The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries

by Michael Gilbert

  Petrella said to Benjamin a week later, “That’s that. Now we know. There was nothing in any of the houses except booby traps. The boatshed was in some ways the most ingenious of them, but the one at Heston wasn’t bad. A trapdoor in the floor with counterweights, and the lower room sealed up, and a lot of inflammable material collected. If she’d caught them in that one, she was going to burn them.”

  “A single-minded woman,” said Benjamin, “and the money was in a safe deposit all the time?”

  “That’s right. Three different safe deposits actually. We found the keys in her room.”

  “How’s Wilmot?”

  “He’s fine,” said Petrella. “That boy will take a lot of killing. The only thing he’s scared of is someone finding out about Mrs. Barker knocking him out. He’d never live that down. I had to promise him solemnly that I wouldn’t open my mouth.”

  “If you don’t talk about it, no one else can,” said Benjamin. There was something in his tone which made Petrella look up.

  “It’s what I came to tell you,” said Benjamin. “They found Mrs. Barker this morning. The Thames Conservancy Police pulled her out below Bell Weir lock. Larry Michaels was with her. Her arms were still round his waist. The pathologist couldn’t unlock them.”

  “Nor could I,” said Petrella, and shuddered.

  Argosy, July 1959.

  PETRELLA’S HOLIDAY

  THE CONSTABLE ON POINT DUTY in St. Andrew’s Circus always has an exasperating time. And this is aggravated when the sun shines, since most of the traffic on the A.2 coastal road passes through the Circus, heading into it by three different routes, then squeezing out through the inadequate width of Vigo Street before attaining the comparative freedom of the Old Kent Road.

  Constable Whitty was not only hot. He was rankling under the undeserved rebuke of Sergeant Mortimer. “Keep ’em moving,” he muttered to himself. “How the hell can anyone keep ’em moving when there’s nowhere for ’em to move to? If this was Russia, now, or America—” He visualised himself, revolver in holster waving a stream of limousines down a four-track highway. “A hundred years out of date. That’s what’s wrong with this country. I ask you.”

  A small cart, drawn by a depressed pony, clattered slowly across the intersection, followed by a lorry with an articulated trailer, six girls on bicycles, and a hearse. Time to switch, thought Whitty. Roll on two o’clock.

  He raised a hand to halt the oncoming car, turned and beckoned forward the head of the traffic waiting in St. Andrew’s Road. A delivery van and an open car got smartly off the mark, followed by a saloon car. The van on the near-side of the car stayed put. Whitty beckoned even more imperiously. The van failed to respond.

  “Engine failure,” diagnosed Whitty, “near the head of a line of traffic on a day like this. Why does everything happen to me?”

  He strode up to the offending vehicle, which was an old, open-backed, Army fifteen-hundredweight truck, and thrust his head into the driver’s compartment. “If you can’t start her, you’ll have to push her,” he said.

  Then he stopped. The man in the driver’s seat was leaning across over the wheel, an empty look on his face, and a neat hole in the side of his forehead framed by a rim of fresh, bright blood.

  Inspector Petrella, although he did not realise it at the time, had passed St. Andrew’s Circus just before the shooting.

  He had not gone through it, but had walked down Dunraven Street, which is separated from the Circus by a large blitzed site. As he went by, he had noticed a line of South Borough Secondary School boys hanging over the wall, and he had observed a game of cricket in progress. The players, as he saw out of the corner of his eye, were young men – indeed, not all that young – probably from the local printing works.

  The bowler, who had a shock of red hair, looked up, and it crossed Petrella’s mind that he recognised him. He was on his way to an urgent appointment and had no time to stop, but he determined to have a word with Mr. Wetherall, who was the headmaster of South Borough Secondary School, and occupied the flat above Petrella’s in Brinkham Road. Some of the blitzed sites were unsuitable playgrounds.

  Petrella was on his way to a rendezvous with a man called Roper, who spent his mornings driving a delivery van, his evenings selling newspapers, and the whole of his time keeping his eyes and ears open. For he was a police informer, and one of the most valuable on Petrella’s list. His charges were high, but his information was usually accurate.

