Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

“Of course they don’t bring the area down,” she said soothingly.

I think the evening everything changed was in late September. We were aware the nights had been drawing in and didn’t sit in the conservatory quite so often. Maybe it was even the first of October the night that Mikey came round, his face pale and frightened looking. I took him straight into the conservatory, ignoring the chill.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up? Have a beer. Sit down.”

He grabbed my shoulder. Honest. He looked so bad he was like a dead man walking.

“Party’s over,” he said hoarsely. “Party’s over.” He deliberately shut the door of the conservatory and turned back to face me.

“People have been asking questions,” he said. “About us. About the raid. Missing money. Drugs. Porky Flambard said people was asking round the nick who’d been the arresting officers that night, who’d come into money. Nasty sorts. One of them...” His voice dropped and I bent my head in close. “They said he didn’t speak English. Looked flash. Porky said they was speaking Spanish. It’s the big boys. They’ve come for us .”

“Brazen it out,” I said, sloshing back my beer and trying to ignore the little flutter in my chest. “But maybe we should go easy on the spending. Just for a bit. Make out we’re hard up, eh? Go on about how we’ve overspent on the house and holidays and things.”

He shook his head sadly. “It won’t work,” he said. “Word’s already around. And they’ve...” He could hardly get the next few words out. “Steve.”

I swallowed my Pull yourself together comment.

“They’ve asked Professional Standards Unit to take a look. If they think there’s a sniff of truth in the allegation, we’ll be suspended. Then the Independent Police Complaints Authority will be involved.”

I got my bottle up then. “Guy Whelan was dead,” I snarled, reflecting not for the first time that it seemed a posh name for the little saddo who’d expired at the very moment that we were turning over his filthy little nest. “Don’t go weedin’ out on me now. How can they know what was in that flat. Anyone could have thieved the money. It doesn’t have to be us. They can’t prove anything. Whelan could even have spent it himself. And as for the heroin: He died .” I spoke the words right into his face. “How can anyone be sure he didn’t shoot up the bloody lot?”

His look changed to one of pity. For me. “Maybe we’d have got away with it if we hadn’t been so flash,” he said, his eyes rolling around the room. “But look around you.” His eyes landed on my beloved Casa Finapottery tiger, jaws snarling, glass eyes gleaming. “It’s proper posh. It’s obvious.” With that he walked to the door, pulled it open, and passed straight through it.

I never saw him alive again.

I was on nights that week, Mikey on earlies, so we hardly saw each other, but four nights later when I arrived on my night shift the sergeant pulled me over. “Mike Lorenzo was a pal of yours, wasn’t he?”

I started to say, “Still is as far as I know.” But instead I stared at him. “Was?” I queried. “What do you mean was ?”

The sergeant put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Steve,” he said awkwardly, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this but...” I could hear that his mouth was dry. His tongue was sticking to his palate. I waited, feeling my shoulders brace. “He was stabbed this morning.”

I heard the words but nothing went in. It was as though they had been spoken in another language. Then I heard my own voice speaking the same language. “What happened?” I begged. “Tell me what happened?”

“He was on the beat, in a shopping centre. It was an unprovoked attack. He was stabbed. Right through the heart.”

I didn’t like this. “Did you get the bloke?”

“Melted away in the crowd.” There was something odd, evasive even, in the sergeant’s manner. I waited.

“Thing is,” he said, “there’s something else. It looked like Mike was the target. The constable he’d been on the beat with said he’d noticed the guy hanging around a couple of days before.”

He stood there, chewing his lip, and I walked out.

I walked the streets, thinking. Remembering. Mikey and me had done our cadetting together. We’d been chums. And now?

I went round to his house. There was loads of cars outside. As I watched, a van drew up and they started filming. It would be a cause célébre, I knew. Unprovoked stabbing of a policeman?

Caron herself opened the door and stared at me steadily before speaking. “I didn’t know everything about you and Mikey,” she said in a low voice, “but I knew for sure that you both suddenly got awful lucky on the lottery.” She gave a wry smile as though it was a joke. But I can tell you I wished very heartily that we had got our money from the lottery. We might have kept our lives then.

“Someone did for him,” she said. “He was frightened for weeks before they got him. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t concentrate. He’d sit up in the chair nights on end. He even talked about getting a gun. He knew they were coming, but they still got him,” she said, “and they’ll get you, too.”

She closed the door gently in my face. It felt like the lid of a coffin coming down on me.

I pulled myself together and went home.

I’d never before realised what a very clever person my wife was. Aileen was quiet, as I have said. But inside her head she could think up ideas so clever, so imaginative, that I used to say she should have been a writer.

You see, there was nothing I could do except come clean. I told her it all, about the drugs raid, the money, the drugs Mikey had flogged. She looked around at the affluence of our house and said nothing. But I could tell she was thinking. Really hard. Really really hard. I could tell by the way her lips went pencil thin. And determined. And her eyes went sort of spikey looking.

Then she reached over and touched my hand. It was the most loving and kindly of gestures. I could almost have cried. “I’ve benefited from all this wealth,” she said quietly. “The clothes, the meals out, the holidays, the jaunts, and most of all this house.”

I tried to make some sort of suitable response, but she carried on talking. “Therefore I have a responsibility, too,” she said. “I have an idea.”

And that was the beginning of it.

I knew as well as she did that it all hinged on identification. Aileen made some pretty good points, the first being that the druggies would not be satisfied with simply going for Mike, that they would, certainly, come for me. I was as good as a dead man. The second being that as my next of kin she would be the one to identify my “corpse,” and the third and most important point being that one of our nutty neighbours was roughly the same height and build as me. A bit paunchier but tall. She even had the clever idea of applying for a passport in his name. No need to forge one for me to make my escape and don’t tell me he’d ever been abroad. She befriended him, found out his name, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, and his birthday to get a birth certificate. We applied to have one within the week.

I daresay the inhabitants of Number Seven often went AWOL so no problems there. No one was going to come looking for him !

Tidy him up, hair cut, my wallet in his pocket, and lastly, his battered body being found in my house. Like Aileen, I decided it was worth the risk.

After all — what choice did I have?

I didn’t go back to work but took compassionate leave. I used the time wisely. Within a week, the precious document was in my hand.