by Jack Higgins
“You should read the papers more often. They aren’t hanging murderers this season.”
“What a shame. No romance in anything these days, is there?”
Joanna pulled him round to face her. “Can’t you be serious for once? You’re in real trouble. What on earth possessed you to bring that girl back here?”
“So you know about that, do you?”
“Miller told us, but I’d still like to hear about it from you,” Morgan said. “After all, I am your lawyer.”
“And that’s a damned sinister way of putting it for a start.”
The door bell rang sharply. In the silence that followed, Faulkner grinned. “Someone I’ve been expecting. Excuse me a moment.”
When Miller left the judo centre he was feeling strangely elated. At the best of times police work is eighty per cent instinct—a special faculty that comes from years of handling every kind of trouble. In this present case his intuition told him that Faulkner had something to hide, whatever Mallory’s opinion might be. The real difficulty was going to be in digging it out.
He sat in the car for a while, smoking a cigarette and thinking about it. Faulkner was a highly intelligent man and something of a natural actor. He enjoyed putting on a show and being at the centre of things. His weakness obviously lay in his disposition to sudden, irrational violence, to a complete emotional turnabout during which he lost all control or at least that’s what his past history seemed to indicate. If only he could be pushed over the edge…
Miller was filled with a kind of restless excitement at the prospect of the encounter to come and that was no good at all. He parked the car beside the corner gate of Jubilee Park, buttoned his trenchcoat up to the chin and went for a walk.
He didn’t mind the heavy rain—rather liked it, in fact. It somehow seemed to hold him safe in a small private world in which he was free to think without distraction. He walked aimlessly for twenty minutes or so, turning from one path to another, not really seeing very much, his mind concentrated on one thing.
If he had been a little more alert he would have noticed the figure of a man disappearing fast round the side of the old folks’ shelter as he approached, but he didn’t and the Gunner watched him go, heart in mouth, from behind a rhododendron bush.
When Miller walked in to the flat and found Joanna Hartmann and Morgan standing by the fire he wasn’t in the least put out for their presence suited him very well indeed.
He smiled and nodded to the woman as he unbuttoned his damp raincoat. “We seem to have seen rather a lot of each other during the past twenty-four hours.”
“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be here?” she demanded coldly.
“Good heavens no. I’ve just got one or two loose ends to tie up with Mr. Faulkner. Shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”
“I understand you’ve already asked him a great many questions,” Morgan said, “and now you intend to ask some more. I think we have a right to know where we stand in this matter.”
“Are you asking me as his legal representative?”
“Naturally.”
“Quite unnecessary, I assure you.” Miller lied smoothly. “I’m simply asking him to help me with my enquiries, that’s all. He isn’t the only one involved.”
“I’m happy to hear it.”
“Shut up, Jack, there’s a good chap,” Faulkner cut in. “If you’ve anything to say to me, then get on with it, Miller. The sooner this damned thing is cleared up, the sooner I can get back to work.”
“Fair enough.” Miller moved towards the statues. “In a way we have a parallel problem. I understand you started five weeks ago with one figure. In a manner of speaking, so did I.”
“A major difference if I might point it out,” Faulkner said. “You now have five while I only have four.”
“But you were thinking of adding a fifth, weren’t you?”
“Which is why I paid Grace Packard to pose for me, but it didn’t work.” Faulkner shook his head. “No, the damned thing is going to be cast as you see it now for good or ill.”
“I see.” Miller turned from the statues briskly. “One or two more questions if you don’t mind. Perhaps you’d rather I put them to you in private.”
“I’ve nothing to hide.”
“As you like. I’d just like to go over things again briefly. Mr. Morgan called for you about eight?”
“That’s right.”
“What were you doing?”
“Sleeping. I’d worked non-stop on the fourth figure in the group for something like thirty hours. When it was finished I took the telephone off the hook and lay on the bed.”
“And you were awakened by Mr. Morgan?”
“That’s it.”
“And then went to The King’s Arms where you met Grace Packard? You’re quite positive you hadn’t met her previously?”
“What are you trying to suggest?” Joanna interrupted angrily.
“You don’t need to answer that, Bruno,” Morgan said.
“What in the hell are you both trying to do…hang me? Why shouldn’t I answer it? I’ve got nothing to hide. I should think Harry Meadows, the landlord, would be the best proof of that. As I recall, I had to ask him who she was. If you must know I thought she was on the game. I wasn’t looking forward to the party and I thought she might liven things up.”
“And you met her boy friend on the way out?”
“That’s it. He took a swing at me so I had to put him on his back.”
“Rather neatly according to the landlord. What did you use…judo?”
“Aikido.”
“I understand there was also some trouble at the party with Mr. Marlowe?”
Faulkner shrugged. “I wouldn’t have called it trouble exactly. Frank isn’t the physical type.”
“But you are—or so it would seem?”
“What are you trying to prove?” Joanna demanded, moving to Faulkner’s side.
“Just trying to get at the facts,” Miller said.
