The Soft Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘I didn’t hold with ‘em, that’s all,’ Mr Polworthy chimed in.

  ‘But you visited your sister occasionally, didn’t you, Mrs Polworthy?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Her voice cut with sharp suspicion through Emmerdale’s exchanges.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to the lady who came in to look after your brother-in-law, a Mrs Damberry.’

  Pursed lips tightened in sourness. Not a word said.

  ‘And did you go on visiting after your sister died?’ he went on.

  ‘Certainly not. It was none of my business to interfere.’

  ‘To interfere? Interfere with what, Mrs Polworthy?’

  ‘With anything. With - with those dirty mice of his.’

  ‘Ah, yes. We noted he had a number of mice, I suppose for some research he was still carrying out? Do you know what it was into?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t.’

  ‘You’ve no idea? Your sister never mentioned anything?’

  ‘She may have done.’

  ‘So what was it? Do you remember at all?’

  ‘Something to do with - with that disease. The one that happens to old people.’

  ‘No sign of that with you, Milly love.’

  Mr Polworthy came away from the TV to give a dull chuckle.

  ‘I should hope not.’

  ‘Is that Alzheimer’s disease? Was Professor Unwala working on Alzheimer’s disease?’

  ‘He may have been. I don’t suppose he was getting anywhere with it.’

  ‘Well, he was a brilliant man.’

  A sniff.

  For a moment he allowed his mind to wander. That little curled-up, tranquil body. The brain that had driven it onwards blotted into nothingness in that smashed head. And the research he was doing … Very likely he had still been carrying on with his work on Alzheimer’s. That sort of research took time. Years and years of patient experimenting, especially without a university laboratory at his disposal. Just that scanty apparatus, those numbered cages of white mice. The one that escaped once. Not the best of conditions. Yet there he was, little Professor Unwala, steadily working away. Always reading and reading in those big books of he, hadn’t Mrs Damberry said? And one day he might have made a discovery that would show how that inevitable deterioration could be prevented. And now all of it lost? Very probably, almost certainly. A waste, an utter waste.

  And coming out here more waste, come to that. Waste of my time. All right, they had to be told, the pair of them, that her brother-in-law has been murdered. But now they have been. And precious little interest they’ve shown. Nor have I got anything much out of them. And never likely to, either.

  So, home James. Home to where I ought to be: in the Incident Room at least while I’m still in charge of things, putting the fire into the inquiry that I failed to before. And with something substantial now to do it with. The firmly established fact of Mrs Ahmed’s boy and perhaps a handful of his nasty friends.

  Tersely he said he would trouble them no longer, and made his way out. Neither of them left their chair to see him to the door.

  And yet, outside, the cold coils of the fog wrapping round him once more, he stood and admitted to himself that they probably lived good enough lives. They did no one any harm. Not for them places in the records in the station basement. Where there were stored the names of dozens of youths ‘known to the police’. Among them, with any luck, that of the killer.

  ‘Thank God you’re back,’ Jumbo Hastings said.

  ‘Why? What’s up? What is it?’

  Jumbo grinned.

  ‘What’s up is I’m dying for a pee, and the paperwork’s been piling up.’

  ‘OK, Jumbo. Piss off then, as they say.’

  Jumbo heaved himself to his feet and headed, rapidly as his solid legs would take him, in the direction of the toilets. But, at the door, he called back over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, yes. Forgot. Message for you. Fothergill. He’s coming down from HQ. Doesn’t say why.’

  But he knew why Detective Chief Superintendent Fothergill, whizz-kid head of the Serious Crimes Squad at County Headquarters, known throughout the force as the Gill, was coming from Barminster quickly as his smart BMW would take him. Because little Mr Unwala had turned out to be Nobel Prize winner Professor Unwala. And the eyes of the world, or at least a good handful of TV cameras, would before long be firmly fixed on Barshire County Constabulary.

