The School of English Murder (22 page)

‘That’s why they think he probably isn’t one.’

‘Well for Jesus’ sake don’t tell Mrs Cowley-Bawdon that.’

‘Mrs Who?’

‘The Ubergruppenfuhrerine. Tell you about her some other time.’

‘What are you going to do now? Give up the search and go to bed?’

‘You don’t think I should ring the local Old Bill?’

‘I think you’d get very short shrift. They wouldn’t get too excited by a grown man being out at ten o’clock.’

‘Oh, sod it. He’s probably in someone’s bed. Or maybe someone with a car took him off to the bright lights. This afternoon he was on at me to take him out tonight, but I refused for his health’s sake: he seriously needs to lay off the food and booze.’

‘Maybe he’s gone off by himself.’

‘Couldn’t without a car: it’s miles and he hates walking. That’s another reason he’s so furious about not being allowed to drive… Hang on a minute.’

‘What is it?’

Amiss put his cigarette in the ashtray, went over to his jacket and tried the pockets. He went back and picked up the receiver.

‘I’m an idiot.’

‘Go on.’

‘The turd’s pinched the keys to the car.’

‘Which is not insured for him?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Look, there’s absolutely nothing you can do, so if I were you I’d go to bed.’

‘Will do. You too. How’s Ellis?’

‘He’s all right. Got a bit of personal trouble that he’ll no doubt tell you about sometime, but I’m keeping an eye on him. He’ll survive.’

‘I won’t pry. OK. Good-night. We’ll talk when there’s any news.’

‘Good-night, Robert. I hope your encumbrance comes home in one piece.’

‘I hope he doesn’t. I don’t know how I can face another four days with him.’

Amiss finished his letter, went to bed and slept until woken by a young woman bearing muesli and China tea. He immediately telephoned Ahmed. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes… no. My head is sick.’

‘I’m coming.’ He pulled on his dressing-gown and hastened downstairs. Ahmed opened the door looking sheepish. He had a large gash on his forehead. It took Amiss ten minutes to extract from him the information that he’d run the car into a wall (the will of Allah), but had not otherwise been hurt (Praise be to Allah). The car was not bad.

When Amiss had arranged for him to be visited by Sister, he went back to his room, showered, dressed and went out to look at the car. He guessed that at a rough estimate, the bodywork had sustained several hundred pounds worth of damage. Bugger it, he thought. I’ll drive it back to London and Rich can sort out the compensation.

He returned to find Ahmed bandaged up, complaining about his sore head and sitting in bed guzzling chocolate.

‘Where did you go last night, Ahmed?’

‘Restaurant. I have meat and wine.’

‘And then?’

‘I find a club and a woman. We have sex and I come here.’ He took another bar of chocolate out of his pocket and tucked into it noisily. Amiss looked at him with only barely concealed distaste. ‘Ahmed, why did you come to Marriners in the first place?’

‘I cannot understand.’

‘Why did the doctor say you must come here?’

‘I am sick.’

‘Do you want to be well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did you drink wine and why are you eating chocolate?’

‘Because I want to.’

‘But if you have those things, you will not get better.’

‘I bay a lot. They must cure me.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ said Amiss. He turned on his heel and went back to his own bedroom.

To avoid the trouble with the management that ensued from missed appointments, Amiss had been making a practice of delivering Ahmed to his various treatments. On this Thursday morning there was no need, as Ahmed decided to stay in bed and skip his massage and his herbal bath. However, in mid-afternoon he consented to join Amiss for a Turkish bath. Relations were tense between them and conversation perfunctory. Ahmed, knowing himself to be in the wrong, sulked. Amiss, weary from holding back from telling Ahmed what he thought of him, found it a great strain to be civil.

They sat opposite each other naked and alone in the Turkish bath until after five minutes two figures came in and joined them. The steam was so thick that it was impossible to recognise faces, but their first few words identified Amiss’s neighbours as the Irish contingent. Amiss was overjoyed to meet them again, and enthusiastically took up Mick’s renewed invitation to a small party in his room. ‘And you’re very welcome too, gentlemen,’ said Mick into the steam in which were buried Ahmed and a third newcomer. Two grunts came back, but Mick ignored the incivility and chatted to Amiss and his compatriot of the horrors of the exercise programme for which he had incautiously signed on. He had pulled a calf muscle on his first day and strained his wrist on the second. He stretched out his injured leg for relief and almost tripped up the invisible man opposite who was just leaving. Mick apologised, but this time the man did not even grunt: the only sound was of him opening and shutting the door.

