Straight. Part 14

The vault alone was taking too long. The four big stock-rooms promised a nightmare.

Brad miraculously found a parking s.p.a.ce right outside Greville's house, which seemed obscurely to disappoint him.

'TWenty past five,' he said, 'for the pub?'

'If you wouldn't mind. And . . . er . . . would you just stand there now while I take a look-see?' I had grown cautious, I found.

He ducked his head in a.s.sent and watched me manoeuvre the few steps up to the front door. No floodlights came on and no dog barked, presumably because it was daylight. I opened the three locks and pushed the door.

The house was still. No movements of air. I propped the door open with a bronze horse clearly Lying around for the purpose and went down the pa.s.sage to the small sitting room.

No intruders. No mess No amazons waving riot sticks, no wrecking b.a.l.l.s trying to get past the grilles on the windows If anyone had attempted to penetrate Greville's fortress, they hadn't succeeded.

I returned to the front door. Brad was still standing beside the car, looking towards the house. I gave him a thumbs-up sign, and he climbed into the driver's seat while I closed the heavy door, and in the little sitting room, started taking all of the books off the shelves methodically, riffling the pages and putting each back where I found it.

There were ten hollow books altogether, mostly with t.i.tles like Tales of the Outback and With a Mule in Patagonia.

Four were empty, including the one which had held Clarissa Williams's letters. One held the big ornate key. One held an expensive-looking gold watch, the hands pointing to the correct time.

The watch Greville had been wearing in Ipswich was one of those affairs with more k.n.o.bs than instructions.

It lay now beside my bed in Hungerford emitting bleeps at odd intervals and telling me which way was north.

The slim gold elegance in the hollow box was for a different mood, a different man, and when I turned it over on my palm I found the inscription on the back: G my love C.

She couldn't have known it was there, I thought. She hadn't looked for it. She'd looked only for the letters, and by chance had come to them first. I put the watch back into the box and back on the shelf. There was no way I could return it to her, and perhaps she wouldn't want it, not with that inscription.

Two of the remaining boxes contained large keys, again unspecified, and one contained a folded instruction leaflet detailing how to set a safe in a concrete nest. The last revealed two very small plastic cases containing baby recording tapes, each adorned with the printed legend 'microca.s.sette'. The ca.s.sette cases were all of two inches long by one and a half wide, the featherweight tapes inside a fraction smaller.

I tossed one in my hand indecisively. Nowhere among Greville's tidy belongings had I so far found a microca.s.sette player, which didn't mean I wouldn't in time. Sufficient to the day I thought in the end, and left the tiny tapes in the book.

With the scintillating t.i.tles and their secrets all back on the shelves I stared at them gloomily. Not a diamond in the lot.

Instructions for concrete nests were all very well, but where was the safe? Tapes were OK, but where was the player? Keys were fine, but where were the keyholes?

The most frustrating thing about it was that Greville hadn't meant to leave such puzzleS For him, the answers were part of his fabric.

I'd noticed on my way in and out of the house that mail was acc.u.mulating in the wire container fixed inside the letter-box on the front door, so to fill in the time before I was due at the pub I took the letters along to the sitting room and began opening the envelopes It seemed all wrong. I kept telling myself it was necessary but I still felt as if I were trespa.s.sing on ground Greville had surrounded with keep-out fences.

There were bills, requests from charities, a bank statement for his private account, a gemmology magazine and two invitations. No letters from sightholders, diamantaires or cutters in Antwerp. I put the letters into the gemmology magazine's large envelope and added to them some similar unfinished business that I'd found in the drawer under the telephone, and reflected ruefully, putting it all ready to take to Hungerford, that I loathed paperwork at the best of times. My own had a habit of mounting up into increasingly urgent heaps. Perhaps having to do Greville's would teach me some sense.

Brad whisked us round to The Rook and Castle at five-thirty and pointed to the phone to let me know how I could call him when I'd finished, and I saw from his twitch of a smile that he found it a satisfactory amus.e.m.e.nt.

The Rook and Castle was old fashioned inside as well as out, an oasis of drinking peace without a juke-box.

There was a lot of dark wood and tiffany lampshades and small tables with beer mats. A clientele of mostly business-suited men was beginning to trickle in and I paused inside the door both to get accustomeid to the comparative darkness and to give anyone who was interested a plain view of the crutches.

The interest level being nil, I judged Elliot Trelawney to be absent. I went over to the bar, ordered some Perrier and swallowed a Distalgesic, as it was time. The morning's gallop had done no good to the ankle department but it wasn't to be regretted.

