‘What now, then?’ Wright asked.
‘Din-din, Shiner. And let’s save a few bob. Let’s go down and nosh bangers and mash with the vulgar constabulary.’
Chapter Sixteen
Rhys was demolishing a mountain of Irish stew at the next table. He was called away to the house-phone and went bounding up the lino-covered stairs. Kenworthy glanced sympathetically at the half-finished meal congealing on his plate.
‘Who’d be a copper? Gives some men ulcers.’
‘Do you think it’s something for us?’
Wright nodded towards the stairs.
‘Sure to be. I dare say Rhys has given instructions at the switch-board that’s he’s to be given the first look at messages now and then. Some buggers you have to work with will try to hog everything.’
It was twenty minutes before Rhys came back down the stairs, clattering with his feet and clearly in a high state of excitement. By now a tubby woman in a green overall coat and mob cap had come and carried away his plate of stew, looking askance at the great blobs of white fat that had formed on the gravy. But Rhys did not look at the table at which he had been sitting.
‘Well, this seems to be it, superintendent. Three persons upstairs, waiting to make statements.’
‘Want me to come?’
‘I should have thought——’
‘Think I’ll be interested?’
Rhys looked at him with bulging eyes.
‘There are three persons upstairs who are asking to make statements which directly incriminate the murderer of alderman Barson.’
‘That’s what I thought you meant.——Well, I’m not going to let them give me indigestion. They’ve waited——how many days?——well, they can wait till I’ve finished my afters.’
Kenworthy dug his spoon into a slab of date-pudding.
‘I’ll wait for you, then,’ Rhys said, hoping to be told to carry on alone.
‘If you would, please.——Aren’t you going to have some more to eat?——Well, have a coffee with us.’
Kenworthy managed to extend the strain on Rhys’s nerves for a full quarter of an hour. Then they went upstairs to the interview room, in which the young man in the drab artificial military uniform was waiting with a couple of other youths.
‘This is Lawrence Yarwood,’ Rhys said. ‘He’s volunteered the information that he heard Stanway making unambiguous threats to kill alderman Barson, and saying specifically that he proposed to use the Luger from the Borough Museum for the purpose.’
Kenworthy looked at the youth with exaggerated distaste.
‘Stand up!’
Yarwood obeyed quickly, but with no suggestion of military bearing.
‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I——in the Saracen’s Head.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sir!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You were hand in glove with Stanway then, if I remember correctly.’
‘I knew him.’
‘You were his side-kick, I thought, his buddy, his number two, his right-hand man.’
‘I got out of it. Could see the way things was going. Who wants to be hand in glove with a bloody murderer?’
‘So what have you got to tell us?’
‘Like this other bloke says——’
‘This other bloke happens to be a detective superintendent.’
‘Like the detective superintendent says. Chick said he was going to do Barson.’
‘I heard him with my own ears saying that he wished he had. Does this amount to the same story?’
Rhys stood watching and listening with increasing discomfort. This was the first he had heard of Kenworthy’s visit to the Saracen’s Head. Kenworthy’s previous acquaintance with Yarwood was one of the most effective pieces of one-upmanship that Wright had ever witnessed.
‘No sir, honest. This was before it happened, see? He said definitely he was going to do it.’
‘Kept it to yourself long enough, didn’t you?’
Yarwood looked desperately over his shoulder at his friends.
‘We was talking it over, see?’
One of the others spoke.
‘Yeah——we reckoned he was bloody daft, see? A bit of fun’s all right, on the bikes and what-not, but we didn’t want nothing to do with no murder.’
Kenworthy seemed to ignore him.
‘Where is this conversation supposed to have taken place?’ he asked Yarwood.
‘Over in Wardle’s.’
‘That’s the name of the ramshackle building by the canal, where they’ve been having their meetings,’ Rhys explained, ‘and where the Luger was found.’
‘Were several of you present when he said this?’
‘Yeah. We was most of us there that night.’
‘Did Putty hear it?’
‘Yeah. She was always hanging around.’
Wright dared to look at Rhys. The Welshman had set his jaw and was determined not to betray that he had not heard of Putty before.
‘And Chick said, unambiguously and specifically——that means, bang to rights——that he was going to the museum to get the Luger to do it with?’
‘Yeah. That’s right. He’d always said he was going after that Luger. Wanted it for the gang, see? Not to use, get me, just as a sort of——well——mascot.’
‘Like the mayor’s mace?’
‘Dunno what you mean.’
‘No. You wouldn’t be versed in the finer points of civic ceremony. You ought to get yourself genned up, Yarwood. You might be mayor yourself, one day, the way these things go.’
He stood back and surveyed the youth, who was staring at him with terrified eyes, his upper lip twitching.
‘It looks very odd to me, Yarwood——’
He left the sentence unfinished, leaving Yarwood a long pause in which to turn over in his mind the oddness of nothing in particular.
‘Well——what do I think is odd about it, Yarwood?’
‘Dunno, sir.’
Kenworthy stormed at him in a voice that must have been audible in distant recesses of the police station.
