Dying to Know (29 page)

Max asked in a high-pitched voice, ‘You're the killer?'

That smile again. ‘Terribly sorry.'

FORTY

I
t wasn't a very big gun, and maybe it wouldn't have made very big holes in me, but I wasn't an expert and thought it safer to take a cautious stance on the issue. Max had resumed her act with the big staring eyes and she was using them to stare intensely at the barrel of said gun. Smith was again crouched slightly forward, his elbows on his knees, the handle of the gun in both hands.

I thought it wise to initiate some conversation. ‘Why did you kill them?'

‘It's a long story.'

‘I think we've got time.'

His smile this time was less than encouraging as he said, ‘Don't bet on it.'

‘Start, at least.'

‘The detective duo have been expending a lot of energy trying to find that out, haven't they? I was quite amused by the blackmail theory; very ingenious and quite fortuitous for me. It couldn't last, of course, but it provided me with a bit more time.'

‘But why the Lightollers?'

He frowned. ‘Because they wouldn't tell me where the diamonds were.'

‘So it is the diamonds,' I said.

‘It always was.'

‘Why are you after them?'

‘They're my inheritance.'

I couldn't stop myself from bursting out, ‘Not another one.'

He reacted at once. ‘No, the only one. They're mine by right. Tom Lightoller's got no claim on them.' His voice had taken on a different voice, one of obsession.

‘How do you justify that?' I asked as calmly as I could; I had the feeling that the wrong question, or perhaps the right question in the wrong tone, would result in his index finger getting twitchy.

‘As compensation for the death of my mother. No child should be deprived of his mother so young.'

‘And you were?'

He looked briefly angry, as if I were being stupid. ‘Yes.'

Looking at the gun barrel and aware that it probably wouldn't be good for my health to annoy him too much, I asked, ‘How did you lose her?'

‘Haven't you worked that out, yet?' he sneered.

Max had, it turned out. ‘She was killed in the original robbery,' she said slowly, working things out. ‘She was Eleanor Johnson.'

He nodded. ‘Well done.'

I blurted out, ‘She was the . . .?' and then stopped myself. Thankfully, he was back in his past.

‘She was beautiful, although I can't remember directly. I've only got a few pictures, you see. I was brought up by my aunt and uncle and they didn't want to talk much about her. I had to do a lot of digging to find anything out about her.'

Max asked gently, ‘How old were you when she died?'

‘Nine months.'

She looked sincerely sad as she said, ‘I'm so sorry for you.'

He wasn't listening, though. ‘She was a
prostitute
. She was
scum
. That's what Uncle Greg taught me; not just by what he said, but equally clearly by what he didn't say, by his actions and facial expressions. And not just him; there was Auntie Jennifer and even their children, Andrea and Jonny. I was supposed to forget her, be grateful for what was done to her, as if I had been saved from some sort of hell. They kept on and on. Preaching at me, dragging me to church and Sunday school every sodding week. Droning on about prostitutes, how they were evil and went to hell.

‘But their brainwashing didn't work. The more they did to blacken her, the more I wanted to know about her, and when I eventually found a photo of her, I knew why they were doing what they were doing.

‘She was beautiful, see? Drop-dead gorgeous, isn't that what they say? How I laughed – laughed and cried, too – when that phrase occurred to me. It could have been invented for her.' He became ruminative. ‘She didn't deserve what happened to her and certainly didn't deserve what they said about her.'

The gun barrel had been dropping slightly but quite perceptibly for a few minutes now. I debated the wisdom of being heroic but only for a moment. Smith continued, ‘They were ugly compared with my mother, and that was why they hated her; it was sheer envy, nothing more.'

‘How come your name's Smith?' Max asked.

‘My adopted name. Smith! What a banal, tedious, excuse for a label. Not a name, not a thing that resonates; just a way of identifying someone, of making sure that you are immediately regarded as run-of-the-mill, average, a small part of a large crowd. There is nothing louder in proclaiming nothingness than to be called Smith.'

‘You killed Baines and Perry.'

Once again, anger flared. ‘Of course, I did. Who else?'

