The Key to the Case Read online

  ‘He’d done two years in Winson Green, Ken. Nobody likes rapists, warders or prisoners. They’d have made his life a pure misery, and done their best to put him off sex for the rest of his life.’

  ‘So?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘So he’d have come out with all the sensitivity knocked out of him, and replaced by violence—and hating women.’

  ‘Hating women?’

  ‘Because they were the other sex. He couldn’t help himself lusting for them, and he hated them for being the source of it. But by that time the sex would be equated with violence, so he couldn’t do anything else but use both together, kind of sublimating—’

  ‘For God’s sake, Richard! Your mind goes tracking off into all sorts of fancy byways. Can’t you control it?’

  ‘You know damned well I like to play around with ideas. For instance...I’ve always said they ought to send rapists to women’s prisons. They’d sort them out there. But perhaps...perhaps they’d come out hating women, the same as from Winson Green. In any event, they’d feel so exhausted and disillusioned that they wouldn’t want to see another woman. There’s a name for it. Something therapy.’

  ‘It’s called downright cruelty.’ And Ken actually laughed.

  ‘Aversion, that’s the word.’

  ‘I take it,’ he said, again abruptly suspicious, ‘that you’re trying to prove something.’

  ‘Trying to help you, Ken. Getting you to see that Bryan could’ve changed since the previous rapes. That’s all. Trying to make some sense of his having killed a woman.’

  ‘Then go back to your psychology books, will you, and leave me to delve into plain facts.’ He gave a short bark of dismissive laughter.

  Definitely, something was nagging at him. The laugh had barely punctured the surface. In the old days he’d have been able to listen to my wild ideas, and dig out the bit of logic that might be hiding in them.

  ‘I’m just playing around with words,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Les has got you whacked when it comes to putting things into words,’ he told me. ‘Hits it on the head, every time, when you hammer all round it.’

  ‘Who’s Les?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Les Durrell. He was at Milo’s house when I got there that night, with a sergeant. The way Les put it, Bryan Dettinger was a dirty little bleeder and had got what was coming to him. Expresses it exactly.’

  It also expressed Les Durrell, who’d allowed his personal dislike to intrude on his professionalism. It said something, too, about the way it had infested Ken’s attitude. But who was I to criticize? Concern, yes, I was entitled to that. But Ken seemed to have relaxed his usual approach because it was the death of a known rapist.

  ‘Expresses it exactly, Ken? That was your opinion, too, was it? Only the death of a dirty little bleeder. So perhaps you weren’t too enthusiastic when it came to considering murder? Or the possibility of it. Is that it?’

  Then I clamped my hand on his wrist. The knuckles were white around the handle of his mug, and it was possible the dregs would be heading for my face.

  ‘You’re a hypocritical bastard, Richard!’ he said softly, his teeth barely separating. ‘That business with you and Amelia! D’you think I didn’t work it all out, what went on there?’

  I released him and tried out my grin. It wasn’t very flexible. ‘Thank you, Ken. I wanted that out of the way. Amelia was the main suspect, and I fought like hell for her, because the motive was exactly the same as we’ve got here. Or related. Rape. Rape and murder—which is what you’re handling. So you don’t care that Bryan could’ve been killed. All right, I expect I’d feel the same. But his father wants it proved to be murder, and before I go any further I’ve got to be absolutely certain there’s not one tiny loophole I can probe into. Will you help me on that? Don’t you trust me any more, Ken?’

  This was the direct challenge, and it was all I could do to hold my eyes on his. Because I’d been lying, if he only knew it, so that he had no reason to trust me. I wanted really to know what was harrowing him, hidden somewhere inside it all. I was masking my intentions by appealing to our friendship.

  He smiled, the same smile I recalled, his intimate smile of complete trust. I felt rotten.

  ‘Of course, Richard. Of course I do. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘The full details of what happened when you were at Milo Dettinger’s house that night.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  For the next few minutes I watched as the tension gradually flowed from him. Once again he was my sergeant and he was making a verbal report. I fetched fresh drinks for us, and he plunged into his narrative. Only once did I detect a slight hesitation, a minuscule reservation.

