Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (21 page)

"Oh, come on, Brian. All anyone has to do is watch a games match at
some school to see a boy of twelve can be as tall as one of sixteen.
And the difference in Billy's and Toby's height wasn't apparently that
much. An inch, inch and a half. Anyway, we're not talking stature here,
we're talking
age
." Dennis's look at the skeleton was
remorseful, his hand drawn down the long femur bone in a gesture that
suggested it was flesh and blood he touched.

"You're forgetting something, Denny. Let's
assume
you're
right about the age," said Macalvie. "The only thing you're basing your
conclusions on is one little thing—"

"It's not a little thing. Each epiphysis fuses with the bone shaft
at a particular age—"

"Can you forget that for just one damned second while I go on?"

"No." Dennis carefully realigned the femur of the dog with its
pelvic bone.

Carefully, Macalvie leaned his hands on the table just above the
skull and leaned over the small skeleton. "Jesus, but I'm glad you're
not on my forensics team—"

"So am I." Dennis politely stifled a yawn. "You've got a thick
skull." He ran his eyes slowly over Macalvie's face. "Literally."

"You're working in a vacuum, Denny. I'll tell you why I'm right—"

"You're wrong."

"Because, number one"—Macalvie had moved over to the rack of test
tubes and pulled two from its pronged fittings— "these soil samples.
Now, the vicar of that church told you, although you've conveniently
forgotten, nobody's been buried, to his knowledge, in that disused
graveyard for forty years, and here we come up with soil removed and
replaced long after that. I sent this stuff through forensics—"

"Thought you didn't trust them." Dennis had stepped back to look,
sadly, at the small dog's skeleton.

"They didn't know what it was for."

"I could tell you the same thing they did."

"Maybe. Since you seem to know everything. The disturbance of this
soil and its constitution shows that the grave was dug within the
two-year period when a nearby mineshaft was excavated because we've got
traces of zinc and other substances in the soil. That's one. Two: in
those two years not one preadolescent male Caucasian went missing from
the area without either returning voluntarily
or
having been
found
or
the remains having been found—"

Wiggins turned from his study of the markout of the gravesite and
frowned. "Pardon, sir, but isn't there a fallacy in that argument? What
about cases not reported?"

"All right, I'll give you that. But we're still talking about a
missing boy and a dog buried together in a structure obviously fitted
out to sustain life. Until somebody pulled the plug." He was talking to
Wiggins over his shoulder, his hold on the table still secure as if
Dench might drag it out from under him.

Macalvie went on. "To say nothing of that deserted cemetery being
found within a quarter mile of the Citrine house. And with all of this
evidence, you're standing there and talking about a possible
three-
or four-year
difference in
bone fusion
."

"That's right. And I'm dealing in facts; you're dealing in
induction. You're adding up a lot of information and coming to a
conclusion. But a piece of your information is missing. Ergo. Erroneous
conclusion," said Dennis calmly.

Macalvie shook his head quickly, like a swimmer clearing water from
his ears. He glanced at Jury, who'd been leaning against the counter.
"You've said sweet nothing. How do you rate the chances that two kids
with two dogs could have been buried secretly in that time frame and so
close to the Citrine house?"

Jury had had his eyes on the tiny skeleton of the dog under the
boy's feet—for his mind had encased them in stone like the effigies he
had so often seen in the churches and cathedrals—lord and lady, earl
and countess—with a little dog, and sometimes two, cushioning their
feet. And he remembered the position Dennis Dench had inferred; the
bones of the dog had been lying atop the skeleton of the boy. While
part of his mind stood aside and looked at the problem objectively, he
himself could hardly breathe and his own eyes were no longer dazzled by
the glare of the hanging light, the fluorescence, the almost screaming
whiteness of the walls, the Formica. They had grown steadily dimmer,
though his ears had taken in everything the others were saying. At the
same time he watched the light fading like headlamps sweeping by in the
fog and the then total darkness. He could hardly breathe. Which of
them had used up the last of the oxygen? The child? The dog? He had had
the dog, at least. The dog that Jury doubted had been sealed in the
grave for companionship.

But who knew? Who could possibly tell what a mind so warped would
do? "I was wondering about Toby," Jury finally said in answer to
Macalvie.

