Dead Letter Day (Detective Johnny Inch series Book 3)

by J F Straker

  Had Alice viewed the letter seriously? If so, she might have taken it with her when she left the house that morning, either because she was reluctant to leave it behind, or because she wished to consult her boyfriend. The latter reason seemed unlikely. According to Polly, Obi’s letter had arrived about five days ago. Alice should have got hers the same day. Would she have waited so long before consulting her boyfriend? But suppose she hadn’t viewed it seriously? Suppose that, like Bagiotti, she had assumed it to be a hoax and had torn it up? Even then she might remember the contents, if not the exact phrasing. In any case, therefore, it was essential that Alice should be found. And found before the police, or whoever else was interested, should find her.

  He did not see Bagiotti as a warm lead. But he was the only lead that offered, and Johnny tried him the next morning. Bagiotti was out on a repair job, an assistant said, and Johnny had to kick his heels for an hour before the man returned.

  ‘What, you again?’ Bagiotti asked. ‘What is it this time?’

  Johnny told him as much as he considered necessary. He needed to contact Alice Slade, he said, but she was temporarily absent from home. He knew it was some years since she and Bagiotti had separated, but had Bagiotti any idea where she might be found? She was said to have a friend named Jack. But Jack who? Did Bagiotti know?

  Bagiotti shook his head. ‘It’s four years,’ he said. ‘Even before that she was screwing around. Did you know she was on the game?’

  ‘You told me she took up with some ponce.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He frowned. ‘What was his name, now? Morton? Martin? Something like that. Marston? Yes, that was it. Marston.’

  ‘Jack Marston?’ Johnny suggested.

  ‘Search me. I never met the bastard.’ He grinned. ‘Alice forgot to introduce us.’

  As before, Johnny tried the telephone directory. There were a great many Marstons listed, and twelve were living in or around the Islington area. It would take time to check them all. And how would he recognize the man if he saw him? Marston had only to deny all knowledge of Alice Slade — as he undoubtedly would if he knew of her husband’s letter and the manner of her friend’s death — and that would be that. There had to be a quicker and more effective way.

  Probing his mind for it, he thought of Whisper Pratt.

  Whisper was an old acquaintance. An ex-peterman (the ‘ex’ was Whisper’s claim, but Johnny doubted its accuracy), he looked younger than his fifty-odd years; time spent in prison had apparently rejuvenated rather than aged him. He was surprised to see Johnny. But he was a friendly, hospitable man, and quick to make a visitor welcome.

  ‘Come in, Mr Inch, come in! Nice to see you.’ He had a harsh, grating voice, as if his throat were permanently infected. ‘Long time no see, eh? How’ve you been?’

  Johnny said he had been well enough, thanks, and how had the world been treating Whisper? Not often enough, Whisper said, but he got by. He produced glasses and bottles from a cupboard, and poured the beer expertly. Watching Johnny drink, he said, ‘And how’s the Boozer, Mr Inch?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Johnny said. ‘Haven’t seen him in months.’ The Boozer was Detective Superintendent Sherrey, Johnny’s erstwhile boss at the Yard. ‘I’ve left the Force. Set up on my own. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.’

  ‘‘Smatter of fact, I had.’ Whisper wiped froth from his lips. He had delicate-looking fingers, long and tapering. ‘That’s what made me wonder. You being here, I mean. What’s it about, Mr Inch?’

  ‘I’m looking for a man named Marston,’ Johnny told him. ‘Possibly Jack Marston. I’m told he lives in these parts.’

  Whisper frowned. ‘In trouble, is he? Well, you know me, Mr Inch. I’m no snout.’

  ‘This isn’t a police matter,’ Johnny said. ‘And as far as I know Marston’s not in any trouble. He’s a ponce. Anyway, it’s not him I’m after, it’s his bird.’

  ‘Groovy, is she?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met her.’ ‘Groovy’ seemed an odd word for Whisper to use. ‘She may or may not know it, but she could be due for a quarter share in quite a sizable fortune. It’ll be tricky going, though. I’m aiming to help her.’