  He had scarcely had time to order the lists of the district’s ‘bad lads’ to be brought up on the computer screens and to arrange with Jumbo, much relieved, for a daylight search of the verge of Seabray Way when the Muster Room door flew open and Fothergill himself came in, already peeling off camel-coloured British Warm to reveal a dark grey pinstriped suit beneath. A narrow predator’s face, with a little reddish moustache above a tight compressed mouth. A bristling head of hair of the same pale red as the moustache. Light green eyes darting.

  ‘Right, Mr Benholme, word with you. In your office, if you please.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Big stuff. Secret stuff.

  Oh, well, the Gill must be allowed his little ways. Had earned them, actually. Admin skills and brown-nosing get you only so far, and the Gill had got a lot further than that. Plenty of real successes under his belt.

  Not allowing him time even to offer the chair behind his desk, or to take it himself, the Gill snapped out what he wanted.

  ‘First of all, I’m leaving you in charge of the Incident Room. But note, please, I want copied to me every scrap of paper that comes in. I’ll use your office, and I’ll be here all but twenty-four hours a day. Until either the case is resolved or Superintendent Verney comes back from Bramshill. Right?’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Now then, put me in the picture. The whole picture from start to finish. And be brief. I don’t want to be sitting here listening to you at midnight.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He did his best to lay out chronologically everything that had happened. The PC’s Fatal radio message, his own decision that this was not an accident but murder - No trouble in omitting March’s part in that - on to realizing the victim was Nobel Prize-winning Professor Unwala and what he had learnt in his interview with Mrs Ahmed.

  ‘You’re certain you can rely on this woman’s evidence? She’ll stand up in court?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I questioned her at some length, and she gave me no cause to believe she wasn’t thoroughly reliable.’

  ‘Good. Looks as though we might get this dealt with, even before we have to go before the TV cameras. We’re in a high-profile situation here, remember, and I don’t want mistakes made. Right, now I’ll find your list of local bad lads on your computer here?’

  ‘It won’t be up just yet, sir. I’d only just come back from seeing the deceased’s next of kin when you arrived.’

  ‘But you’d had this Mrs Ahmed’s evidence before you went out to these people?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then I suggest if you continue to have a part in this inquiry you do not leave reporting in important information until you take it into your head that it’s convenient. Damn it, man, you’re not a wooden-top filling in forms on house-to-house. You’re a detective. Try to act like one.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’

  Only thing to do, eat humble pie. But he needn’t have made such a performance of it, just to show what a bloody hard-nosed high-flyer he is. A word would have been enough.

  As I hope I use when I have to rebuke someone not entirely incompetent.

  ‘And these next of kin, did you do anything more when you saw them than sit there offering condolences?’

  Tempting to say I didn’t even get to sit. But humour him, humour him.

  ‘Yes, sir, I did. I found out there’s no other relatives, either here or in India. And I ascertained the pair of them had only the vaguest hopes of benefiting under any will.’

  He decided in an instant not to say anything about di
scovering that Professor Unwala had been working on Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t particularly relevant, and somehow he didn’t like the thought of the Gill trampling with his little sharp feet over more than was strictly necessary of the old man’s life.

  ‘All right. Well, see that list of youths gets up on my screen. And as soon as maybe.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  With relief he left.

  But no sooner had he got back to the Incident Room than a message came in from one of the constables still plodding round in the cold and fog on catch-up house-to-house inquiries. Mr Harold Jones, an elderly asthmatic, had been at the hospital all day until this evening. But twenty-four hours earlier he had been sitting at his open window at number four Percival Road trying, despite the fog, to ease his lungs with some fresh air. And over a period of a quarter of an hour or more he had seen a man in ‘a black coat’ standing about at the far end of the road at a time shortly before six p.m. He was certain about the hour because he had hoped his asthma would have subsided before the six o’clock news. But, too concerned about his condition to have paid the lurker much attention, he could provide no more information. All he was sure about was the black coat.

