Reginald Hill - Blood Sympathy

‘Why not? Look, I’m not just being nosey, I really like the old lady …’

‘I’m sure. Only she doesn’t need comforting.’

Something in the policeman’s tone got through.

‘You don’t mean … not her too … oh God.’

She had gone quite pale beneath the make-up. Sixsmith waited to see how far Doberley would go with his revelations, but the DC clearly felt he had gone too far already.

He said, ‘I think my superiors would like to talk to you, Mrs Rathbone. Perhaps we could go inside and I’ll contact them on your phone if I may.’

He ushered the woman into the house in front of him, turned to close the door and mouthed, ‘Get lost!’ at Joe.

It seemed like good advice.

Back at the Casa Mia everyone was busy, or looking busy. He looked for Chivers in the hope of getting leave to leave but the Sergeant was nowhere to be seen. In any case, the Morris Oxford was completely boxed in by a fleet of official police vehicles. Untroubled by all this activity, Whitey was fast asleep. It seemed a good idea. Joe slid quietly into the back, closed the door and curled up on the old travelling rug he kept there for warmth on all-night stake-outs.

It was impossible not to think about the killings. From what the nosey neighbour said, it sounded pretty open-and-shut. A house full of tensions, Rocca the wide boy chafing at having to toe the line to get the old man’s charity, his wife perhaps reckoning her sister was getting the better deal from their dad; the old man, dominant, patriarchal; explosive Latin temperaments; exploding Latin rows … no wonder poor old Anglo-Saxon-repressive Andover started having weird dreams!

One thing was sure; there was no case fee in it for J. Sixsmith PI, Inc. And he was glad there wasn’t. Tracking unfaithful wives and credit defaulters might be dull but at least it let you sleep easy.

A wink was as good as a … His eyelids closed … He drifted into a deep dark untroubled sleep …

But there was something in that darkness. Figures seated around a table, mere silhouettes at first, but gradually sharpening, and then their features emerging like a landscape at dawn …

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe Sixsmith in his sleep. Once more he was looking at the slaughtered quartet, and they were looking back at him, their sightless eyes locking on his, as each in turn raised a lifeless hand first to their bleeding throats as if in hope of staunching the wounds, then higher to cover their mouths as if to hold back their screams of terror and agony.

But there was no holding them back. Out they came, high, piercing, unearthly, and Sixsmith felt a weight pressing on his chest and the scream was so close it seemed to be inside his own head …

He awoke. Whitey was sitting on his chest bellowing into his ear that it was long past his tea-time and what was he going to do about it?

‘Don’t do that!’ snapped Joe, sitting up and precipitating the cat to the floor. But when he looked at his watch he had to admit the beast had the right of it. He got out of the car and stretched.

‘You still here?’ said DCI Woodbine, coming out of the house with Chivers in close attendance.

‘That’s right,’ said Joe mildly. ‘But I would like to go soon if I can. I’ve got a meeting tonight, also my cat’s getting a bit hungry.’

‘Four people dead and all he can think about is his cat,’ sneered Chivers.

‘You got something against cats, Sergeant?’ said Woodbine sharply. ‘I’ve got four Persians and I tell you this, I wouldn’t dare keep them waiting for their dinner. So you push off, Mr Sixsmith, whenever you’re ready.’

He thinks it’s all wrapped up, thought Joe. And so it probably is. Witnesses, motive, and a suspect with an Italian accent and a Mafia moustache driving round in a car whose number will be plastered across the nation’s telly screens tonight.

Woodbine ordered the vehicles blocking his exit out of the way and personally waved him out. Joe almost blew a kiss at Chivers but didn’t quite have the nerve.

‘There you are, Whitey,’ he said as he drove home. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes. Even cops can love cats.’

But Whitey was unimpressed. A deepdown racist, he regarded Persians and all foreign breeds as illegal immigrants, sneaking over here to take English mice out of English mouths. So now he merely sneered and yelled even louder for his tea.

Whenever Joe Sixsmith felt the sharp elbows of Anglo-Saxon attitudes digging in his ribs, he reminded himself that these people had invented the fried breakfast.

He liked the fried breakfast. He liked it so much he often had it for tea too. And sometimes for his dinner.

He’d been warned that addiction to the fried breakfast could kill him.

‘There are worse things to die of,’ said Joe.

Whitey enjoyed the fried breakfast too, which was just as well.

‘No fads and fancies here, man,’ Joe had warned him on first acquaintance. ‘You’ve joined the only true democratic household in Luton. We eat the same, drink the same.’ Which principle was sorely tested the first time Whitey caught a mouse and pushed it invitingly towards him.

They shared half a pound of streaky bacon, three eggs, two tomatoes and a handful of button mushrooms when they got back from Casa Mia. Then they split a pint of hot sweet tea sixty-forty and Joe settled before his twenty-six-inch telly to let the early evening news scrape the last traces of the day’s horror from his personal plate into the public trough.

In fact there wasn’t all that much about it. The politician and pony scandal still got main billing, and a crash landing on the A 505 came second. It was only a light plane and there were no fatalities, but a woman trying out her new camcorder had caught the whole drama in wobbly close-up and the resultant images must have been irresistible to the picture-popping TV mind.

If there’d been a camera to record what Joe Sixsmith had seen, he didn’t doubt that the Casa Mia killings would have been top of the pops, but they had to make do with exteriors and a close-up of Willy Woodbine confidently anticipating an early arrest and inviting viewers to look out for, but steer clear of, Carlo Rocca, who could help the police with their inquiries.

There was a photo of Rocca which looked like a fuzzy enlargement from a wedding group. Joe doubted if it would be all that much use except to anyone with a grudge against some fellow with a prominent moustache.

‘Now, sport,’ said the presenter. ‘Luton have made a late change in the team for their key league match tonight …’

Sixsmith sighed and felt his season ticket burning in his wallet. Trust the Major to call a residents’ meeting on a night when Luton were playing at home. That’s what came of being brought up on rugger and polo. Thoughts of truancy drifted through his mind, then drifted out. The Major he could avoid, but not Auntie Mirabelle.

Still he had time for forty winks before he needed to think about going …

He relaxed in his chair, closed his eyes … and was back in Andover’s dream. At least he tried to make himself think of it as Andover’s dream (which meant he knew he was dreaming), only it had his own little variation of the corpses raising their hands to their mouths and screaming … no, not screaming … this time they were making an insistent bell-ringing noise … ah, now they were screaming …

He awoke to find Whitey bellowing in his ear that the phone was ringing and wasn’t he going to answer it?

He yawned and reached for the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Joe, that you?’ demanded the unmistakable voice of his Aunt Mirabelle.

‘No, Auntie, it’s a burglar,’ said Sixsmith.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. You play with pitch, you going to get defiled, doesn’t the Good Book tell us so?’