Philip Kerr - January Window

‘I heard an almighty clang as he hit something on his way down, but when I looked out of the window I couldn’t even see him. But it had to be near enough sixty or seventy feet to the ground. And it was immediately obvious that he couldn’t have survived a fall like that. At the time that’s what I told myself, anyway. Because I panicked and ran away. I got home and thought about it and I was on the point of calling the police to explain what had happened when it said on the news that he’d been murdered. And then I lost my nerve to say anything. But for that I think I would have handed myself in. Really I would. I’m not a murderer, Mr Manson. As I said before, I liked the man. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘I understand that, Mr Cruikshank.’

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he asked Louise.

‘That’s not for me to say, sir,’ she said.

‘But what I find a little harder to understand,’ I said, ‘is why you broke into Silvertown Dock and dug a grave for Zarco in the centre of my pitch and left his photograph in it. That really wasn’t very nice at all; and hardly an accident. You want me to tell you how I know about that as well? Unfortunately you left some tools behind, Mr Cruikshank. One of them had the initials LCC on the handle. For a while I thought that meant London County Council, the forerunner of the Greater London Council. But that all seems a long time ago, even for a spade. Then I saw the name of Mr Zarco’s builders on the mural next door: the Lambton Construction Company. I was actually speaking to one of the workmen the other day and he told me they’d had some tools stolen. That was you as well, wasn’t it?’

Cruikshank nodded. ‘It was meant to be a sort of poetic justice, if you like,’ he said. ‘I just wanted him to know what it was like to suffer the kind of disruption we’d suffered here: to have someone turn your whole life upside down. Frankly I was amazed when you managed to repair the pitch as quickly as you did.’

‘Was that your idea?’ I asked. ‘Digging a hole in the pitch? Or was it your wife’s?’

I looked at the woman with folded arms who was now staring so angrily at the curtains her eyes might have set them on fire. For the first time since meeting her I had a clear sense of the hatred that lay within this woman.

‘How about it, Mrs Cruikshank? You helped him, didn’t you? I can’t think of any other reason your husband would have bothered nicking two spades from next door. For all I know you may have meant the blame to fall on some of those poor Romanian guys.’

She said nothing.

‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mr Cruikshank,’ I said. ‘I think it’s very noble of you to try to shoulder the whole blame for all of this. You have my sympathy; I did something rather similar myself once. But it doesn’t do any good, you know. Speaking for myself now I think it just made things worse.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Manson,’ he said.

‘Yes you do. You see, according to the turnstile computers at Silvertown Dock, the two tickets Zarco gave you for Saturday’s match were both used. Somehow I don’t see Mr Van de Merwe walking all the way to the match. Not with that leg of his. Or somehow Mrs Van de Merwe. Which means you were there, too, weren’t you, Mariella? You were in suite 123 with Zarco and your husband. To help with the negotiations.’

At this point in the proceedings her silence was eloquent enough.

‘Yes, I thought so. You know, I’ll bet it was you who had the presence of mind to close the window and put the three coffee cups in the dishwasher. A woman’s touch? Or was it just to make sure it looked like neither of you were ever there?’

The woman turned from the curtains and looked at me with distaste. She wasn’t bad-looking at all, I thought; fit-looking, too. As if she went to the gym a lot. The thin cotton singlet she was wearing afforded me a good impression of what her upper body looked like: strong shoulders, powerful biceps and well-defined nipples. But it wasn’t until the moment when she leaned across the sofa to pick up her cardigan and put it on that I guessed what must have really happened in suite 123 at Silvertown Dock.

‘You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?’ she sneered. ‘But you can’t actually prove any of this.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘You’re flying by the seat of your pants, Mr Manson.’

‘In fact,’ I continued, ‘I don’t think it was you who pushed João Zarco out of the window at all, Mr Cruikshank.’

‘As if we haven’t endured enough already with all this fucking building work next door. What gives you the right to come here and ruin our lives like this?’

‘I think it was your wife who pushed Zarco out of the window, Mr Cruikshank. Wasn’t it, Mrs Cruikshank? Probably when Zarco called you a bitch.’

‘John? Don’t say another word. Not without a lawyer present. Do you hear?’

‘That’s what cadela means, isn’t it? You see, I speak a little bit of Portuguese, too. And while I can easily see why he would have called you a cunt, Mr Cruikshank, I really can’t see that he would have called you a bitch as well. Not when Mariella here was in the room.’

‘Get out.’

‘I haven’t known you very long but it’s my impression that it’s not you who’s got the temper; it’s your wife here. It was you who pushed Zarco out of the window, wasn’t it, Mrs Cruikshank? It was your husband who grabbed him, I reckon, and tried to prevent his fall; but it was you who pushed him in the first place.’

‘Get out of this house, do you hear me?’

‘Of course, I can’t prove any of that. Then again, I don’t have to. I’ll leave it to the forensics team to match that little scratch on your neck to the tiny amount of skin and blood they found underneath Zarco’s fingernails. But you know something? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you really meant to push him out of the window, Mariella. This, after all, is a much better explanation of why you didn’t try to help him after he fell. Because you hoped he was dead and that all of this dreadful inconvenience you’ve experienced because of a little bit of building work would just go away forever. Isn’t that it?’

I’ve never heard a banshee and to be honest I wouldn’t know what one looked like, but I rather imagine that Mariella Cruikshank gave a pretty good imitation of one as, screaming something in Afrikaans, she threw herself across the room with hands that were reaching for my neck.

It was fortunate for me that I wasn’t standing in front of an open window.

‘What will happen to them?’ I asked Louise.

My rapprochement with the police force was progressing very nicely indeed. It was the following evening and Louise had not long come from the police station in Greenwich; we were lying in bed in my flat at Manresa Road and I had just spent an energetic hour making love to her. I had enormous regard for the police and the job they did, especially when the police looked like Louise Considine, who was now naked in my bed with her thighs still wrapped around my waist and my cock shrinking slowly inside her.

‘To the Cruikshanks?’

‘Yes.’

‘That all depends on the Crown Prosecution Service,’ she said. ‘But speaking as someone who studied law, I think manslaughter might be a lot easier to prove than murder. The scratch on Mariella Cruikshank’s neck and the fibres from her sweater we found underneath Zarco’s nails are certainly enough to prove that she pushed him, but not enough to prove she actually meant him to fall to his death. So far she’s been a hard nut to crack. Doesn’t give away much under questioning. I’m not sure she even knows herself if she meant to kill him or not. Frankly she’s an even bigger bitch than Jane Byrne.’