  Petrella waited, with professional patience, for a full hour, and when he stepped out again into the hot street a cruising police car located him and whipped him back to Gabriel Street. There he found his own superior, Superintendent Benjamin, and Benjamin’s superior, Chief Superintendent Thorn, in possession.

  “I believe,” said Thorn – who was half an inch below the minimum height for a policeman, and known to every criminal south of the Thames as Pussy – “that you were using Roper yourself.”

  “That’s right, sir. I was meeting him this lunchtime. He stood me up.”

  “He had some information for you?”

  “He said he knew where the Borners kept their bank. He hadn’t actually got round to talking terms.”

  “He’ll not talk any more, now,” said Thom. “He got an airgun bullet through the side of his head just before two o’clock. A right neat job. I don’t know when I’ve seen a neater. We’ve got Roper. We’ve got his van. And about a thousand people to question. And that’s all we have got.”

  “It’ll be in all the evening papers,” said Benjamin, who had a long solemn face, and hated publicity of any sort. “It’s probably on the streets by now.”

  “It’s no bad thing if it is,” said Thorn. “We shall have to appeal for members of the public to come forward. We’ll draft an announcement for the B.B.C.”

  “Where are you going to take the statements?” asked Petrella.

  “I think we’ll use this station,” said Thom. “It’s handiest, and the best place to see people will be in your office.”

  Petrella had feared as much.

  Stimulated by appeals in the newspapers and on the wireless, the people of southeast London converged on Gabriel Street, for two whole days, in a steady stream. Some of them were cranks, some were liars, and a few of them had actually been in St. Andrew’s Circus at the moment of the shooting.

  Sergeant Shoesmith, whose methodical habits were invaluable in a crisis of this sort, produced a plan on an enormous scale, which he fastened to the wall, and on it he plotted, in distinctive colours, the position of every witness. In black, if their presence was unsupported; in green if they had been seen by one other person; in red if seen by two or more.

  It was late in the afternoon on the first day that a young man arrived, produced an envelope, and tipped out of it a dozen photographs. “I’m from The Clarion,” he said. “My editor thought you might like to see these. Interesting, aren’t they?”

  “I’ll say they’re interesting,” said Petrella. “Where did you get them?”

  “The Clarion’s running a series. Black Spots in London’s Traffic. We did Charing Cross last week. This week it was St. Andrew’s Circus. Rather a coincidence, really.”

  “Are these actually—?”

  “The time of the shooting? Yes. We took one lot between twelve and two. Another lot between five and seven. The last one of the first series would be the one you’d want, I should think. Isn’t that your chap, in fact?”

  Petrella and Sergeant Shoesmith and Constable Wilmot crowded round the photograph. It was extraordinary. Like having a dream, and then seeing it all in the newspapers next morning. They carried the photograph across to the plan.

  “There’s that saloon car,” said Petrella. “And you can see the nose of the bus, behind. That’s Whitty. He’s just signalling on the other line of traffic. Looks a bit hot, doesn’t he!”

  Sergeant Shoesmith said, “I always thought that man with the beard was a liar. He said he was standing under the clock from half p
ast one to half past two. He isn’t in any of the photographs at all. There’s the little woman who thought it was Communists. And the man with the four dogs.”

  “Isn’t that a bicycle?” said Petrella. “Look, you can just see the front of the mudguard.” He looked at the plan. “That must be the schoolgirl. The one who thought she heard a shot. Just exactly where did you take these from? Can you show me on this plan?”

  “It was an office,” said the young man. “Our chaps usually work from windows. If you stand about on the pavement taking pictures you get a crowd round you. Just about there, I should say. It’s a window on the first floor. He used a telescopic attachment. That’s why the background’s sharp but the foreground’s a bit blurred.”

  “I think they’re excellent photographs,” said Petrella. “Can we hang on to them?”

  “Certainly. We had these copies made for you. Only thing is, if you do get anything out of it, you might let us in on it.” Petrella promised to do that.