A bulky man of about fifty came into the place as if familiar with his surroundings and looked purposefully around, sharpening his gaze on the crutches and coming without hesitation to the bar.

'Mr Franklin?'

I shook his offered hand.

'What are you drinking?' he said briskly, eyeing my gla.s.s.

'Perrier. That's temporary also.'

He smiled swiftly, showing white teeth. 'You won't mind if I have a double Glenlivet? Greville and I drank many of them together here. I'm going to miss him abominably. Tell me what happened.'

I told him. He listened intently, but at the end he said merely, 'You look very uncomfortable propped against that stool. Why don't we move to a table?' And without more ado he picked up my gla.s.s along with the one the bartender had fixed for him, and carried them over to two wooden armchairs under a multicoloured lampshade by the wall.

'That's better,' he said, taking a sip and eyeing me over the gla.s.s. 'So you're the brother he talked about.

You're Derek.'

'I'm Derek. His only brother, actually. I didn't know he talked about me.'

'Oh, yes. Now and then.'

Elliot Trelawney was big, almost bald, with halfmoon gla.s.ses and a face that was fleshy but healthy looking. He had thin lips but laugh lines around his eyes, and I'd have said on a snap judgement that he was a realist with a sense of humour.

'He was proud of you,' he said.

'proud?' I was surprised.

He glimmered. 'We often played golf together on Sat.u.r.day mornings and sometimes he would be wanting to finish before the two o'clock race at Sandown or somewhere, and it would be because you were riding and it was on the box. He liked to watch you. He liked you to win.'

'He never told me,' I said regretfully.

'He wouldn't, would he? I watched with him a couple of times and all he said after you'd won was, "That's all right then." '

'And when I lost?'

'When you lost?' He smiled. 'Nothing at all. Once you had a crashing fall and he said he'd be glad on the whole when you retired, as race-riding was so dangerous.

Ironic, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'By G.o.d, I'll miss trim.' His voice was deep. 'We were friends for twenty years.'

I envied him. I wanted intolerably what it was too late to have, and the more I listened to people remembering Greville the worse it got.

'Are you a magistrate?' I asked.

He nodded. 'We often sat together. Greville intro duced me to it, but I've never had quite his gift. He seemed to know the truth of things by instinct. He said goodness was visible, therefore in its absence one sought for answers.'

'What sort of cases did . . . do you try?'

'All sorts.' He smiled again briefly. 'Shoplifters. Vagrants.

Possession of drugs TV licence fee evaders. s.e.x offenders. . . that's prost.i.tution, rape, s.e.x with minors, kerb crawlers. Greville always seemed to know infallibly when those were lying.'

'Go on,' I said, when he stopped. 'Anything else?'

'Well, there are a lot of diplomats in West London, in all the emba.s.sies. You'd be astonished what they get away with by claiming diplomatic immunity. Greville hated diplomatic immunity, but we have to grant it.

Then we have a lot of small businessmen who "forget"

to pay the road tax on the company vehicles, and there are TDAs by the hundred - that's Taking and Driving Away cars. Other motoring offences, speeding and so on, are dealt with separately, like domestic offences and juveniles. And then occasionally we get the preliminary hearings in a murder case, but of course we have to refer those to the Crown Court.'

'Does it all ever depress you?' I said.

He took a sip and considered me. 'It makes you sad,'

he said eventually. 'We see as much inadequacy and stupidity as downright villainy. Some of it makes you laugh. I wouldn't say it's depressing, but one learns to see the world from underneath, so to speak. To see the dirt and the delusions, to see through the offenders'

eyes and understand their weird logic. But one's disillusion is sporadic because we don't have a bench every day. Twice a month, in Greville's and my cases, plus a little committee work. And that's what I really want from you: the notes Greville was making on the licensing of a new-style gambling club. He said he'd learned disturbing allegations against one of the organizers and he was going to advise turning down the application at the next committee meeting even though it was a project we'd formerly looked on favourably.'

'I'm afraid,' I said, 'that I haven't so far found any notes like that.'

'd.a.m.n . . . Where would he have put them?'

'I don't know. I'll look for them, though.' No harm in keeping an eye open for notes while I searched for C.

Elliot Trelawney reached into an inner jacket pocket and brought out two flat black objects, one a notebook, the other a folded black case a bit like a cigarette case.

