Drinking late night whisky and forgetting that he didn’t smoke anymore was not the wisest “bracing” MacAdams had ever done. He stubbed out a cigarette against the brick wall of the station and swigged some mouthwash, but he knew better than to hope it would go unnoticed. Most people were already at their desks of a morning, and Green was scowling from the glassed-in microclimate of his office.
“I thought you quit smoking.”
“I did.” MacAdams picked up the cleanest dirty mug and assaulted the coffee maker. “What have we got?”
“Coroner wants to see you first thing. Also, Gridley hunted for previous on Sid Randles. I mean, any of the stuff we didn’t already know. He got an overnight for drunk and disorderly in York a month back.”
“In York, I’m surprised anyone noticed a drunk and disorderly.” MacAdams burned his tongue on coffee and winced. “We have the rug he was lying on down at the lab.”
“I thought it was a rental cottage—won’t it be a mess of DNA?” Green asked. She wasn’t wrong. The place was made of DNA. But it had revealed an important part of the story.
“They also took two glass tumblers,” he explained. “Prints just came back. One set for Sid, the other glass wiped clean.”
The announcement perked the ears of everyone in earshot. They had all just jumped to the same conclusion: Sid must have known his killer. They shared a drink together, at least, and whoever it was covered their tracks after. A step forward, though it blew MacAdams’ theory of Jo-Jones-as-victim all to hell.
“We need to make a list of all Sid’s friends and family,” Green said. At her desk, Gridley inverted her fingers, popping knuckles unpleasantly.
“Divorced, wasn’t he?”
“Three times,” MacAdams confirmed. “He cheated on the first wife with the second, then cheated on her with her younger sister.”
“They all must be from Newcastle, then. We’d have known them, otherwise,” Green said, leading the way out of the room. MacAdams followed, nodding; even he didn’t recall the women’s names. Sometimes he wondered if that were the point. People knew Sid too well, here in Abington. By the time they had come through high school, there wasn’t a woman in town to take him seriously—and not a soul alive who’d lend him money. Still: long, tall Sid, a bit seedy but always quick with a joke. And now, dead. MacAdams pushed through the double doors leading to the station’s rear hall, with Green right behind.
“Honestly, Sheila. I just can’t think who would do this.”
“Well, here’s more to chew on,” she said. “I had a chat with Emery at Selkirk and Associates. Josephine is the last of her whole family. No parents, no siblings, not even a distant cousin. Divorced a year ago, no current address in the United States, no present employment. Maybe she’s a trickier customer than she seems.”
MacAdams made a noncommittal sound into his coffee cup.
“Well?” Green needled. “No history... Could be dark money, organized crime.”
“Very doubtful,” MacAdams muttered. Green swatted at him.
“Don’t you even want to throw in some cheerful speculation?”
They had reached the sterile halls outside the coroner’s cold workroom. He could already smell the chemical soup of the place and imagine its grisly gray slabs.
“Sid Randles was shot three times in the back,” MacAdams said tersely. “It ruins a morning.”
More than this, they were about to view the day-old corpse of someone MacAdams knew personally, with the addition of three holes. He took a breath, then walked through to where Struthers waited. “Let’s hear it, doc.”
Eric Struthers pulled the sheet aside. Usually, bodies were turned face up with V neck stiches from autopsy. Sid was lying face down, much as they had found him.
“Sorry, it was the simplest way to show you the wounds.” Struthers leaned over and pointed to three small holes, purple-red and ragged against skin gone pasty blue. “Small caliber bullet. No exit wound, so most of the bleeding was internal—better for the rug, anyway.”
MacAdams had leaned forward as far as he dared to see the neat triangle scatter. Green joined him.
“We are looking for a handgun, then?” she asked.
“Seems so.” Eric nodded. “Don’t see that much around here, do we?”
It was true—there were plenty of murders, but most were with blunt objects or sharp implements, a few hit-and-runs, strangulation, assault, drownings, an occasional hunting rifle. But not handguns.
“Hell,” Green agreed, “there were maybe fifty handgun deaths in all of England last year.”