Morgan moved forward a step. “I’d say you were aiming at rather more than that. You don’t have to put up with this, Bruno.”
“Oh, but I do.” Faulkner grinned. “It’s beginning to get rather interesting. All right, Miller, I’ve an uncontrollable temper, I’m egotistical, aggressive and when people annoy me I tend to hit them. They even sent me to prison for it once. Common assault—the respectable kind, by the way, not the nasty sexual variety.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Somehow I thought you might be.”
“You brought the girl back here to pose for you and nothing else?”
“You know when she got here, you know when she left. There wasn’t time for anything else.”
“Can you remember what you talked about?”
“There wasn’t much time for conversation either. I told her to strip and get up on the platform. Then I saw to the fire and poured myself a drink. As soon as she got up there I knew it was no good. I told her to get dressed and gave her a ten-pound note.”
“There was no sign of it in her handbag.”
“She slipped it into her stocking top. Made a crack about it being the safest place.”
“It was nowhere on her person and she’s been examined thoroughly.”
“All right, so the murderer took it.”
Miller decided to keep the information that the girl had had intercourse just before her death to himself for a moment. “There was no question of any sexual assault so how would the murderer have known where it was?”
There was a heavy silence. He allowed it to hang there for a moment and continued, “You’re quite sure that you and the girl didn’t have an argument before she left?”
Faulkner laughed harshly. “If you mean did I blow my top, break her neck with one devastating karate chop and carry her down the back stairs into the night because she refused my wicked way with her, no. If I’d wanted her to stay the night she’d have stayed and not for any ten quid either. She came cheaper than t
hat or I miss my guess.”
“I understand she was found in Dob Court, Sergeant?” Morgan said.
“That’s right.”
“And are you seriously suggesting that Mr. Faulkner killed the girl here, carted her downstairs and carried her all the way because that’s what he would have to have done. I think I should point out that he doesn’t own a car.”
“They took my licence away last year,” Faulkner admitted amiably. “Driving under the influence.”
“But you did go out after the girl left?”
“To the coffee stall in Regent Square.” Faulkner made no attempt to deny it. “I even said hello to the local bobby. I often do. No class barriers for me.”
“He’s already told us that. It was only five or ten minutes later that he found Grace Packard’s body. You left Joanna’s gloves on the counter. The proprietor asked me to pass them on.”
Miller produced the black and white gloves and handed them to Joanna Hartmann who frowned in puzzlement. “But these aren’t mine.”
“They’re Grace Packard’s,” Faulkner said. “I pulled them out of my pocket when I was looking for some change, as you very well know, Miller. I must have left them on the counter.”
“The man at the coffee stall confirms that. Only one difference. Apparently when he commented on them, you said they belonged to Joanna.”
Joanna Hartmann looked shocked, but Faulkner seemed quite unperturbed. “He knows Joanna well. We’ve been there together often. I’d hardly be likely to tell him they belonged to another woman, would I? As I told you earlier, it was none of his business, anyway.”
“That seems reasonable enough surely,” Joanna said.
Miller looked at her gravely. “Does it?”
She seemed genuinely puzzled. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?”
Morgan had been listening to everything, a frown of concentration on his face and now he said quickly, “Just a minute. There’s something more here, isn’t there?”
“There could be.”
For the first time Faulkner seemed to have had enough. The urbane mask slipped heavily and he said sharply, “I’m beginning to get rather bored with all this. Is this or is it not another Rainlover murder?”
Miller didn’t even hesitate. “It certainly has all the hallmarks.”
“Then that settles it,” Morgan said. “You surely can’t be suggesting that Mr. Faulkner killed the other four as well?”
“I couldn’t have done the previous one for a start,” Faulkner said. “I just wasn’t available.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Easily. There were three statues up there two days ago. Now there are four. Believe me, I was occupied. When Jack called for me last night I hadn’t been out of the flat since Thursday.”
“You still haven’t answered my question, Sergeant,” Morgan said. “The gloves…you were getting at something else, weren’t you?”
“In killings of this kind there are always certain details not released to the Press,” Miller said. “Sometimes because they are too unpleasant, but more often because public knowledge of them might prejudice police enquiries.”
He was on a course now which might well lead to disaster, he knew that, and if anything went wrong there would be no one to help him, no one to back him up. Mallory would be the first to reach for the axe, but he had gone too far to draw back now.
“This type of compulsive killer is a prisoner of his own sickness. He not only has the compulsion to kill again. He can no more alter his method than stop breathing and that’s what always proves his undoing.”
“Fascinating,” Faulkner said. “Let’s see now, Jack the Ripper always chose a prostitute and performed a surgical operation. The Boston Strangler raped them first then choked them with a nylon stocking. What about the Rainlover?”
“No pattern where the women themselves are concerned. The eldest was fifty and Grace Packard was the youngest. No sexual assault, no perversions. Everything neat and tidy. Always the neck broken cleanly from the rear. A man who knows what he’s doing.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but you don’t need to be a karate expert to break a woman’s neck from the rear. One good rabbit punch is all it takes.”
