A Dead Liberty (16 page)

Sloan listened attentively. What the secretary was saying gibed in every way with what Cecelia Allsworthy had told him about Lucy Durmast's end of the conversation. The spur-of-the-moment invitation and the preparation of the scratch meal appeared to be genuine. There was, of course, nothing to prevent them both being the ingredients of a murder …

“And what was it Mr. Bolsover had to do,” asked Sloan, “and so couldn't go to lunch with Miss Durmast as well?”

The secretary pointed to her notebook. “His letters. Mr. Bolsover doesn't like using a Dictaphone. He likes his letters taken down properly in shorthand.”

Sloan could see that he was expected to see the traditional as a sign of virtue and accordingly nodded his approval.

“Mr. Bolsover dictated a lot of work to me right up to lunch-time. In fact,” she said, “rather after lunch-time. I was very late going to lunch myself that day and Mr. Bolsover couldn't have had time for anything much to eat himself. Not if he was going to get to Palshaw by two o'clock, which was when his appointment was for.”

“I see,” said Sloan. Mr. Bolsover's present visitor had at last risen to his feet and had begun to take his farewells. It was rather curious, seeing him do it without being able to hear a word through the glass, not unlike watching an old-fashioned mime.

Or a silent film, perhaps.

Actions without words.

The death of Kenneth Carline had been curiously without speech, too.

Almost a dumb show.

A sudden unexpected invitation followed by a slow and unexpected death.

And even after that wordlessness.

Except for a disembodied voice talking about gates that would be open that should have been locked and keys that should not have been there at all. Which might or might not have had anything to do with the situation.

There were absences which were disturbing, too, rather than presences, which might have been helpful.

The accused's father had gone abroad before the action began: Prince Aturu so soon afterwards as to represent a further worry. Where did the African Kingdom of Dlasa and its new town at Mgongwala come into all this?

If it did.

Sloan wasn't even sure if it would help if he saw a replay of such action as had taken place here at Durmast's. The mental imagery of the rewinding of a silent film though made him turn his mind to Crosby. He shifted his gaze to see whether the detective constable had been as absorbed by the peepshow the other side of the glass screen as he had been. Crosby, it was apparent, wasn't even looking in Ronald Bolsover's direction. He had drifted over towards one of the windows and was staring out over the assorted roof-scapes towards the Minster.

A movement inside the goldfish bowl that was Bolsover's office attracted Sloan's attention. The deputy chairman's visitor was making for the door. Sloan was struck by how unselfconscious both men appeared behind their screens: the play within the play, almost. A similar sense of isolation must be engendered in patients in hospital being barrier-nursed: often enough they had to be content with a glimpse of their loved ones through glass. A distant wave wasn't the same as warm human contact …

“Mr. Bolsover will see you now, Inspector,” murmured the secretary at Sloan's side.

“Come along, Crosby,” commanded Sloan.

The constable turned reluctantly from the window. “Did you know, sir, that on a clear day you can see …”

“Crosby!”

Ronald Bolsover rose to his feet as they entered. “I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen …”

In Her Majesty's Prison Establishment for Women and Girls at Cottingham Grange there was also a certain amount of standing upon ceremony before a visitor was shown into the presence of the person holding the reins of office. Rather more in fact than obtained at the headquarters of the firm of William Durmast. At Cottingham Grange it was the governor's room outside which other people waited. And in Lucy Durmast's case she was one of a considerable queue.

First there were those who wanted to see the governor and after them there were those whom the governor wanted to see. Lucy came into the latter class. She didn't know why. She had simply been told that morning by her wing officer that the governor wished to see her. Even had she not been adopting her Trappist-like stance and had chosen to ask what the governor wanted to see her about she was doubtful if she would have been given an answer. The normal give-and-take of human exchange was conspicuous by its absence in the highly structured world of prison.

