when he noticed Salter, then looked up very quickly and greeted the inspector with a lot of noise. ‘How’s it going, chief?’ was one of the things he said.
‘I’ve just had my first lesson,’ Salter said. ‘I think I’ll join.’
‘Really? Maybe we’ll have a game, sometime.’
‘When I’ve had a couple more lessons.’
They sat quiet then, waiting for each other to speak. Bailey broke first. ‘Any news on Old Dave?’ he asked.
‘None. I’ll tell you, Mr Bailey, we are baffled. It looks as though it must have been a casual set-up.’
‘He got rolled, you think?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Poor old Dave, eh? Well, I’d better change. Percy is always on time.’ He bustled about with his racquet and bag.
‘One thing, Mr Bailey. I was just checking on a few odds and ends. Summers made a’ couple of calls from Montreal on Friday afternoon . . .’
‘That’s right, Inspector, I forgot to tell you. One of them was to me, to tell me he couldn’t play squash the next Monday. He’d forgotten to tell me when I saw him on Thursday that he was going to Montreal for this conference.’
‘I see. That was all, was it? Did he sound very excited?’
Bailey considered this. ‘Excited? No, I wouldn’t say he sounded any different from his usual self. No.’
‘Why would he phone to cancel a game if you hadn’t arranged it?’
‘Oh, it was a standard arrangement we had. We only got in touch when we couldn’t make it. Otherwise my secretary booked the courts for us every day.’
‘I see. It must have been an exciting game on that Thursday to make him forget.’
‘Yeah. We always went at it pretty hard. That it, then? Here’s Percy now.’
Bailey and Cranmer went off to the changing-rooms and Salter went in search of the manager to make preliminary enquiries about joining the club. Once he had started the process, he decided to go ahead and become a member there and then.
CHAPTER 6
I he next morning Salter woke with the thought that one of his many enemies had finally caught up with him in an alley. As well as having two broken legs, he had obviously been worked over from the neck down. So this is what it feels like, he thought. Then he remembered the cause and began to enjoy his pain, the product of his first serious exercise in ten years. He had slept like an athlete, too, and he lay there, thinking of the day before, and watching the stirrings of his wife who slept high on her pillow, her waist almost level with his.face. It was seven o’clock and Salter watched her dig deeper into the pillow for a few extra minutes. He waited until she was still again, then he peeled the duvet back, lifted up her nightdress, and bit her gently on the bottom.
She didn’t move. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘Bum-biting,’ he said. ‘A traditional arousal technique. I thought I’d try it.’
‘Like it?’
‘Not much.’
‘Good.’
‘Want me to try something else?’
She turned and lay on her back. ‘I’m not terrifically in the mood,’ she said. ‘But you are. So how about a Victorian quickie.’ She pulled her nightdress up around her waist.
‘Right,’ he said and rolled towards her. ‘Aaaargh, Holy Christ. I can’t move. Aaaargh. I played squash yesterday. I can’t move.’
‘What a vicious circle,’ she said. ‘You play squash to get fit to improve your sex life, and now you can’t move. OK. When you are convalescent, let me know.’ She stepped out of bed and into the bathroom.
He lay back among his aches. ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he shouted. I’ll walk again, you’ll see.’ After a while he clambered slowly out of bed and edged into his dressing-gown. Downstairs, some minutes later, he met the wondering stare of his two sons, who had heard him shouting and now watched him limping about the kitchen. The hell with them, he thought. Let them wonder.
He forgot his pain the instant the pro hit the ball to start his second lesson later that morning. This time he hit the ball nearly every time, even essaying some rudimentary placing and shot-making. ‘Wow!’ the pro said, between looking at his watch. This time the lesson cost him ten dollars for half an hour.
‘Found a motive, yet, Charlie?’ Harry Wycke stood in the door of Salter’s office as he got ready to leave for Montreal.
‘You want to hear about it, Harry? I’ve got a few minutes before I leave.’
‘Sure.’ Wycke sat down on the hard little visitor’s chair and looked around the office. ‘Not exactly top-of-line here, is it?’ he said.
‘It’s what they had left over.’ Was Wycke about to patronize him?
But the detective just shrugged, and waited for him to speak.
Salter summarized the story so far, and Wycke listened carefully.
‘What next?’ he asked, when Salter had finished.
‘I’m going down to Montreal this afternoon to have a look round. You have any advice?’
Wycke shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t look for anything complicated. Sex. Money. Both.’ He stood up. ‘Want me to check out the bookies here? See if he was known to be over his head?’
‘Yes, thanks, Harry. But I can’t see it.’
‘Nor can I. But it’s an obvious one, so we’ll cover your ass on it.’ He winked and left.
The afternoon train from Toronto to Montreal takes a little less than five hours. Salter carried along Summers’s journal to pass the time, hoping, in spite of Mrs Summers, to find it interesting as well as useful. He treated himself to the first-class section so that he could drink beer and read in comfort, and was assigned a seat by the window; ideal, because, although there is nothing worth looking at on the Montreal-Toronto journey, staring out the window, or appearing to, was the easiest way of avoiding conversation with the other passengers.
The first few pages of the journal depressed him. It was declared immediately that this was Summers’s first exercise in journal-keeping, and the early pages consisted of a long, rambling, ‘literary’ account of the author’s condition—mental, physical, psychological, sexual (too coy to be interesting), social, paternal, marital, fraternal, spiritual (’I know, finally, that I must die;’ for Christ’s sake, thought Salter), and professional. Salter thumbed through the first hundred pages. About thirty pages in, Summers had written: ‘Joyce feeling larky today, and we had a nice time before we got up this morning.’ This was more like it. Salter ordered a beer and settled back with page one.
Gradually as he read on, Summers’s life emerged from
