Dying to Know (22 page)

We both looked as innocent as possible, eyes wide and mouths straight. ‘We were asleep,' I assured him.

‘In bed,' added Max, rather unhelpfully, although neither Tom nor Igor noticed the slight incongruity.

There was silence for a short while. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Totally,' I said.

‘Completely,' added Max.

He pursed his lips and frowned and had me fooled completely into thinking that he was on the point of accepting this when he banged the table again, only this time with even more force, so that the coffee mug fell over and played dead. It must have hurt him – I once broke a bone in my hand doing something similar – but he was made of stern stuff and didn't flinch. Max jumped, too.

‘No,' he decided. ‘I don't believe you. I don't know how you did it, but I think you managed to steal my inheritance from the safe.'

‘Max and I aren't safe crackers. How could we have got into a locked safe?'

‘I don't know,' he admitted. Our joy at this was short-lived. ‘But I do know that it wasn't there when my man looked.'

‘Tom, this is nothing to do with us.'

He waited, might have been in a different room. Nervous silence descended; at least it was nervous on our part; Tom looked completely impassive whilst Igor just looked ugly. After a short while, I tried again. ‘Think about it, Tom. Do you really think that we were the ones who got into the safe and stole your “inheritance”? I'm a GP and Max is a vet.'

This time he did shrug. ‘Your old man was after it – killed to get it – and you sent your girl in to get it when he came unstuck.'

I was surprised, shocked even, to hear how his mind worked. He had struck me as a cold fish and Masson's description of his activities whilst at school only reinforced that impression; now, though, he was talking as if he felt no remorse at all for his parents' deaths, as if he had seen everything as a business and he now interpreted the actions of my father and the two of us in the same light. There was no room for affection in his world view.

‘Tom . . .'

The fist came down again; the coffee mug which hadn't got up since the last time, rolled a bit as he shouted, ‘YES, YOU DID!'

It might have been the third time he'd done it, but I still jumped a little and Max did likewise. Into the silence – albeit a silence that was spoiled by the ringing in my ears – he continued, ‘And if you're not going to do this the easy way, then you're going to do it the hard way.'

With which he gestured to Igor. Igor uttered a soft grunt – it was difficult to tell but it might have been uttered in a lugubriously excited tone – and moved into action. He came around Tom in a distinctly threatening way, so I stood up, ready to repel all boarders. ‘What are you doing?' I demanded.

‘Get out of the way,' advised Tom.

Igor moved forward and I resisted.

At least I tried to resist.

Igor pushed and I moved backwards; I pushed back and I still moved backwards. When I was out of the way, Igor turned to Max, so I took a swing at him.

Now, I'm not a fighter – never had boxing training, done no martial arts, always considered pugilism to be recidivism repackaged as entertainment – but I thought for a moment that I'd made a reasonable job of it. My fist connected with the left side of Igor's face, and I'm fairly sure that I immediately felt a bit guilty about spoiling his good looks, but then it all went distinctly fruit-shaped.

He paused, turned to show me a deep and angry scowl, then grasped my throat.

Yes, I said ‘throat'.

I gurgled at first but then that soon stopped because there was nothing getting either in or out of my chest. The room went that sort of lurid blood colour that you see in horror films and the ringing in my ears came back big time, as if it had been orchestrated and was now being played by the Royal Philharmonic. I vaguely heard Max screaming but then everything went dark.

THIRTY-ONE

W
hen the world came back to me, I was sitting on the floor and my back was against the wall; Max was bending over me as she held my hand and rubbed the back of it, saying my name. My throat felt as if someone had hit it with a sledgehammer and my head was pounding so much I was surprised that the blood wasn't squirting out of my ears. Behind her, Tom was at the table and leafing through something while Igor had taken up station behind him again.

He didn't look happy.

As Max helped me up, he lifted his eyes from it and asked, ‘What's going on?'

I said, ‘You gave it to him.' My voice was an interesting mix of croak and squeak.

