A triumphant sneer replaced the look of mild apprehension on Hopgood’s face.
“With respect, sir, the trouble with bobbies like you – bobbies who’ve left the sharp edge of policing very far behind them – is that you forget what things are like in the real world,” he said. “You’ll get nothing out of a hard case like Johnson by holding his hand, and offering him a cup of tea. Firmness is the only language his kind understand.”
It would serve him right if he was left to stew in his own juice, Woodend thought, but when all was said and done, the man was a colleague, and it was perhaps worth making one more effort to show him the error of his ways.
“Why don’t you let Johnson go?” he suggested. “You’ll never be able to pin the attack on Jack Towers on him, even if he did it – an’ I’m almost sure that he didn’t.”
“He’ll crack,” Hopgood said stubbornly. “Sooner or later, he’ll crack. They all do. And now, if you don’t have any more business here, sir, I’ll escort you to the door.”
They walked in chilly silence down the long corridor which led to the lobby. From beyond the door at the end of the corridor there was suddenly the sound of loud voices. Inspector Hopgood tut-tutted disapprovingly, but seemed in no particular hurry to find out what was going on.
They entered the lobby and saw the cause of the disturbance for themselves. Two uniformed constables were struggling to restrain a man in a smart blue suit who seemed to be on the verge of hysteria.
“This is outrageous!” the man screamed, as he fought to free himself from the policemen’s grip. “I’m not some kind of common criminal! I’m a physician, for God’s sake!”
“I don’t give a toss what you do for a livin’, sunshine,” one of the constables grunted as he twisted the prisoner’s arm firmly behind his back. “You’ve been arrested an’ charged, all in accordance with the law, an’ you’d save us all a lot of trouble if you’d come quietly.”
Suddenly, the prisoner stopped resisting – perhaps because he finally realised how undignified he must look, perhaps because he saw the pointlessness of struggling any longer. The two officers, still keeping a firm grip, led him, unprotesting, towards the custody cells.
“He really is a doctor, you know,” Woodend said. “His name’s Atkinson, an’ he works at the University Hospital. You probably saw him yourself. Last night. When you went to the hospital without rememberin’ to ring me first.”
“We get all sorts in here,” Hopgood replied, indifferently. “Anyway, it’s nothin’ to do with me.”
You’ve no curiosity, lad, Woodend thought – an’ without curiosity you’ll never make a really good bobby.
They had reached the main desk. A white-haired sergeant sat behind it, writing in a ledger.
“That feller they’ve just brought in? What’s he charged with?” Woodend asked.
The sergeant looked up from his work.
“Him?” he said in disgust. “One of our lads in plain clothes caught him solicitin’ outside the public lavatories in St John’s Gardens. Bloody queers – I bloody hate them.”
“A homosexual, is he?” Woodend mused. “An’ not a pink handbag or a powder puff in sight. Well, it only goes to show – you never can tell just by lookin’ at them, can you?”
“When he goes to court, he’ll probably get no more than a six-month sentence,” the desk sergeant growled. “As if that’ll do any good! In my opinion, if the courts are too squeamish to hang ’em, they should at least lock ’em up an’ throw away the key.”
“Tolerance has always been a quality I’ve admired in a man,” Woodend said mildly.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, I think you should certain beg somebody’s,” Woodend told him.
Hopgood coughed. “If there’s nothing more, I’ll see you to the door, Mr Woodend.”
He’s like a pub landlord at closin’ time, Woodend thought, with mild amusement. He’s got to show a certain amount of civility, but he just can’t wait to get me off the premises.
The inspector held the door open, and Woodend stepped out on to the street. It had been cloudy when he’d entered the police station, but now the sun was shining brightly again, and the people walking past seemed to have developed an optimistic spring in their steps.
Woodend turned round. Inspector Hopgood was still standing there, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure that the troublesome bobby from London was actually leaving.
