“Didn’t expect to see a gangster’s moll doin’ anythin’ as domestic as this, did you?” Doris asked, seeing right through his masked expression. “Brassy blonde turned housewife. It makes you think.”
“Yes, it does,” Woodend admitted.
“I’ve had the good times while they were there for the takin’ – bathin’ in champagne an’ all that sort of thing,” Doris told him, “but I’ve never neglected my family. I wasn’t brought up that way.” She paused from her shelling and gazed thoughtfully into the water. “I miss him, you know,” she continued. “Robbie. I never thought I would. But I do. I got used to havin’ him around, an’ now he’s not here any more, it’s like there’s a big gap in my life.”
Woodend nodded sympathetically. “I think it might help us to find his murderer if we knew more about his rackets,” he said.
Doris’s face hardened. “I’ve told you the last time you asked, I know nothin’ about them.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Woodend agreed. “But you knew Robbie, and you know Swann’s Lake.”
“How will that help?” Doris asked suspiciously.
“If he’d been dealin’ in stolen cigarettes, would he have kept them close to him, or would he have been happy to warehouse them in, say, Manchester?”
Doris popped another pod, and tipped the peas into the water. “Robbie wasn’t big on trustin’ most other people. If he been storin’ nicked fags, he’d have wanted them close enough for him to be able to go an’ check on them every day. Maybe even two or three times a day.”
“You’ve got some holiday bungalows around the lake, haven’t you?” Woodend asked.
“There’s nothin’ there,” Doris said firmly.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I checked,” Doris said. “I told you I didn’t know if Robbie was involved in anythin’ criminal, but if he was, I wanted it to die with him. So I checked. There’s nothin’ in any of the bungalows that shouldn’t be there.”
“Do you mind if the local bobbies have a look for themselves? Not that I don’t trust you. It’s just that it’ll give Inspector Chatterton’s lads somethin’ to do.”
“They can look if they like,” Doris said indifferently. “But like I told you, they won’t find nothin’. Even if there had been somethin’, I’d have chucked it in the bloody lake.”
Woodend returned to Robbie Peterson’s office with Doris’s words ringing in his ears. Robbie wouldn’t want to be too far away from the stolen goods, she’d said, but he hadn’t been keeping them in any of the bungalows. He wouldn’t have kept them around the club or the house, either – not unless he got a thrill out of running incredible risks.
“So where else would he hide crates of booze and thousands of cartons of cigarettes?” Woodend asked Rutter’s empty chair.
And once he’d put the question into words, the answer was obvious.
Detective Sergeant Rutter found that the bruising to his ribs caused him to walk more stiffly that he would normally have done, but other than that, he had come away from the battering outside the pub with far less damage than he’d expected. It had been stupid to provoke the fight, he thought, yet it had served as a release – an escape from the emotional pain he had been feeling since he’d heard the terrible news about Maria. And perhaps, in a way, he was trying to share her pain. Or maybe that was too fanciful.
He forced thoughts of his fiancée from his mind. He had a job to do – a job which he had always considered important, but now, as he entered his last few days as a policeman, took on even greater significance. He had already visited five cobblers’ shops in Doncaster without even a whiff of success, but, as was the usual case in this kind of work, he was driven on by the thought that it was always possible the very next one would give him exactly what he needed.
He paused in front of the shop. Johnson’s High Class Boot and Shoe Repairers was spelt out in a half-circle of gold letters on the front window. It was an old-fashioned establishment which had seen better days. People today preferred to drop off their shoes at the local branch of Timpson’s, Rutter thought. Besides, the sort of shoes they were making now didn’t really merit the craftsmanship that Mr Johnson was probably capable of.
He opened the door and heard a brass bell tinkle above his head. The sound brought a man scurrying from the back of the shop. He was aged and shrunken, with a bald head and half-moon glasses perched precariously on his nose. But his hands looked strong, and Rutter noticed the ridges of hard skin on his thumbs.
