Dundee tried to read the nameplate on the desk. ‘Chief Constable… Bear… risto?’
‘You don’t pronounce the ‘i’ in the middle,’ said the man. He made no move to get out of his chair. He eyed Dundee’s uniform. ‘You’re the Yank policeman I was told to expect.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Don’t quite know what it is you think I can do for you.’
‘I’d like to see the spot where the body was found.’
‘Can’t see what it matters where the fellow was chucked from the train, can you?’
‘Nevertheless.’
‘And the woman here?’
‘Her name is Jane Todd. She’s a war correspondent.’
The chief constable turned to Jane with a slightly greasy smile. He had small, rodent-like teeth and small, broken veins on his cheeks. ‘Shouldn’t you be covering the social page, dearie? What the generals’ wives are wearing?’
‘I prefer dead bodies,’ Jane answered. The man looked vaguely like a pig, as well as acting like one, but she remembered her conversation with Hedrick, Dundee’s boss, and kept her feelings to herself.
‘All right.’ Bearisto sighed. He levered himself up from his chair and went out into the main office. He pointed to a young, carrot-haired man in uniform behind the counter. ‘Constable Mainz will show you.’
‘One more thing,’ said Dundee.
Bearisto sighed again. ‘What now?’
‘I’ll need a fingerprint kit.’
‘What would that be?’ asked the chief constable. ‘We’re not the bloody Met, you know.’
‘Something to dust for prints with.’
‘We don’t keep anything like that.’
‘Do you have an art shop in town?’
‘You mean a gallery?’
‘No,’ said Dundee. ‘A shop that sells supplies to artists.’
‘There’s a Windsor and Newton on Commerce Avenue, not that I can see why you’d possibly need such a place.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Mainz,’ said the chief constable, raising his voice. The red-haired man looked around.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Accompany these two, would you please.’
‘Of course, sir.’
The constable followed Jane and Dundee out into the sunlight. ‘We only have the two patrol cars,’ Mainz apologised. He pointed to a pair of zebra-striped spots in front of the municipal building. ‘They’re both on duty, I’m afraid.’ The young man’s cheeks flushed to match the colour of the hair on his head, a spray of freckles standing out across his nose. ‘The chief constable doesn’t think I have enough experience yet so he has me doing the work of a clerk.’ He pronounced the word ‘dark.’
‘I wonder how much experience the chief constable has,’ said Jane, trying not to laugh.
‘He was on the council for a year or two. We had a real policeman, a retired man from Birmingham, but he’s working at the War Office now.’
‘So Chief Constable Bearisto stepped into the breach,’ said Dundee.
‘Yes, sir,’ Mainz said.
‘Well,’ said Dundee, ‘I think we can get along without him for the moment.’ He patted Mainz on the back. ‘And we can take our car. You can tell us where to go.’
‘Of course, sir.’ The young man nodded agreeably. ‘I’ve never been in a Yank car before.’ He flushed again. ‘Sorry, sir.’
‘For what?’
‘Calling you a Yank.’
‘That’s what he is,’ said Jane. ‘We both are. Now come on, let’s get a move on.’
The Windsor and Newton Store turned out to be just around the corner and a block up. Dundee sent the young constable into the shop with orders to buy some powdered lampblack, three broad sable brushes, some blank index cards if they had them, a water colourist’s atomiser and a roll of Scotch tape. There was some brief confusion until Mainz realised that Scotch tape was the American term for Sellotape but after that things went smoothly. He came out of the shop with a small paper bag in hand and then they drove another block up to Ley’s Avenue, then turned left onto Station Road, which ran parallel to the railway tracks. This was clearly the industrial centre of Letchworth. There were small factories left and right, including a furniture manufacturing concern, a dairy and the electrical generating station. Where necessary there were spurs off the main line that led to the sooty brick buildings.
Jane looked around as they drove. No matter how you cut it, not a nice place to die.