“I really would let Rick Johnson go if I was you,” Woodend told Hopgood, knowing, as he spoke, that he was probably wasting his time. “He had nothing to do with the attack on Jack Towers. I guarantee it.”
“You sound a lot more sure of yourself than you did a few minutes back,” Hopgood said.
“I am.”
“In that case, I suppose you imagine that you know who did attack him, as well.”
“No, I don’t,” Woodend admitted. “That’s something we’ll probably never know. But I do think I know why he was attacked.”
Mike Finn’s mother, a string shopping bag on her arm, closed the royal-blue front door behind and set off down the street. Finally! Steve Walker, puffing nervously on a Woodbine, waited until she’d turned the corner, then he threw the cigarette away and made his move.
He sprinted down the alley which ran at the back of the houses, counting off the numbers until he reached the one he’d just watched the woman leave. He lifted the latch on the back gate and pushed. The door gave a little, but not much, and he realised that the bloody thing was bolted from the inside.
“Shit!” he said, louder than he had intended.
A locked gate just about doubled his chances of getting caught, he thought, but there nothing else for it – he was going to have to go over the wall.
He stepped back and took a running jump. His hands connected with the crumbling brickwork on the top of the wall, and he pulled himself up and over, landing heavily next to the outside lavatory. He paused there for a moment – partly to listen for anyone raising the alarm, partly to let his galloping heart slow down. He had never done anything like this before, and it was turning out to be harder – and far more frightening – than he’d ever imagined.
He moved quickly past the coal shed to the back door. Once there, he pulled the jemmy out of his jacket and inserted it between the door and the jamb. When he’d planned the job, he’d pictured the door flying open immediately, but all his initial efforts succeeded in doing was splintering the wood.
Sweat was dripping down the back of his neck. He forced himself to pull the jemmy free, and insert it closer to the keyhole. He levered again, and the door groaned. He tried once more, and felt the lock give.
He was in the back kitchen now, but what he was looking for wouldn’t be there.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be in the house at all, he told himself.
It was more than possible, now he thought about it, that Mike Finn had realised how incriminating it would be, and had got rid of it – which meant he was putting himself through all this gut-wrenching terror for nothing.
Now wasn’t the time for thinking, his mind screamed. Now was the time for action.
He made his way into the hallway and up the stairs. There were three bedroom doors, but only one them had a poster of the Knockouts pinned to it. He turned the handle and stepped inside.
The room was a mess. Clothes lay strewn all over the floor, bits of old amplifiers were spread out haphazardly on the table. But it was the corner of the room which caught Steve Walker’s attention, because lying there, amid a pile of other miscellaneous junk, was what he’d come for.
He picked up his precious trophies and rushed downstairs again. Once in the hall, he was faced with two choices. It would be quicker to leave through the front door – and anything which was quicker had to be very tempting – but there was more chance of being spotted by some passer-by. Better, then, to take a little while longer and leave, as he had arrived, through the back gate.
He retraced his steps
through the back kitchen and across the yard past the coal shed and lavvy. No need to climb over the wall this time. All he had to do was draw back the bolt. He did, but before he had time to open the door, it swung open of its own accord.
A volcano of nausea erupted in Steve Walker’s stomach as he realised that the gate had not swung, it had been pushed – and that the pushing had been done by the man in a blue serge uniform who was standing in the alley.
“Looks like that shop keeper was right,” the constable said. “You were up to no good, weren’t you, son?”
Steve Walker glanced longingly over his shoulder at the open back door. “Listen . . .” he said.
“No, you listen,” the constable said commandingly. “You’re in a lot of trouble, kid. It’s a very serious charge, breakin’ and enterin’. An’ if I was you, I wouldn’t make things worse for myself by tryin’ to make a run for it, because there’s another officer posted outside the front door.”
Steve bowed his head, acknowledging defeat. “I’ll come quietly,” he promised. “But I’ve got to speak to Chief Inspector Woodend right away.”
