’

The light went out immediately as the man’s freckles vanished in a flush of anger and he thundered. ‘You’re not taking me seriously, are you?’

‘Oh yes, I surely am, believe me,’ reassured Joe. ‘I just had to be sure … Listen, Mr Andover, you’ve been straight with me, so the least I can do … The thing is, I’m in the business of solving crimes, not hearing confessions. You see there’s no profit in it, not unless you’re a priest, or a cop maybe, and I’ve got to make a living, you can see that …’

But Andover wasn’t listening.

‘This was a stupid idea,’ he said bitterly. ‘I picked you specially, I thought being a primitive you might understand, but I’ll know better next time. God, you people make me sick!’

He left the room as precipitately as he’d entered it.

Emboldened by the sound of his steps clattering down the stairs, Sixsmith called, ‘Hey, “us people” ain’t no primitive, friend. “Us people” was born in Luton. And you can shut up too!’

This last injunction was to a black cat with a white eyepatch which had raised its head from a desk drawer to howl in sleepy protest at all this din. He clearly didn’t care to be spoken to in this way, but as a huffy exit would take him away from his nice warm refuge, he decided not to take offence, washed his paws as if nothing had happened and went back to sleep.

It seemed a good example to follow but Joe Sixsmith suffered from a civil conscience and in the remote contingency that Andover really had chainsawed his family, someone ought to be told.

He picked up the phone and dialled.

He asked for Detective-Sergeant Chivers, but as usual they put him through to Sergeant Brightman. Brightman was the Community Relations Officer and Joe got on well enough with him, except that he didn’t take his detective ambitions seriously. Worse, he’d met Joe’s Auntie Mirabelle at a Rasselas Estate Residents’ meeting and they’d formed an alliance to persuade Joe back into honest unemployment. Sixsmith suspected Mirabelle had persuaded Brightman to put an intercept on his phone.

‘Joe, how’re you doing? What can we do for you?’

‘You can put me through to Chivers.’

‘You sure? You’re not the flavour of the month there, I gather.’

More like smell of the decade. Whenever their paths crossed, Chivers usually stubbed his toe on a boulder. But at least this meant he took Sixsmith seriously.

‘Please,’ said Joe.

‘It’s your funeral. See you at the meeting tonight?’

Joe’s heart sank.

‘You going to be there?’

‘That’s right. The Major asked me along to report on the latest statistics. Good news, Joe. You seem to be getting it right on Rasselas. Wish we could say the same for Hermsprong. But I think we’d need to torch it and start again. See you later. Hang on.’

A few moments later Joe heard the unenthusiastic grunt with which DS Chivers greeted criminals, his wife, and private eyes.

At least the story Sixsmith had to tell provoked a more positive response.

‘You what?’ said Chivers incredulously.

‘That’s what the man said,’ replied Joe defensively. ‘Look, OK, so it’s probably fantasy island, but I’ve got to tell someone, right?’

‘Haven’t you got a pen pal you could write to?’ said Chivers. ‘All right, what’s the address? You did get an address?’

‘Of course,’ said Joe with professional indignation and crossed fingers as he searched for Andover’s card. He found it and saw with relief that it did give a private address in small print.

‘Casa Mia,’ he read carefully. ‘21 Coningsby Rise.’

‘Coningsby Rise? Very posh. I got a feeling you’re wasting my time, Sixsmith. As usual.’

‘Hey, posh people commit crimes too,’ protested Sixsmith.

But the phone was dead and with a sign of relief, Sixsmith returned his attention to the pressing problem he’d been dealing with when Andover arrived.

It was The Times Crossword.

He’d started doing it recently to impress the better class of customer, but he’d rapidly realized he had no talent for the task. Other people’s clues baffled him. Reluctant to abandon what seemed like a clever ploy, he’d started filling in words of his own choice, then working out clues to fit them. This way he always looked close to completion, though actually finishing one had so far proved beyond his scope. The trouble was that in reverse of the normal process, his method meant the more you filled in the harder it got. He invariably ended up with at least one non-word. Today’s was sbhahk. It could mean something to an Eskimo, he supposed, but to an underemployed PI it was just another small failure.

He glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. Too early to go home. There could be a late rush, though he doubted it. Things were very slow. In the last recession it had been the kind of people who hired lathe-operators who got hit. This time, it was the kind of people who hired private eyes.

Time for a cup of tea, he decided. He went into the small washroom which allowed the estate agent to charge him for ‘a suite’ and filled his electric kettle.

As he re-entered the office he saw the briefcase.

It was black leather with brass locks and it was leaning against the chair Andover had sat on.

‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe Sixsmith.

He stooped to pick it up, then hesitated.

Suppose it was a terrorist bomb?

‘Why would anyone want to bomb me?’ he asked the air. ‘I don’t tell Irish jokes and I try not to be rude about other folks’s religions.’