‘Because they killed your mother.'

He smiled. ‘Not hard, is it?'

I admit that it was out of a fascinated curiosity that I asked him, ‘How did you make it look as if they'd killed each other?'

‘Sheer good luck,' he replied happily. ‘I'd kept tabs on them for years, not that that was difficult, given the fact that they were banged up in prison. In the meantime, I'd drifted into the police force, had even found that I quite liked it. I made sure I knew when Baines and Perry were going to be released, and manoeuvred a posting here, where I knew Baines had a property. He duly did what I hoped and moved back to his house. I watched him as best I could, and struck lucky one evening. He left the house under cover of dark and travelled all the way to a lock-up near Streatham Common. I didn't get close enough to see what he got out of it, but I could guess.'

‘The diamonds?'

‘I thought about smacking him then and there but I wanted both of them; only then could I enjoy them.'

‘Your inheritance?'

He nodded. ‘I'd lost my mother; nothing was going to replace that, but I was damned if I was going to let her murderers make money out of her death.'

‘So you waited until Perry was released and had turned up at Baines' house?'

‘I had to go sick for a while to make sure that I didn't miss it. When it came, though, there was no subterfuge about it. He just waltzed up the path and knocked on the door. I couldn't believe it.'

‘Convenient.'

He agreed enthusiastically. ‘Superbly so. I had spent a long, long time stuck in my car, so it was a relief to get out and stretch my legs, even though the rain was torrential.'

‘What happened then?'

‘I sneaked around into the rear garden. They were in the back room, enjoying their reunion, sitting opposite each other with a can of beer in hand; good mates they must have been; delighted to see each other. I watched them, mesmerized, for I don't know how long; it could have been hours. My feet grew numb, I was shivering, but it didn't matter; nothing mattered then. I just stared at them, a rising anger within me. They were laughing and I wondered at what; they talked and I wondered what about. My mother? Was she the butt of their joking? I didn't know what would have been worse – if they were talking about her or just choosing to forget her, as if she were nothing.

‘And then Perry went out of the room. I woke up then, realized that if I was going to act, it had to be then. I walked to the back door, and was delighted to find it unlocked. I slipped off my shoes and crept to the door of the back room, where I had the pleasure of surprising Baines. He didn't know who I was but he knew that I had a gun and, when I told him to be quiet, he did as he was told.

‘I stood behind the door, gun pointing at his chest, waiting for Perry to return, which he did fairly quickly. Baines proved to be stupid, though; it could have been relatively painless, had he cooperated, but he chose to be clever. I saw his eyes flick to me as Perry came into the room, saw a slight movement of the head. I shot him at once, of course, but in the throat; my aim was spoiled by Perry who barged into the door. That was when I got the black eye; I dropped the gun at the same time.

‘Perry fought well. He had his own gun out and for a moment I thought everything was going to go wrong; he was ferocious and strong but I had one advantage. I hated him; I wanted him dead with a passion that he couldn't hope to match. My only problem was to keep him alive long enough to find the diamonds.'

The gun barrel was definitely drooping quite appreciably and, when I glanced at Max, I saw that she had seen it too. Suddenly I was afraid that she would do something stupid. I asked of Smith, ‘Perry was killed with Baines' gun, wasn't he?'

He shook his head. ‘No. Perry was killed with his own gun. It was just found in Baines' possession.'

‘How come?' This from Max.

‘We grappled for a minute or two. I managed to grab hold of the gun and keep it pointing away from me. When it went off, I was nearly deafened. I wasn't sure until that moment which way it was pointing, and was relieved to discover that it wasn't at me. He fell away from me, a bleeding mess of a hole in his chest and, although, not dead, clearly dying.

‘My main hope was that Baines had already told him where he'd put the diamonds – I knew they were in the house somewhere – but either he wouldn't say or perhaps he didn't know. Anyway, he died in fairly short order and I had a problem. I knew that the shots would have been heard and that I didn't have long. I wiped Perry's gun and then put it in Baines' hand; then I wiped my gun and gave it to Perry. I did a bit of ransacking and then disappeared.'

‘You were seen,' I remarked.