“Quite right.” Struthers reached under the sheet and turned over Sid’s right hand. “No sign of a struggle, nothing under the nails, no knuckle bruises. No evidence of a scuffle at the scene, either. He may have been trying to escape, though. Perhaps making a bolt for the door, judging from the angle of entry.”
Struthers put up an X-ray slide: one bullet in the left ventricle, one in the lung, one lodged in the spine. He made a bisecting movement, chest to hip, and MacAdams tried to imagine the scene. Sid’s glass and the bottle on the side table, Sid on the sofa. Where was his assailant? Standing, perhaps? They spoke. Argued. At some point, things went south. Sid stood and twisted around, making a dash for it.
“Would have taken a minute or so to die,” Struthers continued, “but he was beyond getting up again. No powder burns, but this was close range.”
MacAdams winced involuntarily.
“Right. We’ll want the bullets and casings for testing.”
“Sorry, James, I should have said—” Eric gave an apologetic smile. “The superintendent had me send them by courier to York last night.”
“Why? They don’t have a NABIS ballistics lab.”
“No. But they have an ex-military weapons specialist. Can’t recall the name.” Eric washed his hands. “Semiretired I think?”
MacAdams set his jaw. Outside influence from a retired military expert did not sound like the start of a good week. He waved a hand at Green, a signal for them to depart. They made it halfway to the elevator before he realized she’d been speaking to him.
“Boss—what is the matter with you?”
“Sorry. Thinking about Sid.”
This, apparently, surprised her.
“Were you that good of friends or something?”
MacAdams sighed. Not, exactly, no, not even as kids. MacAdams was the straight line and Sid the curve. MacAdams never left Abington; Sid always came back. There was a point when he’d prided himself on that—on being the steadfast town boy. They weren’t mates, but being the same age, Sid made a fellow look good by comparison. And he was handy. Uncannily so. Sid did odd jobs for everyone. Even MacAdams.
“Fixed a pipe for me last week. Drank a beer in my kitchen on Thursday,” MacAdams said. “It’s the incongruity that gets me.”
“You let Sid in your kitchen?” Green asked, and it wasn’t the answer he’d expected. “I wouldn’t have. Uniform are at his flat now, on Mill Street. Did you want to follow up with them there?”
“Not yet. Go there ahead of me. I’m off to see Cora.”
MacAdams walked the more businesslike hallway beyond the incident room (and it’s takeaway boxes). He ought to be mentally preparing his report. Instead, he was thinking about how Sid never seemed like a threat to him—but Green, who stood up to criminals and Yorkshire bigotry, clearly didn’t trust him. Jo had also been afraid of him. He might need to adjust expectations. All the same, being shot in the back and left to die didn’t seem like someone’s reasonable self-defense.
Chief Superintendent Cora Clapham waved at MacAdams through her partly open door.
“Sit,” she said and slapped a manila folder in front of him. “Came back this morning.”
“What came back, ma’am?”
Cora reached a hand across the desk and flipped the folder open.
“It helps if you read the report, MacAdams,” she said, settling back in her chair and crossing thick arms over a navy blue sweater. “Ballistics. I sent the bullets and casings last night. They arrived just now.”
MacAdams scanned the document in front of him. The National Ballistics Intelligence Service was known for reasonable turnaround; they had the tactical registry and a hub in Manchester...but less than twenty-four hours was practically miraculous. Cora seemed to read the shock on his face.
“It’s not from NABIS. As I’m sure Eric told you, I know a weapons expert in York’s firearms unit personally. He was in the RAF when my father was still Squadron Leader.”
“Air force ballistics are a bit long-range for this, aren’t they?” he asked, already knowing it would nettle her. The look she gave was withering.
“I am aware Sid was not killed with an air-to-ground missile, James. Detective Inspector Fleet expanded on his work in military ballistics and firearms as an expert for the Metropolitan Police. He knew my father.”
Oh joy, MacAdams thought. Cora’s late father had been a proud airman in the RAF, enamored of authority...and a deeply committed social climber. He liked shaking hands with the right people, knew how to smile in photos. MacAdams never trusted the man; Cora, however, idealized him.
“Fleet is semiretired now and working in York,” she went on. “Without him, you’d be waiting on National to track an unregistered firearm. He’s arriving here on Friday to help with the case.”
