I wasn’t any nearer a solution by the time I had to leave for my meeting with Tucker and Ruth. Richard was still asleep, flat on his back, arms in the crucifixion position. I considered nails but settled for sticking an adhesive note to his chest suggesting lunch. When all else fails, I’ve found it helps to enlist another brain. Failing that, I’d make do with Richard and his hangover.
If Shelley had heard about the previous night’s debacle, the atmosphere in the office was going to be frostier than it was outside. I stopped off at the florist on the way in and bought the biggest poinsettia they had. It would act both as peace offering and office decoration. There were three weeks to Christmas, and even with my chlorophyll-killer touch the plant had to stand a good chance of making it into the New Year.
I placed the poinsettia on her desk, a tentative smile nailed on. She looked up briefly, surveyed the plant and savaged me with fashion folk wisdom. “Red and green are never seen except upon a fool,” she said. “Gizmo was right. You do look like shit.”
“And a merry Christmas to you too, Scrooge,” I muttered.
“I don’t have to work here,” she sniffed.
“Nobody else would put up with you now the war’s over,” I told her sweetly and swept into my office. Gizmo had already set everything up. All I needed now was a cop with an open mind. If they could get miracles on 34th Street, I didn’t see why we couldn’t have them on Oxford Road.
Ruth was first to arrive. “I hate surprises,” she grumbled, dropping her fake fur in a heap in the corner. Maybe Tucker would take it for a timber wolf and be cowed into submission.
“Nice outfit,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“Mmm,” she said, preening her perfectly proportioned but extremely large body in its tailored kingfisher-blue jacket and
“Sweetheart, you are a Cheshire Wife.”
She bared her teeth in a snarl. If she’d still been wearing the coat I’d have dived out of the window. “Only geographically,” she said. “I thought you needed me on your side this morning?”
Before we could get too deeply into the banter, the intercom buzzed. “I have a Detective Inspector Tucker for you,” the human icicle announced. I made a big production of crossing my fingers and opened the door.
If the man standing by Shelley’s desk had been any taller, we could have dipped his head in emulsion and repainted the ceiling. He was so skinny I bet he had to make a fist when he walked over cattle grids. He had a thick mop of salt and pepper hair, skin cratered from teenage acne and a thousand-watt smile that lit up the kind of gray eyes that can resemble granite or rabbit fur. “I’m Kate Brannigan,” I said. “Thanks for coming. Would you like to come through?”
Close up, my eyes were on a level with the breast pocket of his jacket. I flashed Ruth a “why didn’t you tell me?” look and ushered him in. He exchanged ritual greetings with Ruth and folded himself into the chair I pointed him towards. I swung the monitor screen round till it was facing them both. “I’m sorry I was so mysterious about this,” I said. “But if I’d told you what I had in mind, you’d have laughed in my face. You certainly wouldn’t have taken it seriously enough to come and see for yourself.”
“I’m here now, so let’s cut to the chase. We’re all busy people,” he said, with no trace of hostility. He obviously didn’t go to the same Masonic dinners as Cliff Jackson.
“It’s not a long preamble, I promise you. Last week, you found Pit Bull Kelly dead inside a shop that had previously been squatted by Dennis O’Brien. Pit Bull had told his brothers he was going down to the shop to sort Dennis out and take over the pitch for himself. Next morning, Pit Bull was found dead from a sub-arachnoid hemorrhage, an unusual injury and one that’s hard to inflict. You decided, not unreasonably given what you know about Dennis, that he’d used a commando karate blow to kill Pit Bull. But given what I know about Dennis, I know it couldn’t have happened like that.”
“But putting prejudice aside, there’s a key piece of evidence that tells me Dennis didn’t kill Pit Bull. I’ve known Dennis a long time, and the one thing he won’t have anything to do with is guard dogs. Back when he was burgling, he’d never touch a house that had a guard dog. If Pit Bull Kelly had turned up with his dog in tow, Dennis wouldn’t even have opened the door. But just supposing he had, that dog is a trained killer. He was Pit Bull Kelly’s private army, according to his brothers. If Dennis had lifted his hands above waist level, the dog would have gone for him. He’d never have got as far as laying a hand on the master without the dog ripping his throat out.”
Tucker nodded sympathetically. “I’ve already heard this argument from Ms. Hunter. And if this crime had taken place out in the open, I might have been forced to agree. But what you tell me about O’Brien’s dislike of fierce dogs doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Patrick Kelly. I could make the argument that the fact the dog was separated from its master by the back door of the shop lends weight to the notion that O’Brien was in fact in the shop and agreed to talk to Kelly on the sole condition that the dog stayed in the service corridor.”
“If so, how did he escape? There’s no way out through the front without being filmed by security cameras and breaking through a metal grille,” I pointed out.
Tucker shrugged. “O’Brien’s a professional burglar. If he put his mind to it, I’m sure he could find a way out that neither of us would come up with in a month of Sundays.”
“That’s not an argument that will carry much weight with a jury in the absence of any evidence to the contrary,” Ruth chipped in drily. Tucker’s eyebrows descended and his eyes darkened.
“What I want to show you,” I interrupted before the goodwill melted, “is an alternative hypothesis that answers all the problems this case presents. It should be relatively easy to make the forensic tests that will demonstrate if I’m right or wrong. But for now, all I want the pair of you to do is to watch.”
I tapped a couple of keys and the screen saver dissolved. The
“Two of his brothers confirmed that the dog was always jumping up at Pit Bull. It’s still not much more than a pup. It’s full of energy,” I said, forestalling any protest from Tucker when he saw where this was heading.
“It’s impressive,” was all he said.
We watched Kelly and the dog arrive at the door to Dennis’s squat. He reached out a hand for the doorknob and clumsily turned it. Expecting it to be locked, he stumbled as it opened under his hand. As Kelly lurched forward, the dog yanked on its leash, jerking Kelly off balance and spinning him half around so that the vulnerable angle under his jaw cracked into the doorjamb, accompanied by a thud courtesy of Gizmo.
The screen went black momentarily. Then the point of view shifted. We were inside the shop, behind the door. Again, we saw Kelly topple into the doorjamb, the dog skittering back from his master. The leash dropped from Kelly’s fingers and the dog scampered back into the service corridor as Kelly collapsed sideways to the floor, the weight of his body slamming the door shut as he fell. The final scene dissolved into the starkness of the crime-scene photograph that had been the starting point for the whole process.
I heard Tucker’s breath leak from him, the first sign that he’d been taking seriously what he saw. “I suppose I’d be wasting my time if I asked you where exactly your source material came from?”
I nodded. “I’m afraid so. All I will say is that it wasn’t the obvious route,” I added in an attempt to give Della’s contact a little protection.
“I take it I can expect the immediate release of my client, in the light of this?” Ruth said, leaning back expansively and lighting a cigarette. Noël Coward would have loved her.