Harm’s Way

by Catherine Aird

  “June isn’t the season, anyway,” contributed Crosby. “Not for that. It’s more of a Christmas crime.”

  Sloan nodded. Teeming and lading were common among shaky club treasurers, defalcation reaching its peak during December. Nemesis usually caught up with them in January.

  “I rather think,” he said drily, “that Ivor Harbeton is in a bigger league than Christmas clubs, risky as they are too.”

  “Not a petty-cash man,” said Crosby.

  “High finance,” said Sloan, although he wasn’t at all sure what the phrase meant. The newspapers had used it more than once. And the word “wheeler-dealer” too, but all the reporting was neatly circumspect. Peccadillo—let alone fraud—wasn’t even hinted at. Newspapers were more subtle than that. “He was prominent in City circles,” Sloan read aloud from a cutting.

  Crosby snorted gently. “And now he’s decamped.”

  “Let us say,” replied Sloan with precision, “that nobody quite seems to know exactly where he is.”

  “Vamoosed,” said Crosby, lapsing still further into the vernacular.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Sloan, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the farmyard, “he didn’t get very far—”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of George and Meg Mellot. They advanced unwillingly.

  “You said you wanted to see us, Inspector,” said the farmer.

  “Just one or two questions about the skeleton,” began Sloan easily.

  “There’s not a lot we can tell you,” said Mellot.

  “We didn’t know anything about its being there,” supplemented his wife anxiously, her eyes on her husband’s face. “Did we, George?”

  George Mellot shook his head.

  “We shall need some sort of statement to that effect for the coroner,” carried on Sloan smoothly. “For the inquest.”

  “Of course,” said George Mellot at once.

  It was always surprising, thought Sloan to himself, how reassuring nearly everyone found both mention of the coroner and the invoking of that most ancient of Norman institutions, an inquest.

  “Naturally,” said Meg Mellot.

  However ambivalent their attitude to the police, the great British public saw the coroner as an impartial enquirer: inquests were a time-honoured procedure that could—and did—happen in the best of families. And, thought Sloan, generously giving credit where credit was due, it was amazing how very above the battle the coroner always contrived to appear.

  “For instance,” said Sloan, coming back to the matter at hand, “it would be useful to know if either of you had heard anything strange at any time lately.”

  Both Mellots immediately shook their heads.

  “Not even,” said Sloan, “the dog barking without a reason?”

  “No,” said Mellot.

  “Never,” said his wife, nervously plucking at her skirt.

  “Where does it sleep?” asked Sloan.

  “Outside,” replied the farmer. “In the yard.”

  “I see.” Sloan paused before he said, “And I take it that you have neither of you seen any unauthorized persons about the farmyard lately?” When he was very small he remembered his mother—no, it must have been his grandmother—teaching him the old song “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town.”

  “No,” said George Mellot firmly.

  All the energy seemed to have gone out of Meg Mellot. She was sitting in the chair with her hands lying loosely clasped together, palms upward, in what the art historians called the Byzantine attitude of sustained sorrow.

  Sloan reached out his hand for one of the press cuttings and said, “Does the name Ivor Harbeton convey anything to you, Mr. Mellot?”

  He never did get a direct answer to his question.

  The detective inspector had hardly asked it before he saw the colour drain out of Meg Mellot’s face. She emitted a low moan and subsided onto the parlour floor at his feet in a dead faint.

  ELEVEN

  Your adversary the devil

  “I say, Calleshire,” chattered the voice on the telephone line, “you do realise that today’s a Sunday, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Sloan evenly. In the police force you knew not the day nor the hour when you might be working. “Yes, Met, I do.”

  “City,” the voice corrected him with celerity. “Not Met.”

  “Sorry,” said Sloan. That had been a faux pas of the first order.

  “You’re talking to the City Fraud Squad,” said the voice. “That’s who you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” said Sloan. “I’m sorry about its being a Sunday but we’ve got a bit of a problem down here.”

  “Speak on.”

  “Can you tell me anything about a character called Ivor Harbeton?”

  “You bet I can.” Something approaching a cackle came down the telephone line. “Don’t say that he’s been operating in your neck of the woods, too?”

  “Not operating, exactly,” said Sloan obscurely.

  “But—”

  “But there may be a link.” Perhaps, thought Sloan, that was too restrained a way of putting it. Mrs. Meg Mellot had canted over at the mere mention of the man’s name. And taken her time to come round.

  “You’ll be lucky to come off best,” said the voice frankly. “Nobody else has that we can see.”

  “Tell me,” invited Sloan. Victims often brought death on themselves. In more ways than one.

  “He’s clever,” said the voice grudgingly. “I give him that.”

  Sloan was not surprised. The unclever did not as a rule attract the attentions of either the Fraud Squad or the newspapers. The Bench of Magistrates dealt with them and then went home to their wives complaining about the low level of education in the country.

  “An entrepreneur,” expanded the man in London, “that’s what I would call Ivor Harbeton.”

  It wasn’t surprising, thought Sloan, that a nation of shopkeepers didn’t have the right word.

  “And,” went on the voice drily, “he’s nearly always nearly legal.”

