Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (12 page)

As I sat thinking this over and wondering whether it should be something I would now have to consider, my eye fell on the spine of the desk diary. It was tucked into one of the wider pigeonholes of the desk. For something to do, I pulled that out and flicked through it. It quickly had my puzzled attention.

The diary had fallen open at the current month. There were no entries other than the jottings of what looked like times on dates and one word written large in block capitals – PLUTO.  That meant two things to me, neither of which made any sense. I looked back through the diary. The entries had started a few weeks previously – once a week without an obvious pattern. The entries consisted of what I assumed were times based on the twenty-four hour clock. If that was correct then every entry recorded times when normal people were in bed. I shut it and put it back.

I had a quick rifle through the filing cabinet and found a folder for my relatives’ solicitors in Hythe. Feeling like I’d achieved something at last, I turned out the light and went downstairs.

I was hungry, but I didn’t feel like cooking. I thought I should avoid the pub for a few days. In the kitchen, my eye settled on the calendar from the Chinese take-away in the village. I shrugged on a jacket and went to get some.

*

The Chinese woman behind the counter recognised me with a friendly smile. Each visit I made back home, my uncle, aunt and I would treat ourselves to one Chinese take-away. I smiled back, said hello and prepared to order.

‘You not come for your dinner on Wednesday.’ She looked a little put out.

‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘Your uncle tell me you eat Chinese on Wednesday. You not come.’

‘When did he tell you?’

‘Last week. No problem. What you like to order.’

I had to tell her about their deaths. She hadn’t known. As an ethnic minority in the village, she probably wouldn’t have been part of any gossip network. She seemed deeply and genuinely shocked and saddened by my news. In her broken English, she told me how sorry she was and then disappeared into the kitchen looking uncomfortable and upset.

I waited for my meal for one, but in truth I was no longer hungry.

***

18

Monday. A little after nine o’clock I got a call from Detective Cash. She was probably giving me a lie in. I hadn’t had one. I’d risen early, run, showered, breakfasted and I was back in the shop packing up books listening to Schubert’s unfinished symphony and wondering, not for the first time, why he’d left it that way.

After we’d provided our good mornings, Detective Cash started her questions: ‘What’s that in the background?’

‘Music.’

She ignored it. ‘I didn’t have you down as a classical music enthusiast, Mr Booker.’

‘What do you have me down as, Detective?’

She paused. ‘A Chaz and Dave fan, perhaps.’ She had to be joking, but before I could call her on it she said, ‘My DI wants to talk to you again.’

‘He knows where to find me.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Positive.’

‘Don’t want to come in and show some good faith. Be a good citizen.’

‘Been there. Done that. Didn’t make me feel like a good citizen. Made me feel like a murderer.’

She wasn’t to be drawn. ‘Suit yourself. I can’t force you to come here, unless I arrest you, of course.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘Never say never, Mr Booker.’

‘I’ll be in all day if he wants me. I’ve got work to do. Jellied eels need bottling and my pearly king suit needs mending.’

‘Expect us when you see us, Mr Booker.’ She rang off.

I put my phone down, trying to work out whether Detective Cash liked me or not. It didn’t really matter one way or the other, but she had an enigmatic quality that I found quite unusual and appealing. She also came across as detached and superior, attributes that weren’t particularly charming or endearing and made me feel I didn’t want to be bested by her in any banter.

Then I thought I should be more interested in why Sprake wanted to see me again. But I’d find that out and worrying about it wouldn’t help. I went back to work.

The jewel in the crown of my uncle’s collection – and something that had been more of his individual bibliophile’s passion than part of the business – was his Booker Prize collection, although he would often remark that every book he owned, no matter how attached he was to it, had a price. It did not take a great stretch of the ordinary imagination to understand where his particular collecting interest had originated.

The Booker Prize had been running since 1969 when it had been known as the Booker-McConnell Prize after the company that had originally sponsored the competition. The prize, the money and the prestige are awarded to the book the judges consider to be the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a citizen of the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe. Since 2002, when administration of the prize had been transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation, it had been known as The Man Booker Prize, again, after the company that stepped in to sponsor it. If they had reduced the prize’s title to The Man Prize maybe I’d have had less work.

From the prize’s inception it had become a thing of my uncle’s to build a collection, not simply of the winners or even the winners and shortlisted books but of every title ever even longlisted. These titles were all first editions, first impressions in excellent condition and signed by their authors. As a small library documenting the history of one of the literary world’s most prestigious and lucrative prizes it could well have been unique. Judging from the American’s offer it was also clearly very desirable.

Over forty years of winners and losers; the best novels of nearly five decades as judged by those who believed they knew. 

Until 2001 there had only ever been a shortlist from which the winning entry had been selected, typically half a dozen books. Since 2001 a longlist had also been published, which upped the collecting ante for my uncle. Numbers in these years could range from twenty-four books in total to a mere thirteen.

It had been a labour of utter devotion for him to keep up with it and something that, once started, he felt honour-bound by some curious bibliophile’s code to continue.

I remembered and smiled at the memory of my uncle’s colourful language when, in 2010, the people in charge had decided to hold a retrospective competition for the Lost Booker of 1970.

Because of a change in the rules at the time, books published in 1970 had not been eligible for the prize. Until 1970 the prize had been awarded to books published the year before but in 1971 it was decided to award the prize to books published in the same year as the award. Therefore, books published in 1970 had been ineligible for competition entry.

