Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

It was funny, his lack of bravado. He had to have planned the murder. The gun wouldn’t have just been sitting in the study waiting for him to use it. He would have had to buy it from some black marketeer, weigh it in his hand, practice with it a few times, setting up a target in some deserted place, and then wait for his opportunity. Strange, then, that he should be so distraught after the event.

But that wasn’t evidence. You had to concentrate on the facts and follow them where they led, and this was a fairly simple case: Stephen Cade had been caught red-handed. Most of the work had seemed to involve filling in endless forms, tapping away on the old Remington typewriter that had seen better days even before it became the property of the Oxfordshire Police. Still, it had been a privilege to work with Trave, and Adam Clayton hoped he’d have the chance to do so again. Trave was something of a legend in the local force. He was very good at his job. Everyone agreed about that. He got results, but he did not inspire affection. He had no nickname, and no one seemed to have ever visited his house. Trave’s fellow officers knew where his lines were, and they took care not to cross them. He was a loner, and perhaps this was why he had not achieved promotion above the rank he’d held for the last fifteen years.

But Clayton had seen another side of Trave. It was standard practice for two policemen to attend autopsies, and Clayton had been picked to accompany Trave to the Cade postmortem. He’d thought he was prepared for the experience but had found to his shame that he wasn’t. He’d felt violently sick even before the first incision and had been unable to conceal his distress. Trave hadn’t wasted time asking him if he was all right. He’d just told the pathologist to wait, taken Clayton by the arm, and walked him out into the air. They’d crossed the road to a pub where Trave had ordered two whiskies and then waited for the younger man to regain his composure. And after that it had been all right. Not great, but all right. With Trave’s help, he’d got through it.

Clayton half wished that Trave was with him now, but Trave had already given his evidence at the start of the trial, and so there was no reason for him to be in the witness waiting room. It was an airless place on the fourth floor of the courthouse with a row of small grimy windows above head height, which let in precious little light. Clayton sat at a Formica table with his back to the door, trying to distract himself with a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mail.

“Mind if I join you?” Bert Blake, the police photographer, sat down opposite Clayton without waiting for an answer to his question. Some of the coffee from his Styrofoam cup spilled onto the table as he settled his large bulk into the chair, but he made no move to clear it up even when it began to drip down onto the floor between them.

Clayton groaned inwardly. Blake was a gossip. Always ferreting out information and then passing it on to people he hardly knew. He was a lonely man and gossip made him feel important, even though his indiscretions had already got Blake into serious trouble on several occasions. He was kept on because he was one of the best at what he did. His photographs left nothing to the imagination.

“When are you on?” asked Blake. His coffee was hot, and he spoke in between noisy sips.

“I don’t know. They said it wasn’t likely before this afternoon.”

“Which means tomorrow,” said Blake, with the knowledgeable air of someone who spent a good part of his working life lazing around in courthouse cafeterias waiting to give evidence.

“Do you think so?” Clayton was unable to keep the anxiety out of his voice, and Blake was quick to pick up on it.

“Is this your first time here?” he asked.

“No.”

Surprisingly, Blake seemed to accept the lie and transferred his attention to a bar of half-melted chocolate that he had extracted from the pocket of his crumpled suit jacket. Clayton watched mesmerised as Blake slowly separated the runny brown chocolate from its purple wrapping, and he didn’t notice Ritter and his wife come through the door behind him and sit at a table in the corner.

“Why do you say tomorrow?” Clayton repeated.

“Well, they’ve got the brother in there now-you know, the one with the funny name.” Blake stopped and scratched his head as he made a vain search through the junkyard of his memory.

“Silas. Silas Cade,” said Clayton.

“That’s right. Silas. Well, I wouldn’t mind betting that he’s going to take some time.”

“Why?” asked Clayton, curious in spite of himself.

“You know what I’m talking about. Your lot found some pictures in his room, which I’d be proud of. Naughty pictures. Taken with a telephoto lens.”

“Who told you that?”

“A friend of a friend,” said Blake mysteriously. He swallowed the piece of chocolate that he had just fitted into the corner of his mouth, and then leant forward conspiratorially toward Clayton.

“Did you see them?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t search the rooms on that side of the house.”

“But you heard about them, didn’t you?” asked Blake with a leer.

“I heard that there were some photographs found but that they were returned to Mr. Cade because they weren’t relevant.”

The photographer’s sudden proximity repelled Clayton. He pulled his chair away from the table and raised his voice instead of lowering it as he answered Blake’s question. He wanted to keep Blake from coming any closer, but instead he succeeded in drawing everybody in the room into their conversation.

In the corner Ritter noticed the sudden alertness in his wife. She had been listening with a bowed head as he gave her a few last-minute reminders on how she was to give her evidence, and he had begun to be irritated as usual by the way in which she continually entwined her arms and hands. But now she became motionless, listening intently to the conversation between the big man in the dirty suit and the young policeman whom Ritter recognised from the night of the murder.

Blake was aware of the interest he’d aroused, and he seemed to enjoy the attention almost as much as he did Clayton’s discomfort.

“They may not have been relevant,” he said. “But they were certainly revealing. I can tell you that much. Slippery Silas must have had a tripod set up in the woods with the camera fixed on that girl’s bathroom, trying to catch her getting out of the shower before she drew the curtains. That was his game.”

In the corner, Jeanne Ritter blushed crimson. She was no longer a girl, but still she had no doubt that the fat man was talking about her. It all made sense. Silas avoided her because he was frightened of Ritter, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. He was watching her through his camera the entire time. She glanced up and met her husband’s gaze for a moment, and then turned away. She could see his brain working, and it scared her. She didn’t know what he would do if he ever found out about Silas.

Clayton saw none of this. He was fully occupied by his own embarrassment and remained completely unaware that two of the most important witnesses in the case were sitting only a few feet behind him. Hoping that his obvious lack of interest would stem the flood of Blake’s revelations, Clayton picked up his newspaper and turned a page, but his clumsy attempt at a rebuff had the opposite effect of what he intended. Blake became even more voluble than before.

“He’s obviously a pervert. Most of these amateur photographers are,” said Blake, who obviously thought of himself as a model professional.

“I thought he had a shop,” said Clayton, returning to the conversation reluctantly.

“Oh, yes. In some street off Cowley Road. It’s probably just a front for him to sell dirty pictures under the counter.”