Straight (17 page)

Brad whisked us round to the Rook and Castle at five-thirty and pointed to the phone to let me know how I could call him when I’d finished, and I saw from his twitch of a smile that he found it a satisfactory amusement.

The Rook and Castle was old-fashioned inside as well as out, an oasis of drinking peace without a jukebox. There was a lot of dark wood and Tiffany lampshades and small tables with beer mats. An office-leaving clientele of mostly business-suited men was beginning to trickle in and I paused inside the door both to get accustomed to the comparative darkness and to give anyone who was interested a plain view of the crutches.

The interest level being nil, I judged Elliot Trelawney to be absent. I went over to the bar, ordered some Perrier and swallowed a Distalgesic, as it was time. The morning’s gallop had done no good to the ankle department but it wasn’t to be regretted.

A bulky man of about fifty came into the place as if familiar with his surroundings and looked purposefully around, sharpening his gaze on the crutches and coming without hesitation to the bar.

“Mr. Franklin?”

I shook his offered hand.

“What are you drinking?” he said briskly, eyeing my glass.

“Perrier. That’s temporary also.”

He smiled swiftly, showing white teeth. “You won’t mind if I have a double Glenlivet? Greville and I drank many of them together here. I’m going to miss him abominably. Tell me what happened.”

I told him. He listened intently, but at the end he said merely, “You look very uncomfortable propped against that stool. Why don’t we move to a table?” And without more ado he picked up my glass along with the one the bartender had fixed for him, and carried them over to two wooden armchairs under a multicolored lampshade by the wall.

“That’s better,” he said, taking a sip and eyeing me over the glass. “So you’re the brother he talked about. You’re Derek.”

“I’m Derek. His only brother, actually. I didn’t know he talked about me.”

“Oh, yes. Now and then.”

Elliot Trelawney was big, almost bald, with half-moon glasses and a face that was fleshy but healthy-looking. He had thin lips but laugh lines around his eyes, and I’d have said on a snap judgment that he was a realist with a sense of humor.

“He was proud of you,” he said.

“Proud?” I was surprised.

He glimmered. “We often played golf together on Saturday mornings and sometimes he would be wanting to finish before the two o’clock race at Sandown or somewhere, and it would be because you were riding and it was on the box. He liked to watch you. He liked you to win.”

“He never told me,” I said regretfully.

“He wouldn’t, would he? I watched with him a couple of times and all he said after you’d won was, ‘That’s all right, then.’ ”

“And when I lost?”

“When you lost?” He smiled. “Nothing at all. Once you had a crashing fall and he said he’d be glad on the whole when you retired, as race-riding was so dangerous. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“By God, I’ll miss him.” His voice was deep. “We were friends for twenty years.”

I envied him. I wanted intolerably what it was too late to have, and the more I listened to people remembering Greville the worse it got.

“Are you a magistrate?” I asked.

He nodded. “We often sat together. Greville introduced me to it, but I’ve never had quite his gift. He seemed to know the truth of things by instinct. He said goodness was visible, therefore in its absence one sought for answers.”

“What sort of cases did ... do you try?”

“All sorts.” He smiled again briefly. “Shoplifters. Vagrants. Possession of drugs. TV license fee evaders. Sex offenders ... that’s prostitution, rape, sex with minors, curb crawlers. Greville always seemed to know infallibly when those were lying.”

“Go on,” I said, when he stopped. “Anything else?”

“Well, there are a lot of diplomats in West London, in all the embassies. You’d be astonished what they get away with by claiming diplomatic immunity. Greville hated diplomatic immunity, but we have to grant it. Then we have a lot of small businessmen who ‘forget’ to pay the road tax on the company vehicles, and there are TDA’s by the hundreds—that’s Taking and Driving Away cars. Other motoring offenses, speeding and so on, are dealt with separately, like domestic offenses and juveniles. And then occasionally we get the preliminary hearings in a murder case, but of course we have to refer those to the Crown Court.”

“Does it all ever depress you?” I said.

