Murder on the Short List (22 page)

The Never-Say-Die Retirement Home had to carry on without us. But there was to be one last squirt from Operation Syringe.

One morning three weeks after the trial Briony decided to sort out her marmalade jars and store them better, using the bubblewrap the aids had been kept in. She was surrounding one of the jars with the stuff when there was a sudden popping sound. One of the little bubbles had burst under pressure. She pressed another and it made a satisfying sound. Highly amused, she started popping every one. She continued at this harmless pastime for over an hour. After tea break she went back and popped some more. It was all enormous fun until she damaged her fingernail and had to ask She-Who-Must-Be-Replaced to trim it.

“How did you do that?” Matron asked.

Briony showed her.

“Well, no wonder. There's something hard inside the bubble. I do believe it's glass. How wicked.”

But it didn't turn out to be glass. It was an uncut diamond, and there were others secreted in the bubblewrap. A second police investigation was mounted into Operation Syringe. As a result, Buckfield, the manager of the Bay Tree Hotel, was arrested.

It seemed he had been working a racket with Marcus Haliburton, importing uncut diamonds stolen by workers in a South African diamond mine. The little rocks had been smuggled to Britain in the packing used for the hearing aids. Interpol took over the investigation on two continents.

It turned out that on the day of our heist Buckfield the manager suspected something was afoot, and decided Haliburton might be double-crossing him. When he checked Room 104 he found the Brigadier's revolver on the bed and he was certain he was right. He took it straight to the suite. Haliburton denied everything and said he was only a go-between and offered to open the new box of aids in the manager's presence. We know what it contained. Incensed, Buckfield pointed the gun and shot Haliburton dead.

After our release, we had a meeting to decide if we would sue the police for wrongful imprisonment. The Brigadier was all for it, but Sadie said we might be pushing our luck. We had a vote and decided she was right.

The good thing is that every one of us heard each word of the debate. I can recommend these new digital aids to anyone.

N
athan was the one I liked interviewing best. You wanted to believe him, his stories were so engaging. He had this persuasive, upbeat manner, sitting forward and fixing me with his soft blue eyes. Nothing about him suggested violence. “I don't know why you keep asking me about a murder. I don't know anything about a murder. I was just popping round to the post. It's no distance. Ten minutes, maybe. Up Steven Street and then right into Melrose Avenue.”

“Popping round to the post?”

“Listen up, doc. I just told you.”

“Did you have any letters with you at the time?”

“Can't remember.”

“The reason I ask,” I said, “is that when people go to the post they generally want to post something.”

He smiled. “Good one. Like it.” These memory lapses are a feature of the condition. Nathan didn't appreciate that if a letter had been posted and delivered it would help corroborate his version of events.

Then he went into what I think of as his storyteller mode, one hand cupping his chin while the other unfolded between us as if he were a conjurer producing a coin. “Do you want to hear what happened?”

I nodded.

“There was I,” he said, “walking up the street.”

“Steven Street?”

“Yes.”

“On the right side or the left?”

“What difference does that make?”

According to Morgan, the detective inspector, number twenty-nine, the murder house, was on the left about a third of the way along. “I'm asking, that's all.”

“Well, I wouldn't need to cross, would I?” Nathan said. “So I was on the left, and when I got to Melrose –”

“Hold on,” I said. “We haven't left Steven Street yet.”

“I have,” he said. “I'm telling you what happened in Melrose.”

“Did you notice anything in Steven Street?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Somebody told me about an incident there.”

“You're on about that again, are you? I keep telling you I know nothing about a murder.”

“Go on, then.”

“You'll never guess what I saw when I got to Melrose.”

That was guaranteed. His trips to the post were always impossible to predict. “Tell me, Nathan.”

“Three elephants.”

“In
Melrose
?” Melrose Avenue is a small suburban back street. “What were they doing?”

He grinned. “Swinging their trunks. Flapping their ears.”

“I mean, what were they doing in Melrose Avenue?”

He had me on a string now and he was enjoying himself. “What do you think?”

“I'm stumped. Why don't you tell me?”

“They were walking in a line.”

“What, on their own?”

He gave me a look that suggested I was the one in need of psychotherapy. “They had a keeper with them, obviously.”

“Trained elephants?”

Now he sighed at my ignorance. “Melrose Avenue isn't the African bush. Some little travelling circus was performing in the park and they were part of the procession.”

“But if it was a circus procession, Nathan, it would go up the High Street where all the shoppers could see it.”

“You're right about that.”

“Then what were the elephants doing in Melrose?”

“Subsidence.”

I waited for more.

“You know where they laid the cable for the television in the High Street? They didn't fill it in properly. A crack appeared right across the middle. They didn't want the elephants making it worse so they diverted them around Melrose. The rest of the procession wasn't so heavy – the marching band and the clowns and the bareback rider. They were allowed up the High Street.”

The story had a disarming logic, like so many of Nathan's. On a previous trip to the post he'd spotted Johnny Depp trimming a privet hedge in somebody's front garden. Johnny Depp as a jobbing gardener. Nathan had asked some questions and some joker had told him they were rehearsing a scene for a film about English suburban life. He'd suggested I went round there myself and tried to get in the film as an extra. I had to tell him I'm content with my career.

“It was a diversion, you see. Road closed to heavy vehicles and elephants.”

Talk about diversions. We'd already diverted some way from the double murder in Steven Street. “What I'd really like to know from you, Nathan, is why you came home that afternoon wearing a suit that didn't fit you.”

This prompted a chuckle. “That's a longer story.”

“I thought it might be. I need to hear it, please.”

He spread his hands as if he was addressing a larger audience. “There were these three elephants.”

