REGINALD HILL

BLOOD SYMPATHY

A Joe Sixsmith novel

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublisher 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993

Copyright © Reginald Hill 1993

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007334865

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780007389155

Version: 2015-07-27

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Keep Reading

About Reginald Hill

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is set in a town called Luton in Bedfordshire. This should not be confused with the town called Luton in Bedfordshire, which the author has never been nearer to than the airport. Therefore any coincidence of layout, nomenclature, or character, is simply that – a coincidence.

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.

CHAPTER 2

It seemed that four bodies got you more than a sergeant, which was just as well.

Chivers, first on the scene, clearly saw Joe Sixsmith as a prime mover in all this mayhem. In fact it turned out that when he was passed details of the phone call saying, ‘My name is Stephen Andover. I have just murdered my wife and her family at 21 Coningsby Rise,’ he had wasted several minutes trying to ring Joe’s office. Once he grasped there really were four bodies in the house, he was much inclined to arrest Andover on the spot. Joe protested that the man had been in his company for the past half hour or more.

‘So we’ve got ourselves a conspiracy, have we?’ snapped Chivers illogically, and was cautioning Joe when Detective Chief Inspector ‘Willy’ Woodbine arrived.

Built like an old style pillar-box, he had a matching reputation for getting his message across. Now he listened to a résumé of the known facts, told Chivers not to be a twerp all his life, and put out a general call to pick up Carlo Rocca, age thirty-four, stocky build, with long black hair and a heavy black moustache, perhaps wearing a slouch hat and a grey topcoat with an astrakhan collar, and driving an F registered blue Ford Fiesta.

Then he went into the house presumably to look for clues.

Chivers glowered after him.

Joe said, ‘Can I go now?’

‘No you bloody well can’t! We’ll need a statement, and I’m sure that Mr Woodbine will want to question you personally. Doberley, get your useless body over here!’

Joe looked round to see Detective-Constable Dylan Doberley trying unsuccessfully to keep out of sight by pretending to search the shrubbery. Known inevitably as Dildo, Doberley was an old acquaintance of Joe’s from their co-membership of the Boyling Corner Chapel Concert Choir. Now they also had Chivers’s wrath in common.

‘Yes, Sarge?’ said Doberley.

‘You seen what’s in there, my son?’ demanded Chivers. ‘You realize they must’ve been having their throats slit while you were starting up your car? Call yourself a detective! Defective is more like it. Take a statement from Sherlock here. Then get yourself off round the neighbours and check if they saw anything suspicious, and I don’t mean you!’

Taking Joe’s statement didn’t take long as he’d already been mentally rehearsing it to keep his personal involvement down to a minimum. When they were finished Doberley said, ‘I’d better get on to the neighbours before he starts yelling again.’

Keeping out of Chivers’s way seemed a good idea, so Joe joined the detective as he walked down the drive.

‘On a short fuse today, your boss,’ he said conversationally.

‘He can blow himself up for me,’ said Doberley bitterly. ‘What’s he think I am anyway? Psychic? OK, I saw them, but they was all happy as Larry, jabbering away like they do, all arms and spaghetti bolognese—’

‘You mean they didn’t speak English?’

‘Of course they spoke English! The two young ones spoke it just like you and me. The old pair sounded a bit more foreign like, and it was when they got a bit excited, they all started spouting Iti.’

‘Excited? You didn’t tell them—?’

‘That I’d come to make sure they wasn’t dead? Don’t be stupid. I told ’em I was crime prevention come to warn them there’d been a lot of break-ins round here lately. That was enough to set them off, particularly the old boy. Right little Musso he was, wanting to know why we didn’t hang people and why he couldn’t keep his own personal machine-gun in the house. Lot of good it would have done the poor old sod. Not when your own son-in-law’s just going to walk right in and slit your throat. If it was the son-in-law did it, that is.’

Joe grinned at the sad little straw Dildo was clutching at and said, ‘He didn’t strike you as suspicious, then?’

‘No, he bloody didn’t!’ exclaimed Doberley. ‘I was just walking back to my car when this blue Fiesta turns into the drive. It stopped and he wound down the window and asked if he could help me. I guessed he was one of the family—’

‘Why?’

‘Because he would hardly have asked otherwise,’ said Dildo in exasperation. ‘How do you earn a living, Joe? Also he spoke with a bit of an accent and he looked foreign with that shaggy moustache and slouch hat. I asked him who he was, naturally, and he told me, and I told him who I was, but I didn’t shoot him the crime prevention line.’

‘Why not?’ asked Joe.

‘I thought: He doesn’t look like he’d scare easy; so I asked about Andover, had he been acting funny recently? And that got him going, all this stuff about crazy dreams and so forth. And that was it.’

He laughed without humour.

‘Know what the last thing I said to him was, Joe? I said it would probably be better if he didn’t mention this to the ladies or the old folk, as there was no need to frighten them unnecessarily! Oh no, he said. He wouldn’t do anything to frighten ’em. Then he went in and did that!’

‘Like you say, Dildo, we can’t be absolutely sure,’ said Joe.

‘No? What do you want?’ said the DC, abandoning hope. ‘The angel of the Lord in triplicate? Here, you’d better disappear now, Joe, and let me get on.’

Immersed in their conversation, they had turned into the driveway nearest Casa Mia and were approaching a not dissimilar mock-Tudor villa, only this one was traditionally coloured and called The Pines. Sixsmith could see why Doberley wouldn’t want to have to explain his presence either to the householder or, worse, to Chivers. Unfortunately their approach must have been monitored, for now the door opened and a woman came to meet them.

She was in her fifties, tall and angular, with expensively coiffured grey hair and a horsey face that looked like it had been worked on by a good picture restorer.

‘Hello,’ she cried in the piercing voice of one who expects her own way but isn’t so absolutely certain of personal desert that she can be quiet about it. ‘Police, is it?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Detective-Constable Doberley, ma’am,’ said Dildo, making a chess knight’s move forward in an effort to conceal Joe. ‘Just a couple of questions, if you would, Mrs … er …?’

‘Rathbone. Julia Rathbone. Is it about next door?’

‘That’s right, ma’am.’

‘Ah. I thought it would be.’

Sixsmith, not wanting to embarrass his fellow chorister but feeling it would look suspicious if he just took off back down the drive, moved sideways towards a grey Volvo parked in front of the garage and started examining it with that air of suppressed shock policemen usually adopted when checking his Morris.

‘Why’d you think that, ma’am?’ asked Doberley.

‘Because I saw your cars arrive, naturally. But besides that, I’ve always said it would end in tears ever since they moved in.’

‘You mean the Andovers?’

‘No, of course not. He’s all right, not quite top drawer, of course, but at least he’s English and knows his manners. Can’t imagine how he got mixed up with his wife, Gina, isn’t it? If they’d met on holiday, perhaps … I mean she’s just so … colourful, like one of those ornaments that look so delightful in Andalucia but when you get them home, it’s straight into the attic. Can’t do that with a wife, of course, not unless you’re called Rochester. But it appears she was born over here, in Tring, I believe, and that’s where he met her, so it can’t be down to sunstroke and vino, can it?’

Dildo Doberley, with a single-mindedness Joe admired, kept hold of the original thread which had led him into this verbal tangle.

‘So why would it end in tears, Mrs Rathbone?’

‘When the other came. That Rocca. My dear man, one look at him and you knew here was trouble. Do you know, he once told me if ever I was thinking of changing my hi-fi, to let him know and he’d fix me up with the best bargain I’d get in Bedfordshire. Well, I knew what that meant, back of a lorry stuff. No, thanks, I said. And he’s still undischarged, you know, and likely to stay so from what I’ve seen.’

There was a great deal more of this. Doberley stuck to his guns manfully and what it boiled down to in his notebook, or would have done if Joe Sixsmith had been making the notes, was that the real money in the family derived from old Tomassetti. He’d built up a thriving business in the fur trade with outlets all over Beds, Bucks, and Herts, till seeing that public opinion was moving strongly against wearing dead animals, he’d sold up, retired, and bought Casa Mia, inviting his eldest daughter and her husband, Stephen Andover, to join them there with the understanding that the house would pass to them after his death.

‘The house was called Cherry Lodge when he bought it,’ said Mrs Rathbone. ‘He changed it to Casa Mia. Down at the bridge club we said that Cosa Nostra would have been more appropriate, especially once the Roccas turned up.’