Whitey raised his head cautiously from his drawer, twitched his ears, then subsided.

Sixsmith got the message. Nuts left bombs without motives, and whichsoever way you looked at it, Andover was undoubtedly a nut.

So what to do? His mind ran through the possibilities.

Ring the police, who would clear the building and the block while they waited for the Bomb Squad. He imagined the scene. Dr Who type robots clanking across the floor. Stern-faced men in flak jackets talking into radios. Long queues of traffic, and anxious, curious, aroused faces peering from behind barriers to glimpse what was going on.

Then the anticlimax when an officer appeared with the briefcase in one hand and a bunch of insurance invoices in the other.

To hell with that!

Gingerly Joe reached out towards the case, paused, telling himself it was better to look stupid alive than stupid dead, reversed the proposition and reached out again, paused again with his hand almost touching the locking catch, drew in a deep breath …

And shrieked as a voice said, ‘Ah, you’ve found my case, then.’

In the doorway stood Andover. He looked neither like a terrorist nor a lunatic. In fact if anything he looked rather sheepish. But Joe was still taking no chances and retreated hurriedly behind his desk.

Andover came into the room and picked up the briefcase. It didn’t explode.

‘I thought I must have left it here,’ he said. ‘To tell the truth, Mr Sixsmith, I’m glad I had an excuse to come back …’

The phone rang, postponing the possibly homicidal reasons for Andover’s gladness.

‘Hello!’ said Joe.

‘Chivers,’ growled the phone.

‘Sergeant Chivers. Well, hello, Sergeant. You got some news for me, Sergeant?’

‘Look, I know what my rank is,’ said Chivers. ‘About that info you so kindly passed on?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s definitely been a crime committed.’

‘You’re sure?’ said Joe, looking fearfully towards the patiently waiting Andover.

‘Certain. And you know what crime it is, Sixsmith? It’s called wasting police time! To wit, Detective-Constable Doberley’s time. He’s just got back from the Andover residence where he found Mrs Gina Andover and her sister, Mrs Maria Rocca, having tea with their parents, Mr and Mrs Tomassetti.’

‘You mean they’re alive?’ said Joe, dropping his voice.

‘Of course they’re alive! I know that Doberley sings in the same church choir as you, Sixsmith, but that don’t mean he’s so far gone he can’t distinguish the quick from the sodding dead. And here’s something else. On his way out, Doberley met the brother-in-law, Carlo Rocca. They had a little chat. Your Mr Andover was mentioned. Doberley asked if he’d been acting funny lately.’

Sixsmith saw that Andover was opening his briefcase. He had a very strange look on his face. He certainly looked like a man who was acting funny now.

Chivers went on, ‘Rocca was very forthcoming. Said that his brother-in-law had been talking a bit strange in the last few days, going on about dreams and slitting throats, all sorts of crazy stuff.’

Andover’s hand was sliding into the case.

‘That’s what I told you, Sergeant,’ hissed Joe urgently. ‘That’s why I rang …’

‘Yeah. Trouble is, you got the wrong number. So do me a favour. Next time you get a nut in your office, ring the psycho department at the Royal Infirmary!’

The phone went dead.

And Mr Andover slowly withdrew his hand from his case.

It held a tube of indigestion tablets.

He belched. His funny look disappeared. He popped a tablet into his mouth and smiled apologetically.

‘Nervous dyspepsia,’ he said. ‘I’ve been suffering a lot lately. Look, Mr Sixsmith, I wanted to say I’m sorry for my behaviour earlier. I realized once I had time to think about it that I must have made quite the wrong impression. It’s my job training, you see …’

‘You mean, you really were trying to sell me insurance?’ Joe cut in.

‘No, of course not. What I mean is, on the training courses, they teach you that the most important thing is, hit hard. Get the customer’s attention. You follow me?’

‘Not really,’ said Joe.

‘What I mean is, I wanted to talk to someone about … this thing. And I got very anxious about it, so I just let my training take over and when I came in here, I may have been a bit over-dramatic … Look, I know in my mind that Gina’s safe at home, and Maria and Momma and Poppa Tomassetti too, but sometimes what you feel is realer than what you know, do you know what I mean?’

‘You’re losing me again,’ said Joe. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere and have a coffee …’

While reassured that he wasn’t facing a multi-murderer, he still liked the idea of having more company than Whitey, who with a look of great resignation had re-entered his drawer.

Andover glanced at his watch.

‘I don’t think I’ve got time,’ he said. ‘My brother-in-law’s picking me up at half past. He borrowed the car today to go for an interview in Biggleswade and we arranged to meet at my office, but when I realized I had to come back here for my case, I left a message for him to come on here, I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Joe. ‘At least sit down while we’re talking.’

A man in a chair is less of a threat than a man on his feet.

