Duffy (3 page)

‘We’ve had the surgeon’s report,’ said Bayliss, ‘and I think we can rule out your Uncle Stanley.’ McKechnie looked puzzled. Bayliss pulled out a short, typed document from his briefcase and read from it: ‘“Victim…Wound…Surrounding Area…” Ah, here we are, “Possible Instrument: medium to heavy knife with fine blade. Small area of blade used, so probably not flick-knife type of instrument, or sharpened domestic knife. Some sort of modelling knife, perhaps, or specialist woodcutting instrument. No evidence of previous usage of the instrument was obtainable, since the wound had already been thoroughly cleansed by time of police examination; but possibly some specialist instrument, like a Stanley knife.”’

Bayliss looked up and smiled in a self-satisfied way; then he nodded to Willett, who dug in his notebook and quoted back Mrs McKechnie’s words: ‘“Something like ‘Time for Stanley’”.’

Bayliss still looked pleased with himself. McKechnie couldn’t imagine why the neutralisation of one of the very few clues Bayliss had should afford him any pleasure. Bayliss explained,

‘Well, before we were looking for everyone called Stanley. Now we’re only looking for people with Stanley knives. It must increase our chances a little.’

McKechnie didn’t know if he was being flippant or simply foolish.

The following week Bayliss and Willett came up to McKechnie’s Rupert Street office. They were shown in by his new secretary, Belinda. He’d deliberately told the agency that he wanted a really efficient girl because he was fed up with tarts in short skirts who doubled the size of his Tipp-Ex bill and tried to make up for it by flashing their panties at him when they were filing. The agency understood what he was saying, wrote ‘Religious’ on the back of his card in their private shorthand, and sent him Belinda, a girl with a slight limp who wore a huge silver cross between her breasts as if to ward off sweaty male hands. McKechnie was happy with her, even though she wasn’t noticeably more efficient than the girls who cutely pointed their gussets at him on their first afternoon.

As Bayliss arrived, he asked casually how long Belinda had worked there; but McKechnie was already prepared for that. He always had temps, he said, because he found them more reliable, and it wasn’t hard to master the work, and he sometimes closed down the office for a few weeks, and anyway, the office was too small to risk getting stuck with a secretary you didn’t get along with. Oh, he got them from all sorts of temp agencies – sometimes one, sometimes another; he couldn’t even remember where he’d got Belinda from – they could ask her if they wanted to. His previous secretary’s name? Oh, Sheila, and before that, Tracy, and before that, oh, Millie or something.

When Bayliss and Willett left, McKechnie felt as if he had just pulled off a deal. He walked up to Bianchi’s and treated himself to the best the kitchen could offer, just to show how pleased he was with himself.

The next week he got the first phone call. Belinda told him that there was a Mr Salvatore on the line.

‘Mr McKechnie?

‘Yes.’

‘And how are you today?’

‘Fine.’

‘Quite sure you’re all right?’

‘Yes, quite. What can I do for you?’ These immigrants did go on a bit – thought it was all part of British civility. McKechnie knew one Greek retailer who, by the time he got to the end of all his preliminary bowing and scraping, had usually forgotten what he was ringing about. Then he had to ring back with his order later.

‘And your wife, Mr McKechnie, is she well?’

McKechnie bridled, though the man’s tone hadn’t changed. ‘She’s fine. What can I do for you?’

‘Because where I come from, we have a saying – a man’s wife is the centrepiece of his table. Don’t you think that is a pretty phrase, a gallant phrase?’

McKechnie hung up. Whoever the man was, he could either come to the point or bugger off. Besides, McKechnie wanted a little time to think what might be going on.

He didn’t get it. The phone went again almost at once, and Belinda said apologetically,

‘You’re reconnected, Mr McKechnie. Sorry you got cut off, one of mythats must have slipped.’ That was the sort of secretary you got nowadays – the old sort, and even some of the gusset-flashers, at least knew when they’d cut you off. This lot didn’t know whether they had or not; they merely assumed – and it was a correct assumption – that they had.

‘Terrible, this telephone system of yours, Mr McKechnie,’ said the voice. ‘They tell me it all went wrong with nationalisation, but of course I do not remember that myself.’