One by one those in front of Lucy were admitted to the governor's office and their problems and transgressions dealt with. Lucy was no longer sure that the two were not indistinguishable—that was something that a prison sentence had taught her. More than once what she had learned while listening to her fellow prisoners talking had sent her mind back to one of her set books in the sixth form at school. Once read she had put it behind her and turned to more interesting works of literature. In her wildest dreams she had never expected to be giving fresh thought to Samuel Butler's
Erewhon
.

The first thing that all the class remembered was that “Erewhon” was an anagram of “Nowhere” and that was certainly true of the land that Samuel Butler described. The second thing that nobody forgot was that in “Erewhon” it was illness and disease that incurred moral obliquity, and crime that became a matter for condolence and treatment. Butler would have put the sick in prison and the committers of crime in hospital. When young and still sure of finding an answer to life's perplexities this had seemed arcane treatment indeed.

The queue outside the governor's office shuffled forward, but Lucy was almost unaware of being in it.

She was less starry-eyed now and more inclined to the view that there weren't as many solutions as there were problems. Her own shining lance of youth had been both tarnished and blunted by Kenneth Carline's death and what had followed. Her mind slid away from both Samuel Butler and Kenneth Durmast as she thought about Don Quixote and his lance. She felt a momentary flash of fellow feeling with that eccentric knight. Tilting at windmills was easier and safer than tilting at a lot of other things.

“Quiet there!” someone shouted.

Lucy didn't even hear them. She was considering Samuel Butler's answer. It had taken on a new interest since she had been in prison herself. There were those about her in plenty in Cottingham Grange who, even to Lucy's lazy eye, were suitable cases for treatment. Her doctor grandfather had always linked illness with guilt—or had it been guilt with interest? She wasn't sure now which it had been and was pursuing this interesting train of thought when someone called her name. She looked up.

“Give your name and number to the governor,” said a commanding voice.

Lucy stood in front of the governor silent but in an attitude of polite attention. Dumb insolence would have been alien to both her nature and her intention.

“Ah, Durmast,” said the governor pleasantly. “We have a little problem about something in your post.”

Lucy looked up. Incoming mail had not been one of the things that had worried her in Cottingham Grange. Her father was no great correspondent at the best of times: when totally immersed in a project he seldom put pen to paper other than on a drawing board, although he might have written home for something he had forgotten. Letters from Cecelia Allsworthy couldn't conceivably pose a problem …

“It's not a letter exactly,” said the governor. There was something in a folder on her desk but Lucy couldn't see what. “More of a—well, a communication really.”

Lucy looked quite blank.

“We wondered if you could perhaps explain it to us before it is given to you.” She coughed. “You will understand that we have always to be very careful in the—er—custodial situation.”

Lucy had heard a variety of euphemisms for prison—mostly from fellow inmates and quite unrepeatable—but “custodial situation” was a new one to her.

“It would appear,” continued the governor, “to have a symbolic meaning of some sort.”

Lucy tilted her head sharply.

“The message—if indeed it contains a message—is conveyed on a sort of raffia.” The governor opened the file on her desk and produced a rough square of loosely woven dried grass matting. “As you will see there is a drawing of a highly ritualised nature of a bird in the top left-hand corner, and in the bottom right what appears to be a sword of some sort.”

Lucy paled.

“Some hair,” the governor continued her description, “has been interwoven under the bird's beak.” She seemed oblivious of Lucy's pallor as she picked the object before her up. “And,” continued the governor, lifting it clear of her desk, “suspended from the whole thing are a row of teeth.”

As the teeth fell downwards in an unseemly fringe beneath the square of grey grass matting, Lucy Durmast's reaction scaled fresh heights of non-verbal communication.

She fainted.

TWELVE

Pulveres
—
Powders

It was always interesting, decided Detective Inspector Sloan, to meet someone for the second time—if only to check that one's recollection of the first meeting still stood.