And what? MacAdams had just been asked to process two divergent and unwelcome points—retired Scotland Yard and arriving on Friday—and could not quite work up a yes, ma’am. It was enough to keep his already dour expression from getting downright surly. Meanwhile, Cora leaned back in her chair.
“Jarvis was a great assistance after my father passed. They had been close. He came here to help sort through paperwork and military memorabilia. So James? Don’t be a prick. Now—look at the file.”
MacAdams was not a prick by default. But there was more going on here, and he hated all of it. Still mute, he turned his attention to a photo of the weapon matched to Sid’s death: positioned against a ruler for scale was a derringer style handgun so small it could fit in the palm of one hand. Small caliber, by necessity, body of black steel, and a brass tack on the handle. German made, so said the description, and small enough to hide up a coat sleeve.
“Very James Bond,” he muttered.
“In the sense of being highly specialized, yes. Very few were ever made. We’re checking serial numbers. At least one of these was in a collector’s set in the USA.”
MacAdams tapped the photo.
“Is that where this one came from?”
“No. It’s your lucky day. That one is right there in the North York Police Station. It was seized eleven months ago in a raid of unregistered handguns.”
MacAdams absorbed this a moment. Like as not, the thing had been sitting on a dusty shelf awaiting a trial, or processing, or both. It wouldn’t exactly take a ballistics expert to identify the specially made ammunition... Fleet’s services were essentially moot at this point, and cat and mouse games were not MacAdams’ thing.
“Are you going to tell me why he’s really coming, or not?”
Cora sat straighter and rolled her formidable shoulders.
“You know I don’t owe you an explanation, MacAdams. So take it as a very serious compliment that I’m giving you one. He’s coming because Sid was murdered with a handgun Fleet is familiar with, and neither you nor Struthers have the expertise to examine the body. And he’s coming because he offered to come, and because I want him here. Is that perfectly clear?”
MacAdams sucked air, then cleared his throat for the long-awaited delivery:
“Yes, ma’am.”
He had let the coffee get cold again and chewed on his general irritation until the microwave did its work. Of course, he’d worked with outside law enforcement before. He’d even worked with Scotland Yard on occasion. But somehow, this had to do with Cora’s father, he was sure of it. Fleet was military. Like her father. Like her brothers. Like herself. Every dog wagged for its own specialty. But ex-military and ex-Yard? He’d be impossibly smug, probably a know-it-all, and Cora would give him a free hand. MacAdams grit his teeth and shoved his door open, intending to throw himself into the worn-out desk chair. Except someone was already sitting in it.
“Oh! Sorry. This is yours, I guess?”
“Ms.—Ms. Jones?”
“I would have sat in one of the other chairs, but they are full of—stuff.” Josephine waved a hand at two filing boxes. MacAdams found himself clearing one, on impulse.
“There is a waiting room,” he said.
Josephine scooted around the desk and sat in a plastic chair. “Well. No one told me.”
“Ms. Jones, why are you here?” MacAdams asked, still standing, because sitting seemed like an invitation he wasn’t giving. His coolness must have been reasonably evident, but Josephine didn’t even have the good manners to look uncomfortable.
“I was upset last night,” she said, rather bluntly.
“About the murder.”
“No. At you.” She wasn’t looking at him directly. Her eyes strayed to the corner of the room, and when she spoke next it had a slightly rehearsed quality.
“I arrived on Tuesday. That’s when I met Sid Randles—twice. He tried to talk me out of taking the cottage, then he got a phone call from some lady.”
“What lady?” MacAdams asked—but Jo just held up one hand and went on with the narrative.
“Wednesday he put a lawn mower outside the window, so I went to turn it off. When I came back, the painting I’d just found was missing. Rupert said he wasn’t even really on payroll, just managing the cottage. So I had him fired. And then he was a dickhead to me at the Red Lion. The next morning, I went to move my things in. And I found him, like I said. Oh. And I don’t know what lady. He was meeting a girl.”
MacAdams was about to ask for clarification, but she didn’t allow him to. She was talking faster now, the East Coast American accent flattening the a’s and making her harder to understand.