Mick’s friend also left after another few minutes, but Amiss, who had a high tolerance for heat, sweated happily and enjoyed Mick’s conversation. After spending so many hours with Ahmed it was a pleasure to talk to someone who merely wished to be entertaining. He had no idea how much time had passed when Mick announced his imminent departure. ‘Make sure you come along about six then. Room seventeen.’

‘I look forward to it. Thanks very much. Coming, Ahmed?’

There was no answer. ‘Ahmed!’

Nothing.

‘They didn’t both leave, did they?’ asked Amiss.

‘Don’t think so.’

‘He must have fallen asleep. Ahmed!’

Amiss stepped carefully over towards the bench opposite and felt around. ‘Ah, got him. Ahmed, wake up.’ He patted him vigorously on the knee. There was no reaction.

‘Mick, I think he must be ill. Will you get the attendant and leave the door open so that the steam clears a bit?’

Mick went off without a word and Amiss waited uneasily. It took three or four minutes before visibility was good enough for the three men to see that Ahmed had a stab wound in his chest, that blood had mixed with the sweat on his body, and that he looked very dead. ‘May God have mercy on his soul,’ said Mick. ‘Now Robert, throw on your dressing-gown and come on upstairs with me. We’d need a quick one to recover from this.’

29

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‘This is appalling, utterly appalling. It could have a disastrous effect on business. I knew I should have insisted on expelling him from Marriners, but through sheer good nature I allowed myself to be talked out of it by that plausible side-kick of his.’

It was eight that evening and Milton and Pooley were listening to Mrs Cowley-Bawdon. They let her go on talking until she came to a natural halt. ‘Now, ma’am,’ said Milton, ‘we have every sympathy with you and we’ll be just as quick as we can, but you must understand that we have to make full inquiries.’

‘But I won’t have any of the patients upset. They are all busy and successful people who come here to rest. They must have no stress. It undoes all the good.’

Pooley admired the mantle of stolidity Milton donned on these occasions. He seemed able to detach himself from the gibberish and think about practicalities while saying that which had to be said. Mrs Cowley-Bawdon was given her head for several minutes more and then Milton became firm.

‘I appreciate all you’ve said, ma’am, but we have to stay here until we’ve done our work. We’ll need an office and, if possible, accommodation for the two of us.’

‘Accommodation? Why do we have to have policemen from London? What’s wrong with the other ones?’

‘Nothing, ma’am. They’re doing an excellent job, but for reasons which I cannot disclose, Scotland Yard is taking over. Now about the office?’

‘
They
made do with a corner of the hall.’ She clicked her tongue, ‘Oh, I suppose you’d better have mine. I hope you’re not going to need it for very long.’ She stood up, picked up her Filofax, and moved towards the door.

‘As long as it takes to conclude our on-the-spot investigation of the murder,’ said Milton stiffly.

She winced. ‘Please don’t use that terrible word.’

Milton’s patience tended to wear thin when he was confronted with hypocrisy. ‘What word would you prefer? Stabbing? Killing? Or would you like me to say he was put to sleep?’ Relations deteriorated after this, but did not quite break down. She bowed to the inevitable, gave them copies of lists of clients and staff along with the timetables of the day, and telling him he could use McIver to find people, she swept out of the room with her head high.

Milton tried Amiss’s number without success. He pressed the porter button on his keyboard. ‘Mr McIver, do you know where Mr Amiss is, please?’

‘Dinna ken, but mebbe he’s back with Mr McGuire.’

‘Please find him if you can and ask him to come down to Mrs Cowley-Bawdon’s office to see the police from London.’

‘It’s such a relief to see you both.’

Milton jumped up to greet Amiss and gave him a rough embrace.

That his friend’s voice was slightly slurred came as no surprise; Milton knew Amiss’s propensity for taking to the bottle when confronted by sudden death.

‘Come and sit down,’ said Pooley, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder, ‘and tell us all about it.’

‘Nothing to tell really. Someone stabbed him just two feet away from me and Mick and we didn’t see or hear a thing. Mick’ll tell you the same thing. Good bloke, Mick. We’ve been drowning our sorrows together along with his mates.’