"Toby? Toby's dead. You read the report."

"He was fifteen."

Dennis Dench laughed his short, brittle laugh. "Convenient, that
would have been for me."

"It was certainly convenient as hell for the kidnapper.

The only witness dies in an accident? Talk about
coincidence."

"Believe me, I did," said Macalvie. "According to your
police there wasn't a single reason to tie that lorry driver to Toby.
The lorry was actually
stopped
at a zebra crossing-I didn't
know they did that-and the kid bolted across it when he started up. It
was dark, raining, he swerved. Too late."

"That's another thing. What in the hell would the boy be
doing in London?"

"Running. Is there a better place to hide than in a crowd?"

"The natural thing for a kid to do is run home."

Macalvie sighed. "Not if there's somebody at 'home' who
knows you're witness to a kidnapping."

"That's your theory, Macalvie."

"So what's yours?"

"I don't have one."

Macalvie went over to stand beside Wiggins who was studying
the photographic mockup. He unfolded an old newspaper clipping and laid
it on the counter beside the partially reconstructed photograph. The
picture in the paper wasn't a studio pose; it showed a young boy with a
puzzled look, his hair covered by a woolen jacket hood like a monk
cowl. He was squinting. Macalvie studied the picture for a moment and
said to Dennis, "I couldn't tell me old mum if her eyes were nothing
¹
but silver discs; mind if I change this?"

"Yes." Dennis was covering the small skeleton.

Even while asking the question, Macalvie cut a piece from a
scrap of paper, penciled something in while looking at the clipping,
and put the tiny strip on the photograph. "Give me your scarf, Wiggins."

With some reluctance, Sergeant Wiggins unwrapped the brown
scarf as carefully as a doctor removing bandages from a patient who'd
just had an eye operation.

Macalvie arranged the scarf around the skull in the photo,

simulating the newspaper picture. He put the rest of the scarf over
the left-hand side of the face and what remained was a fuzzy, but
reasonable facsimile of a face.

"If that isn't Billy Healey, I'll turn down the promotion to
assistant constable."

Dennis tucked the covering round the skeleton of boy and dog, as if,
in the ordinary way of good nights, he were putting them to bed.
"Since the chief constable hasn't offered it, it's not much of a bet."

Macalvie grinned. "Thanks for letting us take up your time."

They walked back through the dining room where the dishes still
remained, together with the bottle of white wine. Dennis Dench took
three glasses from a sideboard, set them on the table, and said,
"You've got to taste this. It's superb. Chablis Moutonne."

Holding it up to the light, Macalvie rolled it in the glass as
Dennis Dench rolled his eyes at Macalvie.

"He knows as much about wine as he does about bone fusion," said
Dench.

Macalvie sipped, rolled the wine in his mouth. "Full and direct.
Subtle bouquet, though a bit violent. Admirably dry —what do you think,
Wiggins?"

Wiggins sipped it; his mouth puckered. "Very dry, sir."

"Bone dry," said Jury.

"The guy's a genius," said Macalvie, as the three of them stood near
the car. The rain driven in from the estuary blew Wiggins's scarf back;
he snatched at it, clearly not wanting to lose it twice in one evening.
"Too bad he's so stubborn," added Macalvie, slamming the car door.

"How far is it to the Citrine place?" asked Wiggins, staring out
into the cloud of rain.

Jury turned to answer. "No farther than it'll take to hand
out three or four tickets, probably."

Jury, sitting in the back seat, wondered if the
Devon-Cornwall constabulary fitted out all of its official cars with
tape decks or whether Macalvie had managed one just to listen to Elvis.

After twenty mites, they were leaving "Heartbreak Hotel" and
entering into a memory of a bright summer's day, purely temporary;
bright summer's days usually were.

Wiggins, sitting beside Macalvie in the front seat, had been
going on about telephone kiosks for the last fifteen minutes or so,
probably (Jury thought) in an attempt to lead Macalvie round to
explaining Gilly Th wake's own call box and Telecom's part in it.

"It's like the red double-deckers. Landmarks, those red call
boxes are, and they're taking them all down. Only leaving up a few,
for nostalgia's sake, probably. I'm surprised there're those in Exeter
still standing. Like the one Miss Thwaite was talking about. . . ,*"

No comment. Macalvie was singing along with Elvis about the
empty chairs, the bare parlor.

