Tomfoolery

by Graham Ison

  ‘So?’

  ‘At what stage did Jane discard her blonde wig?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Oh, stop poncing about, for Christ’s sake, Jim. You know precisely what I’m talking about. Jane took off her wig and left it in the car, and you took it out before you dumped the wheels. And that’s the wig we found in Sandra Nelson’s pad the morning we nicked you, right?’

  ‘Yeah. So what?’

  ‘So what nothing. I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.’ Fox smiled. ‘How many times did you go to the house on Kingston Hill?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I never —’

  Fox held up his hand. ‘Look closely at the tips of my fingers, Jim,’ he said, ‘and tell me what you see.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘Exactly. And we found yours all over the place in the house at Kingston Hill. So I know you were there. And what actually happened after the heist was that you dropped Dixon and then drove Jane to the Marble Arch flat. Still in your chauffeuring costume, you collected her bags, took her straight to Heathrow Airport and put her on a flight for Nice.’ Fox grinned at Murchison. ‘How am I doing so far, Jim?’

  ‘I never.’ Murchison sounded angry. ‘I dumped ’em at Marble Arch.’

  ‘Have it your own way, Jim. Who hung on to the loot, incidentally?’

  ‘Dixon did.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Fox. ‘You did, and you took it straight to Kingston.’

  ‘What are you asking me for? You seem to know.’

  ‘Yes, I probably do, Jim. What’s more, you went to Kingston on more than one occasion. I just want to know how many times. There, that’s not too difficult, is it?’

  Murchison shrugged, defeated. ‘I don’t know. Three or four, I s’pose.’

  ‘And the house at Stoke d’Abernon? How many times did you visit there?’

  ‘Where?’ Murchison’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Stoke d’Abernon, Jim. It’s in Surrey.’

  ‘Never heard of it, and that’s straight.’

  Fox thought that was the case, and Murchison’s prints hadn’t been found there, although he hoped that Fingerprint Branch would find them on the damaging piece of evidence that had been found in the cold water tank. ‘Right.’ Fox turned over a few pages in the file in front of him. ‘Now, Thomas Harley, sometimes known as Wilkins, and Mrs Jane Meadows …’ He looked up. ‘Bit of a quick-change artist, she is, Jim. Been known to abandon blonde wigs in other people’s motorcars. However, both these persons have been arrested, and interviewed by police.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Murchison folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, a sarcastic leer on his face.

  ‘And,’ continued Fox, ‘they both put the murder of Donald Dixon firmly down to you.’

  Murchison altered neither his position nor his expression. ‘What d’you expect?’ he asked insolently.

  ‘Oh, I know, Jim.’ Fox looked sympathetic. ‘Happens all the time. Particularly when thieves fall out.’

  ‘Well, it was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘We found the gun, and we know that it was the gun that killed Dixon.’ That, so far, was speculation.

  ‘It had nothing to do with me.’ Murchison was still desperately trying to convince Fox.

  ‘That weapon was found in the cold water tank at the house at Stoke d’Abernon I mentioned earlier.’

  ‘I told you, I never went near any house in Stoke whatever it was.’

  ‘So you’re saying that you know nothing about Dixon’s murder and you had nothing to do with it. Is that right?’

  ‘Dead right, mister,’ said Murchison, but a tell-tale spasm of fear flitted across his face.

  ‘The weapon was concealed in a plastic lunch box.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘You know the sort of thing I mean, Jim. Housewives used to hold parties to sell them, before they decided that kinky underwear was a better bet. But that aside, your fingerprints were on the box too.’ Fox hoped they were. ‘Perhaps,’ he continued, ‘you would care to consider your position, as politicians are wont to say.’ Fox waited patiently and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Look,’ said Murchison, an edge of desperation in his voice. ‘Harley or Wilkins, or whatever his bloody name is, set the job up.’

  ‘Yes

  ‘I was just the wheelman.’

  Fox shook his head. ‘I think you were a bit more than that, Jim. You said at an earlier interview that you were approached by a man called Harry in a pub called the Oak and Apple in Dulwich, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Fox. ‘There isn’t a pub by that name in Dulwich.’