“Got to, have you?” the constable asked. “Well, we’ll see about that when we’re back at the station.”
The Grapes had only just opened its door for business again, so Woodend was not more than a third of the way down his first pint of bitter when Bob Rutter walked into the bar.
Rutter sat down opposite his boss. “First the good news,” he said. “Eddie Barnes did have a girlfriend.”
“You’re sure of that?”
The sergeant nodded. “I’ve turned up three witnesses – a waitress in a coffee bar where they used to go, the landlord of a pub who wouldn’t serve them, and a cinema usherette who says she noticed them because they sat through two complete showings of Spartacus.”
“So what’s the bad news?” Woodend asked.
“None of them could give me anything like a clear description of her, so while we now know she does exist, we’re no closer to finding her than we ever were.”
“Well, we’ve at least made some progress anyway,” Woodend said encouragingly.
“But not enough,” the sergeant countered. “I’ll grab a bite to eat, then hit the streets again. There’s usually a different crowd of people around at night to the ones who are out in the day, so who knows, I might just get lucky.”
But he didn’t sound very hopeful, Woodend thought. “There’s one thing that’s not clear to me,” he said.
“And what’s that, sir?”
“You say the landlord you talked to barred them from his pub. But from all we’ve learned about Eddie Barnes, he just doesn’t seem like the kind of lad who’d cause enough trouble to get himself barred.”
“That was my first thought as well,” Rutter said, “but it turns out his getting barred had nothing to do with causing trouble. The landlord just decided that the girl was too young to serve. Come to think of it, that’s the one thing they all said about her – that she was very, very young.”
Woodend slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I can be so bloody stupid sometimes,” he said.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“You said your witnesses weren’t able to give you much of a description, but did any of them happen to notice the colour of this girl’s hair?”
“The waitress and the landlord did.”
“An’ did they describe it as dark brown – almost black?”
“Yes,” Rutter gasped. “As a matter of fact, they did. How on earth did you know that?”
“Oh, I’m a dab-hand at spottin’ the bloody obvious, if it’s held right under my nose,” Woodend said.
Sixteen
In less than two hours, the Cellar Club would be full of teenagers, gyrating to the latest records which the stewards who worked on the transatlantic liners had brought back hot from the United States, but for the moment Woodend and Mrs Pollard had the place to themselves.
Woodend, standing on one side of the bar counter, was smoking a Capstan Full Strength with all the concentration of a man who took his regular shot of nicotine very seriously indeed. The club owner was sitting on a tall stool at the other side and was apparently going through her accounts ledgers. But from the number of times she stopped to glance up at the policeman, it was clear that her mind was not really on the job in hand.
It was the woman who finally broke the silence. “I realise that bein’ deliberately mysterious is part of your charm,” she said, “but I really would appreciate it if you’d tell me what all this is about.”
Woodend chuckled. “Do you know, there’s a lot of people – includin’ some young, green detectives – who think that solvin’ a murder is like doin’ a jigsaw puzzle?” he said.
“A jigsaw puzzle?”
“That’s right. But it’s much more complicated than that. When you’re startin’ out in my game, you see all the pieces of the puzzle lyin’ on the table in front of you, an’ you assume that all you have to do is slot them together. But you soon find out you’re wrong – at least, I did – because what you learn is that although all the bits of your puzzle are there, there’s also bits of other puzzles mixed in with them. An’ sometimes, in order to make sure that all you’ve got is the pieces which will help you make the big picture you’re interested in, it’s necessary to put some of the smaller puzzles together first.”
“Well, thanks for that,” Mrs Pollard said. “Now that you’ve explained it to me, it’s as clear as mud.”
“Exercise a bit of patience, an’ it should soon be as clear as a newly polished window,” Woodend promised her.
There was a sound of two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. One was heavy and masculine, the other had the click-click quality of a woman wearing high heels.
“Who the hell’s that?” Mrs Pollard asked.
