Ikon Page 6

  They descended the wet stone steps outside. Titus’ official black limousine was parked just outside the wall that surrounded the sun patio. This evening, the sun patio was barely visible, puddled and mossy, with a solitary sundial dripping in the twilight like a forgotten tombstone.

  ‘I think I’ll travel with Joe, Titus told his Secret Servicemen. ‘Joe? I want to go over some of this RING business with you. Maybe we can work out some angles.’

  ‘Mr Jasper’s car isn’t bulletproofed, sir,one of the agents pointed out. ‘If there should be any kind of irregularity…’

  ‘Don’t you love it?’ said Titus, cracking into a grin. They call an assassination attempt an “irregularity”. Well, I can tell you son, the only irregularity that’s going on around here concerns my bowels, and that’s only because of those damned stepchildren of mine occupying both damned bathrooms for hours on end, making-up and shaving and popping their zits while I have to get myself off to the State Department. And let me tell you this is the first time in my life. I was so damned regular in Viet Nam that the USS New Jersey used to fire off its morning

  salvo as soon as their lookouts saw my toilet door open. Better than a goddamn naval chronometer.’

  The Secret Servicemen shrugged, and walked across to the official limousine with that arms-swinging round-shouldered gait exclusive to bodyguards. Titus climbed into Joe Jasper’s car, and said, ‘How about another one of those cheap cigars of yours, Joe?’ The car’s windshield was beaded with moisture, so Joe switched on the wipers, and cleared it away.

  ‘I’ve got to tell you, this is the first time I’ve gladly cut a fishing-trip short,said Titus. ‘You’ve got to tell me how you managed to lay your hands on that stuff. That was a stroke of genius. You hear that? I’m paying you a compliment.’

  Joe started the engine. The whole thing came to light when I was talking to a man called lacono in Atlantic City. He simply said that he’d met a girl who was boasting that she’d once -‘

  With a shattering crash, like the bow of an icebreaker cleaving its way into a glacier, the car’s windshield imploded, and dumped a slushy pile of sparkling broken glass into their laps. A nano-second later, the car rose and bucked and dipped on its suspension.

  Then they heard the explosion, so loud that it deafened them, and their ears sang as they saw Titus’ huge black polished limousine rise into the air, its doors flapping open as if it were desperately trying to fly, turning over on its back twenty feet above them, tumbling, swallow-diving, and then rolling over and over on to the sun patio, crushed, smashed, and still rolling as it hit the sundial and broke through the stone balustrade which overlooked the garden.

  There was a second explosion, and Titus said tightly, ‘Gas tank.’ A ball of flame licked up into the fog, and then the Cadillac was blazing fiercely from end to end, with a soft and a hungry roar which Titus hadn’t heard since Nam.

  He climbed out of the car, brushing showers of glass off his suit. Joe said, Titus - Mr Secretary - we ought to get the hell out of here. They may have marksmen.’

  But Titus ignored him, and walked across to the ten-foot wide hole in the brick-paved driveway where the explosives had gone off. The device had probably been slipped under the Cadillac while it was parked there a few minutes ago, and been detonated by remote control. Titus looked narrowly up at the hotel windows, checking one after the other, but they were all blank and blind and gave nothing away.

  He climbed the low stone wall on to the sun patio and walked across the scoured, battered flagstones. The car was still burning, although its bodywork was already blackened and blistered, and there was more smoke now than flame. Hanging from the passenger window, he saw a human hand, charred, shrivelled-up, bare to the bone, but with the tips of its fingers still spouting little flames like a menorah. There was something ominous and supernatural about it, and Titus bit his lip and turned away, disturbed.

  Joe came hurrying over with his gun held high in his left hand. It was a gigantic .357 revolver, and if he had ever fired it, the recoil would probably have knocked him flat. But he had only bought it to impress Dan Duggan of the National Rifle Association that he was doing his bit to uphold the spirit of the Second Amendment. He said, ‘Holy Christ,’ when he saw the burning car, and stopped where he was.

  People were running down the steps of the hotel, and opening up their windows. Lights were being switched on everywhere. Somebody said, ‘Call an ambulance. There’s been an accident.’

