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‘These don’t change things much,’ said Joe, all professional reassurance.
‘Yes, they do,’ said Zak. ‘The first one I found in my locker at the Plezz. Which was locked. The second I found on my pillow when I woke up yesterday morning. I think these people are telling me they can go anywhere, do anything. Like cats.’
‘You don’t seem so scared of cats,’ said Joe, looking enviously at Whitey.
‘No, but if he was three times as big as me I’d be scared,’ said Zak.
‘Fair enough,’ said Joe. ‘So why exactly have you come to me?’
‘Because it’s the twenty-ninth, which leaves three days till the race. Seems to me my best chance is for someone to find out what’s going on in those three days.’
‘You’re probably right. But the people with the best chance of doing that are the cops.’
‘Definitely no,’ she said with an authority belying her years. ‘They work for the Law. I want someone working for me.’
This seemed an odd way of putting it but Joe didn’t beat his brain trying to figure out what she meant.
He said, ‘Suppose, as is likely, I can’t find anything out in three days?’
‘Then I find out about it myself on the track,’ she said slowly.
‘That’s crazy! If you’re that worried, why not pull a muscle, catch a cold or something?’
‘The voice told me, don’t think of scratching. I’ve got to run and lose or else all favours are off. Joe, it’s not just me that’s been threatened. I can hire muscle like Starbright to give me some degree of protection. But someone who can get close enough to leave these notes the way they did isn’t going to have any problem targeting my family.’
‘Turning up with me in tow could tip these people you’ve been talking.’
‘Hell, you not that famous, are you?’ she smiled. ‘I’ll say you’re some old friend’s old uncle who’s lost his job and I felt so sorry for you, I’ve taken you on as temporary bagman.’
‘That why you chose me, I’d fit the part so well?’ said Joe unresentingly.
‘No. Positive recommendation,’ she said, standing up and putting Whitey on the desk despite his plaintive protest. ‘Tell me, Joe, that pic up there, who’s it by?’
Surprised, because the only picture in his office was the photo of a recovery truck on the free calendar advertising Ram Ray’s garage, Joe followed her gaze. She was looking at Whitey’s tray still perched on the curtain rail above the window.
‘Sorry, I just stuck it up there to dry …’ he began apologizing.
‘You mean you did it yourself? Joe, that’s really great. Do you exhibit?’
‘No! Look, it was just sort of an accident …’
‘Joe, don’t put yourself down. We’ve had a couple of seminars on the Creative Accident this semester and what comes out of it is that all art is a form of accident, or maybe none of it is, which comes to much the same thing. Will you sell it to me?’
‘No!’
It came out a bit explosively and the girl (Joe knew better than to call girls girls these days, but they couldn’t put him in jail for thinking it!) looked so tearfully taken aback that Joe’s soft heart ruled his soft head and he heard himself saying, ‘What I mean is, you want it, you take it. Gift from me. And Whitey.’
Give credit where it’s due was a Mirabelle motto.
‘Well, thank you, Joe,’ she said, clearly overwhelmed. ‘And thank you too, Whitey.’
She picked up the cat from the desk and gave him a big hug.
Story of my life, thought Joe. I do the deals, he gets the profit.
‘Joe,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to run. Literally. You will take my case, won’t you?’
‘I’ll take a look at it,’ he said. ‘But listen, you haven’t heard my rates …’
‘Charge me top dollar, Joe,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m going to be a millionaire, haven’t you read the papers? I’ll be at the Plezz most of the morning. Come and see me there about twelve thirty. OK?’
And she was gone, clutching her tray like a championship trophy.
Joe looked down at the cat postcards she’d left on the desk.
‘Well, I guess I’m hired, Whitey,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know whether to be glad or not. This one could be a real problem.’
And the cat looked at him with an expression which said, the only real problem you’ve got is you’ve just given away my toilet tray, and what the shoot do you intend doing about that?
5 (#ulink_911de1f4-0017-59fa-9816-a1403034fba9)
Despite the fact that it was still only nine o’clock, breakfast felt a long way away.
Joe popped round the corner to Mr Palamides’s hardware shop where he bought a new litter tray in puce plastic. He foresaw trouble with the colour but it was all Mr P had.
‘OK, it does shout at you,’ he said to Whitey. ‘But have you seen the new gents at the Glit?’
The cat refused to be comforted so Joe left him sulking in the bottom drawer of his desk and went off in search of food.
A bacon sarnie and a mug of tea at MacFrys produced an association-of-ideas timeslip, reminding him of his conclusion, tested at breakfast, that Sandra Iles was Number One Suspect for the Potter killing.
It didn’t feel quite such an odds-on certainty now, but he didn’t doubt that Willie Woodbine on his return home would want to know if she’d been thoroughly checked out, and if Chivers wasn’t bright enough to do it, Joe had no inhibitions about doing himself a bit of good and the sergeant a bit of harm by demonstrating he at least had been on the ball.