‘I’m glad you’ve got support. Now just let’s run through the events of the afternoon and then we’ll send you back to Mick.’

The local police force had done a great deal of the donkey work, so Milton and Pooley were able to confine themselves to talking to the key witnesses — those who had been in the vicinity of the Turkish bath between three and four. Then they spent a couple of hours going through all the evidence, checking and cross-checking.

‘Seems perfectly clear to me, Ellis. Is it to you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let’s just make sure we got the same answers. Surprise, surprise, no one admits to being the mystery man and only two male patients have no alibi for that time. Correct?’

‘Correct: the American film producer and the Scots barrister.’

‘They deny ever being in Saudi Arabia. They haven’t even been in London during the time Ahmed was there. Both of them have seen him around Marriners, but have never spoken to him.’

‘That’s right.’

‘With the exception of those on holiday, all the staff were on-duty and have alibis.’

‘Right. So it looks almost certain that we’re dealing with an interloper.’

‘I’m knackered,’ said Milton, throwing down his pen. ‘It’s nearly midnight and I think we should leave it until the morning. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting a drink in this place.’

‘Hardly, sir. Unless we try Mr McGuire.’

‘His party’s unlikely to be going on still.’ He dialled Amiss’s number and got no answer. ‘Where are we supposed to be sleeping, anyway?’

‘Mrs Cowley-Bawdon said to ask McIver. I forgot all about it. He’s surely off-duty by now.’

Milton pressed porter and got a most disgruntled response. ‘I’ve been waiting till ye were ready, so I could show ye to your quarters.’

‘I’m very sorry to have kept you, Mr McIver. Perhaps you could show us now. We’ll pick you up at your desk.’

He picked up his papers. ‘Stupid old bastard,’ he said to Pooley. ‘All he had to do was to give us the room numbers hours ago. We could perfectly well have found our way ourselves.’

‘I expect he enjoys his grievance.’

They found McIver and followed him to the bedroom that had been allocated to them: single rooms were declared to be out of the question. McIver’s back was stiff and his accent apparently deliberately impenetrable: they couldn’t decide if he was always like that, if he regarded the murder as having been their fault, or if it was because he considered them socially unacceptable.

‘Thank you, Mr McIver,’ said Milton. ‘Now can you tell us where we can find Mr Amiss?’

McIver pointed to a door at the end of the corridor. ‘That’s his room, but ye’ll mabbe may find him in Mr McGuire’s, room seventeen down the other end. I warn ye,’ his tones were sepulchral, ‘I’ve reason to believe they’ve drink taken.’

‘Well, they have had a very unpleasant shock.’ McIver began to speak of weak vessels and Milton interrupted him. ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,’ he said firmly. ‘Thank you, Mr McIver, that will be all.’

He threw himself down on one of the beds. ‘Great God,’ he said, ‘he’s worse than Romford.’

‘You shouldn’t say something like that until we’re off-duty, sir.’

‘We’re off-duty, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. Go and see if Robert’s up to a chat, will you, Ellis?’

‘Why don’t you come too? Mr McGuire might give us a drink.’

‘Oh, all right. Mind you, I can’t imagine he’ll have any left.’ Amiss’s room was empty, so they walked quietly to McGuire’s door and listened. The low hum of voices emboldened them to knock, and the door was opened by McGuire. ‘Come on in, you’re more than welcome. How about a drink? Gin? Whiskey? Vodka? Beer?’

There were half a dozen people in the room; the number of glasses strewn round suggested that there had been far more at various times. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr McGuire. Actually, we were looking for Mr Amiss. A few things we needed to check on about the deceased, you know.’

‘You’ll get nothing out of poor Robert tonight.’ He waved towards the bed, where Amiss slept deeply. ‘He didn’t want to be on his own, but he couldn’t keep awake, so we put him to bed here. I’ll take his later on. Have a drink anyway, gentlemen. And it’s Mick.’

‘Well, I must admit that’s a very attractive idea, Mick. We’ve had a very long day. Whiskey and water please. And it’s Jim.’

‘And the same for me, please,’ said Pooley. ‘And it’s Ellis.’ McGuire sat them down on the side of the bed, got them their drinks and introduced them to their fellow-guests, three of whom they had already met. ‘You’re very impressively equipped with booze for someone on a health farm,’ observed Milton. ‘Cheers.’