Dying to Know (28 page)

‘You think I killed my parents?' I fully expected that we were in for a dose of frown number two followed by a bit of bellowing, but I then realized that he was completely taken aback by the concept of being the killer of his mother and father. He was, it seemed, a loving child.

‘It seemed likely,' I admitted.

For several moments we were cast into silence, as Max and I looked at Tom, and he sat glumly staring into the television that was switched off. The eruption, when it came, was slow in starting but worth waiting for. He began by shaking his head in a way that might at first have been sorrowful but rapidly became clearly incandescent. He then passed quickly from frown number one, on through two and was well on his way to an unprecedented number three before he found voice and a Vesuvian eruption followed.

‘NO! YOU ARE TAKING THE MICKEY!'

There seemed no point to me in entering into a debate but Max gave it a go. ‘No, Tom, we're not—'

‘YES, YOU ARE!' He was getting hoarse and I think that was why he toned it down a bit from then on. He was now breathing quite heavily, in fact almost panting, and becoming more and more agitated. ‘I'm being stupid, Arnie.' He addressed this to the little chap who, clearly knowing on which side his bread was buttered, was nodding enthusiastically. ‘I'm losing my touch, I am. I almost fell for their scam. This was designed to put me off, make me think that they're a couple of innocent idiots.'

Under other circumstances I would have taken exception to his use of this rather pejorative term, but I bit down hard on my tongue. Tom stood up. ‘It's like I thought all along. Your old man was after the diamonds and he killed Mum and Dad to get them. You've dreamed this up just to throw me off the scent.' He was pacing now, and becoming ever angrier. ‘Yes . . . yes, I see it now. You and him are nearly clean away, aren't you? I'm the only one who suspects you, so if you can persuade me, then no one's going to think to look in your direction.' He was nodding at his own brilliance. ‘What do you say, Arnie?'

‘I think you're right, Mr Lightoller.'

He turned back to us. ‘Good. So do I. Now, where are they?'

‘We haven't got them,' I said tiredly.

He snapped his fingers. ‘Arnie. Malcolm.'

I remember thinking,
Malcolm?
, then everything went blurry again. My field of view was immediately severely restricted by the rather unpleasant sight of Malcolm's trousers as he came to stand in front of me and then that familiar feeling of being throttled came upon me as his hand clamped its rather sweaty fingers around my neck and, at the same time, he lifted me with that arm alone to a standing position. I dimly heard Max do her familiar squeak as Arnie went for her and through watering eyes I saw him standing behind her, his left arm around her neck while his right hand was forcing her into a half nelson.

Tom said brightly, ‘Now. You know the routine. Where are the diamonds? Where is my inheritance?'

Max said in a voice that was encouragingly combative although agonized, ‘We don't know. We honestly don't know . . . ow!'

When I heard that I tried a bit of struggling but Malcolm put a stop to that by grabbing my manly vegetables and squeezing so that I did a bit of squeaking of my own. Throughout this, his expression did not change.

Tom shook his head. ‘No, I don't believe you. One last chance. Where are the diamonds?'

I tried to speak but could only manage a feral noise. There was a pounding in my head that was growing louder and more booming, and in my eyes there was a throbbing that was so painful I thought something was sure to burst. Max had given up on being combative and had settled for straight agonized. ‘We honestly don't know!'

‘Wrong answer.' He sighed. ‘The wrong answer.' Then, brightly: ‘Now. Who shall it be first?'

‘Please believe us,' begged Max. ‘We don't know. We never found them.'

Tom came over to Malcolm and me, and stood beside his pet gorilla, dwarfed in stature but not authority by him. He had a wide grin on his face exposing perfect teeth replete with two gold crowns. ‘You?' he asked.

Then he swivelled round to face Max; her face was bright pink becoming worryingly blue at the lips. ‘No!' he announced loudly, then pointed at Max. ‘You!'

As he strode over to where she was sitting, he said to Arnie, ‘Make her squeal.'

