Dust Read online

  Jury sat forward suddenly. “Benny, are you okay?”

  “Me? I’m okay, Mr. Jury. But I can’t say the same for this fella in Room 523. That’s where I am right now.”

  “You haven’t called anyone?”

  Benny sighed. “Yeah, I have. You, Mr. Jury. You tol’ me if there was ever any trouble—”

  “You’re absolutely right. I’m glad you did. Now—”

  Benny lowered his voice as if the dead were all ears. “Now, here’s the thing. I told ’em, the guy that hired me, I was sixteen. Small for my age, see. But I guess the hotel din’t much care as long as I was just hauling trash. But me findin’ dead people, well, it’d probably tell against me, you know, bein’ under the legal age.”

  “Give me the address, Benny.”

  “It’s in EC 1. 86–88 Clerk’nwell Road.”

  Jury wrote it down, tore off the sheet of paper, said, “Look. Right now, you’ll have to notify the hotel. Why don’t you tell the cook, whoever sent you up there, what you found. Let him be the one to tell management and let them be the ones to call in police. It’d probably be Islington police there. It would leave you right out of it. Temporarily.” Very temporarily. “So do that, will you?”

  “Sure. If you say so. Bloke’s name’s Maples. Says here on his license.”

  “What?”

  “The dead guy. His name’s Billy Maples.”

  Jury stuck the pen back in his pocket. “Benny, you shouldn’t touch anything.”

  An exasperated sigh came from the other end of the phone. “A’ course, I know that. I got at the wallet with a napkin for a glove. I could lift it outta this punter’s pocket.”

  “Get the management up there, Benny.”

  “But me, I’m first on the scene, Mr. Jury. They’ll be askin’ me all kindsa questions.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll be there inside of twenty minutes.”

  “What about a doctor, then?”

  “I’m bringing one. Stay put.” He hung up.

  Jury rapped on the bathroom door. “Phyllis?” He smiled. Even the air in the bathroom would be mistily covering her shoulders.

  The door opened an inch and then another. She was still wrapped in the big towel.

  “Dr. Nancy. We’re needed.”

  Phyllis Nancy said, “Is this going to be another episode of The Avengers? Do I wear my Emma Peel wet suit? Or the backless black?”

  The “backless black” was the silk confection she had worn that very night when they’d gone to dinner in the West End. The dress completely covered her front, but left her naked in back from her neck to her waist.

  Jury had commented on the physics of the dress.

  “It isn’t,” Phyllis had said, while peeling the dress downward, “exactly the uniform of a Scotland Yard pathologist.”

  The black dress slid to the floor.

  Now, as she opened the door wider, he hitched his fingers in the towel where it was folded over to tie. This too he watched fall.

  “Get dressed. Billy Maples needs us.”

  “Who’s Billy Maples?”

  Jury started to slide his arms around her, thought of Benny alone with a corpse, and resisted. “Our next case.”

  TWO

  The Zetter, advertising itself as a “restaurant with rooms,” stood in the Clerkenwell Road. It had the spare, angular lines of an old warehouse, the spareness become sleekness and the angularity become minimalist. These things could be accounted for when simply renamed.

  Jury wondered if the Zetter bespoke a trend. Probably, given the upswing of high-end restaurants in London over the last years. Unthinkable, twenty years ago, that London would have a kitchen, or a hotel, naming its restaurant as its primary attraction.

  They couldn’t park in Clerkenwell Road, which even at this hour saw heavy traffic, so Jury pulled into a slot at St. James’s Green.

  Phyllis had no coat, but claimed her black cashmere shawl could protect her from intemperate weather: hurricanes, cyclones, tidal waves. For a while now, rain had been falling hard and steadily, so they crossed the road at a run, and came upon an alleylike walkway called Jerusalem Passage. They took the cover gratefully.

  Coming from the other end was a figure in dark clothes, perhaps running from the rain, but continuing to run through the passage, head down, bumping into Phyllis.

  “Hey!” said Jury.

  Over his shoulder, the man threw back an apology. Jury would have stopped him then and there had it not been for the dark clothes, the white collar that advertised his vocation. Running from an angry God? wondered Jury. Phyllis laughed and they went on.

