Bones and Silence

Dalziel exploded, 'Jesus, sir! Have you not twigged yet? Slippery sod like Swain only ever tells the truth when it happens to support his lies! My guess is his missus was long dead when Arnie turned up, mebbe for as much as a couple of days, though if he'd just done her in that night, he must have come close to shitting himself when Stringer started banging on his door! You don't really think he was going to let her take off to the States, do you? And get a quick divorce and dump him out of her will? No, she were dead, and he were still wondering how best to proceed when Arnie turns up with just the same problem. Solving that helps him solve his own!'

Trimble said, 'Let me be quite clear. Are you alleging that Swain had all the subsequent business with Waterson and Beverley King worked out before he killed his wife?'

'No way!' said Dalziel dismissively. 'Swain couldn't plan a school picnic. He just reacts fast to events, that's the trick of him. Thing that puzzles most people about him is how he could settle to being a small-time builder. But ask yourself, what are small-time builders like? They come round, scratch their heads, size up a job, scribble on the back of an envelope, give you a price. They turn up late 'cos some other bugger has asked them to fix a roof or put in a window. They're always coming across unexpected snags because they can never see more than a couple of moves ahead. But they're bloody ingenious at sorting out the snags when they arise, because that's their talent, that's how they survive. They're never going to build you the Taj Mahal, but they can offer a price on a new set of garages that'll get a mean bloody finance committee's mouth watering. Take away Swain's fancy blazers and posh accent and what have you got? A dodgy small-time builder, smart enough to stay one step ahead of the game, but too short-sighted to make the jump into the big-time.'

'Swain's come close to making it,’ objected Trimble.

'No, sir. Topping your missus doesn't rate as business acumen,' said Dalziel in a kindly tone. 'Anyroad, with his family's track record, he'd likely have got through his wife's money in a twelvemonth, so I reckon we're doing him a favour by putting him away.'

'Andy, you haven't yet said anything which fills me with confidence that we are going to put him away, not for long anyway. No, don't say anything. I realize the most serious part of this odd affair is still to come. Where was I? Oh yes. 'In the days immediately following, I was surprised to find I was able to continue with no apparent after-effects. I have since been advised by medical experts that this process of going through the motions of a normal working life is quite usual in cases of severe shock. It took another shock to show me how unbalanced my mental state really was, and unfortunately that revelation, instead of leading me to seek professional aid, merely pushed me into yet another monstrous misjudgement.

''It began three or four days later when I called on Greg Waterson to ask what he intended to do about his unpaid bill. The business had serious cash-flow problems. Gail had signed some cheques to pay our more pressing bills . . .''

'Forgeries!'

'Proof?'

There was none. Naturally none of the payees (including Thackeray) was interested in making a complaint, the account had been wound up and the funds transferred to Swain, and the bank claimed it would be almost impossible to produce the cancelled cheques even if a genuine plaintiff were found.

‘I’ll get proof,' said Dalziel.

'Perhaps,' said Trimble, frowning. 'Let's press on. '. . . bills, but we still needed every penny that was owed us. Waterson reluctantly invited me in, but as I entered the living-room, all thought of money was driven out of my mind. A woman was standing in front of the fireplace with her back to me. She was tall and slim with long blonde hair, and for a second I was sure it was Gail! Then she turned and facially there was no resemblance at all. But the damage had been done. Curiously she didn't seem to register my shock and left the room almost immediately, pushing by me with a brusqueness which in other circumstances I might have thought rude. But Waterson noticed. He asked if I was all right. In reaction I immediately became untypically aggressive in my demands for instant payment of the five thousand pounds he owed the firm. He went into a rigmarole of evasion, but finally under pressure he admitted he didn't have the money. It was as if the flood-gates had opened, for with no further prompting from me, he went on to tell me that he was being blackmailed by the woman I had seen. He said they were having an affair and he'd been foolish enough to supply her with some drugs. Subsequently she had pestered him to get her more and he'd obliged, but eventually he had drawn the line, as it was both expensive and dangerous. Then she had turned nasty, demanding he supplied either the drugs or the money to buy them, on threat that if he didn't she would turn for help to the authorities and expose him as a major supplier. There was some story too of a large consignment which had been lost. I told him he wasn't the only one with money troubles, he made some remark about my rich American wife, and I reacted at first by being very angry, but gradually my anger turned to grief, and suddenly, with no conscious decision, I found myself telling this comparative stranger everything! The trigger, I am sure, had been the sight of the woman I mistook for Gail, but my mental and emotional state must have been like a volcano, which was bound to burst out eventually. Greg Waterson, whatever his other faults, had a most charming and sympathetic manner. I was in desperate need of someone to talk to, and he made the perfect listener. When I explained how I'd felt when I saw the woman I now know to have been Beverley King, he said yes, he'd noticed my reaction and wondered about it. I think it was now that the mad idea began to form in his mind.

''We had a drink and I began to recover a little. I began to talk about going to the police and making a clean breast of everything. In fact it seemed to me as I grew a little more rational that in telling the story to a stranger, I had taken an irreversible step in that direction. But Waterson urged me to think hard about it. He painted a dark picture of the likely official reaction, of a long and nasty investigation, of the high probability of a murder charge. This made me hesitate, but the greatest impediment to confession was my knowledge that I couldn't tell the police my story without implicating poor Arnie.

''And now Waterson, seeing that I was luke-warm in my resolve, began to explore what other explanation I might give for Gail's disappearance. The police would certainly soon discover she'd never got back to America, and immediately they would focus all their interest on me. Also, he pointed out, even if I did convince them I knew nothing of her whereabouts, it could be years before a court would presume her dead, by which time my business could have failed and I might even have been forced to give up Moscow Farm. What I really needed, he said, was some way of getting her death recognized immediately, without implicating myself in it to the extent of possibly invalidating her will.

''And it was now he came out quite baldly with this incredible proposition; that we should contrive to kill Beverley King in such a way that I could get away with identifying her body as Gail's! This way he would be free of her blackmailing threats, she would become a missing person with no prospect of the police ever finding her, and I would be officially a widower with access to my wife's estate.' What was that, Andy?'

'I just said, oh, the clever bugger,' repeated Dalziel with reluctant admiration.

'Waterson?'

'No! Swain. Swapping it all round like that.'