‘Are you calling me on business, Mr…’

‘Salvatore. Well, yes and no, as you say. I am not in the business of ringing up strangers simply to reduce the Post Office’s deficit, anyway. So, I tell you why I am ringing. I am ringing to say that I am sorry about the cat.’

‘The…’

‘Yes, Mr McKechnie, it was, how shall I say, you understand French, Mr McKechnie, it showed
un peu trop d’enthousiasme.
In simple language, the lads got carried away.’

‘You…fucker.’ McKechnie didn’t really know what to say; he didn’t in fact care much about the cat; it had always been, as she herself put it, Rosie’s baby.

‘Well, I accept your rebuke. Now, the second thing I have to say is, I hope very much that your lady wife is recovering from her unpleasant ordeal. And I suggest that you do not hang up.’ The tone had hardened. McKechnie did not reply. The voice went on. ‘Well, I take the liberty of inferring from your silence that she is, as you put it, on the mend.’

Again, McKechnie did not reply.

‘And the third thing I have to say to you is this. Don’t you think it is extraordinary that the police have no idea what might have happened, or why, or who would have done such a thing? By the way, I assume you did not tell them about your pretty secretary who seems not to be working for you any more?’

McKechnie still did not reply. He was trying to write down on his telephone pad as much as possible of the conversation.

‘No, you did not. I think I can tell that. So, if I may sum up, Mr McKechnie, what I am saying to you is this. Isn’t it extraordinary, and isn’t it a little frightening, that two such unpleasant things could happen in your very own home, and that the police, after full investigation, have found no clues that are of any use to them? Is it not ironic that the one clue which might have been of use was denied to them by you? It is not a pretty situation, is it, Mr McKechnie, at least not for you? I mean, the point is, isn’t it, that something similar, or even, though I do hesitate to say so, something quite a lot worse, could happen, and you would be fairly certain that once again the police would not be able to be of any assistance? What do you say to that, Mr McKechnie?’

‘I say, you never can tell.’

‘And I say to you, Mr McKechnie, that some of us can, some of us can tell. I mean, take the present case. Say you go back to your police. Say you tell them you’re sorry, you lied, you didn’t tell them about Barbara. Do you think that would make them redouble their energies, if you went and told them you had been lying to them? They are only human, after all, Mr McKechnie, they would merely think you had been telling more lies, they would probably say to each other, as you put it, “Stuff him”. And then, if they did take you seriously, where has this new piece of information taken them? How much nearer are they to their quarry? There are other crimes every day, even in your neck of the woods.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Ah, I am happy that you asked me that, Mr McKechnie. It shows at least that you are not a stupid man. What I want you to do is to
think.
What I want you to think about is what people call the angles. That is all that I want you to do, for the moment. And now I will get off this line and let you go about your lawful business.’

The phone was put down.

McKechnie dutifully started to think about the angles. Was he being preshed? Not yet, anyway. Was he being softened up for being preshed? If so, they were going about it in a pretty extreme manner. Was his wife safe at home? Was he safe? Should he go back to the Guildford police? Should he go along to the station here, West Central, up in Broadwick Street? Should he perhaps try and get the investigation transferred to West Central, and hope that the bit about Barbara would get dropped on the way? But what did he really have to tell them here? One thing he could do was go and have a chat to Shaw, the detective-sergeant at West Central he’d had a few drinks with now and then. Maybe he’d do that.

He rang West Central, and was told that Shaw was on holiday for a week. Did he want to talk to anyone else? No, he didn’t.

Two days later Belinda buzzed him and said she had Mr Salvatore on the line again.

‘Mr McKechnie, still well? Good. I won’t take up all that much of your time. I take it you’ve had your think. You haven’t been back and made your little confession, of course.’

McKechnie was silent.

‘No, of course you haven’t. Now, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do for me. You’re going to give me some money. Not very much money. Very little money, really. Twenty pounds. No, let’s say twenty-five. Now, you go to your bank in the morning – or you take it from your float, I really don’t mind which – and you wait for me to ring again and tell you what I want you to do with it. It’s quite straightforward, Mr McKechnie. Oh, and you can be assured that even if you haven’t done this before, I have.’

The phone went dead. McKechnie took a deep breath, put on his jacket, told Belinda he was going out for a few minutes, and walked round to West Central police station.

