Blood Sympathy

‘There’s room to turn at the top of the drive,’ said Andover.

Joe drove in. No sign of any other car, so presumably Carlo Rocca had set out to pick up his brother-in-law. Tough.

Andover got out by the classically porticoed porch which looked like it had been recently stuck on to the studded oak front door.

‘Like a drink?’ he said.

‘No, thanks,’ said Joe firmly.

‘OK. Thanks for the lift. ’Bye.’

Andover went inside. Joe carefully negotiated the ornamental cherry which marked the hub of the turning circle in the gravelled drive.

Ahead was the gateway. Behind, he hoped forever, was Mr Andover and his crazy dreams. He noticed that someone had recently done a racing start here, scattering gravel all over the elegant lawn.

‘Mr Sixsmith!’

He heard his name screamed. In the mirror he saw Andover rush out of the house, waving his arms and staggering like a closing time drunk.

It felt like it might be a good time to follow the example laid out before him and burn rubber.

Instead he stopped, said to Whitey who’d reclaimed the passenger seat reluctantly given up to Andover, ‘You stay still,’ and got out.

Andover was leaning against the cherry tree, his face so pale his freckles stood out like raisins in bread dough.

‘Inside,’ he gasped, then, as if in visual aid, he was violently sick.

Joe went towards the house, not hurrying. He had little doubt what he was going to find and it wasn’t something you hurried to. Also he felt his limbs were moving with the strange slow floating action of a man in a dream. Someone else’s dream.

The front door opened into a panelled vestibule, tailor made for sporting prints and an elephant-foot umbrella stand.

Instead, the walls were lined with photos of bright Mediterranean scenes framed in white plastic, and the only thing on the floor was a woman’s body. Her throat had been slit, more than slit, almost severed, and the handle of the fatal knife still protruded from the gaping wound.

There were open doors to the left and the right. The one on the left led into a kitchen. On the floor were strewn the shards of a china teapot in a broad pool of pale amber tea.

Gingerly Joe stepped over the body so he could see through the doorway on the right. It led into a lounge, and he was glad his sense of professional procedure gave him a reason for not crossing the threshold.

There were three more bodies here, an elderly couple and a youngish woman. The couple were slumped against each other on a garishly upholstered sofa. The woman lay on her side by a low table on which stood four cups and saucers, and a half-eaten Victoria sponge.

All three had had their throats cut.

Sixsmith turned back to the hallway. By the main door was a wall phone, with a fixed mouthpiece and separate earphone, like the ones reporters use in the old American movies. Carefully cloaking his fingers with his handkerchief (something else he’d seen in the movies), Joe dialled the police.

‘DS Chivers, please.’

‘Sorry, the Sergeant’s out on a call, sir. Can I help?’

‘I’m at a house called Casa Mia, number twenty-one Coningsby Rise—’

‘Hold on, sir. We’ve had that call already, that’s where the Sergeant’s gone. He should be with you any time now.’

‘This is real service,’ said Joe.

He stepped out into the fresh air and drew in a deep breath.

Andover was sitting with his back against one of the porch pillars, his head slumped on his chest.

‘You OK?’

The head jerked in what could have been an affirmative.

‘Good,’ said Joe, then walked across to the cherry tree, where he was following Andover’s earlier example when the first police car screamed up the drive.

CHAPTER 2

It seemed that four bodies got you more than a sergeant, which was just as well.

Chivers, first on the scene, clearly saw Joe Sixsmith as a prime mover in all this mayhem. In fact it turned out that when he was passed details of the phone call saying, ‘My name is Stephen Andover. I have just murdered my wife and her family at 21 Coningsby Rise,’ he had wasted several minutes trying to ring Joe’s office. Once he grasped there really were four bodies in the house, he was much inclined to arrest Andover on the spot. Joe protested that the man had been in his company for the past half hour or more.

‘So we’ve got ourselves a conspiracy, have we?’ snapped Chivers illogically, and was cautioning Joe when Detective Chief Inspector ‘Willy’ Woodbine arrived.

Built like an old style pillar-box, he had a matching reputation for getting his message across. Now he listened to a résumé of the known facts, told Chivers not to be a twerp all his life, and put out a general call to pick up Carlo Rocca, age thirty-four, stocky build, with long black hair and a heavy black moustache, perhaps wearing a slouch hat and a grey topcoat with an astrakhan collar, and driving an F registered blue Ford Fiesta.