"A crying shame," said Wiggins.

"What is?" asked Macalvie, as the parlor and doorstep of
"Are You Lonesome Tonight" vanished like the flying landscape.

"That the kiosks are coming down. The government's only
keeping about two hundred of the K2's-that's the regular one, like the
one Miss Thwaite was talking about. . . ." Wiggins paused. No response.
He went on with a sigh. "I always liked the Jubilee one. A bit fancier
on top. Very valuable that would be now." Wiggins's laugh was more of a
giggle. "Don't think you'd find Telecom trying to break one of
those
call boxes open." There was no answering comment from the front seat
One would have thought those two never used the telephone. Wiggins's
sigh was huge this time. "If you wanted one, I mean one of those King
George

boxes, you could actually buy one. Cost you over a thousand quid,
maybe two. There's a firm exports them. They refurbish them. Americans
probably keep 'em in their halls. Cast iron, post-office red. I wonder
how the American call boxes work. How they get the coins out—"

Jury turned and gave him a look. "Bulldoze them." Jury shook his
head, turned back again.

Wiggins was undaunted. "Antiques dealers are buying them up and
selling them, too, if you can imagine."

"I can imagine anything about antiques dealers." Ma-calvie pushed
the eject button and Elvis came out.

Jury was trying to think about Dench's bones as he watched what he
could of the dark landscape Macalvie was fast leaving behind, and with
it, one of the new eyesore-call boxes Wiggins so abhored, telephone
encased in its acrylic surround. Suddenly, the car was rocking with
heavy metal.

"My God, Macalvie. Turn that down."

"Led Zep?" Macalvie half-twisted his head to the back. "You don't
even like Led Zep?"

Even
. Jury the musical stick-in-the-mud. "And keep your
eyes on the road."

"Beautiful voice, he has, that Robert Plant," said Wiggins,
da-de-daing
"Stairway to Heaven."

"And Page's guitar. That bow work is cosmic,
cosmic
. I
don't go at all for the noodlers, Edward, Yngwie, those guys."

Noodlers?

"Oh, I can't agree with you there, not at all. You can't call them
just speed freaks. Yngwie's got progressions as classical as they
come," said Wiggins.

Yngwie? Edward
? Were all fans on a first-name basis with
their idols? "What about Charlie?" asked Jury.

Again, Macalvie twisted round. "Charlie who?"

Jury sighed. "
Raine
. Don't you keep up with the current
scene?"

"You talking about that group that's in London? I've got something
here."

To Jury's dismay he took his hand off the wheel to scrabble amongst
his tapes, slid one in. A voice, clear as the frozen night, was in the
middle of a song.

. . .
sky was blue above the trees but only for a while

It sounded to Jury as if it were going the way of Elvis's bright
summer day. The light gave way to darkness, summer to winter, stone
walls to the ravages of time, cliffs to the lashing of waves. It
reminded Jury, in some way, of the
clair-voyee
.

I watch the streetlamp Down below I watch you turn I watch you go
—

"Well, well, well," said Macalvie, killing the tape as a low-slung
sporty number shrieked past the Ford on this otherwise deserted
stretch of road.

Wiggins was thrown back as Macalvie accelerated.

Jury sighed.

The Citrine house was stark white against the sky and a hundred feet
or so from a cliff along a solitary stretch of the Cornwall coast. A
frozen gullied road was not meant to encourage visitors. Nell Citrine
Healey had been the only one who had used it; she must have liked her
privacy. It was privacy, Jury thought morosely, that had worked against
her.

The rear of the house faced the end of the dirt road. They went in
through the kitchen door, unlocked, unbolted.

"Doesn't anyone bother to lock up?" asked Wiggins.

"She probably thought there wasn't anything of value left to take,"
said Macalvie.

Wiggins looked away.

They stood in the big kitchen with Macalvie looking down at the long
oak center table as if he could see the sandwiches—the one half-eaten,
the other untouched—and the pills still sitting there. Macalvie pointed
to a row of mullioned windows. "Billy wouldn't have heard—"