Carlo Rocca had married Maria, the younger and wilder daughter. Even-handedly, the old man had pushed a large chunk of money their way at the same time as he went into the Casa Mia arrangement with the Andovers. Rocca, then a salesman in a hi-fi and television store, had used his expertise and the money to set up his own shop in Luton’s new shopping mall. For a while things had prospered. Then recession began to bite, interest rates went up, sales went down, and six months earlier Rocca had been declared bankrupt.

‘That was it. Everything had to go, the shop, the stock, his car, and of course they had to get out of their flat, I mean, even our crazy social services won’t pay for a luxury apartment, will they? So Maria came to see her father, I think for more money. But he said no, he wasn’t going to chuck good money after bad, but she was family—about family—and she could come to live with them in Casa Mia, and her husband too, if they wanted. So they did. Well, I knew it would lead to trouble. And it has, but what kind of trouble, Mr Doberley? Here am I telling you everything I know, and you’re not telling me anything!’

Her eyes were bright with expectation.

Doberley, perhaps hoping to shock her into brevity, said flatly, ‘I’m afraid there’s been a fatality, ma’am.’

Her eyes went into super-nova.

‘A fatality? You mean he’s killed one of them?’

‘We don’t have any more details, the investigation’s at an early stage …’

‘But it has to be him. Of course it’s him. I saw him!’

‘You saw … what did you see?’ demanded Doberley.

‘I saw Rocca come running out of the house. Earlier this afternoon. I was in my bedroom and you get a good view over the shrubbery to the front of Casa Mia. Rocca came running out of the front door, jumped in the car and took off like one of those joyriders, you know, wheels skidding, gravel flying everywhere. I remember thinking: That will ruin their lawn-mower if they’re not careful. Who’s dead?’

Ignoring the question, Doberley said, ‘You’re sure it was Rocca?’

‘Oh yes. He had his hand up to his face as if he felt he was being watched and was trying to hide, but that ghastly moustache and awful gangster’s hat are unmistakable. Which of them has he killed? His wife? They were always rowing. The poor old mother must be so distressed. Perhaps I ought to go across and see if there’s anything I can do …’

‘I don’t think that would be such a good idea, Mrs Rathbone,’ said Doberley.

‘Why not? Look, I’m not just being nosey, I really like the old lady …’

‘I’m sure. Only she doesn’t need comforting.’

Something in the policeman’s tone got through.

‘You don’t mean … not her too … oh God.’

She had gone quite pale beneath the make-up. Sixsmith waited to see how far Doberley would go with his revelations, but the DC clearly felt he had gone too far already.

He said, ‘I think my superiors would like to talk to you, Mrs Rathbone. Perhaps we could go inside and I’ll contact them on your phone if I may.’

He ushered the woman into the house in front of him, turned to close the door and mouthed, ‘Get lost!’ at Joe.

It seemed like good advice.

Back at the Casa Mia everyone was busy, or looking busy. He looked for Chivers in the hope of getting leave to leave but the Sergeant was nowhere to be seen. In any case, the Morris Oxford was completely boxed in by a fleet of official police vehicles. Untroubled by all this activity, Whitey was fast asleep. It seemed a good idea. Joe slid quietly into the back, closed the door and curled up on the old travelling rug he kept there for warmth on all-night stake-outs.

It was impossible not to think about the killings. From what the nosey neighbour said, it sounded pretty open-and-shut. A house full of tensions, Rocca the wide boy chafing at having to toe the line to get the old man’s charity, his wife perhaps reckoning her sister was getting the better deal from their dad; the old man, dominant, patriarchal; explosive Latin temperaments; exploding Latin rows … no wonder poor old Anglo-Saxon-repressive Andover started having weird dreams!

One thing was sure; there was no case fee in it for J. Sixsmith PI, Inc. And he was glad there wasn’t. Tracking unfaithful wives and credit defaulters might be dull but at least it let you sleep easy.

A wink was as good as a … His eyelids closed … He drifted into a deep dark untroubled sleep …

But there was something in that darkness. Figures seated around a table, mere silhouettes at first, but gradually sharpening, and then their features emerging like a landscape at dawn …

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe Sixsmith in his sleep. Once more he was looking at the slaughtered quartet, and they were looking back at him, their sightless eyes locking on his, as each in turn raised a lifeless hand first to their bleeding throats as if in hope of staunching the wounds, then higher to cover their mouths as if to hold back their screams of terror and agony.

But there was no holding them back. Out they came, high, piercing, unearthly, and Sixsmith felt a weight pressing on his chest and the scream was so close it seemed to be inside his own head …

He awoke. Whitey was sitting on his chest bellowing into his ear that it was long past his tea-time and what was he going to do about it?

‘Don’t do that!’ snapped Joe, sitting up and precipitating the cat to the floor. But when he looked at his watch he had to admit the beast had the right of it. He got out of the car and stretched.

‘You still here?’ said DCI Woodbine, coming out of the house with Chivers in close attendance.

‘That’s right,’ said Joe mildly. ‘But I would like to go soon if I can. I’ve got a meeting tonight, also my cat’s getting a bit hungry.’

‘Four people dead and all he can think about is his cat,’ sneered Chivers.

‘You got something against cats, Sergeant?’ said Woodbine sharply. ‘I’ve got four Persians and I tell you this, I wouldn’t dare keep them waiting for their dinner. So you push off, Mr Sixsmith, whenever you’re ready.’

He thinks it’s all wrapped up, thought Joe. And so it probably is. Witnesses, motive, and a suspect with an Italian accent and a Mafia moustache driving round in a car whose number will be plastered across the nation’s telly screens tonight.

Woodbine ordered the vehicles blocking his exit out of the way and personally waved him out. Joe almost blew a kiss at Chivers but didn’t quite have the nerve.

‘There you are, Whitey,’ he said as he drove home. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes. Even cops can love cats.’

But Whitey was unimpressed. A deepdown racist, he regarded Persians and all foreign breeds as illegal immigrants, sneaking over here to take English mice out of English mouths. So now he merely sneered and yelled even louder for his tea.

CHAPTER 3

Whenever Joe Sixsmith felt the sharp elbows of Anglo-Saxon attitudes digging in his ribs, he reminded himself that these people had invented the fried breakfast.

He liked the fried breakfast. He liked it so much he often had it for tea too. And sometimes for his dinner.

He’d been warned that addiction to the fried breakfast could kill him.

‘There are worse things to die of,’ said Joe.

Whitey enjoyed the fried breakfast too, which was just as well.

‘No fads and fancies here, man,’ Joe had warned him on first acquaintance. ‘You’ve joined the only true democratic household in Luton. We eat the same, drink the same.’ Which principle was sorely tested the first time Whitey caught a mouse and pushed it invitingly towards him.

They shared half a pound of streaky bacon, three eggs, two tomatoes and a handful of button mushrooms when they got back from Casa Mia. Then they split a pint of hot sweet tea sixty-forty and Joe settled before his twenty-six-inch telly to let the early evening news scrape the last traces of the day’s horror from his personal plate into the public trough.

In fact there wasn’t all that much about it. The politician and pony scandal still got main billing, and a crash landing on the A 505 came second. It was only a light plane and there were no fatalities, but a woman trying out her new camcorder had caught the whole drama in wobbly close-up and the resultant images must have been irresistible to the picture-popping TV mind.

If there’d been a camera to record what Joe Sixsmith had seen, he didn’t doubt that the Casa Mia killings would have been top of the pops, but they had to make do with exteriors and a close-up of Willy Woodbine confidently anticipating an early arrest and inviting viewers to look out for, but steer clear of, Carlo Rocca, who could help the police with their inquiries.

There was a photo of Rocca which looked like a fuzzy enlargement from a wedding group. Joe doubted if it would be all that much use except to anyone with a grudge against some fellow with a prominent moustache.

‘Now, sport,’ said the presenter. ‘Luton have made a late change in the team for their key league match tonight …’

Sixsmith sighed and felt his season ticket burning in his wallet. Trust the Major to call a residents’ meeting on a night when Luton were playing at home. That’s what came of being brought up on rugger and polo. Thoughts of truancy drifted through his mind, then drifted out. The Major he could avoid, but not Auntie Mirabelle.

Still he had time for forty winks before he needed to think about going …

He relaxed in his chair, closed his eyes … and was back in Andover’s dream. At least he tried to make himself think of it as Andover’s dream (which meant he knew he was dreaming), only it had his own little variation of the corpses raising their hands to their mouths and screaming … no, not screaming … this time they were making an insistent bell-ringing noise … ah, now they were screaming …

He awoke to find Whitey bellowing in his ear that the phone was ringing and wasn’t he going to answer it?

