Nor All Your Tears (27 page)

I could see him running that reply through his sarcasm detector; fortunately he seemed to find it bereft thereof. He changed tack, ‘Do you use green ink, Doctor?'

This was a right Chinaman googly and it left me standing at the crease wondering what had just happened. ‘Not habitually,' I admitted cautiously, just in case he was seeking to make me incriminate myself.

‘Every time there's a murder, we get a fair few letters written with the stuff. Some of them are in capitals, some of them are so poorly written they're almost indecipherable, and all of them are anonymous.' I was beginning to see what he was getting at but he wasn't going to let me break in to his little diatribe. ‘And every single one of them has a theory about the murder.' He looked at Sergeant Abelson. ‘They make quite amusing reading, don't they?'

She nodded dutifully. ‘They can be quite extraordinary.'

‘A lot of them are just people attempting to make trouble, either for us or for the people they're accusing. Another large proportion is from crackpots – people who insist that they have incontrovertible proof that the killing was done by Jack the Ripper, or Martians, or the KGB, or even the devil himself. Not a few are from clairvoyants, in contact with the deceased. They all have some common characteristics – most of them demand a reward (whether or not one has been offered) and all are completely unproven.'

‘Well, I'm not claiming a reward . . . and by definition I'm not anonymous.'

He gnawed at his teeth for a bit, the cigarette idly turning to ash and smoke as his forefinger tapped the desk blotter. ‘No, you're not, are you?'

I didn't know what I was to say at that so, in line with a strategy that I have generally found the most successful in these situations, I said nothing. Jean was looking on with pity in her eyes. Masson stood up. ‘You have privileges, Dr Elliot. Unlike most members of the public, you are allowed into my office and I can't just screw up your “hypothesis” and throw it in the round filing cabinet in the corner. I find myself sitting here and listening to you.'

I shrugged and smiled; I didn't mean to annoy him but somehow it always seemed to take him the wrong way, as it did now. It was with a display of great forbearance that he said, ‘The only problem that I have, Doctor, is that at present I don't have a better theory, and I'm starting to get desperate, and there are people upstairs who are starting to get desperate, too'

I saw Jean's eyes widen slightly as he admitted this.

I enquired of him, ‘What about Albert Stewart? Is there anything to link him with any of the deaths?'

‘He and Gillman weren't the best of friends is about the best it gets. Stewart blames Gillman for persecuting him when he was in his class; apparently barely a week went by when Gillman wasn't giving him detention, or even caning his hand, so he definitely bore him a grudge, but we can't find any such link with Yvette Mangon, and Marlene Jeffries wasn't around when Stewart was at school.'

‘How does he feel about lesbians and homosexuals?'

He grunted. ‘The psychiatrist tells me that Stewart isn't too fond of poofs – says it's to do with his military training – but he's not too worked up over lesbians.'

‘No motive there, then.'

‘Not if you believe psychiatrists.' He sounded as if he didn't, particularly. He chewed for a while, perhaps on a rubber band, perhaps on his own tongue, perhaps on a wasp, then he declared, ‘You're almost certainly wrong, but should you be right and I am found to have ignored you, I won't just be for the high jump, I'll be hung, drawn and quartered by the powers that be.' He sounded bitter; once again, it seemed that I was making trouble for him. He turned to his sergeant. ‘Go with the doctor and check out the graffiti, Sergeant, and then do some background checks – but do them quietly. Then, when we have put the good doctor's mind at rest, we can get on with solving this case.'

THIRTY-EIGHT

J
ean said nothing for a long time after we had driven out of the station car park at Norbury in my car. The silence was painful; she just stared straight ahead, lips firmly closed, eyes unblinking, whilst I drove with due care and attention. In a temporal and spatial sense, it was a short journey; in the sense of interpersonal relationships, it was a voyage around the world. I gave in, of course. ‘Are you pissed off with me?'

She turned her head to me at once for a brief moment, then back to the oncoming road; her stare had been painfully intense, though. She said, ‘Inspector Masson warned me about you.'

‘Did he?' I was, I confess, surprised.

‘Oh, yes. As soon as he spotted you in the gymnasium he told me what you're like.'