  “Ah,” said Sloan. Those were the difficult cases. Give him a flagrant breach of the law any day. Justice hanging on a pure technicality didn’t go down well with either judge or jury. Even less well when hanging had been the operative word.

  “Quite ruthless, of course,” continued the voice in a detached way.

  Ruthlessness was not an endearing characteristic. It might have been that that had made a victim of Ivor Harbeton. If he was the victim, that is. Sloan didn’t know yet. What he did know was that Meg Mellot had abruptly fainted at his feet. And that her husband had gone down on his knees beside her, imploring her to lie quiet and still until she felt better.

  “There’s no sentiment in business,” carried on his interlocutor in the City breezily, “but I would have said Ivor Harbeton was born without it anyway.”

  “Anything known?” enquired Sloan. That was police shorthand for a lot.

  “He hasn’t got form,” replied the voice, “but then generally speaking the villains we deal with in this department don’t have.”

  In police parlance, though, they were still villains.

  “Not until the balloon goes up in a big way, that is,” said the Fraud Squad man.

  “And has it with Ivor Harbeton?” asked Sloan.

  “Let us say,” responded the voice cautiously, “that we should like to talk to him. Very much indeed. And so would the people at United Mellemetics.”

  “United Mellemetics?” Sloan scratched about in his memory. “They’re a big firm in the north, aren’t they?”

  “They are. For their sins they got taken over in April by Hobblethwaite Castings—that’s one of Harbeton’s other companies—in April this year. With Harbeton as chairman of the board.”

  “And they didn’t like it?”

  “United Mellemetics,” replied the voice succinctly, “were stripped naked of every asset they held. And the money—”

  “Yes?” Sl
oan was always interested in what happened to money. It was the policeman in him.

  “The money was applied to financing the next take-over battle.”

  “Battle.” Sloan echoed the word. The language of war sat as appropriately on the background of business as it did on that of crime.

  “Well, if you want to be exact,” said the Fraud Squad man astringently, “I should say that rapine and pillage describe what went on at United Mellemetics better, but then I’m old-fashioned myself.”

  “And then?”

  “Then the United Mellemetics auditors went on the war-path.”

  “And found that there had been sticky fingers in the till?” enquired Sloan colloquially.

  “And found themselves unable to reconcile the figures with what was left of the assets,” said the other man more technically.

  “That’s bad.” Even Sloan, who did not count himself as numerate, could see that.

  “The fixed assets were there all right, but—”

  “But the liquid ones had evaporated?” supplemented Sloan. There was even something insubstantial about the very phase. Liquid, indeed!

  “Happens all the time,” said the voice from the City laconically.

  Detective Inspector Sloan of the Calleshire County Constabulary said he could well believe it.

  “Take it from me, old man,” said the Fraud Squad man, “and keep your money in short-dated government stock. You know exactly where you are then.”

  “Quite so,” replied Sloan noncommittally. Actually he wasn’t at all sure that you did know where you were with government. Even chief constables didn’t always know. Home secretaries came in different colours. And in different degrees of dampness. Some were wet and some were dry.

  “And with short-dated government stock,” said the other man, “there’s always the date of redemption to look forward to.” He made it sound like the Day of Judgement.

  “I don’t have anything much left over,” responded Sloan quickly. “Not with my mortgage.” This was not strictly true but money over and above and to spare in the Sloan ménage was apt to be absorbed by purchases from the catalogues of specialist rose growers. He cleared his throat and asked, “Where do you come in with the man Harbeton?”

  “The people at United Mellemetics came to us when they discovered the—er—shortfall.”

  It was funny how malfeasance—like death—attracted euphemisms. Shrinkage was another word that meant more than one might think.

  “So we started to make enquiries,” carried on the speaker, “and we found that two and two didn’t make four either.”

  “Ah.”

  “By then, of course, Ivor Harbeton had gone on to his next takeover battle.”

  “Mellot’s Furnishings,” said Sloan simply.

  “Oh, you know about that, do you?”

  “Only what the newspapers say.”

  “He did it through Conway’s Covers, which is another Harbeton company,” amplified the Fraud Squad man. “Don’t ask me to tell you them all. Proteus isn’t in it.”

  “If we could concentrate on Mellot’s Furnishings …”

  The man at the other end of the telephone line brightened audibly. “That’s easy, Inspector. When all this started Mellot’s Funishings was a well-run company with prime sites in most towns.”

  “Ripe for plucking.” Sloan could see that.

  “The ideal victim. Couldn’t have been better, in fact. The recipe’s quite easy. Take it over, sell the shop sites, lease them back to the company, and use the capital for something else.”

  It couldn’t, thought Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, first-time home-owner, be as simple as that. The hassle of buying one semidetached house in suburban Berebury had been bad enough. He said so.

  “It is simple,” insisted the other man airily. “And perfectly legal. It goes on all the time.”

  Sloan felt stirred into protest. “It’s not the sort of thing to take lying down.”

  A grim laugh travelled along the telephone line. “Tom Mellot didn’t do that, believe you me.”

  “What did he do, then?”

  The man from the Fraud Squad told him.

