Brond (16 page)

‘What could be nicer?’ I said, keeping my eyes shut.

‘There’s butter with them,’ she said coaxingly.

I put my forearm over my eyes.

‘Come on!’ she said. ‘It’ll spoil if it has to wait.’

If only, I fretted, she had thought about that during the night.

‘Chuck me over my clothes,’ I said.

‘In a minute. Do you like your eggs turned?’

Flesh and blood could stand no more. Resolutely I put back the blankets and stood up.

‘Sweet God!’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not one of those exhibitionists.’

With more awkwardness than grace, I progressed to where she had piled my clothes neatly on the edge of the table. Among her other virtues she seemed to be house-proud. I got into my underpants
with difficulty. She could not resist another glance over.

‘No need to peek,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t recovered from the mauling you gave it last night.’

‘Oh, now,’ she said seriously, ‘don’t talk like that or I won’t think well of you.’

‘Turn them!’

‘What?’ she asked in fright.

‘The eggs – I like them done both sides.’

Fat hissed as she tipped them over.

‘I fried them in butter.’

‘You’ll give me a coronary one way or the other.’

Dressed, I came over and had a look.

‘You should fry bacon on a dry pan,’ I said.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘It’s true. A dry pan – heat the bacon and slant the pan. Press the fat out as it fries. Makes the crispest bacon you could eat.’

‘I suppose you’ll manage this though.’

She sounded offended. I began to feel better. To tell the truth, I began to feel unreasonably cheerful. We had two eggs each as well as the bacon. She was a good eater. There wasn’t much
talking until we had finished.

‘I’m going to be coarse again,’ I said.

She looked relieved when I scrubbed the plate with the buttery end of the last roll.

‘Run out and get the same again, would you?’ I licked pale flaky crumbs from the wet tip of my finger.

‘Are you still hungry? Would you like something else?’

There certainly seemed to be a hint there that she was ready to forage out again with her little shopping list. That was very compliant of her. She seemed to split her personality between the
night and the daylight hours.

‘Don’t tempt me.’ A thought cracked my jaw in mid yawn: ‘Kilpatrick will be missed at his work. He told me he worked in an office somewhere.’

‘Oh, no. When he left the Army, he joined—’

She stopped abruptly, and though I waited she didn’t say any more.

‘Well, anyway,’ I said, ‘wherever he is, he’s not here.’

I wondered if the look in her eyes could be relief. If it was, guilt made her more emphatic.

‘I’m worried
sick
about him,’ she said.

‘I know, you lay awake all night worrying.’

She looked more seriously offended this time. I watched uncomfortably as she cleared away and ran water over the dishes.

‘That won’t clear the grease off them if the water’s cold,’ I said.

As a way of ingratiating myself, it didn’t work. She slammed off the tap.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

She was cramming back into her shoulder sack all the odds and ends that had got themselves unpacked.

‘Going?’

‘And you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to lock up.’

‘No, Miss Briody,’ a voice said behind me. ‘I can’t let you do that.’

Without turning round, I knew who it was. Margaret stared over my shoulder wide-eyed with shock at the interruption. As Brond spoke, he moved into the room until I could see him.

‘If you would wait here, Miss Briody,’ he said, ‘it would only take us a minute to make sure.’

‘Sure of what?’ she asked.

He tilted his head and almost smiled: the whole effect seeming to say, If you want to pretend, that’s your business, of course.

‘Who are you?’ Her voice trembled.

But it was his name she had used when she brought me the parcel. She had met him at Professor Gracemount’s party – but, of course, that was weeks ago. Perhaps I was the only one who
could not forget what Brond looked like.

At a movement of his hand, I followed him through the door into the passage that took us out into the yard. We left Margaret standing by the table, her ridiculously crammed shoulder bag swinging
from her hand.

‘There’s no one in there,’ I told Brond as he crossed to the unpainted padlocked door.

‘You’ve looked?’

‘Both of us looked.’

‘Last night? I see. Miss Briody has a key then.’

‘You don’t need one – the padlock’s broken.’