  Whisper nodded. ‘With a nice little cut for your pains, eh?’ Johnny shrugged noncommittally. Denial would have made Whisper suspicious. ‘Well, like I said, you know me, Mr Inch. I don’t go much on birds, specially when they’re on the bash. Come to that, I don’t go much on ponces neither. Will he be getting a cut too?’

  ‘That’s up to his bird. But not legally,’ Johnny finished his beer and waved away the proffered bottle. ‘How about it, Whisper? Think you can find them? There’s a handful in it.’

  ‘I’ll try, Mr Inch. How soon was you wanting to know?’

  ‘Soon. Sooner, if possible.’ Johnny wrote down his telephone number. ‘Ring me, will you? If I’m not there, leave the address with the girl.’

  ‘Could be this afternoon,’ Whisper said. ‘If I’m lucky.’

  ‘You be lucky,’ Johnny said.

  Before leaving he asked about Obi. Whisper remembered the bullion job he had once worked with the Slade brothers, he said — but Obadiah Bullock was little more than a name. It was a name he had not heard recently, which suggested Bullock was going straight. Did Mr Inch want to know? Johnny said he did. Whisper said he would ask around, Bullock and Marston both.

  He asked around to some purpose. Johnny had a late lunch with Nicodemus, and when they returned to the office Whisper had already telephoned. Jack Marston’s address, Jasmine said, was 12A, Mulberry Road. Mr Pratt was still working on the other matter, and would Mr Inch please remember the handful.

  ‘What did he mean by a handful?’ she asked.

  ‘A fiver, love. Did Miss Frazer ring? No? Get me the shop, will you?’

  She had been about to ring him, Polly said. She had news; was the dinner still on? Johnny said it was, and how about telling him the news? It would keep till the evening, she said, it was important but not urgent. She sounded excited. About Obi? Johnny probed. Tonight, she said. Wait until tonight.

  Johnny fixed a time and a place to meet, and rang off. ‘Women!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why do they have to be so bloody mysterious? Answer me that, Delilah.’

  Jasmine giggled. ‘I wouldn’t know, Mr Inch. I’m not mysterious, am I?’

  ‘No. But then you hardly qualify,’ Johnny said. ‘Not at sixteen plus.’

  Mulberry Road was a busy shopping street, and 12A was a maisonette above a hardware store. From the opposite pavement Johnny watched for a while, staring up at the windows above the roofs of passing traffic. When the lights changed and the traffic halted he followed a hurrying band of shoppers across the road and rang the bell of 12A. More than a minute passed while he waited. Then came the sound of bolts being withdrawn, and the rattle of a chain as the door opened a few inches. A woman’s face appeared in the gap.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Slade?’ Johnny asked. The woman nodded. ‘I wonder if I might have a word with you. It’s about your husband.’

  ‘My husband’s dead,’ she said.

  She had a thin, colourless voice in which Johnny thought to detect a note of tension. He said, ‘I know. I was with him shortly before he died. In Westleigh Hospital. He asked me to find out your address.’

  Dark eyes in a pale oval face studied him. ‘Why you?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know you, do I?’

  ‘No. But — look, do we have to talk on the doorstep? Can’t I come in for a minute? It’s about the letter he wrote you. You had a letter, didn’t you?’

  The face withdrew, the door closed slightly, the chain was unhooked. ‘All right,’ she said, opening the door wide. ‘You’d better come in.’

  She stood aside for him to enter. She was slightly the taller, and as he stepped into the narrow hallway he heard her catch her breath and saw her eyes widen. She was looking over his shoulder. He was turning to see what had startled her when something round and hard prodded into the small of his
back. Then he knew, and froze.

  ‘Inside!’ a voice behind him said curtly. ‘And watch it!’

  Johnny watched it. His body had tensed at the unexpected contact, but he was not particularly afraid. A gun-barrel in the back was a commonplace in fiction, but not in real life. Not in England, anyway. That made it seem unreal. It was happening, and it was happening to him. But it had a phoney atmosphere. He didn’t entirely believe it.

  The front door closed. The curt voice said, ‘Upstairs, Mrs Slade.’ The gun prodded Johnny forward. ‘You too.’

  He followed the woman up the stairs. Her skirt was ultra short, and even under strain he noticed her legs: they were slim and straight with narrow ankles. He could no longer feel the gun in his back, but he knew it was there. Don’t try anything, he cautioned himself; play it cool. Wait for the right moment. If it doesn’t come — well, who wants to be a hero?

