Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

“Oh, yes. Poor Benny.” He looked up; a quick realisation. “I suppose if you’re right it means she was right.”

“Yes.” But Barnaby felt neither self-reproach nor guilt. No policeman would have attempted to overturn a properly obtained coroner’s verdict on absolutely no evidence. “The night Mr. Brinkley died—”

“God. Do we have to?”

“Can you tell me exactly what happened from the time you arrived?”

“I…went into the war room.”

“The what?”

“It’s a huge space where his machines were kept. He was lying on the floor close to a giant catapult thing. There’s a sort of gulley overhead holding sling shot, great wooden things, heavy as cannon balls. It was hanging loose and one of them had rolled out and struck him on the head.”

“Only one?”

“One was enough.”

They must have been set to be released singly. Although Barnaby had seen photographs they had been taken purely to establish the physical details of the scene. He would have a closer look at the equipment when SOCO were through.

“Can you tell me exactly what you did from the time you arrived at the house until the moment you left?”

Mallory went through it, sick at heart. These men didn’t know what they were asking. The big one kept interrupting – which telephone did he use to call the ambulance? Did he leave the room and come back at any time? Did he touch or move the body at all? Why did he wash the wooden ball? Then the thinner, younger one asked why he cleaned up the mess.

“Christ!” At this point Mallory’s ability to remain calm was lost. Provoked into anger at their insensitivity, at their persistence, at the fact that they were just damn well there, he shouted: “What d’you expect me to do with brains and blood and vomit all over the floor? Leave it for his cleaner?”

Troy wrote down “cleaner” and asked for her name. Barnaby continued his questioning.

“Have you been back to the house since, Mr. Lawson?”

“No.”

“Does anyone else have keys?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“What about this domestic?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“Doris? Oh, yes. I suppose she does.”

Mallory rested his head in his hands. His fury was evaporating as quickly as it had flared. These people had a job to do. If Dennis really had been deliberately killed he was the last person to be uncooperative.

“We shall need your fingerprints, Mr. Lawson, for purposes of elimination.”

“Fine.”

“So, if you could come down to the station as soon as possible? Please bring the shoes you were wearing—”

“They were badly stained.” He gestured, pushing the memory from him. Pursing his mouth in disgust. “I threw them away.”

Understandable, in an innocent man. Even more in a guilty one. And it was more common than was generally known for the first person on the scene, or the one who reported the crime actually to be the perpetrator.

Barnaby decided this would be a good time to imply that the interrogation was over. He struggled up from the nursing chair.

“Well, I think that’s about it, Mr. Lawson.” But he got nothing in the way of feedback. No sudden slackening of physical tension. Or relieved exhalation of breath. The man simply looked knackered. Maybe it really was time to call a halt. For now. “But while I’m here I also need to talk to Mrs. Lawson. And Miss Frayle.”

“They’re in Causton. Benny had an appointment at Hargreaves, the solicitors.”

“D’you know what that was about, sir?” asked Sergeant Troy.

“No I don’t,” retorted Mallory. “And it’s her business. Not yours.”

“Are they perhaps Mr. Brinkley’s solicitors?” asked Barnaby.

“So?”

“Maybe if they were that ‘close,’” said Troy, a leer in his voice, “she’s mentioned in his will.”

“They were platonic friends who cared deeply for each other.” Mallory looked disgustedly at both men but hit on Troy for his next remark. “No doubt that’s totally beyond your comprehension.”

Barnaby decided against the Horse and Hounds for lunch. True, there was a chance of picking up some local gossip, but it was slight. Much more likely to end up trapped within earshot of someone boring for England. Or be exposed to an endless loop of musical sound bites: nothing longer than sixty seconds and guaranteed tune free. So he settled for the only alternative.

They were offered a window table at the Secret Garden. The very table, in fact, that the DCI’s daughter and her husband had occupied over a week earlier. Barnaby scanned the menu. Sergeant Troy, who would much rather have gone to the pub, moodily regarded a vase of plastic freesias.

“They’ve got liver and bacon.”

“Right.”

“D’you want a look?”

“No. That’ll do. And some chips.”

“Fried potatoes.”

“Whatever.”

There would have been a bit of life in the Horse and Hounds. A laugh and a joke. Maybe a pool table. Something on the telly. Then, having sighed over this collection of absent delights, Troy was left with the thing that was really bugging him, i.e., just who did this bloke, this Mallory Lawson, think he was? And what sort of name was Mallory anyway? Who’d ever heard of it? Troy certainly hadn’t. Probably a “family” name. A wanking public-school name going all the way back to William the bonking Conqueror. Who didn’t go back to him? That’s what Troy wanted to know. Everybody comes from somewhere. Just because you hadn’t got your bit of paper with a seal on. Or your relatives crumbling under old church slabs.

“No doubt that’s beyond your comprehension.” Troy repeated the remark, the patronising remark, in his mind for the umpteenth time. He always boasted that he didn’t give a fairy’s fart what anyone thought of him, a claim so transparently untrue that even Talisa Leanne saw through it. But he couldn’t seem to put this insult from his mind. To a man who wanted more than anything in the world to be admired for his capabilities and intelligence to be told he was an insensitive cretin was a blow too far. And to his face as well.

“I should put that fork down.”

“What?”

“Before you snap the handle off.”

Troy flung his cutlery on to the cloth and began to shore up his defences. He recalled hearing that people who needed to put other people down were hopelessly insecure and decided it was definitely true. What other reason could they have? It was just a pity there were so many out there.

Though the woman who slapped their lunch on the table had a face like a squeezed lemon the food itself was delicious. Crisp rashers of bacon, nicely fried liver and fresh garden peas. All on station expenses too. Troy’s spirits began to rise.

“So. Are we back to the Frayle woman’s flat after this, Chief?”

“I want to see how SOCO are getting on first.”

“Bit of luck – no one else going in since Brinkley died.”

“We’ve only Lawson’s word for that.”

“Think he’s in the frame, then?”

“Hard to say, at this stage.”

“Have we got time for a pud?”

Thirty contented minutes later Troy followed the DCI into the village street. His heart was further gladdened by the sight of Abby Rose Carter on a house-to-house. The man she was questioning looked as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt. Troy smiled, waved, then realised he was walking on by himself. He turned back.

The chief was standing in front of a shabby building made of shingles. It had a rusty tin roof and was practically encircled by old yew trees.

“Blimey,” said Sergeant Troy. “Talk about lowering the tone.”

“This is it.” Barnaby read the noticeboard. “The Church of the Near at Hand.”

“Creepy.” Troy had a wander round. “There’s a window broken back here.”