Dying to Know (23 page)

‘And you'll talk to Hocking and the Parrishes?'

‘We've talked to them already, but we'll have another chat, I expect.'

‘Good.'

As I showed him out, curiosity at last broke me down and I asked, ‘How did you get that beautiful shiner?'

‘It was when I was off duty. I broke up a brawl outside the Norbury Hotel, during which I got in the way of a swinging fist. Why?'

‘Just wondered.'

I closed the door behind him.

Because I'm stupid, I didn't realize what was wrong with all this until we were in bed and drifting off to sleep. When I did, I was at once very much awake.

‘Max?'

‘Mmm?'

‘We're being dim.'

I heard her fighting to come back into consciousness. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Tom Lightoller wasn't after the blackmail stuff. I'm not sure he even knew about it.'

There was a pause as her cerebral functions kicked into motion again. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Don't you remember what he said as he looked at it? “Are you taking the mickey?” They're not the words of a man who's just been given his heart's desire, his “inheritance”.'

She thought about it. ‘No, I suppose not.'

‘So, if he wasn't after the blackmail evidence, what was he after?'

Another pause before, ‘Does it matter? If the Lightollers were murdered because they were blackmailing someone, it's not relevant, is it?'

But I wasn't so sure. I began to suspect that we were very far from getting to the bottom of the Lightollers' deaths.

THIRTY-TWO

T
here is a certain cosmic inevitability about the fact that it was my father who set us on the right track, although, of course, he did so unwittingly. We had slept as late as we dared, breakfasted quickly and then gone to AMH to visit him, arriving at a quarter to ten. His uniformed companion of that morning was a large Afro-Caribbean policewoman who looked on sternly throughout our visit and never uttered a word; I'm not even sure she changed either expression or posture, a show of stoic implacability that I could only admire.

Dad was getting better and better, now sitting up in bed and moving his head quite freely; his colour was better and the drips were down. There was evidence in his beard that he had breakfasted well. Another welcome advance was that he seemed to be treating Max with more warmth, so that he talked directly to her and had great fun ridiculing me – sure signs that she was being invited mentally into the Elliot fold.

Dad was aware that Masson was coming to undertake a formal interview, but seemed strangely inured to the prospect. He showed no anxiety, no emotion at all when I broached the subject, saying only, ‘Well, of course he has to talk to me. I was found at the bottom of the stairs at the same time as poor Doris was killed.'

Despite Masson's warnings, I had turned once again to Alexander Holversum (since I didn't know any other solicitors) and he arrived at just before ten. Every possible facet of him, whether material or spiritual, was twinkling: eyes, teeth, feet, smile and personality.

‘Dr Elliot!' he said as he entered the room and there was for a moment some uncertainty as to which Dr Elliot was being addressed; perhaps it was both, I reasoned. It soon became clear, though, that his pronouncement was addressed to my father as he said, ‘I am told that you have been seriously injured.'

‘Very much so,' confirmed Dad. ‘Very much so indeed.'

‘But you are better?'

Dad couldn't resist playing the injured soldier. ‘A little,' he admitted, adding then, ‘a very little.' This last was graced with a sigh, as if he were just being brave about it all.

Holversum turned to me. ‘And you, doctor. Are you well?'

‘Fine,' I replied, feeling that I was lacking the cachet of a serious head injury and consequent major surgery.

‘My dear!' was Holversum's next shot, this time addressed to Max. ‘What a pleasure to see you.'

Max didn't exactly blush, but there was something about Holversum that made her smile. ‘Thank you very much.'

Masson entered the room and, I have to tell you, the temperature in the room seemed to drop. When he caught sight of me, he scowled and beams of dislike shone over me; the reappearance of Holversum made sure that any chance of a break in the clouds disappeared instantaneously. ‘Mr Holversum,' he said. Just like that. Nothing else.

Holversum clearly had his winter long johns on because he didn't notice how frigid the atmosphere was. He smiled and bowed his head as he said, ‘Inspector.'