“That,” Woodend replied, “is the young lady who’s goin’ to help us find out which pieces belong where.”
The man and woman had reached the bottom of the stairs, and now Mrs Pollard could see that they were Bob Rutter and Lucy Johnson.
“You know all about it, don’t you?” the club owner said to Woodend.
“Well, let’s just say that I’ve got a pretty fair idea,” the chief inspector told her.
Lucy Johnson advanced across the room, stopping a few feet from them.
“Why did you tell him to bring me here?” she asked, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at Rutter. “Is this anythin’ to with Rick?”
“In a way,” Woodend said. “Your husband doesn’t treat you very well, does he, Mrs Johnson?”
“You’ve got it all wrong. He’s—”
“In fact, he’s a proper domestic tyrant, if the truth be told. Even knocks you about from time to time, doesn’t he?”
Lucy Johnson looked down at the brick floor. “He does have a bit of a temper on him,” she admitted.
“You’d never have got married to him if you hadn’t been pregnant, would you?”
Lucy Johnson looked to Alice Pollard for guidance, and when the older woman nodded her head, as if to say she should tell the truth, she said, “No, I wouldn’t have. To be honest, I was just about to break it off with him when I realised I’d missed my period.”
“So when another a man – a much gentler man – started to pay attention to you, you were naturally flattered. Then it got to be more than that, an’ you actually fell in love with him.”
“We didn’t do anythin’ we shouldn’t have done,” Lucy Johnson said passionately. “All we used to do was go to places where nobody knew us, an’ sit around an’ talk.”
“Like the back seats in the cinema?” Woodend suggested. “Did you enjoy Spartacus, Mrs Johnson? He’s a very good actor, that Kirk Douglas, isn’t he? Well worth sittin’ through the film twice!”
The girl’s jaw dropped. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “Maybe we did go in for a bit of kissin’ and cuddlin’– but it was never any more than that. Eddie was very insisten
t about it. He said that it wouldn’t be right to go all the way – not until I’d divorced Rick an’ married him.”
“So it was almost innocent,” Woodend said. “But your husband was furious when he found out about it, wasn’t he? That’s why he attacked Eddie Barnes in the pub. An’ the reason Eddie didn’t press charges when he had the chance was because he was feelin’ guilty.”
“Yes,” the girl said.
“Which, of course, explains why Rick likes to have you by his side wherever he is – because now he’s found out what was goin’ on, he doesn’t trust you anymore.” Woodend lit a fresh Capstan Full Strength. “Now think very carefully about these next few questions, Mrs Johnson. You an’ Rick were the last two people to leave the club the night before Eddie Barnes died, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did Rick go into the dressin’ room at any point – even for just a few seconds?”
“No,” Lucy Johnson said firmly.
“You know what you’re tellin’ me by sayin’ that, don’t you?” Woodend asked. “You’re tellin’ me that your husband, Rick, couldn’t possibly have murdered your boyfriend, Eddie.”
The girl looked the chief inspector straight in the eyes. “I still love Eddie even though he’s dead,” she said, “an’ if my husband had killed him, I’d want him to pay for it. But he didn’t. Rick kept me close to him all evenin’, and he never once went anywhere near that dressin’ room.”
“One more question,” Woodend said. “More for curiosity than for anythin’ else. It’s about the feller who did such a good job of beatin’ your husband up.” He closed his eyes, and pictured the man who he’d seen arguing with Rick Johnson outside the Cellar Club’s entrance. “Am I right – he had brown hair, was aged around twenty-three or twenty-four an’ couldn’t have stood much more than five foot six in his stockinged feet?”
“Yes, you’re right,” Lucy Johnson said.
“An’ who might he have been?”
“Martin, my big brother,” Lucy said. “He’d warned Rick a couple of times that if he knocked me about any more, he’d give him a seein’ to. An’ that’s exactly what he did.”
Death of a Cave Dweller Page 18