‘Odd, Yarwood, that you weren’t with him when he did the museum. You were his ghost, his shadow, hung on his coat-tails. If we look in the records, which we will in a minute, I’ll bet we shall find that you went on probation when Chick did. Got done for lifting stuff from Woolworth’s when Chick did. Had Chick’s girls, when he’d done with them. But suddenly you sprouted a pair of ruddy wings and a halo and left him to do the museum on his jack.’
‘Honest, sir, I said to him, bugger that, I said. You do that bloody lark on your tod, I said. These two will tell you——’
‘All right, sit down, Yarwood. I’m glad you’re not my mate. Detective superintendent will take your statement presently. If you’d told us all this three days ago, I’d have said thank you.——Now——Who are these other two beauties?’
‘William Burgess and Arthur Carter.’
‘One at a time.——William Burgess.——Up, laddie!’
Burgess was one of those who affected tight jeans, a dirty denim jacket and the hair-style of the laughing cavalier.
‘Now——what’s your yarn?’
‘Well, sir——on the night Chick done the museum, we was walking along Wakefield Road——’
‘What time of night was this?’
‘Between two and three in the morning.’
Kenworthy laughed like a lunatic, clasped his hands against his stomach and staggered howling about the room.
‘What was that for? Taking your poodles for an airing? Or looking for dog-ends?’
He laughed again. He was red in the face. He looked as if he were about to have a stroke. The man could act. There were genuine tears squeezing out of his eyes.
He brought out his handkerchief and wiped them.
‘Well?’
‘No, sir, we wasn’t doing anything we shouldn’t.’
‘It’s your normal practice to go taking the air between two and three on a
winter’s night, is it?’
‘No, sir. We was with Chick, see, and he said he was going to do the museum, and we tried to talk him out of it——’
‘You’d actually teamed up with him for the job?’
‘Well, sir, we had at first, I got to admit it. But that was early on, when we was talking in the Saracen’s. It didn’t seem all that clever, when it got nearer the time, not to me and Arthur, it didn’t. So, I could see Arthur’s thinking what I am, and, like I said, we started on Chick, working on him to turn it in.’
‘And then you left him to it?’
Burgess’s brow lightened a little at this suggestion that at last he was possibly being believed.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And walked up and down in Wakefield Road until he’d done?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ready to warn him if any fuzz turned up?’
‘No, sir. We’d made up our minds we wasn’t going to have anything to do with it.’
‘You mean, if a policeman had come along that road while your friend was breaking into the museum, you’d have scarpered and left him to it? I wonder what Chick would have said about that?’
‘We’d talked that over,’ Burgess said. ‘If a copper had of come, we was going to run for it, only make a bit of a row about it. It seemed only fair.’
‘In other words, you were accomplices. Accomplices in a burglary, and, since you knew for what purpose the weapon was wanted, accessories before the fact of murder.’
‘That’s going a bit far,’ Burgess said.
‘It’s not going far at all. You two would be a bit young to remember the Craig and Bentley case, but it’s since the war. Lord Chief Justice Goddard. They topped a laddie of your age for very little more than you’ve done. Topped him, Burgess.’
Burgess looked as if he expected to be topped within the next few minutes.
‘So I wouldn’t want you to incriminate yourself, Billy. And if you’ve any second thoughts——’
‘I can’t go back now on what I’ve said, can I?’
‘You haven’t made a written statement yet, and if you do so, having been warned of the possible consequences of it, you do so of your own free will.’
And then, as he saw that Burgess was about to wilt, he added, ‘though of course, it’s bound to come out sooner or later, so it’s up to you to get yourself in the clear if you can.’
‘I’ll make a statement.’
‘What about you, Carter?’
The other youth agreed by momentarily closing his eyes.
‘Good!——Well now, Billy——tell us what you saw.’
‘We saw Chick Stanway, working on the window.’
‘What was his technique? How did he go about it?’
‘Sir, he stuck a piece of sticking plaster on the glass, then he cut out the best part of a circle with a glass-cutter, then he put a second piece of plaster on, then he lifted the circle out, then he scored the rest of the glass, then he pulled it out, then he got in through the window.’
Kenworthy showed an increase of interest.
‘And when he was easing the glass out, Burgess——did he pull it towards himself, or lever it inwards?’
Burgess thought for a moment.
‘Pulled it towards himself,’he said.
‘And then what did he do with it?’
‘Put it down gently on the gravel path.’
‘You saw a hell of a lot, didn’t you, Burgess? You must have spent more time standing at the museum gates than you did walking up and down in the Wakefield Road.’
‘We was interested, sir. Course we was. He was our mate, wasn’t he? We wanted to see how he done it, didn’t we?’
‘And it must have been a bloody bright night.’
‘There was a good moon, sir——and not much cloud about.’
‘Carter!’
Kenworthy wheeled on the youth who was still sitting.
‘Go and stand outside the door. And you go with him, Yar-wood.——Now, Billy——how big was the moon?’
‘About three quarters full, sir.’
‘What shape was it?’
‘A bit flat on the top right-hand edge.’
‘And where was it?’
Burgess answered as if he had not really believed his ears.
