Hardcastle's Frustration

by Graham Ison

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Graham Ison from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Glossary

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Recent Titles by Graham Ison from Severn House

  The Hardcastle Series

  HARDCASTLE’S SPY

  HARDCASTLE’S ARMISTICE

  HARDCASTLE’S CONSPIRACY

  HARDCASTLE’S AIRMEN

  HARDCASTLE’S ACTRESS

  HARDCASTLE’S BURGLAR

  HARDCASTLE’S MANDARIN

  HARDCASTLE’S SOLDIERS

  HARDCASTLE’S OBSESSION

  HARDCASTLE’S FRUSTRATION

  Contemporary Police Procedurals

  ALL QUIET ON ARRIVAL

  BREACH OF PRIVILEGE

  DIVISION

  DRUMFIRE

  JACK IN THE BOX

  KICKING THE AIR

  LIGHT FANTASTIC

  LOST OR FOUND

  WHIPLASH

  WHISPERING GRASS

  WORKING GIRL

  HARDCASTLE’S FRUSTRATION

  Graham Ison

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2012 by Graham Ison.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Ison, Graham.

  Hardcastle’s frustration.

  1. Hardcastle, Ernest (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Police–England–London–Fiction. 3. Great Britain–

  History–George V, 1910-1936–Fiction. 4. Detective and

  mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-281-8 (Epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8171-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-431-8 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  GLOSSARY

  A FROM A BULL’S FOOT, to know: to know nothing.

  ACT UP: temporarily to assume the role of a higher rank while the substantive holder is on leave or sick.

  ALBERT: a watch chain of the type worn by Albert, Prince Consort (1819–61).

  ALL MY EYE AND BETTY MARTIN: nonsense.

  ANDREW: Slang term for the Royal Navy.

  APM: assistant provost marshal (a lieutenant colonel of the military police).

  BAILEY, the: Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London.

  BEF: British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders.

  BLIGHTY: the United Kingdom.

  BLIGHTY ONE: a wound suffered in battle that necessitated repatriation to the United Kingdom.

  BUCK HOUSE: Buckingham Palace.

  COUGH to: to confess.

  DABS: fingerprints.

  DARTMOOR: a remote prison on Dartmoor in Devon.

  DDI: Divisional Detective Inspector.

  DIP a: a pickpocket.

  DOGBERRY: a watchman (ex Shakespeare).

  DRUM: a dwelling house, or room therein. Any place of abode.

  FEEL THE COLLAR, to: to make an arrest.

  FOURPENNY CANNON, a: a steak and kidney pie.

  FRONT, The: theatre of WW1 operations in France and Flanders.

  GLIM: a look (a foreshortening of ‘glimpse’).

  GUV or GUV’NOR: informal alternative to ‘sir’.

  JIG-A-JIG: sexual intercourse.

  KC: King’s Counsel: a senior barrister.

  KATE CARNEY: army (rhyming slang: from Kate Carney, a music hall comedienne of the late 19th early 20th century).

  KNOCKING SHOP: a brothel.

  LONG BOW, to draw the: to exaggerate or to tell unbelievable stories.

  MI5: internal counter-espionage organization.

  MONS, to make a: to make a mess of things, as in the disastrous Battle of Mons in 1914.

  NICK: a police station or prison or to arrest or to steal.

  NICKED: arrested or stolen.

  NOT PYGMALION LIKELY: a euphemism for ‘not bloody likely’, from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion.

  OLD BAILEY: Central Criminal Court, in Old Bailey, London.

  ON THE GAME: leading a life of prostitution.

  POLICE GAZETTE: official nationwide publication listing wanted persons, etc.

  PROVOST, the: military police.

  QUID: £1 sterling.

  RAGTIME GIRL: a sweetheart; a girl with whom one has a joyous time; a harlot.

  RECEIVER, The: senior Scotland Yard official responsible for the finances of the Metropolitan Police.

  ROZZER: a policeman.

  SAM BROWNE: a military officer’s belt with shoulder strap.

  SKIP or SKIPPER: an informal police alternative to station-sergeant, clerk-sergeant and sergeant.

  SLÀINTE: (slän’cha) Gaelic salutation for ‘Good health’.

  SLING ONE’S HOOK, to: to run away, hastily or secretly.

  STAGE-DOOR JOHNNY: young man frequenting theatres in an attempt to make the acquaintance of actresses.

  SUB: Police shorthand for sub-divisional inspector, the officer in charge of a subdivision.

  TOPPED: murdered or hanged.

  TOPPING: a murder or hanging.

  WAR HOUSE: army officers’ slang for the War Office.

  WAR OFFICE: Department of State overseeing the army. (Now a part of the Ministry of Defence.)

  WIPERS: Army slang for Ypres in Belgium, scene of several fierce Great War battles.