Andover sat down and resumed talking.

‘The thing is, I’ve been having these dreams. At first they were vague, undetailed. I just used to wake up with a general sense of something being very wrong, and this stayed with me all day. A sense of something unpleasant somewhere over the horizon. Then they started getting clearer. And clearer. And … well, what it boils down to is this. I arrive home. I go in the house. No one answers my call. And there they all are. Gina and Maria and Momma and Poppa … sitting round the coffee table … and there are cups and saucers and a half-eaten Victoria sponge cake … and they’re all dead, Mr Sixsmith … they’re all dead!’

His voice which had almost faltered to a halt suddenly rose to a shout.

‘Ah,’ said Joe with a briskness born of a determination not to do anything which might suggest he wasn’t taking Andover seriously. ‘So what you came to report to me was not a murder but a dream of a murder.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the man, back to normal level. ‘But more than a dream, I’m sure. Such vividness, such detail, has got to be more than just a dream. I’m convinced it’s a warning, Mr Sixsmith. I believe unless I do something, it will happen. And if it happens, it will be my fault. A sin of omission, or even God help me, of commission.’

‘Pardon?’ said Joe.

Andover leaned across the desk and fixed him with a gaze which would have sold freezer insurance to Eskimos. Perhaps that’s what sbhahk meant.

‘This is the worst of my dream,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure when I wake up if I feel like I do simply because I’ve found the bodies or whether it’s because I’m the one who killed them!’

Joe glanced at his watch.

‘Will your brother-in-law come up for you or will he be looking for you outside the building?’ he asked.

‘He’ll wait outside. I’ll see if he’s there, shall I?’

Andover came round the desk to look out of the window.

Joe, who didn’t fancy being outflanked, stood up too and sauntered to his filing cabinet.

‘Can’t see him,’ said Andover. ‘I hope he hasn’t got held up at Biggleswade.’

It was on the tip of Joe’s tongue to say, no, Mr Rocca had arrived home about half an hour ago. But on second thoughts it didn’t seem a good idea to let on he’d brought the police into it.

He pulled open a drawer of the cabinet in the interests of verisimilitude and said as he examined its contents (two tins of cat food and a tennis ball), ‘Why’d you come to me, Mr Andover? Why not go to the cops?’

‘You’re joking. They’d just laugh at me,’ said Andover.

Joe thought of DS Chivers and couldn’t disagree.

‘But I had to talk to someone professionally,’ Andover went on. ‘I don’t mean a shrink. Someone who’d take what I said seriously, and maybe investigate, not just prescribe a lot of pills … but it had to be someone truly sympathetic …’

‘Like a primitive, you mean?’ said Joe, recalling their first exchange.

‘Look, I didn’t mean anything. I’m not racist. I married into an Italian family, for God’s sake! It’s just you once did some work for our Claims people and I remembered what they said about you …’

It had been a last-minute job. A negligence case against a private clinic by a man who’d ended up in a wheelchair after a simple cosmetic operation had left Falcon facing a million pound payout. Suspecting, or at least hoping for fraud, they had decided to keep a close watch on the patient. Then the claims investigator concerned had fallen off a ladder and, needing a replacement in a hurry, Falcon had hired Joe. He, however, between the briefing and his office, had contrived to lose the file.

Reluctant to admit his incompetence, he had managed to recall not the patient’s details, but the name and address of the doctor who’d performed the operation. Thinking to bluff the other essential details out of her, he’d called at her house in the Bedfordshire countryside. When there was no reply to his knock, he’d wandered round the back in case she was in the garden and found that indeed she was, being humped in a hammock by a large red-headed man, whose temper proved as fiery as his hair. Joe had fled to his car, literally falling in, and the first thing he saw from his worm’s eye view was the lost file under the seat. There was a photo of the suspect patient pinned to it. He was a large man with red hair.

It had been a nice scam. The lady doctor had made the right incisions, coached the guy in his responses, fixed him up with drugs to help fool the insurance experts, and told her sympathetic colleagues that it had all been too much for her and she was emigrating to Australia to start afresh.

‘So I came recommended,’ said Joe.

‘Sort of,’ said Andover. ‘Some people said you were just lucky. But one or two reckoned there had to be something else, something intuitive, a kind of natural instinct that made you head straight for the doctor. I mean, no one else would have dreamt of suspecting her, not in a million years. So when I got to wondering who I could talk to about investigating dreams, not any Freudian crap, but the sort of dreaming which was like a real world you could move in, maybe manipulate, all I could come up with was you.’

He spoke with a resigned bitterness which wasn’t very complimentary, but Joe was not about to be offended. In fact he was starting to feel rather sorry for the guy, which wasn’t all that clever, seeing that there was no honest way to make a client out of him, even if sight of Joe hadn’t put him off the idea.