He yawned and reached for the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Joe, that you?’ demanded the unmistakable voice of his Aunt Mirabelle.

‘No, Auntie, it’s a burglar,’ said Sixsmith.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. You play with pitch, you going to get defiled, doesn’t the Good Book tell us so?’

‘Yes, Auntie. And you’ve rung to tell me not to forget I’m due at the Residents’ Action meeting, right?’

‘You so clever, how come you can’t get a proper job?’ she said briskly. ‘The Major says, make sure that nephew of yours shows up on parade. People are starting to think they can’t rely on you, Joe, and that’s bad.’

‘People?’

‘Yes, people. The Rev. Pot just the same. He says: Is that Joe singing in my choir or is he not? This is no public house singalong we’re trying to do, this is Haydn’s Creation. That took the Lord seven days, how many days you think it’s going to take you?’

‘I’ll come to choir practice tomorrow, I promise, Auntie. And I’ll be at the meeting tonight.’

‘See that you are. I got someone I want you to meet.’

Joe groaned inwardly, said, ‘Goodbye, Auntie,’ put the phone down, and groaned outwardly. He loved his aunt dearly but her efforts to direct his life were a trial, particularly since she’d decided that what he needed to get his head right and drop this detective nonsense was the responsibility of marriage. A steam of candidates had been channelled his way, most of them extremely homely and slightly middle-aged. Mirabelle would sing Joe’s praises to anyone, but even a loving aunt reckons a short, balding, unemployed nephew in his late thirties can’t be choosey. The odd ones who were comparatively young and attractive always turned out to have some hidden disadvantage, like a string of kids or convictions for violence.

‘Whitey, you look after the place. Anyone tries to get in, you bark like a dog.’

The cat looked suitably disgusted by the suggestion and snuggled into the cushion made warm by Joe’s behind.

Sixsmith envied him as he stepped out into the shadowy canyons of the estate, specially constructed so that where’er you walked, cool gales fanned your butt. With designs like this, who needed nuclear energy? The meeting was in the community room in one of the newer blocks about half a mile away. Normally he would have walked, but there was rain in the wind so he made for his car.

There were no purpose-built garages at this end of the estate. Back in the ’sixties you weren’t expected to own a car if you lived here. There were a dozen lock-ups available in Lykers Yard, a relict of the old nineteenth-century settlement, most of which had been demolished to make way for the high rises. But these were privately owned and let out at rates almost equalling what the council asked for its flats. Joe valued his old Morris, but not that much. It was not a model greatly in demand by joyriders, so, theorizing that crooks didn’t like a dead end, he usually left it parked on Lykers Lane facing into the exitless yard. So far it had survived unscathed.

On arrival at the community room, he hung around outside till he heard the Major’s unmistakable voice calling the meeting to order. Then he slipped in quietly, hoping thus to avoid the threat of Auntie Mirabelle’s latest introduction. But there was no escape. Seventy-five she might be, overweight and somewhat rheumatic, but she had an eye like a hawk, and she patted a vacant seat next to her with an authority that would have intimidated a cat.

On her other side was a woman Joe didn’t recognize, presumably Mirabelle’s latest candidate. He studied her out of the corner of his eye. She looked to be in her late twenties and had a strong, handsome face, which meant she was either a single parent or a psychopath. Suddenly, as if attracted by his appraisal, she glanced towards him and smiled. Flushing, he turned away and concentrated his attention on the Major who was introducing Sergeant Brightman.

Joe had mixed feelings about Major Sholto Tweedie. In many ways, with his cavalry officer’s bark, his hacking jacket, cravat and shooting stick, his habit of addressing anyone black in Bantu, and his simplified view of life as a chain of command, he was a comic caricature of a dying species. After a lifetime spent pursuing wild beasts and women between Capricorn and Cancer till Britain ran out of Empire and he ran out of money, he’d headed home to die in poverty. Landing in Luton, he’d presented himself to the Housing Department saying he understood they had a statutory duty to provide accommodation for anyone in need. A council official, irritated at being addressed imperiously by his surname, thought to get simultaneous revenge and riddance by offering the Major a one-bed flat in the darkest Rasselas block which was scheduled for demolition as soon as there was enough money available to hire the bulldozers.

It was a monumental tactical error. Instead of curling up or crawling away somewhere else to die, the Major, after sampling the conditions, exploded into life. He mounted an assault on the council, at first on his own behalf, but rapidly on behalf of the whole estate. This was not, Joe surmised, because the man’s politics had been radicalized, but simply because as an old soldier he knew that a general was nothing without troops.

The council had been gingered into doing repairs, improving the lighting and providing this community room, and the residents had been inspired to united resistance against graffiti, vandalism and general criminality.

You couldn’t argue with the results. Sergeant Brightman was reciting statistics to show the continuing decline on Rasselas of break-ins, car thefts, drug-dealing, etcetera. Indeed, by comparison with Hermsprong, its twin estate across the canal, he made Rasselas sound like Utopia.

On the other hand, thought Joe cynically, by comparison with Hermsprong, Sodom and Gomorrah probably came across like Frinton-on-Sea. Nor did he much like the sound of the Major’s latest scheme to organize security patrols to deal with offences like wall-spraying and peeing on the stairs. Tweedie referred to ‘residents’ platoons’ but they still sounded like vigilantes to Sixsmith, and to Brightman too, who was trying to steer a delicate path between applauding the Major’s leadership and warning him that private armies were against the law.

‘A watching brief is all they’d have,’ Tweedie cut across the policeman’s diplomacy. ‘No harm in that, eh? Call the boys in blue first sign of trouble. Now here’s what I propose. Battalion HQ, for general surveillance and overall control, myself, Sally Firbright, Mr Holmes and Mirabelle Valentine …’

He then ran through a list of sub-groups (which he called ‘sections’), pausing for comment after each area of responsibility and list of names. No one offered either query or objection. He’s got them scared witless, thought Joe with cynical superiority till he heard the Major say, ‘South-Eastern Sector to take in Bog Lane underpass and the Lykers Yard lock-ups, section leader, Joe Sixsmith; assisted by Mr Poulson and Beryl Boddington …’

Joe started angrily in his seat but Auntie Mirabelle’s fingers were round his wrist and she murmured, ‘Congratulations, Joseph,’ as she gave him a smile and a squeeze which defied him to make a fuss.

‘Everyone happy?’ concluded the Major. ‘Good. Section leaders, there’ll be a bit of bumph coming your way. Watch out for it. Thank you, everyone. Dismiss.’

Sixsmith shot up like a man who is late for an urgent appointment, but Mirabelle’s wrist lock was still in place.

‘This your idea, Auntie?’ he said accusingly.

‘I put in a word,’ she admitted. ‘But no need to thank me. I thought, with you so keen to do the policemen’s work for them, this is a good way to get it out of your system. How’re you keeping anyway, Joseph? You look pretty peaky to me. Scruffy too. If your poor dead mother could see you now, the shock would probably kill her. You need someone to take care of you.’

Determined to head off this line of attack, Joe said, ‘Mr Poulson I know. Isn’t he waiting for his Zimmer? Some vigilante. But who’s this Beryl Boddleton?’

‘Boddington,’ said Mirabelle, with a broad smile which warned Joe too late of the trap that she had laid for him. ‘You want to meet her? Why, here she is. Beryl, this here’s my nephew Joseph I’ve told you about. Also your section leader. Joseph, meet your new neighbour and team colleague, Beryl Boddington. Just moved into my block. Beryl’s a nurse at the Infirmary. Good job, regular money, career prospects, more than can be said for some people who should know better!’

The woman held out her hand. Beneath her coat Joe could see a nurse’s uniform clinging to a sturdy but shapely body. She smiled as he shook her hand. Two smiles without saying a word; I bet she’s been coached to show off her teeth, thought Joe unkindly.

‘Pleased to meet you, Joseph,’ she said.

‘Joe,’ he said, instantly regretting this tiny invitation to intimacy.

‘Joe,’ she echoed, smiling again. She did have very nice teeth.

‘You two will need to talk about your team tactics,’ said Mirabelle.

Joe’s mind instantly started lumbering towards excuses for doing no such thing, but Beryl Boddington was ahead of him.