  As they stood at the hotel’s front desk, Jury saw that the death had had precious little effect on the restaurant, which, even at nearly eleven o’clock, appeared to be doing brisk business.

  He produced his ID for the good-looking desk clerk, who, in a true, new voguish-hotel-with-murder calm, plucked up a house phone, spoke quietly, and then said, “You’re to go right up. It’s on the fifth floor, 523.” She smiled and nodded at Jury and gave Phyllis, in her brief black dress, a questioning look before Phyllis produced her own ID.

  They walked into a room where the forensic team was already in the process of capturing whatever evidence it could. A youngish woman, a maid, perhaps, was being questioned by whoever was in charge. Her English was poor and she was having a hard time of it. Jury thought the detective’s back looked familiar. Then he turned.

  “Ron Chilten!” said Jury.

  Ron smiled his sphinxlike smile, hinting at a richness of disclosure that Jury knew was never coming, largely because there wasn’t anything to disclose. It was Chilten’s forte. “Richard, for God’s sake.” He simulated deep puzzlement. “I stand here and search my brain and can’t remember sending up an SOS.”

  “Stop. You know you need me. What are you doing out of Fulham?”

  “You make it sound like Dartmoor. Maybe it was.” Ron was too easygoing for full-blown rancor. Anyway, he had no need for rancor. It was all about the turf, the patch. Islington police would get on quite well without the rest of the Met horning in. “I ask again, what brought you here?”

  “Your star witness.” Jury nodded toward Benny Keegan, who was talking to an older man, both of them anxiously watching and waiting. “I know Benny well, and I don’t think he’s on intimate terms with Islington police.”

  They had stepped from the room out onto a patio, a huge wooden deck bigger than the room itself. At one end were a table, two chairs, and a body. And Dr. Nancy.

  “Who’s this?” He looked down at Phyllis.

  Phyllis was already kneeling beside the body, giving it a quick examination. She looked up. “Dr. Phyllis Nancy. Superintendent Jury asked me to come along.”

  “We’ve got a doctor,” said DS Chilten, in a tone more uncertain than annoyed. The victim wouldn’t be needing one. He was lying on his back, shot in the chest, blood pooled at his side.

  Phyllis looked at him. “Of course. I just happened to be there and came along. Busman’s holiday.” She snapped on latex gloves she’d borrowed from one of the technicians and turned back to the body. She had a manner that was so short on attitude it was all but impossible to view her as a threat. “I’d like to turn him over?”

  With a slight frown, Chilten nodded.

  She did this in a single neat movement. It wasn’t weight, it was leverage. It occurred to Jury that most things were. It was a thought, anyway. “We’ll be off in a minute; it’s your case, Ron.”

  Chilten snapped his fingers at one of the crime scene operatives for a plastic bag, dropped something into it, and handed it to the technician. Then, in a considering sort of way, he folded first one, then another, stick of gum into his mouth and slowly chewed, as if that’s what the nights were made for. “Not exactly.”

  Jury raised his eyebrows. “Not exactly what?”

  “My case.”

  “It’s Islington’s.”

  “Yeah, I mean it’s Lu’s.”

  Sinc
e he didn’t add to that pronouncement, Jury figured he was in for a night of Chilten’s little manufactured mysteries, smoke and mirrors mise-en-scènes. “Who the hell’s Lou?”

  Now Chilten raised his brows. “Aguilar? You don’t know DI Aguilar?”

  “Should I? Don’t make me dig all the way to China for the information.”

  But Chilten was prepared to let Jury dig. He looked at the tray—the two trays—delivered that night by room service. Chilten turned to the waiters, Benny and the old man whose name was Gilbert Snow. “Now, is this tray of food what you brought up?” He was looking at Snow.

  “That’s it, except it’s been half-et.”

  Chilten nodded. “You didn’t take anything from it, did you, Young Benny?”

  “What?” Benny looked aghast that he’d be asked such a question. “I’d know better’n to take somethin’ from a crime scene, wouldn’t I?”

