I wadded up the kitchen towel and applied vinegar to my abraded hands — noticing in the process that the palms were still itching insanely. Edgar and Arthur bated at the intense, pungent smell, but they were usually present when Pen did her witchy conjurations, so they were used to worse. Coldwood, meanwhile, had finally turned to Matt who was still hovering uneasily by the doorway. He gave him a perfunctory handshake.
‘Pleased to meet you, father,’ he said. ‘You’re the oldest, right?’
‘Just Matt,’ said Matt. ‘I’m three years older than Felix, yes.’
‘And where did this evening walk of yours take you, besides the Salisbury Estate?’
Matt thought about this for a long moment. ‘Nowhere else,’ he said at last. ‘I met Felix there. I was already passing — walking — I was in the area. I heard the sound of a fight and intervened.’
‘A fight?’ Coldwood’s expression of exaggerated surprise was straight out of the silent movies. ‘You found Fix involved in a fight? And him so peaceable? No wonder he looks like an elephant wiped its arse with him.’
I dropped the vinegar-soaked kitchen towel onto the table and went for the brandy bottle again, but Pen intercepted me, grabbing hold of my wrists and turning them over so she could view the damage. ‘How do they feel?’ she asked.
‘Painful,’ I said. ‘And mildly pickled.’
‘I’ll make you a sulphur poultice later,’ she promised.
‘Maybe I’ll get lucky and die from gangrene.’
Pretending to be offended, Pen released my wrists and made a gesture that told me I was divorced from her mercy and goodwill. I took the opportunity to pour myself some more liquor. ‘Tell me about the lab data, Gary,’ I said. ‘Have you got any better idea of what happened in that car?’
Coldwood grimaced and didn’t answer. I refreshed his glass and pushed it across the table towards him.
‘Two men,’ I prompted. ‘One of them was Kenny. The other one wasn’t me.’
‘Two men,’ Coldwood agreed, picking up the glass and taking a solid swig. ‘Two men
‘Do we know whether it belonged to Kenny or one of these other guys?’
He shook his head. ‘No idea. But if it belonged to one of the killers — I mean, the assailants — then he definitely used it mainly for shaving.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that anyone who knew how to handle a malky wouldn’t have made such a frigging dog’s breakfast of it. To look at the wounds, you’d think Seddon had been done over with a potato peeler. And then switched to a tin- opener for the actual kill. Sorry, father.’
Matt did look a little pale and introspective. He’d sat down at last, on the huge wooden chest in the corner, as far removed from these discussions as he could get. He swallowed audibly. I was going to tell him where the bathroom was, forestalling any further degradation of Pen’s already grimy carpet, but Gary was still talking and I didn’t want to interrupt in case it was hard to get him started again. ‘We’ve got some fibres,’ he said, ‘from the other guys’ clothes. No footprints, though. The car was parked on a slope, with the bias towards the driver’s side. Easy enough to bypass the blood if you go in and out by the passenger door. But with the fingerprints and the other bits and pieces, there’s no margin for error.’
‘So we’ll know these guys when we find them,’ I summarised.
‘Which
‘Basquiat is—?’ I echoed. This wasn’t good news. ‘When did that happen?’
He shrugged. ‘As soon as we hauled you in for questioning. You heard me backing off on that. Basquiat thinks the conflict of interest is deep enough to be fundamental, and she was prepared to bring the DCI in. She’s not seeing you as the chief suspect, but she wants to be free to go wherever this takes her. She told me not to get in her way.’
‘And you took that?’ I was incredulous.
‘Yeah. I did.’ Coldwood’s tone was harsh. ‘Because she’s right. Look at it from her point of view — which the DCI is bound to share if he’s got half a brain. If you are involved somehow, then she knows you’ll try to play me. And if it’s anyone else then the big question at trial will be why we didn’t go after you properly out of the gate. We’ll look about as bent as a nine-bob note, and razor-boy will walk on a technicality. Either way I’m a defence lawyer’s wet dream. So there you go. I’m still dancing but Ruth is leading. And that — before you ask — is the other reason I came here tonight: because I thought you ought to know. The weather’s going to get colder.’
I mulled that unpalatable fact over for a moment or two: brandy didn’t sweeten it.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the warning. Listen, Gary, you’re already digging into Kenny’s past, presumably. Any leads there? You know what happened to his wife and kid, right?’
‘Common-law wife,’ Coldwood corrected me. ‘She’s MIA. Walked out on him a year or so back, according to the neighbours. The son belonged to her, not to him, and he’s dead. We’re still getting the details.’
‘Would that include calling up the autopsy report?’ I asked.
Coldwood shrugged and raised his eyes to Heaven.
‘Could I get a copy of that?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Fix!’
‘All right, all right. No harm in asking. What do you make of the other wounds on Kenny’s arms? The older ones?’
‘Botched suicide attempt? Wouldn’t be too surprising, would it? When you think about what he’s been through . . .’
‘I think he might have been self-harming,’ I said.
Coldwood stared at me.
‘Why do you think that?’ he asked.
‘Because I — sorry, because whoever broke into the flat found a hurt-kit in the bedroom. Not the boy’s bedroom. Kenny’s.’
‘We already went over that room.’
I blew out my cheeks. ‘Yeah, but I bet you did it politely. It isn’t a crime scene, and Kenny isn’t a suspect. I almost missed it myself.’
‘You keep defaulting back to that first-person stuff, Fix,’ Gary pointed out testily. ‘Work on it. So are you saying that Seddon—?’
Matt stood up abruptly. ‘I am finding all this talk . . . unnerving,’ he confessed. ‘I think I might leave now. I’m teaching at a seminary in Cheam and I have a very full day tomorrow. If you don’t mind–’
‘I do mind,’ I said firmly. ‘Come on, Matt, we haven’t seen each other in, what, must be a year and a half. And I bet you hear a lot worse in the confessional.’
‘Well, I was leaving anyway,’ Gary said, putting his empty glass down. ‘I’ve got to be on my feet again in four hours. Mind how you go, Fix. And keep your fingers crossed that the floating-pronoun burglar didn’t leave too many prints behind him in Seddon’s gaff. Even my C2s can’t be relied on to miss everything that’s under their noses. I’ll tell them to take another stroll around that bedroom.’
He thanked Pen for the booze and hospitality and let himself out. And then there were three.
‘So how are you doing, Matt?’ Pen asked my brother. ‘I didn’t know you were teaching now.’
‘For six years,’ Matt said, killing that line of conversation stone-dead. Pen was only trying to be nice because the last time Matt had come visiting she’d hit him in the nose with a tea-tray. It hadn’t been in the course of a theological debate, either, although that wouldn’t have been much of a surprise: Pen takes her spirituality pretty seriously.
But I hadn’t insisted on Matty staying behind so that we could discuss the good of his soul. It was something else that was bugging me, and I needed an answer now.
‘We’ll see you in the morning, Pen,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘We’ve got some things we need to go over in private.’
‘Take the bottle,’ Pen suggested. I lifted it, started to say thanks and noticed it was empty. She was just making a point, in her own inimitable way. ‘I’ll get another in the morning,’ I promised.
‘Just pay me some rent,’ she riposted, stroking Arthur the raven’s glossy back.
