The Bad Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Okay, if you say so, skip.’

  And off she went. Keen as mustard.

  He turned to Jinkie. Still looking pretty uncomfortable. Even more than he ought to be.

  Surely he can’t have left some of the stuff lying about somewhere?

  ‘Right, now, old son. You and I have got to have a little talk, eh?’

  ‘Well, yes, Mr Stallworthy, but …

  ‘But nothing, mate. Listen, we’ve played this game before, haven’t we? All right, let’s be clear about it. Today’s going to be your lucky day. What you going to put up as an alibi, eh? Playing cards with some wellchosen friends? Out with the old woman somewhere?’

  Jinkie looked suddenly deeply embarrassed.

  ‘Well, no, Mr Stallworthy. I never got nothing like that fixed up. It’ll have to be the telly. In all night, watching the box. I could tell you all about the programmes.’

  ‘You got the old woman to do her stuff then? Give you the full details?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. That’ll be all right, Mr Stallworthy. Promise you that. But—’

  ‘Right. Well, it’s about as iffy as April Fool for the two o’clock at Uttoxeter today, but it’ll have to do. My report: I have thoroughly checked this alibi and the suspect was able to give a full account of that night’s programmes. And you make sure the wife gives ‘em you, in case anybody else comes to check up. So, okay, now there’s the matter of four or five thousand quid taken from a desk drawer.’

  ‘Four or five thousand! He was having you on, Councillor Symes, if he told you that. Two thousand in twenties, and not a penny more. All counted and correct.’

  So old Symes was telling the truth about the cash. Even if he was lying his socks off about the necklace.

  ‘All right, then. Better be a thousand for me, thousand for you.’

  ‘A whole thou? Mr Stallworthy, I couldn’t make a decent thing out of it any way if you take that much. You know how little I’ll get for that necklace, even if it does turn out real diamonds. And those Staffordshire figures, I won’t be able to get rid of them till the heat’s well off. It may be months, years. I ain’t no Harry Hook, you know, got the muscle to make a fence take what he asks for, or find half a dozen of the lads duffing him up.’

  A thousand, he thought. Well, not too bad, with what I’ve got nicely buried in my garden, Jinkie fashion. Add ‘em together and I’ll not be far off putting down the deposit on the Devon bungalow.

  April Cottage. Getting the last bit for the first payment on April the first. Could be a good sign that. Silly bloody name though, April Cottage. But quite a decent little place, brand new after all. April Cottage, one of twelve. April Cottage, May Cottage, June … Up to October, then Autumn instead of November and Christmas instead of December. Hardly hope to sell a bungalow called November Cottage. And the beginning ones, First Cottage, Spring Cottage - spring in February, what a con - March Cottage, and then our home sweet home. If that builder ain’t sold it by now. Not much, but best we can hope for, Lily and me. And a good big garden, that’ll be something.

  ‘Not your day, Jinkie,’ he said implacably. ‘Two-way split for the cash it’s got to be. Remember, they’re not going to be notes I can flash about tomorrow. And you’ll get quite a sum for those Staffordshire shepherds and shepherdesses. I know. My missus wanted one for her birthday couple of years ago. Way out of my range. You let the four of ‘em stay nice and buried in your stinking bit of a backyard six months or so, and you’ll—’

  ‘Mr Stallworthy, that’s not the trouble. You see—’

  ‘Don’t ponce me about, mate. Half those notes I’ve got to have, and there’s no two ways about it.’

  ‘But them, they’re all old ones, Mr Stallworthy, and mixed. No running numbers. I checked. You could pay for anything with them any time. Make it five hundred for you and the rest for me. Please.’

  ‘Sorry, me old mate. A straight thou. Or I shan’t believe that tinpot alibi of yours. Watching telly all night. Your old woman swearing you were here.’

  Then he realized. The door behind him had just been thrust open. Jane Lane was there. Dust-covered head to foot, and with, cradled in her arms, four Staffordshire figures. Shepherds and shepherdesses.

  Chapter Three

  So Jinkie Morrison got arrested.

