Monkey Puzzle Page 13

  ‘No, you can keep it.’ He watched her rubbing at a dark stain near the thumb. ‘Chocolate sauce,’ he volunteered, and regretted it, as her eyes met his.

  ‘You had it analysed?’

  ‘Yes.’ He regretted having to admit that, too.

  ‘My goodness.’ Her eyes widened. ‘I guess you’ll have to charge me with being drunk in charge of an ice-cream sundae.’

  ‘And a hot-dog with mustard. Index finger area, halfway down.’

  She found the mark – a very tiny mark – and looked at him with a martyred expression. ‘Then I guess it had better be sloppy eating. Do you give any time off for subsequent use of napkin?’

  ‘No – we’re tightening up on that.’

  Their eyes met again, held for a moment, and then Stryker bent down to pick up her briefcase. He offered the coat he’d had over his arm. ‘If we’re going over to the Union, you’d better use this.’

  ‘No, thank you, I’ll be fine.’

  He spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Take the goddamn coat – we don’t allow time off for pneumonia either. I’m hungry, you’re hungry, we’ll go, we’ll eat. All right?’

  ‘Is this an official interview?’

  He pushed open the door and a blast of icy air flapped the coat like a cape as she put it over her shoulders. ‘No – for official interviews I wear the coat and you hide behind the briefcase. Move it, will you? I’m freezing my ass off, here.’

  The Union cafeteria was already filling up. They found a small table in a corner and settled down. He noted with approval that they both had taken the tuna fish sandwiches. ‘They really do them right, here, don’t they? Egg, onion – the works.’

  She regarded him cautiously as he bit enthusiastically into one of the Union’s undoubtedly superior tuna fish sandwiches. He was dressed more neatly than he had been on Saturday – he could have passed for a graduate student in his blue shirt and black and white herringbone sports coat. He wore a tie, his shoes were highly polished, he’d shaved – all very presentable.

  ‘What do you want from me, Lieutenant?’ she asked.

  He finished chewing, took a swallow of coffee, leaned back. ‘I need a spy,’ he said.

  ‘A spy?’ Startled, she could only go on staring at him.

  ‘Right. I need to know what goes on in your department over the next few days. I can’t hang around, and some undercover guy dressed up as a student would stick out because students don’t hang around up there, either. No – I need a spy.’

  ‘And naturally you thought of me, seeing as I’m so obviously disloyal, sneaky, back-biting and two-faced.’

  ‘Seeing as you have an alibi which I think is solid, and because you seem the kind of person who might be interested in justice. At least I was frank – I could have called it something else.’

  ‘You think my being a spy would have something to do with justice?’

  ‘If it helps me catch a killer, yes.’ He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. ‘What’s the matter – old-fashioned concepts bother you ? Or is it just not your problem?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Yes, you did, Your face, your tone, everything. Look, I’m trained to smell out killers, and I tell you that there is something rotten in that holier-than-thou ivory tower Department of yours. I’m not giving up on other possibilities –no way – but I’m certainly not going to discount my instinctive feeling about your little crowd of cronies simply because you all use big words. Big deal. Big words buyeth not this man’s awe.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Dan? He has an alibi, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Nope – he’s too defensive about his “little flock”. All the older ones are like that. I’m asking you. I want your help.’

  ‘But why?’ She leaned back, took a deep breath, and said it. ‘Is it because of that day you didn’t arrest me with the others?’ His face stayed blank, but something in his eyes flickered. She leaned forward, nudging her coffee cup perilously close to the edge. ‘It is, isn’t it? You think I “owe you one”, don’t you?’ He still didn’t say anything. ‘Oh, you smug bastard!’ she burst out, startling them both. Her coffee cup started to go over, and his hand shot out to catch it.

  ‘Take it easy, Kate . . .’

  ‘Kate? How dare you . . .’

