Free Murder Is My Racquet by Otto Penzler Page B

delivering auto parts, nicotine at her finger ends and oil on her overalls. Rumours . Kiley alone upstairs in his room, listening to the record again and again. Rolling from side to side on the bed, trying to keep his hands to himself.
    “Won’t you come in?” Leslie Clarke said. She was wearing a leisure suit in pale mauve, gold slippers with a small heel. Dark red fingernails. She didn’t have a cigarette still in her hand, but had stubbed it out, Kiley thought, when the doorbell rang; the smell of it warm and acrid on her as he squeezed past into the small lobby and she closed the double-glazed Tudor-style external door and ushered him into the living room with its white leather-look chairs and neat little nest of tables and framed photographs of her granddaughter, Alicia, on the walls.
    “I made coffee.”
    “Great.”
    Kiley sat and held out his cup while Leslie poured. Photographs he had expected, but of a triumphant Victoria holding trophies aloft. And there were photos of her, of course, a few, perched around the TV and along the redundant mantelpiece; Catherine, too, Catherine and Trevor on their weddingday. But little Alicia was everywhere and Leslie, following Kiley’s gaze, smiled a smile of satisfaction. “Lovely, isn’t she. A sweetheart. A real sweetheart. Bright, too. Like a button.”
    Either way, Kiley thought, Victoria or Catherine, Leslie had got what she wanted. Her first grandchild.
    “Vicky bought me this house, did you know that? It’s not a palace, of course, but it suits me fine. Cozy, I suppose that’s what it is. And there’s plenty of room for Alicia when she comes to stay.” She smiled and leaned back against white vinyl. “I always did have a hankering after Buckhurst Hill.” Unable to resist any longer, she reached for her Benson and Hedges, king size. “Coffee okay?”
    “Lovely.” The small lies, the little social ones, Kiley had found came easy.
    They talked about Victoria then, Victoria and her sister, whatever jealousies had grown up between them, festered maybe, been smoothed away. Trevor, was he resentful, did he ever treat Alicia as if she weren’t really his? But Trevor was the perfect dad and as far as money was concerned, since his move to Luton, to Vauxhall, some deal they’d done with the German owners, the unions that is, and Trevor had got himself off the shop floor—well, it wasn’t as if they were actually throwing it around but, no, cash was something they weren’t short of, Leslie was sure of that.
    “What about Victoria’s father?” Kiley asked.
    Leslie threw back her head and laughed. “The bastard, as he’s affectionately known.”
    “Is he still around? Is there any chance he might be involved?”
    Leslie shook her head. “The bastard, bless him, would’vehad difficulties getting the right stamp onto the envelope, never mind the rest. Fifteen years, the last time I laid eyes on him; working on the oil rigs he’d been, up around Aberdeen. Took a blow to the head from some piece of equipment in a storm and had to be stretchered off. Knocked the last bit of sense out of him. The drink had seen to the rest long since.” She drew hard on her cigarette. “If he’s still alive, which I doubt, it’s in some hostel somewhere.” And shivered. “I just hope the poor bastard isn’t sleeping rough.”
    • • •
    P aul Broughton was working for a record company in Camden, offices near the canal, more or less opposite the Engineer. Olive V-neck top and chocolate flat-front moleskin chinos, close-shaven head and stubbled chin, two silver rings in one ear, a stud, emerald green, at the center of his bottom lip. A&R, developing new talent, that was his thing. Little bands that gigged at the Dublin Castle or the Boston Dome, the Rocket on the Holloway Road. He was listening to a demo tape on headphones when Kiley walked toward him across a few hundred feet of open plan; Broughton’s desk awash with takeaway mugs from Caffè Nero, unopened padded