Mystery Man (15 page)

It said:

Go to bed, you fucking loser.

I drove nervously to work the next morning. I always drive nervously. There are too many cars and the roads are too narrow and cyclists should be forced to use the footpaths instead of giving qualified drivers the shakes. But these were extra nerves. They were to do with the probability of seeing Alison again; they were also to do with
The Case of the Dancing Jews
and its consequences for my own health. I have a radio but will only listen to it when completely stationary, otherwise it is distracting and my speed will creep up into the thirties. If I'd had my radio on I would undoubtedly have heard the news at nine a.m. and would then have been prepared for what was coming.

As I passed under the flyover at the West Link I noted that the graffiti that was supposed to have been removed now read:
Albert McIntosh is no longer a fruit.
That was just plain wrong. It would be dealt with. But at least it was my kind of problem. My
size
of problem. Not Nazis. Not murder. Just some numbskull with a paint brush. It was a problem I could dwell on that wasn't so major that it distracted me from my driving, unlike the Alison problem, and the killer-on-the-loose problem, and the dead-body-next-door problem, which all might have contributed to vehicular negligence.

The traffic on Botanic Avenue was unusually heavy. But then, as I drew closer to the shop, I realised that it wasn't really – it was just slow because of the rubberneckers staring out of their cars at all the police activity. The offices of Malcolm Carlyle, Private Eye, had been cordoned off; there were half a dozen police cars parked up on the footpath or in
my
parking bay. There was a hearse with an undertaker leaning against it, smoking. There were forensics guys in white. There were two news crews and several photographers. There was Jeff standing in my doorway, looking nervous. Behind him, four mysterious rectangular black holes had been blasted in my pull-down shutters.

It was too much for me to compute all at once.

I kept driving.

How could I park the No Alibis van near the shop when the place was swarming with police and reporters and the van had
Murder Is Our Business
on its side? Would it not be a surefire indicator that I was involved in the murder of Malcolm Carlyle? How many milliseconds would it be before the long arm of the law grabbed me by the throat? And it wouldn't even require a long arm. A short arm. A stunted arm. A police officer suffering from growth hormone deficiency in the general arm area would throttle me the very instant he saw the No Alibis van with its
oh so witty
catch line.

I needed to think. I needed to gather information away from the glare of scrutiny and interrogation.

I hid the van in a public car park on Great Victoria Street and having failed to find a Starbucks in the immediate vicinity made do with an ordinary café. I ordered a hot chocolate and bought a Twix. Throwing caution and brain tumours to the wind, I removed my mobile phone and called Jeff.

'Jeff,' I said, 'what on earth is going on?'

'Where are you?' he barked in response. 'The police are looking for you. They've found your man next door, he's been there all along, he's been rotting away in there while we've been—'

'Why are they looking for me? Do they think I killed—'

'You? Why would they think you—'

'Jeff, what did they say?'

'They wanted to check if it was okay to use your parking space.'

'They
what
?'

'They have pretty strict guidelines about where they can park, you know, on private property and—'

'Jeff. What have they said about Malcolm Carlyle?'

'Nothing. Why would they say anything to me? Where are you anyway? Why aren't you opening up? They want into the shop.'

'
My
shop?
Why?
'

'Well I asked them if they wanted a cup of tea – they can't make it in his place because of the forensics. But that was when I thought you'd be here in a minute and now I feel stupid because I can't get in. And they also think it's pretty strange about the toast.'

'The
what
?'

'When I arrived here this morning they were looking at our shutters. Someone has stuck four pieces of burned toast to them. I mean, you could understand chips or pizza or something some drunk's going to buy on the way home, but where do you get toast from unless you go home and make it and then take it out with you? What retard is going to do that?'

'Do they think the toast is in some way connected to the murder next door?'

'Why would they think that? I think it just made them hungry. Who said it was a murder anyway?'

'Jeff . . .'

'So are you coming in this morning at all? Because if you're not I don't want to hang around here like a suspect or something. Don't they say killers always come back to the scene of the crime? Don't they always offer to help out? Christ, I shouldn't have offered them tea, should I? What was I thinking?'

