A Ghost in the Machine (38 page)

“Only one?”

“One was enough.”

They must have been set to be released singly. Although Barnaby had seen photographs they had been taken purely to establish the physical details of the scene. He would have a closer look at the equipment when SOCO were through.

“Can you tell me exactly what you did from the time you arrived at the house until the moment you left?”

Mallory went through it, sick at heart. These men didn't know what they were asking. The big one kept interrupting – which telephone did he use to call the ambulance? Did he leave the room and come back at any time? Did he touch or move the body at all? Why did he wash the wooden ball? Then the thinner, younger one asked why he cleaned up the mess.

“Christ!” At this point Mallory's ability to remain calm was lost. Provoked into anger at their insensitivity, at their persistence, at the fact that they were just damn well there, he shouted: “What d'you expect me to do with brains and blood and vomit all over the floor? Leave it for his cleaner?”

Troy wrote down “cleaner” and asked for her name. Barnaby continued his questioning.

“Have you been back to the house since, Mr. Lawson?”

“No.”

“Does anyone else have keys?”

“Not that I'm aware.”

“What about this domestic?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“Doris? Oh, yes. I suppose she does.”

Mallory rested his head in his hands. His fury was evaporating as quickly as it had flared. These people had a job to do. If Dennis really had been deliberately killed he was the last person to be uncooperative.

“We shall need your fingerprints, Mr. Lawson, for purposes of elimination.”

“Fine.”

“So, if you could come down to the station as soon as possible? Please bring the shoes you were wearing—”

“They were badly stained.” He gestured, pushing the memory from him. Pursing his mouth in disgust. “I threw them away.”

Understandable, in an innocent man. Even more in a guilty one. And it was more common than was generally known for the first person on the scene, or the one who reported the crime actually to be the perpetrator.

Barnaby decided this would be a good time to imply that the interrogation was over. He struggled up from the nursing chair.

“Well, I think that's about it, Mr. Lawson.” But he got nothing in the way of feedback. No sudden slackening of physical tension. Or relieved exhalation of breath. The man simply looked knackered. Maybe it really was time to call a halt. For now. “But while I'm here I also need to talk to Mrs. Lawson. And Miss Frayle.”

“They're in Causton. Benny had an appointment at Hargreaves, the solicitors.”

“D'you know what that was about, sir?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“No I don't,” retorted Mallory. “And it's her business. Not yours.”

“Are they perhaps Mr. Brinkley's solicitors?” asked Barnaby.

“So?”

“Maybe if they were that ‘close,'” said Troy, a leer in his voice, “she's mentioned in his will.”

“They were platonic friends who cared deeply for each other.” Mallory looked disgustedly at both men but hit on Troy for his next remark. “No doubt that's totally beyond your comprehension.”

 

Barnaby decided against the Horse and Hounds for lunch. True, there was a chance of picking up some local gossip, but it was slight. Much more likely to end up trapped within earshot of someone boring for England. Or be exposed to an endless loop of musical sound bites: nothing longer than sixty seconds and guaranteed tune free. So he settled for the only alternative.

They were offered a window table at the Secret Garden. The very table, in fact, that the DCI's daughter and her husband had occupied over a week earlier. Barnaby scanned the menu. Sergeant Troy, who would much rather have gone to the pub, moodily regarded a vase of plastic freesias.

“They've got liver and bacon.”

“Right.”

“D'you want a look?”

“No. That'll do. And some chips.”

“Fried potatoes.”

“Whatever.”

There would have been a bit of life in the Horse and Hounds. A laugh and a joke. Maybe a pool table. Something on the telly. Then, having sighed over this collection of absent delights, Troy was left with the thing that was really bugging him, i.e., just who did this bloke, this Mallory Lawson, think he was? And what sort of name was Mallory anyway? Who'd ever heard of it? Troy certainly hadn't. Probably a “family” name. A wanking public-school name going all the way back to William the bonking Conqueror. Who didn't go back to him? That's what Troy wanted to know. Everybody comes from somewhere. Just because you hadn't got your bit of paper with a seal on. Or your relatives crumbling under old church slabs.