Chapter Eight
Mainz directed Dundee down a narrow paved road that led to the back of a looming, rust-stained gasworks, where he pulled to a stop. Twenty feet away Dundee could see the raised embankment of the railway right of way. By the looks of it there was no spur leading to the gasworks.
‘LNER,’ said Mainz, getting out of the Dodge, followed by Dundee and Jane.
‘London North Eastern Railway,’ said Dundee.
‘Yes, sir.’ Mainz nodded. ‘No freight carried on this line. It’s all passengers. Non-stop line for the express trains from Letchworth to London.’
‘How long does the ride take?’ asked Jane. She took the Leica out of its case and started taking a few photographs to establish their location.
‘Less than forty-five minutes,’ said Mainz, leading them over to the embankment. There was a small red metal flag on a stick marking the spot where the body had been found. They reached it and Dundee squatted down as Jane continued to take pictures.
‘What was done here?’
‘Done?’ asked Mainz, his expression confused.
‘Was a crime scene marked out, did anyone look around for anything that might have belonged to the victim?’
‘No, sir. The chief constable called the Home Office and they sent out a coroner’s team from London.’
‘Jesus,’ muttered Dundee. He sighed. ‘Photographs taken?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Has it rained since the body was found?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, that’s something anyway.’ He glanced at Jane. ‘Have you done this kind of thing before?’ he asked.
‘Taking snaps of crime scenes? Sure. It’s usually got the body along with it. I used to fill in when the cop photographers were on vacation sometimes.’
‘I wonder if there’s anything to salvage,’ said Dundee.
‘Well, at least we’ve got a pretty good idea of where he impacted,’ said Jane. She pointed down to the embankment. It was made up of gravel and old coal clinkers. There was blood sprayed everywhere and the track itself had a large, gruesome stain. Jane began to take more photographs. Dundee remained squatting, looking over the area carefully, working it in square inches instead of feet.
‘See anything?’ Jane asked.
‘Blood, some grey stuff that looks like it might be brains.’
‘Fits.’
‘Maybe.’ Dundee turned to the red-haired Letchworth constable. ‘The train he had a punched ticket for was going from Cambridge to London.’
Mainz nodded. He pulled a small bound notebook out of his back pocket and flipped through the pages. ‘Jotted it down even though Chief Constable Bearisto said it was a waste of time and I should let the Yanks investigate their own.’
‘What can you tell me about the train?’
‘It’s a daily, sir, except Sundays. Leaves Cambridge 9:40, arrives in Letchworth 10:15, arrives London 11:05.’
‘Fifty minutes.’
‘Forty-five, actually,’ said Mainz. ‘Letchworth halt is five minutes on the down train, fifteen on the up. That one anyway.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Dundee.
‘Most of the trains up to the eight o’clock are for people coming “up” from London. People who live in Letchworth but work in the city. The trains “down” are going into London late. In fact, it’s the last train down to the city for the day.’
‘Was his ticket up or down?’
‘Down, sir. He was going to London, from Ca
mbridge.’
‘Or Letchworth?’
‘Yes, sir. The station’s back that way.’ He pointed. ‘The line curves around the outskirts of the town and then heads south.’
‘When we drove past the station the track was masked by the building,’ said Dundee.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So presumably the compartment side of the train faces the station so people can get off and the corridor side faces this way.’
‘Yes, sir. It’s the same in both directions. They just place the engine on either end depending on whether they’re going up or down.’
‘Which leaves us with a problem, don’t you think?’
‘I didn’t understand a word of that,’ said Jane.
The constable’s eyes widened. ‘Good lord.’
‘That’s it, Constable.’
‘What’s it?’ said Jane.
Mainz looked towards the track and then at Jane. ‘On British railway carriages the exit doors are on each compartment. The corridor side has no exits except at the ends of each carriage and they’re securely locked while the train is in motion. This is the corridor side.’