  ‘Well I must have got the name wrong, then.’

  ‘That’s not all you got wrong,’ said Fox drily. ‘Your friend Harry was Donald Dixon and he was the prime mover in this little enterprise. And you were his lieutenant. Let’s face it, Jim, Harley hasn’t got the intelligence to plan a job like that, but you …’

  ‘All right, so I was a bit more into it than what I said.’

  ‘But when the job was over, there was one hell of an argument about the split. And that’s when things went pear-shaped, isn’t it?’ It was a wild guess on Fox’s part, but he had dealt with enough robbers over the years to know that most crimes followed a familiar pattern.

  Murchison was familiar with crime too, but from the other side, and he knew that interrogations like the one to which he was unwillingly being subjected now also followed a set routine. His chin sank on to his chest. ‘Yeah,’ he said eventually, ‘but it was bloody Harley and that sodding fancy bird of his. They ain’t at all professional, you know.’

  Fox tutted. ‘There you are then, Jim. That’s what happens when you mix it with amateurs. So what happened?’

  ‘It was Dixon. He reckoned that as he’d planned it all and put hisself on the line for nicking it into the bargain, he should have the biggest share. So he went down Kingston and put the arm on Harley and that blonde bitch of his.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Fox. ‘Tell me, if Dixon was the big wheel in all this, how come he gave you the proceeds of the heist to give to Harley? After all, it was Dixon who’d had it away. Harley didn’t catch up until later. So why didn’t he hang on to it until the split had been decided?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Murchison, ‘You don’t think Dixon’d want to walk round London with a bleeding briefcase full of sparklers, do you? Daft, that’d be. S’posing he’d got a pull from the Old Bill? Anyhow, he reckoned it’d be safer to steer clear of Harley’s place for a bit.’

  ‘Very wise,’ said Fox. ‘But you still haven’t told me about the split, dear boy.’

  ‘Dixon was going to get half,’ said Murchison sullenly, ‘and Harley and his bird and me was going to get a third each —’

  ‘That doesn’t add up,’ said Fox. ‘Like the rest of your fairy story.’

  ‘Don’t follow you, Mr Fox.’ True to form, Murchison, realising that he was in dire trouble, had slowly become more respectful.

  ‘The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.’

  ‘I still don’t —’

  ‘What I mean, Jim, is —’ Fox broke off, exasperated. ‘Never mind. What you meant was that Dixon was to take half and you, Harley and Meadows were to split the remainder equally.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  Fox sighed. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘But then Harley, who was going to knock out the gear on the continent somewhere, starts arguing the toss. He reckoned that as he was taking the risks in getting it across there, he ought to have a bigger share.’

  ‘And what did you think about all that, Jim?’

  Murchison ran a ruminative hand round his chin. ‘Well, I reckoned we should’ve stuck to what was agreed.’

  ‘Very noble. But that wasn’t how it panned out, I take it.’

  ‘Nah! There was a right dust-up down Kingston, and Harley pulls out a shooter and does for Don.’

  ‘Oh dear. You were witness to all this,
I take it?’

  ‘Not likely. I never knew nothing about it till after. Harley gives me a bell and says as how we’re all in it together and that if he gets caught he’s going to grass, so I’d better get down there and give him a hand out.’

  ‘And what form did this assistance take, Jim?’

  ‘Well, when I got down there, they’d got it all planned, see. They’d done the shooter up in the plastic box and hidden it. That’s what they said.’

  ‘I see. Are you telling me that you neither saw nor handled this plastic box, then?’ Fox studied Murchison with a rapier-like stare.

  Just in time, Murchison recalled that Fox had told him that his fingerprints had been found on the box. ‘It was lying about, see, so I said they’d better hide it, pronto. I picked it up and bunged it in a cupboard. Last I ever saw of it.’

  ‘But you arranged the funeral.’

  ‘Yeah, well, least I could do. I mean I knew a geezer what’d got a contact in the trade, like. He owed me one, so him and a mate come across with a coffin and a hearse.’

  ‘Ozzie Bryce and Sid Meek, you mean?’

  ‘Oh! You know about them, then?’