  ‘They rang me at home,’ he told me. ‘I was off duty Saturday night. It was a bit after one o’clock, but I’d been watching a film on the telly. Les Durrell had gone out with a sergeant, and they hadn’t known what to expect. It all looked messy to him. There’d been violence. Oh yes, the suicide, that was violence enough. But there was also the smashed front door. The owner, who’d done that, was in some sort of shock, sitting on the bottom of his stairs in the dark, apart from his car’s lights, and the battery was fading. He’d got the phone buzzing in his hands. He was still there when I got to his place. It’s just past your old house, Richard.’

  ‘I know, Ken. I’ve been to have a look at Aces High. You ought to have had a report.’

  ‘Snooping?’

  ‘Just checking Milo’s security, that’s all. Carry on.’

  ‘Where was I? Oh yes. The Inspector...’

  ‘Who, I take it, had been upstairs?’ I said this quietly, without apparent interest.

  He tilted his head. ‘That’s a strange thing to say.’

  ‘Is it? I don’t know. I suppose so. Inspector Durrell therefore went upstairs and checked—’

  ‘He’d sent his sergeant back to the car to radio for the ME to come and have a look.’

  I nodded. ‘Shouted down from the landing, I suppose?’

  ‘You do pick at the niggly little bits!’ he complained. ‘I don’t know the exact order, and I don’t see that it matters. They sent for me. I got there. The ME was upstairs and an ambulance was there. Milo Dettinger was receiving attention—the usual routine, Richard. You know it backwards.’

  ‘But it was obvious to everybody that it was only a suicide?’

  ‘Only?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘It was a violent death.’

  ‘Not suspicious?’

  ‘In view of the smashed front door, which was still wide open—’

  ‘You at once realized,’ I cut in, ‘that nobody could’ve assisted the lad in parting from this exciting and thrilling world.’

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘I was trying to imagine how it would look to Bryan.’

  ‘Nothing like what you just said, that’s for sure.’ There were signs that he was running short of temper again. ‘Deadly dull and rather frightening, I’d have thought. Damn it all, Richard—all those threats being flung around! Where’s this imagination of yours?’ If he was ribbing me, it had a bitter edge.

  ‘I’m using it,’ I assured him. ‘I’m getting a picture of how it would have been if I’d been on it. Nostalgia, Ken. D’you know, I actually miss it! Anyway, I’ll tell you how I would see it, and what I’d have done. Let me know where I go wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Different from what you did, then. That’d be wrong.’ I tried my smile on him, but it bounced off. ‘Right. I arrive. I’m in the hall. Noticed the front door on the way in. I look around. Water all over the place, dripping off the landing. I already know all about the danger the lad had been in. I might well have put somebody on surveillance—’

  ‘The Chief Super wouldn’t have it,’ he interrupted.

  ‘But the Chief Super wouldn’t have it,’ I agreed. ‘But I’d had a quiet word with the CI Traffic, and asked him to have a car running around the district...yes?’

  He smiled thinly. ‘I did that. And a
lot of good it did.’

  ‘Right. I hadn’t expected much from the patrol cars, so I had to be alert when I got to Aces High because of all the possibilities. I’d go up to the landing, where Bryan was lying in a pool of water, and the obvious impression was of suicide. Impression. But in the circumstances, it’d be just as well to make certain. The fact that Milo had had to bash in the front door suggested a sealed house. Better make absolutely sure about that. I’d send the sergeant—’

  ‘He was out in the radio car.’

  ‘The Inspector, then, Les Durrell. That’s assuming there was no back-up at that time?’

  ‘No back-up—it was an apparent suicide.’

  ‘Not a violent crime?’

  ‘Suicide is violence. It’s no longer a crime.’

  ‘Ah yes. Of course. Right. So...Inspector Durrell—’

  ‘I’d sent him to find the stop-cock and turn off the water.’

  ‘I’m getting old, Ken. Should’ve realized that. So you would go and check it, yourself?’

  There was a minimal hesitation. ‘Check what?’

  ‘Just to be safe—to make it a nice safe suicide for the coroner—you would want to check the security. The windows. The back door.’

  ‘Oh, I did that. I see. Of course I did that. There was no evidence of an illegal entry, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘No possibility of it?’

