The Bat (23 page)

After the meeting Harry sat in Andrew’s chair and flicked through his notes. He didn’t glean much, just a few addresses, a couple of phone numbers that turned out to be for garage workshops and some incomprehensible doodles on a sheet of paper. The drawers were as good as empty, just office equipment. Then Harry examined the two bunches of keys they had found on him. One had Andrew’s initials on the leather holder, so he assumed they were his private keys.

He picked up the phone and rang Birgitta. She was shocked, asked some questions, but left the talking to Harry.

“I don’t understand,” Harry said. “A guy I’ve known for little more than a week dies and I cry like a baby, while I couldn’t shed so much as a tear for my mother for five days.
My mother, the greatest woman in the world! Where’s the logic to it?”

“Logic?” Birgitta said. “I doubt it has much to do with logic.”

“Well, I just wanted to let you know. Keep it to yourself. Will I be getting a visit after you finish work?”

She hesitated. She was expecting a phone call from Sweden tonight. From her parents.

“It’s my birthday,” she said.

“Many happy returns.”

Harry rang off. He sensed an old foe growling in his stomach.

Lebie and Harry headed toward Andrew Kensington’s home in Chatwick.

“The number where the man hunts the bird …” Harry began.

The sentence hung in the air between two sets of traffic lights.

“You were saying …?” Lebie said.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about the show. I’m mystified by the bird number. It didn’t seem to have any point. A hunter who thinks he’s hunting a bird and suddenly discovers the prey is a cat, so a hunter is hunted. OK, but so what?”

After half an hour’s drive they reached Sydney Road, a nice street in a pleasant district.

“Jeez, is this right?” Harry said as they saw the house number they had been given by the HR department. It was a large brick house with a double garage, a well-tended lawn and a fountain at the front. A gravel path led to an impressive mahogany door. A young boy opened it after they had rung. He nodded gravely when they mentioned Andrew, pointed to himself and covered his mouth with a hand to show them he was mute. Then he took them round the back
and pointed to a small, low brick building on the other side of the enormous garden. Had it been an English estate one might have called it the gatekeeper’s cottage.

“We are going to go in,” Harry said and noticed that he was overarticulating. As if there was something wrong with the boy’s hearing as well. “We’re … we were colleagues of Andrew. Andrew’s dead.”

He held up Andrew’s bunch of keys with the leather holder. For a moment the boy looked at the keys in bewilderment, gasping for air.

“He died suddenly last night,” Harry said. The boy stood in front of them with his arms hanging by his sides and his eyes slowly moistening. Harry realized the two of them must have known each other well. He’d been told Andrew had lived at this address for almost twenty years, and it occurred to him the boy had probably grown up in the big house. An involuntary image appeared to Harry: the little boy and the black man playing with a ball in the garden, the boy being given money to run and buy an ice cream. Perhaps he had been raised with well-intentioned advice and semi-true stories about the policeman in the cottage, and, when he was old enough, he would have found out how to treat girls and throw a straight left without dropping his guard.

“Actually, that’s wrong. We were more than colleagues. We were friends, we were friends too,” Harry said. “Is it all right if we go in?”

The boy blinked, pinched his mouth and nodded.

The first thing that struck him on entering the small bachelor pad was how clean and tidy it was. In the frugally furnished sitting room, there were no newspapers lying around on the coffee table in front of the portable TV, and in the kitchen no dishes waiting to be washed. In the hall, shoes
and boots were lined up with laces inside. The strict order reminded him of something.

In the bedroom, the bed was made immaculately, white sheets tucked in so tightly at the side that getting under the blankets required an aerobatic maneuver. Harry had already cursed this arrangement in his hotel bedroom. He peeped into the bathroom. Razor and soap were laid out in military order next to aftershave, toothpaste, toothbrush and shampoo on the vanity shelf over the sink. That was all. No extravagant toiletries either, Harry observed—and suddenly became aware of what this meticulousness reminded him of: his own flat after he stopped drinking.

