Killing the Lawyers

Then he returned to the car which he’d parked with a good view of the entrance to the mews. He was well out of the sightline of anyone in Number 7 but if she did emerge in the BMW, looking guilty, it was going to be a delicate task following her in this mobile wallpaper ad. Half an hour later he was starting to feel that this wasn’t a problem he was going to have to face. He went back to the phone box and rang again. Still the answer machine. He pressed the rest and redialled, repeating the process several times. Surely even a lawyer couldn’t be sleeping this soundly? He strolled to the mews entrance and glanced up at Number 7. The curtains were still drawn.

This is stupid, he thought. I mean, no one’s paying me to do this. Head back to the office, Sixsmith, and have a kip till it’s time to go see the lovely Zak down the Plezz and start earning some real money.

But even as his sensible mind hesitated, his traitor feet were carrying him to the door of Number 7 and his foolish finger was prodding the bell.

Nothing happened. He rang again, leaning his ear to the wood to check the bell was actually ringing. It was. And the door moved slightly under pressure from his ear.

He pushed it with his hand and it swung slowly open.

There was a noise to his right. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that an elderly gent of military mien had emerged from Number 6 and was regarding him with a curiosity this side of suspicion, but only just. Fixing his gaze firmly on the doorway, Joe let his mouth spread in a big smile and cried, ‘Well, hello there! Nice to see you again,’ and stepped inside.

Now why do I do these things? he asked himself helplessly. See a clever move and make it quick, is the way to lose at chequers, as Aunt Mirabelle always said after luring him forward with sacrifice, then triple-hopping his pieces.

But he’d done it anyway. Closing the door behind him so that Number 6 couldn’t peer in, he peeped through a small curtained window and saw the old soldier still standing there like he was on sentry duty. Best thing to do was wait a couple of minutes, then exit boldly, shouting, Thank you and goodbye! If the sound of his entry hadn’t roused the drowsy Ms Iles, then he could afford to exit with a bang!

But his awkward mind was asking, why hadn’t the legal lady been roused? Phone ringing, door opening, strange voice downstairs … Maybe she’d been so affected by what happened to Potter she’d knocked herself out with a pint of gin? Maybe … He decided to abandon maybes, knowing from experience how soon you ran out of the comfortable zones and got down to the scarys.

It was simpler to try and wake her, then run like hell at the first sound of movement.

He advanced to the foot of the stairs and called, ‘Ms Iles? You up there?’

No reply. I am definitely not going up those stairs, thought Joe.

Not any more than two or three, anyway.

But four or five never seems much more than two or three, and in no time at all he found himself where he had no intention of being, on the landing.

‘Ms Iles?’ he called again, thinking that if she came out of the bathroom now stark naked, she probably knew enough law dating back to the Middle Ages to get him broiled on a gridiron.

He moved slowly forward towards an open door. It led into a bedroom. She was in there. He could see her. She was naked.

‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.

Maybe she’d got so pie-eyed she couldn’t make it under the duvet. Maybe …

There he went with his maybes again when all the time he knew from the angle of her head to her body that maybes were right out of fashion.

To his long list of folk he’d got wrong he added Sandra Iles. Unless she’d been so ridden with guilt, she’d managed to break her own neck.

He went closer to make absolutely sure. Her nakedness embarrassed him and it would have been easy to imagine accusation in those staring eyes. But there was only death. He touched her face, mouthing, ‘Sorry.’ Cold. Dead for hours. He ran his gaze round the room. No clues leapt up and hit him in the eye. And why the shoot should he be looking for clues anyway? No one was paying him to do a job here.

Still, like Endo Venera said, one way or another a PI was always on the job. No harm then in a few mental notes.

The bed was big enough for two but there was only one central pillow and that had a single indentation in it. Looked like she’d gone to bed then been disturbed. No sign of a nightgown. Either she slept raw or it had been taken. No obvious sign of rape. Her legs weren’t splayed and there were no scratches or bruising that he could see. No sign of struggle either. Everything neat and tidy. The clothes she’d been wearing last night were arranged on hangers and hooked over the edge of the wardrobe door.