“Sid was living in the cottage. I’m almost sure of it. He wasn’t renting it, but everything had been well used, even the bath taps. So, he was mad I came to take over, and then he stole something to get back at me. He was supposed to turn his keys in. He didn’t, though. But the painting is gone, and now he’s dead. What if someone killed him over it?”
Against his better judgment, MacAdams found he was sitting down, after all.
“Rupert Selkirk said he doesn’t know of any painting. And you told the sergeant it was hidden behind a dresser. The only person who even knows about it is you.”
“And Sid. Who took it.”
“You saw him remove it?” MacAdams asked, and she huffed impatiently.
“Oh this again. No. But it didn’t walk off on its own, did it?”
MacAdams tapped the table with an imaginary cigarette. What was he supposed to do with that? Did she mean to be like this? Someone let her waltz right into his office, so apparently she was good at disarming—or dissembling. Then again, the mere fact of her being there was so suspicious that it had the opposite effect. Apparently “cat and mouse” was the order of the day and he missed the memo.
“Ms. Jones, you said all this yesterday.”
“Yes, but not in the right order.” She took a breath and pulled both hands into her lap. “I wanted to give you everything as it happened, and I didn’t do a good job yesterday. You were suggesting I might be angry enough about all this to kill Sid.”
She was sitting there as before, upright and bright-eyed, and apparently unaware that what she’d just said was questionable as hell.
“And—you weren’t angry enough,” he repeated.
“No. I was angrier at you last night, and I didn’t kill you, either.” She looked off in the corner again, so she missed one of MacAdams’ rare double eyebrow lifts. “And then there was the fight—or whatever. He wanted me to tell everyone he didn’t steal the painting.”
He was about to ask her what Sid had said, exactly, but he didn’t have to. She had just repeated the scene, verbatim (according to her), ending with what Tula shouted at Sid before Jo left the room. He found himself writing furiously to keep up.
“Tula kicked him out, then?”
“She said so. And that she’d never liked him much anyway. I was embarrassed, to be honest. More embarrassed than angry, by then. Oh. And I’m not the target, either. You asked if I had enemies, and I don’t. I’m honestly not sure anyone even knows I’m in the UK right now.”
MacAdams had got that far all by himself. But Green was right; better to find out more, including what she was doing between midnight and four in the morning on Thursday.
“Okay. Talk to me.”
Jo pursed her lips and cocked her head slightly to one side. “I lived in Brooklyn until my divorce eighteen months ago. Then my mom got sick, and I moved to Chicago to—to take care of her.”
MacAdams noticed a stricken expression flit by as she talked about her mother.
“Employment?” he asked.
“You might say I lost my job in the divorce,” she said, deadpan. It carried a stinger, though. One MacAdams recognized pretty well. “I’d been an editor at a publishing house.”
“And your ex-husband?”
“Got a job at his girlfriend’s publishing house.”
That wasn’t what MacAdams meant, but it certainly painted a picture. Jo leaned on her palm.
“He didn’t leave me with much, so there’s nothing I have that he wants.”
“What about the estate?” he asked. Jo gave a chirrup of surprise, followed by long, incongruous laughter that almost ended in tears. It was a little distressing to watch.
“Sorry, sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “The estate is in debt and has a giant hole in the roof and a totally ruined library nobody wants. You’ll just have to take me off your crime scene board or whatever you use over here.”
It occurred to MacAdams that Jo Jones perhaps watched too much BBC mystery.
“Thank you, Ms. Jones. Now, if you could tell me where you were between midnight and 4:00 a.m. on Thursday?”
A spark of recognition lit up Josephine’s eyes.
“For real?”
“We ask everyone that.” MacAdams lied. “It’s for your statement, which you still need to sign.”
“I didn’t leave my room again after I went up. Tula brought dinner, and I slept till 6:00 a.m.”
“Anyone verify that?”
She blinked at him, silent. She’d done that the night before, and he still didn’t know how to read it.
“I’ll check with Tula and Ben again.” MacAdams sighed, steering her out of his office and toward Andrews. He would have to pick up the magisterial Fleet at the train station soon. “The sergeant here will take down your full statement.”
“Should I say more about the painting, too?”
She fixated on the painting. And MacAdams didn’t want it—or her—to become a fixation for his case.
“I’m sure there will be no stopping you,” he said.