Written in Blood(129)

The kitten had, as usual, been present and making a nuisance of itself. After a polished performance of naked greed and winsome precocity it had climbed on to Barnaby’s knee, displayed its bottom, sat down and massaged his trousers with its claws. All this to the sound of excessive purring.

‘Why is it always me?’ A cross demand to the room at large.

‘He knows you don’t like him,’ replied Joyce.

‘Dim then, as well as hoggish.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

This morning, perhaps recalling his previous manhandling over the marmalade, Kilmowski contented himself with simply looking at Barnaby’s breakfast plate, looking at Barnaby, sighing a lot, yawning and turning round and round. Eventually, waiting till his wife’s back was turned, Barnaby gave the kitten a small piece of bacon. Followed by a bit of rind for its cheek.

Joyce said: ‘Why don’t you just put him on the floor?’

The coffee arrived. Troy backed into the room with a tray holding a large Kit Kat and two cups and saucers. He put one of these on the desk before metaphorically licking a finger and holding it to the wind.

The atmosphere didn’t seem to be all that bad. Not when you took into account the recent bollocking from the chief super. These were notorious. Poisonous bloody things, likened, by one recipient, to having your head forced down a blocked-up toilet.

Yet here was the DCI, barely minutes after the affray, swigging his drink and doodling with his pencil as if it had never happened. You had to admire him.

Troy, silently doing just that, wondered what was on the note pad. Barnaby was working with close, tiny strokes as if filling something in. Probably plants. Or leaves. The chief was good at that. Nature drawing. He said it helped him concentrate.

Troy unwrapped his chocolate, ran his thumbnail down the silver paper, snapped the biscuit in half. Then, munching, he eased his way around Barnaby’s desk for a quick shufty.

He hadn’t been far out. Primroses. Beautifully done, just like in a book. Tiny flowers softly shaded with grey, leaves with all the bumps on. Even dangly roots, thready and slightly tangled.

Troy felt envious. I wish I could do something like that, he thought. Paint or play music or write a story. Admitted, he could paralyse club cronies with a well-told joke. And his karaoke ‘Delilah’ at the Christmas party had been described as shit-hot. But it wasn’t quite the same.

Seeing the chief’s cup empty he tidied it away, saying, ‘You come to any decision about Jennings yet, sir? Whether he’s still in the frame?’

‘I doubt it. We’re checking out the story he told about Hadleigh’s antecedents. If Conor Neilson had been leading the sort of life described he’d almost certainly be known to the Garda.’

‘Plus it’s an uncommon name.’

‘Not over there it isn’t. And this stuff from forensic is not encouraging.’ He indicated several glossy photographs and closely typed back-up sheets. ‘Jennings’ prints are in the sitting room, on various pieces of crockery, the ashtray and the front door. Nothing upstairs—’

‘There wouldn’t be. The murderer wore gloves.’

‘Don’t interrupt!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Then there’s the problem of his shoes. No fibres from the stair or bedroom carpet. No blood or other substances. No skin particles. They’re absolutely clean. And you know as well as I do you can’t do a job like the one we’re looking at and take nothing from the scene. They’re working on his suit at the moment but I can’t say I have high hopes.’

‘Bit of a blind alley, then?’

Barnaby shrugged and put down his pencil. Troy had been quite wrong in thinking that the chief superintendent’s sarcastic volley had been easily put aside. Though years of practice and a reasonably equable temperament enabled Barnaby to maintain an imperturbable facade he was, in fact, not unperturbed at all but experiencing the beginnings of a dark depression. A grey dried-upness of the mind.

The reason for this was not unknown to him. He had been indulging in the very thing against which his warnings to others had always been so stringent. Ever since the interview with St John - which meant virtually from the outset - his perception of the case had been subtly narrowing. Whilst giving lip service to this or that possibility he had, gradually, become convinced that it was with Jennings alone that the solution lay.

Either Max had killed Hadleigh and run away or he possessed some knowledge that would provide the key that could unlock the mystery. In any event Jennings’ capture and the conclusion of the case had, in Barnaby’s imagination, become so powerfully intertwined that he was now finding it extremely difficult to accept the fact that the first was quickly seeming to have little or no bearing whatsoever on the second. Which left him precisely where?