Reginald Hill: Blood Sympathy

Casa Mia was impressive, even in an area that reeked of Gold Cards and overdrafts. Maybe it was the bold decision to abandon the traditional black and white half-timbering and go for scarlet and gold that made it stand out. Must be money in the insurance game, thought Joe. Though not enough left over to spend on a decent tailor?

‘There’s room to turn at the top of the drive,’ said Andover.

Joe drove in. No sign of any other car, so presumably Carlo Rocca had set out to pick up his brother-in-law. Tough.

Andover got out by the classically porticoed porch which looked like it had been recently stuck on to the studded oak front door.

‘Like a drink?’ he said.

‘No, thanks,’ said Joe firmly.

‘OK. Thanks for the lift. ’Bye.’

Andover went inside. Joe carefully negotiated the ornamental cherry which marked the hub of the turning circle in the gravelled drive.

Ahead was the gateway. Behind, he hoped forever, was Mr Andover and his crazy dreams. He noticed that someone had recently done a racing start here, scattering gravel all over the elegant lawn.

‘Mr Sixsmith!’

He heard his name screamed. In the mirror he saw Andover rush out of the house, waving his arms and staggering like a closing time drunk.

It felt like it might be a good time to follow the example laid out before him and burn rubber.

Instead he stopped, said to Whitey who’d reclaimed the passenger seat reluctantly given up to Andover, ‘You stay still,’ and got out.

Andover was leaning against the cherry tree, his face so pale his freckles stood out like raisins in bread dough.

‘Inside,’ he gasped, then, as if in visual aid, he was violently sick.

Joe went towards the house, not hurrying. He had little doubt what he was going to find and it wasn’t something you hurried to. Also he felt his limbs were moving with the strange slow floating action of a man in a dream. Someone else’s dream.

The front door opened into a panelled vestibule, tailor made for sporting prints and an elephant-foot umbrella stand.

Instead, the walls were lined with photos of bright Mediterranean scenes framed in white plastic, and the only thing on the floor was a woman’s body. Her throat had been slit, more than slit, almost severed, and the handle of the fatal knife still protruded from the gaping wound.

There were open doors to the left and the right. The one on the left led into a kitchen. On the floor were strewn the shards of a china teapot in a broad pool of pale amber tea.

Gingerly Joe stepped over the body so he could see through the doorway on the right. It led into a lounge, and he was glad his sense of professional procedure gave him a reason for not crossing the threshold.

There were three more bodies here, an elderly couple and a youngish woman. The couple were slumped against each other on a garishly upholstered sofa. The woman lay on her side by a low table on which stood four cups and saucers, and a half-eaten Victoria sponge.

All three had had their throats cut.

Sixsmith turned back to the hallway. By the main door was a wall phone, with a fixed mouthpiece and separate earphone, like the ones reporters use in the old American movies. Carefully cloaking his fingers with his handkerchief (something else he’d seen in the movies), Joe dialled the police.

‘DS Chivers, please.’

‘Sorry, the Sergeant’s out on a call, sir. Can I help?’

‘I’m at a house called Casa Mia, number twenty-one Coningsby Rise—’

‘Hold on, sir. We’ve had that call already, that’s where the Sergeant’s gone. He should be with you any time now.’

‘This is real service,’ said Joe.

He stepped out into the fresh air and drew in a deep breath.

Andover was sitting with his back against one of the porch pillars, his head slumped on his chest.

‘You OK?’

The head jerked in what could have been an affirmative.

‘Good,’ said Joe, then walked across to the cherry tree, where he was following Andover’s earlier example when the first police car screamed up the drive.

It seemed that four bodies got you more than a sergeant, which was just as well.

Chivers, first on the scene, clearly saw Joe Sixsmith as a prime mover in all this mayhem. In fact it turned out that when he was passed details of the phone call saying, ‘My name is Stephen Andover. I have just murdered my wife and her family at 21 Coningsby Rise,’ he had wasted several minutes trying to ring Joe’s office. Once he grasped there really were four bodies in the house, he was much inclined to arrest Andover on the spot. Joe protested that the man had been in his company for the past half hour or more.

‘So we’ve got ourselves a conspiracy, have we?’ snapped Chivers illogically, and was cautioning Joe when Detective Chief Inspector ‘Willy’ Woodbine arrived.

Built like an old style pillar-box, he had a matching reputation for getting his message across. Now he listened to a résumé of the known facts, told Chivers not to be a twerp all his life, and put out a general call to pick up Carlo Rocca, age thirty-four, stocky build, with long black hair and a heavy black moustache, perhaps wearing a slouch hat and a grey topcoat with an astrakhan collar, and driving an F registered blue Ford Fiesta.

Then he went into the house presumably to look for clues.

Chivers glowered after him.

Joe said, ‘Can I go now?’

‘No you bloody well can’t! We’ll need a statement, and I’m sure that Mr Woodbine will want to question you personally. Doberley, get your useless body over here!’

Joe looked round to see Detective-Constable Dylan Doberley trying unsuccessfully to keep out of sight by pretending to search the shrubbery. Known inevitably as Dildo, Doberley was an old acquaintance of Joe’s from their co-membership of the Boyling Corner Chapel Concert Choir. Now they also had Chivers’s wrath in common.

‘Yes, Sarge?’ said Doberley.

‘You seen what’s in there, my son?’ demanded Chivers. ‘You realize they must’ve been having their throats slit while you were starting up your car? Call yourself a detective! Defective is more like it. Take a statement from Sherlock here. Then get yourself off round the neighbours and check if they saw anything suspicious, and I don’t mean you!’

Taking Joe’s statement didn’t take long as he’d already been mentally rehearsing it to keep his personal involvement down to a minimum. When they were finished Doberley said, ‘I’d better get on to the neighbours before he starts yelling again.’

Keeping out of Chivers’s way seemed a good idea, so Joe joined the detective as he walked down the drive.

‘On a short fuse today, your boss,’ he said conversationally.

‘He can blow himself up for me,’ said Doberley bitterly. ‘What’s he think I am anyway? Psychic? OK, I saw them, but they was all happy as Larry, jabbering away like they do, all arms and spaghetti bolognese—’

‘You mean they didn’t speak English?’

‘Of course they spoke English! The two young ones spoke it just like you and me. The old pair sounded a bit more foreign like, and it was when they got a bit excited, they all started spouting Iti.’

‘Excited? You didn’t tell them—?’

‘That I’d come to make sure they wasn’t dead? Don’t be stupid. I told ’em I was crime prevention come to warn them there’d been a lot of break-ins round here lately. That was enough to set them off, particularly the old boy. Right little Musso he was, wanting to know why we didn’t hang people and why he couldn’t keep his own personal machine-gun in the house. Lot of good it would have done the poor old sod. Not when your own son-in-law’s just going to walk right in and slit your throat. If it was the son-in-law did it, that is.’