West Central was one of those stations which they kept on not getting around to modernising. Ten years ago they took away the blue lamp mounted on its wall bracket, and five years after that they put up a new sign, a long thin white one, lit by a neon tube, which said
WEST CENTRAL POLICE STATION
. But then things slowed down considerably: the grey paint inside got blacker; the canteen plates got more chipped by the year; tempers got shorter.

Shaw was still on holiday, and instead McKechnie was shown in to see Superintendent Ernest Sullivan, twenty-five years in the force, ten on this patch, a surly, fleshy man unimpressed by all forms of crime and by most forms of complainant. McKechnie told his story – the assault on his wife, the spitting of his cat, the phone calls, the demand for money – while Sullivan shuffled some papers round his desk and occasionally picked his ears with a matchstick.

When he’d finished, Sullivan merely said,

‘Never heard the cat thing before. Heard the rest before. Must take quite a bit of strength to push a spit through a cat. Probably get scratched, wouldn’t you?’

McKechnie was impatient with the amount of interest shown by the police in the death of his cat.

‘What about the wounding of my wife and the blackmail?’

‘How do you know it is blackmail?’

‘Well of course it’s blackmail.’

‘Did the man say what he’d do if you didn’t pay?’

‘No.’

‘Then maybe he’s just trying it on. Maybe the two things aren’t connected. Maybe he just read your local paper and thought he’d try his luck.’

That couldn’t be the case, McKechnie thought, as the Salvatore fellow had known about Barbara, and nothing of that had been in the paper. But all he said was, ‘Not very likely, is it?’

‘It’s possible.’ Sullivan seemed keen for the case to give him the minimum trouble. McKechnie waited. Eventually, Sullivan shifted in his seat, picked his ear again, and said, ‘I suppose I could get the case transferred up here.’ He showed little sign of enthusiasm. ‘Shall I do that?’

‘If you think that’s best. Whatever’s happening, it’s obviously got nothing to do with where I live.’

Sullivan nodded, got slowly to his feet, and disappeared. When he came back, he seemed, if possible, even less keen on McKechnie’s presence in his office. If only McKechnie would go away, his look implied, he could get on and give his ears a real cleaning out.

‘Well, they’re sending me the file,’ he said. ‘Chap named Bayliss. Said that forensics reported the cat had been on the spit for about three hours. Nasty smell, was there?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Come, come, Mr McKechnie, I’m sure you do. And, er, while we’re on the subject of nasty smells, there’s a bit of a one in here, isn’t there?’

McKechnie looked round.

‘No, you don’t need to look round. I mean, there’s a bit of a nasty smell coming from your chair, isn’t there, Mr McKechnie? Not always kept our own nose exactly clean, have we? Bit of a fiddler, really, aren’t you, Mr McKechnie? It is going to be McKechnie for a bit longer, isn’t it? Because if you’re thinking of changing again, I’d better nip out and update our file.’

‘That was all years ago.’

It had also been two hundred miles away. A bit of bad company, temptation, it could happen to anybody. You can’t run a business without being tempted occasionally. But how had Sullivan got hold of his record?

‘It’s all years ago,’ he repeated. ‘I thought there was a Rehabilitation of Offenders Act or something.’

‘There is, Mr McKechnie, there is.’ Sullivan was livening up. He seemed to be enjoying this part of the conversation. ‘But it doesn’t apply to us, now, does it? Or not the way they meant it to. And when someone moves into our patch, in however small a way, we like to know just a little about him.’

‘Well, you know, Superintendent, you can’t run a business without being tempted occasionally.’

‘Yes, I’m sure, Mr McKechnie. I’m just surprised, reading our little file on you, that there weren’t more road accidents up in Leeds.’ He chuckled. ‘What with all this stuff falling off the backs of lorries.’

McKechnie was silent.

‘Still, I suppose we’d better let bygones be bygones.’ Sullivan sounded as if he didn’t hope to convince even himself of this principle, let alone anyone else.

‘Turning to my current problem, Superintendent.’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘What should I do about the twenty-five quid?’

‘Pay it and write it off against tax as a bad debt.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Completely. Isn’t that what your natural instinct would be to do? Isn’t that what any self-respecting fiddler would do?’