  ‘Are you okay, Miss Trevorne?’ It was Jody Longman, tray in hand, looming large with concern next to their table. ‘You want to come over and sit with us?’ He nodded towards another table, where several of Richard’s fraternity charges sat. They were all watching, and Kate felt herself blushing furiously, knowing that the least plea from her could lead to a nasty scene – they’d love any excuse to take out Stryker, or any other cop.

  ‘No, thanks, Jody. I’m fine, really.’

  He eyed Stryker. He was a big boy – they were all big boys at that other table. ‘We all like Miss Trevorne, here, you know?’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Stryker said, calmly. ‘I like her, too.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Jody, really. I was just angry about something silly, that’s all. You go eat your lunch – you haven’t got much time before your next class, have you?’ she asked desperately, not knowing his schedule. Eventually, after another eye-to-eye battle with an amused Stryker, Jody moved off.

  After a moment, Stryker spoke. ‘It was silly, you know. I was hoping you’d forgotten it.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were,’ she said, in a low, tight voice. ‘I’ve never forgotten it. You and all those other cops, my God, you swarmed into the old Department as if we had an atomic bomb in there, swinging your sticks and yelling. It was terrifying, just terrifying . . .’

  ‘Is that why you ran?’

  She looked away. She could still feel the way her heart had pounded. It was pounding, now. The sound of his boots clattering up the stairs behind her, down the hall, the way she’d been cornered in that empty room, nearly jibbering with terror. She knew he was not tall, but he’d seemed huge, then. Even when she’d realised he was young, the helmet and dark glasses had made-him seem like some dark and evil knight, so menacing. If she could have seen his eyes, then, as she could see them now . . .

  ‘That wasn’t me, you know,’ he said softly. ‘That was a kid about three months out of the Academy. It was my first demo and I was terrified, too. You figured you had a cause, you all felt noble and wonderful, right? Me, I was scared out of my socks that I’d mess up. So much noise, so much smart-ass hatred coming at us. I was scared of you all, scared of hurting you, if you want the truth, but even more scared that my fellow officers would see how scared I was. When you lit out it was a relief- you gave me a chance to run away, too. When we got to that classroom, I thought maybe we’d talk about it, I could use my “social skills” and all that crap – but then, when you spat at me – ’

  ‘I didn’t!’ she protested, aghast.

  ‘The hell you didn’t. On me and my badge. I’d just gone through two years of hell to earn that uniform, and it meant a lot to me. What you and your pseudo-intellectual buddies were protesting about actually had my sympathy – but when you did that something in me snapped. Okay, I’m sorry, but I could have killed you I was so angry. Instead . . .’ He stopped.

  The memory that lay between them shimmered and flamed, momentarily. They both remembered his hand on her bare flesh. The sound of it, the heat and the impact, echoed silently, and they looked anywhere, everywhere but at each other. They should have laughed, of course. Under any other circumstances they would have laughed, because it was only a long-ago incident, kind of wild and kind of exciting, and they were grown up, now.

  Weren’t they?

  The noise and the chatter and the laughter of the students washed around them, blurred into no sound at all but made a kind of cocoon, isolating them. ‘You could have reported me, got me thrown off the force, you know that?
’ he said, quietly. ‘Legally what I did to you was indecent assault.’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’ She, too, spoke quietly. She remembered spitting now. Remembered how he’d gone rigid, how his tentative half-smile had been wiped away as he’d wiped the spit from his uniform and then moved towards her -

  ‘Did you know it then?’

  ‘Yes.’ (But she’d also known she deserved that spanking.)

  ‘Okay. Then I guess I owe you one.’

  Now that it was out in the open she felt strangely empty – as if she’d given something saved from her childhood to a total stranger. It was gone for ever, whatever it was. ‘We’re evens,’ she told him.

  ‘Then help me.’ He leaned forward, now, she could feel his warmth on her face, their hands were close on the table. ‘The things you were protesting about then must have meant something to you – you must have cared about “fairness” and “justice”.’