  Could this be one of the gang of yobbos? Left back to keep a lookout? The time was certainly about right. Pity the description was so bad, but there had been the fog and by then it would have been dark. Still, this was another pointer.

  He beckoned to one of the cadets on duty.

  ‘Take this to Detective Chief Superintendent Fother-gill, lad. You’ll find him in my office.’

  The cadet took the copy message.

  ‘And, lad.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Smarten yourself up a bit, and mind your p’s and q’s when you speak to Mr Fothergill. Right?’

  The message brought the Gill himself into the Incident Room almost at a run.

  ‘This is the sort of break I’d hoped for, Mr Benholme. A black coat. Do you see the significance of that?’

  He didn’t. Only thing, say so.

  ‘Not sure that I do, sir.’

  ‘No? Well, think what’s our most prevalent policing problem just now.’

  Bloody riddles. This the way the Gill got his reputation for being bright? Well, no. He is bright.

  ‘You tell me, sir.’

  ‘Britforce, Chief Inspector. Britforce, a major national semi-Fascist organization with its heart in Barshire and its so-called troopers parading about all over the county. I’m surprised you didn’t come up with Britforce the moment you set eyes on this message. Britforce thugs in their trademark black macs.’

  Should he have thought of them as soon as he had read about that black coat? But the description hadn’t in fact put any immediate picture of a black-mackintoshed Britforce trooper on guard outside Professor Unwala’s while some racist thuggery took place. Perhaps it ought to have done. Hadn’t Bob Carter only this morning talked about black-mac stirrers?

  ‘Well, yes, sir, true enough. Britforce thugs are a problem in the town here at times. More, I suppose, for you in Barminster, but they make trouble in King’s Hampton too.’

  ‘Right then, you can forget about the local riff-raff now. I want you to concentrate full out on Britforce. Go yourself to their HQ first thing tomorrow. Question that fellow Marcus Pennings who runs the outfit. Find out where every one of his troopers was at the time of the killing. Every single one. Have a word with Inspector Travis at Special Branch first. And take - who is it? - DI Carter with you. I want this treated as absolute top priority.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir. But with Mr Verney away, we’ve no senior detective to hold the fort here bar Mr Carter.’

  ‘I can’t help that. You should be better organized. You never know when an emergency might occur. Make some other arrangement. If anything really serious comes up I shall be here. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with two cases at once. But I want two senior officers to tackle Pennings. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Chapter Six

  Professor Unwala roughed up fatally by Britforce troopers? Thugs who happened to be passing when by chance - another mouse escaping? - the old man had opened his front door? It wouldn’t, he thought, be the first time Britforce bully boys had beaten up a black in King’s Hampton. So it all certainly seemed to fit in. That u-rine-ated incident a month ago, the black bastard yell, the lurking man in the black mackintosh, if that was what asthmatic Mr Jones had meant by ‘black coat’.

  But then there was Mrs Ahmed’s cast-iron certainty about that yell. That it had come from a boy. A Britforce trooper that young? Well, perhaps it was possible, just. If only just.

  However, Detective Chief Superintendent Fothergill was convinced. And had issued his orders.

  So do what I’m told. Phone Inspector Travis at Special Branch. See what he has to say about youngsters as Britforce troopers. He ought to know whether there were any. After all, Britforce must be almost the only subversive outfit in the area.

  ‘Britforce?’ came the snapped-out answer from County Headquarters. ‘There isn’t much I don’t know about that organization.’

  ‘Just what I want to hear, Inspector. The truth is I detest the whole thought of all that sort of thing, and I’m afraid I’ve blocked it from my mind up to now.’

  ‘Mistake there, I think, Mr Benholme. If things go the way those people want, as they well may, then you could find before long that Britforce is playing a very considerable part in your life.’

  Was there a hint of acceptance in his voice? A police disciplinarian responding to similar sentiments coming at him from, as it were, the other direction?

  Better go a bit carefully.

