Killing the Lawyers

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 else up here.

He thought of a discreet retreat, but memory of what stood on his doorstep plus shame that he should be revealed as scareder than a cat combined to move him onward and upward. But pride did not inhibit him from calling, ‘Hello. Someone up there?’

‘Mr Sixsmith? Is that you?’

The voice was if anything pitched lower than the neckless monster’s, but undeniably and very pleasingly female. A figure advanced from the shadows of the landing.

‘Miss Jones?’ said Joe.

‘Sort of,’ said the woman.

She too was wearing a baggy tracksuit, but with the hood up. Now with a little shake of the head she tossed it back to reveal a face he just had time to start to recognize before Whitey made his move. From a standing start he got up to maximum knots in a couple of strides, then leapt up at the woman’s long throat.

‘Whitey!’ yelled Joe in alarm.

But it was too late. The cat hit the woman in the chest, caught his claws in the tracksuit top, relaxed into her cradling arms and lay there, looking up, four paws in the air, purring like a chocolate-box kitten.

It was quite revolting, like Boris Karloff playing Little Lord Fauntleroy.

‘Now aren’t you a beauty then?’ she said, nuzzling her nose against his head.

And Joe said, ‘He thinks so. And aren’t you Zak Oto, the runner?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Are you coming up or do you interview all your clients on the stairs?’

In the office, seated on the chair which didn’t fall to pieces if you leaned back too hard, Zak Oto said, ‘Sorry about the Miss Jones thing on the answerphone, but I couldn’t be certain who’d hear the message. Thing is, Mr Sixsmith, I’m being threatened and I need someone to take care of it.’

She flashed him the multi-megawatt smile which made her as big a hit on billboards and screen as her legs did on the track. She was already the Bloo-Joo girl and word had it that Nymphette were after her to front up their new range of popular sports clothing. Even dressed in a baggy tracksuit she looked a million dollars, which was probably a lot less than she was going to be worth.

Joe was making a production number of looking round his office.

‘Something up, Mr Sixsmith?’ she asked.

‘Just checking there’s no one here but me and my cat. Which of us did you see for the job, Miss Oto?’