Dying to Know (8 page)

His optimism seemed to me to be out of all proportion to the evidence.

And so we waited, the whole affair seeming to follow more or less the same course as it had twenty-four hours before. The decor remained as it had, my emotions were certainly similar, and the entertainment seemed peculiarly familiar, for through that same waiting room passed a stream of people who, whilst differing in most respects to those I had seen the night before, in the most important were identical.

I began to realize just how boring Percy Bailey's job was.

From where I sat, I could see the clock on the wall behind him, and this only made the waiting worse, the time slow, the tedium swell. My bladder swelled, too, but the only toilet was on the far side of Percy and I didn't fancy my chances of a positive response if I asked to be excused.

Then Constable Smith appeared in the office, looking rather tired. I called out to him, ‘Constable Smith?'

He looked up; he was still frowning, presenting the impression of a man with severe troubles on his horizon. ‘Hello.'

‘We're here to see my father. I understand you're questioning him about Oliver Lightoller's death.'

The frown deepened. ‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘We are.'

I was about to ask why but my new-found attorney decided to start earning his crust. ‘May I ask, constable, on what grounds you are holding him?'

Smith looked over his shoulder, as if afraid of being overheard by Masson in conversation with the enemy. ‘No grounds at all,' he said at last.

Holversum perked up, clearly sensing a victory. ‘Ha! In that case—'

‘He volunteered to come in and help us.'

‘Oh.' Holversum turned to me sadly. ‘Nothing we can do, I'm afraid. The blighters have got us on that one.'

I ignored him and asked of Smith, ‘But why are you questioning him at all? Just because they didn't get on together? That's absurd. And why at the police station? Surely you could have done it all at his home?'

Smith looked at Percy, who just kept on scribbling, refusing to have anything to do with the matter, before he said, ‘I really think you'll have to ask the inspector those questions . . .'

Whereupon, as if summoned, Masson opened the door at the back of the office and, leaning on the handle and the door frame, bellowed, ‘Smith!'

He looked very hot, very bothered and very impatient. Smith almost left the ground as he spun around; Percy didn't move any part of his considerable musculature. ‘Just coming, inspector.'

Masson caught sight of us and, I could see by the way his face turned from light pink to lightish mauve, he could have done without the vision. Mr Holversum smiled and called out in a friendly way, ‘Hello, inspector.'

Judging by Masson's expression, this proved far from helpful. He advanced into the room. He was in shirt sleeves and his tie was loose, his top two buttons undone; I had never seen him in such a condition before. He said in a dangerously steady voice, ‘Dr Elliot.'

He ignored Holversum who, nonetheless, did what he was paid to do. ‘Inspector, I am here to represent Dr Elliot, whom I believe you have been interrogating in regard to the death of Oliver Lightoller.'

Masson said loudly and forcefully, ‘It was murder, Mr Holversum. None of your verbal tricks here, please.' The words ‘Mr Holversum' were said in a coldly polite and totally disrespectful manner.

Holversum bowed his head to concede the point. ‘Nonetheless—'

‘Since Dr Elliot is here of his own free will and hasn't asked for legal representation, I don't really see that you have any business here.'

‘So we are led to understand by your constable. However—'

I had had enough of Masson's stonewall defence and Holversum's pretty but ineffective footwork. ‘Inspector, you can't possibly believe that this has anything to do with my father.'

Masson looked surprised. ‘Yes, I can,' he countered, as if I were being stupid.

I stared at him. ‘What?'

Masson repeated himself and, for my benefit, did so slowly. ‘Yes, I can.'

‘I told you. The disagreement was nothing. Two grown-ups having a silly argument, that's all.'

Masson looked less than impressed. ‘You think so? You think we should forget about what's gone on between your father and Lightoller?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Tell me, doctor. Was your father in the habit of socializing with Oliver Lightoller?'

I said carefully, ‘No.' I felt like a man wandering into a forest full of gin-traps.

‘They didn't ever go around to each other's houses for a spot of tea and a couple of Bourbon biscuits?'

Again, I said, ‘No.'

‘Never?'

‘Never.' But I knew as I said this that I was being led by the ring in my nose exactly where Masson wanted me to go.

‘Then perhaps you'd tell me why your father visited Lightoller in his shop at just after noon today.'

What could I say? The words had yet to be invented that would adequately describe my feelings then.

Holversum stepped in smartly. ‘Whether or not Dr Elliot visited the deceased, I still do not see why you are holding him as a suspect.'

Masson turned to Holversum and if ever a human being could be described as ‘smouldering', this was it. ‘I will hold him for three very good reasons, Mr Holversum. Firstly, this is a murder. Secondly, Dr Elliot has refused to explain why he chose to pay a call on a man whom he seems to have cordially hated. Thirdly, as far as we can ascertain, no one called at the shop after him until his son here did. Since we've established by our enquiries this afternoon that it is highly unlikely that his son could have done it, I think he has some questions to answer.'

It was obvious that Holversum had practised law for so long that incontrovertible arguments presented him with no problems at all; had he been defending Pontius Pilate, he would have argued quite cheerfully that the one-year-olds had it coming. ‘Have you any fingerprint or bloodstain evidence to implicate him?' he demanded.

Masson actually smiled. ‘No.'

Holversum pounced. ‘In which case, I demand—'

The smile was returned to store as Masson interjected, ‘Mr Holversum, as I have already told you, Dr Elliot is here voluntarily. He is not charged with anything.'

Before Holversum could start quoting case law and invoking the Geneva Convention, I asked what I thought was a reasonable question. ‘Surely by now he's explained matters. Why is he still here?'

Which was when I saw just what a hard time Masson was having. ‘Because,' he said, ‘he refuses to explain himself. In fact, he refuses to say anything useful at all.'