  For a minute, as Jane Lane had stood grinning there, the Staffordshire figures clasped to her dustsmeared bosom, Jack had contemplated cutting her in on the deal.

  ‘Well, Jinkie,’ he had said, by way of fishing for her response, ‘I guessed you’d been a naughty lad, but I didn’t think you’d have been stupid with it.’

  ‘But, Mr Stallworthy, it was bloody cold last night. I was frozen stiff when I got home. Frozen. I couldn’t of gone out digging there in the back. Never thought one of your lot’d be round first thing. You can’t blame me.’

  ‘You’ve blamed yourself, me lad. Looks like you’ll have to do a stretch for this lot. Two thousand quid in loose notes somewhere about too. You’re a right berk, you know.’

  He had flicked a quick glance at Jane Lane as he had mentioned the cash. But not a gleam of interest showed on her smoothly pink face.

  ‘Of course,’ he had gone on, risking taking things a little further, ‘there’d be some officers who’d have a bit of that cash off of you. Sort who take a few quid here and there. Not what you’d call corrupt, you know. Just blokes who like to do things.’

  Another glance across out of the corner of his eye. And still not a flicker of response. Unless there was a faint hardening of those pretty lips.

  So he gave up.

  ‘But don’t you start thinking you’ve landed up with any of that sort, me lad. Not here, not now. You’re for it, and no mistake.’

  He turned to clever-clever, straight-out-of-nurseryschool Jane Lane. Daft name, daft girl.

  ‘Right, darling,’ he said. ‘You found the stuff, you make the collar. And don’t forget to caution the bugger, he’s fly enough to take advantage.’

  She darted him a scornful glance.

  ‘Mr Morrison, I am arresting you on suspicion of burglary, and I caution you: you do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say may be given in evidence.’

  ‘There you are, Jinkie,’ he said, to pay the bitch back for that don’t-teach-me look. ‘Bet you’ve never had it done so much by the book before. Keep your mouth shut, you’re in trouble. What you’ve heard from me more than once, ain’t it? And hundred per cent good in law, too.’

  But then he had to watch, inwardly seething, while Jane Lane, besides noting down in her pocket-book the Staffordshire figures she had recovered from the dusty attic and the necklace and other items Jinkie had reluctantly produced, meticulously counted the two thousand pounds in notes, licked forefinger flipping up the twenties one by one.

  But, as he had planned when he let her make the arrest, in the end she paid for her lucky find. He left her at last in the nick ploughing through all the followup paperwork on her own.

  She’d learn one day not to be too cocky. Perhaps.

  He thought then suddenly, as he slipped away, of his own early years. Not in the CID, but as a probationer constable, when he’d believed he was going to devote all his energies simply to catching criminals. In the days - still bright in his mind - when he’d caught out, as a boy of ten at school, his thieving classmate, Herbie Cuddy. Proud as Punch he’d been when he’d worked out, by keeping tabs on boys - and girls come to that - asking in class ‘to be excused’, who it had been who was dipping into the pockets of the coats hanging outside. And, after his process of elimination had produced the only possible perpetrator, he had got together a gang to beat up Herbie in the playground. Little had he known then that Herbie was one of the notorious Hook family, pirates in the olden days, so it was said, and Abbotsport criminals ever since, generation after generation.

  His start as a detective. And, by Christ, when he’d first joined the force he’d carried on in the same boywonder letter-of-the-law way. Behaved,
in fact, just like Jane Lane. Or even more prissy.

  There’d been the time when, back in the canteen out at the old Mussel Street nick, demolished now, the sergeant he’d been on patrol with had leant across the table and slid a pound note into the top pocket of his regulation heavy serge, high-buttoned jacket.

  ‘What this for, Sarge?’ he had actually asked.

  ‘For you, laddie. No questions, eh? No pack drill.’

  ‘But what’s it for, Sarge? Where did it come from?’

  ‘Oh, God, laddie. Didn’t you learn anything at Mansfield? Not even how to keep your eyes open? Looked into three pubs this evening, didn’t we? Did you think the gaffers in them were happy to see us because they liked coppers?’