  ‘I don’t see,’ he protested, ‘the difference.’

  I revolved my empty mug on the table surface, staring down at it. ‘Ken,’ I said, ‘Milo told me he locked the back door before he went out, but he made no mention of bolts. I’m not sure of this fact—but was the back door bolted? You know as well as I do that it’s possible to get out of a door and leave it locked, even with the key in the lock.’ I looked up quickly. His eyes had narrowed. As I lifted my head, he lowered his.

  ‘It could be done, Ken,’ I persisted.

  ‘The back door was bolted, top and bottom,’ he told me quietly, ‘as well as locked. The key was in the lock on the inside.’

  ‘There you are, then.’ I sat back as though pleased. ‘So the house was completely sealed.’ I hesitated, because his eyelids had flickered. ‘But maybe you have doubts about that?’ I suggested, softly and insidiously, chipping at it.

  ‘No doubts!’ he replied, too briskly for the simple response.

  ‘Good.’ I picked up my empty mug and stared into it, but he didn’t take the hint. ‘Perhaps the lad himself bolted it. I don’t suppose you tested for fingerprints?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! It was a suicide. A suicide, Richard.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose I’m reaching too far.’

  ‘You’re breaking your damned neck to try to keep Milo Dettinger happy. He doesn’t deserve it, I can tell you. He wants it to be murder. But you don’t owe him anything and he’s not worth the trouble.’

  I smiled. ‘I owe him fifty pounds.’

  ‘What? Now look here, Richard, I’m not having this. Once you start taking fees that makes you a pro. I’m not talking to any snide private eye—’

  ‘Snide, Ken?’

  He was shaking his head, annoyed perhaps at himself. ‘I didn’t mean you. A phrase. It was just a phrase.’

  ‘Good. Fine.’

  ‘And how come you owe him fifty pounds?’ he challenged.

  Smiling, I told him. ‘We were round at his club, Amelia and I. I wanted serious words with him, so we left Amelia at the roulette table. She won fifty pounds. Now, that could be pure chance, but I’m very suspicious. If it’s possible to fiddle it, then I’d love to prove how, and he’d be up to his neck in trouble. And I’d stuff his fifty quid up his jacksie.’

  ‘In fivers?’ Ken asked interestedly, not doubting my ability.

  ‘In pound coins. One by one. Possibly red hot.’

  That lightened the mood. We enlarged on it, embroidered it, until we were laughing freely into each other’s faces. And then, in the aftermath, I said:

  ‘And of course, bolts or not, it could still have been murder.’

  ‘How?’ he demanded, but as a friendly challenge.

  ‘Two possibilities. His father or his mother.’ I said this casually, placidly.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘But I am.’ And I told him how serious I was, and how either of them could have done it.

  During the telling, he didn’t take his eyes from my face. I tried to make it convincing. It was convincing, provided that you could accept the sick personalities involved in the perpetration of such a crime—by either parent.

  Ken groaned. ‘What a beautiful family life they must’ve shared! Mind you...’ He glared at me. ‘It’s not going to persuade me to reopen the file.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that. I just wanted you to realize I’m pretty deep into this, Ken, and it’s beginning to stink to high heaven.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sniffed, at the stink or at my persistence. I couldn’t guess which.

  ‘It’s a pity about the bolts, though,’ I murmured, as though to myself.

  Something flickered behind his eyes and a nerve jumped in his cheek. ‘Forget the bloody bolts.’

  ‘Of course. They don’t enter into it now.’

  He looked at his watch, for something to look at. ‘What time’re you meeting Amelia?’

  I looked at mine. ‘Half an hour ago.’

  ‘I’d have liked to meet her, but I ought to get back. It’s murder now, Richard. The job, I mean. The crime figures are bouncing.’

  We strolled out of the pub together and along the street. Despite what he’d said, nothing seemed to be calling him urgently towards that metal in-tray. We reached the corner, where our ways would part.

  ‘Be seeing you,’ he said, turning away.

  I thumped his shoulder. Something had gone adrift in our relationship. I said casually, ‘I’ll give it some more thought.’

  ‘What?’ He paused, his head turning.

  ‘The question of the bolts.’