‘Sorry, not now,’ she said as if he were pressing her. ‘I’ve got to be on duty in twenty minutes.’

‘Joseph’s got a car, he can give you a lift, ain’t that right, Joseph?’

To Sixsmith’s jaundiced ear this sounded like a well-rehearsed exchange in a second-rate soap.

He said brusquely, ‘Sorry, but I got trouble with my carburettor. I’m just heading back to fix it.’

The nurse said indifferently, ‘That’s OK. I’ll get the bus. See you, Mirabelle.’

‘Don’t forget the choir practice,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Rev. Pot’s desperate for sopranos.’

‘I’ll see. But with shifts, it’s not easy. ’Bye now.’

The nurse turned and left.

Mirabelle said, ‘Joseph, why are you so rude?’

Sixsmith might have felt a little guilty if it hadn’t been for the revelation that his aunt was mounting a second front at the choir.

He said, ‘Don’t know what you mean, Auntie. Excuse me. I need to talk to Sergeant Brightman.’

The Sergeant greeted him accusingly.

‘Joe, that’s a real hornets’ nest you stirred up. You’ve got everyone running around like mad downtown.’

‘Hey, Sarge, I didn’t kill them,’ protested Sixsmith. ‘How’s it going? They got this Rocca yet?’

‘Give us time, Joe. It’s only you PIs in books that get instant results. Real police work takes a bit longer. Isn’t that right, Mirabelle?’

Joe realized his aunt hadn’t let herself be shaken off so easily. Fortunately the Major, whose keen military eye had quickly recognized good warrant officer material, seized her and said, ‘Belle, my dear woman, we must talk about disinfectant for the back stairs. I gather the council’s still dragging its feet.’

‘That’s right. And did you see the mess they left last time they emptied the bins?’

Sixsmith headed for the door. A man who didn’t grab his chance to escape deserved to stay locked up.

Outside he found the forecast rain coming down in earnest. His headlights picked out a figure leaning into the wind-driven downpour. It wasn’t till he was past that he realized it had been Beryl Boddington.

He hesitated, then said, ‘Oh shoot!’ and pressed on. She probably hadn’t spotted him and to stop now would be a tactical error of monumental proportions.

But he still felt guilty.

He parked his car in Lykers Lane and set off at a brisk trot for his block. There was a taxi outside the entrance. An Asian woman in a sari with a small child in her arms got out, followed by a boy of five or six carrying a large plastic bull with purple horns. The taxi-driver grabbed a suitcase from the boot, then shepherded the party to the shelter of the entrance, stooping over them from his great height as if to protect them from the rain.

Joe knew the man. Mervyn Golightly, one-time fitter at Robco Engineering till the same collapse which sent Joe down the road had dumped him too. He’d put his redundancy money into a cab and he and Joe had a vague deal—‘Any of my customers need a PI, I’ll pass them on to you, any of yours need a cab, you pass them on to me.’ It didn’t occur to Joe that Golightly’s presence here tonight might have something to do with this so far unproductive arrangement.

‘Merv,’ he said. ‘How are you doing? This is some lousy weather.’

‘Joe Sixsmith,’ yelled Golightly, slapping his hand with so much force he almost knocked Joe back out into the wet. ‘Now this is fortunate. Lady, this is the man I was telling you about. Luton’s answer to Sam Spade and Miss Marple all in one. Joe, I’m dropping a punter at the airport when I spot this lady and her family standing all forlorn, so I ask her, what’s up, lady? And she tells me they won’t let her husband into this great free country of ours, did you ever hear such a thing? Her and the kids they let through, but her husband they hold on to. What’s she supposed to do? She says she needs a lawyer, but where do you get a lawyer in Luton this time of night? You can get laid, you can even get a plumber if you’re a millionaire, but a lawyer, no way. Then it hits me, if you can’t get a lawyer, next best thing is my friend Joe Sixsmith. So here she is. Name’s Bannerjee, do what you can, huh?’

‘Merv, I don’t see what—’

‘You’ll think of something. I’m out of here. Regular pick-up over in Hermsprong. Exotic dancer, if she’s not shaking her stuff in Genghis Khan’s in forty minutes, she’ll uncouple my tackle. Ciao, bambino!’

He gave the Indian family a smile like a neon sign, waved aside the woman’s attempt to open her purse, and folded himself dexterously into his cab.

‘Merv, wait!’ yelled Joe. ‘We need to talk!’

‘We’ll sort out my commission later, Joe,’ yelled Merv. ‘See you!’

He gunned his engine and shot away in a screech of spray.

It was time to be firm, decided Sixsmith. He felt sorry for this woman, transported from her Third World rural environment to this cold unwelcoming country, but she had to understand from the start that there was nothing he could do for her except point her to the right authorities.

He said, ‘Mrs Bannerjee, I’m sorry. My friend has made a mistake. I don’t do immigration work. I’m a private detective. What you want is the Immigrant Advice Centre …’

She was looking at him like he was raving mad.

‘What is all this about immigrants?’ she demanded angrily. ‘I have been living in Birmingham for fifteen years. My children are all born here. I have a National Insurance number, and a job as part-time receptionist at the Sheldon Airlodge Hotel.’

‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe. He’d made the same kind of bonehead assumption that so irritated him when people made it about him. This was clearly his night for guilt.

He said, ‘I’m sorry, I thought when Merv mentioned the airport …’

‘We are coming back from holiday, ten days in Marbella, three star hotel. We arrive at Luton, very good flight, only ninety minutes late, and as we go through Customs green light, a man says, will you come this way, please? And he takes us to a little room … please, is there somewhere we could sit down? This has been a very tiring day.’

Joe didn’t know if it was written somewhere, never let a woman with two kids and a suitcase into your home, but he guessed it was, probably in the Dead Sea Scrolls or on a pyramid. Maybe it went on to give advice on how to keep them out, but not having the benefit of a classical education he lacked the art. And the heart.

He picked up the suitcase. It was very heavy.

‘You’d better come on up,’ he said.

CHAPTER 4

Whitey was still stretched out on the armchair. He kept his eyes closed but Joe knew he was watching. Mrs Bannerjee sank with a sigh of relief on to the sofa. The infant still slept in her arms and the little boy clung on to his bull with one hand and his mother’s sari with the other while his huge brown eyes took in the mysteries of this new place.

Joe didn’t disturb the cat. Standing was fine. He didn’t want this to get too cosy.

‘So what happened next, Mrs Bannerjee?’ he asked.

She said, ‘They took my husband away somewhere else, also our luggage. After a while a lady comes with a cup of tea and orange juice for the children. She asks a lot of questions about our holiday, where we have gone, who we have seen. I ask her, where is Soumitra, my husband? And she replies that he will be with me soon, and goes on asking questions. Then she leaves us alone. After a long time she comes back with my suitcase and tells me I can go with the children but Soumitra must stay. I ask why and she says to help with inquiries. I try to argue but she leads me outside. I do not know what to do. I think perhaps I will phone Mr Herringshaw, my husband’s employer in Birmingham, but I do not have his number and besides, it is very late to be disturbing such a man. Our car is in the car park but I have no key and I cannot drive. I think maybe I will take a taxi home but I do not have enough money for such a journey and in any case I do not want to go far in case they let Soumitra go. So I stand there undecided and though I try to be strong, I find that I am crying … Then your friend comes up to me …’

Good old Merv. He hated people being miserable. He’d been worth twice what he got paid at Robco just because of the job he did for shop floor morale.

‘Amal, be careful,’ said Mrs Bannerjee.

Her young son had gained sufficient confidence to detach himself from his mother’s side and kneel in front of the armchair to examine Whitey, who returned the compliment assessingly. The boy’s hand went out and touched the cat on the stomach. Joe held his breath. Whitey would claw Mother Teresa if he didn’t take to her. But now he stretched luxuriously, offering the whole range of his undercarriage to the child’s caress and began to purr like a hive of bees.

‘It’s OK,’ said Joe. ‘Look, Mrs Bannerjee. My friend Merv was right in one respect. What you need is help from the law, not my kind of law, but a real lawyer. I may be able to get someone. There’s this lady solicitor I know who works at the Bullpat Square Law Centre. If we can get her interested she’s very good. But it would help if we had some idea why they’re holding your husband …’

‘Why do you need to ask?’ she demanded scornfully. ‘Is it not obvious? They think he is smuggling something into the country.’

Sixsmith didn’t care for the scorn and in any case it wasn’t all that obvious. If they’d picked up Bannerjee on suspicion of smuggling, why on earth had they turned his wife loose without a much more thorough investigation of her possible complicity?

