door. The pounding went on. Where was Atkins? But the man with the knife had come from Atkins’s doorway, so where had Atkins been then?
‘Sergeant,’ he managed to croak. His voice was expressionless. He was still covered in snow. Like being his own ghost.
Outside, the policeman was shouting, then blowing his whistle. Denton pushed with his right hand and the little table on which the derringer rested toppled over. Denton rolled himself off the chair. He lay on the floor, then pulled himself to his knees, up to a crouch to shamble towards the door. A huge effort to open it, then beyond it the stairs down; he held on to the banister with both hands but still fell halfway and wound up sitting at the bottom. He crawled to the door and opened it.
The policeman’s face was terrified, then enraged. Another whistle was sounding somewhere. Denton tried to speak.
Chapter Eight
It was morning.
‘How is Atkins?’
‘He’s had his head bashed in.’ Detective Sergeant Guillam looked angry, apparently his normal expression. He glared at Denton with what seemed to be disgust. ‘Didn’t the constables even come into the house with you?’
Denton moved his head from side to side. He felt as if he’d ploughed a forty-acre field. ‘I didn’t ask them to.’
‘It isn’t your business to ask them! They’re supposed to use their bloody heads!’
It was a little after eight in the morning. Atkins had been carried away to a hospital before daybreak; since then, the place had swarmed with police. Two of them were posted now, one in front and one in the back garden, through which, presumably, the man with the knife had escaped — classic closing of the door after the horse was gone. The window by the stairs, all its glass broken out except for sharp triangles along the frame, was hung with a blanket until the glazier arrived.
‘You didn’t see his whole face either time. He smelled. You say he looked frightened — what the hell does that mean?’
‘He was sweating. His eyes were frightened.’
‘Of what? You were there in your drug stupor; what’d he to be frightened of?’ Guillam was a Puritan, Denton decided; ‘drug stupor’ was a deliberately outrageous moral statement. ‘Why didn’t he kill you if he had the chance?’
‘The gun went off.’
Guillam glanced at the hole the bullet had made in the plaster. ‘You’re a brilliant marksman,’ he muttered.
‘I want my gun back.’ The local detective had made off with it before Guillam had got there.
‘You’ll get it back, you’ll get it back. You’re going to get into trouble, having guns about.’ Guillam was grumpy: it was early; he had been got out of bed to take the case. Without Atkins in the house, nobody was offering him even tea.
Denton used his good hand to point towards the pantry. ‘There’s an alcohol stove in there. Water. You could make us tea.’ His throat was sore, his mouth dry. ‘All of us.’
‘That where he attacked you the first time, is it?’ Guillam lumbered down the room and looked. He still had his bowler and his overcoat on. It was raining again; the smell of wet wool had come in with him. A certain amount of banging from the pantry indicated he was trying to make tea. He cursed. While the kettle heated, he pulled the now wet blanket aside and looked out of the broken window. ‘Probably cut himself,’ he said. ‘Not enough to matter, I suppose.’ He came towards Denton, looking at this and that in the room, sizing it up. ‘You sure it was the same man both times?’
‘Yes.’
‘No burglar stays inside once he’s been seen. He skedaddles, he does.’
‘Not a burglar.’
‘I know he’s not a burglar! Judas Priest.’ He had his hands deep in his coat pockets, dragging his shoulders down. ‘You think it’s
‘Him?’
‘You know who I mean! Don’t get cute.’ He went past Denton, looked at the books beyond the fireplace, took one down and riffled its pages. ‘Because of your Mulcahy.’
‘
‘Well, nobody else’s claiming him. You think it’s the man killed the Minter girl, you do. Hooked up somehow through your Mulcahy. Well, I won’t have it. Anyway, Willey’s got his Cape Coloured in custody; they’ll move to a charge as soon as he gets a confession. You look disappointed, Mr Denton. Myself, I’m happy with a nigger sailor.’
‘Don’t use the word “nigger” in my house.’
‘This is a police investigation! I’ll use any bloody word I want! What’re you, the society for the improvement of bloody Africa?’
‘I heard enough of that talk during the war. Cork it, Guillam — I mean it.’ Denton stared him down; Guillam shrugged and looked away. Denton said, ‘Find Mulcahy. He can tell you at least whether the murderer was a black man or not.’
Guillam put the book back and turned on Denton. ‘Very cute of you to spy out that peephole in the girl’s room. Terrifically cute of you not to tell me about it yesterday.’ He loomed above Denton. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the peephole yesterday?’
‘You would have made some joke about Sherlock Holmes.’ Denton pulled his blanket closer; he was in the green armchair again. ‘If Mulcahy was behind that peephole when the girl was killed, you’ve got a witness, you know.’
‘I have to be told about the peephole by Munro, who’s got a bee up his arse because he fell off his own roof and isn’t in CID any more, and he’s just delighted to know something that I don’t! Well, it was well done, and my congratulations to you, Mr Denton!’ Guillam took his hat off and made a deep bow. ‘Brilliant, brilliant! The coppers look like idiots again, and the amateur sleuth finds the clue!’
‘Go suck eggs.’
‘Don’t you talk to me like that! I’ll put your arse on the floor as soon as look at you!’
‘Well, do it while I have one arm in a sling; it’s your best chance.’
Guillam stared at him and burst out laughing. He went back up the room shaking his head, and two minutes later he came out with a pot of tea and two cups without saucers. ‘Sugar’s coming.’ He went to the window and called something down, and a minute later one of the policemen came up. By then, Guillam was laying out more cups and the sugar bowl and some vaguely suspicious-looking milk.
‘Yesterday’s milk,’ Denton said.
‘Smells all right. Oh, hell!’ Guillam had poured some into his tea, and apparently it had separated. ‘Forget the bloody milk.’ He muttered to the constable to take a cup down to his pal and get a move on, and then he brought his own cup and lowered himself to the hassock near Denton’s feet.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it that the bastard was so determined to kill you that he came back, and I don’t like it that it’s you, with your interfering and your nose into everything. Nothing personal, Denton, but you’re not a helpful part of the landscape.’
‘I didn’t invite him to come and try to kill me.’
‘Put an advert in the newspapers, did you, trying to reach your Mulcahy?’
‘I did not.’
‘“If R. Mulcahy will reply to this address, he will hear something to his advantage”? None of that? It would
