The Old Silent

Macalvie sat wide-eyed, feigning wonder… feigning concern… just feigning. 'You through?'

Jury swallowed, choked, and reached for the paper cup Macalvie was taking up. He took a drink and said, 'I can only assume, since you didn't tell me anything, and since I'm here on the Nell Healey business, that somehow you've discovered the boy's body. How, I don't know.'

Macalvie looked surprised. 'How? I just kept on searching, Jury.' Why wouldn't any cop do the same? his expression asked.

Jury scanned the police photographs of skeletal remains, human and what appeared to be animal, taken from all angles, first lying in the grave, later carefully removed and placed on the ground, out of it. 'Nell Healey doesn't appear to know you've found anything.'

Macalvie took his feet off the desk, made a neat stack of the photos and replaced them in the brown envelope, which he handed to Jury. 'You want to tell her, Jury?'

Wiggins coughed, sucked his lozenge noisily, and looked from the one to the other. Macalvie was out of his chair, jamming a tweed cap on his head. 'Especially since you don't know the whole story? Come on; we're going to Cornwall.'

Wiggins shoved his lozenge under his tongue, and said, 'Well, it'd help if you told us the story.' He sneezed. 'Sir.'

Jury smiled. 'Be sure you leave the window open, Macalvie. You never know when He might call you to fly out of it.'

The window shut with a bang that splintered the old paint at the corners. 'You guys are a treat.'

They passed the desk of Macalvie's secretary, whose eyes were bent on an embroidery hoop. 'Will I see you again?' she asked, sucking a finger that she seemed to have stabbed with the needle at her boss's appearance. 'Or should I just leave up the decorations till next Christmas?' Her face, as chisled as a square-cut diamond, turned to the ceiling molding, round which were festooned more dull and dusty strands of tinsel. 'Sergeant Thwaite called to say Telecom is having your service at home disconnected.'

Macalvie's cap was pulled down somewhere in the region of his nose. 'I don't have a home; I don't have an office; I don't need a secretary. So long, Effie.'

She seemed to be considering this, as one hand left the hoop to scratch almost meditatively, like a cat, under one armpit. 'Then can I take down that bloody tinsel and moth-eaten wreath?'

Jury smiled at her. 'We could all do with a bit of glitter.' He looked at the faded gold loopings and smiled even more broadly. 'I take it the decorations aren't your idea.'

The hoop was forgotten, lying on her typewriter, a decades-old IBM. Her smile was as wide as the wreath. 'His. Every year, he wants the damned stuff up.'

Wiggins made a sound between a giggle and a sneeze as Macalvie's coat disappeared round the door.

Jane leaned her square chin on her equally square fingernails. 'And every year he gives me the same present.'

'Bath salts,' said Jury, solemnly.

'Bath salts,' said Jane with an added touch of glamour in her smile. 'Crabtree and Evelyn.'

'Good-bye, Jane.'

She brought her fingers to her palm a couple of times in a good-bye wave.

19

'That's okay, Wiggins, I'll drive,' said Macalvie as Wiggins was quickly trying to capture the driver's seat.

Jury got in the passenger's side while Wiggins stowed himself into the rear seat and appeared to be offering up a prayer.

Macalvie twisted round and said, 'We can take the A-thirty-eight, but the shortcut across Dartmoor's better. No traffic.'

Obviously recalling an earlier drive through sheets of rain and hemmed in by stone walls (no stone of which Macalvie had left unturned), Wiggins brought out his big gun: the vaporizer.

Macalvie gave Wiggins a look of disgust. Jury nodded at the road ahead. 'Take the A-thirty-eight.'

Macalvie shrugged, tore away from the curb.

When they hit the roundabout, a black Lamborghini with a woman driver dripping jewels and a fox fur cut him off, gave him a finger, and took the car up to ninety as she sped onto the motorway.

'Lady, lady,' sighed Macalvie. He yanked the blue light out and shoved it on top of the Ford.

'Brian we're going to Cornwall. You're not-' Jury was tossed against the back of his seat as Macalvie jammed the pedal down.

'Following her, we'll get there a hell of a lot faster.' He smiled broadly.

Wiggins had a coughing fit and Jury just shook his head as the Ford closed in on the Lamborghini. 'You're not a traffic cop, for Christ's sakes.'

'So what? There's never one around when you need one.' The Lamborghini finally pulled over. Macalvie braked on the shoulder, got out a ticket book that he kept stashed in the glove box, and said, 'This won't take long.'

Macalvie, Jury knew, loved being a copper. The possibilities were endless.

Looking through the rear windscreen, Wiggins said, 'Do you think he might have been a deprived child, sir?'

'No.' Jury was blowing on his hands. 'But his parents were.'

'There's one old Lambo won't be hitting the highways for six months.' He whistled and drifted out into the traffic.

An hour later, they were flying by a brightly lit Little Chef that Wiggins eyed longingly, as if the wind stirred up by the traffic was wafting the aroma of plaice and chips and beans on toast down the motorway through the driver's open window.

Macalvie had been giving Jury the details of the scene, eight years ago, in the house on the Cornwall coast. They were the same details, but Macalvie liked to get everything right at least twice before he moved on. 'You should have heard them, Jury-Healey and Citrine-when she refused to pay up. I thought Roger Healey was going to take the poker and let her have it. Daddy wasn't quite so violent, but it looked like a cardiac arrest was imminent. 'Are you insane, Nell? He's my son!or 'My dear God, you've got to. He's like my own grandson.' No one seemed to think Billy Healey was her anything.'

Macalvie was trying to honk an old charabanc out of the fast lane, but it kept on rattling right along. Through its dirt-smeared rear window, Jury made out a group of people who looked to be in some sort of costume. Finally, the Ford pulled into the inside lane and Macalvie slowed down, hunching over to have a look. A wide, white banner on the side of the old bus announced the Twyford English Country Dancers. They seemed to be singing; they were certainly clapping in time to something, and sounded drunk as lords.

'I think maybe they got an elephant driving.'

The elephant smiled down at the Ford and raised his plastic cup.

'Oh, hell,' said Jury.

The blue light went back up on the hood. 'You want that horse's arse out here on the highway, Jury? No wonder old people are always getting clobbered on zebra crossings. It's probably your effing C.I.D. running them down.' He shouted at the charabanc and waved it to the next exit.

'You must admit, sir,' Wiggins said to Jury, as they careened to a halt in the car park, 'Mr. Macalvie's right. Can't have this sort of thing on the roads.'

The sergeant smiled up at a blue neon sign missing one of its letters: CAF.

To Jury none of the riders looked a day under eighty as they spilled out of the bus, still singing, still clapping, still boozing.