  ONE

  The detectives’ office in Cannon Row police station, in a turning off Whitehall in London, was thick with tobacco smoke on that Monday morning at the beginning of March 1918. The police station and New Scotland Yard opposite had been erected 28 years previously to the plans of Norman Shaw and constructed, fittingly, from Dartmoor granite hewn by convicts from the nearby prison.

  All the windows in the office were firmly closed and the only heating came from a solitary and inadequate smoky fire. However, the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District was obliged to be parsimonious in his capacity as controller of the Force’s finances, and spent no more on the comfort of junior police officers than met the minimum requirements. The thinking of the hierarchy was that such officers should be ou
t on the street, not languishing in their offices.

  In this stark and essentially functional room, four or five detectives were seated around a long wooden table, each working on reports, applications for warrants and all the other paperwork that was a necessary part of a CID officer’s lot. There was, however, only one typewriter in the office, and fewer chairs than there were detectives, a state of affairs that was regarded by the senior officers as an incentive for their juniors to arrive early.

  Close to the door of the office, Detective Sergeant (First Class) Charles Marriott, being the senior officer in the room, was privileged to have his own desk. This morning he was drafting a complicated report that would eventually find its way to the office of the Solicitor to the Metropolitan Police and thence to the Director of Public Prosecutions. But it was not proving easy, and several times, he had begun it again. In common with other detectives, Marriott had often thought that it was easier to solve a crime than to commit the details to paper afterwards.

  ‘Excuse me, Sergeant.’ The young uniformed constable on station duty hovered in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, what is it now?’ asked Marriott, throwing down his pen in exasperation and heaving a sigh. ‘And don’t tell me you’re applying to become a detective. Take it from me, it’s not worth the trouble.’

  ‘No, Sergeant, it’s this message that’s just come in from Thames Division.’ The PC crossed to Marriott’s desk and handed over a form.

  Marriott quickly scanned the brief missive. ‘All right, leave it with me,’ he said, standing up and dismissing the constable with a wave of his hand. He buttoned his waistcoat and donned his jacket. Crossing the narrow corridor, he tapped on the divisional detective inspector’s door and entered.

  ‘What is it, Marriott?’ DDI Ernest Hardcastle, head of the CID for the A or Whitehall Division, looked up with an expression of annoyance at having been interrupted. He too was engaged in writing a difficult report about ex-Inspector John Syme that would eventually find its way to the Commissioner. Since 1910, Syme had held a continuing, and often violent, grudge against the Metropolitan Police for his reduction in rank and subsequent dismissal for a variety of disciplinary offences. At nine o’clock last Saturday evening, he had been arrested, yet again, outside Buckingham Palace with a brick in his hand. Syme, who would throw a brick through any government window he could find, including 10 Downing Street, had been charged with intent to commit malicious damage and would appear later that morning at Bow Street police court. It was unfortunate for Hardcastle that most of Syme’s protests were conducted on A Division, and that it fell to him to be the one writing the reports.

  ‘A Thames Division crew from Waterloo Pier has reported dredging up a male body, sir.’

  ‘Waterloo Pier’s on E Division, Bow Street’s patch. What the hell’s that got to do with us?’ demanded Hardcastle, placing his pipe in the ashtray.

  ‘It was found floating near one of the uprights of Westminster Bridge on our side of the river, sir.’

  ‘Well, if he committed suicide it’s not a crime, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle. ‘You should know that you can’t prosecute a dead man. Only attempted suicide’s a crime,’ he added archly. ‘A successful suicide’s not a matter for the CID.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a suicide, sir, unless his name’s Harry Houdini,’ said Marriott, again referring to the message form and permitting himself a brief grin. ‘The body was tied up in a sack.’

  ‘You could’ve said that to start with, Marriott,’ growled Hardcastle irritably. ‘We’d better go and take a look, I suppose.’ Relieved that he had an excuse for not completing his report about Syme, he stood up, put on his Chesterfield overcoat and seized his bowler hat and umbrella. ‘Starting the week with a dead body that’ll probably turn out to be a murder is something I could well do without.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’ Marriott knew that such an investigation was likely to put the DDI in a bad mood for the next few days, and possibly longer if the enquiry dragged on.

  Before descending the stairs Hardcastle paused to put his head around the office door of his deputy, Detective Inspector Edgar Rhodes.

  ‘If anyone wants me, Mr Rhodes, I’m going to have a look at a body at Waterloo Pier that the river police have obligingly found for me floating by Westminster Bridge.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Rhodes.

  ‘I really don’t know why they withdrew the CID from Thames Division last year, Mr Rhodes,’ muttered Hardcastle, ‘and that’s a fact. I sometimes wonder what they’re thinking about over there.’ He cocked a thumb in the general direction of Scotland Yard. ‘And now I’m stuck with a suspicious death.’ He was still complaining when he and Marriott left the police station.