On top of the wardrobe he could see the edge of what looked like a black metal box.

According to Endo Venera, two things a good PI never missed the chance of looking into were an open bar or a closed black metal box.

He tried to reach it, couldn’t. He picked up the stool in front of the dressing table. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but in for a penny, in for a pound, it’s nose that makes the world go round.

Even standing on the stool only got his head level with the top of the wardrobe. He wrapped his handkerchief round his right hand, reached up, fumbled till he found a handle, and lifted the box down.

It was eighteen inches by nine, the kind of portable strongbox you can buy in any legal stationer’s. There was a key in the lock. He turned it and lifted the lid.

‘Shoot,’ he said.

No telltale legal documents here, just photos, the kind of pictorial biography to be found in nearly everyone’s desk or attic. Sandra Iles (presumably) as baby, as infant, as (now recognizably) schoolgirl; on holiday, in cap and gown, in (bringing a reminiscent twinge to his neck) a judogi fastened with a black belt. Other people, presumably family and friends, appeared on some of the snaps but no one Joe knew till he hit a group photo taken on the steps of Number 1 Oldmaid Row.

There were five of them, Iles and four men. Joe recognized the burly figure of Peter Potter. The other three – a distinguished elderly man with silvery hair, a slight dark man with a sardonic white-toothed smile showing through an eruption of black beard, and a big blond Aryan in his early thirties – were presumably Pollinger, Naysmith and Montaigne, though not necessarily in that order.

Two down, three to go. The thought popped uninvited into his mind.

Then the doorbell rang, making him drop other people’s worries and several photographs.

He went to the curtained window and without touching peered through a tiny crack.

On the cobbles below stood a police car. Alongside it, looking up at the house and listening with polite boredom to the expostulations of the military man, was a pair of uniformed cops.

Joe glanced at his watch. Dickhead! I went in, found her dead, and was about to raise the alarm when the police arrived wasn’t going to sound so convincing now fifteen minutes had elapsed. It was going to sound even worse if they caught him in the bedroom, going through the dead woman’s things.

Hastily he scooped up the spilled pics, dropped them back in the box, locked it, clambered on the stool, replaced the box on the wardrobe, jumped down, replaced the stool before the dressing table, and headed for the door.

One last glance round to make sure he hadn’t left any traces of his illegal search. And he had. The group photo of the Poll-Pott team had fluttered half under the bed. He picked it up. The doorbell rang again and a voice started shouting urgently through the letter box. No time to put it back. He shoved it into his pocket and sprinted downstairs just in time to open the front door before they smashed in the glass panel with a truncheon.

‘Hey, that’s timing,’ said Joe. ‘I was just going to ring you.’ But he could see they didn’t believe him.

6 (#ulink_f74e8194-d25f-55f8-a808-bb50b3288abf)

It took the police doctor’s confirmation that Sandra Iles had been dead between twelve and fifteen hours to move Sergeant Chivers away from the pious hope that Joe had been caught in the act. But it didn’t move him far.

‘OK, so maybe you were just revisiting the scene of your crime,’ said Chivers. ‘Let’s concentrate on what you were doing between say seven and ten last night. And if you were sitting at home watching the telly, the courts don’t accept alibi evidence from cats!’

‘Shoot,’ said Joe. ‘Then I’m in real trouble, ’cos my witnesses are a lot less reliable than Whitey.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It means that for most of the time, I was here being questioned by you, Sarge. Remember?’

Chivers closed his eyes in silent pain.

‘And when you were done with me, I went straight round to the Glit to wash the taste out of my mouth,’ said Joe, pressing his advantage.

‘The lowlife that drink there are anyone’s for a pint,’ said Chivers without real conviction.

‘I’ll tell Councillor Baxendale you said that, shall I? We got there the same time, and it’s true, I bought him a pint.’

Dickie Baxendale was chair of the council’s police liaison committee.