What then followed was neither fascinating nor productive. Masson kept asking my father the same questions – Why did he go into Doris Lightoller's house? How did he get in? Where was Doris when he went in? If there was someone else there, who was it? If he didn't know who it was, what did he look like? Why couldn't he say? – and all the while, Mr Holversum did what Mr Holversum did best, which was to thwart Masson, constantly advising his client to say nothing and to say it loudly. Not that Dad had much to say. He still had amnesia for the critical period just after entering the house, not that Masson professed much belief in this.

‘You're not the only person to have caught amnesia in that house,' he observed with his customary sarcasm, looking with great meaning at Max who dropped her eyes with an apologetic grimace.

‘Really, inspector?' said Holversum. ‘I do hope you're not implying that my client is feigning his illness. He has quite clearly suffered an extremely grave injury and is the innocent victim of a serious assault. He is anything but a criminal.'

‘So you say, Mr Holversum. So you say.'

‘I do, inspector. I do.'

They looked at each other, Masson with an angry glare, Alexander Holversum with a sweet smile that I am sure was calculated to infuriate rather than appease.

It ended after perhaps thirty minutes with Masson informing Dad that he was technically in custody, under arrest on suspicion of murdering Doris Lightoller, and that he was not to leave hospital under any circumstances. Since Dad wasn't going anywhere for several days, this seemed to be a touch unnecessary. As Masson was leaving the room, he turned to me and said savagely, ‘I want a word with you, doctor.'

Outside, he didn't quite pin me to the wall with my feet off the ground – he was about six inches too short to do that – but he did invade my personal space and, were I a lawyer, I am fairly sure that I could have had him for assault as he poked my sternum with a finger apparently made out of oak. ‘Smith's been telling me what a prat you are.'

‘A bit harsh, inspector.'

‘Yes?' he enquired. ‘You think so?' It was a rhetorical question. ‘I don't, Dr Elliot. I think you have potentially fatally hampered an investigation into a double murder; I think that, if I weren't such a nice, accommodating sort of person, I'd have you charged with perverting the course of justice, breaking and entering, interfering with a crime scene . . .' He ran out of books to throw at me, and had therefore to finish up rather lamely with: ‘And half a dozen other crimes.' He was full of self-pity. ‘My life is hard enough without all this. Four deaths in three weeks, for goodness' sake. That's not fair, so it's totally out of order that I should also have to put up with amateur sleuths wandering about like Lord Peter Wimsey's bloody butler after a lobotomy.'

‘But at least, now you have to admit that it might not be as straightforward as you thought.'

With which, he backed off a bit, perhaps exhausted; it was a relief because his breath was ever so slightly pungent. ‘Do I?' he demanded. ‘Do I?' There was a pause in which I thought that maybe he had tossed another rhetorical one into the ring and a stand-off ensued. He broke first. ‘I've been to see Tom Lightoller – he seemed to think I was a lunatic, putting to him some cock-and-bull story about threatening and assaulting you; knew nothing about any photographs and private investigation reports. He spent last night at the Masons' dinner, and he's given me a list of names as long as my Aunt Fanny's washing line to corroborate that.'

‘Look, inspector. You may not like me, but you do know that I'm not a liar, or a criminal, or stupid. Inexperienced and naive, maybe, but not dishonest. What Max and I told Smith is the truth. Lightoller was a blackmailer and we found the evidence. His son took it from us—'

I was about to go on to say that I wasn't sure that it actually mattered, that maybe there was another motive altogether, but Masson was still fairly steamed up. ‘All I know about you, Dr Elliot, is that you are a complete and utter pain in my behind. In future, just stay out of my way, OK?'

With which, and before I could give him another theory to chew on, he was off down the corridor.

Alexander Holversum hung around for five minutes after Masson departed, solemnly informing Dad not to say anything in front of whichever uniform happened to be in the room, and optimistically telling us that they didn't have anywhere near a strong enough case against Dad, something which neither Max nor I considered to be remotely close to the truth.