Then he went into the house presumably to look for clues.

Chivers glowered after him.

Joe said, ‘Can I go now?’

‘No you bloody well can’t! We’ll need a statement, and I’m sure that Mr Woodbine will want to question you personally. Doberley, get your useless body over here!’

Joe looked round to see Detective-Constable Dylan Doberley trying unsuccessfully to keep out of sight by pretending to search the shrubbery. Known inevitably as Dildo, Doberley was an old acquaintance of Joe’s from their co-membership of the Boyling Corner Chapel Concert Choir. Now they also had Chivers’s wrath in common.

‘Yes, Sarge?’ said Doberley.

‘You seen what’s in there, my son?’ demanded Chivers. ‘You realize they must’ve been having their throats slit while you were starting up your car? Call yourself a detective! Defective is more like it. Take a statement from Sherlock here. Then get yourself off round the neighbours and check if they saw anything suspicious, and I don’t mean you!’

Taking Joe’s statement didn’t take long as he’d already been mentally rehearsing it to keep his personal involvement down to a minimum. When they were finished Doberley said, ‘I’d better get on to the neighbours before he starts yelling again.’

Keeping out of Chivers’s way seemed a good idea, so Joe joined the detective as he walked down the drive.

‘On a short fuse today, your boss,’ he said conversationally.

‘He can blow himself up for me,’ said Doberley bitterly. ‘What’s he think I am anyway? Psychic? OK, I saw them, but they was all happy as Larry, jabbering away like they do, all arms and spaghetti bolognese—’

‘You mean they didn’t speak English?’

‘Of course they spoke English! The two young ones spoke it just like you and me. The old pair sounded a bit more foreign like, and it was when they got a bit excited, they all started spouting Iti.’

‘Excited? You didn’t tell them—?’

‘That I’d come to make sure they wasn’t dead? Don’t be stupid. I told ’em I was crime prevention come to warn them there’d been a lot of break-ins round here lately. That was enough to set them off, particularly the old boy. Right little Musso he was, wanting to know why we didn’t hang people and why he couldn’t keep his own personal machine-gun in the house. Lot of good it would have done the poor old sod. Not when your own son-in-law’s just going to walk right in and slit your throat. If it was the son-in-law did it, that is.’

Joe grinned at the sad little straw Dildo was clutching at and said, ‘He didn’t strike you as suspicious, then?’

‘No, he bloody didn’t!’ exclaimed Doberley. ‘I was just walking back to my car when this blue Fiesta turns into the drive. It stopped and he wound down the window and asked if he could help me. I guessed he was one of the family—’

‘Why?’

‘Because he would hardly have asked otherwise,’ said Dildo in exasperation. ‘How do you earn a living, Joe? Also he spoke with a bit of an accent and he looked foreign with that shaggy moustache and slouch hat. I asked him who he was, naturally, and he told me, and I told him who I was, but I didn’t shoot him the crime prevention line.’

‘Why not?’ asked Joe.

‘I thought: He doesn’t look like he’d scare easy; so I asked about Andover, had he been acting funny recently? And that got him going, all this stuff about crazy dreams and so forth. And that was it.’

He laughed without humour.

‘Know what the last thing I said to him was, Joe? I said it would probably be better if he didn’t mention this to the ladies or the old folk, as there was no need to frighten them unnecessarily! Oh no, he said. He wouldn’t do anything to frighten ’em. Then he went in and did that!’

‘Like you say, Dildo, we can’t be absolutely sure,’ said Joe.

‘No? What do you want?’ said the DC, abandoning hope. ‘The angel of the Lord in triplicate? Here, you’d better disappear now, Joe, and let me get on.’

Immersed in their conversation, they had turned into the driveway nearest Casa Mia and were approaching a not dissimilar mock-Tudor villa, only this one was traditionally coloured and called The Pines. Sixsmith could see why Doberley wouldn’t want to have to explain his presence either to the householder or, worse, to Chivers. Unfortunately their approach must have been monitored, for now the door opened and a woman came to meet them.

She was in her fifties, tall and angular, with expensively coiffured grey hair and a horsey face that looked like it had been worked on by a good picture restorer.