I felt a touch of affront. ‘What am I like?'

Now that was always going to be a dangerous question, but, alas, also an irresistible one, you will doubtless have realized. She said dispassionately, ‘He said you're probably a very good GP but, as far as he was concerned, you're a constant irritant; he added that you cannot resist trespassing where you're not wanted and that your interference in police procedure, no matter how well intentioned, verges on the criminal.'

‘Oh . . .'

But she had yet to finish. ‘He added that your father's even worse, although at least he has the excuse of senility.'

All this seemed a bit of a turnaround on the part of her attitude towards the Elliots, especially the junior branch. ‘Oh . . .'

The journey was completed in silence. The evening was cooling as we walked through the playground to the back area of the school; the buildings sheltered the worst of the traffic noise, and so there was a hint of the rural about the scene. It seemed to soften her somewhat. ‘Where is this clue?' she asked, her voice mocking but gently so.

I took her over to the spot and drew her attention to what had been scrawled. She contemplated it for a long time, tilting her head on occasion, even going so far as to screw up her darkly hazel eyes. Then she relaxed, as if holding her breath was all part of the ‘police procedures' in which I apparently interfered. ‘You've got a thing about graffiti, haven't you?'

‘Not so as you'd notice.'

She scanned the entire wall. ‘This is like finding the face of the Virgin Mary in the froth of an emptied beer glass. You could make out anything in this chaos.'

‘But you see, don't you? It looks like
JG
because of the upstroke of the
h
beneath it, the one from the word
shit
. It turns a
C
into a
G
.'

‘If you say so.'

I gave in. ‘OK. Thanks for taking a look, anyway.'

She must have felt a bit sorry for me for it was with a slight smile that she said, ‘You should have told me your theory first.'

‘I was going to.'

As we walked back to the car, I told her what had happened between me and Max. ‘I'm worried about her,' I said.

‘I'm sure you're exaggerating the threat from Tristan.' Everyone seemed to think that; even I could occasionally be persuaded to that point of view, although there were times in the middle of the night when I awoke from a dream in which he was stamping on my fingers; rather painfully this was a dream based on memory and not fantasy. She added reassuringly, ‘I've no doubt her parents will look after her until she calms down a bit.'

‘I still don't understand why she's reacted like this.'

She stopped abruptly, looking at me with an expression that at first I thought was concerned, then I realized was pitying. ‘No,' she agreed. ‘You don't, do you?'

Another long, quiet journey then ensued. As we arrived back at the station, Masson was just hurrying down the steps of the front entrance. He sailed past the front of the car as we both got out. Jean called out, ‘Sir? What's going on?'

He turned at her call. ‘There's been some sort of incident in Kingswood Avenue. A man's been stabbed.'

Ever eager to help, I called, ‘Do you need me?'

He swung his gaze around upon me and, even for Masson, it was malevolent, quite possibly unto the point of loathing. ‘There's an ambulance in attendance and I'm sure they will be able to cope so no, Doctor, I don't need you.'

‘Is it a domestic?' asked Jean as she went to join him.

He was still staring at me; I momentarily wondered if unbeknownst to me I'd sprouted some sort of appendage out of the back of my head, so fascinated was he with me. ‘Sort of,' he replied. ‘The casualty's name is Mike Clarke.'

THIRTY-NINE

O
f course I tagged along, didn't I? And much as the good Inspector might not have wanted me there, he could hardly refuse, could he? I'm glad I did, too, because it was a proper carnival of entertainment. There were two ambulances, three police cars, at least a dozen members of the constabulary fraternity and a crowd of perhaps twenty on-lookers.

Oh, and my father's car.

Uttering a silent but still potent fricative, I pushed through to the front gate where I was stopped by a burly policeman who wasn't interested in who I was, what I did for a living or the fact that my father's car was parked nearby and he might well be inside the house. Jean and Masson had disappeared and it was clear that this stolid example of blue-uniformed, decerebrate intransigence was not going to be swayed by anything I might say; also, the Thornton Heath citizenry – or at least those of them who were present – were becoming restive at our duologue and were muttering things like ‘Prat' and ‘What a tosser'. Frustrated, both physically and emotionally, I was about to leave hoi polloi to their sport and try to gain access another way, when Jean came out of the house.

