The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest Page 8

  “Just like that, in one weekend?”

  “Just like that. He can do it, you know, just like there’ve always been women who can do it to men. He’s very useful to Furlough, though I hear whispers that all isn’t quite cozy. Bob must be a weakish­ point in an organization as tight as that, and I have a hunch that he’s broken their rules a couple of times and had a warning that there’ll be really nasty trouble next time. Anyway, he took Sukie from me in three days, not trying at all, as far as I noticed. And she isn’t a feather-headed flibbertigibbet, either. She’s a real tough egg, and one of the best climbers I’ll ever meet. You know what it is makes a real climber, Jim? Not nerve, or strength, or the sort of thing you see on gym displays on the telly, though they’re all useful in their way. It’s the knack of getting every particle of strength into a single muscle movement—hooking a couple of fingers into a cranny—but keeping your mind, your will, in a state of intense balance so that the immediate physical focus is only a part of what’s going on. Otherwise you find yourself screaming with cramp a good five yards before the next possible resting place. Sukie’s a natural. If there were vertical races in the Olympics, she’d be climbing for England and all the papers calling her a golden girl, instead of which she’s married to a ponce and cooking tagliatelli in a basement. She can cook, too.”

  Pibble sat silent for a while, thinking of the balanced will which knew exactly where each pepper pot was in its kitchen. Yes, that’d be useful if you were reaching for a fissure hundreds of feet up and an inch’s uncertainty might mean that you became a sprawling lump of meat on the screes below. Her husband must be an encumbrance, too. He saw, for a second, Blondin wheeling a top-hatted Edwardian across Niagara.

  “When did you change sides?” he asked. “About Caine?”

  “Ach, it’s a long story. Bob hung around at the foot of the climbs making sensible remarks, then strolled up by sheep paths to meet us at the top. Has it ever struck you that rock-climbing is the purest of all sports, Jim? There’s hardly a worthwhile climb in Europe which my mum couldn’t see the start and finish of, walking up by the easy way. No cups, no quarrels with coaches, no interviews with flash journalists (unless you’ve got a color supplement to sponsor you)—you just hang there and reach for your next hold. Anyway, one way and another Bob spent a good deal of time with us, talking deprecatingly about Standring and making no bones about having lost his head for heights. That’s how Sukie came to take that picture. It was after supper, which accounts for the horizontal shadows, and we’d all been drinking a bit. Somebody was teasing Bob and he was holding his own, of course, but Sukie came over all defensive (I should’ve realized then) and swore that he was a better man than any of us. Honestly, I don’t think I started it—I was still on his side—but a bit of needle got into the conversation and the upshot was Bob said he’d take us up to the Monk’s Corner and show us just how badly his nerve had gone. So we all trooped off—there’s not much to amuse one at that time of night on top of a saddle in mid-Wales—and up Bob started. He’d draped himself with all the paraphernalia; he’s got a feeling for things like that—put him into the Middle Ages and he’d wear his hauberk as if he’d been born in it. The Monk starts easy and gets quite severe, but it’s interesting the whole way. You know, there are climbs which are difficult but somehow dim; you do them and go somewhere else. But if you’re in those parts you make a point of doing the Monk, however often you’ve done it before, so Bob must have seen quite a few of us starting up the first ten feet, which is like a ladder, almost. There was this large light falling yellow from the west, and Bob walked up to the rock and went whistling up the first few feet. Then, yards before he was in any trouble, he looked back over his shoulder and laughed aloud and said he couldn’t go on. That’s when Sukie took the picture.”

  “I’ll save you the rest, Ned. You had to come back Sunday, but Caine and your Sukie decided to stay down for another day when the rocks would be less crowded.”

  “Yeah. Sukie was in a lull between hospitals; I hitched a lift, and left them the Consul to come back in. You’re a knowing old bastard.”

  Rickard banged the side of his fist on the horn button. The unoffending and patient vehicle gave a startled peep and Rickard blinked and switched the ignition off.

  “When did you decide that Caine was really a villain?”

