Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds

But Trave hadn’t finished. ‘Does a man called Thorn work here?’ he asked. ‘Middle-aged, balding, no glasses—’

‘I know what ’e looks like,’ said the old man, interrupting.

‘Is he here? I need to see him.’

‘That’ll depend on if ’e wants to see you,’ the old man said laconically. ‘You’d better come in, I suppose.’

The old man stepped aside and Trave went past him into a wide, dimly lit entrance hall. There was a threadbare colourless carpet on the floor, and the walls, void of pictures, were badly in need of a coat of paint. There were several doors on either side, but they were all closed and probably locked, Trave thought, noticing the large bunch of keys attached to the old man’s waistband. Maybe one of them contained the visitors’ book, Trave speculated, but the old man didn’t ask him to sign anything. Instead he pointed to a hard-backed chair set against one of the walls; told Trave to wait, speaking in the same peremptory tone he’d used outside; and then went up the staircase at the back of the hall. Trave could hear the sound of the old man’s knee joints cracking even after he’d disappeared from view.

The sound faded away and then, after an interval of several minutes, began again – the old man was coming back down the stairs. But immediately there was the sound of quicker feet, and a man who matched Mrs Graves’s description was the first to appear in the hall. He looked tired and preoccupied, and his clothes were just as crumpled as she’d described them.

Trave got up and held out his hand, which Thorn took absently for a moment. ‘I’m Detective Trave,’ he said. ‘Are you—’

‘Thorn. Yes. Alec Thorn. Jarvis here said you wanted to see me. I haven’t got long, I’m afraid. I’ve got a lot of work to do today.’

‘Do you know a man called Albert Morrison?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘Did you go and see him yesterday – at his flat in Battersea?’

Thorn paused, not answering. His eyes flickered over to the old man, who was standing listening to them at the bottom of the stairs. Trave had noted the look of interest in the old man’s eyes as well as Thorn’s when he’d mentioned Albert’s name.

‘We’d better go in here, I think,’ said Thorn, opening a door halfway down the hall – Trave had been wrong about them being locked. ‘That’ll be all, Jarvis,’ he added, shutting the old man out once Trave had gone past him into the room.

It was a small, primitive kind of waiting room. Two rows of armless, hard-backed chairs faced a wall on which a photograph of the King in his coronation robes hung slightly askew. There were no windows and there was no fire. Neither man sat down – Thorn stood with his back to the door, facing Trave.

‘I know you went there,’ Trave said quietly. ‘Mrs Graves, the neighbour downstairs, says she saw you. You left a note that she gave to Mr Morrison when he returned from a walk in the park, and after he got it he became agitated and came over here in a taxi. Did you see him here yesterday, Mr Thorn? I need to know.’

‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Thorn adamantly. ‘What’s this about, Detective? You can’t come in here asking questions without telling me why. Has something happened to Albert?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. He died last night. I’m here because he was murdered—’

‘Murdered!’ Thorn looked thunderstruck and his face collapsed as if under the impact of a blow for which he had been entirely unprepared. He turned away, putting up his hand as if to ward off further attack, and then staggered to a chair and sat down.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Trave. He hadn’t been prepared for the intensity of Thorn’s reaction to the news.

‘Murdered!’ Thorn repeated the word, shaking his head to express his incredulity. ‘How?’

‘He was pushed over the balustrade outside his flat. His daughter saw him fall.’

‘Ava was there. My God! Did she see who did it?’

‘No, it was too dark. Could you please tell me how you knew Mr Morrison?’ Trave asked.

‘We were friends. We’ve been friends a long time. Oh God, poor Albert,’ he added, his voice cracking. He put a cigarette in his mouth but couldn’t light it because his hands were shaking too much. Trave had to help him with the match.

He inhaled deeply and then collapsed in a fit of coughing. The smoke filled up the airless, windowless room and Trave was tempted to open the door for ventilation, except that he suspected Jarvis was on the other side listening.

‘How did you become friends?’ asked Trave. ‘Did you work together?’

‘Yes, we used to.’

‘Here?’

Thorn nodded.

‘And what kind of work was that, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ said Thorn. ‘It’s confidential.’

‘Well, perhaps you can help me with this, then: Why did you go and see Mr Morrison yesterday afternoon?’

Thorn didn’t reply right away, and Trave pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, willing to wait for an answer. Thorn seemed to have got over his original shock and was looking carefully at Trave through the haze of his cigarette smoke. It was almost as if he were assessing the policeman, seeing how far he could trust him.

‘I’m going to need an answer, Mr Thorn,’ said Trave quietly. ‘I need to know why he made that taxi journey and whom he came here to see. Confidentiality won’t wash, I’m afraid. This is a murder inquiry.’

‘It was a friendly call. That’s all. I hadn’t seen Albert in a couple of months and I wanted to see if he was all right.’

Trave was sure Thorn was lying. Yet the man’s surprise and grief when he’d heard the news of Morrison’s death had seemed genuine. It didn’t add up.

‘What about the note that you left him? What did that say? …

‘What did it say?’ asked Trave, repeating his question when Thorn didn’t answer. ‘I need to know.’

‘Nothing – just that I’d called and that I wanted to see him. Have you got it?’ Trave noted how Thorn mumbled his answer but then raised his voice when he asked his own question. There was an urgency there that sounded almost like desperation.

Trave shook his head. He hadn’t got Thorn’s note and he was damned if he was going to show Thorn the note in Morrison’s handwriting that he’d found in the dead man’s pocket. Not when Thorn was being so evasive. Trave decided to go on the attack.

‘You’re not telling me the truth,’ he said. ‘Do you really expect me to believe that you left a note saying nothing at all when receipt of that note made Mr Morrison so agitated that he got straight in a taxi and rushed over here?’

‘How do you know he was agitated? How can you know that?’ asked Thorn, looking agitated himself.

‘Because his daughter told us. She was there when he got the note. She was the one who ordered the taxi.’

‘Oh, poor Ava. It’s too awful,’ said Thorn, sounding genuinely distressed. ‘She must be in a terrible state. I ought to go and see her.’

‘What was in the note, Mr Thorn?’ asked Trave, refusing to be distracted by Thorn’s emotional outburst.

‘Nothing – I already told you that.’

‘And you’ll swear to that, will you?’

‘If I have to,’ Thorn said grimly.

‘And you didn’t see Albert Morrison here yesterday or anywhere else?’

‘No. If he came here, I didn’t see him. I swear it,’ said Thorn, looking Trave in the eye.