  An accident? thought Titus. He started to walk back to the car, and he was trembling like an old man of 80. No, not an accident. An irregularity that’s what it was. And he dearly and deeply wanted to know who was responsible.

  Joe said, ‘Holy Christ,’ again, and then suddenly began to walk after him.

  Five

  Chief of Police Walter Ruse considered himself to be a true Westerner, in the sense that he believed in justice being fair, prompt, and memorable. He would not uncommonly deal with traffic offenders by giving them a swift hard kick in the pants, rather than write them a ticket; and all of Phoenix remembered the time when he had caught the Yapton boys for drunk driving on Van Buren Street, and knocked their heads together so hard that their lawyer had successfully pleaded in court that they had already been punished to the limits of the law.

  He was a big man, huge-bellied, with a fat, tanned face, and two little near-together eyes the colour of cold steel. Kathy Forbes always said that his eyes reminded her of two nails sticking in a pig’s behind. Chief Ruse always said that Kathy Forbes reminded him of a medium-class madame. There was little love lost between the Press and the Police department in Phoenix; particularly that summer.

  Because of his direct attitude to justice, Chief Ruse was not at all happy with the obvious complexities of the homicide on Oasis Drive. Here was a woman found with her head sawn off, one of the most brutal attacks he’d ever seen. Yet there was no apparent motive, no robbery, no rape, no vandalism, not even ‘Death to Pigs’ scrawled in blood on the wall. Just her head sawn off; and, worse, her head was missing. Police dogs had searched the area all morning and all they had come up with so far was an unpleasantly dead coyote. Chief Ruse hoped very much that this wasn’t going to be the beginning of one of those inexplicable new fashions in homicide. He had enough to contend with right now, keeping the husbands and wives of Phoenix from blowing themselves away with their own handguns. It always happened in the summer, when the temperature hit the high 80s. Chief Ruse took off his large

  Western hat and wiped the inside of the brim with his handkerchief, and sniffed.

  The headless body had just been taken away. Chief Ruse heard the ambulance siren warbling away down 36th Street. He stood with his hands on the bulges of fat which overhung his hips, and contemplated with absent-minded seriousness the hysterical splashes of blood on the walls and bedspread, and the dark tide of coagulated gore which spread out over the white carpet beneath his feet like a monstrous scab. He heard the front door of the house close behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He knew who it was. Lieutenant Berridge, humming to himself. Berridge was arguably the best homicide detective that Phoenix had seen in fifteen years - young, fit, intelligent, well-trained and well-experienced. Chief Ruse found him unbearable, not only because he was so damned good, but because he looked like one of those toothy California tennis-players, all flashing incisors and tanned knees, and because he was only 31 years old, and because he had thick sun-blond hair and sharp blue eyes, and because his wife Stella was exactly the same, a twin almost-blonde, athletic and wholesome; and because he was such a conceited paralysing pain in the ass. And because he would never keep still, but was always hopping or jumping or shuffling around as if he were warming up for a basketball contest.

  ‘You want to tell me your opinion, chief?’ asked Berridge, lacing his fingers together and popping all his knuckles, one after the other, in a controlled salvo. Chief Ruse closed his eyes. He hated people who made gratuitous noises with their body. He said,
without opening his eyes, ‘Whatever opinion , happen to have, I know that you’ve got yourself an opinion which is a hundred times more dynamic, so why don’t you tell me what it is now and get it over with?’

  ‘Right, okay,’ said Berridge, raising his finger instantaneously to make point one. “There isn’t any question that we have some unusual difficulties here, particularly as far as identification is concerned. But I do think that we can

  safely assume that the dead woman is in fact Mrs Margot Schneider, widow of the late Major Rudolph Schneider, of the United States Air Force. Everything we have here supports that assumption. We have no ID. No Social Security card. In fact, we have nothing with a picture. But we do have her pension papers, and when I checked with Luke Air Force Base, they confirmed her age and her general appearance - and they tally. Her doctor confirmed her blood group, which is another plus. What’s more, there are letters in her writing-table from old girlfriends in the service, going right back to 1951.’

