feared there wasn’t enough to be portioned out among the three of them (Cyril, Fiona, Jury), seemed to swell like a balloon.
The ladder which Racer was climbing had been furnished by one of the maintenance crew who had asked if he wanted a picture hung and would he like maintenance to do it?
“No!” Racer said, as if he meant to nullify the entire visible world in the manner of John Ruskin. Abashed, the maintenance man had left. (Jury had missed this opening chapter in the cat fracas; Fiona had reported it in fulsome detail.)
Racer had been positioning the ladder against the wall, climbing up and looking in the small well made to accommodate the recessed lighting, a well that could also accommodate cat-sized objects. There was a row of tiny lights just beneath the ceiling around all the walls. The lights were hidden by a strip of molding (cat height, if the cat was lying down).
As Racer looked right and left up there, Jury did not bother telling him that Cyril could easily slip right round the corner and be hidden by the recess on the other wall that Racer had given the all-clear to. Enjoying life immensely on this Monday morning, relieved of his Sunday depression for a while, Jury looked up, not at the recessed lighting but at the ceiling fixture, an iron rod ending in two light bulbs which were covered by a chic copper shade, inverted like a large bowl. This was a perfect place for a cat-nap, as Jury was bearing witness to, if that bit of paw over the edge was any proof.
Racer descended the ladder, disgusted. His back was to the paw. “I’m setting the trap again.” He dusted his hands. “The next time that bloody ball of mange appears will be the
The caramel-colored paw drew in. Nap disturbed. Jury sighed, envious of such sangfroid.
Dragging the ladder, Racer went to the outer office, picked up the phone when it rang on Fiona’s desk and barked into it. Cyril sat up in the copper shade, measuring distances. He was so fast and so agile that had he been a villain, police never would have caught him. As if auditioning for the Royal Ballet, Cyril leaped, a graceful curve in air to make a four-point landing on Racer’s desk. While Racer barked, Cyril washed. Then hearing the phone slam down, and other microscopic moves and sounds that announced the chief superintendent’s return, Cyril streaked off the desk and oozed underneath it.
“The hell with it,” said Racer. “Here. Open this and set that trap.” Racer sent a tin of sardines sailing to his desk in an arc. Then, in a matador move Cyril would have appreciated, Racer swirled his coat from the rack and around his shoulders. “Oh, Wiggins wants you,” he said to Jury, tilting his head toward the phone. “That was him.” He walked out, calling “lunch” over his shoulder.
Cyril squirmed out from beneath the desk, and, from a sitting position, made another four-point landing atop the desk. He moved over to the can of sardines.
Jury walked through the door of his own office, laughing.
“Sir-” Wiggins began.
“You missed it, Wiggins, too bad.”
“Sir, you just got a call-”
Wiping a few tears of laughter away, he said, “A call about what?”
“A shooting. It was from that DCI Haggerty you went to see.” Wiggins looked at his tablet. “The name will be familiar to you, he said. A Simon Croft. He’s been shot; he’s dead.”
A cold breeze fought its way past the shuddering windowpanes and touched Jury’s face. He felt thrust into the midst of events he could not control. What the source of this feeling was he didn’t know.
“You know him, sir? I mean this Croft person, the victim?”
Jury nodded. It was easier than explaining. “Where did he call from?”
“Croft’s house. It’s in the City, big house on the Thames. Here.” Wiggins ripped the page from his notebook. “He said he’d like you to come if you possibly can.”
Jury looked at the notes. “There’s a problem I’m helping him with. I’ll go. You have the number so that you can reach me?”
Wiggins nodded. Jury left.
Ten
A few people were still hanging about, wide-eyed and thrilled, on the other side of the yellow crime scene tape, watching the police van slide out of the forecourt of the Croft house and make its way, signals flashing, along the Embankment.
Jury thought Simon Croft must have had quite a bit of money to live in this large house backing onto the Thames. Behind the house was a short pier jutting out over the river; fifty or sixty feet beyond it was a boat, anchored. How had the owner ever got the London Port Authority to permit a private boat to anchor there? The Thames was still a working river, after all. The boat looked as if it were drifting there in a gray mist.
Mickey Haggerty waited in what Jury supposed was the library, considering the books and the dark wood paneling. Bookshelves lined the walls, except for the wall behind the table, in which a bow window looked out over the river. Jury could see the boat through this window. There was a large walnut writing table inset with dark-green leather. Simon Croft’s body had fallen forward across this green leather. Blood had pooled on the desk, dripped down onto the floor beside his chair. His left arm was reaching out and beside his hand lay a 9mm automatic.
“It was the cook who found Croft when she came this morning-” Mickey had come up beside him and was flipping over a page in his notebook “-at ten A.M. I’ll tell you…”
But whatever it was remained untold; Mickey just shook his head. Jury said, “You look tired out, Mickey.”
“It’s the bloody medication.”
Jury put his hand on Mickey’s shoulder; he looked pale and exhausted.
Mickey shoved the handkerchief he’d used to wipe his forehead back in his pocket. “I got the call an hour ago. His cook rang the station. Mrs. MacLeish.”
“Where is she now?”
“At the station, answering some questions. She wanted to get away from here. She’s really the Tynedale cook, but comes over here to cook for Croft a couple of days each week.”
“Croft lived here alone?”
Mickey nodded. “He was a broker, very successful. Had his own small-what’s called boutique-firm. One of the few that didn’t get swallowed up by the banks in the eighties. Croft stayed independent. Smart man. He was writing a book about the Second World War. I think he was using the Blue Last as a symbol for the loss of the real Britain, which ‘real’ I think he equated with ale and beer. A slow erosion of the British spirit.”
Jury smiled. “That’s always been the sentimental view.”
“How cynical. Listen, I want a word with the doctor.”
This person had been talking to one of the crime scene officers. Mickey asked him how soon he could do the autopsy.
“Late this afternoon or tomorrow morning, early.”
“Early? I’d appreciate that.”
The doctor smiled fractionally. What Jury remembered about the way Mickey worked was that he never pushed people already pushed to the limit for favors. He often got favors as a consequence.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” said the doctor. “He died somewhere between midnight and four or five A.M.; the rigor’s fairly well established. Body temp and room temp don’t suggest anything delayed or sped up the decomposition. Still, you know how hard it is to fix the time of death. I’ll know better when I do the autopsy. And of course you know it’s no suicide. Whoever tried to make it look like one knows sod all about ballistics.”
“I figured. Thanks.” He nodded to the doctor. Then he said to Jury, “According to this Mrs. MacLeish, Croft was working on a book. He had a laptop and a manuscript and also a card index, notes for the book, which she said was always sitting on the desk. The manuscript sat on that table by the printer.” He paused. “Don’t printers have memory? Anyway, someone, presumably the shooter, nicked all that stuff. At the moment, that’s all I know that was taken.”