‘Hello,’ she cried in the piercing voice of one who expects her own way but isn’t so absolutely certain of personal desert that she can be quiet about it. ‘Police, is it?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Detective-Constable Doberley, ma’am,’ said Dildo, making a chess knight’s move forward in an effort to conceal Joe. ‘Just a couple of questions, if you would, Mrs … er …?’

‘Rathbone. Julia Rathbone. Is it about next door?’

‘That’s right, ma’am.’

‘Ah. I thought it would be.’

Sixsmith, not wanting to embarrass his fellow chorister but feeling it would look suspicious if he just took off back down the drive, moved sideways towards a grey Volvo parked in front of the garage and started examining it with that air of suppressed shock policemen usually adopted when checking his Morris.

‘Why’d you think that, ma’am?’ asked Doberley.

‘Because I saw your cars arrive, naturally. But besides that, I’ve always said it would end in tears ever since they moved in.’

‘You mean the Andovers?’

‘No, of course not. He’s all right, not quite top drawer, of course, but at least he’s English and knows his manners. Can’t imagine how he got mixed up with his wife, Gina, isn’t it? If they’d met on holiday, perhaps … I mean she’s just so … colourful, like one of those ornaments that look so delightful in Andalucia but when you get them home, it’s straight into the attic. Can’t do that with a wife, of course, not unless you’re called Rochester. But it appears she was born over here, in Tring, I believe, and that’s where he met her, so it can’t be down to sunstroke and vino, can it?’

Dildo Doberley, with a single-mindedness Joe admired, kept hold of the original thread which had led him into this verbal tangle.

‘So why would it end in tears, Mrs Rathbone?’

‘When the other came. That Rocca. My dear man, one look at him and you knew here was trouble. Do you know, he once told me if ever I was thinking of changing my hi-fi, to let him know and he’d fix me up with the best bargain I’d get in Bedfordshire. Well, I knew what that meant, back of a lorry stuff. No, thanks, I said. And he’s still undischarged, you know, and likely to stay so from what I’ve seen.’

There was a great deal more of this. Doberley stuck to his guns manfully and what it boiled down to in his notebook, or would have done if Joe Sixsmith had been making the notes, was that the real money in the family derived from old Tomassetti. He’d built up a thriving business in the fur trade with outlets all over Beds, Bucks, and Herts, till seeing that public opinion was moving strongly against wearing dead animals, he’d sold up, retired, and bought Casa Mia, inviting his eldest daughter and her husband, Stephen Andover, to join them there with the understanding that the house would pass to them after his death.

‘The house was called Cherry Lodge when he bought it,’ said Mrs Rathbone. ‘He changed it to Casa Mia. Down at the bridge club we said that Cosa Nostra would have been more appropriate, especially once the Roccas turned up.’

Carlo Rocca had married Maria, the younger and wilder daughter. Even-handedly, the old man had pushed a large chunk of money their way at the same time as he went into the Casa Mia arrangement with the Andovers. Rocca, then a salesman in a hi-fi and television store, had used his expertise and the money to set up his own shop in Luton’s new shopping mall. For a while things had prospered. Then recession began to bite, interest rates went up, sales went down, and six months earlier Rocca had been declared bankrupt.

‘That was it. Everything had to go, the shop, the stock, his car, and of course they had to get out of their flat, I mean, even our crazy social services won’t pay for a luxury apartment, will they? So Maria came to see her father, I think for more money. But he said no, he wasn’t going to chuck good money after bad, but she was family—about family—and she could come to live with them in Casa Mia, and her husband too, if they wanted. So they did. Well, I knew it would lead to trouble. And it has, but what kind of trouble, Mr Doberley? Here am I telling you everything I know, and you’re not telling me anything!’

Her eyes were bright with expectation.

Doberley, perhaps hoping to shock her into brevity, said flatly, ‘I’m afraid there’s been a fatality, ma’am.’

Her eyes went into super-nova.

‘A fatality? You mean he’s killed one of them?’

‘We don’t have any more details, the investigation’s at an early stage …’

‘But it has to be him. Of course it’s him. I saw him!’

‘You saw … what did you see?’ demanded Doberley.

‘I saw Rocca come running out of the house. Earlier this afternoon. I was in my bedroom and you get a good view over the shrubbery to the front of Casa Mia. Rocca came running out of the front door, jumped in the car and took off like one of those joyriders, you know, wheels skidding, gravel flying everywhere. I remember thinking: That will ruin their lawn-mower if they’re not careful. Who’s dead?’