Mr Holversum used every trick that he had learned in the many years in his profession, flashed his smile at full strength, and generally talked a lot, but Masson was not to be persuaded. My father was to remain in custody overnight and, if necessary, beyond; and since he had not asked for legal representation, he was not going to get any. As Mr Holversum remarked to me sadly afterwards, ‘Inspector Masson is such an obdurate fellow.' We finally left the police station at just before three in the morning, he still smiling despite this lack of success, I unable to match this positive attitude.

‘Isn't there anything we can do?'

‘Not really, not unless your father requests legal representation, or is formally charged.'

‘Great.'

He patted me on the back. ‘Never fear, Holversum is here. We will prevail.'

He seemed to find great pleasure in this maxim, so much so that he repeated it as he began to walk away, throwing it over his shoulder at me, then laughing.

TEN

‘
H
ow's your father?' Jane asked the next morning.

I didn't know. I had tried ringing several times throughout the morning, but had met on every occasion the seemingly indomitable stubbornness of the constabulary. In a voice remarkably similar to Percy Bailey's, the policeman who answered the phone refused repeatedly to answer any of my questions, telling me only that my father was still being questioned. I managed to contact Mr Holversum, who assured me with a high-pitched laugh that he was moving ‘even the stars in their firmament' to gain access to my father; unfortunately, since my father had apparently still not requested legal representation, there was little that he could do.

I struggled through the day, beset by exhaustion and worry, wondering what my father was going through, able to think only about the kind of interrogation techniques employed with such relish by Jack Regan and his colleagues in
The Sweeney
. It seemed to me unlikely that Constable Smith would partake in such exuberant methods of questioning, but Masson was another matter; he had always struck me as a man who was relentless in the pursuit of those he saw as criminals. I wondered what my father was playing at by neither answering Masson's questions nor asking for a lawyer, and was concerned that perhaps he had . . .

I met Max at seven thirty for a drink in the Railway Telegraph in Beulah Road; she had just had to put down a large golden retriever and was somewhat melancholy; the news about my father jerked her out of this, however. ‘My gosh! Murder?'

I nodded.

‘Who?' She drank whisky and coke, but I still loved her; a large proportion of the contents of the glass disappeared inside her.

‘Oliver Lightoller.'

A look of epiphany lit her face; her large eyes became positively hypnotic in their size, her mouth hanging open, her delicious tongue just visible. ‘Oh . . . I see,' she decided.

There was something about the way she said this. ‘Do you?'

A nod, then more whisky and coke, but she said nothing.

‘What do you mean?'

I knew the look of unalloyed innocence well. There was nothing nasty in Max, and that made her very dangerous to know; very dangerous indeed. She looked around, as if police spies might lurk anywhere and everywhere. ‘Well, I can understand why he might have done it. I mean, this Mr Lightoller sounded as if he were a very unpleasant man—'

‘He didn't do it, Max,' I interrupted a tad forcefully. ‘He's innocent.'

This concept was novel to her and apparently disappointing. ‘Oh.'

She swallowed the last of her drink and prevailed upon me to go to the bar and order some more. When I returned, her next question told me that she hadn't quite accepted the possibility that my father might not commit homicide at the slightest provocation. ‘If he didn't do it, who did?'

‘I don't know.'

The silence that followed between us was an awkward one before she suddenly said, ‘We should find the real murderer.'

Which was all fine and dandy in principle, but I still had vivid memories of my last encounter with a murderer and their return came back to me with sufficient clarity to make me shudder. Before I could say anything, she continued, ‘If the police aren't doing their jobs, then we'll have to do them.'

‘I'm sure the police will come to their senses and realize how absurd the idea is.'

She frowned with more than a touch of incredulity. ‘You really think so?'

‘Of course.'

‘Well, I remember when the old lady over the road from me was attacked in her own house and left for dead, and they didn't ever catch who did it. They were useless.'

‘They don't fail every time—'

‘And there was the time that my parents were burgled; all the police did was turn up, wander about for twenty minutes and make some fatuous comments about the inadequacy of the locks. They never even pretended that they were serious about looking for the thieves.'

I might have argued still further, except that I knew that there was a degree of truth in what she said; Masson hadn't exactly covered himself with an air of infallibility when it came to investigating the deaths on the allotments a few months before.

‘What can we do?' I asked somewhat pathetically.

‘Investigate,' she said at once, as if that were a magic word that immediately bestowed on us the abilities of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond in one.

‘How?' I enquired, and my tone was partly curious, partly trepidatious.

Well, if she had had anything in her mind, it went out of it at that point and her opened mouth gave forth no bounty. After a short pause, she said uncertainly, ‘We'll have to think about that. It's too late now to do anything, anyway.' She finished her drink.

By the time I had returned from the bar again, I had made a decision. ‘If Masson's dumb enough to charge Dad with Lightoller's murder, then we interfere. Until then, we stay out of it.'

She was on the point of arguing, so I leaned across and planted a large kiss on her open mouth, which proved effective in silencing her. I had to keep it up for quite a while, but decided on balance that it was worth it. Slightly numb of lip, we parted eventually and Max looked distinctly happy.

After which, things went quite well. In fact, they went brilliantly . . .

At about three in the morning, as Max lay sleeping peacefully and with quite astonishing pulchritude next to me, the phone rang and two thoughts entered my head instantaneously. One was that this must be news about my father, that perhaps at last Mr Holversum had worked his promised magic and managed to get my father released; the other was that in five hours' time I was on call for twenty-four hours and a night's strenuous hokey-pokey with Max was not the best preparation, especially following on from two nights in which I had barely amassed a total of seven hours of sleep.

‘Yes?'

Dad's voice was bright and breezy. ‘Hello, Lance. Couldn't give me a lift home, could you?'