‘In other words, there’s no way he could have been thrown out of the train and landed here,’ explained Dundee.
‘So what happened?’ Jane asked.
‘Someone forced him up the embankment just as the train went by and put two bullets in his head. He fell back against the train, which did all the damage. It was a night train, so no one would have seen anything because the blackout curtains would have been drawn, and the sound of the engine would have masked the sound of the shots.’
‘Which means he was already in Letchworth,’ said Jane.
‘Probably,’ Dundee said. ‘But it doesn’t get us any closer to identifying him.’
‘What about his fingerprints?’ asked Mainz. ‘I assumed that’s what all the lampblack and brushes were about.’
‘Smart boy,’ said Dundee. ‘According to the Home Office coroner in London he was an American, so his prints wouldn’t be on file with Scotland Yard. On the other hand, maybe the man who killed him left something behind with his prints on it. Maybe we can identify him, even if we can’t identify the corpse.’
They began quartering the area directly around the blood-splashed cinders where the man with Kelman’s dog tags had been shot. As Constable Mainz and Dundee carefully gathered up the detritus along the railway line Jane took several photographs of each piece. After almost an hour they had two brass shell casings from a Colt .45 automatic pistol that had been forcefully ejected and landed a dozen feet away, almost hidden in the tall weeds growing at the foot of the embankment, an empty ten packet of Darts Cigarettes, an equally empty bottle of Watney’s Red Barrel ale and a book of paper matches advertising the services of J. G. D. Satchell, Surveyor, Estate Agent & Auctioneer.
Dundee spent the next thirty minutes dusting each object with the lampblack and the sable brushes, then gently applying the tape to the resulting prints, lifting them off the objects, then putting the strips of tape down firmly on the plain index cards purchased by Mainz. By the end of the half hour he’d taken prints from the cigarette packet, the beer bottle and the book of paper matches. There were several sets of prints, smudged and overlapping, on the beer bottle as though it might have been passed back and forth but the ones on the book of matches and the packet of Darts were clear sets.
‘I’ve never seen it done that way,’ said Mainz. ‘I thought you powdered and then took pictures with some sort of special camera.’
‘It’s not the camera, it’s the film,’ Jane explained. She’d used the technique more than a few times for the New York Police Department. ‘It’s very high contrast so when you develop it the only thing that shows are the prints on a plain white background.’
‘I heard they were doing something like this in Czechoslovakia,’ Dundee answered. He shrugged. ‘It seems to work.’
‘Chief Constable won’t like it,’ said Mainz, frowning. ‘Doesn’t like anything new.’ The young man cleared his throat. ‘”If ’twas good enough for my da, it’s good enough for me,’’’ he said, doing a fair imitation of his boss.
‘His father probably fought in the last war and was used to Germans dropping bombs by hand,’ said Dundee with a sour note in his voice. ‘The world moves on.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ said Mainz. ‘Sometimes I wonder where it’s headed for.’
‘Hell,’ offered Jane with a grin. ‘But not in a handcart. In a fast car.’
‘Long as it’s not a German one,’ grumbled Dundee. He nodded to Mainz. ‘Put all of this into the paper bag. We’ll go to this estate agent’s place and then I’ll deliver the prints to Scotland Yard myself.’
‘No need,’ said Mainz happily, gathering up everything and putting it into the paper bag from the art store. ‘We have a dactylograph back at the station. I can send them direct.’
‘And the chief constable?’
‘He’s usually on the links by this time of day,’ Mainz answered, smiling. ‘Probably with the chairman of the council. Elections this month.’
‘All right,’ said Dundee. ‘We’ll drop you off. You send the prints to Records at Scotland Yard and Miss Todd and I will go and see Mr Satchell.’
The estate agent was located on Eastcheap, one street west of the art supply store and directly behind the new Urban District Council building that faced onto the town square and looked like something they might build in Philadelphia, complete with a clock tower and belfry done in white. Satchell’s itself was one of fifty identical storefronts on the street, in another one of the block-long connected buildings that seemed to be so popular in the town.