Ronald Bolsover was brisker in his office than he had been at home, but this came as no surprise to Sloan, whose own pace slowed down too as he crossed his domestic threshold. All the modern appliances of efficiency were there in the office as well and they made for a certain quickening of tempo. So did the fact that the occupants were visible—even if not audible—to the rest of the office. It would be a self-confident man who sat back and twiddled his thumbs at Ronald Bolsover's desk in full view of the rest of the staff.

Not that Bolsover appeared to hurry either. Here was a deliberate, careful character, probably the ideal anchorman to a restless energetic chairman. Every born leader needed a patient number two and Ronald Bolsover might well be the natural consolidator, the sort of man you did leave to hold the fort. He waved both policemen into chairs and looked expectantly at Sloan.

“Just a few routine points, sir,” said the detective inspector easily. “About things we didn't know about when we saw you before.”

“That sounds hopeful.” Bolsover cocked his head alertly.

Sloan wasn't sure if hopeful was the word he would have chosen himself. He wasn't even sure where hope came in in a murder investigation. That truth will out, perhaps, but he wasn't absolutely sure about that. There was a German proverb he had heard somewhere about the truth sometimes being too sad to be borne. He cleared his throat and asked more mundanely if Bolsover could tell them anything more about the official opening of the Palshaw Tunnel.

The deputy chairman of Durmast's grimaced. “As a public-relations exercise, which it was meant to be, it was a disaster of magnitude one. There are no two ways about that. Nobody could get the Press to take an interest in anything except the demonstration.” He moved to an intercom. “I'll get the prints brought in.”

Sloan nodded, not without sympathy, and said, “That would be a help.”

“And then when the police started to put a stop to it all the newspapers wanted to do was to photograph the police tangling with the demonstrators.”

Detective Constable Crosby stirred, and said morosely, “That's always good for a laugh.” He'd been on the front line himself and knew.

“I see,” said Sloan to Bolsover. Responses to protests were very nearly as significant as the protests themselves; Sloan was aware of that from experience.

“The Minister was particularly put out,” said Bolsover, “as of course the Department of Transport were involved in the funding, though not in the actual work. The County Council organised that.”

“Quite so,” said Sloan, although in fact local authority finance was almost a closed book to him. Other, better men than he, lost sleep over the precept for policing the County of Calleshire and the Rate Support Grant.

“The Lord Lieutenant was naturally all for carrying on regardless,” said Bolsover.

“Naturally,” echoed Sloan. Put into Latin and the sentiment would have done for the family motto of the Dukes of Calleshire. Carrying on regardless was what His Grace's family had been doing since time out of mind. Predictably the only ribbons that cut any ice with the Duke were either Garter ones or faded mementos of wars well fought, worn of the left breast: one in front of a tunnel wouldn't carry much weight with His Grace. One man's mob, though, was another man's protest group and—more important perhaps—another man's constituents.

“The chairman of the Calleshire County Council wasn't exactly happy either,” said Bolsover.

“And Mr. Durmast?” asked Sloan curiously.

“Bill?” Bolsover gave a short laugh. “Oh, Bill wasn't too worried. Like the old trouper he is he insisted that all publicity is good publicity. He told us to wait until the tunnel collapsed before we complained about bad publicity. When that happened he said we could shout as much as we liked. He always said when we did have any little problems to look at Brunel.”

“What about when all your troubles weren't little ones?” asked Crosby.

“Then,” replied Bolsover, “he would say not to forget the Tay Bridge and what happened to that.”

“Ah,” said Sloan. The chairman's approach went a long way towards explaining how it was that Bill Durmast got on well with Hamish Mgambo and King Thabile III.

“That quietened Clopton's,” said Bolsover. “They were the contractors.”

“I expect it did,” said Sloan.

“But it was a disappointment all the same,” he admitted.

“The demonstrators …”

“Oh, you people caught some of them,” said Bolsover, “but that wasn't the point. It wasn't revenge we were after. Besides”—he shrugged his shoulders—“they came up in front of old Pussyfoot.”