One reason suggested itself uncomfortably. They might have felt it worthwhile letting her loose and following her to see who she made contact with …

He went to the sliding window which opened on to a tiny balcony crowded with pot plants. Stepping carefully between them, he peered over the rail into the street below. Six storeys down he saw three police cars, sirens muted but with their roof lights still gently pulsating. A little further along was Mervyn Golightly’s taxi with Merv leaning against it, protesting loudly as a constable ran his hands up his legs.

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe Sixsmith.

The doorbell rang.

He moved quick. He knew the Law’s way with a door when they wanted quick access. A short ring in lip service to legality, then …

Fortunately he hadn’t put the chain on. He seized the handle, turned it and pulled. The burly constable swinging the sledgehammer didn’t have time to change his mind. The weight of the hammer carried him into the flat and across the room and out of the open window on to the balcony, where the low rail caught him across his ample belly and doubled him up. For a terrible moment Joe thought he was going to go over. But he let go of the hammer and grabbed the rail with both hands as Joe dived after him and seized the seat of his pants.

Over the man’s shoulder he saw the hammer sailing through the night air with the breath-catching majesty of an Olympic medal throw.

Then, like a smart bomb, it revolved slowly as though seeking its programmed target, locked on, straightened up, and arrowed down.

Far below a constable looked up. He opened his mouth in horror, then screamed a warning. The doors of the middle of the trio of police cars flapped open left and right, and two uniformed men hurled themselves out in perfect sync a split second before the sledgehammer passed through the car roof like a cannon ball through canvas.

‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.

‘Will you get your black hands off my white arse!’ snarled the burly man.

Joe could understand his ill temper but that gave him no entitlement to racist cracks.

He let go of the trousers and said, ‘Hey, friend, look what you’ve done to my begonias. Someone’s going to have to pay for this.’

Then he turned in search of the bossman.

There were two of them, a DI from the Drug Squad and a Senior Investigation Officer from Customs and Excise. At first they vied for control, but as Joe repeated his story, and Mrs Bannerjee repeated her story, and confirmation came from below that Merv the taxi man was repeating the same story, gradually the two men each tried to back out of the limelight, leaving centre stage to the other. The flat meanwhile had been well turned over without result and the searchers were reduced to a close examination of the balcony plants in hope of discovering some illegal growth.

‘That is a pelargonium,’ said Joe, indignantly snatching a pot from a pair of clumsy hands. ‘Who’s going to clear up this mess? I want compensation. What right you got to come in here, wrecking my flat, scaring my cat, and terrifying this poor woman and her kids?’

The men looked unimpressed and it was true that Mrs Bannerjee seemed more indignant than afraid, while her daughter hadn’t even woken up and the little boy was sitting in a corner with Whitey in his arms, both of them watching the activity with wide-eyed interest.

‘I’m going to ring my lawyer,’ said Joe. ‘But first I’m going to ring the News, tell them there’s a great story here, cops and Customs men busting an innocent man’s place up, not to mention throwing sledgehammers through police cars. Now that should really make a headline!

It was the threat of ridicule which did the trick. The searchers began to do some token clearing up, while Mrs Bannerjee, her kids and her suitcase were being ushered from the flat.

‘Where are you taking that lady?’ demanded Joe.

‘Helping with inquiries,’ said the DI who had lost the battle to shed responsibility and signalled this by grudgingly admitting his name was Yarrop. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be well taken care of.’

Joe doubted it. Having let Mrs Bannerjee run free to see where she went, now presumably they would put her in the same room as her husband and bug their conversation. The last thing on their official minds would be genuine concern.

‘Suppose she doesn’t want to go?’ he said.

‘It is all right, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Mrs Bannerjee. ‘I never wanted to go away from my husband in the first place. Now they say I will see him. But, please, you mentioned a solicitor …’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll try to get hold of the woman I told you about. Her name’s Butcher.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Sixsmith,’ said the woman, smiling for the first time. She was rather pretty when she smiled. ‘You have been very kind. Amal, say thank you and goodbye to Mr Sixsmith.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Sixsmith,’ piped the little boy to Whitey whom he had released with great reluctance.

He thinks the cat’s in charge, thought Joe. Maybe he’s right.

The Bannerjees went out.

Yarrop said, ‘I’m sorry about this. Can’t win ’em all.’

‘Well,’ said Joe grudgingly, ‘at least you can admit a mistake.’

‘Mistake,’ echoed the man thoughtfully. ‘Maybe. It would certainly be a mistake to start disturbing solicitors at this time of night, wouldn’t you say? Let’s both try to avoid any further mistakes, shall we? Good night now!’

He left. Joe went to the phone and dialled. He had a sense that Yarrop had gone no further than the other side of the door but he didn’t care.

A woman’s voice said, ‘Bullpat Square Law Centre.’

‘You really work late,’ said Joe approvingly. ‘Now that I admire.’

‘I know that voice. Is that you, Sixsmith? I heard you’d gone bankrupt.’

‘You heard wrong.’

‘You sure? I could swear I saw you flogging apples off a barrow in the market.’

‘Still can’t tell us apart after all these years? No wonder you’ve got to work long hours to make a living.’

‘And I want to get back to it, so why don’t you come to see me in the morning. I can maybe manage a two-minute slot around ten?’

Joe said, ‘I need you now, Ms Butcher.’

‘Ms? Such politeness means trouble. But it’s no good, Sixsmith. I’m not moving out of here, not even if you’ve been gang-banged by the entire Bedfordshire Constabulary.’

‘Not yet,’ said Joe. ‘But there’s a man called Bannerjee in a fair way to being screwed.’

He explained. There was a long silence.

‘You fallen asleep?’ inquired Joe courteously.

‘Chance would be a fine thing. How do you know this Bannerjee guy isn’t a pro dope-smuggler?’

‘I don’t,’ said Joe. ‘But I don’t think his wife is. And I’m certain his kids aren’t. And the way the cops came bursting in here, they’re pushing this thing very hard, and that’s the way innocent people get squashed against the wall.’

‘God, you’ll be telling me next you’ve got a dream. These guys who turned you over, they had a search warrant, I take it?’

‘I forgot to ask,’ admitted Joe.

‘Oh Jesus. The great PI! I expect it was all so sudden.’

‘Well, it was.’

More silence.

‘And you say they dropped a sledgehammer on to a police car?’

‘From seven floors up,’ said Joe. ‘It went clean through the roof.’

‘All right. I’ll do it. Not for your sake, not even for the Bannerjee kids’ sake, but for the sledgehammer’s sake. A story like that deserves some reward.’

The phone went dead.

‘Whitey,’ said Joe, ‘this has been a busy day. And nothing to show for it, except more mess than when you chased that blue-tit that came through the window.’

Whitey gave his are-you-never-going-to-forget-that? mew, and disappeared behind the armchair. He emerged a moment later dragging little Amal Bannerjee’s toy bull which he deposited in front of Joe before climbing back on to the chair and going to sleep with the complacent look of one whose duty has been done.

‘The poor kid,’ said Joe, picking up the bull. He went on to the balcony and looked down. All the cars had gone including the one with the new non-sliding sunroof.

With a sigh, Joe placed the bull carefully among his begonias and started clearing up the mess.

CHAPTER 5

Next morning didn’t begin too well.

Joe found he’d run out of provisions for the fried breakfast and had to make do with plum jam on high bake water biscuits which Whitey loathed.

Also he felt very tired. After his third mug of tea, he recalled he’d been woken at least twice in the night by the strident strains of the Casa Mia quartet.

Still, the way business was he didn’t anticipate much difficulty catching up on sleep at the office.

As usual, he stopped to pick up his papers at Mr Nayyar’s shop on Canal Street which linked Rasselas and Hermsprong. Mr Nayyar claimed to run a speciality store, which meant he sold everything.

‘And I’ve run out of food,’ said Joe after he collected the Sun and The Times, the former to keep him abreast of current events, the latter for his crossword ploy.

Mr Nayyar’s real speciality was knowing his customers’ requirements better than they did. As he busied himself assembling the rich and varied ingredients of the fried breakfast, Joe browsed through his tabloid, careful to avoid the page with the boobs as he knew these caused Mr Nayyar a problem. Banned from his shelves were any magazines which flaunted flesh, but this principle if extended to papers would drastically limit his trade. So regulars like Joe kept the curves at a low profile till well clear.

