Hang on St. Christopher (The Sean Duffy #8)

4. Quentin Townes

CHAPTER 4

QUENTIN TOWNES

A constable told us that the stolen car was a gold 1989 Jaguar with a Dublin registration, so I put out an alert for the vehicle. The victim’s keys were gone with the car, but getting access to his house was easy with a lock pick kit and a minute to spare.

We did a quick shoofty around to make sure there were no starving kids or starving pets inside—there weren’t—and that the gas was off. It was. We’d do a thorough search later when the case warranted it. A note for the milkman on the front step said: “One Gold Top only—Q Townes,” and when we went door-to-door canvassing for witnesses, we learned that that indeed was his name: Quentin Townes.

The next door neighbors on either side had barely exchanged two words with the victim since he moved in about two months earlier, but the lady across the street, a Mrs. Franklin, was more helpful. She was in her late sixties but still worked part-time at Glenview Secure Mental Hospital as a staff nurse. Observant, friendly, and sharp as a tack, Mrs. F. would have been the ideal witness were it not for a tendency to become prolix.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen the actual murder, but she had heard the gunshots, and she told us a good deal about the victim. She invited us in for a cuppa, and although we were in a bit of a rush to make the notification, we could see that there was no way of dodging the tea.

Chintzy living room, china teapot, Ceylon tea, full-cream milk, Jaffa Cakes—bog standard fare.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Townes has been a very good neighbor since he moved in. Very nice gentleman. Well spoken. He was a painter; did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Interior decorator sort of painter?” Crabbie asked.

I shook my head, but before I could explain, Mrs. Franklin had leaped in. “Oh, no, nothing like that. A painter painter. He was a very classy gent, was Mr. Townes. He did wee portraits and landscapes. Watercolors and oils. Did one of me and my granddaughter. It’s very good. That’s it over the fireplace. Look at thon; isn’t it something?”

Out of politeness, Crabbie and I had to examine the picture, and truth be told, it wasn’t a bad representation, although maybe a little generous to Mrs. Franklin from a senescence point of view. But if an artist can’t flatter his subject a little, he’s probably not a very savvy artist—Graham Sutherland / the fireplace at Chartwell being a case in point.

“Is that how he made his living?” I asked, sitting back down on the sofa and scarfing a Jaffa Cake.

“I believe so. He had a studio in the conservatory at the back. He said he’d been painting for years.”

“He’s not from around here, is he?” I asked.

“No, no, no. He was from down south somewhere. Although he’s been up in Belfast for a while, I gathered. He’d only moved to this house a few months back, but he said he’d been giving classes on and off at the Tech for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Dublin accent?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. He was well spoken, though. Polite.”

“How old was he, exactly?” I asked. “We couldn’t really tell from the, ehm, body, and we haven’t been able to recover his driving license.”

“Oh, he was in his fifties. He looked younger than that, of course, but I think he was an older man. Very courteous. Always said ‘good morning, Mrs. Franklin!’ Always helped me with my bins. Getting the new wheelie bins in and out. Those awful, difficult new bins. Why we couldn’t have just stuck with the old ones, I’ll never know. The binmen used to come ’round the back of the house, have a wee chat with you, carry your bin to the bin lorry, carry it back. Now you have to do most of the work yourself with those new wheelie bins and forget about having a conversation with those young bucks! Let no new thing arise, my grandfather used to say.”

“Aye,” Crabbie agreed. “Now, what time did you hear those alleged gunshots, Mrs. Franklin?” he asked while I finished my Jaffa Cake.

“Four fifty-five. It was the last numbers game on Countdown, and I was looking at the TV when I heard the shots.”

“Are you sure? Was there a clock on your TV?”

“No, but Countdown is always the same. They do the last numbers game and then the conundrum and then they wrap up the show. The last numbers game is always at four fifty-five.”

“And did you know they were gunshots?”

“I did not. I thought it was a car backfiring. One of the students down the way there has a Volkswagen and it’s always doing that. Backfiring, stalling. Mrs. McCallister told me the engines are in the back of those things! That can’t be right, can it?”

While Crabbie tried to get her off the topic of Volkswagen engines, I found myself caught in a stare with the black lough water. Just to the left, you could see the distant twinkling lights of Scotland. One of them, perhaps, was the lights from my own living room, and I thought again how odd it was to be removed from that universe of domestic bliss into this unpleasant little world of joyriders and murderers and dead men in bespoke three-hundred-quid linen jackets.

“No, if I’d thought it was shots, I would have gone out. I might have been able to help poor Mr. Townes,” Mrs. Franklin continued with a flutter of emotion.

To prevent that emotion from becoming an entirely unnecessary feeling of guilt, I shook my head. “He died almost instantly. There was nothing you could have done,” I said.

“That’s a relief. He was a nice man. I wouldn’t want for him to have suffered.”

“I don’t think he did. Shots, you said, not shot?”