  ‘Well, what it is: I’m afraid Britforce is going to be playing more of a part in my life tomorrow morning than I altogether welcome. DCS Fothergill’s sending me to interview that man Marcus Pennings about the possible involvement of Britforce troopers in the murder we’ve had here in King’s Hampton.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The buzz round here is the victim’s some sort of Nobel Prize winner. Is that right?’

  News travels fast. Barshire Police Headquarters a hotbed of gossip. Still, it’ll be all over the media soon enough.

  ‘Yes, Inspector, that’s what he is. Was. Nobel Prize for Physiology, some time in the nineteen forties. So you can see we want a quick result.’

  ‘Then what can I tell you, in particular?’

  ‘Well, put me more in the picture about Marcus Pennings for a start.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’d advise you to tread very carefully with him. He doesn’t tolerate opposition. Of any sort. Police, left-wingers, anybody. If he doesn’t like anything you say, he’ll be on to the Chief Constable before your back’s turned. And he’ll take your words out of context. He fights dirty, Marcus Pennings. He’s tough, too. You won’t be able to bully anything out of that one.’

  ‘I see. So I’ll have to be a bit cunning? Soft-soap approach?’

  ‘I doubt if that’ll do you much good. He’ll see through it in less time than it takes to tell. And he’ll cut up all the rougher.’

  ‘A real hard nut then.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to manage best as I can. Still, thanks for the warning. But there’s one other thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘About the uniform Britforce troopers wear. Aren’t I right that in fact the wearing of uniform by civilians is banned? Has been right from the time of the pre-war Fascists?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the strict interpretation of the law. But we can’t enforce it too rigorously these days. It’s convenient, for instance, for security firms to give their personnel a distinctive look.’

  ‘I suppose so. So about the Britforce uniform, or semi-uniform. We’ve a report of an individual in a black coat seen hanging about near the murder scene. What chance would there be of identifying him as Britforce?’

  ‘A black coat? Well, that might be anything. I’ve got a topcoat myself that’s pretty dark. But, yes,
if your witness can say the fellow was wearing a long black mackintosh, then you could make a reasoned guess he’s Britforce. Though on the other hand there’s no law against black macs. Anyone can have one.’

  ‘So we’re going to have to let that one go?’

  ‘I’d say you are. Well, anything else I can tell you?’

  ‘Yes, just one thing. Does Britforce take on boys?’

  ‘Boys? What d’you mean boys?’

  ‘Just that really. Boys young enough to have voices still at least occasionally going treble.’

  ‘Well, can’t say I’ve seen much sign of them taking anyone on young as that. Certainly weren’t any kids that age at that rally of theirs down your way. Commemoration of the famous Battle of King’s Hampton, last foreign force to be thrown back from British shores. Only that was just a couple of dozen shipwreck survivors, what I hear.’

  ‘Yes, seem to remember being told that at school here. Still, we live in the age of hype. Mustn’t forget that.’

  And do I have anything more to ask? No, don’t think so. Heard more than I really want to, especially about Marcus Pennings. A nasty customer.

  Ah, well.

  ‘No, I think that’s all, Inspector. Thanks for your help.’

  So, with Bob Carter sitting beside him, he drew up at a few minutes past nine next morning in front of a small shop in a Barminster backstreet. A pair of crossed black flags with the Britforce clenched-fist emblem on them displayed in the dusty window told him he had found the right place. Also, according to Inspector Travis, the home of Marcus Pennings.

  ‘Right then, Bob. I don’t need to tell you: we’ll have to go bloody carefully here.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Christ, if those sodding neo-Fascists, whatever they are, have done in someone on our patch, black or white, I can’t see why we shouldn’t go for them hell for leather. What they need is to be taught a bloody good lesson.’

  ‘I dare say,’ he answered. ‘But the fact is, if we’ve got it wrong about Britforce thugs being our chummies, Marcus Pennings is the sort of person capable of raising a very nasty stink.’

  ‘But we aren’t wrong, are we? Bloody Fothergill sending senior officers mob-handed. Must mean something.’