The Old Silent

The air, Melrose thought, should have been redolent with the smell of Buster, given the cat had been there for twenty-four hours.

'Go home,' Abby said again, in that same atonal voice.

Ethel tossed down what was left of her sandwich and got up, haughtily, as if to say it made no odds to her whether she stayed or went. But as she pushed her sleeves into her coat on her way to the barn door, she issued one parting shot.

'And if there's no heaven and we just turn into vapors, then just where's your mother, I'd like to know!'

Abby's eyes were turned to the old beams of the roof. 'With Ricky Nelson.'

Part Two. THE KING OF SUMMERTIME 18

Lost cause was a term that never applied to any case Brian Macalvie was working on; it often extended to the people working under him, however.

Often, but not always. The female voice Jury heard coming from the forensics lab at the end of the corridor belonged to Gilly Thwaite, Macalvie's Scene-of-Crimes officer.

When Macalvie saw Jury appear at the open door, he motioned him in with an impatient wave of his hand as if Jury were an overdue referee.

Not that Macalvie needed one; he was standing in his usual posture, hands pushed in trouser pockets and shoving back the raincoat he seemed never to remove, and chewing gum at a rate roughly equivalent to the fast- talking Gilly Thwaite. Across the lab table she leaned into him. like a heavy wind.

Jury sat down in a white enamel folding chair and tipped it back, watching Macalvie stand there like the tree that wouldn't be uprooted. She was trying to face him down about fingerprints, or the lack of them, in the case they were working on.

'… no partials, no latents, only elimination. For the sixth damn time. Nothing!' Her big black-rimmed glasses took over half of her small, triangular face like goggles.

Gilly Thwaite was more than usually edgy, thought Jury. She was smart enough to know that what Macalvie's co-workers thought of as the chief superintendent's 'arrogance' was better described as his simple confidence that he was right ninety percent of the time-which he was. Macalvie allowed a margin for error or natural disasters: flooding of the River Dart, the collapse of Exeter Cathedral, the disappearance of the Devon-Cornwall coast, or worse-information withheld from him. This was why Gilly Thwaite was being defensive, Jury knew. She suspected that Macalvie was going to pull the rug out.

'The toilet seat, Gilly? I mean under the toilet seat. Even a bastard that could shove an old guy's skull in can be very fastidious about-'

'Yes! Under, over, inside the tank…' She came close to slapping him with the folder she fanned in front of his face; Macalvie brushed it away as if it were a mosquito. 'Look, you seem to forget I'm notyour print expert-'

'Be grateful for small blessings, Gilly,' said Macalvie round the cigarette he was lighting. 'Let's get to the call box on the corner. At thirteen-five a call was made to that number. At thirteen-ten the old guy was killed-'

'Two call boxes, Superintendent, two.' She held up two fingers directly in front of her chief's eyes.

Macalvie's expression didn't change, so she finally dropped her hand. 'I'm talking about the only one this villain could have called from and got to that house in four minutes.' He shrugged. 'But if you insist on two possibilities, it's still the same thing, it'd just take a little longer.'

'Those call boxes were dusted for prints; do you think between the whole team we don't have at least one brain… I take that back.' It was hard to make Gilly Thwaite's face flush, but Jury saw the blood rising along the neck.

'Either of them credit-card phones? Phone-card phones?'

Wiggins, who had been scrutinizing a row of phials on one of the tables for either cures or diseases, looked over at the two.

'Regular call boxes.' Gilly Thwaite pretended to be shrugging this off because she knew it was important and she'd missed something. Jury could almost see her mind racing, sprinting round the course trying at least to keep abreast, if not ahead, of Macalvie's nag.

He stood there chewing gum while she didn't answer. 'You thought of calling Telecom?' He tapped ash into his hand. 'Probably make their day, a couple crowbars, an axe or two…'

She stood there frowning, saying nothing.

'Think about it.' He looked at his watch as if he were timing her, then started toward the door.

'Why do you have to play with your people's minds, Macalvie?'

They were on their way down the corridor to his office.

'To find out if they've got any. She's one of the few who does. What's wrong, Wiggins?'

Sergeant Wiggins was looking decidedly puzzled as he slowly unwrapped a tin of Sucrets. 'What? Oh, nothing. Nothing.'

The office was cold because Macalvie always kept a window open whatever the season. Since he never seemed to remove his coat-he was out more than in-the cold didn't bother him. Jury was surprised to see the window festooned with scraggly blue and brassy-orange tinsel, the sad remains of the passing season. The late sun reflected and refracted it on Macalvie's copper hair and when he turned, sparked his intensely blue eyes. God did the lighting for Macalvie.

He had plunked himself into his swivel chair at a desk full of ashtrays, folders, and coffee mugs that could have gone to the lab; amidst this buildup of what Jury imagined was the residue of old cases that Macalvie refused to close and therefore to let anyone file, he pulled out a folder it would have taken his secretary a week to find.

Wiggins hunched down in his heavily lined raincoat and looked unhappily at the open window. He pulled his thick gloves from his pocket and put them on, staring at Macalvie. Hint-wise, it wasn't of much use; Macalvie could never understand disturbances of the body so long as the mind was in first gear.

Jury hadn't bothered taking off his coat, either, and hadn't bothered sitting down because he was too busy staring at the photos Macalvie had spread out, facing Jury. 'What's this, Macalvie?'

'Pictures.' Macalvie reached down into his file drawer, stuck a pint of Glenfiddich on the table with some paper cups, leaned back, and propped his feet on the desk top. 'Photos of remains. A boy and his dog.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Look at the photos. They buried the dog, too.'

Jury's head came up. 'I'm not one of your team, Brian. You don't have to wait for me to catch up with you. If you're talking about Billy Healey, he was never found, and Toby Holt was killed by a lorry. This isn't Dunstable races, and I don't care if I win, place, or show. I just want to show up with something when the chips are down-'

'The chips are always down. Have a drink.' He started pouring small measures into cone-shaped cups.

Wiggins, who ordinarily looked at liquor the same way he looked at lizards, actually drank his down neat, choked, pulled out his lozenge tin.

'No, thanks,' said Jury, waving away the drink. Leaning on the divisional commander's desk, his hands splayed, he said levelly, 'Listen to me: you're a chief superintendent, a divisional commander, not Sam Spade-you even call your secretary 'Effie'-and you act like Joe Cairo and the Fat Man are going to come walking through a bead curtain. You run a department, Macalvie; you're not Spade or Marlowe. So stop pulling cards out from behind your ear, okay?'

Wiggins quickly pulled out his charcoal biscuits, anodyne for anything-digestion, anger-and shoved one toward Jury. Jury took it without thinking, stuck half in his mouth, and chewed the dreadful thing. No wonder Wiggins was almost always sick if this is what he thought would cure him.