Judas Country

'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.

He nodded vaguely. 'You see, perhaps Mr Cavitt was the last person to see him alive…'

'Didn't his daughter? – Mitzi?'

'Ah yes, perhaps.' As if he'd forgotten her.

'Didn't you ask her why she thought he killed himself?'

'Yes.' He nodded again and his head went on waggling as if he were too tired to switch it off. Finally he said: 'Yes. She thinks it may be because he had incurable cancer and only two months to live.'

After a long time I said: 'And you still think it would be better if he'd left a suicide note?'

He smiled wearily. 'Yes.'

*

When I got downstairs again, Mitzi and Kapotas had vanished and Sergeant Papa was snoring steadily on a bench seat by the bar. Ken and Nina sat at a table, each with a small brandy glass, not saying anything.

I sat down. 'Did you know anything about the Prof dying of cancer?'

'Yep,' Ken said, a chopped-off sound. He went on staring at the tabletop. 'Mitzi told me just now.'

'Well, I suppose it must be true, and the post-mortem'11 show it, but…' I shook my head helplessly. 'But if he'd only got a couple of months to go, it must've been pretty bad. Did he know about it in jail?'

'I'm sure he didn't. And the medical checks you got in there, they just about counted your legs and arms and no more. I remember he'd got this sort of hernia trouble, but that was right at the end and he said he'd wait and see a doctor in Vienna. Well, it turned out that was it: they operated and found a secondary cancer in his groin.'

'Where was the main one?'

'It was a… a melanoma or some word like that, sort of skin cancer in the middle of his back. Apparently it doesn't hurt, there. In fact, the docs said it wouldn't hurt at all until near the end and then you go down fast."

Nina shivered and instinctively tightened her folded arms. I may have shivered myself, a bit. I'd stopped knowing what to feel about the Professor, but at least a 9 mm slug through the mouth sounded a bit more reasonable, now.

'If those buggers in Biet Oren had spotted it when he could still be operated on,' Ken said quietly, 'he'd still be alive. They bloody well killed him.'

'Well, not quite that,' I tried to soothe him. 'You should get back to bed; tomorrow's another day.'

'It looks like today from where I'm sitting.' Well, yes, since it was nearly three in the morning. But he suddenly slapped both hands on the table, levered himself upright and gave a long shuddering stretch like a cat. 'See you, kids.' And he'd gone.