“I’m looking for a man who might have brought a particular pair of shoes in here to be repaired fairly often,” Rutter said, showing the cobbler his warrant card. “He’s about five feet eleven tall. And he has blonde hair and a blonde moustache – both of them neatly trimmed.”
“Foreign accent?” the cobbler asked.
“Foreign? You mean, like French or something?”
The old man shook his head. “Nay, lad. Like yours. Not Yorkshire. Well, not quite as foreign as yours. From Liverpool, or somewhere like that.”
Rutter felt his pulse start to race. The Alex Conway whose birth certificate Sergeant Dash had come up with had been born in Liverpool – which would explain how he came to know Robbie Peterson. “He might well be a Liverpudlian,” he told Mr Johnson.
“Well, there’s a turn up for th’ books,” the old man said, giving a dry, rasping chuckle.
“Have I said something funny?” Rutter asked, bemused.
“If he’s the man I think he is, then you’re dead wrong on the height,” the cobbler explained. “But sithee, that’s hardly surprisin’.”
“What do you mean by that?” Rutter said, but the old man had already turned and was making his way, crab-like, back into the bowels of the shop.
The cobbler returned a couple of minutes later, holding a pair of black shoes in his hands. They looked well-cared for, Rutter noted, although there were signs, on one instep, of the leather cracking.
“Beautiful things,” the old man said, laying the shoes on the counter for Rutter to examine. “Look at the great workmanship. That stitching alone’s a work of art.”
“So they’re not factory made?”
The old man tut-tutted. “Definitely not. They was made by a craftsman who loved his trade. There aren’t so many of us left now.”
Rutter picked up one of the shoes. “Did you happen to notice what he was wearing when he brought these in?”
“Of course I noticed,” the old man said. “It’s my job to notice.”
“And what was he wearing?” Rutter asked, doing his best to hide his exasperation.
“Various things. No definite style or colour. Sometimes black, sometimes brown, now an’ again suede. He even come in once wearing a pair of them daft things with pointed toes.”
“Were they custom made as well?”
The old man shook his head. “They were decent quality – at least what passes as decent quality these days – but they weren’t in th’ same class as the one’s you’re lookin’ at.”
There was something wrong with these shoes, Rutter thought. Something about the insides, just above the heel.
“It’s never bothered me, bein’ small,” the old cobbler said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Bein’ small. It’s never bothered me. But it must bother him, or he’d never have spent so much money on a pair of elevator shoes.”
It was too early in the day for there to be much business at the fairground, and the Green brothers were both sitting sullenly on the painted wooden fence which led up to the pay box. They had been watching Woodend, DI Chatterton and the two uniformed constables ever since the four men first came into sight, but now, as the policemen stopped in front of the ghost train, they gave no sign of even knowing that they were there.
Woodend stepped forward. “I’d like a guided tour,” he said to the elder brother, “and I’d like you to take me on it.”
Clem Green sneered. “Got a search warrant you can show
me?” he asked.
Woodend beamed at him. “I don’t need one, Sunshine,” he said. “The Ghost Train is owned by Mrs Doris Peterson – and she’s given us her permission to look around all we want.”
Led by the reluctant Clem Green, Woodend and Chatteron walked carefully down the track, past papier maché skulls and crudely carved wooden skeletons. The rafters were not the crumbling oak beams of which haunted houses are made, but blunt, unadorned steel girders. Deprived of its lighting effects, and the illusion created by the speed of the journey, the tunnel looked makeshift and seedy. The track twisted and turned, and, almost before they knew it, Green was pushing open the double doors that led to the exit.
“Satisfied?” he asked Woodend, once they were on the outside again.
“You’d be surprised if I said yes, wouldn’t you?” the Chief Inspector asked. “Where’s the engine?”
Green pointed to the buttons and levers next to the pay box. “That’s it.”
