Others (24 page)

26

I noticed that my car, still parked on the double-yellow, had a parking ticket taped under the windscreen wiper. Great, all I needed on such a morning. The policeman stationed outside the agency’s front door looked down his nose at me as I approached, his hard face expressionless. He must have watched as the traffic warden slapped on the ticket, but I guess it would have taken an ounce of humanity to explain the circumstances to the illegal parking and the constable’s heart had no such measure.

‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ he asked when I tried to slip past him.

‘I’m Nick Dismas. It’s my company up there.’

He seemed to enjoy towering over me. *Yes, I know who you are and you’re not going up those stairs. It’s an SOC.’

‘I thought I might be able to help.’

‘It’s off limits, mate, ‘specially to you.’

‘Is your lot up there?’

‘SOCO and CID.’

Scenes of crime officers, who would be photographing the area as well as dusting for fingerprints and searching for telltale marks, loose hairs, or anything else that might be useful in solving the case, together with a couple of detectives no doubt going through desks, diaries and files, generally snooping around.

‘Is Macaroon with them?’ I asked.

‘Detective Chief Superintendent Macaroon, yes.’

Would you let him know I’m here?’

‘It’s my job to keep people out, not ran up and down stairs all day.’

There’s always one. In general, I got on pretty well with the local constabulary, most of whom, from CID to uniform, were a decent breed; but, as with any profession, you always seemed to come up against the mean-minded bastard of the bunch. Well, today I didn’t need it.

In front of him, I took out my mobile and tapped in my office number. ‘Is DCS Macaroon there?’ I enquired when the phone upstairs was answered. ‘Could I have a quick word with him? Tell him it’s Nick Dismas.’

The policeman on the door watched me stone-faced.

‘Mac? Yeah, it’s Nick. Look, I’m down at the front door and the dickhead on duty won’t let me come up and see you.’ I winked my good eye at the dickhead.

The shout soon came down the stairs behind him.
‘Let him up, Collins?

The policeman, who must have had ambitions to make it big-time as a nightclub bouncer, flushed red as he stood aside.

‘Carry on,’ I instructed him as I brushed by, the tiny venting of anger good for me: after the shock, sadness and depression of last night, I needed something to bite on.

He didn’t respond, but I felt his eyes burning my back all the way up the first flight of stairs.

There was blue and white tape across the open office door and I ducked under it. Oliver Macaroon, who was talking to the two zealot detectives who had grilled me at the station, turned towards me.

‘Nasty business, Dis,’ he said, holding out a hand in greeting.

We shook and the other two officers, by now fairly certain I wasn’t the villain of the piece, nodded in my direction. I nodded back and they went on about their business, rifling through open filing cabinets.

‘Hey,’ I said irritably. ‘You know, those files are supposed to be confidential.’

They should’ve had stronger locks then,’ came the surprisingly mild reply from the one I remembered was called Headley.

It was frustrating, but already too late to do anything about it. He continued to thumb through the client tabs, looking for who knows what?

The forensic officer, dressed in all-in-one white overalls, was dusting Henry’s desk with black powder, taking care to avoid the still-sticky blood and the drenched accounts book that had been half under the mutilated body, searching for ‘latents’, invisible deposits of natural skin secretions. Chalk outlined where my old friend and colleague had lain. I wondered if forensics had discovered any alien fingerprints yet - mine had been taken at the station and Ida’s and Philo’s would be taken later in the day for elimination purposes, if nothing else. The problem was that there would be scores of dabs, from the cleaning lady’s to the many clients who had visited the offices, so how could they all be identified? I shuddered at the bloodstains that were not restricted to the desk and the immediate area of floor beneath it, but splattered around the room as if some crazy artist had waved a red paint-covered brush around.

‘Anything yet?’ I asked Macaroon to distract myself.

Too early. Look, let’s go into your office and chat.’ The chief superintendent pointed the way, his words a command, not an invitation.