The front page headline and three lines of text were still concerned with the horse-loving politician, and the back page concentrated on the A505 plane crash. The pilot, Arthur Bragg, had been taken ill not long after leaving Luton Airport to ferry Mr Simon Verity, a business executive, and his secretary, Miss Gwendoline Baker, to a conference in Manchester. He’d managed to keep control just long enough to flop the plane down on the roadway. None of the three was seriously injured, but they’d all been kept in hospital for observation and the Press concentrated on the woman who’d taken the video, ‘Raven-haired beauty, Meg Merchison (29)’.

She said: ‘I was trying out my new camcorder on a flock of rooks when I suddenly spotted this light plane diving out of the sky. It was terrifying. I thought at first it was going to hit me, but it levelled off, just missing some trees, and I was able to follow it all the way down on to the road. I never dreamt when I bought the camera it would give me a thrill like this.’ There was a photo of the raven-haired beauty astride a gate, caressing her camera sensuously and showing enough leg to give Mr Nayyar moral palpitations.

Lucky lass, thought Joe. Wonder how much she got for the video?

He turned to the inside pages and found that here the Casa Mia killings got a double-page splash. There was a lot of sensational speculation, but nothing new and they were still using the same blurred picture of Rocca that had been shown on telly. There was no mention of Joe. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed at missing the publicity or glad at missing the Press.

The shop door opened and two teenagers came in. Dressed identically in T-shirts, jeans and trendy trainers, with hair razored to a crowning crest, they were sexually distinguished only by a faint smear of moustache on the larger one’s lip and a bubbling of breast on the smaller one’s chest.

Sixsmith recognized the design on their T-shirts, a Union Jack with Maggie Thatcher’s face at the crux. This meant they belonged to the True Brits, the leading white gang on the Hermsprong Estate. Joe doubted if they’d enter a Pakistani-run shop looking for anything but trouble, so he kept a close eye on them as Mr Nayyar busied himself with the order.

As the shopkeeper turned his back to weigh some tomatoes, the girl thrust a handful of chocolate bars under her T-shirt. She felt Joe’s eyes on her, grinned at him and nudged the boy. He looked towards Joe, bared his teeth in an animal snarl, picked up a music cassette from a display rack and slipped it into his pocket. The girl meanwhile was pushing a couple of packs of panti-hose down the back of her jeans.

‘I think that is everything, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Mr Nayyar. ‘Now let me see, how much will that come to?’

‘Serve these young folk first,’ said Joe. ‘I’m in no hurry.’

‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘Nothing here we want. Load of Pakky junk. Come on, Suzie.’

They made for the door. Joe moved quickly and blocked their way.

‘Hey, man,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? Even junk costs money.’

‘What you on about, Sambo?’ said the boy. ‘You best keep your black nose out, you don’t want it even flatter.’

The girl laughed shrilly and said, ‘You tell ’im, Glen.’

Mr Nayyar said, ‘Please, Mr Sixsmith, it is all right. Let me deal with this.’

Joe looked at him in surprise, then doubled up as the boy, seeing his chance, hit him in the belly and dived through the door. The girl went after him, Joe flung out an arm to grab her but all he managed was to push her shoulder. Unbalanced she staggered over the threshold and fell forward on to the pavement. The boy grabbed her hand and dragged her to her feet. Her forearm was badly grazed and there was a new tear in her jeans through which blood was oozing.

‘Come on, Suzie,’ screamed the boy, dragging her away. ‘You black bastards, I’ll get you for this!’

A moment later they heard the roar of a motorcycle engine rapidly fading.

‘Mr Sixsmith, you OK?’ demanded Mr Nayyar.

‘I will be,’ gasped Joe. ‘Hadn’t you better ring the police?’

Nayyar shrugged.

‘Why bother?’ he said. ‘They have other things to do than trouble with petty pilfering from a shop like this.’

‘It’s still crime,’ said Joe. Then as his breath came easier, he looked sharply at the shopkeeper and said, ‘You knew they were nicking stuff, didn’t you?’

Nayyar looked as if he was going to play at indignation for a moment, then he shrugged and said, ‘Mr Sixsmith, people like you and me, we know there are pressures that other people, white people, do not know. Sometimes if we give a little with the little pressures which irritate us, we may hope to avoid the big pressures which can burst us.’

‘You mean you don’t want to antagonize these kids who come here thieving in case they gang up on you?’ said Joe. He shook his head and went on, ‘Suit yourself, Mr Nayyar. Just give me my shopping. How much do I owe you?’

‘Please, Mr Sixsmith, you have tried to be helpful. No charge today.’

Joe took out his wallet and said firmly, ‘You’ve got me wrong, Mr Nayyar. I’m not a pressure, I’m just a customer. How much?’

Back at the car, he gave Whitey a raw sausage and some radical ideas on the reform of the young to chew over. Then he said, ‘Shan’t be long. Watch out for joyriders, now.’

Five minutes’ walk took him into Bullpat Square. It was a market day and the traders’ vans and stalls made it quite impossible to park here. The market customers also tended to overspill into the Law Centre and when he opened the door and saw how crowded it was, he began to turn away. But a voice called, ‘Sixsmith! I want you.’ And he turned back to see a small bird-like woman of about thirty ushering an elderly couple out of the inner office.

He went inside and said, ‘Hi, Butcher. You’ve gone blonde. What are you up to? Trying to get out of paying your husband alimony?’

‘I was always blonde. I’ve just gone back to my roots.’

She was not much over five two, and skinny as a well-picked chicken wing. She had an initial, C, which presumably stood for something but Joe had never called her anything other than Butcher. She pushed work his way when she could, though there was rarely much money in it.

They’d met when Joe went to the Centre looking for help in the aftermath of his redundancy. There’d been none forthcoming. Robco had done everything according to law and what Joe got was what he had coming, no more, no less. It was when Butcher asked, ‘So what will you do now?’ and Joe replied, ‘How do you go about setting up as a private detective?’ that she had started looking at him with more than professional interest.

‘First thing is, you’ve got to be able to wisecrack and to whistle. You know how to whistle, do you, Sixsmith?’

‘Pardon?’ said Joe, bewildered.

‘There’s a lot of work to do,’ said Butcher and had started the crash course in how to wisecrack like a real Private Eye which was still going on.

Now she said, ‘Don’t sit down, you’re not staying.’

‘Look, I was going anyway when I saw how busy things were,’ said Joe slightly offended.

‘Highty-tighty,’ said Butcher. ‘I meant you’ve got business.’

‘Sorry?’

‘That Bannerjee you put me on to last night, I was able to help. At least I sat with him till they got it into their thick heads he wasn’t going to say any more. Then I got his wife and kids into an hotel.’

Joe looked at her with admiration. She must have been up half the night and still managed to look bright as a glass of lager, while a couple of bad dreams left his mind cloudy as homemade ale.

‘Did he do it, then?’

‘Do what? They’re not saying he did anything. The game they’re playing now is that this is an immigration case, his papers aren’t in order. This is clearly bollocks. He’s been living here for nearly fifteen years. He’s the sales manager for Herringshaw’s, a Midlands rag trade firm. All they’re trying to do is put the squeeze on him so that if he does know anything, he’ll get so scared about possible deportation he’ll cough.’

‘And what do you think?’ asked Joe. ‘Is he straight?’

‘I’d say so,’ she said. ‘He’s certainly won golden opinions from his employers. At his request I rang Herringshaw’s and his boss, Charles Herringshaw no less, got very indignant and said he’d come down himself to see what he could do. He told me to stay on the case, he’d pick up all the tabs, so I’m in gainful employment at last. I owe you, Sixsmith.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Joe, who knew that Butcher was forever jammed in a cleft stick of needing well-paid private work to subsidize the Centre without having the time to go out and find it.

She glanced at her watch and said, ‘Christ, look at the time. You’re late.’

‘Me? I wish I had something to be late for. Or is this a not so subtle hint you want shot of me?’

‘No, it’s tit for tat. That’s why I wanted a word with you. I’ve sent you a client. She wants a good PI so I told her to be at your office at ten-thirty. I meant to ring, but things got hectic, and I didn’t realize you kept upper-class hours.’

‘Can’t afford to keep anything else,’ said Joe. ‘What’s her name? What’s she want? Can she afford me? Can I afford her?’

But Butcher only cried, ‘Go, go, go!’ and opened the door to admit what looked like a tribe of gypsies.