  “Difficult. I started my file in November, but I’d been pretty well certain for weeks before that. Still, I didn’t want to know it. O.K., he’d pinched Sukie from me, but I was—am—fond of the kid and I didn’t like the idea she’d turfed me out for a creep. The worst man winning is bad for morale, you know. I don’t say I felt—feel—Sukie had any moral duty to prefer me to him, but there are limits; besides, I don’t want her to muck up her marvelous youth—she’s the kind who’s got a duty to be happy. Still, I told Burnaby to keep an eye on him, not saying why. We’ve got quite a machine, you know, and it wasn’t difficult to log his appearances in the relevant pubs and clubs, and keep track of who he was with and who he talked to. At first I persuaded myself he was an innocent out for kicks who’d had the bad luck to meet up with a nasty lot. Still, I didn’t fancy warning him off myself, so I thought I’d have a word with one of the girls. She’s dead now, took an overdose last Christmas Eve, left a note saying she couldn’t face the tedium of Christmas dinner with the family. That’s why I picked her; she was loopy about the truth. Diana Hazard, born Chloe Maggott, always told her clients her real name before she even took a stocking off. Anyone else would have faked something a bit more melodramatic by way of a suicide note. Not a whore with a heart of gold, mind you—meaner-hearted than most, in fact—but a truth addict. She told me about Bob.”

  “Which side was she on?”

  “Neutral. She wasn’t the kind who likes or dislikes people, but she respected him as a professional. He had this talent and he used it in a way Chloe understood and with an efficiency she admired. I couldn’t go on persuading myself Bob was an innocent after listening to Chloe.”

  “When did he find out you were a copper?”

  “I think he knew all along. He’s fantastically perceptive about people. I bet he knows more about you—about what goes on inside you, anyway—than I do, Jim. I think that’s part of the reason why he picked on Sukie—a nice, savage, unanswerable way of riling a copper. He may even have been simple enough to believe it’d muck things up for me if ever I pinned something on him—look like personal malice. He wouldn’t have considered what Furlough would think about it—he’s not at all clever, you know, quite incapable of thinking three minutes into the consequences of any of his actions. He’s the sort who shuts his eyes and hopes the nasty consequences will go away and bother somebody else. Look, Jim, I’m not going to sleep much after this, anyway—at least not till I’ve taken some sort of action. Let me just nip back and root around among my gang—I might be able to find out what Bob was up to last night. Burnaby’s made something of a hobby of him and he was out till midnight, so there’s a good chance he’ll come up with something. I’ll be back about three.”

  Pibble looked at him. He was still porridge-colored with fatigue, but no longer tinged with the hectic pallor of a dying Keats; and his voice had gathered from somewhere a little of its proper fizz and bounce. Pibble wondered whether to tell him that the whole Caine imbroglio looked like being academic now that he’d nosed out a basin of blood. Ah hell, he wants to go, poor fish, and it did seem an uncanny amount of blood. Explore every avenue, if only for the pleasure of telling defense counsel that you’ve done so.

  “Thanks, Ned; that would tidy things up. I’ll cushion Mrs. Caine as far as I can.”

  “Cushion yourself, you sentimental old weasel. Sukie’s quite … But it’s a kind thought. So long.”

  The Consul jerked away, the rattle of its muffler nagging the afternoon air. Pibble realized that his stomach was calling, softly but insistently, for its ritual sausages and cheese and bitter. Th
at would be beautiful: an hour in a quiet corner with the Guardian crossword puzzle; sixty sacred minutes free from the fury and the mire of human blood. Still, nobody digests happily on a dicey conscience. Better nip back to No. 9 to say where one’s off to, and check whether the lab people have come. Besides, Fernham had Strong’s Good Pub Guide.

  The lab men were grouped around the hole in the floor, in a blaze of photo floodlight. They glanced at him, frowning, artists disturbed in mid-creation; they looked like an early, small-screen TV play, with the whole cast crammed into five feet of stage. Pibble craned over shoulders and saw that they’d hardly begun on fingerprinting. Fine, plenty of time for lunch. He recognized the pathology man, young and spotty but not stupid, but couldn’t remember his name—something odd about it. Pibble edged around the group to him.

