The Guilty Are Afraid

The desk sergeant, a big, fat-faced man, looked at me and then at Candy, who shook his head and kept on, through a doorway, up some stairs and along a passage to a door at the far end. I walked at his heels.

He paused outside the door, rapped once, then turned the handle and shoved the door wide open. He put his hand on my arm and moved me into a big room that contained a desk, six upright chairs, a couple of filing cabinets, Captain Katchen, Lieutenant Rankin and a tall, thin man around forty with straw-coloured hair, rimless glasses and a face of an eager ferret.

Candy said, “Brandon here, Captain,” then stepped back, giving me the stage.

I took a couple of steps forward and stopped. Katchen was standing by the window, his massive face dark with congested blood. He looked at me the way a caged tiger might look at a fat lamb that is being marched past its cage.

Rankin sat on one of the upright chairs, his hat tipped over his eyes, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He didn’t turn his head to look at me.

The straw-haired man eyed me with the interest and the professional detachment of a bacteriologist confronted with an obscure germ that might or might not be a potential killer.

“Why is this man handcuffed, Captain?” he asked in a soft, Ivy League voice.

Katchen suddenly appeared to have difficulty in breathing.

“If you don’t like the way I make my arrests, you’d better talk to the Commissioner,” he said in a voice that could have stripped rust off any lump of old iron.

“Is this man under arrest then?” the straw-haired man asked, his voice a polite inquiry.

Even if he had the face of a ferret and an Ivy League accent, he was rapidly becoming my favourite member of this oddly assorted trio.

Katchen bent his glaring stare on Candy.

“Take those goddam bracelets off,” he said, his voice muffled with rage.

Candy came over to me, slid a key into the lock, twisted and the cuffs dropped into his hand. With his back turned to Katchen he allowed himself a slow, deliberate wink at me. He moved away while I went through an elaborate pantomime of rubbing my wrists and looking injured.

“Sit down, Mr. Brandon,” the straw-haired man said. “I’m Curme Holding of the District Attorney’s office. I heard Captain Katchen wanted to see you so I thought I would see you too.”

I began to feel less depressed.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Holding. I feel in need of protection. The Captain has already talked to me once today. So I’m more than pleased to see you.”

Holding took off his glasses, inspected them and put them back on again.

“Captain Katchen wouldn’t do anything out of the line of duty,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

I smiled.

“Maybe the Captain has a sense of humour. I took his talk seriously, but maybe you could be right. You have only to look at the deep-seated kindness in his face to realize he could be a great little kidder.”

Katchen made a growling sound deep in his throat and moved from the window towards me. He looked like a gorilla disturbed at feeding time.

“Will you ask the questions, Captain, or shall I?” Holding said, sudden steel in his voice.

Katchen paused. His little red-flecked eyes moved from me to Holding, who stared at him with the bored expression of a man watching a very tough gangster movie and finding it phony.

“Now you’ve got your oar in, you can handle it yourself,” Katchen snarled, biting off each word. “I’m going to talk to the Commissioner. There’s too much goddam interference from your office. It’s time someone did something about it.”

He went past me, out through the doorway and slammed the door behind him. The room rocked a little under the percussion.

Sergeant Candy said, “You won’t need me, Mr. Holding?”

“That’s okay, Sergeant.”

I heard the door open, but I didn’t look around to see Candy leave. The door closed behind him gently in sharp contrast to the exit made by Katchen.

“Well, now, Mr. Brandon, would you take a seat?”

Holding said, and waved to a chair opposite the desk. He got up and took the desk chair.

As I sat down I met Rankin’s blank stare. I got no information from it: it was neither friendly nor hostile.

Holding moved a pencil from the blotter to the pen tray and gave me a hard look from behind the screen of his glittering glasses.

“Captain Katchen is retiring at the end of the month,” he said. “Lieutenant Rankin is taking his place.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

Rankin moved restlessly, fingering his tie. He didn’t say anything.

“Lieutenant Rankin is in complete charge of this investigation,” Holding went on. “I am, of course, referring to these two murders at Bay Beach.”

I could see the trap in that.