Ignoring the question, Doberley said, ‘You’re sure it was Rocca?’

‘Oh yes. He had his hand up to his face as if he felt he was being watched and was trying to hide, but that ghastly moustache and awful gangster’s hat are unmistakable. Which of them has he killed? His wife? They were always rowing. The poor old mother must be so distressed. Perhaps I ought to go across and see if there’s anything I can do …’

‘I don’t think that would be such a good idea, Mrs Rathbone,’ said Doberley.

‘Why not? Look, I’m not just being nosey, I really like the old lady …’

‘I’m sure. Only she doesn’t need comforting.’

Something in the policeman’s tone got through.

‘You don’t mean … not her too … oh God.’

She had gone quite pale beneath the make-up. Sixsmith waited to see how far Doberley would go with his revelations, but the DC clearly felt he had gone too far already.

He said, ‘I think my superiors would like to talk to you, Mrs Rathbone. Perhaps we could go inside and I’ll contact them on your phone if I may.’

He ushered the woman into the house in front of him, turned to close the door and mouthed, ‘Get lost!’ at Joe.

It seemed like good advice.

Back at the Casa Mia everyone was busy, or looking busy. He looked for Chivers in the hope of getting leave to leave but the Sergeant was nowhere to be seen. In any case, the Morris Oxford was completely boxed in by a fleet of official police vehicles. Untroubled by all this activity, Whitey was fast asleep. It seemed a good idea. Joe slid quietly into the back, closed the door and curled up on the old travelling rug he kept there for warmth on all-night stake-outs.

It was impossible not to think about the killings. From what the nosey neighbour said, it sounded pretty open-and-shut. A house full of tensions, Rocca the wide boy chafing at having to toe the line to get the old man’s charity, his wife perhaps reckoning her sister was getting the better deal from their dad; the old man, dominant, patriarchal; explosive Latin temperaments; exploding Latin rows … no wonder poor old Anglo-Saxon-repressive Andover started having weird dreams!

One thing was sure; there was no case fee in it for J. Sixsmith PI, Inc. And he was glad there wasn’t. Tracking unfaithful wives and credit defaulters might be dull but at least it let you sleep easy.

A wink was as good as a … His eyelids closed … He drifted into a deep dark untroubled sleep …

But there was something in that darkness. Figures seated around a table, mere silhouettes at first, but gradually sharpening, and then their features emerging like a landscape at dawn …

‘Oh shoot!’ said Joe Sixsmith in his sleep. Once more he was looking at the slaughtered quartet, and they were looking back at him, their sightless eyes locking on his, as each in turn raised a lifeless hand first to their bleeding throats as if in hope of staunching the wounds, then higher to cover their mouths as if to hold back their screams of terror and agony.

But there was no holding them back. Out they came, high, piercing, unearthly, and Sixsmith felt a weight pressing on his chest and the scream was so close it seemed to be inside his own head …

He awoke. Whitey was sitting on his chest bellowing into his ear that it was long past his tea-time and what was he going to do about it?

‘Don’t do that!’ snapped Joe, sitting up and precipitating the cat to the floor. But when he looked at his watch he had to admit the beast had the right of it. He got out of the car and stretched.

‘You still here?’ said DCI Woodbine, coming out of the house with Chivers in close attendance.

‘That’s right,’ said Joe mildly. ‘But I would like to go soon if I can. I’ve got a meeting tonight, also my cat’s getting a bit hungry.’

‘Four people dead and all he can think about is his cat,’ sneered Chivers.

‘You got something against cats, Sergeant?’ said Woodbine sharply. ‘I’ve got four Persians and I tell you this, I wouldn’t dare keep them waiting for their dinner. So you push off, Mr Sixsmith, whenever you’re ready.’

He thinks it’s all wrapped up, thought Joe. And so it probably is. Witnesses, motive, and a suspect with an Italian accent and a Mafia moustache driving round in a car whose number will be plastered across the nation’s telly screens tonight.

Woodbine ordered the vehicles blocking his exit out of the way and personally waved him out. Joe almost blew a kiss at Chivers but didn’t quite have the nerve.

‘There you are, Whitey,’ he said as he drove home. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes. Even cops can love cats.’

But Whitey was unimpressed. A deepdown racist, he regarded Persians and all foreign breeds as illegal immigrants, sneaking over here to take English mice out of English mouths. So now he merely sneered and yelled even louder for his tea.