Macaroon was a tall beanpole of a man, six-two or more, his shoulders slightly stooped as if he were height-self-conscious. His huge ears stood at right angles to his head, like the open doors of a car, his nose strong, well-defined in a face that spoke of strength. His hair was a premature silver-grey and cut close to his scalp, a Grade Two at least. There wasn’t much humour in Mac, but behind the rather austere veneer there lay a quietly compassionate man dedicated to righting the wrongs on his manor. We had known each other a long time, since, in fact, we were both comparative rookies in our respective careers, and we had helped each other on numerous occasions, feeding bits of information that often put either one of us on the right path towards solving or resolving our own individual investigations (reluctant to become known as a ‘nark’ in the town, though, I was always careful as to the kind of information I passed on, and never once had any of it ever led directly to anybody’s arrest).

I went ahead and skirted my desk, which was still askew across the room. Mac followed me in, closing the door behind him.

‘Here,’ he said, placing his big hands on the edge of the desk, ‘let’s move this back to its original position. We’ve taken pics and video, and drawn a sketch, so we’ll know where it was.’

He shoved and I guided, and soon I was sitting behind the desk as though everything were perfectly normal. A soft breeze caressed the back of my neck, the window behind me still open. Mac brought over a chair and sat facing me.

‘Your men shouldn’t have broken into my private files, Mac,’ I complained.

‘We have a search warrant’

‘That wouldn’t cover access to confidential records.’

‘We do what we deem necessary.’

That they certainly did, and whining about it would get me nowhere. I shook my head resignedly, an act rather than a reaction - I had to let him know my displeasure somehow. He took no notice though.

What else can you tell me about all this, Dis?’ he said, his scrutiny making me uncomfortable.

‘Honestly, nothing more than I told you and your officers last night. I came up here and found Henry lying across his desk, half-naked, dead, and mutilated. I heard noises from this room and when I entered I found the kid crouched in the corner.’

‘You told us he appeared to be frightened of you.’

‘If he were the killer he might have been afraid of what I would do to him. Besides, he was already in shock.’

‘We don’t believe he was the murderer.’

I leaned forward on the desk, pressing my knuckles against my chin. ‘How did you come to that conclusion? Apart from Henry, he was the only other person up here.’

With those injuries to the victim there would have been blood on the perpetrator, and plenty of it. Also, we found no weapon on the premises that could have caused such damage. We’ve searched the yards at the back and the road below your window, even the roof over our heads in. case the boy threw anything up there when he was outside on the ledge.’

‘I didn’t see any murder weapon on him when he climbed out’

‘We aren’t actually talking about a murder weapon as such. The victim was dead before any knife or instrument was used on him.’

I felt a huge relief that Henry had not been alive when those cruel outrages had been inflicted upon his body. Then what did kill him?’

The first officer on the scene noticed that the victim’s tongue was protruding slightly from the mouth and on closer inspection he saw it was purplish, congested. Around the eyes - the parts not covered by blood, that is - there were numerous haemorrhaged capillary blood vessels. Your colleague was strangled, Dis.’

Once more, I felt relief that Henry had only endured strangulation. The thought of him being alive when his genitals had been cut away and his eyes torn out… I reached inside my pocket for a cigarette, the tenth, or possibly the twentieth of the day so far.

‘Our pathologist took an X-ray before carrying out the autopsy. He found damage to the thyroid and the cricoid cartilages, and most importantly the small bone just above the Adam’s apple was broken. All indications of manual strangulation, Dis, and that suggests immense force was used. You saw for yourself how puny the boy was. I doubt very much that he could have killed Henry Solomon.’

I thought it over as I lit the cigarette. ‘So who could have…?’

The boy’s pimp, perhaps, if he had one. Another client, or even a jealous boyfriend. Or perhaps both Henry and the boy he’d picked up were followed here from the streets. This could have just been the work of some homophobic’

Then why didn’t he finish off the rent boy as well?’

‘It could be that whoever the perpetrator was, he thought it was the older man, the predator, who should be punished.’

I closed the lighter and drew in on the cigarette, almost feeling the pollution nestling in my lungs, the sensation perfidiously comforting. Macaroon could be right, it might well have been a random killing. But somehow I knew it wasn’t. Some intuition -
again -
told me there was nothing at all random about Henry’s murder. I blew smoke across the desk.