Woodend leant over until his face was almost touching Green’s. “Maybe most of the bobbies you know are thick enough to swallow that, but I’m certainly not,” he said. “That’s the control panel, lad. Where’s the bloody thing that drives this lot?”
For a split second, Clem Green looked as if he might make a run for it, but the two constables were watching him closely, and it was obvious to him he wouldn’t get more than a few yards. Slowly, fatalistically, he turned round and led Woodend back into the tunnel.
It was not surprising that they had missed the door to the engine room the first time through. It was hidden by the figure of a decapitated monk, the severed head residing under one arm and grinning ghastlily from the power of a sixty-watt light bulb.
Green took hold of the catch and pulled, and both monk and door swung outwards, to reveal a fair-sized room.
Green stepped back. “It’s in there. You want to take a closer look?”
“I most certainly do,” Woodend said. “But if you don’t mind, I rather think I’d like to follow you.”
Green stepped inside, with Woodend at his heel. The engine was big, but it took up less than half the area inside the room. Not that the rest was empty. There was a camp bed, with filthy sheets and blankets on it – used no doubt when one of the Green brothers had to stay on guard duty – but most of the space, floor to ceiling, was crammed with cartons of cigarettes.
Woodend turned to look at Clem Green. “Heavy smoker, are you, son?” he asked genially.
Eighteen
Clem Green had not spoken a word since the discovery of the thousands of cartons of cigarettes, and now, back in Robbie Peterson’s office, with the two constables guarding the door, he still showed no inclination to open up.
“I think you might be able to help us find Robbie Peterson’s murderer,” Woodend said.
Green stared at a point on the wall two feet above the Chief Inspector’s head, but said nothing.
“Don’t you want his killer brought to justice?” Woodend asked.
“It’s no skin off my nose one way or the other,” Green muttered.
No, it probably wasn’t, Woodend thought. People like Clem Green had no idea of what society was or how it operated. To him, the law was not something designed to create order – it was an inconvenience which should be side-stepped as often as possible. “Tell me everything you know about Alex Conway,” he said.
Green’s eyes remained firmly fixed on the wall. “Never heard of him.”
“He may be goin’ under another name. He’s good at doing that. But he’s the man you did business with in Doncaster.”
“Didn’t do business with no man in Doncaster. Didn’t do business with no man anywhere.”
“It’s too late to play the innocent,” Woodend told him. “We found you with a room full of stolen fags, for God’s sake.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about them,” Green said.
Woodend sighed. The trouble with dealing with petty criminals like Clem Green was that they were often too stupid to appreciate their own position. In the face of the evidence, most men would be trying to negotiate the best deal they could for themselves. All Green was offering was sullen defiance.
“Look, there isn’t any way in the world you’re goin’ to walk away with this charge,” the Chief Inspector said. “You’ll be goin’ back to prison whatever else happens. The question is, how much porridge will you do? Now, if we arrest Alex Conway, we’ll charge him not only with the murder of Robbie Peterson, but also with bein’ the big wheel behind the smugglin’ racket. If we can’t find him, well, we’ll probably say it was entirely your operation. And that could have a significant effect on your sentence. So come on, Clem, tell me how I can collar him.”
“I’ve never heard of no Alan—”
“Alex.”
“. . . no Alex Conway. An’ somebody must have put them fags in the engine room since the last time I looked in there.”
Woodend shook his head despairingly. “I’d really advise you to think it over very carefully, lad. An’ soon. Because if we find Conway on our own, we won’t need your help any more. An’ if you haven’t helped us, there’s really no reason why we should help you.” He turned towards the constables standing in the doorway. “Take him down to Maltham Central,” he said. “Maybe a few hours in the cells’ll drum some sense into him.”
The Green brothers had been gone for only five minutes when Inspector Chatterton arrived with Harold Dawson. The journalist/photographer looked his normal seedy self, but now there was an added element – he was twitchy, too. The overall impression he gave, Woodend thought, was of one of those dirty old men who waited to talk to little boys outside public lavatories.