CHAPTER 3

Whenever Joe Sixsmith felt the sharp elbows of Anglo-Saxon attitudes digging in his ribs, he reminded himself that these people had invented the fried breakfast.

He liked the fried breakfast. He liked it so much he often had it for tea too. And sometimes for his dinner.

He’d been warned that addiction to the fried breakfast could kill him.

‘There are worse things to die of,’ said Joe.

Whitey enjoyed the fried breakfast too, which was just as well.

‘No fads and fancies here, man,’ Joe had warned him on first acquaintance. ‘You’ve joined the only true democratic household in Luton. We eat the same, drink the same.’ Which principle was sorely tested the first time Whitey caught a mouse and pushed it invitingly towards him.

They shared half a pound of streaky bacon, three eggs, two tomatoes and a handful of button mushrooms when they got back from Casa Mia. Then they split a pint of hot sweet tea sixty-forty and Joe settled before his twenty-six-inch telly to let the early evening news scrape the last traces of the day’s horror from his personal plate into the public trough.

In fact there wasn’t all that much about it. The politician and pony scandal still got main billing, and a crash landing on the A 505 came second. It was only a light plane and there were no fatalities, but a woman trying out her new camcorder had caught the whole drama in wobbly close-up and the resultant images must have been irresistible to the picture-popping TV mind.

If there’d been a camera to record what Joe Sixsmith had seen, he didn’t doubt that the Casa Mia killings would have been top of the pops, but they had to make do with exteriors and a close-up of Willy Woodbine confidently anticipating an early arrest and inviting viewers to look out for, but steer clear of, Carlo Rocca, who could help the police with their inquiries.

There was a photo of Rocca which looked like a fuzzy enlargement from a wedding group. Joe doubted if it would be all that much use except to anyone with a grudge against some fellow with a prominent moustache.

‘Now, sport,’ said the presenter. ‘Luton have made a late change in the team for their key league match tonight …’

Sixsmith sighed and felt his season ticket burning in his wallet. Trust the Major to call a residents’ meeting on a night when Luton were playing at home. That’s what came of being brought up on rugger and polo. Thoughts of truancy drifted through his mind, then drifted out. The Major he could avoid, but not Auntie Mirabelle.

Still he had time for forty winks before he needed to think about going …

He relaxed in his chair, closed his eyes … and was back in Andover’s dream. At least he tried to make himself think of it as Andover’s dream (which meant he knew he was dreaming), only it had his own little variation of the corpses raising their hands to their mouths and screaming … no, not screaming … this time they were making an insistent bell-ringing noise … ah, now they were screaming …

He awoke to find Whitey bellowing in his ear that the phone was ringing and wasn’t he going to answer it?

He yawned and reached for the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Joe, that you?’ demanded the unmistakable voice of his Aunt Mirabelle.

‘No, Auntie, it’s a burglar,’ said Sixsmith.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. You play with pitch, you going to get defiled, doesn’t the Good Book tell us so?’

‘Yes, Auntie. And you’ve rung to tell me not to forget I’m due at the Residents’ Action meeting, right?’

‘You so clever, how come you can’t get a proper job?’ she said briskly. ‘The Major says, make sure that nephew of yours shows up on parade. People are starting to think they can’t rely on you, Joe, and that’s bad.’

‘People?’

‘Yes, people. The Rev. Pot just the same. He says: Is that Joe singing in my choir or is he not? This is no public house singalong we’re trying to do, this is Haydn’s Creation. That took the Lord seven days, how many days you think it’s going to take you?’

‘I’ll come to choir practice tomorrow, I promise, Auntie. And I’ll be at the meeting tonight.’

‘See that you are. I got someone I want you to meet.’

Joe groaned inwardly, said, ‘Goodbye, Auntie,’ put the phone down, and groaned outwardly. He loved his aunt dearly but her efforts to direct his life were a trial, particularly since she’d decided that what he needed to get his head right and drop this detective nonsense was the responsibility of marriage. A steam of candidates had been channelled his way, most of them extremely homely and slightly middle-aged. Mirabelle would sing Joe’s praises to anyone, but even a loving aunt reckons a short, balding, unemployed nephew in his late thirties can’t be choosey. The odd ones who were comparatively young and attractive always turned out to have some hidden disadvantage, like a string of kids or convictions for violence.