The Art of Murder

Chapter 35

'Bloody odd,' Turner commented as they strode across the gravel driveway back to the car.

'Which part?'

'Well, all of it, actually. But how did the Kinnears get away with covering up a serious assault?'

'As Martins said, money talks.' Pendragon tossed him the car keys.

'So, what now?' the sergeant asked.

'We pay Jimmy Macintyre a visit.'

The country road taking them north-west towards Braintree was icy and treacherous. They drove slowly and stopped for a late pub lunch at a place called the Knight and Garter that was surprisingly good: a traditional ploughman's and beer, rather than Korean, Ethiopian, or the other exotic cuisines favoured by so many pubs made over by their brewery.

They found the address extracted from the archives at Riverwell without too much trouble, and pulled up outside a tiny brick-and-slate council house. Its red-painted front door had faded to a fleshy pink; there were traces of snow on the roof, frost on the windows. The garden had been left untended and was overgrown with weeds. As they approached, the policemen noticed the door was badly cracked and the letterbox simply a rectangular hole.

Pendragon rang the bell. The house remained silent. Turner stepped back on to the path and looked at the upper storey. There were no lights on, the curtains were all drawn. Pendragon rapped his knuckles on the door. Still no reply. He stepped back to join Turner and the sergeant had another go, leaning on the bell. Eventually they heard some shuffling sounds coming from the hall.

'Who is it?' The voice was frail, that of an elderly man.

'Police officers, sir. Is that Mr Macintyre?'

A silence. Then the sound of the man clearing his throat. 'What ya want?'

'My name is DCI Pendragon. We'd like to have five minutes of your time.'

'Why?'

'We wanted to ask some questions about Juliette Kinnear. The woman who attacked you.'

A longer silence.

'Mr Macintyre?'

'Go away.'

'Sir, we just need to ask you a few…'

'I said, go away.'

Pendragon looked at Turner, who shrugged.

'We've come a long way, sir,' Pendragon said gently, giving it one last try. 'Could do with a cup of tea.'

Silence.

'Sir?'

Silence.

Pendragon let out a sigh and turned towards the path. The sergeant hovered close to the door for a second and then retreated. They had just reached the end of the path when they heard a sound. Pendragon spun round and saw that the door had opened a crack. They caught a glimpse of Macintyre, one hand extended, beckoning them in.

Jimmy Macintyre hung back behind the door as Pendragon and Turner stepped into the dark hall. 'Straight through. On ya right,' he said.

It was very dark inside the house and it grew darker as Macintyre closed the front door. A faint red glow was the only illumination, produced by daylight filtering through flimsy crimson curtains. The place stank of rotting food and urine. There was no carpet, just grimy ripped old newspapers forming a trail from the hall into what passed for a living-room. They could just make out a tatty armchair, the foam stuffing protruding at half a dozen points along each arm. Beside this was a metal-framed dining chair.

'Grab the chair from over there, young fella,' Macintyre said to Turner as he lowered himself into the armchair. The sergeant did as he was told, removing a pile of newspapers from another spindly metal chair. Pendragon sat down to the left of Macintyre.

Gradually their eyes adjusted, but they could still make out little in the room. Macintyre fidgeted in the armchair. He had a walking stick, which he placed against his left leg. He sat back, looking down at his lap. 'So, what do you wanna know?' he asked, then coughed suddenly, a raspy, guttural sound that seemed to go on for a long time.

'We've just come from Riverwell Hospital,' Pendragon began.

'Ah, I see. So you know the Kinnear girl is long dead.'

'Yes, Mr Macintyre. We were given the outline of the story. About her disappearance in 1996 on a day trip.'

Macintyre coughed again, noisily.

'We also learned that Juliette Kinnear had attacked you, and how that led to her being sectioned.'

The old man said nothing. He just kept looking down at his lap. All they could see of him was a dim outline.

'For a lot of people, 1995 was a long time ago,' Macintyre said, his voice little more than a whisper. 'Not for me. It was the thirtieth of November 1995, but it still feels like yesterday.'

'Are you able to talk us through it, sir?' Turner asked, trying to see a page of his notebook by holding it a few inches from his face. After a moment, he gave up and lowered it to his knees. He thought of asking if he could put on a light, but concluded it might upset Macintyre too much.

'I ain't spoken to anyone about it since I left the Kinnears' employ.'

'They paid you off?'

'Oh, yes. I didn't see much point in fighting 'em,' Macintyre responded quietly, still staring down. 'The girl was put away. They hoped she could be cured. I knew it would be in my own best interest to take "early retirement", so to speak, and to keep me mouth shut. Officially I wasn't stabbed, just had a bit of an accident in the grounds of the 'ouse.'

'I see,' Pendragon said. 'Do you feel able to tell us more about the attack? What might have provoked it, for instance?'

Macintyre looked up sharply. 'Provoked it? Nothin' provoked it,' he snapped. 'I did nothin'. Absolutely nothin'. The Kinnear girl was mad. Didn't need no provocation.'

Pendragon let the man calm down, allowed him to go at his own pace.

'I was working on one of the flowerbeds. It was unusually mild that autumn. A busy time of year for a gardener, clearing away the leaves, turning the soil… Anyway, there I was behind the greenhouse. I knew the girl well. She used to come and talk to me sometimes. She was a strange kid, even before… She would paint in the garden. Crazy pictures, if you ask me. She'd paint the house and the gardens but the pictures looked nothing like anything I could see. Modern, I s'pose. Some folk seemed to think she was pretty good, but I could never see it meself.

'Anyhow, that Sunday she comes out into the garden and sits on the wall to talk, just like she often did. I thought she looked a bit odd. The pupils of her eyes were huge. I know now, of course, that she had been taking something. Suddenly she says, "Mac… Would you let me paint you?" I laughed. "What the 'ell would you wanna paint me for?" I said. "Anyway, I reckon it wouldn't look much like me when you'd finished." She laughed with me at that. Then she jumped off the wall.'

He fell silent again.

Turner glanced over at Pendragon, but even though his vision had begun to adjust to the darkness he could barely see his boss. Pendragon waited patiently.

'I saw a flash of something at the last moment. Didn't realise it was a bread knife, of course. Not exactly expecting it, was I?' Macintyre's voice had become almost inaudible. He seemed to realise this, shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. 'Fourteen wounds,' he said matter-offactly. 'Lost pints of blood before a delivery boy just happened to notice me on the path. No one in the house had heard my screams.' He let the final word trail away. Pendragon and Turner could hear the old man breathing heavily. 'Sergeant?' he said after a moment. Turner could tell Macintyre was looking at him, but could see almost nothing more than the vague shape of his face. 'Could you please open those curtains a fraction?'

Turner glanced towards Pendragon, but could not make out his expression. Standing up, he picked his way through the gloom towards the red haze of the window, arms extended like a blind man. Then he felt the waxy fabric of the curtains between his fingertips, stopped and searched for the edge. Taking two steps to his left and running his hands along the fabric, he grabbed a fistful of curtain, and pulled it to his right.

Light flooded into the room. Turner spun on his heel, shading his eyes. He could see Pendragon with a hand at his brow and then lowering it before turning towards the hideously disfigured face of Jimmy Macintyre.

'Fourteen wounds,' the man said, his upper lip bisected by a scar that ran from where his left eye had once been, twisting it into a grotesque facsimile of a leer. 'All of 'em to the face.'