“It was good of you to come, Mr Dawson,” the Chief Inspector said.
“Good of me?” the reporter repeated. “I wasn’t given much choice, was I?”
Woodend turned his attention to Chatterton. “I do hope you’ve not been intimidatin’ Mr Dawson, Inspector,” he said, pulling a wry face. “I’m very keen on maintainin’ good relations with the press.”
For once Chatterton seemed to get the joke, and grinned. “All I did was suggest that if he didn’t want to come here, we could have our little talk down at the station, sir. He didn’t seem too keen on that idea, so here we are.”
“Take a seat, Mr Dawson,” Woodend said, pointing to the chair on the other side of the desk.
“I’d prefer to stand,” the journalist replied.
“Oh, for goodness sake, take the weight off your feet,” Woodend said exasperatedly. “It’s making me tired just looking at you.”
Unwillingly, Dawson sat.
“Strictly speakin’, this matter is none of my affair, but Mr Chatterton has been kind enough to allow me a few minutes with you,” Woodend said.
“What matter?” Dawson asked belligerently. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
Woodend reached into the drawer and produced several bulky brown envelopes. He place them on the desk and divided them into two piles, a large one and a small one.
“Pornographic photographs,” he said, indicating the larger pile. “Nasty, filthy muck, but very well done. The work of a professional, I would say. A professional who works locally. And how do I know that he works locally? Because Mr Chatterton here recognises the woman who’s the star of most of the pictures. Isn’t that right, Inspector?”
“Down at the station, we call her Ten-bob Mary,” Chatterton confirmed. “Been on the game in Maltham for years.”
Woodend pulled one of the photographs out of an envelope and held it up for Dawson to see. “She must have rubber bones to be able to do that,” he said.
“What’s all this got to do with me?” Dawson asked.
“Oh, that’s easy to answer,” Woodend said. “You’re the photographer, and Robbie Peterson, that well-known art lover, was the distributor.”
“I never—”
“Shut up!” Woodend said loudly. “I haven’t finished yet. This lot,” he
indicated the smaller pile of envelopes, “is even more interestin’.”
He removed a photograph and laid it in front of Dawson. It was not particularly hot in the office, but he noticed that tiny droplets of sweat were forming on the photographer’s brow.
“Now the quality’s not as good as the ones in the other batch,” Woodend said, “but considerin’ the conditions you were workin’ under, it’s still not bad.”
Dawson’s eyes were fixed firmly on the wall, just as Clem Green’s had been earlier.
“Why don’t you look at the picture, Mr Dawson?” Woodend suggested.
“I don’t want to,” Dawson muttered.
“Look at it!” Woodend snapped, in a voice that startled even Inspector Chatterton.
Dawson reluctantly picked up the glossy photograph.
“What can you tell me about it?” Woodend asked.
“It’s a picture of a copse of trees.”
“Accordin’ to Mrs Clough, it’s called Sutton’s Copse,” Woodend said. “It’s just beyond the caravan site, an’ it’s a favourite spot for courtin’ couples. Now you’re the expert, Mr Dawson. Perhaps you could help me out here. What time of day would you say this picture was taken at?”
“From the shading, I’d guess it was taken in early evening,” Dawson said reluctantly.
“Time of year?”
“Is this necessary?” Dawson protested.
“Time of year?” Woodend repeated.
“The trees are in full leaf, so it’s probably late spring or early summer.”
“Can you see anythin’ else apart from the trees in the picture?”
“Two figures. It’s impossible to say whether they’re men or women, but they seem to be bending down.”
Woodend handed several more photographs across to Dawson. As the series progressed, the photographer got closer and closer to his subjects. For the final one, he couldn’t have been more than a few feet away. It was a side-on view. It was not a good composition – there were too many blurred trees – but the centre of the picture was well in focus.
Murder at Swann's Lake Page 19