  “You didn’t know it was a crime scene, Young Benny. Did you?” Chilten’s tone was the condescending one grown-ups use with children, the “How-could-you-know-anything-that-mattered?” tone, you being only thirteen or ten, or six or eight. No wonder kids clammed up, thought Jury.

  Benny said, “If it wasn’t a crime scene, well, he was pretty dead, wasn’t he?”

  A crime scene technician stuck his head around the doorjamb of the bathroom. “’Scuse me, sir, but there’s a dog in the shower.”

  Chilten frowned. “The victim had a dog? Why in hell hasn’t it barked or something? Why would he be—? Perhaps the villain wanted to get him out of the way.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Chilten took long strides toward the bathroom.

  “Sparky?” asked Jury.

  Benny cringed, nodded. “See, Sparky always waits for me in the alley. I was over an hour late because of this coffee delivery, and it was raining somethin’ awful. So I thought, well, no harm in him comin’ with me on this one delivery, so I got him into the lift and we come up here.”

  Phyllis Nancy said, “Is this the Sparky who saved Superintendent Jury’s life?”

  Benny’s chest puffed out a little. “Thass right.” He was happy to have Sparky’s role remembered.

  Chilten was back, the crime scene fellow following with the dog.

  Sparky, a small white terrier, was quiet until he saw Jury, whereupon he started barking and wriggling.

  Chilten asked, “Was this mutt here when you brought the coffee?”

  Benny looked at Jury, saw by his expression he’d just as well tell the truth. “Actually, Sparky’s my dog.”

  “Your dog. Your dog? Did he carry the tray, or what?”

  The technician chortled. Chilten looked at him. He stopped. Chilten went on: “What’s the story on this dog, Young Benny?”

  Jury watched Benny cringe at being addressed in this manner. But he replied, “Like I said, I just had him along with me. We were to go home right after.”

  “I’m sure the management likes your dog running round a crime scene—”

  “We din’t know it was a crime scene, did we?”

  Jury turned away. Benny was cutting a bit too close to DS Chilten’s bone, wasn’t he?

  “Funny.” Chilten looked down at Sparky. “All we need, isn’t it? A dead body and a dog.”

  As far as Jury was concerned, there couldn’t be enough dogs in the world for him: Arnold. Stone. Sparky. Mungo.

  Benny said, “When I saw this dead man, well, I put Sparky in the bathroom there as I was afraid he might knock up against some bit of evidence.”

  Skillfull, thought Jury. He put his hand on Benny’s shoulder. They all seemed to have forgotten that finding a dead body might be traumatic for a kid.

  Chilten looked over at the door to the room. A man had just been admitted. “Mr. Lewis?”

  “That’s right. I’m pinch-hitting for the manager, the manager not being here this evening. You wanted to know about the, ah, victim? His name is Maples, Billy Maples.” Mr. Lewis looked grim. He could have done without this murder’s happening on his watch. “All I can tell you is that he checked in this afternoon, about two o’clock. I did a quick computer search before I came up here. Well, I knew something bad had happened, didn’t I?”

  Chilten nodded. “Go on.”

  “Mr. Maples had listed his home address as Chelsea. Here. I wrote it and the phone number down for you.” Lewis held out a small piece of paper taken from a Zetter message pad. There was one like it by the telephone. He looked from Chilten to Jury, uncertain as to which one was in charge.

  Jury inclined his head toward Chilten.

  Chilten took the note. “One thing, Mr. Lewis. These rooms on this floor—you call them studios, right? They’re pricey, aren’t they?”

  Lewis shrugged. “Yes, I expect they are. Superior studio is what this one’s called. Then there’s the deluxe, which is a little more. But they have some of the best views over London. Well, as you can see.” He swept his arm toward the patio. They stepped onto it and took in the Zetter’s view.

  A view with a corpse, thought Jury. But it was still quite wonderful, the spire of St. Paul’s in one direction, the spire of the post office building in another. London at night and from this height was a knockout. He smiled at it, at London.

  “I didn’t take the booking, but I can find out exactly what transpired.”