  While Petrella, assisted by Sergeant Shoesmith and Detective Constable Wilmot, was sorting out the eyewitnesses, Superintendent Benjamin was inquiring into the movements of the Borners.

  “Curly and me,” said Maurice Borner, a handsome, dark-haired, young man with an arrogant Assyrian nose, “was playing snooker at Charley’s. Copper was there, too. We started about one, and wasn’t finished much before three.”

  “A long game?” suggested the Superintendent.

  “That’s the way it is,” said Maurice, “when you get interested in a thing.”

  “Anyone else see you?”

  “You know Charley’s, Superintendent. It’s sort of private. A few of us use it. I believe Sammy did look in.”

  Sam Borner, fatter than his brother and superficially jollier, agreed readily that he had looked in at Charley’s. He had spent most of the lunch hour in his flat with Harry and Nick. They had been having a quiet game of cards. They often had a quiet game of cards at lunchtime.

  “It’s as clear as the nose on Maurice’s face,” said Benjamin. “That’s the lot that did it. It’s not going to be easy to prove. No one’s going to be keen on giving evidence against them. They carry too much weight.”

  “I know the two Borners,” said Petrella. “Nick Joel and Harry Hammanight – he’s the big ex-sailor, isn’t he? Who are the others?”

  “Curly’s one of the Bassets – the only one out at the moment. Copper’s a redhead. He used to be quite a nice boy, and a promising boxer before they got hold of him.”

  Something in Petrella’s memory stirred, but died.

  “And it’s all very fine,” went on Benjamin, “for us to say we know the Borners did it because they’d got their knife into Roper and because they’ve got an alibi which is so watertight that it sticks – that’s not going to cut much ice in court. First thing we’ve got to find out is how it was done. What the hell are you grinning at?”

  “I was just thinking,” said Petrella, “that that’s one of the finest mixed metaphors I’ve ever heard.”

  “Tchah,” said Benjamin.

  By the second evening Petrella and his assistants were contemplating a dwindling number of possibilities.

  “I think,” said Petrella, “that we could rule out anyone on the pavement. It would be much too risky.”

  “Suppose,” said Wilmot, who was young and read detective stories, “they had this airgun disguised as an umbrella.”

  “Why would anyone carry an umbrella on a day like that?”

  “Well, a walking stick.”

  “It’s no use supposing,” said Petrella. “We know that no one was doing anything of the sort. We know everyone who was on the pavement, on both sides of the road, their names and addresses, and where they came from, and where they were going to. Do you suppose that any of them could have got away with pointing a walking stick at Roper without half a dozen people noticing it?”

  “I agree with you, sir,” said Sergeant Shoesmith. “Our investigations have definitely ruled out the possibility of any of the passersby being implicated, and the owners of all windows overlooking the scene have been checked and cross-checked.”

  “Suppose someone got on the roof, went up the fire escape—”

  “And shot Roper through the top of the driver’s seat without leaving a hole in it?”

  “Roper could have been leaning out of the cab.”

  “He could have been,” said Petrella patiently, because he liked Wilmot, “but how could the man on the roof know that he was going to lean out of the cab at just that place and time?”

  “I’m inclined to think, sir,” said Sergeant Shoesmith, “that it must have been a man in one of the other vehicles. We have established that Roper followed the same route almost every day on the way from his shop to the depot where he picked up his evening papers. And it was inevitable that he would be held up at St. Andrew’s Circus. All he had to do was to draw up behind Roper, or beside him, shoot at the moment the traffic was signalled forward, and rely on getting away in the confusion.”

  “Splendid,” said Petrella. “Splendid. Now tell me which of the vehicles you had in mind. We have succeeded in identifying them all, I think.”

  “Well,” said Sergeant Shoesmith, “I admit that’s a bit more difficult.”

  “There were only three possibles,” said Petrella. “Unless the killing was done on the spur of the moment, the car must have been in the same stream of traffic as Roper. No one coming into St. Andrew’s Circus from another direction could possibly guarantee to be at the head of one line at the precise moment Roper was near the head of the other. Right?”