'I'll be there shortly,' I said, and hung up.

My hot chocolate arrived.

It was not up to scratch. It wasn't Starbucks. There was no finesse. It was spoon, stir, deliver.

Okay.

Settle.

The relevant point was that I had done nothing wrong, apart from a spot of burglary. I had not killed Malcolm Carlyle. The police did not think I had killed him either. They had no reason to. No reason to suspect anything.

Not yet.

But how did they know to even look for him? Why today of all days? Had somebody seen us enter Private Eye? Perhaps spotted the lights going on inside? Or, please God, no, what if Alison had tipped them off in revenge for the toast incident?

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

She was as confused and concerned as I was. She was surely at that very moment staring across the road from the jewellery store at the crime scene. She might even be wondering if the police could extract DNA from toast and then connect it to what they found inside? Was she thinking that if questioned I would choose to spread the blame and incriminate her?

For the ten millionth time I cursed myself for not following my instincts. I knew
The Case of the Dancing
Jews
was out of my league almost from the very start. I should have rejected it completely and concentrated on my bookselling; but oh no, a chance to impress a pretty girl, and now I was up to my oxters in trouble. Even last night, when we'd discovered Malcolm Carlyle's body, I'd gone against my own better judgement by not following through with my 999 call. There was a world of difference between
immediately
telling the police what we'd discovered and going to them
after
they'd already located the body. It was more than suspicious. It was
damning.

So what to do?

Buy more time.

Figure it out.

Act dumb.

Act
normal.

How hard could that be?

I pushed through the crowd of gawkers. Some fellow shopkeepers tried to engage me in gossip, but I said nothing. Jeff was relieved to see me. I unlocked the shutters and pushed them up, in the process removing the toast from scrutiny. I punched in the code and released the dead bolts. We entered the shop and switched on the lights.

Thirty seconds later a man came in.

Jeff gave him the thumbs-up and said, 'I'll put the tea on.'

'Forget the tea,' said the man.

He was of medium height, in a charcoal suit, with a black moustache and grey-flecked hair. He put out his hand and said, 'Detective Inspector Robinson, CID.'

I tend not to shake hands because of the risk of plague, but on this occasion my hand was out and grasping his before I could stop it. 'How're you doing?' I enquired. 'I hear you have a stiffy.'

Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up . . .

His brow furrowed. 'We have discovered a body next door. We believe he may be—'

'Malcolm Carlyle,' I said. 'We were wondering where he'd gotten to. Six months he's been missing. Poor man. He was in here a few times but I didn't know him that well. I get his clients calling in from time to time looking for him. I help them out when I can. Are you sure you don't want a cup? We have coffee. There's Ribena in the fridge.'

DI Robinson nodded slowly. His eyes ranged around the interior of the shop before settling back on me. 'You would appear to specialise in murder.'

Jeff laughed.

I aped him. But louder. 'Well you know what they say, those who can, do, those who can't, teach, and those who can't teach, teach PE.' His eyes were stuck to me. 'So Jeff tells me you're concerned about my parking space. Park away. I haven't the van with me today anyway. You'll probably be here a couple of days, but that's fine. The traffic wardens can be a bit—'

'So, I understand you called the emergency services last night.'

I cleared my throat. My pacemaker
whirred.

'No, I . . .'

'Call was logged at seven thirty p.m. from this location.'

'No, I . . .'

'Were you on these premises at seven thirty, last night?'

'No. And yes. I wasn't exactly aware of the time . . .'

'Did you phone the emergency services at seven thirty last night?'

His eyes bored into mine. I have a terrifically inbred Presbyterian tendency to deny
everything,
even in the face of perfect evidence to the contrary.

'No,' I said.

'It was me.' It was Alison, standing in the open doorway. 'I phoned.'

I pointed at her. 'Yes, it was her.'

If she was prepared to shoulder the blame, if she'd already made the decision that she was going to be the martyr, then it was my duty to do everything in my power to support that decision.