‘Jean?' She looked less than elated to catch sight of yours truly, which saddened me somewhat. ‘Is Dad in there? Is he all right?' She hesitated, then came down the garden path. I said quickly, ‘Can I see him?'

She came to a quick decision which, thankfully, was the one I wanted; I was allowed admittance, much to the disgust of the good burghers of our fair town. ‘Where is he?' I asked. ‘Has he been hurt?'

She said tersely, ‘No, he's fine.'

I was relieved, of course. I asked, ‘What's happened, then?'

‘We don't know yet. Give us a chance.'

‘But it's to do with the murders. It must be . . .'

She turned on me at that one. ‘Look, Lance. I'm letting you in here as a favour; the Inspector will probably rip me up into tiny pieces for doing it, but . . .' She paused, as if she had lost her thread. When she carried on, it was in a pained sort of voice. ‘I suppose I like you . . .' and another pause, followed by, ‘And you have a sort of right to be here, especially in view of your father's presence. But please just be quiet and just keep your father company. OK?'

I nodded meekly and followed her into the house.

She led me through the house past the closed doors of the front and rear sitting rooms out through the galley-style kitchen. Dad was sitting in the garden with Ada at a green plastic table on which were two empty tea cups; they were overseen by a woman police constable who stood behind them, her back to the house. She glanced over as I hove into view but was given the nod by Jean and did not spring into action; she was of a fairly stocky build and I was seriously afraid that she would have done me no little harm. Dad was justifiably surprised to see me come out of the back door. ‘Lance!' he said at once, then looked at Ada and I appreciated for the first time that she was in a bad way. She had been weeping and doing so, it seemed to me, copiously. She had got to that stage which rarely afflicts those beyond childhood; the one in which the weeper starts to gulp and hiccup. She held to her nose a small lace handkerchief but, alas, it was totally inadequate for the task it had been given; it was, to put it bluntly, sodden. Dad was up and out of his chair at once, but not before I had detected a degree of awkwardness 'twixt the pair.

He came over and took my elbow, asking in a quiet tone, ‘Nothing's happened, has it? Mike's –' he glanced over at Ada who was staring at us – ‘all right, isn't he?'

‘He's not good, Dad.' In fact Mike Clarke was receiving medical attention in one of the ambulances; according to Jean, his wound was deep and there was a large amount of internal bleeding. He would require emergency surgery, but the ambulance crew were afraid to move him even the short distance to Mayday Hospital without first making some effort at stabilizing him. David Clarke was in the other ambulance, apparently bruised and battered, but not in a serious condition.

‘Oh, dear,' he said gravely and kept glancing over at Ada. Jean had slipped back into the house. ‘I did what I could.'

‘What's happened?'

He deliberately turned his back on Ada, presumably afraid that amongst her undeclared talents was one for accurate lip-reading. ‘I finally plucked up the courage to tell her I thought things weren't going to work out between us . . .' He whispered, using that strange enunciation that people think stops the sound of their voice dead at about two feet. He halted, thought about what he had said and what I might be thinking, and added suddenly, ‘Not that I was unkind, or anything . . . but there's no easy way, is there? I mean, however it was said, it was . . .'

‘Dad, I don't mean what happened between the two of you: I mean what's gone on here? Who stabbed Mike Clarke?'

‘Tricia.' He barely made any sound at all when he said the name.

‘Good Lord!' This earned me a solemn nod. I asked, not unreasonably, ‘Why?'

He took me further away from Ada, who was again crying piteously and now being comforted by her police escort. ‘I called over here about an hour ago. I'd done a lot of thinking and decided it was only fair to tell her how matters stood. I knew that she'd been waiting at school for Joanna, so I knew she'd be a bit later than normal. Anyway, I arrived, knocked on the door and Ada let me in. She made me a cup of tea and we came to sit out here; Mike was asleep before going to work this evening, and she didn't want to disturb him. I had just got to the meat of the matter when there was a kerfuffle from inside the house. Well, naturally, Ada went to see what was going on, and I followed, because I didn't want her put in harm's way.'