‘So why was she worried when Potter could just have gone out the back way which, if his car wasn’t parked out front, seems the most likely explanation?’
‘She had a feeling something was wrong,’ said Chivers.
‘Sort of feminine intuition?’ offered Joe.
‘No. Sort of feeling anyone might get when an aggressive little black man bursts in, rushes upstairs, starts throwing furniture about, and storms out shouting stuff about killing people,’ said Chivers.
‘Yeah, well, we’ve been through all that, Sarge,’ said Joe. ‘So what’s she do now?’
‘She goes upstairs, goes into Potter’s room, and finds him lying by his desk, dead as a doornail.’
‘And how’d he die?’
‘Neck broken. No sign of a struggle. One quick professional twist. That’s what really got you off the hook, Sixsmith.’
‘Why so?’
‘Because I got my Black Belt boy to check with Mr Takeushi who told him, wrapped up in Oriental politeness, of course, that after six lessons you still couldn’t punch your way out of a paper bag, let alone inflict damage on a fully grown man with all his limbs and senses about him. So now, sod off, Sixsmith, and let me get on with some real detection!’
Joe woke up next morning knowing exactly who had killed Peter Potter.
Or at least having a vague idea who might possibly, all else being equal, have had something to do with his death.
It was hard experience had taught Joe to approach his certainties with this degree of caution. He’d seen so much solid ground dissolve beneath his feet he could have freelanced as an oil drill. But as he worked his way through the Full British Breakfast, which was his patriotic way of starting each new day, he could detect no flaws in his logic.
He went through it again.
He had left Potter alive and well though in a lousy temper.
Twenty minutes later he was dead, his neck broken by someone who knew how to do that sort of thing.
The only other person definitely in the building was Sandra Iles, who had claimed to be expert in the neck-breaking arts and had given Joe himself a fair example of her skills.
She had found herself with a great opportunity of offing Potter with a short-odds prime suspect all laid on. Or maybe she had killed the guy on the spur of the moment and got the idea of fingering the pathetic little black man later. Didn’t matter. Nor did motive. They were business colleagues which, like marriage, is notoriously a relationship in which incentives to murder are offered daily.
So why look further?
The only trouble was, if he could think of it, almost certainly Chivers had thought of it too.
He rang the station to check.
Chivers wasn’t in yet, he’d had a late night, yawned DC Dylan Doberley unsympathetically.
‘So how’s it going, Dildo?’ asked Joe. Doberley was a friend, or at least a fellow member of the Boyling Corner Choir where he atoned for being a materialistic, lecherous, C of E dropout by possessing a natural basso profundo.
‘Slowly,’ said Doberley. ‘Word is, there’s a thaw in the Cairngorms, the DCI’s wife is more irritating than his flu, and the Super’s holiday firm’s gone bust, so poor old Chivers’s dreams of glory are fading pretty damn fast.’
‘Nothing then? No arrests, no suspects?’ enquired Joe.
‘Only you. I’d go into hiding, he’s getting really desperate.’
‘Thanks, Dildo. I may do that. See you at choir practice.’
Joe put the phone down and said, ‘You hear that, Whitey? Time running out for poor old Chivers, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t grab a slice of that glory.’
Whitey, who had grabbed a slice of fried bread, chewed sneeringly.
‘Just you wait and see,’ said Joe.
Wait and see what? was the question which the cat or any sentient being might legitimately have asked, but Joe was able to postpone essaying an answer by his awareness that while glory might exalt the ego, it took paying customers to feed the flesh. Miss Jones was probably a wind-up, but he couldn’t afford to neglect the chance she was for real.
He arrived in Robespierre Place at eight forty-five, parked the Magic Mini round the corner, and walked back to Peck House with Whitey slouching at his heels, disconsolate to discover they weren’t about to launch another assault on Mirabelle’s prize turkey.
Peck House, named for Alderman Peck who had conducted himself as chairman of the council’s planning committee and as chief shareholder in the firm which got the contract to develop this and many other sites with an aplomb which didn’t desert him during his later appearances in the dock, was a nineteen sixties that-was-the-future-that-was building, only saved from the high-rise demolition boom of the eighties by the fact that the Alderman’s luck ran out shortly after the third floor. Hastily capped and redirected from residential to office use on the grounds that, while in five years it probably wouldn’t be fit for even the most desperate of council tenants – the kind of businesses driven to seek a base in Robespierre Place couldn’t afford to be so finicky – it loured disdainfully at the stolid Victorian terrace opposite like a misunderstood romantic hero.
Its frowning exterior was reflected on the face of a man lurking in the doorway, though any claims he had to be romantic were well hidden. About five and a half feet tall, and almost as much across the shoulders, he might have got close to six feet if God had given him the usual proportion of neck. Perhaps the material saved here had gone into the formation of his ears which were large, pasty-grey, and wrinkled, reminding Joe of something he’d seen in a packet down the Chinese supermarket.
He was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. Perhaps, thought Joe, who always tried to look on the bright side, he was a British heavyweight out on a training run who’d stopped for a rest and a smoke.
Why was the bright side always fantasy?
The man was blocking his path. Purposefully.
‘Sixsmith?’ he growled or rather shrilled, in a surprisingly high voice which was nonetheless menacing.
‘That’s right,’ said Joe. ‘It’s not Miss Jones, is it?’
To his surprise, instead of breaking him in two, the man said, ‘Just Jones. Inside.’
Taking this as instruction rather than analysis, Joe pushed open the door and stepped in. He glanced round to see if the man was following but he remained on the step glaring down at Whitey who returned the glare with interest.
‘It’s OK,’ said Joe. ‘He’s with me.’
Despite a slight weakness round the knees, he ignored the lift and headed for the stairs. Whitey never used the lift on the grounds that his life was far too valuable to entrust to a piece of machinery installed by Alderman Peck. Joe, no great lover of exercise, usually thought it a risk worth taking, but the fear of being followed into that rickety tin box by that slab of flesh and bone on the doorstep sent him heading for the stairway.
But his fears were groundless. The street door closed and the man remained outside.
His relief only lasted to the final half landing. Whitey as usual had nimbled ahead of him, but as Joe turned the final bend he saw the cat had halted in his I’m-going-to-get-me-a-wildebeest crouch.
Oh shoot, thought Joe. There’s someone