  Payment for turning a blind eye to minor infringements of licensing hours, for coming quickly to the rescue if customers cut up rough. At least he had had the sense to shut up when eventually the penny had dropped.

  But on his way back to his bachelor bed at the station-house that evening he’d thrust the pound note - drinking money for a week or more in those days - into the first dustbin he’d come across.

  Then, next morning, what had he done? Actually left the station-house ten minutes early in the chancy hope that the note would still be there in the bin, for all he knew - routines of his beat well learnt - that the binmen would have been round at first light that day.

  But really, he thought as he watched Jane Lane march Jinkie off to his cell, that incident in the old Mussel Street nick had been the beginning of it all. Not that he’d ever done much in those early days. Not until he absolutely needed to. Not till he was married to Lily, and mad about her. Lot of water under the bridge since then.

  So no question now of Jane Lane coming with him to Video Magic. She still had plenty of paperwork to do before she had finished booking in Jinkie.

  No, it’s off on my own to the docks and that nasty shop. Where that unsavoury object behind the counter is going to have to do what clever-boots WPC Lane by chance prevented Jinkie Morrison doing. Make a fat contribution to the nest-egg.

  Nothing else for it. Allow the shitbag to escape the cell he - much more than Jinkie Morrison - deserved, and let him cough up some of his nasty earnings instead. Not that whatever sum he’s likely to shell out will provide a tenth of what I really need. For what Lily, above all, wants.

  With a bitter taste in his mouth, he set off for the docks area.

  Video Magic, sharply illuminated in the bright spring sunshine, looked just as grimy as when, passing by on Friday, he had gone in to see if, however unlikely it was, there might be a copy of The Lovely World of Lilies on its shelves. The man leaning on its bubbled plastic counter, the thin white stripes of his drooping brown suit almost lost in its general greasiness, seemed every bit as repulsive as he had been before. The cigarette dangling from his mouth might have been the identical fag he had hanging there earlier.

  But now there were no blank-label unboxed videos on the counter beside him with those tell-tale letters on them, S/M, Les, Gk, Ped.

  Jack got straight down to business. No messing about. Out with the warrant card, flick it open in the fellow’s face.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Stallworthy, Abbotsport CID.’

  And, at once, a look of wariness in the eyes in that narrow face.

  ‘What you want? Ain’t nothing for you here.’

  ‘You the owner?’

  ‘Suppose I am?’

  ‘I asked: you own this place?’

  ‘What if I do?’

  ‘You got a name, I suppose?’

  ‘What you want to know for?’

  ‘I asked you your name.’

  A moment’s battle of wills. But a moment’s only.

  ‘Teggs, if you must know. Mr Teggs.’

  ‘I suppose you put something in front of Teggs. What is it? Fauntleroy? Marlene?’

  ‘Norman.’

  A two-syllabled grunt.

  ‘Right, Norman.’

  Without more questions, Jack went round the side of the narrow counter to the doorway to the back premises and brushed apart its curtain of multi-coloured, tatty plastic ribbons.

  ‘Hey, you can’t go in there.’

  ‘Just watch me.’

  He stepped through. A small room, in almost complete darkness by contrast with the sun-splattered shop itself, the only light coming from a dust-thick window high up on the far wall. In a moment he made out a rickety table and on it an electric kettle, a half-empty milk bottle, and a battered radio. Round the rest of the walls racks were stacked with boxed videos.

  He peered at the nearest rack, conscious of Norman Teggs at the doorway behind him, thin face poking half through the plastic ribbons of the curtain. Moving closer, he was able to make out, on the dustrimed spines of the boxes, popular film titles.

  ‘All bought regular from the wholesalers. Show you the receipts.’

  He ignored that.

  Further round, Bruce Lee kung-fu movies. Then horror films. And a section of James Bonds. Some science fiction.

  But then, down on a bottom shelf, he spotted, on a half-hidden label, two semi-naked intertwined bodies. He stooped, pulled the box out. Cousins in Love. Never heard of it, but a regular film by the look of it. Bit naughty, but hardly what he’d come to find.

  He moved on.

  ‘That’s just kiddies’ stuff there,’ came the whiny voice from between the plastic ribbons.