‘I was, wasn't I? But the trail led to nothing and, in any case, Masson was already in the process of making up his mind that there was no one else involved.'

‘But you didn't have the diamonds.'

He snorted. ‘No, I didn't and, more annoyingly, I didn't have the chance to look for them. Masson had us searching the house for three days and every minute I was in agony that someone would find them, but no one did. Baines had done a good job.'

He seemed to be hypnotized by his own story and the gun was being held only loosely. I shifted my weight and Max, good girl that she was, distracted Smith's attention by asking, ‘Didn't you go back and look on your own?'

‘Every night, but I couldn't do too much for fear of someone noticing that things had been disturbed.'

‘And eventually the house was cleared by Oliver Lightoller.'

‘Yes. I was so near and yet so far.'

‘But you had killed the two men who murdered your mother. Wasn't that enough?'

It was a good question but an unfortunate one because it angered him and the gun barrel jerked back up. ‘Don't be stupid. There can never be enough revenge for the killing of your mother.'

Max said nervously, ‘I didn't mean . . .'

‘I wanted the diamonds. Having them wouldn't have been enough alone, but it would have been a further, small piece of justice.'

I sought to calm him. ‘So Oliver Lightoller had everything from the house; is that the only reason you killed him?'

He laughed. ‘I knew his reputation. He was as bent as a safety pin; he'd been fencing stuff for years and we'd never proved anything, but that was only because he was bloody clever. I figured he was smart enough to know a good deal when he saw one, so I went to him and suggested that if he should find an unexpected bonus in the stuff from Baines' house, he would do well to discuss the matter with me.'

‘But he didn't?'

‘Unfortunately for him, no. He thought he could get things past me, but I found out that he'd discovered the diamonds.'

‘How?'

‘He had one of them valued. Unfortunately, he had it valued by a man who might, or might not, have felt up a little boy in a swimming pool and who owes me for giving him the benefit of the doubt on that occasion.'

‘So you went to see him?'

‘He told me that he had only found a single diamond, that Baines had split the diamonds and he was still looking for the others.' A sigh. ‘Silly man.'

‘You didn't believe him?'

‘I'd spent a long time studying Baines and I knew that he was just a stupid thief. If he'd had a stash of diamonds, he wasn't going to split them up; he'd have forgotten where he'd hidden them.' He shook his head. ‘Wherever they were, they were in one place.'

‘Which made you cross?' I suggested.

‘I gave him a chance and he decided that he didn't want to take it. Fair enough, don't you think?'

Max, bless her, was looking for logic in his words. ‘But wasn't killing him a bit unwise?'

He could only agree. ‘He made me cross,' he admitted. ‘In retrospect, running him through wasn't my best move.' He spoke sadly, full of regret; it was one of those moments where I wasn't sure whether the best course of action was to concur or demur. He brightened up though and then went on: ‘But, having done so, I had to make the best of things. I searched the shop as thoroughly as I could, keeping away from the front window and putting up the closed sign to deter intruders; it was just before lunchtime, so I didn't expect it to excite too much attention. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the diamonds and, once again, time wasn't on my side. I had to open up the shop again, slip out the back and wait. All I could do was hope that nobody connected Lightoller with the deaths in Greyhound Road.'

‘Which they didn't, initially.'

He nodded. ‘I couldn't waste time, though. As soon as Masson let me off the leash, I went to see Doris, to see what she could tell me.'

‘And what could she tell you?'

‘At first, not a lot. I had to use the hammer to get her to cooperate.' Max shivered and I have to admit that the calm way he said this made me feel a bit queasy as well. Smith added, ‘But eventually she opened up a bit. She told me that hubby had hidden them in a book, and that it was somewhere in the house, but she swore that she didn't know precisely where. I was about to persuade her to change her mind about that, but it was at that point that your old man came snooping around and I had to make myself scarce. I'd been interrogating Doris at the top the stairs – that was where I came upon her as she came out of a bedroom – so when he started coming up, the only place I could hide was upstairs. When he started up, I knew that my only chance was to push him back down again; I charged out, head down, and pushed.'