  “Care to guess how much of that is blood?”

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “Shame on you, Thackerey.” (Got it; he spelt it with an extra “e.”) “Professional reticence at your age! Suppose I were to lay you three to one that it was more than a teaspoonful and less than a pint, would you take me?”

  “One to three against? Twenty to one on, more like. No, sir, if you’re thinking in those terms, the wise money will be going somewhere round about half a cupful, and getting about five to one on it.”

  “Thank you. If you’re right, it seems a lot to come squirting out of the back of a bashed head. D’you know yet which group the old boy was?”

  “Yes, sir. O.”

  “Fat lot of use that is.”

  “Yes, sir. Bad luck, sir.”

  Pibble craned again. The fingerprints were visible now, gray on the yellow enamel of the bowl. They looked improbably thin and delicate, like a woman’s. Pibble went downstairs and Eve met him on the first landing, carrying a blue loose-leaf folder and a little packet of filing cards.

  “I have some reading matter here for you,” she said in her most prissily academic accents; he was sure now that they were a symptom of stress or embarrassment. “You may care to occupy yourself with it over luncheon. Paul is quite right; you cannot understand us without some knowledge of our past. But I think if you concentrate on the moment of obliteration you are likely to achieve a wrong emphasis. I could lend you the books I have written, but that picture would also be partial, because for academic reasons I have minimized the part played by my father. The best I can do is this.”

  She shoved the fat folder at him with an uncharacteristically gawky gesture, and continued.

  “It is several attempts to write a biography of him, none of them at all successful, but in your peculiar circumstances you may find it more illuminating than a finished work. I lack altogether Paul’s bent for summoning whole areas of experience into a single temporal framework. Minute particulars are more my line.”

  She laughed her Edinburgh teatime laugh, but went on less regally.

  “These are the cards I got out for you, and the note on our financial affairs. You will keep them confidential, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Pibble flipped through the cards and found the one he wanted. The information was there but meant nothing to him.

  “What is monotro’aic melanemia?” he said.

  “It’s a very rare hereditary blood disease, found only in New Guinea. With proper treatment, especially diet, it has no effect at all, but in the wrong circumstances it can affect the nerve centers and the processes of growth, with the results you saw in Rebecca. She’s been like that since she was twelve. My father tried to persuade her mother to feed her the right things, but he was very averse to overriding anyone. It doesn’t affect her intelligence at all; she was the first of the adults to learn to read.”

  “That’s what I felt. Another thing, if you’ve got the time, how will the Kus choose themselves a new chief?”

  “Normally they would do it by acclamation, because the dying chief would have made his wishes known. Failing that, there’s a kind of eeny-meeny-miney-mo method, involving the throwing of ritual sticks on the ground, but they certainly can’t use that if there’s a possibility of Aaron’s killer being chosen. Otherwise there’s a prolonged but very interesting ceremony which consists of elaborate competitive boasting about each man’s prowess and possessions. They take it in turn and each contender has to raise the previous one, as in a poker game, by making a bigger boast and by placing an object of greater value than the last in a central pool. In the end, contenders drop out, either because they are bankrupt or because they’ve used up all their boasts, and the bravest and richest man becomes chief. He takes the pool, but he has to redistribute it among the tribe without keeping noticeably more than he put in. He can do this any way he likes, and can thus bind key figures in the tribe to him.”

  “It sounds like a potted version of a Republican Party convention,” said Pibble. “Are you eligible yourself?”

  “I would be if I broke off my relationship with Paul and took a wife. So would Paul, of course, which was what Aaron really wanted, though I don’t imagine he talked to anyone except me about it.”

  “At least it sounds as if nobody can have been motivated by a certainty that he would succeed to the chieftainship.”

  “No. Is that all?”

  “For the moment, thank you very much. Do you know where either of the uniformed constables is?”

