Mark Mills - Amagansett

It was a sobering realization. He tamped out his cigarette and stared at the wall clock, the second hand ticking interminably by, hammering out the inescapable truth: he had lost the initiative, events had outrun him in the last few days while he’d been dallying around with Mary, at the mercy of his own lust like some overheated schoolboy.

Voices in the squad room brought him round. He entered as Chief Milligan was ushering the Basque into his office. Hollis caught the Basque’s eye, but there was no sign of recognition.

‘What’s going on, Tom?’ asked Bob Hartwell.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said, entering Milligan’s office.

His earlier display of ignorance, stupidity even, had earned him the right to watch the great man at work.

Milligan went in hard, way too hard. There was no teasing, no coaxing, no insinuation designed to unsettle; he just slapped it on the table like a side of meat.

‘I’m not sure I know what you’re saying,’ was the Basque’s response.

‘I’m not saying anything, I’m asking.’

‘You mean, why did I keep quiet about my involvement with Lillian Wallace?’

‘What else do you think I mean?’

‘Probably the same reason she didn’t mention it to anyone.’

‘But she did—to the maid.’

‘They were very close,’ said the Basque.

Hollis was beginning to understand how the English psychiatrist must have felt.

‘I’m waiting for your answer,’ said Milligan.

‘I guess I think what happened between us wasn’t anybody else’s business but ours. I still don’t. That’s my answer. Will it do?’

‘Don’t you get smart with me, son. You’re the subject of a formal complaint.’

‘By who?’

‘Manfred Wallace.’

‘Oh,’ said the Basque indifferently. ‘You mind?’ He pulled his tobacco pouch from the pocket of his pants. Milligan gestured impatiently that it was okay, then he launched into an account of a fishing trip the previous weekend. It was the first Hollis had heard of it.

‘There was some tension, yes,’ said the Basque.

‘He’s accusing you of intimidation.’

‘He screwed up. He could have killed someone with a keg.’

‘A keg?’

‘We were swordfishing,’ said the Basque, as if that explained everything, knowing full well that it didn’t.

Milligan was floundering now, but he had a trump left to play. Holding it back was the only thing he’d done right.

‘That’s all fine, Mr Labarde, except for the small matter of your war record.’

The Basque visibly stiffened. Milligan allowed the silence to linger.

‘If you’ve got a problem with Manfred Wallace I’d say he has cause for concern. Wouldn’t you, if you were me?’

The Basque lit his cigarette with the Zippo. ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said, ‘what it’s like to be you.’

Milligan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You watch yourself.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ said the Basque.

‘Two years?’ Milligan glanced at Hollis. ‘You think that’s a long time?’

The last thing Hollis wanted was to be drawn into the exchange, but both men were waiting on his reply.

‘It’s more like three years,’ he said.

Words for which he would be made to suffer later.

‘Two, three…ten,’ said Milligan, leaning forward in his chair. ‘You leave the Wallaces well alone. I don’t want you anywhere near them, you hear me?’

‘I hear you.’

Milligan looked at Hollis and nodded towards the door: get him out of here.

Hollis followed the Basque down the stairs and out of the building. The sunlight was spilling into Newtown Lane.

‘I had nothing to do with that,’ said Hollis.

‘I figured as much.’

‘I’ll run you back.’

‘I’ll walk.’

He walked at a pace most men ran at, with a long easy stride. Hollis felt foolish hurrying along beside him, dodging the pedestrians.

‘It’s him, isn’t it—Manfred Wallace?’

‘Is it?’

‘He knows you’re on to him. He’s trying to head you off.’

‘Is he?’

‘Talk to me.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos you did before.’

‘I was wrong to.’

‘You need me. What are you going to do, put a bullet in his head?’

The Basque drew to a halt, his cold gray eyes fastening on Hollis. ‘Now why would I want to do that?’ he asked. ‘Killing’s easy.’

From anyone else it would have sounded like an empty boast, but Hollis had read the files and the words chilled him. He was being closed out, and it was a moment before he figured a way to penetrate the Basque’s guard.

‘Just tell me one thing. Were you in her room the day she died?’

He could see the Basque battling with his curiosity.

‘Why?’

‘Because someone was. A man.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The toilet seat in her bathroom…it was raised.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘Then that’s where they were waiting for her.’

Hollis had run through the last moments of Lillian Wallace’s life many times in his head, armed with information only he possessed. Now he was proposing to share those insights—an opportunity he figured the Basque was unlikely to pass up.

And he didn’t.

‘That offer of a ride still stand?’

They drove in silence until they reached the village limits, then Hollis began to speak. He explained that there’d been no visible signs of a struggle on Lillian’s body, which suggested she’d been incapacitated in some way. Chloroform was a possibility. Some small residue of the drug would show up in an autopsy, but only if you were searching for it, which the Medical Examiner hadn’t been. One possible scenario, the most credible one, was that Lillian had been drugged in her room, dressed in her swimsuit, carried to the swimming pool and drowned. He explained that the autopsy was inconclusive regarding the sand in her lungs. The proper test hadn’t been conducted. Only an exhumation and another autopsy would prove the theory, and that was out of the question right now.

The Basque stared out of the window while Hollis spoke, the muscles in his jaw clenching as he listened.

‘They drowned her in the pool and dumped her body in the ocean later that night, didn’t they?’ said Hollis.

‘They?’

Something in the Basque’s voice hinted at a greater knowledge.

‘They…he—you tell me.’

‘There was just the one.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Manfred Wallace?’

‘What do you think?’

‘A professional,’ said Hollis. His mind turned to the bull-necked thug on duty in front of the church the day of the funeral, but he dismissed the idea. It was unlikely they’d thrust the killer into the limelight like that.

They had reached Amagansett by now and were heading east on Main Street.

‘You can drop me here.’

Hollis slowed, but didn’t pull over. To stop would mean ending the conversation.

‘I’ve got things to do,’ said the Basque firmly.

Hollis pulled to a halt beside the Presbyterian church and turned the engine off.

‘Why?’ asked Hollis.

‘Why what?’

‘Why kill her?’ The question hanging over the investigation from the very first—the motive.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sure you do,’ said Hollis. He offered the Basque a cigarette—a delaying tactic—but he declined. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking. I can help.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m helping already. If I shared what I knew with Milligan, you’d be a suspect. Maybe that’s what they were hoping.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it? You keep quiet about your relationship with Lillian, that’s already pretty suspicious. She’s rich, you’re not, different worlds, she wanted to end the affair, you fought…“Isn’t that how it happened, Mr Labarde? In fact, where were you on the night in question, Mr Labarde?”’ He paused. ‘Any lawyer worth his salt would have a field day with it. It was a neat move of his, going to Milligan. Unless you have evidence. He figures you haven’t, or he wouldn’t have done it. Do you?’