I pushed it open with my finger and lifted it clear. He took it from me and examined it, then looked about as if searching for a place to lay it. There was a box round a standpipe and he stood
the lock on top of it at a careful angle.

‘Didn’t you find it strange?’ he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door.

‘Didn’t you find it strange that a businessman should go off on holiday and leave his property so badly protected?’

‘I didn’t give it a thought,’ I lied stubbornly.

‘Extraordinary,’ Brond said, looking at me with interest.

The store seemed smaller than during the night. Builders’ material was stacked everywhere. What I had taken for ladders were lengths of timber propped against the far wall. There were
ladders as well, hung on hooks from a beam. Light drifted down from dirty skylights. Slowly Brond paced the length of the place.

He stopped in front of a pile of empty sacks in the corner farthest from the door.

‘Well?’ he asked.

I could see no reason for the question. It seemed to me he was playing another of his obscure games with me.

‘Well?’ he asked again and swung his forefinger like a pointer. I could see nothing.

‘Are you joking?’

‘What an odd impression you must have of me.’ The note of his voice was as solemn as a Sunday bell. ‘Doesn’t it seem strange that the floor here is so clean?’

There was a path through the dust.

‘Shift them away.’

The sacks were dirty. I lifted one and a shower of grime settled on my shoes. I held up my hands. Each was oiled with a sooty smear.

‘This is stupid.’

‘Don’t stop. It would look bad if you refused.’

The bewilderment he imposed on me and the fear I would never admit made me turn again to the task. I tugged at the next sack trying to slide it off to keep down the mess. It would not move. I
pulled again but something was holding it. I was doing Brond’s bidding. What kind of man was I? In blind anger I took a double grip on the sack and, too excited to be careful, gave a great
heave. It came with a sudden release and I staggered back in an uprising cloud of dirt as the body of Kilpatrick turned stiffly out from among the sacks and sprawled at my feet.

Fastidiously, Brond waited until the dust settled. He bent over the body and turned back the shirt to look underneath.

‘Shot,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice question who killed him. The person who fired the gun or the one who brought him out here. If the two acts are traceable to the one culprit,
the problem resolves itself.’

I did not understand. A broad smear of black grease striped the dead face from one eye to the side of the mouth. I felt in my pocket for a handkerchief although I never carry one.

‘Why did he come out here?’ I hardly knew what I was saying.

Brond stood up impatiently.

‘Come out? Without help? And burrow under the sacks? First being agile enough to bind himself.’

With the shoe that had the thick raised sole, he touched the body’s legs at a place where they were tied with a piece of cord.

‘His thumbs are lashed together also.’

The same shoe lifted the body over without effort. It was true. But what horrified me was to see how poorly the body was dressed – trousers, a cotton shirt, the feet were bare.

‘This would be a cold place at night,’ Brond said as if reading my thoughts. ‘He’d lost so much blood, of course, otherwise he would have struggled from under there at
least. He must have been half dead already.’

It was too horrible to accept.

‘He must have been dead.’

‘No.’ Brond’s shoe scuffed at the sack. The body’s clenched fist lay on a corner of it as if to claim possession. ‘He bled on this while he was lying here. Not much
– but then by that time he didn’t have a great deal left. Given his all for Queen and country. Or whatever he did give it for.’

I had never seen anything colder than Brond’s smile.

The door we had come out by lay open and so did the next two, until in the front shop I stared blankly at the last door which lay open to the street. Margaret was gone. Outside stood the sleek
hulk of the car that had taken me to see Brond a lifetime ago. Primo sat behind the wheel.

‘Why didn’t he stop her?’

‘Would you have wanted that?’

‘Yes. Why would she—’

‘Well?’

Well? Well?

I shook my head. Was it conceivable that Margaret could have known while we lay in bed together that Kilpatrick was dying out there in the cold under a bundle of greasy sacks?

Nothing could make me believe that.

TWELVE

T
he man in the grey shirt and old flannels asked, ‘How long is that now?’

He had been asking at five minute intervals.

‘More than an hour,’ I told him.

‘It’s incomprehensible to me,’ he said.