  ‘Of course, James. I’ve nicked ’em.’ Fox beamed at the prisoner.

  ‘Oh!’ said Murchison again, and gulped. ‘Well anyhow, Harley was a dab hand at a bit of forgery — so he reckoned — and he’d nicked some forms from somewhere and done it all up kosher. Then this bird Jane. She done the phoning to some vicar —’

  ‘In Cray Magna.’

  ‘Yeah, well, down Devon some place. Yeah, that was it.’

  ‘I thought you’d remember, Jim. After all, you drove the hearse, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why Cray Magna, incidentally?’

  ‘Well, smart-arse Harley reckoned that if he picked some place miles away in the country we’d get away with it. We nearly did an’ all.’ Murchison looked momentarily regretful.

  Fox laughed. ‘You might have done if it hadn’t been for Susan Harley. It was she who did for you, my son, reporting her husband missing to the police.’ Fox suddenly flicked his fingers. ‘That reminds me, Jim,’ he said. ‘I knew there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Murchison gave Fox an apprehensive glance. ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Yes. A little question of threatening to murder Mrs Susan Harley. I’ve told you before about going round threatening people, Jim.’

  ‘Yeah, but that was before you told me the first time —’ Murchison suddenly stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox with a grin. ‘I know. But thank you for the admission, James. That can go on the indictment too. You should never put the arm on a woman. It has a nasty habit of bouncing back and hitting you behind the ear.’ He paused for a moment as if a sudden thought had occurred to him. ‘Of course, once the dear departed Dixon was out of the way it meant that you were going to get a bigger share, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, I s’pose so, but I never thought of that.’

  ‘Not much, you didn’t,’ said Fox. ‘It’s what’s called motive, James. By the way, d’you know what happened to the bulk of the jewellery?’

  ‘Harley said he’d taken it over to France and left it there in a safety deposit, and that he was fixing for a buyer.’

  Fox threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh dear, Jack,’ he said to Gilroy. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Gilroy grinned. ‘Nice, that, guv’nor.’

  ‘I don’t see what’s so bleeding funny about it,’ said Murchison.

  ‘What’s so funny about it, Jim, is that the jewellery was in the coffin containing the late lamented Donald Dixon, and you helped to bury it.’

  ‘What?’ Murchison’s face started working in anger at being had over. ‘The double-dealing bastard,’ he said.

  ‘Like I said, Jim, that’s what comes of mixing it with amateurs.’ In fact Harley had admitted to abandoning the spoils altogether because, following the murder of Dixon, he had decided that the proceeds had become too hot to handle. But Fox didn’t bother to tell Murchison that. It would have ruined the effect.

  ‘Did you say you’ve got Harley banged up, Mr Fox?’

  ‘Indeed I have. Why?’

  ‘Nothing. But I’ve got a few friends on the inside, and thirty years’ll be long enough to put matters right.’

  ‘I hope that’s not another threat to murder, Jim. How many more times d’you need telling? Anyway, I don’t see why you should think that Harley will get thirty years.’

  ‘That’s about the going rate for a topping, ain’t it?’

  *

  The ballistics experts and the Fingerprint Branch had both worked flat out. It was either that or have Fox constantly nagging them. Three days after Harley’s arrest, Hugh Donovan, the firearms man, and Sam Marland, the senior fingerprint officer, appeared in Fox’s office.

  ‘Good news?’ Fox rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

  ‘I think you’ll be pleased,’ said Donovan. ‘The weapon was definitely the one used to kill Dixon. No doubt about it. And the shell cases found with it were definitely those used in the weapon.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Fox. ‘And what about you, Sam? Any luck?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marland. ‘We got two sets of prints off the plastic box.’

  ‘But you got nothing off the weapon itself, Denzil Evans tells me.’

  Marland held up his hands and sighed. ‘Did we ever? But it doesn’t matter, as it happens.’

  ‘So whose prints did you ID?’

  Marland laid his report on Fox’s desk and pointed to a paragraph. ‘That’s the bit that puts the finger on your murderer, Tommy,’ he said. ‘So to speak.’