  This was not very subtle of me. Usually I can do better. But it drew a response, a short and startled look and a clamping of his jaw muscles. Then he recovered.

  ‘You do that, Richard. You do that.’ Then he was moving away rapidly.

  Thoughtfully, I made my way to the square. I’d arranged to meet Amelia by the rancid-green statue of the Prince Regent. It was all pedestrian precinct there, with benches. I didn’t know whether she’d expected me to be seated on one of them, but it was far too cold for sitting. I was late. I didn’t expect to find her seated there, either. But the café at which they’d arranged to meet, she and Cath, was only a stone’s throw away, so I went and strolled past its windows, and there they were, heads close, just finishing their lunch and lingering probably over a second cup of coffee. I signalled, and strolled back to the statue.

  They came. In five minutes, they came. If Cath had been depressed or morose, there was no sign of it now. But she’d enjoyed Amelia’s company for an hour, and I know how that can boost you. Her face was alive and her attitude animated. All smiles, she was, for me. I raised my hat. Cath doesn’t object to my old-fashioned ways.

  ‘Richard! How nice.’

  I kissed her on the cheek, and held her away from me. ‘You look well, Cath. I’ve just had a beer and a sandwich with your Ken.’

  ‘You managed to get him out, then?’

  ‘Certainly. It seemed to do him good. Too much desk work, that’s what’s the matter with Ken. He always liked to get out and around.’

  ‘Since he got the last promotion...’ She shook her head.

  ‘Yes. It changes your life.’

  We were walking slowly back to the multi-storey car park where Cath had left her car. I said, ‘He couldn’t wait to get back to his desk. Hurry, hurry. Yuk! I used to hate the paperwork.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cath. ‘You would, Richard.’

  We left her, promising to fix a visit to their new home. ‘Far too big for two,’ Cath pronounced it to be. />
  It is not always a good idea to move house. It takes a while to settle in, until you can put your hand on whatever you want without having to work out where you’ve left it.

  We had parked Amelia’s Granada in the open park behind Wetherby’s store. Having politely asked whether Amelia wanted to do any shopping in there, shading my reluctance, and having received her decisive no, I opened up the car and we got inside. ‘A sandwich and a beer,’ she said. ‘Not your usual lunch.’

  ‘Two pints,’ I corrected, ‘and I’m fine. And Cath?’ I stopped to pay at the kiosk. Then I continued, ‘She seemed well to me.’

  Amelia laughed. There was a wealth of relief in it, even joy. ‘It wasn’t anything much. Just that she’s going to have a baby, and she’s a little old for a first one. Naturally, she’s a bit worried.’

  ‘Of course. I take it you reassured her.’

  ‘I did my best. And Ken? Didn’t he mention it?’

  I drove along to the huge roundabout at the new ring road, and negotiated it before I replied. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t know. We didn’t get round to babies.’

  ‘Of course he knows!’

  But it hadn’t been the approaching event he’d had on his mind. We would have cleared that in a few words, and with an exchange of ribald advice. And that would have been that.

  After a while, during which I’d been thinking it over and trying to evade the obvious, Amelia said, ‘But she’s also very worried about Ken. She says he’s quiet and remote lately. He’ll sit with his eyes on the telly screen and not take in a moment of it. I think you’ve got something to say, Richard. Come on—out with it. You’ll feel better then.’

  No doubt I would. I wasn’t certain that Amelia would, though. I pursued the subject tentatively.

  ‘I think it’s the work he’s got. He’s a grade higher than I ever reached, you know. The pressures become heavier.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not that,’ she said with calm confidence. ‘Don’t prevaricate, Richard. Or should it be procrastinate? I know what’s worrying you, because I’ve already had a hint. You feed me information in dribs and drabs, as though I’m some tender and delicate creature who can’t digest a proper helping. You’ve already mentioned rape and murder. Three rapes, and a final ghastly episode. Of course I hate to hear about it. Everything comes flooding back, and I have to fight it away. No, Richard, please don’t slow for that lay-by. I want to say it here and now. I hate it! Hate the very thought of it. But it’s here. Ken’s involved in all that—and it’s no good you denying it—and I hate that too. You’ll dig into it deeper and deeper, and as I reckon it’s because of Ken...’