“You told me about them already.”

“Ah, but I was anticipating. When I first spotted the elephants I didn't know what they were doing in Melrose. I thought about asking the keeper. I'm not afraid of speaking to strangers. On the whole, people like it when you approach them. But the keeper was in charge of the animals, so I didn't distract him. I could hear the sound of the band coming from the High Street and I guessed there was a connection. I stepped out to the end of Melrose.”

“Where the postbox is.”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“When you started out, you were popping round to the post.”

“Now you've interrupted my train of thought. You know what my memory is like.”

“You were going towards the sound of the band.”

He smiled. “And I looked up, and I saw balloons in the sky. Lots of colours, all floating upwards. They fill them with some sort of gas.”

“Helium.”

“Thank you. They must have been advertising the circus. Once I got to the end of Melrose Avenue I saw a woman with two children and each of them had a balloon and there was writing on them – the balloons, I mean, not the children. I couldn't see the wording exactly, but I guessed it must have been about the circus.”

“Very likely.” In my job, patience isn't just a virtue, it's a necessity.

“You may think so,” Nathan said, and he held up his forefinger to emphasise the point. “But this is the strange thing. I was almost at the end of Melrose and I looked up again to see if the balloons in the sky were still in sight and quite by chance I noticed that a yellow one was caught in the branches of a willow tree. Perhaps you know that tree. It isn't in the street. It's actually in someone's garden overhanging the street. Well, I decided to try and set this balloon free. It was just out of reach, but by climbing on the wall I could get to it easily. That's what I did. And when I got my hands on the balloon and got it down I saw that the writing on the side had nothing to do with the circus. It said
Happy Birthday, Susie
.”

Inwardly, I was squirming. I know how these stories progress. Nathan once found a brooch on his way to the post and took it to the police station and was invited to put on a Mickey Mouse mask and join an identity parade and say “Empty the drawer and hand it across or I'll blow your brains out.” And that led on to a whole different adventure. “Did you do anything about it?”

“About what?”

“The happy birthday balloon.”

“I had to, now I had it in my hands. I thought perhaps it belonged to the people in the house, so I knocked on the door. They said it wasn't theirs, but they'd noticed some yellow balloons a couple of days ago tied to the gatepost of a house in Steven Street.”

“Steven Street?” My interest quickened. “What number?”

“Can't remember. These people – the people in Melrose with the willow tree – were a bit surprised because they thought the house belonged to an elderly couple. Old people don't have balloons on their birthdays, do they?”

“So you tried the house in Steven Street,” I said, giving the narrative a strong shove.

“I did, and they were at home and really appreciated my thoughtfulness. All their other balloons had got loose and were blown away, so this was the only one left. I asked if the old lady was called Susie, thinking I'd wish her a happy birthday. She was not. She was called something totally unlike Susie. I think it was Agatha, or Augusta. Or it may have been Antonia.”

“Doesn't matter, Nathan. Go on.”

“They invited me in to meet Susie. They said she'd just had her seventh birthday and – would you believe it? – she was a dog. One of the smallest I've ever seen, with large ears and big, bulgy eyes.”

“Chihuahua.”

“No, Susie. Definitely Susie. The surprising thing was that this tiny pooch had a room to herself, with scatter cushions and squeaky toys and a little television that was playing
Lassie Come Home.
But the minute she set eyes on me she started barking. Then she ran out, straight past me, fast as anything. The back door of the house was open and she got out. The old man panicked a bit and said Susie wasn't allowed in the garden without her lead. She was so small that they were afraid of losing her through a gap in the fence. I felt responsible for frightening her, so I ran into the garden after her, trying to keep her in sight. I watched her dash away across the lawn. Unfortunately I didn't notice there was a goldfish pond in my way. I stepped into it, slipped and landed face down in the water.”

“Things certainly happen to you, Nathan.”

He took this as a compliment and grinned. “The good thing was that Susie came running back to see what had happened and the old lady picked her up. I was soaking and covered in slime and duckweed, so they told me I couldn't possibly walk through the streets like that. The old man found me a suit to wear. He said it didn't fit him any more and I could keep it.”

“All right,” I said, seizing an opportunity to interrupt the flow. “You've answered my question. Now I know why you were wearing a suit the wrong size.”

He shrugged again. He seemed to have forgotten where this had started.

It was a good moment to stop the video and take a break.

M
organ the detective watched the interview on the screen in my office, making sounds of dissent at regular intervals. When it was over, he asked, “Did you believe a word of that? The guy's a fantasist. He should be a writer.”

“Some of it fits the facts,” I pointed out. “I believe there was a circus here last weekend. And I know for certain that the cable-laying in the High Street caused some problems after it was done.”

“The fact I'm concerned about is the killing of the old couple at twenty-nine, Steven Street, at the approximate time this Nathan was supposed to be on his way to the post.”

“You made that clear to me yesterday,” I said. “I put it to him today and he denies all knowledge of it.”

“He's lying. His story's full of holes. You notice he ducked your question about having a letter in his hand?”

“Popping round to the post is only a form of words.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning he's going out. He needs space. He doesn't mean it literally.”

“I'd put a different interpretation on it. It's his way of glossing over a double murder.”

“That's a big assumption, isn't it?”

“He admitted walking up the left side of Steven Street.”

“Well, he would. It's on his way to the High Street.”

“You seem to be taking his side.”

“I'm trying to hold onto the truth. In my work as a therapist that's essential.” I resisted the urge to point out that policemen should have a care for the truth as well.

“Are those his case notes on your desk?” Morgan said.

“Yes.”

“Any record of violence?”