“No doubt that's beyond your comprehension.” Troy repeated the remark, the patronising remark, in his mind for the umpteenth time. He always boasted that he didn't give a fairy's fart what anyone thought of him, a claim so transparently untrue that even Talisa Leanne saw through it. But he couldn't seem to put this insult from his mind. To a man who wanted more than anything in the world to be admired for his capabilities and intelligence to be told he was an insensitive cretin was a blow too far. And to his face as well.

“I should put that fork down.”

“What?”

“Before you snap the handle off.”

Troy flung his cutlery on to the cloth and began to shore up his defences. He recalled hearing that people who needed to put other people down were hopelessly insecure and decided it was definitely true. What other reason could they have? It was just a pity there were so many out there.

Though the woman who slapped their lunch on the table had a face like a squeezed lemon the food itself was delicious. Crisp rashers of bacon, nicely fried liver and fresh garden peas. All on station expenses too. Troy's spirits began to rise.

“So. Are we back to the Frayle woman's flat after this, Chief?”

“I want to see how SOCO are getting on first.”

“Bit of luck – no one else going in since Brinkley died.”

“We've only Lawson's word for that.”

“Think he's in the frame, then?”

“Hard to say, at this stage.”

“Have we got time for a pud?”

Thirty contented minutes later Troy followed the DCI into the village street. His heart was further gladdened by the sight of Abby Rose Carter on a house-to-house. The man she was questioning looked as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt. Troy smiled, waved, then realised he was walking on by himself. He turned back.

The chief was standing in front of a shabby building made of shingles. It had a rusty tin roof and was practically encircled by old yew trees.

“Blimey,” said Sergeant Troy. “Talk about lowering the tone.”

“This is it.” Barnaby read the noticeboard. “The Church of the Near at Hand.”

“Creepy.” Troy had a wander round. “There's a window broken back here.”

Barnaby's nature was not of the type to be fascinated by the weird and the deathly but now he thought about the church and the people who came there. How lonely they must be, how desperate to be assured that the people they loved had not gone for ever. And what a comfort to be able to believe that one day they would all be together, living in paradise, time without end. Barnaby thought of his parents. Of Joyce still with him, thank God. Of his beloved daughter, just the thought of whose loss could bathe him in a cold sweat of terror. He was too honest to pretend that sometimes, in the dark watches of the night, he too did not long to deceive himself. But he couldn't, and in the bright rational light of day was not sorry. Happy ever after sounded great until you thought it through, when it began to sound like a fate worse than death. Imagine, thought Barnaby, millennia after millennia after millennia of radiant bliss. Having a nice day not only every single day but every single second of every single minute world without end, and never being able to call a halt. Enough to drive a man mad.

“It's a forest back there.” Troy came up, flicking black needles from his jacket sleeve. The two men walked on. “Do you think Dennis Brinkley ever went?”

“Wouldn't have thought so. Not from the way Lawson described him.”

“There's gotta be a connection though, Chief.”

Though hard to credit, this was undoubtedly true. Somewhere at some time something had happened to forge a link between the shy, stiffly correct financial consultant and the flamboyant, boastful necromancer Ava Garret.

“Did I tell you Cully had met her?”

“At the church?” Troy was amazed. He didn't know the chief's daughter well but she seemed to him the last person to go in for such wonky shenanigans. Cully had struck Sergeant Troy as pretty unmystical. A touch cynical, even.

“She rang last night to tell me about it. All to do with research.”

“For what?” Troy could never understand actors. He found it hard enough to be himself. Pretending to be all sorts of other people seemed quite deranged to him.

“She's playing a medium in
Blithe Spirit
and wanted to talk to some real ones.”

“But there aren't any real ones.”

“Don't try my patience, Troy.”