  ‘I cared about Richard, that’s all. My convictions were rather second-hand, even then. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to pick and choose my “beliefs”, in order to survive.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got many of those old shiny ideals left, myself. I’ll tell you, they were heavy to carry around all the time – hence the chronic backache of middle-age. One of the few I’ve got left is doing the best I can at my job. Corny, but I’m stuck with it. I’m trained to catch killers so people with or without ideals can sleep nights, you know? Maybe not every night, but most nights.’

  ‘But don’t you see? I’m not trained,’ Kate said, seizing on this. ‘The only detective training I’ve had has come from books, fiction. What if I told you something that was irrelevant and you drew the wrong conclusion from it? I don’t want that on my conscience.’

  ‘Neither do I. As it happens I’m pretty cautious about jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘Oh, really? I’ve heard they call you “Jumping Jack”, she said, with a half-smile. ‘You jumped to the one about Aiken being murdered by one of us in the Department.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ He smiled, too. ‘I just sort of sidled up to it and gave it a nudge, that’s all. Anyway, don’t think of it as telling on someone, think of it as trying to clear everyone else. Don’t you want it over with? I do.’

  She narrowed her eyes and looked at him, the Innocence Kid, the Man in the White Hat, the Good Guy. Was he being honest with her? Well, she’d do him the same favour.

  ‘I don’t want to be part of it.’

  The mask slipped, and for a moment she saw the face she remembered, bleak and angry. His face changed so quickly, he was such a sudden man. ‘I see,’ he said, in a dead voice. ‘Let the dirty cop do the dirty cop’s job, is that it? You people who don’t want to get “involved” make me sick. Involved means “caring”. Are you so frozen up in yourself that you don’t care if people die before their time? Have their life ripped out of them as if they were animals who didn’t deserve to breathe? That’s what a killer does, you know. He decides who will be sacrificed so that he can survive. Don’t you think that’s disgusting? Don’t you think that’s wrong?’

  His anger had left her and moved to the killer. He was telling her why he went on, what drove him, what burned in him and made him look so tired. She couldn’t believe all cops felt that way, but if even a few did, then all her old protests and outrages had been misdirected. The trouble was, these days every direction looked wrong to her, somehow. Nothing was all clean, all right. Was that what “maturity” meant? Accepting that?

  ‘I’m not as strong as you are,’ she said.

  ‘Strong? Jesus, don’t you think I’m still scared?’ he demanded. ‘It’s not strength – it’s more like running faster and faster so you don’t fall down, that’s all. I need your help, Kate, I’m begging for it.’

  ‘I . . . can’t give it.’

  He looked at her for a long time, then looked down at the lapel of his jacket, and brushed something invisible from it. ‘That’s twice,’ he said, and walked out.

  SIXTEEN

  Stryker’s anger and resentment carried him through the maelstrom of students and all the way up to the English Department. Oh, Stryker, he told himself, you stupid, horny bastard. Aren’t you getting paid back, now? He didn’t know why he was so surprised at her reaction. He couldn’t expect other people to compromise themselves and/or betray their friends for an abstract concept like justice. Maybe that was why he’d become such a cynic – because he always did expect it, and was always disappointed.

  He’d so desperately wanted her to be different.

  That was something which might have come from that rookie of fifteen years ago – not the old, mean cop he’d become. Rookies have dreams of fair maids – old cops have corns.

  Oh, what the hell, he ordered himself, get on with the job. He stiff-armed the glass door to the Main Office and spoke to the secretaries in general. ‘Does anyone know where Professor Pinchman is? I had an appointment with him but he’s not in.’

  Karen Lasterman came over. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I should have put a note on his door and I forgot. He went home about two hours ago – he wasn’t feeling very well.’

  ‘Oh? Nothing serious, I hope.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. His health is kind of up and down, you see. He has a lot of pain from his legs but he refuses to give in until it gets the better of him, and then he’s furious.’ There was unmistakable fondness in her voice as she described the old man’s stubborn struggle to keep going. ‘We usually have to force him to take time off.’

