Death by the Book - Lenny Bartulin [45]
Jack listened and looked around the kitchen. He was wary and nervous and kept glancing at Durst’s gun hand to make sure his finger did not creep up and hug the trigger, accidentally or otherwise. Adrenaline could do funny things to nerve-endings, even after you had calmed down.
Durst said: ‘I had to get out from under him after the gun went off.’
Jack watched him pull a face. His thin, leathery lips stretched tightly across his Royal Doulton teeth.
‘He looks small but he weighed a ton. I had to kind of slide out. Dead weight, all right.’
‘So how did he get in?’ asked Jack.
‘Don’t know. Must’ve picked the lock. The door was open when I got here.’
‘Pity you didn’t get here earlier.’
‘Yeah,’ said Durst. ‘Pity.’ The fringe of his sweptback hair had fallen down over his forehead in two thick, Superman-like curls. He pushed them back up with his free hand, letting it rest on top of his head.
Jack looked at Edward Kass again. He could identify a little of the man he had seen in the photo on the net: long face, thick lips, strong straight nose. The hair was grey of course, though still there, the ears larger, the eyebrows like wild tufts of bleached grass growing out of a crack in a wall. He was not so gaunt in old age, or as dark. Whatever had been on his mind, only the eyes could confirm, and they were now shut. Forever. His poetry would never be so definitive.
The dead poet was wearing a blue cardigan, an orange-and-black-checked flannelette shirt, faded black pants with folded-up cuffs and red tartan slippers. House clothes. Blood dripped onto the left slipper from the edge of the table: Jack could hear it now in the dark silence of the room, the soaked slipper, the thick thwap … thwap … thwap of slowly congealing blood dropping down, almost in slow motion. Jack had never seen a dead body before. He never thought his first time would be a double.
He looked over at the man on the floor. Shiny, silver-grey tracksuit and what looked like brand new black Adidas sneakers with gleaming white stripes. Tough-guy-in-the-money, break-and-enter clothes.
‘Do you know him?’ asked Durst.
Jack turned too quickly: his neck jarred and made him grimace. Ian Durst did not notice. He was staring down at the body on the floor as well — casually, half interested, like the dead man was just a hooked fish gone stiff on a jetty.
‘No,’ said Jack. The question annoyed him. ‘Do you?’
Durst shrugged and shook his head. ‘Just one of those faces, I suppose. Makes you think you’ve seen it before. Don’t you think?’
Jack frowned. His heartbeat changed up a gear. ‘Not really.’
Ian Durst locked his clear baby-blue eyes onto Jack’s hazel-brown ones. Then he glanced down at the gun in his hand, but without moving his head too much. He checked it out from a couple of angles, turning it a little this way and then the other. He had an almost smug look on his face. A grin dimpled his cheek but was gone before it could be accused of anything. He looked up again, his face now hard and dark and vaguely threatening.
Jack held the stare. Said nothing. Neither did Durst.
Celia’s shaken voice was heard from the lounge room. ‘The police are here.’
Jack half expected to see Peterson among the blue uniforms searching the apartment for clues. He was relieved not to. Instead, a Detective Sergeant Keith Glendenning was the man in charge. Under his creased grey suit he possessed maybe half a personality. Everything else about him was pretty average, too: height, width, looks and shoes. Jack wondered about his abilities. Glendenning walked with a heavy gait, slowly and sadly, like a man who might have carried a bucket and mop for a living instead of a badge and a gun. He was probably only in his forties but looked a decade older around the eyes. They crowded in together above a nose the size of a small ham. He kept glancing at a mobile