“Possibly, but the Rainlover has one other trademark. He always takes something personal from his victims.”
“A kind of memento mori? Now that is interesting.”
“Anything special?” Morgan asked.
“In the first case it was a handbag, then a headscarf, a nylon stocking and a shoe.”
“And in Grace Packard’s case a pair of gloves?” Faulkner suggested. “Then tell me this, Miller? If I was content with one shoe and one stocking previously why should it suddenly be necessary for me to take two gloves? A break in the pattern, surely?”
“A good point,” Miller admitted.
“Here’s another,” Joanna said. “What about the ten-pound note? Doesn’t that make two items missing?”
“I’m afraid we only have Mr. Faulkner’s word that it existed at all.”
There was a heavy silence. For the first time Faulkner looked serious—really serious. Morgan couldn’t think of anything to say and Joanna Hartmann was just plain frightened.
Miller saw it as the psychological moment to withdraw for a little while and smiled pleasantly. “I’d better get in touch with Headquarters, just to see how things are getting on at that end.”
Faulkner tried to look nonchalant and waved towards the telephone. “Help yourself.”
“That’s all right. I can use the car radio. I’ll be back in five minutes. I’m sure you could all use the break.”
He went out quickly, closing the door softly behind him.
Faulkner was the first to break the silence with a short laugh that echoed back to him, hollow and strained. “Well, now, it doesn’t look too good, does it?”
17
Harold Phillips was hot and uncomfortable. The Interrogation Room was full of cigarette smoke and it was beginning to make his eyes hurt. He’d already had one lengthy session with Chief Superintendent Mallory and he hadn’t liked it. He glanced furtively across the room at the stony-faced constable standing beside the door.
He moistened his lips. “How much longer then?”
“That’s up to Mr. Mallory, sir,” the constable replied.
The door opened and Mallory returned, Brady following him. “Did they get you a cup of tea?” the Superintendent asked.
“No, they didn’t,” Harold answered in an aggrieved tone.
“That’s not good enough—not good enough at all.” He turned to the constable. “Fetch a cup of tea from the canteen on the double for Mr. Phillips.”
He turned, smiling amiably and sat at the table. He opened a file and glanced at it quickly as he started to fill his pipe. “Let’s just look at this again.”
In the silence which followed the only sound was the clock ticking on the wall and the dull rumble of thunder somewhere far off in the distance.
“Sounds like more rain then,” Harold commented.
Mallory looked up. His face was like stone, the eyes dark and full of menace. He said sharply and angrily, “I’m afraid you haven’t been telling the truth, young man. You’ve been wasting my time.”
The contrast between this and his earlier politeness was quite shattering and Harold started to shake involuntarily. “I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered. “I’ve told you everything I can remember.”
“Tell him the truth, son,” Brady put in, worried and anxious. “It’ll go better with you in the long run.”
“But I am telling him the bleeding truth,” Harold cried. “What else does he want—blood? Here, I’m not having any more of this. I want to see a lawyer.”
“Lie number one,” Mallory said remorselessly. “You told us that you didn’t know the name of the man you’d had the argument with at The King’s Arms. The man who went off with Grace Packard.”
“That’s right.”<
br />
“The landlord remembers differently. He says that when you came back to the pub to take him up on his offer of a drink on the house, you already knew the name of the person concerned. What you’d really come back for was his address only the landlord wouldn’t play.”
“It’s a lie,” Harold said. “There isn’t a word of truth in it.”
“He’s ready to repeat his statement under oath in the box,” Brady said.
Mallory carried on as if he hadn’t heard. “You told us that you were home by half-nine, that you took your mother a cup of tea and then went to bed. Do you still stick to that story?”
“You ask her—she’ll tell you. Go on, just ask her.”
“We happen to know that your mother is a very sick woman and in severe pain most of the time. The pills the doctor gave to make her sleep needed to be much stronger than usual. Her dosage was two. We can prove she took three yesterday. Medical evidence would indicate that it would be most unlikely that you would have been able to waken her at the time you state.”
“You can’t prove that.” Harold sounded genuinely indignant.
“Possibly not,” Mallory admitted candidly, “but it won’t look good, will it?”
“So what. You need evidence in a court of law—real evidence. Everybody knows that.”
“Oh, we can supply some of that as well if you insist. You told us that after leaving The King’s Arms you didn’t see Grace Packard again, that you walked round the streets for a while, had a coffee at the station buffet and went home, arriving at half-nine.”
“That’s right.”
“But you found time for something else, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You had intercourse with someone.”
Harold was momentarily stunned. When he spoke again he was obviously badly shaken. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I wouldn’t try lying again if I were you. You asked for evidence, real evidence. I’ve got some for you. For the past couple of hours your trousers, the trousers you were wearing yesterday have been the subject of chemical tests in our laboratory. They haven’t finished yet by any means, but I’ve just had a preliminary report that indicates beyond any shadow of a doubt that you were with a woman last night.”