Harry’s new life had in fact started there, with the simple exercise of discipline, based on everything having its place, shelf or drawer and being returned there after use. Not so much as a Biro was left out, not a blown fuse in a fuse box. In addition to the practical application there was of course a symbolic significance: rightly or wrongly, he used the level of chaos in his flat as a thermometer for the state of the rest of his life.

Harry asked Lebie to go through the wardrobe and the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and waited until he had gone out to open the cupboard beside the mirror. They were on the top shelf, neatly stacked in rows and pointing at him, like a warehouse of miniature missiles: a couple of dozen vacuum-packed disposable syringes.

Genghis Khan had not been lying when he said Andrew was a junkie. For that matter, Harry had been in no doubt either when they found Andrew in Otto’s flat. He knew that in a climate that generally necessitates short sleeves and T-shirts a police officer cannot walk around with a forearm covered with needle holes. Therefore he had to insert the syringe where the marks wouldn’t be seen, such as, for example, on the back of his legs. Andrew’s calves and the backs of his knees were full of them.

*   *   *

Andrew had been a customer of the guy with the Rod Stewart voice for as long as Genghis could remember. He reckoned Andrew was the type who could consume heroin and continue to function almost as normal both socially and professionally. “That’s not as unusual as many like to think,” Genghis had said.

“But when Speedy discovered round and about that this bloke was a police officer he got paranoid and wanted to shoot him. Thought he was an undercover cop. But we talked him out of it. The bloke had been one of Speedy’s best customers for years. Never any haggling, always had his money ready, kept arrangements, no chat, never any shit. I’ve never seen an Aboriginal deal with dope so well. Bloody hell, I’ve never seen
anyone
deal with dope so well!”

Nor had he seen or heard any rumors about Andrew talking to Evans White.

“White hasn’t got anything to do with the customer side down here anymore. He’s a wholesaler, that’s all. He pushed stuff in King’s Cross for a while—I have no idea why, he earns enough as it is. Apparently he stopped—had some trouble with a couple of prostitutes, I heard.”

Genghis had spoken openly. More openly than was necessary to save his hide. In fact, he had seemed to find it amusing. He must have reckoned there was no great danger of Harry going after them as long as they had at least one of his colleagues on their books.

“Say hello and tell the bloke he’s welcome back. We don’t hold grudges,” Genghis had grinned at length. “Whoever they are, they always come back, you know. Always.”

The caretaker at St. George’s Theatre was in the lunch room and remembered Harry from the previous night. He seemed relieved.

“F-finally someone who’s not going to dig and ask questions about what it looked like. We’ve had journalists buzzing round here the wh-whole day,” he said. “Plus those forensic fellas of yours. But they’ve got enough work to do of their own; they don’t b-bother us.”

“Yes, they have quite a job on their hands.”

“Yeah. I didn’t sleep much last night. Wife had to give me one of her s-sleeping pills. You shouldn’t have to experience that sort of thing. S’pose you’re used to it, though.”

“Well, that was slightly stronger fare than usual.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go into that r-room again.”

“Oh, you’ll get over it.”

“No, listen to me, I can’t even bloody call it the p-props room, I say
that room
.” The caretaker shook his head in desperation.

“Time heals,” Harry said. “Trust me, I know a bit about that.”

“I hope you’re right, Officer.”

“Call me Harry.”

“Coffee, Harry?”

Harry said please and laid the bunch of keys on the table between them.

“Ah, there they are,” the caretaker said. “The bunch of keys Rechtnagel borrowed. I was f-frightened they wouldn’t turn up and we would have to change all the locks. Where did you find them?”

“At Otto’s place.”

“What? But he used the keys last night, didn’t he? His dressing-room door …”

“Don’t worry about it. I wonder if there was anyone else apart from the performers behind the stage yesterday.”

“Oh yes. Let’s see now. The l-lighting engineer, two stagehands and the sound manager were there, of course. No costume or makeup people, this isn’t a b-big production. Well, that’s about it. During the show there were only the stagehands and the other performers. And me.”

“And you didn’t see anyone there?”

“Not a soul,” the caretaker answered without any hesitation.

“Could anyone have got in another way apart from the back door or the stage door?”