With Holversum gone, Max and I stayed on but our conversation was somewhat constrained by the spectre who sat in the corner and looked as though she would rather be doing anything else than be with us, and in truth I wanted to tell her that the feeling was mutual. Despite this I told Dad what we had discovered regarding Oliver Lightoller's blackmailing activities and Samuel Hocking's bedroom activities.

‘But there's something else, Dad. I know there is. Tom Lightoller's been after something, but it wasn't the private detective's report.'

‘I told you Lightoller was a crook. You wouldn't listen, but I knew.'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘He never listens to me,' he told Max. ‘Always been the same.'

‘Has he?' she replied curiously, and rather unfaithfully, I thought.

An enthusiastic nod from my progenitor. At least, I comforted myself as the expected embarrassing story was told, he was showing distinct signs of returning to normality. ‘Oh, yes,' he said, ‘I remember when he was fourteen – old enough, you'd think, to know better – he insisted on picking at the scab on his knee when he fell off his bike. I kept telling him not to, but he always knew better. Of course, it went septic and he had to spend four days in hospital on intravenous antibiotics.'

‘Really?' Max eyed me with mock surprise, as if she would never have believed me capable of such stupidity.

‘And that wasn't the only time, far from it.'

I enquired coldly, ‘Is this how we're going to spend the time? Embarrass Lance?'

‘But Max wants to hear what kind of a person you are. Don't you, dear?'

At which Max nodded enthusiastically and, in disgust, I picked up the
Croydon Advertiser
and cut myself off from the conversation. It was the same old copy I had looked at before, but I would have read the telephone directory with intense concentration just to blot out Dad's humiliating stories.

Now, the
Croydon Advertiser
is, as you may have guessed, the local paper for Croydon and its environs. I didn't take it regularly and had not bothered with it for some weeks. I would imagine it was much like many local papers: week after week full of screaming but ultimately uninspiring headlines about drunkenness, the theft of bicycles and the exploits of the local football club (Crystal Palace – known, inappropriately, as ‘The Eagles'). Its staff probably prayed every day for some real news and, every so often, they were rewarded. The story of Ricky Baines and Eddie Perry, of course, had been pure unadulterated manna.

Much of what Jessie Trout had told me had been accurate, but it proved to have been a somewhat patchy account. Thus, the main thrust – that Ricky Baines and Eddie Perry had robbed a jewellery shop in Covent Garden, during the course of which a prostitute by the name of Eleanor Johnson had been run over, that they had been fairly quickly arrested but that the booty had never been found – was substantially true. It was in the details, though, that I found interest.

It was not jewellery that had been stolen, but unmounted diamonds; only small ones, but then they didn't have to be big to be valuable: two hundred and fifty thousand pounds worth, to be precise. It had all happened twenty-two years ago, since which time Ricky Baines had been inside Wormwood Scrubs and Eddie Perry in Dartmoor. They had been released within weeks of each other, with Ricky Baines taking up residence more or less immediately in a rented property in Greyhound Lane, although how he had afforded to do so was the subject of much speculation. It seemed that Eddie Perry had done a bit of speculation himself and concluded that Ricky was spending money that belonged at least in part to him. He had come looking for Ricky and the diamonds and, what is more, found him.

The boys in blue of the Croydon Constabulary, led by Inspector Masson, had come running as soon as the reports of two shots fired in Greyhound Lane had been received, and they had found Ricky Baines and Eddie Perry in the back room on the ground floor. They faced one another, each with a single bullet wound: Eddie's in the chest, Ricky's in the throat. The house was a tip and the speculation was that Eddie had broken in and been turning the place upside down in his eagerness to get hold of the diamonds, then been disturbed by Ricky. Professor Crawford had concluded that Eddie's wound would not necessarily have been immediately fatal – it had nicked the superior vena cava but missed the heart and the aorta – whereas Ricky's would have been; Ricky had shot first, thought that his man was down and had been fatally mistaken.