‘And you're alive, Lance. Spot the connection.'

I saw her point but before I could acknowledge this, Tom interrupted rather rudely. ‘Are you two taking the mickey?'

Max replied, ‘It's the file you wanted.'

He opened his mouth but I'm not sure that he was going to say ‘Thank you'.

The doorbell rang.

He shut his mouth, and looked concerned; Igor frowned but that, I feel, was the utmost limit of his thinking on the subject. I said at once, ‘I'd better get that,' and, since we were between Igor and the front door, I rushed out into the hall, taking Max with me. Tom cried out but, strangely, I didn't feel it wise to listen too closely.

When I opened the door and found Smith standing there, I have never been so delighted. In fact, I was so pleased – and the look on my face was so ecstatic – that he looked first alarmed, then nervous, as if he feared an outbreak of dementia in the Elliot household. Max, too, let out a loud sigh and smiled broadly, hardly adding to the impression of normality. I said loudly for the benefit of Laurel and Hardy in the kitchen, ‘Constable Smith! Come in!' My voice was still polyphonic and shouting caused no little pain.

He was ushered in, murmuring, ‘Sorry to bother you, doctor.'

‘It's no bother. No bother at all.' I kept it nice and loud.

‘Are you all right?'

‘Fine, fine. Come into the kitchen.'

I led the way into a kitchen shorn of undertakers; the back door was open and the file was gone. No one had cleaned the coffee cup. He didn't say anything, but I watched him look around the room, at the opened back door, and I could see that he was aware that he might just have interrupted something.

Max said, ‘I'd better close the door; it's getting rather cold in here.' Even I heard the tremored relief in her voice.

‘It is a bit, isn't it?' he agreed. There was a hint of something in his voice that might just have been amusement, as if he'd guessed that we hadn't been alone.

I hesitated, unsure of what I was about to say when he peered closely at my throat and remarked, ‘Has someone tried to strangle you, Dr Elliot?'

I sat down with a loud sigh. ‘We've just had a visit from a small psychopath and his pet gorilla.'

He raised a copper eyebrow. ‘Tell me more.'

Max made coffee and chipped in with her own observations as I related what had happened. At the end of it, both of his eyebrows had made the journey northwards and he was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was in a wondering tone. ‘It seems we've been missing a trick.' But before we could congratulate ourselves on being ahead of the local plod once again, he went on: ‘But you have just confessed to at least two criminal acts in your account.' There was a smile twitching about the corners of his mouth, as if he found our shenanigans privately amusing.

‘Done with the best of intentions,' I protested.

Max had put down the coffee in front of him and he was now shovelling sugar into it as if afraid that at any moment the sugar bowl was going to vanish for ever after. ‘We all know where that particular path leads.'

‘If we hadn't done that, you wouldn't know about Lightoller's blackmail schemes.'

He took a sip of what could only be coffee-flavoured syrup. ‘Yes, we would,' he countered flatly. ‘We'd have found it this morning when we did the thorough search.' Amazingly, he seemed to like the taste.

‘Not necessarily . . .'

‘Yes, we would.' There was no arguing with him. ‘And, what's more, it would be tucked up safe and sound in the evidence cupboard at the station, instead of in the possession of Tom Lightoller.'

Max had joined us at the table. ‘He's horrible, constable. He nearly killed Lance.'

He did at least show some sympathy for me, which was more than Masson would have managed. ‘I can see that.'

‘Well, then . . .'

He shrugged. ‘It doesn't really matter. Even if you had thought to do the sensible thing and hand it over to me immediately, it would have been useless in court.'

‘Why?'

‘Because of how you obtained it. You can't go around stealing things and then presenting them as proof of innocence. It's a fundamental tenet of how justice operates.'

‘That's stupid.' This from Max.

He smiled sadly at her. ‘Be that as it may, that's the law.'

‘Then the law's stupid.'