“Well, there’s a corridor at the side of the gallery. Now the g-gallery was closed yesterday, but the door was open because the lighting engineer was sitting up there. Have a word with him.”

The lighting engineer’s prominent eyes bulged like those of a deep-sea fish that had just been brought to the surface.

“Yes, hang on. There was a bloke sitting there before the interval. If we can see in advance that there’s not going to be a full house we sell only stall tickets, but there was nothing odd about him sitting there. The gallery isn’t locked even
if the tickets are actually for the stalls. He was on his own, in the back row. I remember I was surprised he would want to sit there, so far from the stage. Mm, there wasn’t a lot of light, but, yes, I did see him. When I returned after the break, he was gone, as I said.”

“Could he have got behind the stage through the same door as you?”

“Well.” The lighting engineer scratched his head. “I assume so. If he went into the props room he could have avoided being seen by anyone. Thinking about it now, I would say the man didn’t actually look very well. Yeah. I knew there was something at the back of my mind, nagging at me, something that didn’t quite fit—”

“Listen,” Harry said, “I’m going to show you a photo—”

“By the way, there was something else about the man—”

“This is all great,” Harry interrupted him, “I’d like you to imagine the man you saw yesterday, and when you see the photo you mustn’t think, just say the first thing that occurs to you. Afterward, you’ll have more time and maybe change your mind, but for now I want your instinctive reaction. OK?”

“OK,” said the lighting engineer and closed his protuberant eyes, making him look like a frog. “I’m ready.”

Harry showed him the photograph.

“That’s him!” he said, quick as a flash.

“Take a bit more time and tell me what you think.”

“There’s no doubt. That’s what I was trying to tell you, Officer, the man was black … an Aboriginal. That’s your man!”

Harry was worn out. It had already been a long day, and he was trying not to think about the rest. When he was ushered into the autopsy room by an assistant, Dr. Engelsohn’s small, plump figure was bent over a large, fat woman’s body
on a kind of operating table illuminated by huge overhead lamps. Harry didn’t think he could face any more fat women today.

Grumpy Engelsohn looked like a mad professor. The little hair he had stuck out in all directions and blond bristles were scattered randomly across his face.

“Yes?”

Harry realized the man had forgotten the phone conversation of some two hours before.

“My name’s Harry Holy. I rang you about the initial results of the autopsy on Andrew Kensington.”

Even though the room was full of strange smells and solutions Harry could still detect the unmistakable odor of gin on his breath.

“Oh, yes. Of course. Kensington. Sad case. I spoke with him several times. When he was alive, mind you. Now he’s as silent as a clam in that drawer.”

Engelsohn motioned behind him with his thumb.

“Listen, Mr.… what was it again? … Holy, yes! We’ve got a queue of bodies here all hassling me to be first. Well, not the bodies, no, the detectives. But all of them will have to sit tight and wait their turn. Those are the rules here, no queue-jumping, understand? So when Big Chief McCormack himself rings this morning and says we have to prioritize a suicide, then I start wondering. I didn’t manage to ask McCormack, but perhaps you, Mr. Horgan, can tell me what on earth makes this Kensington so special?”

He shook his head in a toss of contempt and breathed more gin over Harry.

“Well, we’re hoping that’s what you can tell us, Doctor. Is he special?”

“Special? What do you mean by
special
? That he’s got three legs, four lungs or nipples on his back, or what?”

Harry was exhausted. What he needed least of all now was a drunken pathologist trying to be awkward because
he felt someone had stepped on his toes. And university-qualified people had a tendency to have more sensitive toes than others.

“Was there anything … unusual?” Harry ventured, trying another formulation.

Engelsohn regarded him with misty eyes. “No,” he said. “There was nothing unusual. Nothing unusual at all.”

The doctor continued to look at him with his head rocking from side to side, and Harry knew there was more to come. He had just inserted a dramatic pause which, to his alcohol-soaked brain, probably did not seem as long as it did to Harry.

“For us it’s not unusual,” the doctor continued at length, “for a body to be full to the brim with dope. Or, as in this case, with heroin. What
is
unusual is that he’s a policeman, but as we get so few of your colleagues on our tables I couldn’t say
how
unusual that is.”