‘Mr Andover, I’m sorry, I’m strictly a wideawake PI. Could be what you really need is a travel agent, take a nice holiday. Now if you don’t mind I’m closing shop, time to head home for my tea …’

‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’ve been foolish. It was just that I nodded off after lunch today and I had the dream with such intensity, I had to do something … Where on earth is Carlo?’

‘Perhaps he’s having trouble parking?’ suggested Joe.

‘Not Carlo. He still drives and parks like he was in Rome. He’d be right out there in the street if he was coming. Mind if I call my office?’

He picked up the phone and dialled without waiting for an answer.

‘Debbie? Hello. It’s me. My brother-in-law been in yet? Thank you.’

‘Damn the man,’ he said putting the phone down. ‘I can’t afford to be late tonight. Gina and I are going to the theatre …’ He looked at Joe speculatively. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be going my way, Sixsmith?’

Joe sighed. He was, vaguely, in so far as the concrete blockhouses of the Rasselas Estate were within mortar-bombing distance of the mock-Tudor villas of Coningsby Rise.

‘Come on,’ he said.

The old Morris Oxford had a few rattles and squeaks, but none of them to do with the engine. An aptitude for crosswords Joe might not have, but when it came to machinery, he could make an engine purr like Whitey in anticipation of a fish supper.

Casa Mia was impressive, even in an area that reeked of Gold Cards and overdrafts. Maybe it was the bold decision to abandon the traditional black and white half-timbering and go for scarlet and gold that made it stand out. Must be money in the insurance game, thought Joe. Though not enough left over to spend on a decent tailor?

‘There’s room to turn at the top of the drive,’ said Andover.

Joe drove in. No sign of any other car, so presumably Carlo Rocca had set out to pick up his brother-in-law. Tough.

Andover got out by the classically porticoed porch which looked like it had been recently stuck on to the studded oak front door.

‘Like a drink?’ he said.

‘No, thanks,’ said Joe firmly.

‘OK. Thanks for the lift. ’Bye.’

Andover went inside. Joe carefully negotiated the ornamental cherry which marked the hub of the turning circle in the gravelled drive.

Ahead was the gateway. Behind, he hoped forever, was Mr Andover and his crazy dreams. He noticed that someone had recently done a racing start here, scattering gravel all over the elegant lawn.

‘Mr Sixsmith!’

He heard his name screamed. In the mirror he saw Andover rush out of the house, waving his arms and staggering like a closing time drunk.

It felt like it might be a good time to follow the example laid out before him and burn rubber.

Instead he stopped, said to Whitey who’d reclaimed the passenger seat reluctantly given up to Andover, ‘You stay still,’ and got out.

Andover was leaning against the cherry tree, his face so pale his freckles stood out like raisins in bread dough.

‘Inside,’ he gasped, then, as if in visual aid, he was violently sick.

Joe went towards the house, not hurrying. He had little doubt what he was going to find and it wasn’t something you hurried to. Also he felt his limbs were moving with the strange slow floating action of a man in a dream. Someone else’s dream.

The front door opened into a panelled vestibule, tailor made for sporting prints and an elephant-foot umbrella stand.

Instead, the walls were lined with photos of bright Mediterranean scenes framed in white plastic, and the only thing on the floor was a woman’s body. Her throat had been slit, more than slit, almost severed, and the handle of the fatal knife still protruded from the gaping wound.

There were open doors to the left and the right. The one on the left led into a kitchen. On the floor were strewn the shards of a china teapot in a broad pool of pale amber tea.

Gingerly Joe stepped over the body so he could see through the doorway on the right. It led into a lounge, and he was glad his sense of professional procedure gave him a reason for not crossing the threshold.

There were three more bodies here, an elderly couple and a youngish woman. The couple were slumped against each other on a garishly upholstered sofa. The woman lay on her side by a low table on which stood four cups and saucers, and a half-eaten Victoria sponge.

All three had had their throats cut.

Sixsmith turned back to the hallway. By the main door was a wall phone, with a fixed mouthpiece and separate earphone, like the ones reporters use in the old American movies. Carefully cloaking his fingers with his handkerchief (something else he’d seen in the movies), Joe dialled the police.

‘DS Chivers, please.’

‘Sorry, the Sergeant’s out on a call, sir. Can I help?’

‘I’m at a house called Casa Mia, number twenty-one Coningsby Rise—’

‘Hold on, sir. We’ve had that call already, that’s where the Sergeant’s gone. He should be with you any time now.’

‘This is real service,’ said Joe.

He stepped out into the fresh air and drew in a deep breath.

Andover was sitting with his back against one of the porch pillars, his head slumped on his chest.

‘You OK?’

The head jerked in what could have been an affirmative.

‘Good,’ said Joe, then walked across to the cherry tree, where he was following Andover’s earlier example when the first police car screamed up the drive.