The green awning over the door, like the book of matches, referred to it as J. G. D. Satchell’s but, as they were quickly informed, J. G. D. had been in his grave for the past twenty-five years and the office was now run by his son, W. H. Satchell, who, according to the instantly proffered business card, was also M. Inst. M. & Cy.E., whatever that meant.
He was also short, almost completely bald, sporting tortoiseshell spectacles, a pencil-thin Clark Gable moustache and several chins, one after the other. When he smiled his teeth were obviously – albeit expensively – false and clicked slightly when he talked. He was wearing a three-piece Harris tweed suit in a houndstooth check, a red-and-green-striped bow tie and what were usually referred to as ‘sturdy’ walking shoes in brown. In other words, Jane thought, he was a near-perfect caricature of an English country gentleman; all he needed to complete the picture was a Tyrolean hat like the one the Duke of Windsor was invariably photographed wearing and a knobby walking stick. If pressed a man like Satchell could probably talk about salmon fishing, sheep shearing and cricket all in the same conversation.
The office itself was on the small side. There was a single desk behind a courtroom-like bar with a swinging gate, several waiting room chairs, half a dozen wooden filing cabinets with rows of large ring binders above them. The walls were painted a vague mustard colour and covered with framed photographs and drawings of houses and commercial buildings. The floor was dark green linoleum.
‘So, what can I do for our American allies?’ asked Satchell after the introductions had been made. He looked almost fiercely pleasant, as though the smile on his face and the twinkle in his eye were theatrical props and had nothing at all to do with his actual feelings. Everything was bluff, hearty and irrepressibly friendly.
‘I wonder if you can tell us if you’ve rented to another one of your allies lately?’
‘An American?’
‘Yes.’
‘As a matter of fact I did. He was from the quartermaster’s division I believe. He was looking for warehouse space. I only had a very small property but he leased it immediately.’
‘What was his name?’ asked Dundee.
Satchell got up from behind his desk and went to one of the old filing cabinets. He opened one of the drawers, pulled out a file and returned to his desk. He sat down and
flipped open the file.
‘Danby. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Danby. First Infantry Division, First Quartermaster’s Company.’
‘Shit,’ muttered Dundee, his face falling.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Satchell.
‘Something wrong?’ Jane asked.
‘Forget it.’ Dundee took a deep breath and let it out slowly from blown cheeks. ‘Where exactly is this warehouse?’
* * *
It turned out to be a small brick building on Northway Road, right beside the railway overpass and equidistant from the station and the place where the body had been found.
‘How long was the lease for?’ Dundee asked as Satchell turned an enormous key in the padlock that secured the garage-style doors of the little building.
‘Three months.’
‘What did he say he needed it for?’
‘He didn’t,’ said the dapper little man. ‘He simply showed me a requisition form from his office and a purchase order. That was enough for me.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Jane murmured.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing.’
The key finally turned and Satchell swung open the doors. The square space inside was empty except for several workbenches up against the far wall.
‘He’s come and gone by now, of course,’ said Satchell. ‘The lease was up a few days ago.’
‘Were the tables here when you rented him the place?’ Dundee asked, walking back into the shadows.
Jane followed him. She looked down at the floor. There was no sign that anything had been stored here. The concrete floor was clean except for a small, darkened patch in one corner, close to one of the worktables.
Dundee had spotted it too and bent down for a closer examination. There were four equidistant bolt holes drilled in the floor, as well as a corresponding, but larger, hole in the ceiling.
Satchell frowned. ‘He wasn’t given leave to make any alterations.’
‘Charlie Danby never asked leave for anything,’ said Dundee, a sour note in his voice. He touched the dark spot on the concrete floor. Scorched. The hole in the roof might have been for a ventilation pipe or a metal chimney.
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