Jennings sank back on to his hard shell of a chair. He appeared numb with shock and was mumbling something that Troy did not quite get. He asked for clarification and was far from surprised when it came.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Jennings. ‘I want to see my solicitor.’
Hunting in Full Steel
It was the start of a new week and the weather had changed completely. Warmer, with a mizzle of rain. A sly day, as they say in Suffolk. When Troy entered the office Barnaby was on the phone. The sergeant saw immediately what was going on. The chief’s expression was one he recognised, blank, self-controlled, constraining with some force the response he thought appropriate to the occasion.
‘I am aware of that, sir ...
‘Yes, I shall be talking to him again this morning ...
‘It’s hard to say at this stage ...
‘I’m afraid not ...
‘Naturally I will ...
‘I have already done so ...
‘I’m sure we all hope ...
‘No. At least nothing I’d care to put on the table ...
‘I am pursuing—’
Troy heard the crash as the interrogator slammed the phone down right across the room. Barnaby replaced his own receiver without any visible signs of irritation.
‘Being leaned on from the top, chief?’
‘The head lama himself.’
‘Spit in your eye don’t they? Llamas?’
Barnaby did not reply. He had picked up a pencil and was doodling on a large note pad.
‘Jennings’ solicitor, is it?’
‘Just earning his hundred fifty an hour.’
‘They got it sussed - lawyers,’ said Troy, unbuttoning a cream trench coat of martial cut embellished with epaulettes, buckles, a belt of highly polished leather and pockets so wide and deep they could well have contained reinforcements from the US cavalry.
‘Whoever loses they win. Crafty buggers.’ He shook out the coat and placed it on a hanger, smoothing the fabric out and fastening the buttons.
‘You’re wasted here, sergeant. You should have been a valet.’
‘Load of rear gunners. I suppose it’s pressing trousers all day.’
‘Well, when you’ve finished faffing about, I’m in dire need of a caffeine shot.’
‘I’m as good as gone,’ said Troy, who was indeed already opening the door. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’
‘Not right now.’
Barnaby was pleased with himself for not feeling peckish. Perhaps his stomach was adapting. Shrinking to accommodate the modest input that was now its daily portion. Of course, it could be that it was still only half an hour from breakfast time.
The kitten had, as usual, been present and making a nuisance of itself. After a polished performance of naked greed and winsome precocity it had climbed on to Barnaby’s knee, displayed its bottom, sat down and massaged his trousers with its claws. All this to the sound of excessive purring.
‘Why is it always me?’ A cross demand to the room at large.
‘He knows you don’t like him,’ replied Joyce.
‘Dim then, as well as hoggish.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’
This morning, perhaps recalling his previous manhandling over the marmalade, Kilmowski contented himself with simply looking at Barnaby’s breakfast plate, looking at Barnaby, sighing a lot, yawning and turning round and round. Eventually, waiting till his wife’s back was turned, Barnaby gave the kitten a small piece of bacon. Followed by a bit of rind for its cheek.
Joyce said: ‘Why don’t you just put him on the floor?’
The coffee arrived. Troy backed into the room with a tray holding a large Kit Kat and two cups and saucers. He put one of these on the desk before metaphorically licking a finger and holding it to the wind.
The atmosphere didn’t seem to be all that bad. Not when you took into account the recent bollocking from the chief super. These were notorious. Poisonous bloody things, likened, by one recipient, to having your head forced down a blocked-up toilet.
Yet here was the DCI, barely minutes after the affray, swigging his drink and doodling with his pencil as if it had never happened. You had to admire him.
Troy, silently doing just that, wondered what was on the note pad. Barnaby was working with close, tiny strokes as if filling something in. Probably plants. Or leaves. The chief was good at that. Nature drawing. He said it helped him concentrate.
Troy unwrapped his chocolate, ran his thumbnail down the silver paper, snapped the biscuit in half. Then, munching, he eased his way around Barnaby’s desk for a quick shufty.
He hadn’t been far out. Primroses. Beautifully done, just like in a book. Tiny flowers softly shaded with grey, leaves with all the bumps on. Even dangly roots, thready and slightly tangled.
Troy felt envious. I wish I could do something like that, he thought. Paint or play music or write a story. Admitted, he could paralyse club cronies with a well-told joke. And his karaoke ‘Delilah’ at the Christmas party had been described as shit-hot. But it wasn’t quite the same.
Seeing the chief’s cup empty he tidied it away, saying, ‘You come to any decision about Jennings yet, sir? Whether he’s still in the frame?’
‘I doubt it. We’re checking out the story he told about Hadleigh’s antecedents. If Conor Neilson had been leading the sort of life described he’d almost certainly be known to the Garda.’
‘Plus it’s an uncommon name.’
‘Not over there it isn’t. And this stuff from forensic is not encouraging.’ He indicated several glossy photographs and closely typed back-up sheets. ‘Jennings’ prints are in the sitting room, on various pieces of crockery, the ashtray and the front door. Nothing upstairs—’
‘There wouldn’t be. The murderer wore gloves.’
‘Don’t interrupt!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Then there’s the problem of his shoes. No fibres from the stair or bedroom carpet. No blood or other substances. No skin particles. They’re absolutely clean. And you know as well as I do you can’t do a job like the one we’re looking at and take nothing from the scene. They’re working on his suit at the moment but I can’t say I have high hopes.’
‘Bit of a blind alley, then?’
Barnaby shrugged and put down his pencil. Troy had been quite wrong in thinking that the chief superintendent’s sarcastic volley had been easily put aside. Though years of practice and a reasonably equable temperament enabled Barnaby to maintain an imperturbable facade he was, in fact, not unperturbed at all but experiencing the beginnings of a dark depression. A grey dried-upness of the mind.
The reason for this was not unknown to him. He had been indulging in the very thing against which his warnings to others had always been so stringent. Ever since the interview with St John - which meant virtually from the outset - his perception of the case had been subtly narrowing. Whilst giving lip service to this or that possibility he had, gradually, become convinced that it was with Jennings alone that the solution lay.
Either Max had killed Hadleigh and run away or he possessed some knowledge that would provide the key that could unlock the mystery. In any event Jennings’ capture and the conclusion of the case had, in Barnaby’s imagination, become so powerfully intertwined that he was now finding it extremely difficult to accept the fact that the first was quickly seeming to have little or no bearing whatsoever on the second. Which left him precisely where?
Well, once he had accepted that Jennings was telling the truth, there were three options. The first, that Hadleigh had been murdered by a passing opportunist who had then left with a suitcase full of women’s clothing but without a Rolex watch worth thousands seemed barely credible.