Paint, Gold and Blood by Michael Gilbert

Author:Michael Gilbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Paint, Gold and Blood
ISBN: 9780755132379
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

3

“We did think at first,” said Superintendent O’Keefe, “that it might have been mugging and robbery. Rather an unpleasant sort of mugging, you might say. He’d been drowned. Held head down in that muck. Not very nice.”

His fatherly manner and matter-of-fact way of speaking robbed the words of some, but not much, of their brutality.

It was five o’clock in the morning. His audience was Mr. Chaytor, Stewart and Peter. They were seated in the living-room before a dying fire. In the last few hours a large number of people had appeared and disappeared. Most of them had tramped through the house. A photographic team, with flash-lights; finger-print men who seemed able to work in the dark; a police doctor, followed by a well-known pathologist who had been treated by everyone with great deference and had looked as neat and as wide awake as if he had been in his Harley Street consulting-room.

Statements had been taken from everyone and a follow-up team had appeared and erected a tent over the spot where Jemal had hung. A pathetic catafalque, thought Peter.

The police doctor had sent Mrs. Chaytor to bed and had given her a sleeping-pill before he left.

“However, when we got that boy’s prints on the computer at Central and found out he was—” the Superintendent consulted his note-pad, “—an Iranian called Mohammed Awali Jemal, a member of a militant section of his compatriots, why then we changed our minds somewhat.”

“If you already had his finger-prints on record,” said Stewart, “does that mean that he had had previous convictions?”

“Some form, yes sir. He’d been up twice for brawling in the streets. The second occasion was more serious. People got hurt. Rather a violent young man. Well, you know how these groups fight among themselves. Hate each other, sometimes more than they hate their real enemies. And this had the look of a revenge killing.”

“You said mugging and robbery.”

“Did I?” O’Keefe looked surprised. “I suppose I thought that because there wasn’t much in the young man’s pockets. If he had had a wallet or anything like that it was gone. Only thing we found, in his watch-pocket, was a damp piece of cardboard which might tell us something when our back-room boys have worked it over. They do wonderful things with screens and cameras. You say you knew him, sir?”

This was shot, without warning, at Peter who had been slumped in his chair. Now he sat up and tried to pull himself together.

“I wouldn’t say I knew him well. It was when I was doing a stint of teaching foreigners English. Quite a few of the Iranian dissidents came to me. Jemal was one of them.”

“What did you make of him?”

“I thought he was a very earnest young man, wholly devoted to the anti-Khomeni faction. And prepared, unlike most of the others, to take active steps.”

“Active steps?” said the Superintendent thoughtfully. “Yes. You didn’t know, perhaps, that a young man of his description is wanted in France in connection with an outrage in the Boulevard de Magenta?”

“I read about it,” said Stewart.

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