  ‘Did you have to force him this morning?’

  She frowned. ‘No, not really. He looked pretty bad. I offered to call him a taxi, but he said someone was driving him home.’

  ‘That’s the Madison Hotel, on Hamilton?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Okay.’ He thought a moment. ‘Anyone else free right now?’

  She leaned back and consulted a schedule taped to the wall beside the reception desk. ‘Frank Heath will be free at three o’clock, and so will Mr Underhill. Everyone else has classes right through from . . .’ The bell in the hall rang stridently. ‘From now. Monday is our busiest day. Tomorrow would be a lot better.’

  ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,’ said Stryker.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Nothing. Thanks.’ He went out feeling all dressed up with nowhere to go. He could have come the heavy cop and dragged one of them out of class, but there was no point. He glanced at his watch. He was due at the post mortem at three, and the Madison Hotel was on the way. Maybe he’d look in on Pinchman. Why not? Hassling a cripple seemed to be Kate Trevorne’s concept of a cop’s favourite pastime – who was he to argue with a member of the public?

  He found a parking place and walked back to the hotel. The thing that had bothered him about Pinchman’s story was his comment about ‘feeling cold’ around nine. Was that because of his disability? The heating wasn’t turned off until eleven. He might be lying about how late he’d stayed – or his watch might have stopped. If he had been there later he might have noticed something or someone. It was worth a minute, anyway.

  The Madison was an old hotel, still very shabby on the outside, but surprisingly modern within. There was still a desk, but it was no longer manned. Stryker rang a bell marked ‘Service’ and after a moment a man appeared, napkin in hand, surrounded by the aroma of vegetable soup – some of which had come along for the ride on his chin. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Pinchman?’

  ‘2D – at the back.’

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘Came in a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Alone?’

  The man’s narrow eyes narrowed more. ‘Young guy with him.’

  ‘What did he look like, this “young guy”?’

  The man shrugged – it was all of vast disinterest to him. ‘Like a young guy,
what else? Tall, had a beard, like that. Who are you, anyway? Cop?’

  ‘Cop,’ Stryker agreed, and walked towards the lifts. As the doors slid closed he turned and met the now-avid stare of the Manager, wiping his chin with his napkin.

  Pinchman’s escort could have been Hoyland, or Underhill, or a student, Stryker thought. When the lift doors slid back he saw further evidence of money spent on the hotel’s conversion. He supposed the rough exterior had been preserved as a kind of camouflage, blending it into the rather run-down neighbourhood that was slowly being taken over by the University. He wondered if this hotel would eventually fall, like the rest, to car parks and blank-faced characterless buildings like Grantham Hall. He hoped not. The plasterwork on the ceilings was beautifully intricate, and the old light fittings had been preserved and restored. The carpet was thick and muffled his steps. Someone had taken a lot of trouble over this place, and he hoped they were willing to take a lot of trouble to prevent its loss.

  He was so absorbed in the décor that he was almost at the door of 2D before he smelled the gas.

  It was a thick old door and had some tight new locks. After five or ten kicks, Stryker ran back down the hall and banged on the door of 2A. To the questioning and suspicious face that eventually presented itself through the crack, he barked an order for an ambulance and the police, in that order. He had to produce his identification before agreement was reached. The three wasted minutes built up in him a store of frustration.

  He went back to the door and kicked it in on the fourth try.

  An invisible tide of gas poured out and enveloped him. As he reeled back he caught sight of the Manager approaching, his annoyance visible the length of the hall.

  ‘I’m going in,’ Stryker shouted. ‘Watch for the ambulance.’

  Pulling up his scarf he ran in, not daring to turn on a light. A faulty switch could provide just enough spark to blow half the hotel clear into the next street. Groping in the dim light, he staggered through the obstacle course of unfamiliar furniture to the windows, and threw them open one by one. Cold wind blew in, and snow started to settle on the carpet as he went to a door on his left. Bedroom. Empty. Door opposite? Kitchen? Yes.