Gavin Lyall - Judas Country

'More coffee?' But just then a uniformed cop escorted Mitzi back in and looked blankly around the rest of us. 'Mister… mister Caviti?'

Ken got up. 'Ready and willing.'

'Please to come…'

Mitzi had sat down at Nina's table. I went over, didn't sit. 'Just want to say how very sorry I am, Miss Spohr. If there's anything I can do…'

She looked pale but dry-eyed; enclosed and introspective rather than openly sorrowing. She didn't look at me. 'Yes, please. If you can move my room.'

I nodded. 'Yes, of course.' The cops would be trampling around up there for probably hours yet. I went across to Kapotas and the Sergeant to arrange it, and after a bit of discussion we shifted her one down and a bit forward to 227, so she wouldn't be under the old rooms.

Then Kapotas asked: 'And what shall I tell Harborne, Gough, in London?'

'Whatever the police decide. What else can you say? People die in hotels all the time; it's nothing new.'

'But I must tell them what he was.'

'A Professor – whatever that means in Austria – and a mediaeval archaeologist.'

'But you knew him.' Slightly accusing.

'Only met him this afternoon. It was Ken who knew him; they met in jail in…' From Sergeant Papa's expression I realised my mistake; I'd never mentioned that angle to Kapotas before, and he hadn't the Sergeant's eye for spotting these things.

'In jail?' he hissed. 'Both of them?' He stared around wildly. 'My God, now I'm running a brotheland a prisoner's aid society! Why don't we set up roulette wheels in the kitchen and sell marijuana at the desk? Or is that something else you forgot to tell me about?' And he glared at the Sergeant.

Papa stiffened and said with dignity: 'There are no drugs in this hotel while I am hall porter.'

That's a small consolation, then,' Kapotas said bitterly, then looked at me. 'And I supposeyou wouldn't be…' Then he stopped because he'd remembered just what we'd discovered Ihad been doing. 'Oh God, I need a drink. And I don't care if it's after dinner or before breakfast! ' And he headed for the bar.

Papa said calmly: 'He has not got the nerves to be a hotel manager.'

'He never expected to be one. And there must be hotels where it's easier.'

'Not much. Even the best hotels cannot really pick their guests; they can only keep out some who they know to cause trouble.'

'I suppose so…' After that, we just sat in weary silence until a uniformed cop brought Ken back in and beckoned me up. Ken's expression was just on the contemptuous side of blank-ness, but I wasn't allowed to have a word with him.

After anhour and a half of Lazaros's interrogations, the atmosphere in 105 would have stopped flying at any airport in the world. The Inspector himself was still sitting on the same place on the bed, only now with two ashtrays crammed full of butts, some still smouldering. If he lost his job with CID, with his sense of smell he'd no chance of remustering as a police dog.

'Sit down, please, Captain.'

'Just mister.' I sat carefully on a sagging woven-cane chair, and he turned the pages of his notebook, sprinkling ash around an already grey patch on the counterpane.

'Did you know the Professor had been in jail?'

'I'd been told.'

'You did not tell me.'

'From me it would have been just hearsay. I knew somebody else would tell you."

He looked up Wearily. 'So you know something about the law and the courts?"

'A pilot my age is bound to. The air's got more laws than aeroplanes in it, these days.'

He seemed to accept that. 'Did you see the gun?'

I nodded.

'You have a good stomach. It made my sergeant sick.' It had taken a little finding: it had been in the bath itself, just about below the head.

'Same answer: a pilot my age has seen some messy accidents.'

He bought that, too. 'Gunshot suicide… it is always too easy to arrange. And with the gun in all that blood, the fingerprints are gone. Why would it be in the bath, almost behind him?'

I pointed my right hand at my teeth. 'He sticks the gun in his mouth. The recoil blows it out again. If it stays in his hand for a moment, then it could swing his whole arm in an arc, right round to the side.' I swung my arm and clouted my knuckles on the next chair.'Buggerii. So it hits the edge of the bath, the gunfalls inside, slides down to where it was. His arm flops back by his side. If I'd been faking a suicide, I'd've put the gun in a more obvious place. Anyway, can't you test his hand for powder marks?'

'It is being done.' He groped around on the bed and found a crumpled pack of cigarettes, then lit one from the stub of his last and found a parking place for that in one of the ashtrays. 'But whose gun could it be?'

'Doesn't the licence tell you?'

'I assume that is a joke.'

'In Israel he had a gun – so I'm told. That's what got him the year.'

He made a note. 'But his daughter said he had no gun now.'

I shrugged. 'Maybe she didn't know. Anyway, would she admit knowledge of a criminal offence?'

He nodded sagely; the question hadn't been too serious. 'And tomorrow all the relatives from Vienna will fly in and be very excited, and half of them will want me to prove it was murder because suicide is not respectable and the other half will prefer suicide because murder is not respectable, either.'

I grinned briefly. 'So can't you make it an accident? – while cleaning a gun?'

'He was licking the dirt out of the barrel, perhaps?'

'It's been done before. Isn't that how Ernest Hemingway died – according to the record?'

'I believe so,' he said gloomily. 'And people still compare national suicide rates. So – why did he kill himself?'

'Since when has guesswork been admissible evidence?'

'We are not in court, we are in a third-rate hotel bedroom and wishing very much we were home in bed.' His voice had a sudden edge to it. Then he paused, sighed, and joggled the loose flesh around his jaw as if he were trying to rub some life back into it. 'Perhaps I want it to be murder and I could solve it. and become promoted. Suicide promotes nobody; there is nobody to blame except the world. What made him kill himself?'

'He was insane.'

He nodded. "That is one of the best arguments in a circle that even you English have invented. Why did he kill himself?

'Because the balance of his mind was disturbed. How do we know it was disturbed? – Because he killed himself. Inquest closed. But why was he unbalanced?'

I took a pipe and peered at the crusted ash in it, but then lit it anyway. My tongue already felt like a new-laid tarmac road, so a few more puffs couldn't hurt. 'He'd spent a year in jail. Jn that time his wife might have walked out on him-'

'His wife died five years ago.'

'All right, but he could have gone broke, lost his academic status… anything.'

He tilted his head and looked at me with rather worn curiosity. 'I find that our files have already heard of Professor Spohr. His academic status is… somewhat past. Mostly he spends his time discovering relics and selling them, usually illegally.'

Cyprus is one of the touchiest places about the export of antiquities; the airport is plastered with notices forbidding it. I shrugged again. 'He obviously didn't belong to the jail-going classes, so just being inside might have shaken him up. But he could live through the year because he'd always got something to look forward to: getting out. And then he gets out and finds it's all flat and grey and no hope of that improving, so… bang.'

'That is good," he said admiringly. 'That is very sensitive and understanding. What did he talk to Mr Caviti about this afternoon?'

I almost blew it – little though I knew anyway. With the rambling, late-night chatter and then the flattery, he'd done a nice job of easing me off balance for the important question. If I'd had less experience with coppers who were even bigger bastards, I'd probably have babbled of green fields. As it was- I looked uninterested and shook my head. 'I dunno. I think it was just a booze-up with an old cell-mate. Anyway, Ken didn't tell me anything.' And I knew Ken hadn't told him anything, either. Drunk or sober, Ken's distrust of the Law was in far better training than mine.