‘Can I help you?’ the doorkeeper asked as I approached; his accent could have been from anywhere other than Scotland, and I’d never seen him before.
‘I’d like to speak with Mr Holmes,’ I replied.
‘Then you’ll be disappointed, sir. Mr Holmes does not receive visitors.’
‘I’m a hard man to disappoint,’ I countered. ‘I apologise for not calling ahead to make an appointment, but the matter is important, and it’s only just come up.’
‘You’d have been wasting your time trying to call. The number here is ex-directory.’
‘Those don’t exist for me.’ I pulled my warrant card and showed it: I’d no reason to hassle the guy, and he had every right to refuse me entrance. ‘That says I’m a police officer, Detective Superintendent Skinner. You’re doing your job, sir, but so am I, and mine overrides yours. So please go and ask Mr Holmes if he has five minutes to assist me in a murder investigation in which he is not, I repeat not, a suspect.’
He made his choice, and let me step into the hall. ‘Very well. Please wait here.’
I did. He left through a door in the far left corner. While he was gone I scanned the place carefully for the next camera, the one that I was sure was trained on the door, but I couldn’t spot that either. The guy was gone for five minutes, but I kept my patience. If he was going to ask me to leave he’d have been back sooner.
When he did return, he was brisk and to the point. I saw that he had a professional bearing, not that of hired muscle. ‘Mr Holmes will see you, Mr Skinner,’ he announced. ‘I’m sorry for the delay, but we’ve been moving him to his receiving room. If you’ll come with me. ..’
I followed him into a broad corridor, more of a second hall, in fact, with several doors off, all double width. The set that faced us were of dappled glass, and he led me towards them. They opened out into a conservatory big enough to accommodate a tennis court and a few spectators into the bargain. It looked into a walled garden, and was expensively but not heavily furnished, a circular table and a couple of armchairs, that was all. Its main feature was a pale blue tiled swimming pool, with a ramp rather than steps leading into it.
But no, the main feature was probably Perry Holmes himself. He was waiting for me, seated upright in a wheelchair with a high back, a head restraint, and padded arms. His right hand rested on a control pad. It moved very slightly, one finger, no more, but he started to roll towards me.
‘I won’t shake hands, Mr Skinner,’ he chuckled, hoarsely. ‘I probably wouldn’t even if I could. You can sit down, though. Would you like a wee refreshment, as they say?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Are you sure? I can’t join you since Hastie here has to feed me, and we don’t do that in public.’ I glanced across at another blueuniformed man who was standing close by, pale-skinned, slimmer and smaller than the other. ‘But don’t let that put you off.’
‘No, really.’
‘As you wish. You can leave us now, lads.’ The two men withdrew, without a word. ‘They’re my carers,’ Holmes said as the door closed. ‘Hastie’s a nurse, highly trained and very experienced; Vanburn’s my masseur. I need a lot of that, to keep me going. They’re good lads; they allow me a certain lifestyle, and they’re with me pretty much full-time. As you can see, I have very little movement; facial muscles, fingers and toes, but that’s it… apart from erections. Ironically, I still have those, but they have nothing to do with muscle movement. The doctors say it may have something to do with the bullet in my brain, but those people say I should be dead, so what the hell do they know?’
‘Are those two your only staff?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied. I noticed for the first time that his chair had high supporting pads on either side of his head. ‘I have a housekeeper, a chef, both Chinese, and a personal assistant.’
‘Assisting you with what?’
‘My business activities, of course. My property holdings, and my other investments, take a lot of management, and I’m becoming more involved in development again, after my involuntary hiatus. Miss Young
… that’s my assistant, is a lawyer with an accountancy qualification. I recruited her from a merchant bank; I pay her a bloody fortune, but she earns it.’
I settled into one of the soft white armchairs and studied him. The Perry Holmes I’d interviewed had been wired up to half the devices in the Western Infirmary, but he’d been a solid, formidable man. Two years on, he’d lost some weight, but his eyes were keen and bright, and his life force was strong. He was past sixty, but take him out of the chair and you wouldn’t have guessed; you’d have called him ten years younger.
‘What do you see?’ he asked. ‘What are you thinking? Do I look like that poor wee professor chap? Or the Father of the Daleks? Come on, tell me; I don’t have many visitors, it’s useful to know what people really think of me.’
I told him exactly what I’d been thinking, and saw pleasure register on his face. ‘That’s good. You don’t feel sorry for me, then?’
‘Mr Holmes,’ I replied, ‘suppose you were sitting on hot coals with an imp of hell poking hot needles in your eyes, I wouldn’t feel sorry for you. That bullet in your brain doesn’t absolve you of all the crime you’ve committed, or rather that you had committed, through your brother. To tell you the truth, I had a wee bit of sympathy for him when I saw him lying dead in the mortuary, evil bastard that he was, since he was never really a man in his own right, just the instrument of your will, him and that big German pansy, Kraus. How do I feel about you? Like many people do: sorry that Billy Spreckley wasn’t a better shot, and didn’t put all four in your head.’
‘Fair enough,’ he conceded. ‘I like a man who speaks his mind. If you’re that repulsed by me, then how about giving me a good thump on the head? The slightest blow could kill me, so my consultants all agree. Christ, if you hit one of these support pads hard enough, and I know you could, that would probably do it. Nobody would ever be the wiser either, because there wouldn’t be a mark on me.’
I frowned; and then I smiled. ‘You’ve got a point there,’ I said. I started to rise from the armchair. Just for a moment, a tiny moment, I saw a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. It was enough. I sat back again.
‘Bastard,’ he murmured, and then he grinned too. ‘You didn’t do it, though. And do you know what that tells me? That you are what you say I am… or I was: someone who delegates to others the things that he’s too careful, or circumspect, to do himself. But that’s just what you do: you delegate the shitty end. You catch your thieves, your murderers, and although sometimes your instincts may be Old Testament, as they clearly were with the late Johann, judging by the contempt with which you spoke of him, you don’t act upon them. Instead you simply deliver the people up to justice; to the jailer, or half a century ago to the executioner.’
‘That’s my job,’ I pointed out. ‘If I let my own feelings get in the way, I wouldn’t be doing it properly. There’s this too: I work for society; you work against it.’
‘Me?’ he laughed. ‘I’m a property tycoon.’
‘Of course you are, Mr Holmes, of course you are. Now, can I ask you, as a property tycoon, or as anything else, does the name Winston Church mean anything to you?’
I had a big advantage over Perry, in his situation. He couldn’t look away from me. Sure he could have turned his chair around, but I could have turned it right back. He could have closed his eyes, I suppose, but he didn’t. He surprised me by holding my gaze and replying. ‘Would that be Mr Church of Newcastle?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Yes, it’s a name I recall. I’ve never met the gentleman, but I believe my late brother may have… on what business,’ he added, ‘I know not. Why do you ask?’