Killing Time (27 page)

Three children they’d had, and would have had more, except that the war broke out, and though being the father of small children Mr Perceval could have got out of it, he didn’t think it was right to. Violet agreed, and he joined up straight away. It was all right at first, they didn’t send him overseas, so he was able to get back and see Vi and the kiddies now and then. They would listen to concerts on the wireless together. The old Queen’s Hall got blitzed – that was a shock. Then later in the war he got sent out to the Far East. That was bad enough; but he ended up in a prisoner of war camp, and that was – well, you just didn’t talk about it. Still, he survived, and you had to be grateful, didn’t you? He lost most of his hair because of it, though, and nearly all his teeth. When he got home after the war, the first thing he did was have the rest out and get a nice set of false ones on the Beveridge, as they used to say then. Well, it was only fair to Vi. He looked a sight with all those gaps.

There was no place for a violin maker in the New Britain, so he had to begin again. Bicycle repairs he went in for. He reckoned with petrol rationed, everyone’d be using bikes, and he wasn’t far wrong. Then he got interested in watchmaking, just as a hobby to start, but soon he was mending people’s watches and clocks on the side, so to speak, and pretty soon that was the best part of the business. In the Sixties when everyone started getting cars, and bicycles went pretty much by the board, he dropped that side of it and started taking in wirelesses as well. It was just common sense and nimble fingers, he told Violet. There was nothing much to it.

Nimble fingers. You wouldn’t think it to look at him now. He was lucky if he could make a cup of tea now without spilling it. And when you were old, people thought you were daft as well, that was the worst of it. He still had all his marbles, thank you, but they would talk to you that soppy way, like talking to a parrot.
Not that many people talked to him at all now. Vi was gone – taken suddenly, didn’t even make it to his retirement. They’d looked forward to his retirement, doing things together. And the children were all gone too, Jim to Canada, Peggy to Australia. Kevin, the youngest, had gone out there too, but to Sydney – Peggy was in Brisbane. He hadn’t heard from Kevin for sixteen years. Kevin never married. He never married, and then he just – stopped writing. Well, you had to wonder, didn’t you?

And so here he was all alone in this flat. The pension didn’t go very far, but he didn’t want much at his age. If he’d saved a bit while he was working, maybe he could have gone out to Canada or Australia and been near the kids. He should have saved, really. But he didn’t know that he’d really want to live abroad, even if it was Commonwealth. You were better off with what you knew. No, if he won the Lottery, he didn’t know that he’d go. What he would do, if he won the Lottery, was go to a concert. He’d like to go to a concert again. Maybe one of the Proms – hear a bit of Elgar. He’d like to do that once more before he went Upstairs.

Hollis listened courteously, attentively, his hands still and no notebook in sight. And only when Mr Perceval had wound himself down and come to a stop did he raise the question of the bumps upstairs. ‘It seems you mentioned when we talked to you before that you heard a noise upstairs earlier in the day – in the afternoon, sometime?’

‘Ah, well, you didn’t want to know about that, did you?’ Mr Perceval said with a canny look. ‘Young policeman, all impatience, wants to get on and get done with it. I’m an old fool and I speak too slow. He didn’t want to know.’

‘I want to know,’ Hollis said.

‘All interested in late at night, weren’t you?’

‘That’s right. But now I’d be very interested in anything you could tell me about this other thing. A heavy thud, did you say?’

‘A crash and a thud, I’d call it. Like something big and heavy falling over.’

‘And do you remember what time it was?’

‘Course I do. Twenty past one. I looked at the clock.’

‘And why did you do that?’

The old man whistled a ghostly laugh through his vast china teeth. ‘Clever, aren’t you? ’Cause I thought someone might want to know, that’s why!’

‘Really? So what did you think had happened that someone might want to know about?’

But Mr Perceval only went on laughing to himself, his shoulders shaking. At last he stopped, sighing, and got out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes, a process of agonising slowness. When he had succeeded in getting the handkerchief folded and back into his pocket, he straightened his shoulders a little and said, ‘Right, I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ve got the patience.’ Hollis nodded, and grew still and earnest again. ‘Middle of the day, see, it’s quiet. Everyone out at work, kids are at school. I like the quiet. I sit here and just listen. I got me library book, but mostly I just listen. You’d be surprised what you can hear. Metal frames, these flats are built on, did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Not from round here, are you?’