  Fox skimmed through the paragraph that Marland had pointed out. Then he looked up with a grin on his face. ‘Now that’s what I call evidence, Sam. There’s no doubt, I suppose.’

  ‘None whatsoever. I’m happy to go into the box with that.’

  ‘Nice one,’ said Fox.

  *

  ‘Well, James, I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon.’ Fox beamed at Murchison and sat down.

  ‘Now look here —’

  ‘I’ve got some bad news for you, old son. And I’ll tell you why. Before he moved into the hotel business and took to crime, Thomas Harley really was an insurance broker. He believes in insurance, passionately. And he made doubly sure on this occasion. Despite what you said about not seeing the gun until it was all neatly packed up in its plastic box, there’s a flaw in that argument —’

  ‘I never —’

  ‘Just listen. When that box was found, it was examined by fingerprint experts. Examined very carefully. And d’you know what they found, Jim? They found your fingerprints —’

  ‘Well, I said I’d handled it, didn’t I?’

  ‘But they found them underneath the tape with which the box was sealed. And they found them on the lid. Inside! And that, Jim, was because you sealed it up after you’d killed Dixon. It was the other way round, you see. You forced Harley into helping you out. Another threat to murder, I suppose.’ Fox sighed. ‘And he, in turn, conned Jane Meadows into assisting. That was why they cut and ran, and why Thomas Harley decided to fake his own death. He panics, you know,’ he added as an aside. ‘Unfortunately, Mrs Harley — Susan to you — went bent on the lot of you, and loosed her mouth off to the police. But being an amateur, Harley hung on to the gun, simply because he didn’t know how to get rid of it. Bingo! You got nicked.’

  ‘All right, so I packed up the shooter, but that don’t mean I topped Dixon.’

  ‘I mentioned insurance just now, Jim. And Harley’s best bit of insurance was the cases.’

  ‘The cases?’

  ‘Yes, dear boy.’ Fox smiled. ‘The little brass things that the bullets are in when you put them in the chamber.’

  ‘What about them?’ asked Murchison nervously.

  ‘Know what happened to them?’

  ‘Well, Harley said he’d —’ Murchison broke off, sudden
fear strangling his vocal chords.

  Fox laughed again. He was really quite enjoying himself. ‘Harley, very carefully — with plastic gloves, I shouldn’t wonder — picked them up, all three of them, and put them in another little plastic box inside the one containing the pistol.’

  ‘What did he do that for, the berk?’ Murchison was starting to sweat now.

  ‘So that if the body was ever discovered, the identity of the murderer wouldn’t be too difficult to work out. Harley knew you’d got form … Well, he’d only got to look at you, hadn’t he? Your mistake was to load the pistol with your bare hands.’ Fox shrugged. ‘But then most people do. Consequently, your dabs are on all three cartridge cases. How’s that for being bang to rights, Jim?’ Fox stood up and smiled at the unfortunate Murchison. ‘In a way,’ he added, ‘I suppose it serves Dixon right for introducing you to a berk like Harley.’ But the illogicality of that comment was lost on Murchison.

  *

  Lady Morton heard the milkman and opened the door.

  ‘Good morning, young man,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning, m’lady.’ The milkman paused. ‘Excuse me for asking, m’lady,’ he said, ‘but you haven’t seen Mr Benson lately, have you?’

  Lady Morton stood up, clutching her pint of milk. ‘No, not lately,’ she said. ‘Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Well his milk’s still there from yesterday.’ The milkman pointed to a lonely bottle standing in front of Jeremy Benson’s door.

  ‘How very strange,’ said Lady Morton thoughtfully. ‘But I think you can leave that to me, young man.’ She walked back into her flat and telephoned her friend Detective Chief Superintendent Fox of the Flying Squad.

  Fox had other things to deal with and told Crozier to see to it.

  Crozier did what Lady Morton should have done in the first place and telephoned Marylebone Lane police station.

  Delta One answered the call and effected an entry, as policemen are wont to say, causing serious damage to the door frame in the process.

  Jeremy Benson was in bed. Dead. On a side table was a note briefly explaining that he was convinced that he was to be prosecuted for his part in the affair of Harley, Meadows and company, and just could not face the scandal that would result.