DI Robinson studied her. 'And who might you be?'

'I work in the jeweller's across the way. I was over having a drink with my boyfriend . . .' She nodded down at the trestle tables, still set up for a party, while I concentrated on trying to stop my head rolling off my shoulders. Had I heard her right? Yes – I'd heard her right. But I was careful not to get carried away with it, or to clap my hands and jump on the table and propose marriage. I knew, or suspected I knew, that she was just saying I was her boyfriend as a means of adding more weight, more credibility, more
heft,
to the pathetic explanation that was bound to follow. It meant that we were no longer blaming each other, that we were a team, partners in crime. We would go down together. Bonnie and Clyde. '. . .and I persuaded him to take a look next door – we were worried about the smell.'

'The smell?'

'Pine,' she said. 'An overwhelming smell of pine.'

DI Robinson looked from her to me. 'Pine,' I agreed.

'Why on earth would that worry you?'

'Because it was so unusual,' said Alison. 'If we'd smelled something rotting . . . we would have thought it was just the drains . . .'

'Or the bins out the back,' I said. 'They never pick them up on time . . .'

'But we're in the middle of the city,' said Alison. 'You shouldn't be smelling pine that intensely.'

'So his plan actually backfired,' I said.

The detective's head literally jerked towards me. 'Whose plan?'

'Whoever killed him and hung pine trees on his body.'

'Am I understanding you correctly?' he asked incredulously. 'You were next door? You saw it? You've actually been in there?'

I looked at Alison. She rolled her eyes. 'Yes,' she said, 'we went in. There's a hole in the roof space. We thought the place was empty, and if we could pin down the smell we'd at least know what to complain about . . .'

The DI shook his head. 'Well this is a turn-up for the books. I thought you dialled 999 and then decided not to waste police time, so you hung up. But you actually entered the building next door? Both of you? You
broke
in.'

I studied the carpet. Most shops have carpet tiles so that they can be easily replaced when dumb customers walk in shit and stuff. I had insisted on one single piece of fitted carpet in plain beige. If there had been lines or patterns or both I would never have gotten any work done.

When I chanced a look up, DI Robinson was staring at me. He raised an eyebrow.

'Yes, we were in there,' I said.

'To find the source of the pine,' said Alison.

'I want you to tell me exactly what you saw.'

'Do you want me to draw you a picture?' Alison said.

The detective's demeanour visibly darkened. 'Watch your attitude,' he snapped, waving a warning finger at her. 'A murder has been committed and—'

Alison held up her hands. 'No, I mean literally draw you one . . . I'm an artist . . . I could . . .'

She trailed off. He was shaking his head. He had heard enough. 'I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm dealing with here,' he said grimly. 'Either you two are up to your necks in this, or you're complete blithering idiots.'

The truth, of course, lay somewhere in the middle.

'We didn't expect to find a body,' Alison said weakly.

'And we didn't murder him,' I added.

For the moment there was nothing much DI Robinson could do beyond chastising us for breaking and entering and possibly contaminating a murder scene. He directed a more junior officer to take statements from us. He warned us he'd be back to see us once the forensics evidence was analysed. 'In the meantime,' he said, 'if I were you I wouldn't be making any plans to leave the country.'

As
if.
I hadn't been out of Belfast since 1985, and that was to Lourdes, which is no place at all for a Presbyterian; I was coachsick and seasick on the way there, and the same on the way back. If there was a miracle, I couldn't see it for all the boke.

As DI Robinson didn't yet know how the cards were going to fall, he also demanded a statement from Jeff, who acted like he was furious, but seemed to rather enjoy being slightly to the left of the centre of attention. The prospect of running a campaign to free
himself
from prison excited him in a way that merely protesting on behalf of obscure lefties a continent away hadn't for a long time. The way he slowly tramped out of the store just before lunch would make you think the ball and chain was already attached to his ankles. As he stood at the door, having collected his £12 for standing behind the counter doing
nothing
all morning, he raised a fist and punched the air defiantly. I gave him a similar salute, but utilising just two fingers.