THIRTY-NINE

A
nd Max squealed. I struggled but all Malcolm did was to tighten the grasp of both his hands and I soon stopped. Then Max squealed again . . .

The door burst open and in came Constable Smith, followed by three burly forms in the dark-blue sackcloth that passes for high-end tailoring in the constabulary. A lot of confusion followed, much of which passed me by, since my attention was wholly taken up by the relief as first my throat and then my private parts were released. I fell back into my chair but already my thoughts were on Max. Malcolm was just standing there, the arrival of a contingent of plod apparently causing central nervous system overload, so he did nothing when I struggled to my feet and headed for her. Arnie, meanwhile, demonstrated that he had a few more functioning neural pathways by releasing Max and backing away from the approaching wave of blue, looking around for an exit route. Tom was alternating between frowns number one and number two, his mouth quivering, eyes wide as he stood in the middle of the room and presumably tried to think of explanations.

Smith went for Tom, two of his friends went for Malcolm and the fourth went for Arnie. Max had slumped back in her chair, still conscious but in a lot of pain. I hugged her as hard as I could while around me a fair amount of tussling, struggling, blasphemy and breaking of my property went on. Only Tom didn't struggle and, after Constable Smith had whispered into his ear, he said in a loud voice, ‘OK, lads. Enough's enough.'

After that, it all went a bit quiet. Malcolm, Arnie and Tom were led away by Smith and the three uniforms while I sat with Max in the mess that was the living room, each with a glass of brandy. I had checked her arm and it was still intact, and her throat seemed to have suffered no serious harm; various parts of my body to which I was rather attached ached appallingly but only time would tell if they had suffered serious permanent damage. Max was shaking quite badly but I didn't say anything because I was shaking more.

Eventually Smith returned and sat opposite us as we hunched together on the sofa. His black eye had almost gone as he sat there, relaxed and happy. ‘Tom and his friends have been escorted back to the station. We can relax a bit.'

I looked around at the mess in the room, thinking that I had a lot of clearing up to do. He caught me looking around and said complacently, ‘We got here just in time.'

Max asked plaintively, ‘How did you know?'

He smiled broadly. ‘Holversum.'

Which surprised me. ‘Holversum?'

‘He phoned the station this evening and told us about a peculiar phone call he'd received from you. He had been pondering what to do about it, and then decided that contacting us would be the best thing to do.'

Max and I looked at each other. We hadn't discussed it, but clearly both of us had assumed that now Tom Lightoller had shown himself innocent of the murders, it must be Holversum who was the guilty party. Smith was prattling on, though. ‘The inspector and I discussed it, and he decided that I should come over and see you, try to find out what it was you were up to.'

I heard the words, wondered why my head was whispering a question to me. That was surely a lie. Why would he lie? ‘With three hefty colleagues?' I said. ‘That was prescient.'

He laughed. ‘Oh, no. I came on my own, but when I got here, I saw Tom Lightoller's van outside and wondered what was going on. I thought it wise to do a bit of reconnoitring first, and that way discovered the damage done to the back door. I stayed back but saw Tom and his heavies hustling you out of the kitchen. I called for backup straight away.'

‘Thank God you did,' I said fervently.

‘You can say that again. I think he was about to do you a bit of damage, miss.'

She laughed nervously. ‘Just a bit.'

He nodded earnestly. ‘Still, all over now.'

‘Absolutely,' I agreed. I had thought about offering him some brandy but decided against it given that well-known dictum concerning ‘drink and duty'. I had seen
The Sweeney
– quite enjoyed it, too – but still couldn't come to believe that this was how the police really behaved. Smith surprised me, though.

‘I couldn't have one of those, could I?'

‘Brandy?' I asked. ‘Yes, of course. Ice?' He declined and I went to the kitchen to get another glass and when I returned Smith was leaning forward talking earnestly to Max, trying to reassure her that Tom Lightoller would be charged with breaking and entering, assault, illegal detention, and whatever else they could think up. I filled the glass, then handed it to him.