  They went into the sitting room. It was expensively but flashily furnished, with plenty of black and white and chrome and glass. The walls, one a dark purple, the others green, were devoid of pictures. A huge ebony figure of a woman, with pendulous breasts and bulging belly, stood in one corner.

  ‘Sit down, Mrs Slade,’ the voice said. ‘The settee, please.’ Another prod from the gun. ‘Over there, you.’

  ‘Over there’ was a black leather armchair which swivelled on a triangle of chrome legs. Johnny sat. Now for the first time he could see the owner of the voice: a squat, stocky man, barrel-chested, with a lot of curly black hair and heavy brows and a weary-looking moustache. He wore a dark green anorak and green trousers, and in his left hand he held a short-barrelled revolver. Johnny recognized it as a three-eight Smith and Wesson. He had a vague notion that he had seen the man before, and tried to remember where. Memory failed to respond.

  ‘For crying out loud!’ he said angrily. He had been silent long enough, and silence bred submission. It was time to assert himself. ‘What’s all this about? Why the heavy melodrama?’

  ‘Shut up!’ The man moved from the doorway to stand beside the woman. His eyes on Johnny, he said, ‘This letter you had from your husband. Where is it?’

  She sat on the edge of the settee, leaning forward, hands clasped round her knees. For a woman approaching middle age she was over-painted and underdressed. Above the short skirt she wore a figure-hugging cardigan, with the top buttons undone to reveal the inner contours of her breasts. But she was still undeniably attractive, though the attraction was rather too blatant for Johnny’s taste; in her youth she could have been beautiful. He began to appreciate why Slade had had trouble with her. Slade hadn’t the necessary magnetism to hold a woman like Alice. Neither, Johnny suspected, had Bagiotti.

  Her dark eyes, emphasized by too much eye-shadow in an almost matt-white face, blinked fearfully. ‘I — I don’t understand,’ she faltered. ‘My husband’s dead.’

  ‘I know he’s dead,’ the man said. He spoke in clipped tones, with the hint of an accent that Johnny could not place. Welsh, was it? ‘It’s the letter I want, not your husband. Where is it?’

  Rocking slightly, she looked up at him. ‘I never had a letter,’ she said. ‘Not from him. I haven’t seen or heard of him in years.’

  He slapped her across the cheek with the back of his hand. Johnny gripped the arms of the chair and started to rise. The gun stopped him.

  ‘Watch it!’ the man said.

  He wouldn’t shoot, Johnny told himself. It wasn’t that sort of caper. Then he remembered Dolores Cash, and his confidence waned. He sank back in the chair.

  The man grabbed the woman’s hair, forcing back her head. There were the marks of his knuckles on her cheek, and her eyes were bright with moisture.

  ‘The letter,’ he snapped. ‘Get it.’ She cried out as he yanked sharply at the handful of hair. ‘And don’t let’s have any nonsense, eh?’

  She gave the briefest of nods — with his tight grip on her hair, more would have been painful — and almost reluctantly, it seemed to Johnny, he released her. She stood up and took a few tentative steps, as though testing her balance. She was crying freely now, the mascara-tinged tears leaving grey trails on her cheeks as they rolled slowly down.

  ‘It — it’s in the cupboard,’ she said, pointing.

  The cupboard wasn’t a cupboard, but a long chest under the window. She had to pass Johnny to reach it, and impulsively he put out a hand to stop her. The man was right behind her, and before Johnny had realized his intention a steel toe-cap crashed into his ankle. The agony was exquisite, it felt as if the bone had shattered. Rivers of pain streamed up his leg to engulf his body, and he slumped back in the chair.

  ‘Get on with it, woman,’ the man said.

  She moved forward, out of Johnny’s sight. The man stayed where he was. Johnny wanted to caress his ankle, to smooth out the pain, but his body had gone numb and he was unable to move. Rage and humiliation possessed him. He, Johnny Inch, ex-detective sergeant and one time middle-weight quarter-finalist in the A.B.A. championships, had sat inert while a woman was assaulted and terrorized into submission; he had suffered physical violence with no attempt at retaliation, he had cringed ignominiously into instant obedience. That the man carried a gun was small excuse; unarmed coppers regularly tackled gun-toting villains. Sometimes they were wounded, occasionally killed. But they didn’t hesitate to have a go.