‘Something’s happening.’

We listened to the sound of running feet and a voice shouting with an edge of panic.

‘I never imagined it would be like this,’ the man said.

There is something wrong about uncontrolled noise in a police station. You associate police stations with discipline. If anyone does anything violent, you expect it to be done quietly and
off-stage. My mind shied off images of violent policemen. Thoughts like that are weakening when you sit waiting in an interview room.

‘To the police, of course,’ Brond had said.

I had been astonished.

‘Where now?’ I had asked, desperately casual, watching the vast shoulders of Primo as he steered the car through the morning traffic.

‘To the police, of course.’

He had turned on me a look of mild reproach.

‘I hope,’ he said, ‘you realise the seriousness of what we found.’

‘We found Kilpatrick,’ I said.

‘We discovered a murder,’ Brond chided. He was enormously the good citizen, expensively dressed, with Primo as chauffeur, leaning forward with a folded handkerchief to wipe a trace
of greasy dust from his shoes. ‘In the event, that leaves us no choice. It would be unthinkable to do anything else.’

Until the exact moment we entered the station – even while we were climbing the steps – I did not believe him. My first reaction was an enormous relief. Someone was going to sort out
the pieces and let me have my life back.

The whole station heaved with confusion. An unanswered telephone was left ringing. Three constables passed at the trot. Brond spoke to the sergeant at the desk. I could not hear what was being
said. I saw his face change, then it was as though the same virus affected him. He hobbled away at an incredible pace down a corridor to my left. That was the last I had seen of him.

A plain-clothes man had taken me by the arm. Five minutes, ten, had passed while I waited for Brond to come back. A sense of some vast catastrophe built up round me. It was strange to be at the
centre of so much activity and be so excluded.

‘In here,’ I’d been told.

‘What’s going on?’ I’d asked.

‘Wait here. Someone’ll be along to talk to you in a moment.’

He might have been deaf. As I asked again, he gave me the look policemen use to put you on a different planet. Then he shut the door.

The only other person in the room was a brown-faced, elderly man in shirt and flannels. Despite the stains on the flannels, he had that air which mysteriously but unmistakably signals prosperous
respectability. Like me, he had been waiting. We had passed the time listening, trying to make out from the confusion of sounds what was causing the panic. Once the door was thrown open and we
jumped up, but it was a flustered sergeant who stared at us as if we had no right to be there.

‘I’ve been—,’ my companion began.

‘Sorry, sorry. Later. Really sorry.’

The sergeant disappeared. I had never heard a policeman offer so many apologies. It was like a measure of disorientation.

We sat down slowly.

‘This is impossible,’ flannel trousers said.

‘Something serious is going on.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘But still . . .’

We sat in silence. It was a miserable place. High on one tiled wall there was a narrow strip of window. I pulled the table over and stood on it. Pushing up on the toes of my good foot, I could
just see out. It was some kind of air-shaft. Within feet of me, there was a featureless brick wall.

‘I don’t see any need for that,’ my companion said.

I climbed down.

‘Did you see anything?’ he asked inconsistently.

I offered him a sneer.

‘All I meant was that if there’s some emergency we’d best let them deal with it. All we can do to help is be patient.’

‘Splendid attitude,’ I said. ‘Admirable. You’re not a criminal yourself then.’

He flushed with annoyance.

‘Good heavens, of course not. Do I look like—’

He broke off, looking at the unsightly flannels.

‘I was gardening. That’s why I’m here. I’d bought onion sets. The roses at the back haven’t been doing well. Too sheltered perhaps. Anyway I’d decided to have
them up and I’d bought onion sets. So I took out the bushes and raked and I had the sets in a pail. They’d been in water, you see. I pushed the dibble in – to make a hole, you
see, for the set – but when I pulled it out the dry soil ran into the hole and ran and ran. And I stood up and stepped back and there was a roar and a gasp as if the earth itself had taken a
breath. And half the garden was gone and I was standing right on the edge of a black hole I couldn’t see any bottom to. I mean it just went down, and I could hear little stones and clods
still falling.’