Peter Lovesey: Bloodhounds

"He said they were written for people with sick minds."

"That is over the top," agreed Diamond, regardless that Jones himself had a mind that was sick and over the top. "Practically everyone has read Bond. I have. What did he mean?"

Julie murmured, "The violence."

Diamond said, "It's all very tame by today's standards, isn't it?"

"I doubt if Milo Motion has read anything written in the last thirty years," said Jones.

"So you took your revenge on Milo?"

"Yes, and you don't know how it was done."

"Don't I?" said Diamond, his own ego challenged. "Don't I?"

"Let's hear it, then," Jones sneered.

He heard it from Diamond, point for point. The extra padlock from Foxton's. The switch while Milo was aboard the boat, enabling Jones to unlock it later.

The deflating of Gilbert Jones was satisfying to behold. "All right, you worked it out," he eventually conceded, "but not one of them could."

"I'm sure you're right. Your planning can't be faulted. It would have been a perfect crime if Sid Towers hadn't got curious and driven out to the boatyard just as you were replacing the original padlock."

Jones didn't deny it. He said, "I didn't mean to kill him. I mean, I hit him from behind, but I only wanted to make my getaway. He hadn't seen me. If he'd survived, you would have been none the wiser."

"And Rupert?" said Diamond, leaping ahead. "Why was he killed? He hadn't insulted your brainpower. He wasn't even a member when you joined the Bloodhounds."

This was the crux of it. Sid's death may not have been planned, but Rupert's was. Stringing a man from a bridge isn't accidental.

Jones was silent for some time. Then he shook his head. "You've got to see it my way. You were closing in. I was worried. It was only a matter of time before you got round to me unless I did something dramatic to put you off. I'd be up for manslaughter at the very least. Maybe murder. I needed someone to take the heat off me. First I thought of Jessica Shaw. She's clever. Clever enough to have written the riddles. And she was holding a party at the art gallery. I decided a message on the window would get some attention. If nothing else, it would create a distraction."

"And buy time?"

"Well, yes. But I needed someone else to be blamed for writing up the graffiti. Rupert Darby."

"Why Rupert? He hadn't even crossed your path."

"That's exactly the point," said Jones with the pitiless logic that had sentenced Rupert to death. "He was a stranger to me."

"You marked him with the paint spray," said Diamond. "You'd never met him, but he was easy to recognize with the beret."

"And it struck me then that Darby was a better choice than Jessica. And if he committed suicide, or appeared to-"

"You mean, if you were to murder him."

Jones didn't balk at the mention of murder. It was secondary to his plan. His locked room crime was the proof of his brilliance in the face of the Bloodhounds, the police, his workmates, all the people who had ever slighted him. It had to remain undetected, regardless of the consequences. The killing of two hapless men had been incidental. What mattered was that he succeeded. Murderers of his kind are rare, but they exist; they lose all sense of proportion and nothing is allowed to thwart them.