  “I think Mr. Fernham’s in the men’s kitchen—it’s on the right in the basement.”

  “Did you have to put kitchens in when you came?”

  “Three. There’s a little one for Paul and me. The Gas Board thought I was pulling its leg.”

  “I can imagine it.”

  In the basement, the smells were outlandish and hungry-making, though the doors were shut. All the men were in their kitchen, the three young ones working carefully through Kempton Park runners, four of the elders playing knucklebones on a deal table, and a fifth stirring a very big new saucepan on a gas cooker. Fernham was slouched against the wall, helmet off, pretending to watch the game but really staring at the cook. This was a Ku whose Christian name Pibble had not yet identified, but whom he had mentally called The Poacher because of the jacket he wore, an elaborately pocketed and flapped affair in a green dogtooth tweed. It might have been made for some large and jovial squire, but on its present owner it hung below the knees. As Pibble watched, The Poacher groped in a pocket and withdrew a pawful of small brown paper bags which he smelled in turn before putting a couple of pinches from one of them into the brew. He put the bags back and began to search another pocket; this took some time, but at last he pulled out some small black objects (spiders?) and popped them in, too. Pibble crossed to Fernham.

  “Smells good,” he said. “D’you know what it’s called?”

  One of the knucklebone players, Elijah, glanced up.

  “We call it stew,” he said.

  He picked up the bones in his right hand, flipped them into the air, caught four on the back of the hand, slid them off into a small pile, picked up the fallen two, tossed them a couple of feet into the air, picked up the pile, and caught the two as they fell. He seemed almost to have time to wait for them to come down. Then he did the same with his left hand. The black limbs moved so fast over the bleached deal that they lost their outline, becoming a patterned flicker like leaf shadow.

  “Strong left this for you, sir,” said Constable Fernham.

  Pibble read the list. There were eight pubs on it, with the name of the brewer followed by three columns of figures, which turned out to be points awarded for food, clientele, and comfort. The Station Hotel had far and away the best score; its brewer was down as “Bass, but careful landlord” and there was a further note: “It’s all right once you’re inside.”

  “Thanks,” said Pibble. “If anyone wants me, I’ll be at the Station Hotel till about two.”

  When he got there, Pibble found he knew
it well, a crazy adventure in turreted brick, a fistful of Mouse Towers, an abandoned design by Ludwig of Bavaria, the whole loutish hodgepodge shouldering out toward the roaring roundabout where the Ring Road crossed the A-something. (Not Pibble’s idea of a pub, which was a back-street nook kept by a silent old man who lived for the quality of his draught beer. It would be empty when Pibble used it, except for two genial dotards playing dominoes, but its finances and its bitter would be kept healthy by squads of thirsty men working in a trade so peculiar that they had to do all their drinking at hours when Pibble was dredging for torsos.) Pibble willed his stomach to pessimism and went in.

  The Bass was beautiful; the cheese was strong Canadian cheddar and the sausages Harris, cooked to a mahogany fatness; the butter was butter. Pibble, as he settled down to read, wondered why Strong wasn’t farther up the ladder. If he had served his job as he had served his superior officer …

  The cards turned out disappointing, collections of bony fact which Pibble couldn’t put flesh on. The old men were a bit younger than they looked: Aaron had been fifty-eight, Melchizedek was fifty-four. Everyone seemed to be related: Leah was Ishmael’s sister, Elijah was … Ach! Hell. He’d take them home and he and Mrs. Pibble could spend the evening constructing a genealogical table; that might amuse her for a bit.

  The sheet of paper labeled “Finance” read:

  I inherited a considerable amount of property from my mother, whose mother’s father had been a successful speculative builder in the middle of the last century. This has enabled me to bring the Kus here and to maintain them—not as expensive as it sounds, as we prefer to live frugally, except for heating. Simon, Jacob, Daniel, and Magdalene work for London Transport and bring home roughly £50 a week between them. Paul’s earnings from his paintings vary considerably, but recently he has been doing very well, earning just under £2,000 in the last financial year.