Palindrome Read online

  “I’m not grumbling but I’d like to know what you’re up to,” she answered. “You look like death, by the way.”

  Gabriel smiled encouragingly. “All those blood tragedies you’re reading are affecting your view of the world — mankind in general and me in particular.”

  “You may be right there but I wouldn’t bet on it.” Pat saw it as her role to correct him when she thought that he was even slightly wrong. “By the way I’ve studied them and not just read them.”

  Pat got up and was about to walk in the direction of the kitchen to prepare supper for the two of them when Adam suddenly took her hand. The movement made him turn and he fell back into the armchair. Pat ended up sitting bolt upright on his lap.

  “You’ll soon get sick of that,” she said. “I’m heavier than I look.”

  “Strewth, you’re right,” he said in an exaggerated Australian accent. He kissed her.

  She responded to the kiss politely, even generously, then got up, shaking her head. “You’ve ignored me dreadfully with this murder business.”

  “It’s my own blood tragedy.”

  “There’s usually more than one murder in these plays, you know.”

  Pat had a bright face that usually alternated between the two poles of a brilliant smile and a menacing frown. Her wavy mouse-coloured hair went blonde quickly after a bit of sun — usually accessed abroad. She had a good figure that stood on muscular rather than shapely legs. Her thin delicate hands, scrubbed and pink, always struck Adam as being like those of a child.

  “How are your am-dram detective efforts going?” she asked curtly.

  Gabriel told her about his meeting with Grant and Brook.

  He barely paused before going on to ask her, “Is dinner ready?

  It’s late.”

  “You’re right. You must be hungry. I’ll get things ready.”

  Gabriel followed her into the kitchen. He was a man who could not do anything for himself and he liked watching Pat move around, doing ordinary things — cooking, washing. She always looked so sure of herself, so certain of the outcome.

  “They’re still searching the building for the murder weapon and any blood-stained clothes that might have been hidden there,” Gabriel chorused as she moved across the stage of the kitchen from sink to stove and back to sink again. “The murderer must have got a good deal of blood on him. He couldn’t have got very far in that condition. He must have ditched the weapon and the clothes somewhere.”

  Scraping the bottom of a pan angrily, Pat asked him. “What was the weapon?”

  “Grant thinks it was something like a Sweeney Todd razor. But he’s not sure about its exact nature. The wound was wide and gaping.”

  “So?”

  “So I was just thinking about Hewitt who wears suspenders and is always so clean shaven. He’s just the type to use an old style razor.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “Who knows? Apparently he had a thing for Anna. It’s not clear if Anna felt the same about him.”

  Pat crossed over to the stove and added salt to a bubbling saucepan. It was a few seconds before she suddenly seemed to recall what Adam had just said. “Suspicious then?”

  “Very. And his wife, I would say, would do for Lady Macbeth, or the Witch of Edmonton for that matter.”

  “I teach my students that the witch was innocent.” “You may be right but I’m not so sure in this case,” Gabriel mused.

  “So you think Hewitt was Anna’s lover — actual or pro-spective — and that he or the witch or both knocked her off. You’re right it’s just like a Jacobean tragedy.”

  “Somehow, I wouldn’t have thought Hewitt was that unstable.” Gabriel shook his head. “But if Anna was holding up, or worse, about to scupper his big deal then who knows what might be possible.”

  “It’s a wise man who knows everything that’s possible,” Pat said, shifting the saucepan on the Aga when it was about to boil over. This shifting of saucepans to areas of different temperature on the hotplate was a complete mystery to Gabriel. Pat was an excellent homemaker, good at cooking, sewing, budgeting. She had a talent for making things work and in her own way bringing warmth to her surroundings. “Pour me a glass of wine, will you, Adam? My glass is in the sitting room. You don’t mind eating there this evening, do you? I’ll join you in a minute.”