  “Right,” said Wilmot. He enjoyed seeing Sergeant Shoesmith put in his place.

  “And he must have been beside him or in front of him. The shot couldn’t have been delivered from behind. That brings us down to the delivery van immediately in front, the open car to the right front, or the saloon car, level with Roper on the right. We know who they are. They’ve all come forward, none of them has the faintest connection with Roper, and none of them looks in the least like a murderer. Apart from that”—Petrella prodded a document on the table in front of them—“we’ve now got the results of the laboratory tests, which show that the bullet went into Roper from the left-hand side, either on the level, or from very slightly above – it would depend on how he was holding his head at the moment of impact. Which makes complete nonsense of the idea that he was shot from a van in front, or from a car much lower than he was and on his right.”

  “That’s right,” said Wilmot again. “Real tricky, this one.”

  “It’s no good just saying it’s tricky,” said Petrella crossly. “We’ve got to find the answer to it. There’s no arguing away the fact that someone put a bullet into Roper’s head. He didn’t shoot himself.”

  It occurred to Petrella afterwards that the reason they couldn’t see the answer was because they were too near the problem. He took all the photographs home with him that night, and propped them round the teapot while he ate the evening meal he had cooked for himself. And when he went upstairs afterwards to chat with Mr. Wetherall, he took the photographs with him.

  Mr. Wetherall, the reigning headmaster of the South Borough Secondary School, was a neat, grizzled man, with a nose reminiscent of the great Duke of Wellington and an all-embracing knowledge of the characters and habits of the South Londoners whom he had taught, as boys, for thirty years, and successive generations of whom he had watched grow up into tough, unpredictable, cheerful, amoral citizens.

  “I have no faith,” he said, “in amateur detectives who step in where the professional has failed, but if you wouldn’t mind handing me that magnifying glass – it is rather a fine one, isn’t it? Young Simmonds gave it to me when he left. You may know his father.”

  Petrella knew Mr. Simmonds well: he was the second most eminent receiver of stolen goods in South Borough.

  “This is the photograph that was taken at the moment of the shooting? And the others at short intervals before
it?” Mr. Wetherall pored over the photographs, occasionally chuckling to himself as he recognised an ex-pupil in the crowd.

  Then he straightened up and said, “Well, really. I’m quite sure you’ve noticed it for yourself, but that young lady – the one in the final photograph, she appears to be smoking a cigarette. Odd, don’t you think, that she isn’t doing so in any of the earlier ones? Significant, perhaps?”

  “Which young lady?”

  “No. Not in the crowd. I mean the young lady in the advertisement on the hoarding. The one advertising SUDDO. Make Monday Funday.”

  Petrella snatched the glass, and focused it. Then, with fingers that fumbled, he grabbed the other photographs and concentrated on each in turn.

  What Mr. Wetherall had said was absolutely true. The young housewife, holding aloft a snowy-white garment, and announcing with a dazzling smile that Monday was Fun-day had, between her teeth, in the final photograph only a thin, cylindrical object not unlike a large cigarette.

  Early next morning he sought out Mr. Cooper, who was agent for the owner of the bombed site which fronted on St. Andrew’s Circus, masked at that side by hoarding, and which ran clear back, behind the hoardings, to Dunraven Street.

  “I put this barbed wire up a day or two ago,” said Mr. Cooper. “I heard people had been getting down into the site, at the back, playing cricket. We’ve never had any trouble before. Do you want to go down yourself? It’s a bit of a climb.”

  “See if you can borrow a ladder,” said Petrella, “while I shift some of this wire.” Half an hour later, with the assistance of a sign painter’s ladder, they were standing on what had once been the basement floor of a large building.

  “If you don’t mind,” said Petrella, “I’ll do this bit alone. I don’t want any unnecessary footprints.”

  Mr. Cooper looked at him curiously, and said, “This something to do with the shooting the other day?”

  “It might be,” said Petrella. “Why?”

  “I did wonder why anyone would want to climb down here just to play cricket. You can see for yourself. It’d be an awkward place to get at, even without the wire. I suppose I ought to have said something before.”