Joe fought his way through them, checked his watch and wallet (the first step to integration is a shared prejudice) and headed back to the car where he found Whitey had unwrapped and eaten the rest of the sausages.

It was dead on ten-thirty as he parked the car outside the office. There was a BMW in front of him. A woman got out. She was elegantly dressed in black culottes and a jacket of pearly grey silk, a severe white blouse relieved by a large pink brooch at the neck. Her short bronze hair looked as if it had been sculpted, an effect heightened by the classic regularity of her face, which however bore a badge of mortality in the shape of a black eye beyond the scope of cosmetic disguise.

‘Mr Sixsmith, I presume?’ she said.

‘Well, I’m not Dr Livingstone,’ said Joe, still under Butcher’s cinematic influence.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ he hastily added, seeing from her face that this lady was not for joking with.

Her eyes were running over his clothes, his car and his cat like a VAT man’s over a ledger. They then turned to the building which belonged to the nineteen-sixties Prince-Charles-hates-it school of architecture.

‘Cherry said I shouldn’t judge by appearances,’ she murmured half to herself, but only half.

‘Cherry?’ said Joe.

‘Cheryl Butcher,’ she said.

‘Oh, that Cherry. Would you like to come inside?’ said Joe.

In the tiny dark foyer, he automatically checked his mailbox. As he opened it he felt those assessing eyes watching him and prayed it wouldn’t be revealingly empty. He was in luck. There was a Security Trade Fair opening at the National Exhibition Centre the following week and various electronic firms were bombarding him with invitations to come along and check out their bugs.

Clutching the sheaf of envelopes ostentatiously, he ushered the woman into the lift. Whitey howled. He didn’t trust the lift and usually they walked up the stairs together. When he realized that good client relations were going to be put before good cat relations he jumped down from Joe’s shoulder and set off up the stairs with his tail at a disgusted angle.

‘Sorry, I didn’t get your name,’ said Joe as the lift laboured up three storeys.

‘Baker,’ she said. ‘Gwen Baker.’

It sounded as if it meant something, or perhaps it was just the way she said it.

‘And have you known, er, Cherry long?’

‘We were at school together.’

‘Old friends, then.’

‘You could say so. We were thrown together by linguistic affinity. Little girls like that sort of thing.’

This was like one of those crossword clues, the ones which obliged him to invent his own answers. He worked at it and was delighted to have a sudden revelation as the lift shuddered to a halt.

‘Butcher and Baker!’ he said.

She looked at him sharply as if suspecting she was making a very large mistake. The doors opened to reveal Whitey yawning on the landing as if he’d been waiting for ages.

Inside the office she did her audit act again. He felt like asking her what he was worth. But when he offered her a chair he noticed that she sat down rather stiffly and also that the bruising on the left hand side of her face was accentuated by the pallor of the right.

‘You OK?’ he asked in concern. ‘Anything I can get you?’

‘Like all the best private eyes, you have a bottle in your desk, I suppose,’ she said.

‘Well, no. I was thinking, more a cup of sweet tea, like.’

She smiled for the first time.

‘It’s kind of you, but no, thanks. Let me put you in the picture then we can decide if we’re wasting each other’s time.’

It was, he had decided, a wife-battering case. His heart sank. A man who could batter a woman would probably have little qualms about battering a middle-aged balding PI.

But no harm in showing her he was no slouch, deduction-wise.

He said, ‘Go ahead. You want to tell me about your husband, I presume.’

He took her by surprise.

She said, ‘Yes, but …’

Then he saw those sharp eyes backtracking his line of reasoning, and a twitch of the right-hand corner of her mouth told him he’d got it wrong.

‘Perhaps I should begin by explaining I suffered my injuries in a plane crash …’

Of course! That was why her name was familiar.

He jumped in eagerly. ‘Yes, Gwendoline Baker. The A505 crash yesterday. You’re the secretary.’

‘The what?’

‘The secretary. To Mr what’s it. Verity. Mr Verity.’ He could see that he was still failing to impress. ‘That’s what it said in the paper.’

Her eyes touched the tabloid sticking out of his pocket.

‘I hope you don’t base all your appreciation of objective reality on what you read in that rag. Let me see.’

He handed it over, feeling like a small boy caught reading a comic under his desk.

A snarl of fury animated her features as she glanced at the back page.

‘So you’re not Mr Verity’s secretary?’ said Sixsmith tentatively.

‘No, I am not. Au contraire, as they say. He is my secretary. He was accompanying me to a business conference in Manchester. I should be giving a paper there at this very moment.’

‘You could send it by special messenger, it won’t get there too late,’ suggested Sixsmith.

She rolled her eyes upward and said, ‘I’m beginning to have serious doubts about this, Mr Sixsmith. One thing is certain. We will get on much more speedily if you refrain from further interruption.’

Sixsmith, relieved that the spectre of the battering husband had receded, nodded agreement. Things were beginning to sound much more interesting. His second guess was that she was going to tell him the plane crash wasn’t an accident, but had been arranged by some business rival to get rid of her or at the least keep her away from the Manchester conference.

She said, ‘The first thing to understand is that the plane crash wasn’t an accident. I’m sorry?’

Sixsmith’s inner triumph and regret at letting himself be browbeaten out of a chance of showing her he wasn’t an erk, had expressed itself in a plosive grunt. He turned it into a cough and smiled apologetically.

She went on.

‘The pilot’s illness was induced deliberately with the sole purpose of bringing the plane down and causing my death. Does that cat always stare like that?’

Whitey hadn’t followed his usual practice of opening the lowest desk drawer and climbing in, but was sitting upright as an Egyptian artefact, apparently rapt by Ms Baker’s speech. Sixsmith felt the direct question entitled him to speak.

‘I’m sorry. Is he bothering you? Whitey, get in your drawer. You can listen just as well there.’

‘What do you mean, he can listen just as well there?’ demanded the woman in some agitation, her hand at her throat.

‘Just a manner of speaking,’ said Sixsmith. ‘You know cats. Sometimes I get the feeling Whitey thinks he runs the business!’

‘And you find that remarkable?’

‘Not so remarkable as you’d find it if I put him on your case,’ laughed Sixsmith.

She smiled thinly, but the answer seemed to reassure her and she let go of the pink brooch which she’d been clutching like a talisman and took a thin gold cigarette case out of her purse.

‘Do you mind?’ she said, lighting up.

No, but the cat does, thought Sixsmith. He nudged the drawer shut with his knee. Whitey would have to suffer a little discomfort in the interests of business. A potential paying customer was entitled to a bit of atmospheric pollution.

Talking of paying, he speculated how high he dared pitch his fee. Depended what her line of business was. She dressed expensive. Maybe she was in ladies’ fashions, nice little earner at the class end of the market, he guessed. One way to find out—the subtle questioning.

He said brightly, ‘Why don’t you tell me about your business, Ms Baker?’

She said, ‘What on earth for? I run an automotive electronics firm, if you must know. But that has nothing to do with the case.’

‘It’s why you were in the plane, isn’t it?’ said Joe defensively.

‘Yes, of course. But she didn’t need access to my company records to know my schedule, did she? No, I’ve no doubt Gerald told her.’

‘Gerald?’

‘My husband, Gerald Collister-Cook.’

Sixsmith sighed. He knew he was delaying the dénouement, but he also knew that if he didn’t get things straight as he went along, you could dénoue all you liked and it would still be French to him.

‘So Baker is your maiden name?’

‘And my professional name. I saw no reason to lumber myself with that double barrelled monstrosity in business. I’ve just about got the bastards conditioned to dealing with Gwen Baker on level terms. They’d need another decade to come to terms with Gwendoline Collister-Cook, and I can’t say I blame them. Can we get on, Mr Sixsmith?’

‘I’d like that,’ said Joe sincerely. ‘You were saying that Gerald probably told her. Who is her, Ms Baker?’

‘Who is her? I’ll tell you who her is, Mr Sixsmith.’

Eyes flashing, mouth stretched taut in a rictus of hate, Gwen Baker grabbed the Present-from-Paignton paperknife out of Sixsmith’s desk tidy and swung it high. His arms shot up to ward off the blow. But he wasn’t the target. The knife plunged down with such force it passed clean through the tabloid spread out on the desk and dug deep into the woodwork.

‘That’s her!’ spat Ms Baker. ‘That’s the bitch who’s trying to kill me.’

Joe’s gaze slid down the still quivering knife and saw that its point had neatly sliced through the cleavage of raven-haired beauty Meg Merchison (29).