“Two bangs, one after the other, the way a car does sometimes, which is why I thought it was a car.”

“How long an interval between these two bangs, do you think?”

She thought for a moment. “Two seconds.”

“Two seconds,” I said, and wrote it in my notebook. Crabbie and I exchanged a look and a psychic communication.

A barrel in the gut to gentle his condition and bring him down. A barrel in the head at close range to kill him. Take the keys, steal the car, burn the car out to make it look like a joyriding gone wrong.

But what motive could there be if it wasn’t a botched carjacking?

“Did Mr. Townes ever speak about any enemies, threats against him, dissatisfied customers? Anything like that?”

“Mr. Townes was a very good artist. I can’t imagine he had any unhappy customers.”

“Human nature being what it is, though, I’m sure he upset some people,” I suggested.

“He was a very easygoing man. A churchgoing man, I think.”

“Which denomination?” I asked—always a loaded question in Ireland.

“Well, he was from down south, so you’d think he was a Catholic, but I don’t think he was actually. I think he was Church of Ireland.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, while I had the weans sitting for their portrait, Radio Ulster was on, and Dr. Eames was talking about something or other and I saw Mr. Townes nodding to himself. And Dr. Eames is the Archbishop of the Church of Ireland.”

“Not completely conclusive evidence there, Mrs. Franklin,” I suggested.

“Well, he wasn’t very religious,” she conceded.

“We’ll need to contact a next of kin,” Crabbie said to me.

“Yes, thanks for reminding me, Sergeant McCrabban. Did he have any family that he spoke about?”

“No. He never mentioned any family to me. I assumed his parents were dead.”

I sipped my tea. “Did he mention a wife or siblings?”

“No, he didn’t. Oh dear, oh dear, I hope there’s someone that’ll come up to bury him! I wouldn’t like to think of him without anyone to speak for him.”

I put my hand on her arm and gave her a reassuring smile. “We haven’t searched his house yet. I’m sure we’ll find an address book. And if we don’t, we’ll find out who he’s been calling on the phone, and call them,” I said.

“That’s very clever. You’re very professional,” Mrs. Franklin said.

I looked at Crabbie. “Mrs. Franklin says we’re very professional,” I said.

“I heard.”

I leaned in conspiratorially to Mrs. F. “This is me and Sergeant McCrabban’s first case in a while. We’re actually a bit rusty, so any help that you can give us would be greatly appreciated.”

“I’ll do all I can,” she said, genuinely appreciating my honesty.

“So he didn’t speak about siblings, parents, or old girlfriends?” I reiterated.

“No, but he was a handsome man, though. I imagine he left a few broken hearts along the way when he was younger.”

“Did he charge a lot of money for his artwork?” Crabbie asked.

“A hundred pounds for a portrait.”

“That seems reasonable,” I said.

“And if you weren’t happy with it, he didn’t make you take it. He just got out the white spirits and reused the canvas.”

“He sounds like a very even-tempered man.”

“The very words I would have used. Philosophical.”

“Did he have any hobbies? Golf, sailing—anything like that?”

“None that I knew about.”

“And I know I’ve asked this already, but are you sure he never mentioned any enemies?”

“None that he talked to me about.”

“Did it not seem strange to you that he never spoke of his family at all? He must have come from somewhere.”

“I don’t like to pry, and he didn’t offer the information. Maybe Kenneth would know. He was over there once a week. He did Mr. Townes’s lawn as he didn’t have a mower of his own. He was only renting, so I suppose he never got ’round to buying a mower, and Kenneth didn’t mind. Good exercise for him. Doctor said he needed to get out and about. He talked to him a few times.”

Mrs. Franklin got up, opened the living room door, and yelled upstairs:

“Kenneth! It’s the police! It’s about Mr. Townes.”

“I’m watching the snooker, amn’t I?” a voice bellowed down the stairs.

“It’s the peelers, Kenneth. They need to speak to you!”

A long pause and then a reluctant “All right. But this better not take long. It’s live.”

Kenneth came down the stairs. He was a large, balding man in a white shirt and brown cardigan. His Freddie Jones in David Lynch’s Dune –style eyebrows were upturned at a thirty-degree angle, giving a delightful surprised/indignant look to his countenance.

“I’m Detective Inspector Sean Duffy; this is Detective Sergeant John McCrabban. We’re investigating the death of Mr. Townes across the road.”

“I didn’t see anything. I was watching the snooker. It’s the finale. It’s the UK masters.”

“Your wife says that you went over occasionally to mow Mr. Townes’s lawn,” I said.

Mr. Franklin gave Mrs. Franklin a betrayed look.

“So I did. What of it?”

“Did he ever talk to you about any friends, relations—anything like that? We’d like to ascertain the next of kin as soon as possible.”

Mr. Franklin shook his head. “Look, here’s the thing. I offered to mow his lawn when I was out doing mine and he said yes. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting him to say yes. Nobody around here would say yes. They might borrow your petrol mower, but they wouldn’t actually let you mow the grass for them!”