  Gabriel returned to the sitting room with a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator. He poured Pat and himself a drink then frowned at one of her execrable modern prints. She had a weakness for modern art and there were more than a few expensive prints which viscerally irked him whenever he looked at them. He had never much liked the decoration and furnishing in the sitting room. Pat had taken it upon herself to have all the taste in their marriage and he had not been allowed to veto any of her ideas.

  Pat entered carrying two plates containing rice and some meat that looked and smelt like goulash. She put them down on a small table in the centre of the room then like a magician, seemingly from nowhere, produced two sets of knives and forks and a pair of napkins.

  Gabriel did not begin eating immediately. He hesitated to disturb the mound of rice on his plate with the tip of his fork. Pat asked him if there was anything wrong.

  “Palmer or Hewitt or Taylor?” he toned.

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  He took a mouthful of food and then cleared his throat “I feel in my bones that the murder must be tied up with the palindrome story.”

  “Adam, you’re being utterly incoherent.”

  “It’s what’s going to solve everything in cancer according to Nebotec.” He put down his plate, got up and retrieved from his briefcase a leaflet he had picked up at the Nebotec symposium. He handed it to his wife when he sat down again. “What do you think of that?”

  She read it with visibly growing distaste. “What’s all this nonsense about Nebotec — established pioneers in new drug research? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Just be grateful it’s not a mixed metaphor. Hewitt specialises in them.”

  “It reads like something out of a magazine.”

  She re-read the page, brooding over it, the wave of her mouse-coloured hair rising and falling as her eyes ran down the page.

  “Well,” she said at last, “if you believe what they say here, this anti-palindrome drug is the best thing since sliced cheese — the holy grail of cancer cures. Is it?”

  “I don’t know enough to say really. But I doubt it. Cancer is not that simple a disease. It’s unlikely to be caused by just one thing going wrong. There can be more than one reason a car runs off the road. It’s the same with cancer. “

  “For “best” read “profitable” then.”

  “Correct.”

  “And if it’s not true?”

  They both looked at each other.

  “Could Palmer or Hewitt have fiddled with the microscope and changed the slides?” Pat asked.

  Gabriel stoically drank the last drops of his white wine. “Hewitt maybe but not Palmer — apparently he was on a bus to Heathrow or already at the airport when it was all happening. Even Hewitt would have struggled to do it in the time available. Without help, that is.”

  “You mean from the witch?”

  “Or Taylor, or someone else we don’t know about?”

  “Suppose Anna did have an affair with Hewitt? Wouldn’t he want to hush that up? The witch of Edmonton wife might not have been that forgiving of her wayward American husband. Anna wasn’t pregnant, was she?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I’m sure Grant would have told me if that was the case.”

  “Then again, Anna might have told Hewitt that she was pregnant in order to get him to do something about it. “Ditch the witch. Otherwise I’ll tell everyone and ruin your marriage and your career.” Hewitt would have had to act then.”

  “What a devious mind you have? You’ve read far too many Jacobean tragedies. Comedies for you next year.”

  “But it i
s possible, isn’t it?”

  Gabriel acknowledged the possibility with a nod before remarking, “Yes, but there’s no proof.” He continued to think out aloud. “It seems to me that someone tampered with those slides. It’s all a question of why. And then there’s what Tina Simms said...”

  “Shall I leave the room so that you can talk to yourself in private?”

  “Sorry love. Tina Simms works as a laboratory technician at the Nebotec labs. She said that Anna disapproved of Nebotec and their methods. The first time I met Hewitt and Palmer together it struck me that there was something between them. Hewitt said Anna “wasn’t the sort of girl to rock the boat” and that she was a “nice kid”. Was it just a slip of the tongue? I know his words don’t mean much in themselves but that phrase “wasn’t the sort of girl” suggests a strong sense of familiarity to me.”

  “Which means?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you’re right: Anna and Hewitt were close, perhaps dangerously close. They may have struggled to keep it in the dark.”

  “It’s all madly speculative, isn’t it? You’ve hardly touched your dinner. Isn’t it any good?”

