The man looked at him blankly. Then he said, 'What was that you called me?'
'Benny. Benjamin Lightfoot as was.'
A grin split the man's face.
'The name's Barney. You think I'm Benny, is that what this is all about? Jeez, what a screw-up.'
If it was an act it was a great one. But Wield, studying the man's face, was almost sure it wasn't. The man certainly looked very like the photo of Benny which he himself had doctored, but seen in the flesh, there were too many differences.
It wasn't a question of physical characteristics, all of which fitted well enough. It was a matter of expression, a glint in the eyes, a twist of the lips, a watchful cocking of the head to one side, little things like this. Okay, so people could change a lot in fifteen years, but there was no way Wield could imagine that repressed, shy, fey youngster turning into this assured, aggressive, self-sufficient man, any more than (he now admitted fully to himself for the first time) he had ever been able to believe that Benny Lightfoot had the savvy to get himself safe out of the country. Not even with fifty thousand pounds. He'd have had it taken off him by the first con man he met!
He said, 'When did you last see your brother, Mr. Slater?'
'Before ma took us to Oz,' said the man. 'We went up the valley to see Granny Lightfoot. Ma said he could still come with us if he wanted, but he just shook his head and clung on to the old lady like someone was going to try and drag him free.'
Dalziel groaned, like thunder over the sea, but he didn't speak.
'You keep in touch? Letters and such?' said Wield.
'Nah. Christmas cards was the limit. We're not a writing family. Not till the old lady's letters when Benny had his spot of trouble, and then there was only the two.'
'You knew about the Dendale disappearances?'
'Heard something. Didn't pay it much mind. Troubles of our own. Things started falling apart for us soon after we hit Oz. Jack, that's Jack Slater, my stepfather, turned out a wrong 'un. Nothing crooked, well, not so's you'd notice. But the horses, the booze, the sheilas. I left school soon as I could, lot sooner than I should, that's for certain. Someone had to earn. To start with, ma tried to keep up with Jack, in the boozing at least. Only, she didn't have the constitution. By the time Jack up and left, she was real ill with it. That's when the letters came, I guess.'
'The letters from your grandmother, Mrs. Lightfoot?'
'That's right. Look, telling you all this stuff is going to get me out of here, right?'
He addressed his words to Dalziel.
The monkey might be doing the talking, thought Novello, but this guy knows who's grinding the organ.
'I'm starting to think the sooner I see thy back, the better,' said Dalziel with feeling. 'But I reckon I can thole thy face till you've answered all our questions.'
'No need to turn on the charm, mate,' said Slater. 'Okay. These letters. I didn't pay them any heed till years later when I was tidying up after Ma passed on. First one said the old girl had changed her address and was living with some relative in Sheffield and if we saw anything of Benny, would we let her know. Second said she moved again to this nursing home, Wark House, and asked about Benny again. That was it.'
'Your mother write back?' asked Wield.
'How would I know?' said Slater. 'Could be, but like I say, she wasn't much in control for a helluva lot of the time. Talked about Granny Lightfoot sometimes, hated her guts as far as I could make out, and I gathered the feeling was mutual. But one thing Ma always did say about her was she was a tidy old bird with her head screwed on, and if anyone in our family could hang on to a bit of dosh, Agnes was the girl.'
'Wasn't she concerned about Benny?' Novello heard herself asking.
Slater shrugged and said, 'Who knows? Didn't talk about him much and when she did, it was usually to say he'd made his bed and could lie on it. I think she was really pissed when he chose to stay with his gran rather than take off with her.'
'But he was her son, her firstborn,' Novello persisted.
'So? That just made getting the old heave-ho from him worse. Sometimes when the booze had got her to the weepy stage, she'd say she'd like to see Benny before she died. Then she'd get past it and say he'd probably got the old girl's dosh by now and was living high on the hog, so why the hell should she worry about him when he didn't worry about her?'
Wield was looking over his shoulder at Novello to see if she had anything else to say. She gave a small shake of her head.
'So after your mother died, you thought you'd come back to England and check whether in fact the old lady was seriously rich and see if you could squeeze some of it your way?' said the sergeant.
'Not so,' said Slater, unperturbed by the provocative question. 'Ma died, and suddenly I was footloose and fancy free, no one to please but myself, no one to spend my money on but me, and I thought, the only relatives I got in the whole wide world are back there in Pommerania, so why not take a trip and see what there was to see.'
'But you made a beeline for Wark House, right?' said Wield accusingly.
'No way, mate. Touched down on Monday. Dossed down with this mate of a mate in London. He had this old camper he let me borrow for a few quid. Lot cheaper than hotels, and I'm a real open-air boy. I drifted north, taking in the sights. Hit Yorkshire Friday morning and thought, no harm in checking Gran Lightfoot out. It was good to find her still alive. Mind you, she was pretty crook. And confused. Thought I was Benny. I tried to put her straight, then she said something which really made my ears prick and I stopped trying. Something about she knew I'd have found the money and used it to get away safe.'
'Thought you weren't interested in money,' said Wield.
'Didn't say that, mate. What I said was, that wasn't why I came back. But I wasn't going to look the other way if it looked like some dosh might be due to me. Especially when she let on in her ramblings it was fifty thou in cash, and she'd put it in a tin chest up under the eaves where Benny knew she always hid her valuables, so that's where he'd have looked after she went into hospital.'
'And she believed Benny had got the money?' said Wield.
'Yeah, that's clearly what she reckoned when he vanished from sight. And now that she knew for certain he'd got it-because she'd seen me, thinking I was Benny-she said she could die happy. Now I did try telling her again, no need for her to die just yet, happy or not, as I was Barney not Benny, but she was pretty flaked out by now and I could tell she wasn't taking it in. So I left. Look, no need to sit there looking all po faced. I want her to know who I really am. I'm going to call in again on my way back south and hope I get her when she's a bit more with it.'
He stared defiantly at Wield and the others, then it came to him that it wasn't just disapproval he was seeing on their faces.
'What?' he said.
'Bad news,' said Dalziel. 'Or mebbe good, depending how you look at it. After your visit, she died happy. Last night.'
'Ah, shit, you're jossing me? No, you're not, are you? Shit. I really hoped…'
He appeared genuinely distressed.
Novello waited for someone to suggest a break in the interview but all Dalziel said was 'Never fret, lad. Tha's still in good time for the funeral. And now there's the money to make it a good 'un. Sooner we get this sorted, sooner you can start seeing to all that. So let's get on, shall we? Just take it from when you leave Wark House.'
The implication that soon as Slater had told them this, he would be free to go, came close to being an inducement, thought Novello. Not that it mattered. She reckoned she could have told most of the man's story for him anyway.
'I headed on north 'cos that was the way I was pointing,' he began. 'But all the time I was thinking, like you do when you're driving. And what I thought was if Benny had picked up the dosh and taken off, why'd he never tried to contact Gran? I mean, he loved her more than anyone else in the world, right? So what had happened to him? And the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, had it happened to him before or after he got his hands on the money?'
'So you got to wondering if mebbe the box were still where Agnes put it, up in the attic of Neb Cottage,' said Dalziel.