  ‘Oh, yes? And what else’ve you got with kiddies in ‘em?’ He managed his swing round to a nicety. Just in time to catch on the narrow, cigarette-dangling face the look not of wariness now but of plain dismay.

  ‘What you mean? You saying I got porn stuff?

  Got him.

  ‘You had Friday, when I was in before.’

  But the fellow had recovered. A bit.

  ‘So that was you? Pretending to ask for some poxy gardening video. Thought you was familiar.’

  Poxy? Take the bugger down a peg.

  ‘All right, that was me. And what did I see on the counter out there, just before you stashed them away underneath? Not bloody Walt Disney’s Fantasia they weren’t.’

  ‘Listen, mister, they were just a few tapes I was keeping for a friend. Nothing wrong with a grown man watching stuff like that, is there? Not if it takes his fancy. That ain’t illegal.’

  Without answering, he went over to a narrow wooden cupboard in the wall opposite the table, which in the dim light he had not seen at first.

  ‘Right, what’s in here, then?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. Just some stuff. Old stuff. Things we got no use for.’

  But the door had a Yale lock, and, close up now, he could see round it smears on the dusty surface.

  ‘Key.’

  ‘Ain’t got one.’

  ‘Come off it.’

  Norman Teggs stepped fully through the dangling curtain.

  ‘Listen, mate,’ he said, ‘I got friends. How about you call all this off?’

  ‘Friends? You? You surprise me. Now, give us that key. And quick about it.’

  ‘Just you watch out, I’m warning you.’

  ‘You and who else?’

  ‘You’ll find out. You’ll find out all right, if you don’t just buzz off.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll buzz off all right. Just as soon as I’ve had my look-see in here. Now, that key.’

  ‘Dunno where it is. Ain’t put anything in there for years. It’s just an old storage place. Why d’you want to look in there?’

  ‘Because I do, mate. So, the key.’

  ‘I told you, dunno where it is.’

  ‘You’d better think, then. Unless you want me to call up a support team. With a crowbar.’

  ‘No, no. No need for that.’

  Norman Teggs stuck a hand in the trouser pocket of his droopy brown suit, pulled out a ring of keys, held it out with one of them, a Yale, to the front.

  ‘This should be it. I was sort of - I forgot I had it, that’s all.’

  Jack took the offer
ed ring, slid the Yale key into the lock, turned it, pulled the narrow dusty door open.

  What he saw inside was more than a cupboard. As far as he could make out in the murky daylight coming from behind him, it was another small room, windowless.

  ‘I suppose there’s a light.’

  ‘Yes. No. No, you can’t never see nothing in there. I told you it’s just a store place. Stuff we don’t want.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  He groped along the wall beside the door. Eventually found a switch.

  A neon tube came flickering to life. Except for more racks jammed with videos, most of the confined space was taken up by a bench on which stood a greypainted machine with a little VDU above a complicated set of controls.

  Not hard to guess what it did. Copy tapes.

  Norman Teggs had come to peer in from just outside.

  ‘Well now, Norman, looks as if you’re in a spot of bother, don’t it? What are all these, then?’

  From the rack beside him he pulled out the first tape that came to hand. No tiny discreet letters on this. Instead a fuzzy black-and-white photograph of two jutting female backsides and a luridly printed title Hot Bottoms.

  ‘Well, mate, you’re in big trouble, ain’t you?’

  Norman Teggs, hovering at the narrow doorway, looked as if he knew he was.

  ‘Listen …’ he said, and came to a stop.

  ‘All right, I’m listening.’

  ‘Look. Look. Well, I know those are a bit dodgy. But they don’t do no real harm, do they?’

  ‘Not to your pocket, they don’t. That’s for sure.’

  ‘Yeah, well, most of that sort of thing’s faked, ain’t it?’

  ‘Is it? You going to give me a bit of a film show, then? We see how faked it is?’

  ‘I could do that. If you like, I could show you some as’d make the one you got there look like a fairy story.’

  ‘No way, my son. You ain’t going to get out of this just by giving me a hard-on.’

  Was the fellow sharp enough to take the hint?

  Seemingly not.