He declined to comment. ‘I'll have to tell the inspector what's been going on.'

I grimaced. ‘I was afraid you'd say that. What will he do?'

‘At the worst, he could have you both arrested and charged on several serious counts because of what you've told me.'

Max, still relatively unused to the ways and temper of the good inspector, said at once, ‘He wouldn't!'

He shook his head from side to side in consideration. ‘No,' he agreed eventually, ‘he probably wouldn't. He'll give you both a bollocking you'll never forget, though.'

I had expected no less. Trying to look on the bright side, I pointed out: ‘Still, it gives Samuel Hocking, and maybe the Parrishes, a good motive for wanting to do away with the Lightollers.'

‘I suppose,' he agreed grudgingly. That smile again; he clearly thought we were just being stupid.

Max added, ‘And Mr Hocking has no alibi and easy access.'

And then I remembered. ‘Except that Mr Hocking's done his back in, so I can't see him running swords through people or battering them to death.'

‘Oh, gosh, no,' said Max sadly.

‘And your father also has no alibi and easy access,' he pointed out.

‘Oh, for God's sake!'

He held up his hand. ‘I'll admit, it's certainly food for thought, if all you say is true. The problem is, we haven't seen this stuff, have we? You're desperate to prove your father's innocence, so maybe you've made all this up.'

Max became incredulous. ‘How can you think that? We haven't done anything of the sort. We're telling you the truth, honestly we are.'

‘I'm sure.'

‘Look at my throat,' I said. ‘Do you think I did this to myself? Or perhaps you think that Max did it.'

‘There is that,' he conceded.

‘All you have to do is go and talk to Tom Lightoller.'

He laughed. ‘You think he'll corroborate your story, do you? My, how trusting you are, doctor. What a pleasant world you must live in.'

‘But you've got the testimony of two of us . . .'

‘And, if he's the kind of man you say he is, I can guarantee that he'll have the testimony of at least six people to say that he was dishing out soup to the homeless, or knitting tea cosies with the Women's Institute.'

Max was about to do that exploding thing again, so I said quickly, ‘So what are you going to do?'

He took a long time to think about that one, during which time he finished his coffee. ‘I'm not sure. It's up to the inspector, and he's very stretched at the moment, what with tidying up the killings in Greyhound Lane.'

‘You mustn't let him lose sight of the Lightoller case,' I said forcefully. ‘I think we've shown that there might be more to this than was at first apparent.'

More of that smile. I was starting to get irritated by it; he seemed to think he was dealing with morons. ‘Don't worry, doctor. We won't.

‘I'll report to him at once what you've told me. I'm sure we'll pay Tom Lightoller a visit; if nothing else, it'll show him that we know what he's been up to. And then, tomorrow, at ten o'clock, the inspector is going to have a little chat with your father, now that his doctor tells us that he's well enough. At that meeting, I don't doubt that he will be formally cautioned. You might care to have a lawyer there for him.'

Max beat me to it with the horrified surprise. ‘He can't!'

Smith shook his head. ‘I wouldn't advise telling the inspector what he can and can't do.'

‘After all we said? After the evidence of the blackmail?'

‘I'll admit that if you haven't been telling me a pack of lies then it's a potential motive for those being blackmailed. You've demonstrated that Hocking does not have a reliable alibi for the first murder, but what about the second?'

‘We didn't have the chance to find out.'

He snorted. ‘Which means we'll have to.'

I thought, That's what you're paid for
.
I said nothing, though.

He continued, ‘And, in any case, Samuel Hocking wasn't found at the bottom of the stairs with Doris Lightoller battered to death at the top.'

‘That's not fair,' I protested.

‘From our point of view, it is.'

Max tried. ‘But you aren't just going to ignore what we've told you, are you?'

He paused. ‘I told you. I expect we'll have a chat with Tom Lightoller, make it plain that I know what he's been up to. We'll also warn him about threatening innocent – or, at least, more or less innocent – citizens.'