The DCS now leaned forward. ‘What isn’t clear, despite what you told us last night, is what made you return to the agency so late.’

I explained yet again.

‘So you received a phone call from this Broomfield woman, who is supposed to be some kind of clairvoyant. You say she rang you and practically begged you to come here right away.’ Mac frowned. ‘I didn’t know you believed in that sort of stuff, Dis. Psychic sensing, talking to the dead, predicting the Lottery numbers? I thought you were much too grounded.’

It was difficult to reply.

‘And yet,’ the policeman went on, ‘at this woman’s request, you came to your offices straight away. Is there something you’re keeping from me, Dis? Has your company become involved with some dodgy customers, drug dealers, for instance?’

I almost laughed aloud. ‘Mac, our work is delivering summonses or writs, tracing people, surveillance, debt collecting and catching out cheating love partners or insurance fraudsters. And that’s just the “exciting” part of our job. Come on, you know how commonplace our work is.’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary recently, then?’

I was tempted to let him in on the Ripstone case, but two things stopped me: one was client confidentiality, and two was that Mac would have thought I’d finally flipped if I’d told him about celestial wings, disembodied voices, images in mirrors and every other goddamn thing I’d been through since Shelly Ripstone had walked through my door. Ollie Macaroon had always known me as a pragmatist, someone as down to earth as he was himself, and I wasn’t going to disappoint him now. What would be the point? Would it help him find the person or persons who killed Henry? I didn’t think so.

‘It’s all been routine stuff, Mac,’ I said.

‘You can’t think of a connection with any case past or present?’

I shook my head.

‘Henry Solomon had no enemies that you know of?’

I shook my head again. ‘None that I’m aware.’

‘Has anyone called you a monster before?’

That hurt. Christ, coming from Mac that really hurt. ‘No,’ I said flatly, ‘not directly to my face. You still think the kid was referring to me in the ambulance?’

Not even slightly uncomfortable, Mac replied: Who else could he have meant? I mean, do you, yourself, know anyone locally who might fit that description.’

‘I wasn’t aware that I did myself.’

Still not fazed, the DCS went on: ‘You know precisely what I’m getting at. Sorry if I’m being indelicate, but I don’t have time to spare anyone’s feelings.’

He was right, of course. What’s more, in his own way, he was treating me as an equal, a sensible, objective equal. Although I didn’t consider myself a ‘monster’, I
was
different from most of my fellow men, and Mac was straight enough to treat it as a plain truth. I had to face it - I’d always had to face it - I was unsightly, and although I knew Mac well enough to be confident that
he
didn’t think of me as a ‘monster’, we were both aware that there were plenty of others out there who did. We were professional investigators, even though there was a vast difference in the nature of our individual work, and Mac respected me enough to know I would understand his position. His question may have sounded harsh, and sure, it stung at first, but in fact, it was reasonable under the circumstances and, as I said, he was treating me as an intelligent equal. Others might have misunderstood, but I didn’t.

‘No, Mac,’ I said, at last answering his question. ‘I can’t think of anyone around town who might be described in that way. We’ve got plenty of weirdos, our fair share of mental cases, and even some pretty “monstrous” gangster types in the neighbourhood. Nobody that you could describe physically as a monster, though. No one I’ve ever met, anyway.’ I stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray close to my elbow. ‘But tell me, Mac, d’you have any idea yet of how it happened last night? I know the kid was scared out of his mind when I reached him, but d’you think he was involved in Henry’s murder?’

The big policeman pondered awhile before answering. ‘I suspect that Henry Solomon had been using these offices as a night-time trysting place for some time. The youth - we’ve identified him as Jamie Kelly, by the way - was well known to us as a rent boy and it’s possible that it wasn’t the first occasion he’d been brought here. What we don’t know yet, and hopefully it’ll only be a matter of time before we find out, is whether Solomon picked him up in a gay club or on the street, or whether they already had a prearranged meeting here. Until we’ve established either, we can’t say if one or both were followed back to your offices. It could even be that some low-life passer-by discovered the front door downstairs was open and decided to have a look around.’