‘Many thanks,' he said, taking the glass and then some of the brandy; in fact, taking quite a lot of it. A sigh. ‘That's better.'

I said conversationally, ‘You look stressed.'

He had been looking at the carpet but at my question paid attention to me. ‘You're right there.' He was shaking his head, and had already finished the brandy. ‘It's been bloody busy over the past few weeks, what with the deaths of Baines and Perry, then the murder of the Lightollers.'

Things were going around in my head; not normal things, but fantastical objects, dreamlike concepts. ‘You'd only just arrived when it all kicked off, hadn't you?'

His attitude changed; just slightly, but noticeably. ‘That's right.'

I took a sip myself. ‘And the work's not over yet.'

He shook his head sadly. ‘No.'

‘If it wasn't Tom Lightoller and it wasn't Alexander Holversum, then who killed Doris and Oliver?'

Smith was lost in reverie but came back to answer my question. ‘It was your father, wasn't it?'

But he asked it in what was almost a teasing manner, and he had trouble suppressing a smile as he did so.

‘No, it wasn't,' I replied calmly.

He considered. ‘I must admit that it's always struck me as a poor motive for a double murder,' he said. ‘An argument about blocked access, a few inches shaved off the boundary, a stolen watch.'

‘Have you told Masson of your doubts?'

He shook his head sadly. ‘The inspector's a very good policeman, but he's a bit prone to irritability.'

‘Tell me about it.' I felt suddenly elated; at last someone was listening to us. ‘He's closed his mind completely to any other possibility.'

‘And any other motive,' he agreed.

‘Exactly.'

This was going swimmingly. The stress of the evening's events was dissipating as the brandy did what brandy does and Smith's confessions worked a bit of their own magic. Max had at last relaxed against me and might even have been dozing off. I offered Smith another glass of brandy which he accepted readily.

Having satisfied his desires, I sat back down and he took another sip. ‘Very nice.'

I concurred; I would have been very upset if he hadn't liked it, in fact. I had bought the stuff on a holiday in southern France about three years ago and it had cost me a bomb. ‘Constable, I don't want to put you in a difficult position, but is there anything you can do to influence the inspector?'

He pursed his lips, drew in a whistling breath. ‘That's difficult, very difficult.'

‘I know, but if anyone has any influence with him, it must be you.'

He smiled sadly. ‘There are two pretty big obstacles in the way of success.'

Max asked, ‘What?'

He took another large sip of the brandy and, as he did so, I watched a worryingly large amount of money disappear into his buccal cavity. ‘Well, firstly, I've learned that the inspector is a stubborn man. A very stubborn man indeed.'

It was a sentiment with which I could heartily recur. ‘And the other?'

‘That's an even bigger obstacle.'

Max and I looked at each other; he sounded so sad. ‘What is it?'

‘I don't want to.'

I didn't know what to say but, bless her, Max did. ‘But you must! If you think that Lance's father is innocent, it's your duty to make sure that he isn't wrongfully convicted.'

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely, absolutely,' he agreed. ‘And in normal circumstances, I'd be right there in his office tomorrow morning telling him just where he's going wrong . . .'

‘But?'

‘But these are not normal circumstances.' With which he uttered a deep sigh.

Max asked incredulously, ‘Why not?'

I sighed; Max had missed the subtle but quite distinct transformation in Smith. His hand was in the pocket of his raincoat; if it had been Masson, I would have been fairly convinced he was feeling for cigarettes, but Smith didn't smoke. ‘I think that the good constable is trying to intimate that it suits him to have my father as the one and only suspect.'

‘Why?'

To Smith, I said, ‘There's no proof. I haven't a shred of anything approaching evidence to implicate you.'

Max gasped and Smith took a gun from his pocket. ‘But you've been putting things together in your head, haven't you?'

‘What things?'

‘My arrival in the neighbourhood just before the Greyhound Lane killings for one.'

‘That's nothing but a coincidence.'

He shook his head. ‘It just needs a single question to start people digging. Maybe they'd find something out, then something else, then, before you know it . . .'