Oh, brilliant! When he said they didn't exist that was fine. Now I say they don't exist I'm trying his patience. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. All he really wants, all any of them really want, is a yes man. Agree with everything, praise whatever they do right or wrong, dumb your mind down, colour your nose brown. Right—I can do that. And from now on I will.

“That must be Brinkley's house.” Barnaby nodded towards SOCO's van and the strangely shaped building behind it.

“I expect it is, sir.”

As they climbed the front steps John Ferris, in charge of the SOCO unit, came out and Barnaby said: “You through?”

“Not quite with the flat. But you're OK with the murder scene.”

“Better have a look then.”

“Be amazed.” Ferris grinned at him. “Be very amazed.”

And they were. The twenty-five-by-twenty photographs showing the body of Dennis Brinkley and its immediate surroundings were no preparation at all for the vast expanse of space and light they now encountered. The towering structures, the great garlands of glowing waxen rope, massive crossbows, a butcher's hook on which you could have hung a brace of elephants.

Both men were disturbed by the machines, Sergeant Troy the more so. For no reason that he could have put into words, they struck him as deeply shocking. Barnaby quickly shook off this unease and turned his attention to the mechanism of the trebuchet. But Troy, who would have been completely at home at a modern armaments fair, felt his skin crawl and creep. Determined to conceal any weakness, and ignoring predatory shadows that seemed to press against the small of his back, he began to stride about, affecting an interest in the gigantic constructions. There was a hanging metal cage big enough to hold several men and next to this some stocks. Troy spent a pleasant couple of minutes picturing Mrs. Sproat so constrained and himself throwing rotten cabbages, then ambled up to a three-tier wooden tower on wheels. There were long, narrow openings at regular intervals along the sides. Troy came closer and attempted to squint inside. A cool wash of air grazed his eyeball. He jumped back.

“Come and look at this.”

Sergeant Troy was glad to. He moved quickly, hurrying to where the chief was studying the apparatus that held the huge wooden balls. The rack, tilted at an extremely steep angle, was covered with grey powder.

“Blimey,” said Sergeant Troy. “A dinosaur's bollocks. They go in this catapult thing?”

“Those or boiling oil or red-hot coals. Sometimes the heads of prisoners. They weren't fussy.”

“How d'you know all this?”

“The notes.” Barnaby indicated the illustration and paragraphs of text in a little frame on the wall nearby. “All the machines have them.”

“So why's the sling in the wrong place for the ball to fall in?” The trebuchet had been shifted at least a couple of metres to the left of its original position. The drag marks were on the floor.

“Presumably so it would hit Brinkley instead.”

“But he wouldn't be daft enough to stand there, surely?” said Troy, already shedding his new role as yes man. “How does the thing work, anyway?”

“Very simple.” Barnaby got out a handkerchief and pushed his shirt sleeves back. Aluminium was a sod to wash out. “The balls are held in place by this block of wood. The rope,” he took a loose hanging cable in his hand, “lifts the block and releases them, one at a time.”

“Only if you let it go, surely. Hold on and they'd all roll down.”

“No. There's a ridge, look – halfway up. It drops down when the block moves then clicks upright again. Let's have a look at the glossies.”

Troy opened his bag and took out the photographs of Dennis Brinkley's mortal remains. Apart from the floor the only flat surface was a marble slab balanced on two columns of grey stone in the centre of the room. Troy spread the pictures out on this.

“So. He seems to have been lying exactly…here.” Barnaby walked back, one of the pictures in his hand. “Would you mind, Troy?”

Yes, I bloody would mind, thought Sergeant Troy, already feeling somewhat fragile after his encounter with the spirit of the barbican.

“It would be very helpful.”

Troy got down on the floor. “Just keep well away from that rope, Chief, OK?”

Barnaby walked slowly around the machine, studying Troy's stretched-out form from all angles.

“Can I get up now?”

“In a minute.” He got out his handkerchief. “Lift up.” When Troy did, Barnaby spread the handkerchief precisely where his head had been. Troy got to his feet and Barnaby gave a tug on the rope. A ball rumbled down and landed almost directly on the linen square.