‘In the bloody sky, sir.’
‘Sorry!’ Kenworthy said. ‘I thought it might have been shining out of Yarwood’s bum.——Where was it in the sky? High up, low down, overhead?’
‘Just over the top of the trees, sir.’
‘All the bloody trees in Fellaby?’
‘Them in the church-yard. Where the rookery is.’
‘Well done, Billy. A fine bit of nature-craft. Remind me to tell your scoutmaster I’ve passed you for your badge.’
He brought Carter back, asked him the same questions and received effectively the same answers.
‘Fair enough, me-laddoes. Detective superintendent Rhys will take all your statements in a few minutes. Just wait here.’
Kenworthy took Rhys into the corridor.
‘Congratulations!’ Rhys said. ‘I enjoyed that. I’m glad to know that we’re going to get statements in spite of your solicitude.’
‘Yes——and damned useful statements they’re going to be.——You do see the import of these interviews, don’t you?’
‘I should hope so.’
‘It isn’t what you thought when you first came to tell me that the lads were here.’
‘I’m not a fool,’ Rhys said.
‘Well, you know how to go about it now, don’t you, Rhys? See them separately, harry them on every sentence. Check and double-check every shade of an idea. Be nice with them one minute and bloody nasty the next, so they don’t know where they stand.’
‘Thank you, Kenworthy. That will be a great help to me. I am for ever falling down on taking statements. In twenty-five years of experience, I have never seemed to get them right. And what about Stanway? Do you think we ought to have him in again?’
‘Stanway?——Oh, yes, Stanway.——Yes, I think you might bring him in for a spot more questioning. May I leave that to you, Rhys? Wright and I are going to be busy this afternoon.’
‘And if it reaches a certain point, shall I charge him, Kenworthy?’
There was an optimistic timbre in Rhys’s voice. It was well known in provincial forces that Kenworthy often fed in information and then stepped modestly aside to let the local officers make the final arrest and take the superficial credit. He said he did it to save himself paper work and appearances in court.
‘Charge him? Oh, yes, if you’re satisfied that the statements are enough to hold him on, charge him with breaking and entering.
And illegal possession of a fire-arm, too, if you want to pile it on. But don’t charge him with murder on the present evidence. On what you’ve got up to now, you can only allege intent. And superintendent—’
‘Yes, superintendent?’
‘Don’t give him bail,’ Kenworthy said, and swept Wright away before Rhys could make any retort.
‘Right, Shiner——quick as you can, and as unobtrusively as you can, get hold of those bits of broken window, and let’s get over to the museum.’
Gill was still on leave, and his senior assistant was an obliging but fussy woman who, they thought, would never leave them to get on with their work. Wright pulled away the boarding for a second time, whilst Kenworthy brought out the triangles and irregular polygons of glass and began to arrange them on a table.
‘Got it all, sir?’
‘About four fifths of it. Some of the splinters won’t tell us much. But we’ve got most of the perimeter, and with that and the circle to orientate us, we shouldn’t go far wrong.——Damn it, I never knew jig-saws were so difficult. The trouble is, we don’t know which side the picture’s on.’
Wright rested the sheet of plywood against the wall and came over to help.
‘Shouldn’t this piece be the other way up, sir?’
&nbs
p; ‘Should it?——Well——You have a go.’
Eventually Wright completed the composition. Kenworthy brought a tape-measure from his waistcoat pocket and began to measure the distance between the cracks, and to chart the distances on a piece of paper.
‘Now, Shiner——show me where you spotted the cracks in the putty.’
‘They’re not all very well marked, sir. And I’m afraid I spoiled a bit of it, last time I was here.’
‘We’ll try, anyway——’
Kenworthy brought his tape and diagram to the window.
‘Here’s one——and here’s another——’
He took measurements and applied the edge of his paper to the window-frame. Then they went back to the reconstructed pane.
‘No doubt about it. Look——you can see from these little blobs of adhesive which side he worked from. I’m afraid this may be going to put Gill’s laundry bill up again. You were quite right, Shiner——this was done from the inside. And those boys were lying.’
Kenworthy replaced the glass in the envelope. Wright nailed back the board.
‘This complicates everything, Shiner. I can’t see any alternative to pulling a really dirty one on Rhys this time. I don’t mind baiting him a bit——that keeps him on his mettle. But this time I’m going to have to go too far. Once he knows about this, he’s going to have to release Chick. And whatever else happens, I don’t want Chick released this side of midnight. On the other hand, once the lad’s been charged, someone’s got to eat humble pie, and that ought to be my job. Amen. So let it be. Our job is to find Barson’s murderer, and if we have to rub up Rhys the wrong way into the bargain, that’s just too bad. I take full responsibility for suppressing what we know about this window. And we must both keep out of everybody’s sight for the rest of the day.’
He looked at his watch.
‘Blast! It’s still only mid-afternoon. We’ve a hell of a lot of time to kill. Shiner——I don’t want to give you an inferiority complex——but would it offend you if I say that I think I ought to handle tonight’s combination of Lesueur and the Chief Constable myself?’
Death of an Alderman Page 15