“So would I,” he agreed, but then stopped. It was as though a fuse had blown and he was no longer functioning.
“And we’ve found the gun. It had been thrown into the grounds of St Jude’s Church about two hundred yards down the road.”
All of this seemed like good news and we waited patiently until he said suddenly, “One problem is that ballistic analysis of the bullet’s trajectory places the point of origin as the opposite side of Thornton Road, at ninety degrees to the position of Peter Carlton’s shop. To be precise, from a rather neat and tidy end-of-terrace house called Dunhiking. A newly married couple live there, Mr and Mrs Homan. She’s pregnant and he’s a plasterer; we’ve searched the house and investigated them thoroughly – and, in the process, scared the bejeesus out of them. And found nothing.”
“Ah…”
“As you’ve probably read in the papers, Carlton claims not to have left his shop all afternoon, and all the witnesses we’ve talked to support that; we have no positive sightings of Carlton outside his shop during the critical time. Certainly no one saw him with a gun.”
“Did anyone hear the shot? Surely someone did.”
He shook his head. “A silencer was used.”
“Well, that’s something…”
He pointed out sourly, “A silencer doesn’t make the marksman invisible.”
“Perhaps he was in a soundproofed van or something, parked in the road in front of Dunhiking.”
Masson was becoming impatient. “He didn’t leave the shop all day, remember?”
“An accomplice?” Max suggested, but it was with such timidity that she was almost cowering as the words came out. Masson didn’t even seem to hear, though. He merely repeated, “He did it. I know that, I just don’t know how.”
“Why are you so sure?”
He drained his beer, then put the glass down hard. “I’ve been staring at him across an interview table for the past nine days and he radiates smugness because he knows he did it, and I know he did it, but I can’t show how.”
Max, as usual, came to the point. “Why are you here, Inspector?”
It took him a while to answer that one, and when it came it did so with a degree of reluctance that was quite entertaining to behold. While we waited, I poured more Pimm’s for Max and myself and asked him, “Another beer?”
He shook his head. More silence. He seemed to have forgotten the pleasurable prospect of delivering a beating to the dragonfly and was contenting himself with staring at the bird table. Max and I drank some more Pimm’s.
Then, “You’re his GP, right?”
Pennies – several of them – dropped. “Yes,” I replied warily.
He glared at me. “I know all the crap about patient confidentiality, Doctor, I’ve been there before. You silly sods have no idea how difficult you make my life, but I’m not talking about that.”
“No?”
“I don’t want to know about Peter Carlton’s medical conditions – I want you to tell me if he ever mentioned anything that might be relevant to the death of his brother.”
Which was different. The doctor’s waiting room is not a priest’s confessional; I only have to remain schtum about medical things. “I can’t recall anything,” I said.
He was suspicious. “Really?”
“Yes, absolutely. He’s never mentioned his brother, or the history between them.”
He breathed heavily for a bit, possibly angry at me, possibly at the fates that he felt goaded him, then nodded. “It was worth a try.” More silence and more Pimm’s.
He began to speak again after a while. “In pursuit of this case, I seem to have uncovered a secret coven of loonies in the area. I’ve been told about midnight prowlers, UFOs, ghosts and goblins. One old woman saw a man indecently exposing himself, although she only told anyone when we came to call, and another was visited by her ex-husband, except that he was lost at sea in 1948.”
As crusty and irritable as Masson was, Max managed to find empathy within herself. “Surely you’ve been in situations like this before? Cases that seemed insoluble, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. Too many, in fact. And, in some of them, I’ve known who did it, too, but I’ve never felt so bloody taunted as I do in this one. He thinks I’ll never prove that he did it, and he’s quite happy to crow about it.”
The phone began to ring in the house, which was something of a relief. I went to pick it up and heard Dad’s dulcet tones. “Lance? I just wanted to tell you that it’s back.”
“What is?”
“The book.”
The way he said it, the word might have had a capital letter; he might have been talking about a holy writ or a long-lost first edition. “What book?”
“From the library.”
Which did not answer my question nor, indeed, did it answer any question at all. “Dad, could you be more explicit?”
He tutted; I was used to my father’s tutting and he was undoubtedly good at it, but this was better than most. He followed it up with, “The next stage.” When I said nothing, he went on, “Of my project.”
I was slightly exasperated by the way that the evening had gone and so was slightly acerbic as I asked, “What on earth are you talking about now?”
“The next step on from the longbow.”
“What does that mean?” As I asked this, I felt something furtling around in my bowels.
“Although the longbow undoubtedly revolutionized the art of war…” A shiver of cold horror blossomed within me. I could see that this meant trouble; knowing my father, I now appreciated that “the next stage of the project” probably meant building his own nuclear weapon and then testing it in the greenhouse while he took shelter in the kitchen with a large saucepan on his head. He droned on, “I am of the opinon that for sheer elegance, it is inferior to its predecessor, the crossbow. The crossbow was more powerful and easier to use, see. A great sniper’s weapon.”
“But you can’t,” I protested.
“Why not?”
“Because you really might kill someone with one of those. Where will it end? A do-it-yourself cannon?”
To my horror, there was brief silence and I just knew that he was storing this for future reference before he said, “You really are so melodramatic, Lance. Anyone would think you were talking to an irresponsible child.”
“Dad, is this wise?”
“Wise? Why shouldn’t it be?”
I had taken in a deep breath with all the arguments poised and ready to spew forth, but then thirty years of experience told me to keep quiet. Nothing I would say – nothing anyone would ever say – was going to stop my father doing what my father did. I let it all out in a long sigh. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Lance, are you all right?” he asked with genuine concern. “You seem a bit out of sorts.”
It took me a moment to find my voice. “I’m fine, Dad. Just fine.”
When I went back out to the garden, Max was looking severely strained and Masson was looking as he always did, which was morose. He stood at once. “I must be going,” he announced as if anyone was going to argue.
As I showed him out, I tried to cheer him up. “I’m sure you’ll break the case soon.”
He didn’t even reply.
For two months nothing happened and everyone forgot about the death of Harvey Carlton, even the Croydon Advertiser. Dad went quiet, too; I asked him how his crossbow was coming on, but all he did was mumble something about “technical problems”. I remember nodding sympathetically whilst giving thanks to God. Then, quite abruptly, Peter Carlton was found one morning unconscious on the floor of his shop by a woman who was interested in purchasing a set of dining chairs. An ambulance was called and he was taken to Mayday Hospital where a severe, left-sided stroke was diagnosed; he regained consciousness within a day but he remained severely compromised – paralyzed down the right-hand side, unable to speak, dribbling constantly. I visited him after two days and saw in him what I had seen in so many stroke victims – severe depression. Who could blame him? In the space of a second, his entire life had been taken from him; he had not just been placed in a cage but gagged and restrained by a straitjacket as well. There would be some improvement if he could find the will to work at it, but it would not be much, unlikely ever to bring him to an independent existence, definitely never enough to allow him to work again. I could see within his eyes that he knew it, too, and that was agony to behold.