Martha Grimes: The Old Silent

The cabinet was fitted with doors easily opened by hitching a finger (or paw) in the handle. Unfortunately, Racer would walk by occasionally and kick the door shut. He had commissioned Fiona to get a lock and key, grumbling (Fiona'd told Jury) about the char being at the booze bin again. ("That's what he calls it, imagine? Common, ain't it?" she'd added, tossing down her nail file and picking up the buffer.)

Inside the cabinet were two or three bottles each of Remy, Tanqueray, Black Bush and aged Scotch, fallen off backs of vans (according to Fiona): gifts from villains that Racer had done little favors for. There was a miniature replica of a beer keg with a spout and a small cup for catching the whiskey. Right at eye level, if you were a cat. Cyril often wandered from the inner to the outer office in a weaving, wondering way.

"He'll get sick," Fiona had said after one of the booze bin jaunts.

"Cyril? You know he's only doing it to drive Racer crazy."

"Maybe he should have a liver test."

"If you want my opinion," said Fiona, nodding toward her beloved (now sick) superintendent, "a couple of weeks off-"

"No, I do not want your opinion, Miss Clingmore. I cannot recall the last time-if ever there was one-that I wanted your opinion." He was still twirling his thumbs, looking from his secretary to his superintendent with that got you both on the run, haven't I ? expression.

Fiona pursed her bright red lips and said, hefting the pile of papers, "So you want me to shred this lot, I expect." She quietly chewed her gum and regarded him, poker-faced.

Racer's already alcohol-mottled face flushed a rosier red. " Shred ? I do not shred papers."

"No? What about all them-those-letters to the commissioner last year. You surely didn't tell me to file-"

"Take those papers and your jeweled talons," (Fiona was deeply into nail art) "out of here. And see if that cat's roaming the halls and walking across the forensics lab tables. Do you hear me ?"

With the weight of the papers, she still managed an indifferent shrug. "Well, I still say anyone that's not had sick leave in fifteen years deserves more consideration." Turning to go, she added, "I'll just take these to the shredder." Fiona exited to the tiny tinkle of glass on glass.

Wiggins was still holding a copy of Time Out in one hand and with the other pouring a dollop of vinegar into a glass of water to which he then added a spoonful of honey.

Jury just shook his head. That Wiggins had got to the point where he could measure his medications without even looking up from his reading was proof of a practiced hand indeed. "I'm not talking Fisherman's Friends and charcoal biscuits, I'm talking sick , Wiggins." Jury was yanking open the drawer of a filing cabinet. "The real thing, official sickdom, sicko, down-for-the-count." Jury took one of the forms from the drawer on his sergeant's desk. "Something only a week or two in the country can fix. The damned things have enough copies, don't they?" Jury fingered the multicolored form.

Wiggins stopped tapping his honeyed spoon against the glass and looked from Time Out to the form to Jury, frowning. "I don't understand, sir."

"Two weeks off, flat on my back. More or less." Jury scratched his head over the wording of a question. When was this illness first evidenced ? He felt like answering, My first meeting with Chief Superintendent A. E. Racer… . He glanced over at Wiggins's desk. The sergeant was slightly pale. It was, Jury supposed, one thing to be medicating oneself for a sore throat with honey and vinegar while still at one's desk; it was quite another to have illness stamped with the imprimatur of officialdom.

Jury scratched away, half-conscious of the sergeant's rather ragged breathing. Practicing for the doctor himself, perhaps? He looked up; Wiggins was looking at Jury sadly. Across the corner of the entertainment magazine he held was a banner saying, The Last Wind Blows . Whatever that meant. The cover showed the face of a young man, head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open. Round his neck was a strap holding a sleek white guitar. Across the picture of the guitarist was written SIROCCO , the white cursive letters streaming across the cover as if wind were blowing the letters away. "I need a different climate. Warm. Sand, sea, warm breezes."

Wiggins said, "My doctor suggested just that a while back. A year or two ago."

Jury smiled at the fact that now Wiggins sounded somewhat envious. " What are you putting down, sir? Not that you don't need time off-"

Jury nodded toward the magazine. "Or Time Out. Nervous collapse, how about that? He certainly looks as if he might have one."

Wiggins flipped the magazine over, looked at the cover, said, "Well, apparently he thinks he is. 'The Last Wind Blows.' It's his last concert."

"Whose?" Jury looked up. Where had he seen the face?

"Charlie Raine's. He's lead guitarist for this rock group, Sirocco. Surely you've heard of them."

That was it. Posters tacked up around London. "Last concert ? God, he looks like he just started his last form in public school."

"A shame, isn't it?"

Jury penned in another answer to another inane question. "A publicity stunt, more likely."

"I don't know, sir. Actually, when you think of it, success is pretty hard on a person."

Putting aside his pen, Jury said, "We should know."

"What sea and what sands are you going to?" His smile was like the last tiny sliver of waning moon.

"Yorkshire."

The magazine fell to the desk; the pen dropped. They had been across the North Yorkshire moors years ago. It was not the high point in Sergeant Wiggins's career.

" West Yorkshire, Wiggins. Wanner."

Wiggins gave him a sickly smile.

Jury rose, stretched, and got out a cigarette. He went round to Wiggins's desk and added, looking down at the picture of the young singer, "And maybe awhile in Cornwall. Don't you have a day or two of leave coming up?" Jury nodded at the form. "Why don't you take it?"

Wiggins took fright momentarily. "I expect you could call that sea and sand," he said with an unusual turn of mild humor.

Jury lit a cigarette, looked at the face on Time Out .

"Heathrow was flooded with fans. They had enough police for a terrorist attack. Carole-anne was probably there," said Wiggins.

"Living Hell seems to be her group."

"Oh, that's hard to believe. They're passe."

Sergeant Wiggins often surprised him with a knowledge of unusual or arcane subjects, totally unrelated to his work.

"She's been poring over maps and timetables for a week now in her spare time."

"Is she taking a trip, then? I'll miss her."

Wiggins could move quickly from speculation to a fait accompli . And then, Jury realized, so could he. He shoved the form to one side, drumming his fingers impatiently. "What about the Devon-Cornwall constabulary? What did Superintendent-what was his name?"

"Goodall, sir. He's passed away, sir." Wiggins looked into his glass as if it were the funeral wine. "Last year it was. I got a chief detective inspector, though."

"What did he say?"

Wiggins took a large swallow from his glass of honey-vinegar elixir before answering. "Nothing very helpful; he seemed reluctant to go into it. That it had been over eight years, after all. Couldn't dredge up the details off the top of his mind."

"No one's asking for the top of his mind." Jury leaned back, looked up at the ceiling molding. A spider was swinging precariously from a thread of its broken web. "They must have a fairly thick dossier on that kidnapping; even I remembered the essentials, and I wasn't in Cornwall. Couldn't he take the trouble to have one of his lackeys open the files?"