‘No, I’m from Manchester.’

‘I guessed that, from your accent. I was born and brought up in Shepherd’s Bush. I saw these flats being built. Great steel frames, just like Lego it looked. And the metal carries sound, like the strings of a violin, you see, and the inside of the flats are like the sound box. I listen and try to work out what the sounds mean. Shut my eyes and visualise, see ’em walking back and forth, pulling out a chair, shutting a cupboard. Sounds were important in the jungle. It was all you had – nothing to see. Just the snap of a twig – and you got to know which direction it comes from. That takes practice.’

He paused, his eyes fixed, listening to something – in memory, perhaps. ‘So anyway, this day you want to know about.
She’d
gone out, I knew that. I heard the front door slam. She’s a heavy walker, and she will slam doors.
Him
, now, he’s soft on his feet. You don’t hear his feet, except when he goes over the creaking boards. I know where all of
them
are.’

‘He was a dancer,’ Hollis offered.

The old man lifted his head a little in attention. ‘Was he? Was he? Now that’s interesting. That accounts for the exercising, I suppose. Ballet, was it?’

‘Something similar,’ Hollis answered discreetly.

‘He exercised in the evening, half past five to six o’clock. It took me a while to work it out, what it was. Anyway, this particular day, I’d heard him in the bathroom – you can hear
the water rush out of the bath – and then in the bedroom – over that way – and then it all went quiet. Prob’ly in the kitchen. They got stone floors, the kitchens – fireproof, see? – so you can’t hear walking about in the kitchen. Then about one o’clock I heard him come in above me. I was sitting in here, in the front room. There’s a board about there.’ He pointed to the ceiling near the door. ‘It creaks when you step on it, no matter how soft-footed you are. He walked across, and then I heard the telly come on.’

‘You can hear the television?’

‘When it’s turned up.
She
has it up loud. A bit mutton if you ask me. She’d had it on the night before. So when he turns it on, the sound’s still up loud, you see? But then he turned it down. You know why? He had a visitor.’

Hollis felt his scalp prickling. They were on to something. He knew it. ‘A visitor? How did you know that?’

‘They’ve got a doorbell, just the right pitch to carry. He turns the telly down, crosses the creaker.’ He pointed again. ‘I didn’t hear the front door open and shut. He doesn’t slam like her. But then a moment later he comes back into the front room with someone else. I hear them come in, first the visitor, then him.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Two different treads. The visitor’s a heavier walker. Visitor sits down over there, him upstairs goes over there. Anyway, then it goes quiet again – they’re sitting down, right, chatting? Then about five minutes later
he
goes out and comes back in – gone to fetch something. He’s not made a cup of tea – not gone long enough. Fetched something to show him, maybe.’

‘Or fetched the whisky bottle and two glasses,’ Hollis said.

‘Oh, is that the way it was?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But there was a whisky bottle and two glasses on the coffee table.’

Mr Perceval nodded several times, piecing the knowledge into his sound-track. ‘Right. Right. Then, twenty past one, it happens, a crash and a thud, just over there.’ He pointed at the ceiling, and Hollis noted that he was indicating just about the position of the chair and the body. If Perceval had never seen the inside of Jay Paloma’s flat, it was a good piece of evidence, because his own easy chair and television were in a quite different position. ‘And then,’ Perceval
went on, ‘some banging and trampling in about the same place—’

‘What sort of banging?’

‘Like DIY, but muffled. Like somebody hitting something with a wooden mallet, maybe, rather than a hammer. And he’s moving his feet, the heavy-footed one, trampling about, like I said, but all on the spot.’

The repeated blows to the skull, Hollis thought. The frenzied attack. DIY was about the mark: Paloma had had the loft conversion to end them all.

‘Then there’s a silence, and then he goes out, back across the creaker, and there’s nothing more. I didn’t hear the front door close. He did it quietly. And then there’s silence up there all afternoon. Which is why,’ he said, fixing Hollis with a stern eye, ‘I reckoned someone would want to know. Because I listened for him to go out of the room, but he never did.’

‘Are you sure it was the visitor who went out?’