  Chief Ruse opened his eyes, and turned around with fat Michelin chins to stare at Berridge as if the young lieutenant were babbling complete nonsense. But Berridge, though hyper-active, was too arrogant to allow Ruse’s famous death-ray stare to put him off. He raised a second finger, and said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, the most important question is not who she is, or why she was murdered, but why would anybody want to take her head? Don’t you agree? And, personally, I think there are three possible answers to that. One, her killers may have wanted to remove all traces of some unusual and incriminating head-wound. Perhaps she was killed with something incredibly specialized, like a glazier’s hammer, or a carpet-fitter’s tool - which is possible, but not particularly likely. Second, they may have taken it for kicks.’

  ‘You mean they wanted to play soccer with it?’

  This time, Berridge was genuinely startled. But he managed to say, in words that fell out like a shower of loose teeth, They may have taken it for some kind of ritual, that’s what I mean. Sexual, or magical. Those sort of kicks.’

  ‘And the third possibility?’

  ‘The third possibility is that they may have taken her head as proof to some third party that they’d actually killed her.’

  ‘In other words, our poor Air Force widow was killed by contract? Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, that kind of stuff?’

  That’s the inference, yes.’ Chief Ruse slowly scratched the capacious seat of his pants. ‘Well, now,he said, ‘those are all possibilities. But they still don’t get us any nearer to finding out who killed her, and why.’

  ‘On the contrary, chief, argued Berridge. The first thing we should do is run a computer make on any violent crimes which have involved blows to the head with the usual weapons. Then run a second make on any sex or black magic cults which hold the human head or skull to be particularly significant. And finally a make on any contract killings in which the head or other parts of the body were taken as proof of death.’

  There was a chime at the front door. Berridge said, ‘I’ll get it. It’s probably the food I ordered.’

  ‘You ordered food?’

  Berridge looked surprised. ‘I shall probably be working on this thing for the rest of the night. Besides, it’s only a diet burger.’

  ‘God help us,breathed Chief Ruse, hitching up his pants. ‘A diet burger.’

  There was talking by the front door. After a while, Chief Ruse went out into the corridor, and said, ‘Berridge? What’s going on?’

  ‘Ah, chief, there you are, said a girl’s voice. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. They told me you went downtown with the coroner.’

  I never ride with stiffs, said Chief Ruse. ‘Now get your tail out of here, Miss Forbes. This is a police prohibited area.’

  The officer at the door said, ‘I’m sorry, chief, she just pushed past me.’

  Berridge said, ‘It’s okay, chief. We can let in the star reporter from The Arizona Flag, can’t we? Maybe she can give us some assistance.’

  ‘Another damned Californian, grumbled Chief Ruse.

  T’m not, as a matter of accuracy, said Kathy, unbuckling her black shoulder-bag so that she could check her tape-recorder. She gave Chief Ruse a wide, toothy grin. T was born in Tucson, near Randolph Park. I was raised

  in Phoenix, and I only went to Los Angeles when I was fourteen years old.’

  ‘Thanks for the c.v., said Chief Ruse. ‘Now, what can you possibly want to know that you haven’t already been told? The body’s gone, the photographers have gone, the forensic team have made their initial studies and they’re going to be back tomorrow to do a little more. Everything’s running routinely.’

  ‘Do you have any theories?’ asked Kathy.

  ‘Yes,said Chief Ruse flatly, ‘I suspect that Mrs Schneider was murdered.’

  Kathy didn’t blink. ‘How about you, lieutenant? Any ideas?’

  ‘Don’t ask him, Chief Ruse interrupted. ‘According to him, Mrs Schneider was decapitated either by someone who didn’t want us to know that they’d hit her over the head with some kind of weird object, like a piano; or some kind of sex-magic lunatics who get off on severed heads; or a hit-man who needed a souvenir to prove that he’d done what he was paid for.’

  Is that right?’ Kathy asked Lieutenant Berridge.

  Berridge drummed his fingers in a complicated tempo on the door-frame. ‘Not exactly. But I guess you could say that it’s close enough.’