  “It’s very good,” he reassured her before, without a break, continuing to express his thoughts out aloud, “Why do people commit murder? Your Jacobean tragedies are full of them. Do you have the answer to that one?”

  “Most of the murders in those plays are committed for revenge or to gain a particular advantage — usually sex or money.”

  “I thought all the blood in those plays was spilled mainly for dramatic effect. Isn’t that what the public wanted then?”

  “True, but they’re morality plays as well. They show that you can’t get away with murder. The characters in these plays don’t see beyond the next step, which is usually a dirk in a rival’s back.”

  “There are quite a few queuing up for that role in this case.” Gabriel paused. He finished eating then took a sip of wine. His heavy glance lingered on the glass which he continued to hold near his mouth as he spoke again, “I wonder why old Palmer let Anna go on working at Nebotec if he knew she was so negative about the results?”

  “Perhaps he was okay with her negativity about this palindrome thing as long as her comments were kept in house at Nebotec? Do you think whoever changed the slides was worried that Anna was about to spill the beans on a side effect of this drug?”

  “I don’t know. But that would certainly have been awkward for quite a few people at Nebotec — Hewitt, Taylor, Palmer.”

  “Rather typical of you to diagnose a passionless crime, one committed for a scientific reason rather than for passion or revenge.”

  “I haven’t made a diagnosis yet, but I can tell you that for some people science is a passion.”

  There was no rain but the dark sky and a cold unseasonable wind promised to deliver it later when Gabriel drove into Oxford early the next morning At one point he slowed down and waited for a rabbit caught in the headlights of his car to hop across the road into the bushes. His journey was in darkness until he drew near the ring road and he could see in the distance the streets of Oxford ablaze with orange and white light.

  The newsagent’s was situated at the heart of the business park; it was off the main road, in the middle of a small row of shops that included a dry cleaner’s and a hairdresser’s. The two other shops were in darkness and looked untenanted; one of them was fronted by a tall glass window that had drawn, thickly slatted blinds, the other, possibly a former butcher’s or greengrocer’s, had a row of sloping shelves behind a dirty window.

  Gently opening the newsagent’s door, Gabriel stepped inside. A short man with a surly expression stopped shifting piles of newspapers on the counter in front of him and looked suspiciously at Gabriel as if he guessed he was one of the top shelf brigade.

  “Are you open yet?” Gabriel asked, fingering a pound coin he had ready in his pocket.

  “You’re a bit early, but what can I do for you,” the newsagent replied without enthusiasm, continuing to stack newspapers on the counter.

  “You wouldn’t know where the Nebotec labs are, would you?”

  “You’ve come down too far. If you go back to the main drag you’ll find it loops round. Keep following it and you’ll see a sign.”

  “Thanks. I’m a little early. Came up from Bristol this morning. Thought I’d hit more traffic than I did. None at all as it turned out.”

  “You did the right thing though. Traffic builds up quickly around this time.”

  “Not very well signposted round here.”

  “That’s the council, that is. They charge enough for business rates but don’t do anything to help shops like mine. There used to be a sign to the village that was here but some drunk kids, joyriding, knocked it down. We’re still waiting for the council to put it back up. Maybe they’re waiting for all of us to go out of business so they won’t have to. A bloody disgrace, it is...”

  Gently encouraged by Gabriel the newsagent expanded wonderfully. By the time he had chosen and paid for his papers Gabriel had a full account of the greedy council that had given planning permission to property developers to build an industrial estate which was overcrowded, poorly maintained and had too few services.

  “We’re almost all that’s left of the original village that was here.”

  “Do you live on the premises?”

  The man shook his head. “No, would you? There’s nothing here at night except joyriders. And during the day it’s busy, lorries and big trucks making deliveries, picking things up. Good for my business — lots of people work here — but it’s no place to live. I live in Oxford.”

  “I just came through Cowley. That’s changed a lot since I was last here.”

