Gillian Galbraith - Where The Shadow Falls

‘Fat lot of use I’ll be, I’m sure, but on you go.’

He extracted a flask from his pocket and poured a tot of whisky into his milky coffee, sniffing the unappetising mix before taking a loud gulp from it.

‘I was wondering, sir, when did you get your new car?’

The major looked deeply affronted. ‘I really don’t see what that has to do with anything, Sergeant. I’m more than happy to assist you but I don’t want our time wasted. Sandra needs to hoover in here, you know, it’s her invariable routine.’

It struck Alice, not for the first time, that the man seemed unnaturally detached from the murder investigation being pursued round about him. His own brother was the victim, but, for all the concern he showed, it could have been a tadpole killed rather than his own flesh and blood. The man’s co-operation, she decided, was no longer optional.

‘If you would prefer it, sir, we could easily move this talk to St Leonards? No problem there with housework,’ she smiled, with her mouth only, not her eyes.

‘No, no. Carry on…’ he shifted in his chair uneasily. ‘Just thinking of the wife, you understand.’

‘The new car?’ she reminded him.

‘I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago, probably.’

‘And what did you do with the old one?’

‘Sold it.’ He nodded his head sagely.

‘Which garage did you sell it to?’

‘Er… no garage, actually.’

‘No? How did you sell it then?’ Not that old chestnut, surely. A sale over a pint in a pub to a stranger.

‘On the street. You know, with a sign in the back. Car for sale, telephone number, etc.’

‘And were you paid by cheque?’

‘No, of course not! From a complete stranger? Wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.’

‘Cash, then. I expect you put it in the bank.’ The Major shook his head emphatically. ‘Hardly worth it, we only got a couple of hundred anyway.’

‘Presumably, you got the buyer’s name, you know, for registration purposes?’ He shook his head again.

‘Scrap. No names, no pack drill.’

‘Well, perhaps you could give me its registration number?’

‘’Fraid I never remember that kind of thing… a type of dyslexia, I expect. Gave them all the papers too.’

‘Could you remind me, sir, of the make of the car and its colour?’

‘Naturally. It was a Volkswagen. A Volkswagen Polo, whitish, cream-coloured. More my wife’s toy really.’

Mrs Freeman came into the room, Hoover trailing behind her, and sat on the padded arm of her husband’s chair, smiled encouragingly at him and casually rested an arm around his neck. They fitted well together; both past their prime, ordinary, comfortable, leaning thigh against shoulder, touching each other. Seeing a loose hair on her husband’s collar she picked it off, tossing it into the empty fireplace.

Alice’s phone went and she was relieved. The call would, whatever its actual content, provide a pretext for her to leave. She did not intend to interview the Major in the company of his wife. She wanted them kept apart when spoken to in order to minimise the leakage of information from one to the other. In fact, DCI Bell was calling to bring her back to the station, and she was pleased that she could leave with an honest excuse.

Having asked to use their loo, she was shown into a cramped, windowless cubby hole off the kitchen, the noise from the over-size fan deafening any occupant, obscuring any unwanted sound effects. The place had been done up as a gentleman’s convenience to Mrs Freeman’s specification, cream paint, smutty prints on the wall and a few ancient copies of the Shooting Times cobwebbed onto the cistern. Passing her hosts’ bedroom and seeing the major’s ivory hair brushes on a dressing-table, on impulse, she dashed in and speedily combed through one of them with her fingers, gathering together a good crop of grey hair from its bristles.

‘I said there was some kind of gay connection in all this, didn’t I?’ DC Lowe said excitedly, slamming down the telephone receiver.

‘Yes, you did,’ Alice conceded.

‘Well, the boss says we’re to go to see that Georgie boy again, Sarge. Great, eh?’

‘What are you going on about, Kevin?’

Her patience was at a low ebb, weeks of overwork taking its toll.

‘Sarge, we’ve to go back to the bookstore or whatever. We’ve to find that guy. He’s been at it again, bragging in the pub and all. Only this time he’s talking about Mr Lyon, like he knew him too or something. He’s been mouthing off about the big house and the man’s sister. Stuff he couldn’t know unless he’d been seeing Lyon himself.’

‘Fine,’ Alice said and, briefly, closed her eyes. For days the squad had been treated to an intermittent dialogue between Eric Manson and Kevin Lowe, speculating, piling one shaky supposition on another, all founded on the simple premise that two gays could never be monogamous, faithful, like good, old married heterosexuals. Sex would hold the key to this case. Georgie would be implicated in it one way or another. Sometimes their conversation centred on the investigation, often it roamed free, covering subjects as diverse, and complex, as human nature and normality, usually wrapped up in a few heated minutes.

On this matter, an unexpected meeting of minds had occurred. One, Alice thought ruefully, informed by inexperience and the other by prejudice. And all the vilified ‘political correctness’ courses in the world could not make up for their lack of grey matter. Only yesterday she had listened as Alistair Watt, exasperated into participation, challenged their joint conclusion that a side effect of ‘gayness’ was promiscuity. Casanova, Don Juan, Alan Clark, Hugh Hefner had not all been gay, he had suggested-promiscuity incarnate tended if anything to be resolutely heterosexual. Yes, Eric Manson had countered, undeterred, but they have a choice. Gays don’t. They are constitutionally incapable of fidelity. Undisguised laughter had greeted this new thesis, and Alice having dismissed it, enquired whether her two colleagues would then condemn, as they appeared to do, other unchangeable genetic traits such as left-handedness and whether, perhaps, having a choice and still being unfaithful could be viewed as more culpable. DC Lowe had asked her to repeat that one, then observed that his girlfriend’s cousin was a gayboy and actually seemed quite nice. Good at football, too.

A mousy assistant in the bookshop re-directed the Police officers to Georgie’s lair in Cumberland Street, a basement flat on the humbler, east side of the street. Having descended the stone steps to the front door they entered, finding themselves serenaded by Dusty Springfield’s smoky tones, belting out ‘Preacher Man’.

The kitchen table was covered in punnets of loganberries, and the man pulled out chairs for them, all the while explaining that he was having a dinner party that evening and had a mass of de-husking to do. Favouring them with one of his brightest smiles, he declared that he would continue with his task while they spoke, if that was all right with them. They both nodded, dazzled by the smile’s warmth into immediate, unthinking assent.

‘Mr De Thuy…’ Alice began, but she was instantly corrected.

‘Georgie, please. I’m always known as Georgie, by everyone. Everyone. I prefer it.’

‘Well, Georgie,’ she tried again, accustoming herself to its informality and feeling, unaccountably, that her professional status was diminished by its use, ‘I hear that you’ve been saying, at the Boar’s Head, that you knew Nicholas Lyon.’