  ‘So I can say that you’re looking for a piano-wielding sex-magic madman with a neurosis about being believed by his employers?’

  ‘Miss Forbes -‘ burst out Chief Ruse. But Berridge raised his hand to quiet him down, and laughed. ‘Come on, chief, she’s deliberately goading you. You should know that. Miss Forbes, I have to congratulate you on your technique.’

  ‘Lieutenant Berridge is married, by the way, said Chief Ruse, hitching up his belt again, and sniffing.

  ‘Maybe we’d better go through to the kitchen, suggested Berridge. ‘It’s kind of gory right here.’

  He took Kathy’s arm and guided her through to Margot Schneider’s neat wood-panelled kitchen. ‘You won’t touch anything, will you?’ he told her. ‘The forensic boys

  have finished in the murder room, but they have to go over the whole house.’

  On the kitchen wall, next to the icebox, was a memo pad with the legend, ‘Don’t forget brocc! also bank I’s check!’ A half-finished cup of coffee had been left on the worktop, still impressed with the pink lipstick of a woman who now had no head. Lieutenant Berridge thrust his hands in his pockets and looked around, and said, ‘Pretty strange, isn’t it? The last person who came into this kitchen is dead.’

  Chief Ruse followed them in, and folded his arms over his belly. ‘I don’t want to rush you, Miss Forbes, but I’m going to rush you. Three questions and then that’s it. I have a duty to all of the Phoenix media, not just to The Flag.’

  ‘Oh, sure, I understand,’ said Kathy. Tell me - do you happen to have any photographs of the victim - anything that we could publish?’

  Chief Ruse glanced at Lieutenant Berridge uneasily. The question of photographs was one which he would have preferred to hold over until tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow. The truth of the matter was that they had found no photographs of the murdered woman at all, not even amongst the framed pictures of her family on the sitting-room table. If there were any photograph albums in the house, they hadn’t located them yet; and even when they had sent a sergeant around to Luke Air Force Base this afternoon to check on any photographs the Air Force might have on file of social gatherings and parties, they had found no identifiable picture of Margot Schneider in any of them. Plenty of Major Rudolph Schneider, smiling and holding up glasses of champagne. Even one tantalizing picture showing him waltzing with Mrs Schneider - she with her back to the camera. But that was the only one, and it was impossible to make a positive identification from that. It seemed, oddly, as if Margot Schneider had never in her life been photographed. Even her Social S
ecurity card was missing. ‘Er, we have some pictures, but we have to show them

  to her next-of-kin first,’ Lieutenant Berridge extemporized. ‘You understand how it is.’ ‘May I see one?’

  Chief Ruse shook his head. ‘Not at this time. And not ahead of any of the other media.’

  ‘Well, suit yourself,’ said Kathy. ‘But I have to tell you that Mrs Margot Schneider seems to have been the world’s least-photographed human being. None of her neighbours have pictures of her. The Arizona Biltmore doesn’t have any pictures of her, despite the fact she often used to go to dinners and social functions there. And, of course, we can’t even photograph her dead.’

  ‘Right,’ nodded Lieutenant Berridge. ‘No head.’ It sounded like a comic oneline.

  Kathy said, ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that the murderer might have cut her head off simply to prevent you from finding out who she was?’

  ‘She was Margot Schneider,’ said Lieutenant Berridge. ‘All the papers prove it. She had pension papers, letters from friends. She was wearing one slipper when she died and that slipper was bought from the Scottsdale Shopping Mall nine weeks ago by Margot M. Schneider. She used her American Express card. Listen, there are theories in homicide cases and there are wild guesses. Sometimes, very rarely, the wild guesses pay off. But if we begin to doubt the overwhelming circumstantial and documentary evidence that the murder victim was Margot Schneider, then we’re going to complicate ourselves up our own assholes. Chief Ruse and I don’t usually see eye-to-eye on very much when it comes to detective work, but I think we’re in agreement about that. The fundamental undeniable fact is that a woman like Margot Schneider has been murdered by decapitation. Now we have to work on the probable theories about why she was decapitated. That’s what we’re doing, and that’s all. All I can say in our favour is that we’re very good at what we do. We’re