  “There’s not a lot of the motor works left so there’s not as much employment as there once was. I don’t know how people can afford to live there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you wouldn’t think we were in a recession, the way prices for houses in places like Cowley have gone up.”

  Gabriel nodded politely and looked at the clock behind the newsagent. It was flanked by a large display of liquorice and a cabinet full of cigarettes in packs sporting a prominent government warning that promised death if they were opened.

  “That’s a lot of fags,” Gabriel said, pointing with his finger. “It’s amazing people still buy them despite all the measures to stop them?”

  “Of course they do. They couldn’t care what’s on the pack. Only what’s inside. Stupid, bloody government. Trying to ruin my business. They’re what keep me going.”

  “And the liquorice? Do people buy so much liquorice round here?”

  “Not really. I got them at cost price but no one buys it.”

  “So why stock it if no one buys it?”

  “If I didn’t make that kind of mistake, I wouldn’t be on a poxy industrial estate outside of Oxford but in the centre of town, wouldn’t I?”

  Gabriel looked at the clock again. “Still early, I am.” He surveyed what was available on the counter then said quietly, “Might as well have a go at the Lotto. Don’t normally have time to do it. Can I borrow your pencil?”

  The newsagent handed Gabriel a small pencil. “Double rollover this week. Four million they reckon.”

  “Four million!” Gabriel repeated, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He handed back the pencil and paper and waited for his numbers to be recorded. “Not even the Nebotec staff are paid that much, I expect. Do any of them play it?”

  The newsagent nodded. “They’ve got a syndicate there. One of them comes in regular as clockwork every Tuesday and Friday after work to do the business. They do a bit of a spread. The same numbers. Never miss a draw.”

  “Not even the week they had the murder there?”

  “Came by then as well.”

  Gabriel nodded as if he had expected this piece of information then put away his wallet and, gathering up the papers he knew he would not have time to read, muttered his
thanks. Before leaving, he asked, “I don’t suppose the numbers they play are a palindrome?”

  “A what?” The newsagent looked at him in ignorance.

  “Never mind,” Gabriel said, smiling to himself.

  Chapter 10

  Draw no dray a yard onward

  To Gabriel, whose image of the Grant wife was that she be pretty, nice and above all young, the latest Mrs Grant came as no surprise. Carla had the usual qualities for the role — pre-requisites no doubt as far as Grant was concerned — and, being Brazilian, a touch of the exotic to boot. Gabriel compared her slim body with the slim body of Grant’s previous wives then her sweet face with the others’ sweet faces, her long hair with the others’ long hair...

  A little ashamed of his conjectures, Gabriel offered Carla more wine. She shook her head. Her English was heavily accented and a little halting. Gabriel was not certain if it was that which made her shy to speak; or perhaps it was the fact that she did not know what to say to people so far out of her age group. Pat was much more at ease with her than Gabriel who often struggled to make idle chit-chat. Pat genuinely liked people whereas he no more than tolerated them. He often felt uncomfortable in company; out of place, like a man who has walked into the Ladies toilets in error.

  “It’s good that you persuaded Nick to come,” Pat said, doing her best to make Carla feel at ease. “We haven’t seen him for years.”

  “It takes a murder to bring us together,” said Grant who took every opportunity to answer for his wife.

  “Have there been any new developments?” Gabriel asked.

  Grant shook his head. “Brook seems to have gone a little off the boil about all the slide business you’ve raised. As nothing amiss was found in the slides he thinks that there might be another explanation for the position of the stage on the microscope. His chief is upset at the lack of progress in the case and has put the wind up him. I hear he questioned someone outside Nebotec, some Animal Rights nutter with a record of criminal damage and violent assault.”

  There was an abrupt rather anguished pause in the conversation between the two men, during which Carla, perhaps feeling less intimidated when her husband was distracted, could be heard speaking to Pat: “Nick has to travel so much in his job, doing coroner’s autopsies at different hospitals. He’s usually too tired to do anything on weekends.”