Dying to Know (21 page)

I was about to tell him when Percy coughed. ‘I'm not sure you should be discussing that, not until the inspector gets here.'

‘If Masson wants to talk to Dad first,' I suggested, ‘perhaps he should pull his finger out of wherever it is and get here.'

‘He's a bit stretched,' admitted Percy. ‘Constable Smith's phoned in sick again.'

Dad asked somewhat plaintively, ‘What's going on?'

I looked at Percy with my eyebrows raised and he responded with a faint shrug while the look on his face suggested that he was washing his hands of the affair. To Dad I said, ‘Doris Lightoller's dead.'

His eyes widened and his mouth opened slightly. ‘Oh, no,' he whispered. Then: ‘How?'

I tried not to hesitate, but failed. ‘She was attacked with a hammer.'

His eyes closed. I knew Dad, knew that he might not have liked either of the Lightollers but the last thing in the world he would have wanted was to see them dead. ‘Dear God.'

There was an awkward silence; I could feel the presence of Percy behind me taking all this in, an audience of one following the action with an opened mouth and tongue that peeped shyly out of the dark. Inevitably, Dad asked, ‘Who did it?'

I glanced up at Max who was on the other side of the bed. Her grimace said it all:
rather you than me.
Percy's cough wandered into the room from his position in the corner. Dad frowned at me and I saw the beginnings of comprehension peeping like rosy-fingered dawn over the horizon. ‘They think I did?' he asked quietly.

I nodded. ‘Your fingerprints were on the hammer. They think you attacked her and then somehow fell down the stairs.'

Being my father, he took this in a completely unexpected fashion. What he should have done was protested his innocence with passion and gusto, shouted incredulity from the chimney tops, expressed loudly his scorn for the notion. Instead, all he did was say, ‘I wonder if I did?'

Max squeaked in alarm as I said through teeth that were threatening to buckle under the strain so tightly were my jaws clamped together, ‘No, Dad, you didn't.'

Percy had sat up; several decades of less than exhilarating police work behind the counter at Norbury police station might have turned his detective abilities from razor sharp to something with all the cutting ability of a lead pipe, but even he could tell something worth listening to when it wandered past his lugholes.

‘I hope not,' Dad continued, his tone suggesting that, in his own mind at least, he was merely having an absorbing academic discussion. ‘But I can't be sure at the moment, can I? I can't remember doing it, but then I can't remember
not
doing it.'

‘Of course you didn't do it, Dad. You're not a violent man.'

He thought about this. ‘I don't think I am . . .'

‘You're not, Dr Elliot,' put in Max.

He turned to look at her. ‘Not normally, at least.'

‘Not ever,' she said firmly. ‘You're one of the kindest, most caring, most gentle people I've ever met.'

He looked at her intently. Perhaps he was checking for insincerity, for the merest suggestion that she was being patronizing and, accordingly, I found that I was holding my breath. Then he smiled just a little and reached out his hand to pat hers, the drip line swaying as he did so. ‘Thank you, my dear. It's very kind of you to say so.'

I decided to concentrate on the positives in what Dad had told us. ‘You said that you heard Doris making a commotion. Did you hear anyone else?'

He thought about this. ‘I don't think so.'

‘And when you went into the house, there was nothing to suggest the presence of someone else?'

‘Not that I recall.'

I gave up. Dad's refusal to give himself any means of escape – to offer any doubt, no matter how small, that someone else was in the house when Doris Lightoller had died – was to me ample evidence that he was innocent in every sense of the word, but I suspected it would mean nothing to the more cynical ears that resided beneath a policeman's helmet.

Percy was noting things down in his notebook and I had a strong suspicion that it wasn't his shopping list. In desperation, I looked around the room for a subject to change to, my eyes lighting on a crumpled copy of the
Croydon Advertiser.
‘Catching up on everything you've missed?' I asked, picking it up and brandishing it.