“It was good exercise for you!” Mrs. Franklin insisted.

“It was exercise, aye. Good exercise? I don’t know about that.”

“But you spoke to Mr. Townes,” I said.

“Yeah. He wasn’t what I’d call a chatterbox, but we talked on occasion.”

“What about?”

“The usual things.”

“What are the usual things?”

“Football, weather.”

The usual things men discussed when they didn’t want to talk about reality.

“What was his team?”

“Liverpool.”

I turned to McCrabban. “Clearly, he was a man of taste and discretion. The suit, the car, Liverpool.”

“Liverpool is in long-term decline. That’s what the Mirror says,” Crabbie muttered.

I ignored this and turned back to Mr. Franklin. “He ever talk about siblings, next of kin?”

“Nah. Never spoke about it. But there were no next of kin. I sort of gathered that. No friends either. No one ever came ’round, did they? No wife, no kids, no mother, no brothers. A wee bit suspicious, if you ask me. Around here we like to know where somebody comes from, you know? But Mr. Townes, he arrives in the street, dead of night, moves in, sets himself up as a painter, and nobody knows him from Adam.”

“You’re talking a lot of nonsense, Kenneth!” Mrs. Franklin said. “He arrived on a Monday morning. I saw him move in myself.”

“Paid for all his bills in cash. Said he didn’t trust the banks,” Mr. Franklin said.

“I don’t trust them either!” Mrs. Franklin countered.

Mr. Franklin shook his head and tapped his finger to his nose. “You can’t use a bank unless you have ID, am I right?”

“Aye,” Crabbie agreed.

“Am I also right in thinking you haven’t found a driver’s license or a passport yet?” Mr. Franklin asked.

“We haven’t done a really thorough search of the house,” I said.

“You won’t find any either. I was over there doing his lawn one Friday, and the detector vans boys came to check to see if he had a TV license. He didn’t, and when they asked to see some ID, he said he didn’t have any form of identification in the house. And they said he had a twenty-four-hour grace period to go to the post office and get a license and he said he would, but I don’t think he ever did. Quentin, he called himself. That part I believe. If you’re going to make up a name, you wouldn’t make up Quentin.”

Mrs. Franklin was deeply irritated now. “I am sorry I brought you down, Kenneth. These are police officers conducting a very serious investigation and you’re filling their heads with a load of nonsense!”

“You’re the one talking nonsense!”

“Kenneth, lower your voice!”

“I can raise my voice in my own house, so I can!”

Crabbie was looking uncomfortable now and wanted us away from this. He nodded his head toward the door. He was probably right. A thorough search of Mr. Townes’s house would likely give us all the answers we needed.

I got to my feet. “Just another couple of quick questions and then we should head on,” I said. “You don’t know if Mr. Townes had any other source of income apart from the painting?”

“No. I don’t think so. Why do you ask that?” Mrs. Franklin wondered.

“He was driving a Jaguar, and he was wearing a rather expensive jacket,” Crabbie said.

“Oh, yes, he was always very well dressed, was Mr. Townes,” Mrs. Franklin said.

Mr. Franklin shook his head. “Were youse listening to me? I don’t think he even had a bank account. He was always paid in cash for his work, and he told me once that he went to Belfast to settle his electricity bill. But you don’t have to do that if you have a bank account, do you? They do direct debit, don’t they? Cash only. Very strange in this day and age.”

Mrs. Franklin shook her head. “You and the banks, Kenneth, please.”

“Indeed. Well, thank you both very much. Here’s my card. Call me if you can think of anything else that might help us with our inquiries. Anything at all.”

We left the Franklins to it and recrossed the road.

“Search the house?” Crabbie asked.

“Search the house,” I agreed.

I sent off a constable to call the electric company and find out about these cash payments for his bills, and I called in the standard background check to HQ to see if we could locate Mr. Townes’s passport, driver’s license, game license, gun license, or any criminal record.

“We haven’t discussed motive,” Crabbie said as we walked through Mr. Townes’s front door.

“Motive?”

“If it wasn’t a carjacking gone wrong.”

“Ach, it could be any number of things. Jealous husband? Financial troubles? Trouble with the local bookies?”

Crabbie didn’t look convinced by any of those explanations. But it was way too early to speculate about any of that. I sighed. “Aye, Crabbie, might be a tricky one even if it is only a simple carjacking. I bet we find the car burned out with enough petrol in the tank to get a real inferno going and wipe out all the recoverable forensic evidence.”

“That’s a bet I wouldn’t take,” Crabbie said, quickly adding, “Not that I would ever take a bet.”

“No.”

Crabbie rubbed his hand across his chin. “With no forensic evidence at the scene, no eyewitnesses, and potentially no forensic evidence in the car, this may be a hard nut to crack.”

“That’s why they called for the best, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the best was on holiday in Spain, so they have to make do with you and me,” Crabbie said with only the barest hint of a smile.