The precise nature of this demonstration he had yet to work out. One thing was certain. Anything that came close to confrontation in a secluded spot was definitely out. Citizen’s arrest sounded easy when you said it fast, but it wasn’t a concept most Lutonians took kindly to, and he’d already had experience of getting on the wrong side of Ms Iles.
He doubted she’d be at work today. The chambers on Oldmaid Row would be crawling with cops and in any case, hadn’t she told Chivers she’d just called in to collect some case notes to study at home over the rest of the holiday? Probably a way of making some poor sod pay for her time even when she was lying around watching old movies on the box.
He drove to the post office, checked the telephone directory. There were three S. Iles, but one was a greengrocer and another lived on the Hermsprong Estate where rats hardly dared to go, let alone lawyers. The third address looked promising. 7 Coach Mews. This was all that remained to mark the site of one of Luton’s great coaching inns which had gone into rapid decline with the coming of the railway. The coming of the motor car had taken much longer to displace the horse totally in the town’s conservative affection and the stable complex had survived the demolition of the old inn by a good fifty years. Finally it too had become ruinous till a smart seventies developer had bought up the site, kept the old cobbled yard and as much of the facade as wasn’t on the point of collapse, and constructed eight town houses which had tripled in price by the height of the eighties boom. They had suffered the universal dip since then but were still only within reach of the town’s fattest cats, like accountants, pornographers, and lawyers.
He drove round there and smiled smugly when he saw the BMW parked in the cobbled yard. So far so good. But where next?
He recalled a story he’d heard read on the radio where some guy had gone around telling people in high places he knew their secret, then watched their reaction. It had been a pretty funny story, but maybe it had a serious side.
He guessed she was in the house, what with the car outside and the curtains still drawn. There was a phone box a little way down the street. He went into it and dialled the Iles number.
It rang a few times then an answer machine clicked in.
He put on the approximation of an Irish accent he used when singing ‘Danny Boy’ and said, ‘We know it was you that did it. See you soon.’
Then he returned to the car which he’d parked with a good view of the entrance to the mews. He was well out of the sightline of anyone in Number 7 but if she did emerge in the BMW, looking guilty, it was going to be a delicate task following her in this mobile wallpaper ad. Half an hour later he was starting to feel that this wasn’t a problem he was going to have to face. He went back to the phone box and rang again. Still the answer machine. He pressed the rest and redialled, repeating the process several times. Surely even a lawyer couldn’t be sleeping this soundly? He strolled to the mews entrance and glanced up at Number 7. The curtains were still drawn.
This is stupid, he thought. I mean, no one’s paying me to do this. Head back to the office, Sixsmith, and have a kip till it’s time to go see the lovely Zak down the Plezz and start earning some real money.
But even as his sensible mind hesitated, his traitor feet were carrying him to the door of Number 7 and his foolish finger was prodding the bell.
Nothing happened. He rang again, leaning his ear to the wood to check the bell was actually ringing. It was. And the door moved slightly under pressure from his ear.
He pushed it with his hand and it swung slowly open.
There was a noise to his right. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that an elderly gent of military mien had emerged from Number 6 and was regarding him with a curiosity this side of suspicion, but only just. Fixing his gaze firmly on the doorway, Joe let his mouth spread in a big smile and cried, ‘Well, hello there! Nice to see you again,’ and stepped inside.
Now why do I do these things? he asked himself helplessly. See a clever move and make it quick, is the way to lose at chequers, as Aunt Mirabelle always said after luring him forward with sacrifice, then triple-hopping his pieces.
But he’d done it anyway. Closing the door behind him so that Number 6 couldn’t peer in, he peeped through a small curtained window and saw the old soldier still standing there like he was on sentry duty. Best thing to do was wait a couple of minutes, then exit boldly, shouting, Thank you and goodbye! If the sound of his entry hadn’t roused the drowsy Ms Iles, then he could afford to exit with a bang!
But his awkward mind was asking, why hadn’t the legal lady been roused? Phone ringing, door opening, strange voice downstairs … Maybe she’d been so affected by what happened to Potter she’d knocked herself out with a pint of gin? Maybe … He decided to abandon maybes, knowing from experience how soon you ran out of the comfortable zones and got down to the scarys.
It was simpler to try and wake her, then run like hell at the first sound of movement.
He advanced to the foot of the stairs and called, ‘Ms Iles? You up there?’
No reply. I am definitely not going up those stairs, thought Joe.
Not any more than two or three, anyway.
But four or five never seems much more than two or three, and in no time at all he found himself where he had no intention of being, on the landing.
‘Ms Iles?’ he called again, thinking that if she came out of the bathroom now stark naked, she probably knew enough law dating back to the Middle Ages to get him broiled on a gridiron.
He moved slowly forward towards an open door. It led into a bedroom. She was in there. He could see her. She was naked.
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.
Maybe she’d got so pie-eyed she couldn’t make it under the duvet. Maybe …
There he went with his maybes again when all the time he knew from the angle of her head to her body that maybes were right out of fashion.