'These were Greville's,' he said. 'I brought them for you.' He put them on the small table and moved them towards me with plump and deliberate fingers. 'He lent me that one,' he pointed, 'and the notebook he left on the table after a committee meeting last week.'

'Thank you,' I said. I picked up the folded case and opened it and found inside a miniature electronic chess set, the sort that challenged a player to beat it. I looked up. Trelawney's expression, unguarded, was intensely sorrowful. 'Would you like it?' I said. 'I know it's not much, but would you like to keep it?'

'If you mean it.'

I nodded and he put the chess set back in his pocket.

'Greville and I used to play. . . dammit. . .' he finished explosively. 'Why should such a futile thing happen?'

No answer was possible. I regretfully picked up the black notebook and opened it at random.

'The bad scorn the good,' I read aloud, 'and the crooked despise the straight.'

'The thoughts of Chairman Mao,' Trelawney said dryly, recovering himself. 'I used to tease him... he said it was a habit he'd had from university when he'd learned to clarify his thoughts by writing them down.

When I knew he was dead I read that notebook from cover to covet. I've copied down some of the things in it, I hope you won't mind.' He smiled. 'You'll find parts of it especially interesting.'

'About his horses?'

'Those too.'

I stowed the notebook in a trouser pocket which was already pretty full and brought out from there the racing diary, struck by a thought. I explained what the diary was, showing it to Trelawney.

'I phoned that number,' I said, turning pages and pointing, 'and mentioned Greville's name, and a woman told me in no uncertain terms never to telephone again as she wouldn't have the name Greville Franklin spoken in her house.'

Elliot Trelawney blinked. 'Greville? Doesn't sound like Greville.'

'I didn't think so, either. So would it have had something to do with one of your cases? Someone he found guilty of something?'

'Hah. Perhaps' He considered. 'I could probably find out whose number it is, if you like. Strange he would have had it in his diary, though. Do you want to follow it up?'

'It just seemed so odd,' I said.

'Quite right.' He unclipped a gold pencil from another inner pocket and in a slim notebook of black leather with gold corners wrote down the number.

'Do you make enemies much, because of the court?'

I asked.

He looked up and shrugged. 'We get cursed now and then. Screamed at, one might say. But usually not.

Mostly they plead guilty because it's so obvious they are. The only real enemy Greville might have had is the gambling club organizer who's not going to get his licence. A drugs baron is what Greville called him. A man suspected of murder but not tried through lack of evidence. He might have had very hard feelings.' He hesitated. 'When I heard Greville was dead, I even wondered about VaccarQ But it seems clear the scaffolding was a sheer accident . . . wasn't it?'

'Yes, it was The scaffolding broke high up. One man working on it fell three storeys to his death. Pieces just rained down on Greville. A minute earlier, a minute later...' I sighed. 'Is Vaccaro the gambling-licence man?'

'He is He appeared before the committee and seemed perfectly straightforward. Subject to screening, we said. And then someone contacted Greville and uncovered the muck. But we don't ourselves have any details, so we need his notes.'

'I'll look for them,' I promised again. I turned more pages in the diary. 'Does Koningin Beatrix mean anything to you?' I showed him the entry. 'Or CZ = C x 1.7i'

C, I thought, looking at it again, stood for diamond.

'Nothing,' Elliot Trelawney said. 'But as you know, Greville could be as obscure as he was clear-headed.

And these were private notes to himself, after all. Same as his notebook. It was never for public consumption.'

I nodded and put away the diary and paid for Elliot Trelawney's repeat Glenlivet but felt waterlogged myselL He stayed for a while, seeming to be glad to talk about Greville, as I was content to listen. We parted eventually on friendly terms, he giving me his card with his phone number for when I found Greville's notes If, I silently thought. If I find them.

When he'd gone I used the pub's telephone to ring the car, and after five unanswered brr-brrs disconnected and went outside, and Brad with almost a grin reappeared to pick me up.

'Home,' I said, and he said, 'Yerss,' and that was that.

On the way I read bits of Greville's notebook, pausing often to digest the pa.s.sing thoughts which had clearly been chiefly prompted by the flotsam drifting through the West London Magistrates Court.

'Goodness is sickening to the evil,' he wrote, 'as evil is sickening to the good. Both the evil and the good may be complacent.'

'In all income groups you find your average regulation slob who sn.i.g.g.e.rs at anarchy but calls the police indignantly to his burglarized home, who is actively anti-authority until he needs to be saved from someone with a gun.'

'The palm outstretched for a hand-out can turn in a flash into a cursing fist. A nation's palm, a nation's fist.'