Having collected meticulously and as a completist, my uncle had been forced to scour the Internet, flex trade contacts and still pay an eye-watering price for the six books that completed the collection.

I was engaged in packing these when the police arrived. They signalled their arrival with a loud knock at the rear door. I answered it with my cricket bat to hand. Sprake stood glowering at me. Over his shoulder and a few paces back Detective Cash waited.

Sprake made no attempt to commiserate with me for the loss of another family member. I invited them into the shop because I had to.

‘What happened to your face, Mr Booker?’

I’d forgotten about that. ‘Would you believe an unfamiliar door?’

‘No.’ Quickly, he took hold of my hands in his and with a surprisingly determined grip held them up to inspect my knuckles. As the only blow I’d landed with my fists had been into Pike’s well-padded middle there was nothing for him to see. He dropped my hands, smiled without humour and left it. He couldn’t make me tell him and he probably had more important things on his mind. Cash stared harder at the colouring around my eye. She looked freshly dissatisfied with me and I didn’t like that.

Sprake had a little wander around, letting me know he was still important, and I followed him closely. He didn’t look like the kind of man who could be trusted to pick up a thousand-guinea book, know it and then treat it accordingly. He stopped at the boxes I’d already packed. ‘Is this your doing?’

I explained the order and the responsibility I felt to honour it.

He looked seriously at me. ‘Do you have that legal right, Mr Booker? Shouldn’t you wait for their estate to go to probate before you start meddling in their affairs? Shouldn’t you consult with other surviving relatives with a legal claim on their estate?’

‘
There are no other surviving relatives. It’s just me.’

He gave me a long cold look then, no doubt calculated in his policeman’s thinking to unsettle me.

‘So all this is yours now?’ He flapped an arm like he was directing traffic.

‘Just so you know, Inspector, it’s all this – the mortgage-free freehold of the building – their car, the contents of their bank accounts – which incidentally I don’t have the first idea about – and possibly there will be an insurance policy or two. Again, I really don’t know about that but I’m sure with what you’re thinking you’ll be able to tell me fairly soon.’

He actually smiled at me.

Eventually, he arranged himself in one of the leather wingback chairs. I sat too. Cash remained standing. I could not tell from his expressionless cod-face whether he was still regarding me as a serious suspect or not.

‘The pathologist’s report for your uncle states two things we don’t like.’

‘Apart from him being dead?’

He stared blankly at me before saying, ‘Your uncle did not die from drowning.’

‘How did he die, then?’

‘His neck was broken, Mr Booker. There was no fluid to speak of in his lungs, indicating he was already dead before he went in the water.’

That was a jolt. ‘You’re saying he was murdered and then thrown into the sea?’

‘It’s difficult to see how he could have ended up in the water without help and with a broken neck. It might also tell us two things. Whoever did it was trying to confuse us about the way he died and that same person enjoys a very poor understanding regarding forensic science and what an autopsy would reveal.’

I couldn’t speak.

‘Maybe they didn’t expect one to be performed,’ continued Sprake. ‘Or maybe they were just desperate.’

‘How do you mean?’ I said.

‘Before we go into that let me tell you the second thing the autopsy revealed.’

I was listening.

‘Your uncle had only been dead for a matter of hours. The pathologist has determined he died sometime Friday night.’

I felt the blood drain out of my face. It had ebbed away to regroup somewhere I might find it more useful. Friday night. I arrived on Wednesday night. Forty-eight hours.

Sprake said, ‘I’ll remind you that your aunt...’

‘I know when my aunt died. You don’t need to remind me.’

‘Settle down, Mr Booker.’ It was a gentle warning. ‘Obviously, we need to find out where he was in the meantime. Any ideas?’

That could have been a test. I didn’t rise to it and he looked like I’d let him down. But I was thinking about his question. Forty-eight hours, then his neck was broken, then dumped in the sea. I felt sick and tasted my bile.

I swallowed hard through a dry constricted throat and broke the silence. ‘I have no idea where he could have been. If you still suspect me of having a hand in my relatives’ deaths then remember your people had a good look around here on Friday.’

‘I know. Mind if I have a look around myself while I’m here?’

I shook my head. I wouldn’t have cared if he’d invited the station football team in. Maybe he indicated to Cash to wait with me. He left and I heard his heavy tread going up the stairs.

‘Think hard,’ said Cash. ‘Somewhere local he could have been held for forty-eight hours.’

‘Does he still think I’ve got something to do with it?’

‘He doesn’t say, but I don’t think so.’

I sighed heavily and rubbed at my face. I needed a shave.

‘I can’t think of a single reason why anyone would have wanted to hurt either of them, let alone kill them. If he was being held for that long, were there any other injuries to his body. Had he been tortured?’

‘What makes you ask that?’

‘Why keep him alive and locked up for forty-eight hours and then kill him? Why do that unless you want something from someone?’

‘You never received any sort of ransom demand?’

‘What? Of course
I didn’t.’

‘Just asking. So we can rule out kidnap.’

I remembered something. ‘What was on his feet when he was found?’

‘He wasn’t wearing anything on his feet. I checked at the scene.’

‘A coat?’

She shook her head for reply.

‘So neither of them was dressed for being out in the weather of Wednesday night. And they were both old people. Old people don’t go out in the cold and wet in their slippers without a jacket on. Maybe they were surprised here and just taken, quickly, no ceremony, no messing about.’