‘Course I am. Different tread. Anyway,
he was
found dead up there, am I right?’

‘Yes, he was, but not until the next day. He could have been killed any time. And we know – you know too because you heard it – that someone broke into the flat that evening.’

‘He was already dead by then,’ Mr Perceval said with calm certainty. ‘Must’ve been. Else why wasn’t he walking about? Why didn’t he answer the phone when it rang? And why didn’t he do his exercising? Always did his exercising, regular as clockwork.’

‘That’s a good point,’ Hollis said. ‘But why didn’t you tell us all this before?’

‘I told you, that young constable didn’t want to know. In too much of a hurry.’

‘You could have told someone else. Called at the police station. You should have come forward with important information like this, you know.’

‘And would you have believed me?’ Mr Perceval said. ‘You were all stuck on half past eleven, and fair enough, with the door being broken down. If some doddery old josser came tottering in talking about creaky floorboards at twenty past one, you’d have shown him the door. Politely, all right, but that would have been the way of it, am I right?’

Hollis had to admit, unwillingly, that he was right. The ill-fitting teeth, the whistle, the slowness, would hardly have cut the mustard in the frenetic pace of modern station life, and without time and space to expand and justify his story, Perceval was barely believable. Even now, Hollis was wondering how you would ever present his evidence in such a way that a court would accept it. He was pretty sure the CPS wouldn’t even want to try.

Candy Williams looked frightened to death, but though her little chin quivered she faced Slider and Hart resolutely.

‘I ain’t got nothing to say. You got my statement. Why don’t you leave me alone?’

‘Hmm, yes, I know,’ Slider said, ‘but – can I sit down? Thanks. Yes, your statement. It’s giving me problems, and do you know why?’

Candy didn’t evince any desire to be told. She had sat down opposite him on the edge of a chair, her bony knees together and her ankles well apart, her hands clutched together in her lap. She looked about thirteen. She turned her face from him and stared at the window.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Slider went on. ‘Well, I knew you weren’t telling the truth. And you knew that I knew, didn’t you? I mean, nobody was fooling anybody in that interview room.’

‘Candy, we’re trying to help you,’ Hart interposed sharply. ‘Pay attention.’ Candy’s face remained averted, like a child refusing to take her medicine.

‘The thing is this,’ Slider went on conversationally, ‘I know Jonah made you give him an alibi. I suppose he threatened you with all sorts of things if you didn’t. I expect he gave you a few smacks as well, just to give you a taste.’ Candy’s mouth moved at that, a little, bitter downturn. ‘So you lied about him being in the flat with you all that time. I don’t blame you. But now something new has turned up, and that lie isn’t going to help him any more. To help him you’ve got to tell me the truth.’

Now she turned her face back, looking at him, puzzled, trying to understand.

‘You see, I don’t think Jonah did murder Jay Paloma.’

She stared.

‘But I can’t prove it unless you tell me the truth. You’ve got to admit to me which bit of your story was a lie, so I can be sure the rest is true, do you understand?’

‘You’re lying,’ Candy said, looking from one to the other uncertainly. ‘You’re tryna trick me. You’re tryna to get me to drop him in it.’

‘No. Absolutely not,’ Slider said. ‘Listen to me: Jonah doesn’t need an alibi for half past eleven at night. But if you go on lying about that, I can’t accept your evidence at all, on anything. You can’t be his alibi for any other time. And that means you’ll be useless to him.’

‘You don’t want him to think you’ve let him down, do you?’ Hart suggested.

Candy began to sweat. She seemed confused. She looked at Hart and let drop an appalling facility of abuse.

‘It’s no good swearin’ at me, sweetheart,’ Hart said. ‘I’m not the one on the spot. Big Jonah give you a job to do, and if you fuck it up—’ She shrugged eloquently.

‘You bastards,’ said Candy. ‘You pig bastard slags. What you tryna do to me?’

‘Just tell me the truth, Candy. Tell me what really happened on Tuesday,’ Slider said with gentle insistence.

She looked at him now, and there was appeal under the defiance. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t understand
nothing!’

‘Then make me understand.’ Slider became brisk. ‘Come on, Candy, I’m trying to help you, but if you won’t help yourself—’