To his long list of folk he’d got wrong he added Sandra Iles. Unless she’d been so ridden with guilt, she’d managed to break her own neck.
He went closer to make absolutely sure. Her nakedness embarrassed him and it would have been easy to imagine accusation in those staring eyes. But there was only death. He touched her face, mouthing, ‘Sorry.’ Cold. Dead for hours. He ran his gaze round the room. No clues leapt up and hit him in the eye. And why the shoot should he be looking for clues anyway? No one was paying him to do a job here.
Still, like Endo Venera said, one way or another a PI was always on the job. No harm then in a few mental notes.
The bed was big enough for two but there was only one central pillow and that had a single indentation in it. Looked like she’d gone to bed then been disturbed. No sign of a nightgown. Either she slept raw or it had been taken. No obvious sign of rape. Her legs weren’t splayed and there were no scratches or bruising that he could see. No sign of struggle either. Everything neat and tidy. The clothes she’d been wearing last night were arranged on hangers and hooked over the edge of the wardrobe door.
On top of the wardrobe he could see the edge of what looked like a black metal box.
According to Endo Venera, two things a good PI never missed the chance of looking into were an open bar or a closed black metal box.
He tried to reach it, couldn’t. He picked up the stool in front of the dressing table. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but in for a penny, in for a pound, it’s nose that makes the world go round.
Even standing on the stool only got his head level with the top of the wardrobe. He wrapped his handkerchief round his right hand, reached up, fumbled till he found a handle, and lifted the box down.
It was eighteen inches by nine, the kind of portable strongbox you can buy in any legal stationer’s. There was a key in the lock. He turned it and lifted the lid.
‘Shoot,’ he said.
No telltale legal documents here, just photos, the kind of pictorial biography to be found in nearly everyone’s desk or attic. Sandra Iles (presumably) as baby, as infant, as (now recognizably) schoolgirl; on holiday, in cap and gown, in (bringing a reminiscent twinge to his neck) a judogi fastened with a black belt. Other people, presumably family and friends, appeared on some of the snaps but no one Joe knew till he hit a group photo taken on the steps of Number 1 Oldmaid Row.
There were five of them, Iles and four men. Joe recognized the burly figure of Peter Potter. The other three – a distinguished elderly man with silvery hair, a slight dark man with a sardonic white-toothed smile showing through an eruption of black beard, and a big blond Aryan in his early thirties – were presumably Pollinger, Naysmith and Montaigne, though not necessarily in that order.
Two down, three to go. The thought popped uninvited into his mind.
Then the doorbell rang, making him drop other people’s worries and several photographs.
He went to the curtained window and without touching peered through a tiny crack.
On the cobbles below stood a police car. Alongside it, looking up at the house and listening with polite boredom to the expostulations of the military man, was a pair of uniformed cops.
Joe glanced at his watch. Dickhead! I went in, found her dead, and was about to raise the alarm when the police arrived wasn’t going to sound so convincing now fifteen minutes had elapsed. It was going to sound even worse if they caught him in the bedroom, going through the dead woman’s things.
Hastily he scooped up the spilled pics, dropped them back in the box, locked it, clambered on the stool, replaced the box on the wardrobe, jumped down, replaced the stool before the dressing table, and headed for the door.
One last glance round to make sure he hadn’t left any traces of his illegal search. And he had. The group photo of the Poll-Pott team had fluttered half under the bed. He picked it up. The doorbell rang again and a voice started shouting urgently through the letter box. No time to put it back. He shoved it into his pocket and sprinted downstairs just in time to open the front door before they smashed in the glass panel with a truncheon.
‘Hey, that’s timing,’ said Joe. ‘I was just going to ring you.’ But he could see they didn’t believe him.
6 (#ulink_f74e8194-d25f-55f8-a808-bb50b3288abf)
It took the police doctor’s confirmation that Sandra Iles had been dead between twelve and fifteen hours to move Sergeant Chivers away from the pious hope that Joe had been caught in the act. But it didn’t move him far.
‘OK, so maybe you were just revisiting the scene of your crime,’ said Chivers. ‘Let’s concentrate on what you were doing between say seven and ten last night. And if you were sitting at home watching the telly, the courts don’t accept alibi evidence from cats!’
‘Shoot,’ said Joe. ‘Then I’m in real trouble, ’cos my witnesses are a lot less reliable than Whitey.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means that for most of the time, I was here being questioned by you, Sarge. Remember?’
Chivers closed his eyes in silent pain.
‘And when you were done with me, I went straight round to the Glit to wash the taste out of my mouth,’ said Joe, pressing his advantage.
‘The lowlife that drink there are anyone’s for a pint,’ said Chivers without real conviction.
‘I’ll tell Councillor Baxendale you said that, shall I? We got there the same time, and it’s true, I bought him a pint.’
Dickie Baxendale was chair of the council’s police liaison committee.