Dad nodded. ‘I like to keep abreast. One of the nurses gave it to me. Nice girl; about your age, Lance. Not married, either.'

Ignoring him and hoping that Max was not taking offence, I peered at the date on the front page. ‘It's last week's.'

‘Is it?' he asked, then shrugged. ‘I did wonder.' He sounded vague, almost musical and for a second I thought that he was having some sort of turn; I looked across at Max who was watching Dad too, but then the door opened.

Ed Keeping came in, Dad's medical notes under his arm and looking, as ever, as if he was either on his way to, or on the way back from, a beach, although there wasn't one for sixty miles. ‘Hi, guys. How's tricks?'

My father eyed him. ‘If, by that strange idiom, you are asking after my health, Mr Keeping, I can tell you that I am fine.' He seemed to be back to normal.

‘Call me Ed.'

Dad looked less than impressed. ‘I'd rather not.'

Ed Keeping was looking at the nursing chart which he put back down as he said with a smile, ‘As you like.'

I asked, ‘Would you like us to leave?'

‘Nah. I won't be more than a couple of minutes.'

To Max, Dad said loudly, ‘I can't help feeling that there is a worrying degree of informality entering into the doctor-patient relationship. It's not a good idea; not a good idea at all. It interferes with the necessary degree of clinical objectiveness that the doctor must have to give of his best.'

We moved back as Keeping began a brief clinical examination, first feeling Dad's pulse, then checking his eyes and his chest. When he had done this, he said through a large and amused smile, ‘You're doing just great, Dr Elliot.'

‘That's nice to know.'

Keeping was writing in the notes. ‘The drips can come down tonight. Are you eating and drinking?'

‘I'm trying, although to judge from the quality of the muck on the plate, the canteen staff don't want me to.'

‘Do you have a headache?'

‘Only when I eat.'

Of me Keeping asked, ‘Have you noticed any change in his personality?'

When I shook my head, Keeping asked with a sly glance at Dad, ‘You mean he was always like this?' Before Dad could vocalise his outrage, he continued quickly, ‘Another five minutes, no longer. He's getting tired.'

‘I am not.'

Keeping looked at him and then turned to me with a perfectly straight face. ‘It often happens after a serious head injury.'

Dad demanded, ‘What does?'

He was ignored, though. ‘It's nothing to worry about.' And with that he winked at me.

Dad wasn't going to be left out. ‘What isn't?'

I nodded. ‘I understand.'

Keeping walked out, leaving my father demanding loudly of anyone and everyone, ‘What on earth is that man talking about?'

THIRTY

D
arkness fell as we drove back to Dad's house. We let ourselves in and I was looking forward to a nice fry-up courtesy of Max, hopefully followed by . . . well, who knows?

It wasn't to be, though.

I know that in crime thrillers and suchlike, the hero is at once instinctively aware of something being amiss when he enters a room or a house, that he has at his fingertips an unerring sixth sense of danger, but it didn't happen with me. Max went in first, and I followed, I switched on the hall light, and we took off our coats. We went through into the kitchen, switched on the light in there, and only then for the first time saw that we had visitors.

Tom Lightoller sat at the kitchen table, one of his goons – the big one with a brow big enough to stand under should it rain – behind him. The cheeky devil had helped himself to a cup of coffee which he was now ostentatiously sipping; Igor, or whatever his name was, had to content himself with chewing something that I could quite easily imagine was a small furry rodent. They looked to me as if, as undertakers, they offered the complete service, including providing the cadaver.

Max squeaked, I said something that might have been, ‘What the hell?' and Tom Lightoller said politely, ‘Good evening.'

Igor scowled; perhaps he had bitten into the gall bladder.

Tom Lightoller put the coffee cup down and continued, ‘You weren't about, so we made ourselves at home.'

‘What the bloody hell is going on here?'

‘I want to speak to you.'

‘You can't just barge in like this.'

‘I did, though, didn't I?' He said this not arrogantly, merely in the spirit of getting things right.