CHAPTER 6

It got worse.

Ms Baker quickly regained control, but the return to her cool, rational manner only heightened the craziness of what was to come.

‘She’s been having an affair with Gerald. Affair! For him, it was a one-night stand, nothing more. Meaningless. We accept such things in our marriage. We don’t exchange notes, nothing so louche as that. But we’re two adult people, leading lives which often set us far apart, and we both have strong needs. But that bitch wanted more. In fact she wanted everything. But it soon dawned on her that she wasn’t going to get it without a fight. Well, I was a match for her there, I tell you. I was well ahead on points. But I didn’t realize just how far she’d go, if pushed.’

‘The plane crash, you mean?’ said Joe, who was beginning to wonder what Butcher’s resentment would do if this was what her gratitude sent him. ‘She arranged for the pilot to be taken ill?’

‘Of course. How the hell else did she happen to be sitting out there with a video camera ready to record it all for her scrap book?’

‘You’ve told the police this, have you?’ said Joe hopefully.

‘Don’t be stupid! How much notice do you imagine they’d take?’

‘Well, I mean, they could find evidence, things I can’t begin to do. Presumably you suspect the pilot was poisoned and they can get a full medical examination, analyse samples …’

‘Poison? Who said anything about poison? She’d probably used a poppet.’

‘A poppet? Like a lathe-head?’

‘A lathe-head? What the hell’s that?’

‘It’s something to do with a lathe,’ said Joe cautiously. He usually felt it best to keep details of his past employment away from potential clients, though why he should be worried about alienating Ms Baker he didn’t know. He felt a strong pang of nostalgia for the tumult of the tool room, the smell of oil and hot metal, the shouted jokes and laughter of his workmates.

‘Is it? Very interesting, I’m sure. But this poppet I’m talking about, Mr Sixsmith, would be a small doll, made out of clay or wax or even rags, looking as much like the pilot, Arthur Bragg, as possible, and incorporating some of his hair or nail clippings or excreta, or something very closely connected with him. And when she saw the plane coming over she’d stick a needle into its belly and waggle it around. Normally that would kill, in which case I would certainly have died also. Only with her hate being directed at me, she couldn’t get a big enough surge for that, so she only made the poor man feel rather ill.’

She said all this in the kind of tone suited for delivery of a detailed analysis of automotive electronic statistics.

Joe got up and switched on his electric kettle. He needed a mug of hot sweet tea.

He said, ‘You’re saying this Meg Merchison is a witch, is that it?’

‘Not a term I care for, but use it by all means if it will tighten your grasp of the situation,’ said Ms Baker wearily.

‘And the reason she didn’t manage to kill Mr Bragg was that she was really aiming at you?’

‘That’s right. The poppet works by providing a focus for deep passionate hatred. But like I said, it’s me she hates, not Bragg, so she couldn’t generate a big enough charge to really knock him out.’

Joe put two tea-bags in his Chas’n’Di wedding mug and held it up invitingly to the woman. She shook her head.

‘If that’s the case,’ said Joe, ‘why bother with the pilot at all? Why not simply do a poppet of you and bite its head off?’

He looked at her triumphantly and for the first time she didn’t mock his triumph.

‘At last, an intelligent question,’ she said. ‘She knew it was no use trying to get at me direct. Don’t imagine she hasn’t tried. But I’m her match there. I’m well protected.’

She unclipped the pink brooch from her blouse and twisted the stone out of its setting to reveal that it was hollow. Inside Sixsmith saw a small wodge of grey stuff, like putty, into which had been pressed scraps and shards of God knows what, and Joe Sixsmith had no desire to share the knowledge.

‘You mean, you’re a … one of them too?’ he said.

‘I have some knowledge,’ she said, replacing the brooch. ‘Enough to deal with her kind in the normal course of events. But fighting over a man has never been my scene.’

‘So what’s all the fuss about?’ asked Joe, adding an extra spoonful of sugar to the four already in his tea. He needed the energy.

‘You mean, why don’t I just let her get on with it? I’ll tell you why. Because Gerald’s my husband and I don’t care to give him up, certainly not to a common little bitch like that. Also, in business matters we have a fiduciary relationship which makes it inconvenient to part company at the moment.’

Joe, who loved clarity above all things except Luton Town, studied this carefully before saying, ‘You mean, she’d not only get him, she’d get some of your cash?’

‘You could put it like that.’

He smiled his relief at getting back to something like firm ground.

‘So what do you want me to do, Ms Baker?’ he asked. ‘Get evidence that Meg Merchison’s trying to kill you by witchcraft?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped. ‘I need no evidence, and what evidence do you imagine you could get which would satisfy the police? I have problems enough holding my own with my chauvinist colleagues without giving them a field day by letting my name be linked publicly with a witchcraft scandal!’

‘So what do you want?’ asked Sixsmith.

She said, ‘She’s got power over Gerald, there’s no other way he’d get entangled with a creature like that.’

‘Blackmail, you mean?’ he said without much hope.

Ms Baker sighed and said, ‘Mr Sixsmith, you cannot blackmail a man into screwing you. No. She has a locket. It belonged to Gerald’s mother and that’s a very strong link to start with. Look, you can see it dangling between those gross paps in the picture.’

She had to withdraw the paperknife to reveal the heart-shaped locket nestling in Merchison’s cleavage.

‘It has a ruby cameo design, a cinquefoil, a very strong magical number and image. Inside there will be various items, we needn’t go into the details, suffice to say that with the right words spoken over them, they have real power.’

‘A love charm, you mean?’ said Sixsmith.

‘Love! But yes, a love charm, if that helps you grasp what this is all about,’ she snapped. ‘What I want you to do, Mr Sixsmith, is get hold of that locket for me, and fast. This creature is quite mad. What happened yesterday was an open declaration of war. Why do you think she told the media about the video?’

‘So’s she could make a bit of money, I suppose,’ said Sixsmith wistfully.

‘No! So that I would know she’d caused the crash. All right, so she didn’t kill me, but she hopes that she can frighten me into submission by showing me how far she will go. Well, I won’t be frightened off, but if she escalates this thing into a full-scale psychic war, it could take all my time and energy to resist and I can’t afford to neglect my business like that. So the simplest thing for me to do is get Gerald back to his right senses for long enough to regain full control of all my finances. Once she sees he’s only worth the clothes he’s wearing—and I bought most of those—she’ll soon lose interest.’

Joe was still trying to find a way out of this madness via reason.

He said, ‘If this love charm’s so powerful, why doesn’t she just use it to make your husband take off with her now?’

Ms Baker’s lips drew back from her mouth, showing a pair of long sharp incisors in a smile so unmistakably malicious that for the first time Joe began to consider the real possibility that she was a witch.

She opened her purse and took out a thin silken white cord, about nine inches long with a single complex knot tied in it.

‘Because of this,’ she said. ‘While this knot is tied, Gerald can burn with desire, but there’s nothing he can do about it. The knot gets loosened only when he’s in my bed.’

Joe looked in horror at the limp white cord. He began to feel a certain masculine sympathy for Gerald the Hyphen.

‘And does your husband have any idea that you and Merchison are …?’

‘Adepts? Of course not!’ She laughed. ‘He lectures in political economics at the University of Bedfordshire. What could he understand of such things? You on the other hand, Mr Sixsmith, with your ethnic background …’

‘I was born in Luton,’ protested Joe for the second time in twenty-four hours.

‘It’s the bloodline that counts,’ she said dismissively. ‘I was born in Bexhill, but my mother’s family have lived near Pendleton in Lancashire since Tudor times at least.’

The detail of the boast was lost on Joe but he got the drift. He opened his mouth to assert indignantly that he was tired of people deciding on the colour of his skin that he must be into voodoo and dreamtime and all that rubbish, but the sight of that knotted cord still dangling from Ms Baker’s fingers gave him pause.

‘Why’d you go to But … to Cherry, Ms Baker?’ he asked.

‘I tossed and turned all night in that hospital bed and I knew I had to do something. I needed an agent, but he had to be guaranteed discreet and sympathetic. I thought of my own lawyers but decided they’d be useless. Wrong class of business, you see. Then I remembered Cherry. It was worth a try. I discharged myself from hospital and went straight round to that hellhole she calls a law centre. When I explained discreetly what I needed, she came up with you. She told me you weren’t exactly Philip Marlowe but that you had what she called blood sympathy.’

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