  “If you would. I expect he could afford it, if that suit he’s wearing is any indication.” Chilten looked down at the body as if he’d call it back to life, just so he could ask about the suit. “I saw one like it in a window in upper Sloane Street. Get me any information you can, including telephone records. Outgoing, incoming calls. We haven’t spotted a mobile yet, though it’s hard to believe he hadn’t one, a sport like this.”

  Jury smiled at the description. How long had it been since he’d heard “sport” used in that way?

  Chilten nodded toward the assistant manager. “That’s all for now. Thank you.”

  Mr. Lewis took his leave.

  Phyllis rose, peeled off the gloves, shivered in the night air. “I’d say that’s about right, something over an hour. Two hours would be stretching it. Well, but we know the time frame, right?

  “The dinner comes up around nine o’clock according to this Gilbert—”

  “Snow, sir. Nine o’clock, right.”

  “And the coffee comes up around ten o’clock.”

  Ron nodded and flicked through his notebook.

  How many pages could he possibly have accumulated if he’d only been here fifteen minutes before Jury?

  “Okay. The waiter, Snow, brings up dinner at nine. Young Benny brings up the coffee—” Notes consulted again. “At ten or ten-ten. He’s not absolutely sure, but knows that’s close enough—”

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Benny was standing at Jury’s elbow, together with the old waiter.

  “Gil here says you’re missing somethin’ significant.” Benny brought that out as a dozen different syllables, probably to make sure Chilten and Jury understood the significance. “Tell ’em, Gil.”

  The waiter, Gilbert Snow, looked to be in his sixties. He had sad eyes and a slightly sallow complexion, and although by no means corpulent seemed to have had his share of Zetter dinners.

  “It’s this, like: the young gentleman orders his dinner be brought up, which is what I did. He then said he wanted coffee, but to be brought up around ten. He wanted coffee for two people, for two. He was very particular about that.”

  Jury said, “He was expecting someone, then.”

  Benny nodded. So did Gil. “I mean, well, that’s what you’d think, right?”

  Jury wondered why Snow hadn’t brought the coffee up himself, but didn’t ask it. Save it for later. Unless Chilten asked. He didn’t. Maybe he already had. Gilbert Snow seemed all too aware that except for the expected guest, he might have been the last person to see the victim alive, and who wants that on his platter?

  “Let’s say time of death was one and a half hours ago. Tha
t includes the time it took us to get here, of course.”

  “Phyllis?” Jury looked at her. “Give or take how much?”

  “I can’t say precisely. The time looks pretty fixed to me. You don’t often have a witness at both ends of a death—” Her frown deepened. “I can be a little more exact when—I mean when whoever does the autopsy—when that’s done. But I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

  “Remember your Sherlock Holmes, Jury,” said Chilten.

  “He’s never far from my mind. What?”

  “The simplest theory is preferable. Is usually right.”

  “That’s not Holmes. That’s Occam’s razor.”

  Phyllis stepped on Jury’s foot and gave him a look. Then she said to them, “I’m leaving. I think I should give Benny a ride, don’t you?”

  “Take the car.” Jury dug in his pocket for the keys.

  She shook her head. “I’ll get us a cab. I’ll call down to the desk.”

  “I think Benny’d better wait for the guv’ner,” said Ron.

  Jury sighed. “Where in hell is this Detective Inspector Aguilar? He’s taking his own sweet time—”

  “Right behind you.”

  THREE

  Jury had been standing with his back to the door. uickly he turned and saw that, obviously, Chilten’s “Lou” wasn’t male. Detective Inspector Aguilar was a woman.

  There would be no argument about that. DI Aguilar had walked in and sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Tall, willowy, black hair, nearly black eyes, a faint golden glow to her skin. Aguilar: could be Latino, could be Spanish, South American, even Indian. The Lu could be Louise, Lucille, Louella, hell, she could be Lucretia Borgia, for all he cared. She looked like she’d just come off a Paris runway with that shape, those cheekbones, and that hauteur, rather than out of an Islington police station. He wondered if her appearance always had this effect on her team. They stood, as if breathless and waiting. Except for Ron Chilten, whom Jury had never known to get breathless about anything.

  Rather than ask who he was, in a gesture of utter disdain, DI Aguilar raised her eyebrows.