  There was a slight breeze on Victoria Embankment as Hardcastle and Marriott turned out of Scotland Yard’s east gate. A dense fog clung to the river and drifted on to the pavements where it was knee-high. But there was a hint of rain in the air and that and the breeze were slowly dispelling the mist. And the temperature had yet to reach forty degrees Fahrenheit.

  ‘Well, I’m not walking all the way to Waterloo Pier in this weather,’ complained Hardcastle, and promptly hailed a taxi. ‘Waterloo Pier nick, cabbie, and be quick about it.’

  It was Monday the fourth of March 1918. The Great War had now been in progress for three years and seven months. In Flanders the British and French armies were bogged down in opposing trenches that stretched for over three hundred miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Between the allied forces and the Imperial German Army there existed a killing ground called no-man’s-land where countless soldiers of the warring factions had lost their lives in this interminable war. Some remained buried there, to be recovered if ever the conflict came to an end. Some would be recovered years later, and some would never be found.

  But now that the American Expeditionary Force, under the command of General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing, had entered the war, things were, at last, beginning to look hopeful for a swift and decisive victory.

  ‘I’m DDI Hardcastle of A,’ announced Hardcastle as he and Marriott descended the steps from the Embankment and entered the front office of London’s only floating police station.

  ‘All correct, sir.’ The station officer, a sergeant, had a moustache and spoke with a Scots accent. He was a short man and, Hardcastle surmised, barely met the minimum height requirement. But he was well built and looked as though he might have been a useful wrestler. That he was a good swimmer went with the job.

  ‘Matter of opinion,’ muttered Hardcastle, who was always irritated by the formal report junior officers were obliged by the regulations to make, whether all was correct or not. ‘I understand you’ve found a body for me.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘He was spotted drifting downriver near Westminster Bridge. The crew was lucky to come across him in this weather.’ As if to emphasize the sergeant’s comment, a foghorn sounded loudly close by; and the police station rocked in the swell of the passing vessel.

  ‘You might’ve done me a favour and let him drift on to E Division’s manor,’ muttered Hardcastle.

  The sergeant grinned and lifted the flap in the counter. ‘If you’d care to come through, sir, we’ve got him laid out in the side office.’ He nodded to Marriott. ‘How are you keeping, Charlie?’

  ‘Fair to middling, Jock.’ It was not the first time that Marriott and the river policeman had met to discuss a dead body. It was one of the penalties of Cannon Row police station being responsible for that half of the river closest to it.

  Hardcastle spent a few moments surveying the corpse that the river police had placed on a bare wooden table. The victim, clothed in a suit with a celluloid collar and a tie, appeared at first sight to have been affected only by immersion in the dirty water of the Thames. Neatly folded at one end of the table was the sack in which the victim had been found.

  ‘Looks like some sort of clerk to me, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle as he studied the apparel in which the
body was attired. He turned to the river policeman. ‘Any personal belongings on him, Skipper?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. These were found in his pockets.’ The sergeant handed over a few pieces of sodden paper and a wallet. He pointed to a couple of banknotes and some small change. ‘The money was still there, too, sir,’ he added, implying that robbery did not appear to be the motive for the man’s death.

  ‘Ah, I was right, Marriott.’ Hardcastle spread the papers out on the table. ‘According to this pay packet, his name appears to be Ronald Parker and he works at the Kingston upon Thames Gas Company.’ He put the pay packet back on the table, took a letter from its envelope and spread it out. ‘It’s a bit smudged by the water, but I can just make out what it says. It’s from a woman called Daisy Benson with an address in Gordon Road, Kingston. She wants to know when he’s coming to see her again and suggests that next Saturday afternoon would be a good time. It looks like she might’ve been his fancy piece on the side.’

  ‘Might be his mother-in-law, sir,’ suggested Marriott, half in jest.

  Hardcastle scoffed. ‘Has your mother-in-law ever written to you, Marriott, expressing a desire to see you again?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No, I thought not. Nor has mine.’ Hardcastle turned back to the body. ‘Well, so far so good. I’ll be interested to see what Dr Spilsbury makes of it.’

  ‘D’you want me to send for him, sir?’

  Hardcastle pondered Marriott’s question. ‘I doubt he’ll see much point in coming down here,’ he said. ‘After all, our Thames Division colleagues have already unwrapped the body, so to speak, and I don’t suppose much will be lost if we get it straight up to St Mary’s. Arrange it, Marriott, there’s a good chap.’

  Dr Bernard Spilsbury, the pre-eminent forensic pathologist of his generation, always conducted his post-mortem examinations at St Mary’s Hospital at Paddington. Renowned for his painstaking investigation into the cause of death, his appearance in the witness box was guaranteed to send a frisson of concern down the spines of defending counsel. Many were the cases in which Spilsbury’s detailed analysis had resulted in a conviction for murder that, without his testimony, might well have been dismissed as accidental death. And on other occasions his interpretation of the victim’s fatal injuries had been instrumental in negating a killer’s plea of self-defence.