He took a sip and considered me. “It makes you sad,” he said eventually. “We see as much inadequacy and stupidity as downright villainy. Some of it makes you laugh. I wouldn’t say it’s depressing, but one learns to see the world from underneath, so to speak. To see the dirt and the delusions, to see through the offenders’ eyes and understand their weird logic. But one’s disillusion is sporadic because we don’t have a bench every day. Twice a month, in Greville’s and my cases, plus a little committee work. And that’s what I really want from you: the notes Greville was making on the licensing of a new-style gaming club. He said he’d learned disturbing allegations against one of the organizers and he was going to advise turning down the application at the next committee meeting even though it was a project we’d formerly looked on favorably.”

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that I haven’t so far found any notes like that.”

“Damn ... Where would he have put them?”

“I don’t know. I’ll look for them, though.” No harm in keeping an eye open for notes while I searched for C.

Elliot Trelawney reached into an inner jacket pocket and brought out two flat black objects, one a notebook, the other a folded black case a bit like a cigarette case.

“These were Greville’s,” he said. “I brought them for you.” He put them on the small table and moved them toward me with plump and deliberate fingers. “He lent me that one,” he pointed, “and the notebook he left on the table after a committee meeting last week.”

“Thank you,” I said. I picked up the folded case and opened it and found inside a miniature electronic chess set, the sort that challenged a player to beat it. I looked up. Trelawney’s expression, unguarded, was intensely sorrowful. “Would you like it?” I said. “I know it’s not much, but would you like to keep it?”

“If you mean it.”

I nodded and he put the chess set back into his pocket. “Greville and I used to play ...
dammit ...”
he finished explosively. “Why should such a futile thing happen?”

No answer was possible. I regretfully picked up the black notebook and opened it at random.

“The bad scorn the good,” I read aloud, “and the crooked despise the straight.”

“The thoughts of Chairman Mao,” Trelawney said dryly, recovering himself. “I used to tease him. He said it was a habit he’d had from university when he’d learned to clarify his thoughts by writing them down. When I knew he was dead I read that notebook from cover to cover. I’ve copied down some of the things in it, I hope you won’t mind.” He smiled. “You’ll find parts of it especially interesting.”

“About his horses?”

“Those too.”

I stowed the notebook in a trousers pocket which was already pretty full and brought out from there the racing diary, struck by a thought. I explained what the diary was, showing it to Trelawney.

“I phoned that number,” I said, turning pages and pointing, “and mentioned Greville’s name, and a woman told me in no uncertain terms never to telephone again as she wouldn’t have the name Greville Franklin spoken in her house.”

Elliot Trelawney blinked. “Greville? Doesn’t sound like Greville.”

“I didn’t think so, either. So would it have had something to do with one of your cases? Someone he found guilty of something?”

“Hah. Perhaps.” He considered. “I could probably find out whose number it is, if you like. Strange he would have had it in his diary, though. Do you want to follow it up?”

“It just seemed so odd,” I said.

“Quite right.” He unclipped a gold pencil from another inner pocket and in a slim notebook of black leather with gold corners wrote down the number.

“Do you make enemies much, because of the court?” I asked.

He looked up and shrugged. “We get cursed now and then. Screamed at, one might say. But usually not. Mostly they plead guilty because it’s so obvious they are. The only real enemy Greville might have had is the gambling club organizer who’s not going to get his license. A drugs baron is what Greville called him. A man suspected of murder but not tried through lack of evidence. He might have had very hard feelings.” He hesitated. “When I heard Greville was dead, I even wondered about Vaccaro. But it seems clear the scaffolding was a sheer accident ... wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was. The scaffolding broke high up. One man working on it fell three stories to his death. Pieces just rained down on Greville. A minute earlier, a minute later ...” I sighed. “Is Vaccaro the gambling-license man?”

“He is. He appeared before the committee and seemed perfectly straightforward. Subject to screening, we said. And then someone contacted Greville and uncovered the muck. But we don’t ourselves have any details, so we need his notes.”