  Life returned to his limbs, and he bent to massage the ankle, apprehensive lest the action should generate further violence. None materialized, and he stayed bent, staring at the man’s legs a couple of feet to his right, his anger so intense that had it not been for the confining arms of the chair he would have abandoned caution and flung himself at them. It was only when he noticed that the man’s feet were pointed at the window, suggesting that he was watching the woman, that he realized that this might, after all, be his opportunity. Rustling noises from the direction of the chest suggested that the woman was having difficulty in finding the letter, or perhaps she was feigning difficulty, playing for time. Time for what? Slowly, a fraction at a time because the spindle was stiff, he swivelled the chair to face the man’s legs, dreading that at any moment they would turn towards him and that the pistol would smack down on his bent head.

  He was almost ready when the lid of the chest closed with a thud. ‘Well?’ the man demanded. And then, ‘Right. Bring it here.’

  It was now or never. Johnny did not hesitate. But even as he propelled his body forward, seeking the tackle, the man moved. Only a step — but enough for Johnny’s outstretched arms to miss their target. He landed heavily on hands and knees, and before he could recover a foot caught him in the ribs and sent him sprawling.

  ‘Try that again, punk, and you’ll regret it.’ The man kicked him again. ‘Get back in the chair.’

  Johnny obeyed. He regretted it already; he had gained nothing but sore ribs to add to a sore ankle. A hand to his side, he watched the man open and read the letter the woman gave him. The envelope, he noticed, was similar to Obi’s.

  The man nodded at the woman, slipped the letter into his pocket, and turned to face Johnny. Johnny glared at him. He said bitterly, ‘Where were you dragged up, you creep? It’s bad form to read other people’s mail.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He laughed, and began to walk slowly round the chair. Johnny tried to use the swivel to watch him, but after half a turn it stuck. ‘It’s your turn now, punk. I want the letter the girl gave you in the pub, the one Slade wrote to Obi Bullock. Where is it?’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ Johnny told him.

  The man clipped him solidly on the ear from behind. ‘Don’t get fresh, punk. And don’t lie; that’s bad form too. We saw her give you the letter, so we know you’ve got it. Just hand it over, will you?’

  Johnny’s head sang from the blow. He tried to think. This wasn’t one of the two villains who had tangled with him at the Frazers’, and he did not look or sound like the ‘nice, polite gentleman’ who had visited Mrs Frazer earlier. So there were at least four of them in the
business, and presumably one of the four had followed Polly or himself to the Cricketer and had seen her hand him the letter. Was this the one? Was that why he looked familiar? A strange face in a pub? Whoever it was, he could not have seen Johnny give the letter back; that had been later, at the Circus. Hence the assumption that he still had it. Johnny found consolation in that, it absolved him from the agony of choice. Even if he ratted on the girl and told the truth the man would not believe him. He had no alternative but to sweat it out.

  ‘Time you had your ears syringed, creep,’ he said. Pride demanded a show of resistance. If it could not be physical it had to be vocal. ‘I said to get stuffed.’

  The man was still behind him. Johnny gripped the arms of the chair and tensed for the expected blow. When it came it was more violent than he had expected. The gunbarrel crashed against the base of his skull with such force that he was knocked forward. Pain swamped him. Faintly he heard the woman cry out. Then he slumped into unconsciousness.

  He was still in the chair when he recovered. His immediate sensation was of a damp chill at the back of his neck. When he opened his eyes he saw the woman bending over him. She looked anxious. He said weakly, ‘Where is he? Has he gone?’

  ‘Yes.’ Water dripped from the cloth in her hand. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m alive, anyway. That’s something.’

  ‘He searched your wallet.’ It lay on the floor. She picked it up and watched him examine it. ‘Is anything missing?’

  Johnny shrugged, and wished he hadn’t. ‘A few quid.’ He wondered if the woman had taken it. Not that it was important. But the man had been after Obi’s letter. Would he have bothered with the money? ‘You O.K.?’