  That was when Detective Constable Crosby materialised at his elbow. “The doctor wants to see you before he goes, sir,” he said.

  The pathologist was standing on the makeshift inspection platform, his perennially silent assistant, Burns, at his side. Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby clambered up beside them. There was room—but only just—for the four of them. Dyson and Williams had finished their photography and were standing at the bottom of the scaffolding tower. Also waiting at ground level at a discreet distance was a van from Morton’s, the Berebury undertakers.

  “Eyes first, hands next, tongue last, Sloan,” said Dr. Dabbe. “That’s what I was taught.”

  “Very wise, Doctor,” said Sloan. At the Police Training College they had had a lot to say about ears and listening but there was no need to go into that now.

  “Poor Fred who was alive and is dead.” Detective Constable Crosby had not been taught anything of the kind and rushed into speech.

  “Very dead,” agreed the pathologist before Sloan could say anything at all. “Well, gentlemen, we’ve done all that we can up here.” He looked round from their raised vantage-point. “I must say it makes a change from a ditch.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” said Sloan. Now the doctor came to mention it, most dead bodies were low-lying.

  “The heights of Abraham’s bosom,” said Dr. Dabbe obscurely.

  Sloan cleared his throat. “What do you make of him, Doctor? For the report, I mean.”

  “Oh, there’s not a lot of doubt about the NASH classification, Sloan,” said the pathologist, “unless someone removed the head for fun, of course.”

  “What’s the NASH classification?” enquired Crosby.

  “The four options open to a forensic pathologist,” responded Dr. Dabbe, waving a hand in the direction of the skeleton.

  “Four?” echoed the constable.

  “Four, Crosby,” snapped Sloan. The constable should know all this. “One more than three, and one less than five.” He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that the pathologist encouraged badinage with constables. Superintendent Leeyes didn’t.

  “Natural causes, accident, suicide and homicide,” recited Dr. Dabbe.

  “NASH,” agreed Crosby, nodding.

  “Homicide, Crosby,” said Sloan mordantly. “The killing of a man. Like regicide but less specific.”

  “Of course,” said the pathologist, momentarily diverted, “there are always the other four things.”

  “What other four, Doctor?” enquired Sloan evenly. They weren’t getting anywhere standing upon the platform talking like this, and time might be important.

  “Eschatology.”

  “What’s that?” asked Crosby promptly. It sounded like a medical word to Sloan.

  “The science of the four last things,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  Sloan didn’t say anything at all. The doctor was going to tell them whether or not he asked what they were.

  “Death, judgement, heaven and hell,” pronounced Dr. Dabbe. He grinned suddenly and tapped the scaffolding platform with his foot. “Makes you feel you’re in a pulpit, doesn’t it, being up here?”

  The height wasn’t having that effect on Sloan, besides which he had other things on his mind. “The finger,” he began purposefully. In his opinion philosophy could wait. There were certain practical matters he needed to set in train. And soon. “Can we be sure that it came from this body?”

  “As sure as eggs is eggs,” responded the pathologist just a whit colloquially, “but I’ll check for you properly presently.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Actually, Sloan, nearly all the fingers have gone, give or take a thumb.”

  “‘The moving finger—’” began Crosby.

  Sloan quelled the detective constable with a look. The trouble was that he couldn’t do that with t
he consultant pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital Management Group.

  “So,” continued Dr. Dabbe obliviously, “have quite a number of other smaller bones.” He coughed. “And we shan’t be wanting a lot in the way of Canopic jars, shall we, Burns?”

  “No, Doctor.”

  Sloan waited for elucidation.

  “They’re what the ancient Egyptians used to bury the entrails in,” the doctor informed him.

  “When they weren’t casting them?” enquired Sloan neatly.

  “That was the Greeks,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  “Talking of height”—Sloan reverted to an earlier topic before he got into deeper water still—“do we know how tall this man was?”

  “Burns here has done some measurements,” said Dr. Dabbe. “Haven’t you, Burns?”

  “That’s right, Doctor.”

  “And taking the length of the left femur—”

  “That’s still there, then,” said Sloan.

  “Too heavy for anything short of a vulture,” said the pathologist. “Or a jackal.”

  “So …” The only jackals in rural Calleshire were human ones.

  “So, taking the known length of the left femur, measured, of course, from the top of its head to the bottom of the internal condylar surface—”

  “Of course,” murmured Sloan.

  “—and applying Pearson’s formula for the reconstruction of living stature from dead long bones—”

  “Yes?”

  “—we can calculate that he—whoever he was—”

  Who he was, thought Sloan to himself, was a bigger question altogether. Perhaps who he had been might be a better way of putting it. He permitted himself a sideways glance at what was lying there. A quotation drifted into his mind from somewhere. “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair,” except that there wasn’t a rag left on the body and no hair either.

  “—whoever he was,” repeated Dr. Dabbe, “was just over five foot eight inches tall.”

  “That’s very useful to know,” said Sloan and he meant it.

  “Give or take half an inch or so,” the pathologist said, adding a rider.

  “A small man, then.”

  “By the time I tell the court in centimetres,” said the pathologist cynically, “they won’t know whether he was a dwarf or a giant.”