‘I'm going to phone the police,' I said but before I could actually do anything towards this end, Igor moved out from behind the shadow of his diminutive boss and stepped towards me. That was all he did – he didn't have a gun, a knife, a flame-thrower or even brass knuckledusters – but it was enough. He made his point.

‘Sit down,' advised Tom.

Max and I looked at each other, then sat down. Tom enquired solicitously, ‘You sure you don't want any of your coffee?'

It was a nice offer and, I'm sure, well meant. I spoke for both of us. ‘No, thanks.'

He looked distressed for a second but, from the expression on his face, he was remarkably resilient, an impression that was strengthened when he said with a shrug, ‘OK.'

He took a sip of his – of my – coffee. ‘You should get Nescafé Fine Blend. It's ten times better than this stuff.'

You probably can't imagine the shame I felt that I had let my guest down but I bore it all with fortitude and muttered, ‘Thanks for the tip.'

Despite the pain that he professed to feel, he managed to finish the coffee and put the mug down. ‘Now,' he said. ‘To business.'

‘If you wouldn't mind.'

‘Your old man killed my old man.'

‘No, he didn't.'

‘And then he killed my mum.'

‘No, he didn't.'

‘The old man, I could take or leave, but my mum, she was a bit special. I loved her.' He had become ruminative.

‘Dad didn't kill anyone.' Nobody could say that I wasn't persistent.

‘Of course, Masson thinks it was over some watch or something, but I know different.'

I tried upping the volume a tad. ‘Tom, Dad didn't kill anyone.'

It had no discernible effect. He had previously been looking at his fingers clasped on the table in front of him but now he looked up at me. ‘You know different, too.'

‘Do I?'

He suddenly banged the table hard with his fist and the coffee mug jumped, thought momentarily about falling over in surprise, then thought again. It made us both jump and it made Max squeak and clutch my arm. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘You do.'

I didn't argue and into the silence of my agreement he continued, ‘My old man had something . . . of value.' I began to see what he was getting at but I didn't say anything; beside me Max stirred, presumably because she, too, was seeing some light. He continued, ‘I want it. It's mine. The way I look at it, it's my inheritance.'

I cleared my throat. ‘Well . . .'

This proved to be a mistake because it provoked him to turn on me and say crisply, ‘Don't argue, else my companion here will pull out your tongue and lick your arse with it.'

Max couldn't help herself. ‘Charming!'

There was a moment of something that I can only describe as incipient menace as Tom appraised her, then he bowed his head slightly and said, ‘Sorry.'

I think he meant it, too. I didn't feel that I ought to comment and it was left to Tom to pick up the conversation. ‘Somehow, your father found out about it and he went looking for it. He looked in the shop and then he looked in the house, but he didn't find it.'

This was fantasy, of course, but in the interests of keeping my tongue inside its usual orifice I tried to make the argument against his hypothesis using facial expressions alone. It didn't have the same oratorical force and he carried on obliviously, ‘I'm told your girlfriend was caught snooping around my parents' house.'

Max flushed. ‘It wasn't like that . . .'

‘That's not what I heard.'

‘You heard wrong,' insisted Max.

I added, ‘She was attacked by a real thief, too.'

‘Oh, yes.' I'm not sure whether I had hoped to evoke some sympathy in his breast; in any case, I failed.

‘Some would say she deserved what she got.'

Max squeaked. ‘Well!'

‘You or your family and friends always seem to be in the vicinity when these things happen,' he pointed out.

‘A coincidence.'

Tom's eyes narrowed as he pushed on. ‘There's a safe in my parents' house. If ever the old man had anything valuable, that's where he'd put it.'

‘Really?'

‘I expected it to be there, yet, hey presto, when my man looked in it, it was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard.'

Max joined in with: ‘How odd!'

‘And he had the distinct feeling that someone was in the house with him when he was there.'

‘Imagine!' I ventured.

He looked at me sharply. ‘It wasn't you then?'