Blood Sympathy

‘Not really,’ said Joe.

‘What I mean is, I wanted to talk to someone about … this thing. And I got very anxious about it, so I just let my training take over and when I came in here, I may have been a bit over-dramatic … Look, I know in my mind that Gina’s safe at home, and Maria and Momma and Poppa Tomassetti too, but sometimes what you feel is realer than what you know, do you know what I mean?’

‘You’re losing me again,’ said Joe. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere and have a coffee …’

While reassured that he wasn’t facing a multi-murderer, he still liked the idea of having more company than Whitey, who with a look of great resignation had re-entered his drawer.

Andover glanced at his watch.

‘I don’t think I’ve got time,’ he said. ‘My brother-in-law’s picking me up at half past. He borrowed the car today to go for an interview in Biggleswade and we arranged to meet at my office, but when I realized I had to come back here for my case, I left a message for him to come on here, I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Joe. ‘At least sit down while we’re talking.’

A man in a chair is less of a threat than a man on his feet.

Andover sat down and resumed talking.

‘The thing is, I’ve been having these dreams. At first they were vague, undetailed. I just used to wake up with a general sense of something being very wrong, and this stayed with me all day. A sense of something unpleasant somewhere over the horizon. Then they started getting clearer. And clearer. And … well, what it boils down to is this. I arrive home. I go in the house. No one answers my call. And there they all are. Gina and Maria and Momma and Poppa … sitting round the coffee table … and there are cups and saucers and a half-eaten Victoria sponge cake … and they’re all dead, Mr Sixsmith … they’re all dead!’

His voice which had almost faltered to a halt suddenly rose to a shout.

‘Ah,’ said Joe with a briskness born of a determination not to do anything which might suggest he wasn’t taking Andover seriously. ‘So what you came to report to me was not a murder but a dream of a murder.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the man, back to normal level. ‘But more than a dream, I’m sure. Such vividness, such detail, has got to be more than just a dream. I’m convinced it’s a warning, Mr Sixsmith. I believe unless I do something, it will happen. And if it happens, it will be my fault. A sin of omission, or even God help me, of commission.’

‘Pardon?’ said Joe.

Andover leaned across the desk and fixed him with a gaze which would have sold freezer insurance to Eskimos. Perhaps that’s what sbhahk meant.

‘This is the worst of my dream,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure when I wake up if I feel like I do simply because I’ve found the bodies or whether it’s because I’m the one who killed them!’

Joe glanced at his watch.

‘Will your brother-in-law come up for you or will he be looking for you outside the building?’ he asked.

‘He’ll wait outside. I’ll see if he’s there, shall I?’

Andover came round the desk to look out of the window.

Joe, who didn’t fancy being outflanked, stood up too and sauntered to his filing cabinet.

‘Can’t see him,’ said Andover. ‘I hope he hasn’t got held up at Biggleswade.’

It was on the tip of Joe’s tongue to say, no, Mr Rocca had arrived home about half an hour ago. But on second thoughts it didn’t seem a good idea to let on he’d brought the police into it.

He pulled open a drawer of the cabinet in the interests of verisimilitude and said as he examined its contents (two tins of cat food and a tennis ball), ‘Why’d you come to me, Mr Andover? Why not go to the cops?’

‘You’re joking. They’d just laugh at me,’ said Andover.

Joe thought of DS Chivers and couldn’t disagree.

‘But I had to talk to someone professionally,’ Andover went on. ‘I don’t mean a shrink. Someone who’d take what I said seriously, and maybe investigate, not just prescribe a lot of pills … but it had to be someone truly sympathetic …’

‘Like a primitive, you mean?’ said Joe, recalling their first exchange.

‘Look, I didn’t mean anything. I’m not racist. I married into an Italian family, for God’s sake! It’s just you once did some work for our Claims people and I remembered what they said about you …’

It had been a last-minute job. A negligence case against a private clinic by a man who’d ended up in a wheelchair after a simple cosmetic operation had left Falcon facing a million pound payout. Suspecting, or at least hoping for fraud, they had decided to keep a close watch on the patient. Then the claims investigator concerned had fallen off a ladder and, needing a replacement in a hurry, Falcon had hired Joe. He, however, between the briefing and his office, had contrived to lose the file.

Reluctant to admit his incompetence, he had managed to recall not the patient’s details, but the name and address of the doctor who’d performed the operation. Thinking to bluff the other essential details out of her, he’d called at her house in the Bedfordshire countryside. When there was no reply to his knock, he’d wandered round the back in case she was in the garden and found that indeed she was, being humped in a hammock by a large red-headed man, whose temper proved as fiery as his hair. Joe had fled to his car, literally falling in, and the first thing he saw from his worm’s eye view was the lost file under the seat. There was a photo of the suspect patient pinned to it. He was a large man with red hair.

It had been a nice scam. The lady doctor had made the right incisions, coached the guy in his responses, fixed him up with drugs to help fool the insurance experts, and told her sympathetic colleagues that it had all been too much for her and she was emigrating to Australia to start afresh.

‘So I came recommended,’ said Joe.

‘Sort of,’ said Andover. ‘Some people said you were just lucky. But one or two reckoned there had to be something else, something intuitive, a kind of natural instinct that made you head straight for the doctor. I mean, no one else would have dreamt of suspecting her, not in a million years. So when I got to wondering who I could talk to about investigating dreams, not any Freudian crap, but the sort of dreaming which was like a real world you could move in, maybe manipulate, all I could come up with was you.’

He spoke with a resigned bitterness which wasn’t very complimentary, but Joe was not about to be offended. In fact he was starting to feel rather sorry for the guy, which wasn’t all that clever, seeing that there was no honest way to make a client out of him, even if sight of Joe hadn’t put him off the idea.

‘Mr Andover, I’m sorry, I’m strictly a wideawake PI. Could be what you really need is a travel agent, take a nice holiday. Now if you don’t mind I’m closing shop, time to head home for my tea …’

‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’ve been foolish. It was just that I nodded off after lunch today and I had the dream with such intensity, I had to do something … Where on earth is Carlo?’

‘Perhaps he’s having trouble parking?’ suggested Joe.

‘Not Carlo. He still drives and parks like he was in Rome. He’d be right out there in the street if he was coming. Mind if I call my office?’

He picked up the phone and dialled without waiting for an answer.

‘Debbie? Hello. It’s me. My brother-in-law been in yet? Thank you.’

‘Damn the man,’ he said putting the phone down. ‘I can’t afford to be late tonight. Gina and I are going to the theatre …’ He looked at Joe speculatively. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be going my way, Sixsmith?’

Joe sighed. He was, vaguely, in so far as the concrete blockhouses of the Rasselas Estate were within mortar-bombing distance of the mock-Tudor villas of Coningsby Rise.

‘Come on,’ he said.

The old Morris Oxford had a few rattles and squeaks, but none of them to do with the engine. An aptitude for crosswords Joe might not have, but when it came to machinery, he could make an engine purr like Whitey in anticipation of a fish supper.

Casa Mia was impressive, even in an area that reeked of Gold Cards and overdrafts. Maybe it was the bold decision to abandon the traditional black and white half-timbering and go for scarlet and gold that made it stand out. Must be money in the insurance game, thought Joe. Though not enough left over to spend on a decent tailor?

‘There’s room to turn at the top of the drive,’ said Andover.

Joe drove in. No sign of any other car, so presumably Carlo Rocca had set out to pick up his brother-in-law. Tough.

Andover got out by the classically porticoed porch which looked like it had been recently stuck on to the studded oak front door.

‘Like a drink?’ he said.