“I’ll look for them,” I promised again. I turned more pages in the diary. “Does Koningin Beatrix mean anything to you?” I showed him the entry. “Or CZ equals C times one point seven?”

C, I thought, looking at it again, stood for diamond.

“Nothing,” Elliot Trelawney said. “But as you know, Greville could be as obscure as he was clear-headed. And these were private notes to himself, after all. Same as his notebook. It was never for public consumption.”

I nodded and put away the diary and paid for Elliot Trelawney’s repeat Glenlivet but felt waterlogged myself. He stayed for a while, seeming to be glad to talk about Greville, as I was content to listen. We parted eventually on friendly terms, he giving me his card with his phone number for when I found Greville’s notes.

If, I silently thought. If I find them.

When he’d gone I used the pub’s telephone to call the car, and after five unanswered
brr-brrs
disconnected and went outside, and Brad with almost a grin reappeared to pick me up.

“Home,” I said, and he said, “Yerss,” and that was that.

On the way I read bits of Greville’s notebook, pausing often to digest the passing thoughts which had clearly been chiefly prompted by the flotsam drifting through the West London Magistrates Court.

“Goodness is sickening to the evil,” he wrote, “as evil is sickening to the good. Both the evil and the good may be complacent.”

“In all income groups you find your average regulation slob who sniggers at anarchy but calls the police indignantly to his burglarized home, who is actively antiauthority until he needs to be saved from someone with a gun.”

“The palm outstretched for a handout can turn in a flash into a cursing fist. A nation’s palm, a nation’s fist.”

“Crime to many is not crime but simply a way of life. If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don’t apply to you.”

“Infinite sadness is not to trust an old friend.”

“Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.”

“I hate rapists. I imagine being anally assaulted myself, and the anger overwhelms me. It’s essential to make my judgment cold.”

Further on I came unexpectedly to what Elliot Trelawney must have meant.

Greville had written, “Derek came to dinner very stiff with broken ribs. I asked him how he managed to live with all those injuries. ‘Forget the pain and get on with the party,’ he said. So we drank fizz.”

I stopped reading and stared out at the autumn countryside which was darkening now, lights going on. I remembered that evening very well, up to a point. Greville had been good fun. I’d got pretty high on the cocktail of champagne and painkillers and I hadn’t felt a thing until I’d woken in the morning. I’d driven myself seventy miles home and forgotten it, which frightening fact was roughly why I was currently and obediently sticking to water.

It was almost too dark to read more, but I flicked over one more page and came to what amounted to a prayer, so private and impassioned that I felt my mouth go dry. Alone on the page were three brief lines:

I felt as if I shouldn’t have read it; knew he hadn’t meant it to be read. May I achieve humility ... that prayer was for saints.

 

When we reached my house I told Brad I would go to London the next day by train, and he looked devastated.

“I’ll drive you for nowt,” he said, hoarsely.

“It isn’t the money.” I was surprised by the strength of his feelings. “I just thought you’d be tired of all the waiting about.”

He shook his head vigorously, his eyes positively pleading.

“All right, then,” I said. “London tomorrow, Ipswich on Friday, OK?”

“Yerss,” he said with obvious relief.

“And I’ll pay you, of course.”

He looked at me dumbly for a moment, then ducked his head into the car to fetch the big brown envelope from Greville’s house, and he waited while I unlocked my door and made sure that there were no unwelcome visitors lurking.

Everything was quiet, everything orderly. Brad nodded at my all-clear, gave me the envelope and loped off into the night more tongue-tied than ever. I’d never wondered very much about his thoughts during all the silent hours; had never tried, I supposed, to understand him. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. It was restful the way things were.

I ate a microwaved chicken pie from the freezer and made an unenthusiastic start on Greville’s letters, paying his bills for him, closing his accounts, declining his invitations, saying sorry, sorry, very sorry.

After that, in spite of good resolutions, I did not attack my own backlog but read right through Greville’s notebook looking for diamonds. Maybe there were some solid gold nuggets, maybe some pearls of wisdom, but no helpful instructions like turn right at the fourth apple tree, walk five paces and dig.