Murder is Suspected (C.I.D. Room Book 10)

by Roderic Jeffries

  “You’d better sit behind the desk,” said Grant.

  Fusil understood that there was to be no privilege in rank. He went round the desk, put down the green folder he had been carrying, and sat. Grant sat in front of the desk.

  “I’ve received reports from the forensic lab, sir, and made a number of enquiries. I’ve drawn up a résumé of the evidence.” He picked out a sheet of paper from the folder. “I think it’ll be easiest if you read this now.” Fusil stood up and leaned forward to pass the paper across.

  Grant slowly and carefully read through the report. He brushed his moustache with the knuckle of his right forefinger. “This evidence surely tends to indicate my wife’s car?”

  “I would put it this way, sir. There is nothing in the evidence to say beyond argument that it was your wife’s car which was involved, nor by the same token is there anything to say it wasn’t. That is why I’ve asked to question you, your wife, and your son.”

  Grant placed the sheet of paper carefully down on the desk. He folded his arms across his chest.

  What in the hell, wondered Fusil, was going on in that mind? “Did you go out on the evening of Thursday, the twelfth of May?”

  “I was at home from six-thirty onwards.”

  “Do you know if your wife’s Fiat was taken out by anyone that evening?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “But surely…” Fusil stopped himself.

  “Well?”

  “Nothing, sir. As you can’t help me any further, I’ll have a word with your wife. Would you like to be present?”

  “I think it is better if you question her on her own.” Grant stood up. With shoulders squared, he strode out of the room.

  Fusil fiddled with a pencil which had been lying by the side of the blotter. It must be a shock, he thought, suddenly to discover that principles were not as inflexible as one had always supposed them to be.

  Diana entered the room and he stood. “Would you like to sit in that chair, Mrs Grant? I’ll be as brief as I can.”

  She sat. “All this reminds me of the childhood game of murder,” she said, with disdainful sarcasm.

  He smiled, hoping she’d expected him to be annoyed. “I believe your husband has explained to you why I’m here and why I need to ask certain questions?”

  “Very many times.”

  “Good. Then I don’t need to bother with the background. Do you remember the twelfth of May, a Thursday? It was the day before the car ran into the garage.”

  “I can obviously place it generally.”

  “Can you say whether you drove anywhere in your car that night?”

  “I can say quite definitely that I did not. I was feeling rather under the weather.”

  “As you know, there was a hit-and-run accident. I’m trying to trace the car involved.”

  "Despite what I’ve just said, do you wish to accuse me of having been driving that car?”

  “No. But presumably your car was on the road during the evening or your husband would never have bothered to ask me to check it out. Was your son out in it?”

  “He may have been, in the early part of the evening. But he was home by seven and stayed home for the rest of the night.”

  “Are you certain he was back by that time, Mrs Grant?”

  “I have just said so.”

  “Your car was taken to Titchbourne Garage because of damage to the nearside front. What happened?”

  “My son was driving into the garage on Friday morning. Unfortunately, he caught his heel on the torn mat and in consequence his toe went forward and jabbed the accelerator rather harshly. The car hit the side of the garage.”

  “A little bit clumsy. I’d have thought?”

  “I don’t remember asking for your opinion.” She stood up. “I’ve put up with answering your questions because my husband wished it. He did not ask me to listen to unnecessary and impertinent comments.” He watched her leave and wondered what it had been like to be attached to a regiment in which she was the colonel’s wife.

  There was a long wait before Duncan finally came into the study.

  Fusil, like the chief constable, disliked young men who wore excessively long hair, straggly beards, and T-shirts, but this dislike arose not because he believed such physical features denoted moral decay, rather because experience suggested such people were far too ready to assume that the world owed them a living. When he’d been young he’d had to work like hell for every opportunity which had come his way. But when he spoke to Duncan his tone of voice betrayed no hint of his feelings. “Thanks for coming along. I expect you know what all this is about?”

  “Sure,” said Duncan, as he slumped down in the chair. “My old man got a bee in his bonnet and it’s been buzzing loud enough to drive the rest of us crazy.”

  “I think he was right in asking me to check.”

  “Think how you like. It’s a free world if you’re white.”

  “Did you hear that the man on the bicycle was badly hurt?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Road accidents are part of life.”

  “Rather a nasty part for the person involved, wouldn’t you think?”

  “I try never to think.”

  “You don’t concern yourself with other people’s troubles?”

  “I’ve enough of my own… Look, I’m in a hurry. If you want to discuss the great big life outside, let’s do it some other time, huh?”

  “Fair enough. Then we’ll concentrate on the twelfth of May. Do you remember that day?”

  “Sure. It followed the eleventh.”

  “Do you remember the details of that day as experienced by you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Maybe something happened to impress itself on your mind?”

  “And maybe it didn’t.”

  “Let’s move more slowly. It was a Thursday.”

  “I’ve been wondering.”

  “And at just after ten-forty-five at night a man called Evans was knocked off his bike by a Fiat one two seven, hatchback, one stop light not working, registration letters PU M or N. The car didn’t stop.”

  Duncan reached down to his pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes. He took a long time about lighting one. Fusil produced his pipe and took a much longer time about filling the bowl with tobacco and tamping this down. After a while, Duncan began to fidget.

  Fusil finally struck a match and lit the pipe. “Were you driving that car?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Me? Don’t you understand anything? Mother told you the car wasn’t out that night.”

  “How d’you know what she’s just told me?”

  Duncan didn’t answer.

  “When there’s a collision there’s usually a transfer of traces — some paint was scraped off on to the bike. That paint matches paint taken from your mother’s Fiat. The nearside headlamp on the hit-and-run car was smashed by the collision, the Fiat was taken to Titchbourne Garage on the Friday to have the wing and bonnet repaired and the nearside lamp renewed.”

  “I drove into the side of the garage Friday morning.”

  “Wasn’t that rather careless? It’s a large garage.”

  “My foot caught on the torn mat and I inadvertently shoved down on the accelerator.”

  “That could have been a very convenient accident. I mean, if there’d already been some lesser damage which might have suggested an accident on the road. By giving the brickwork a good smack, the signs of the first contact were overlaid.”

  “Here, you’re right! Now there’s a smart idea.”

  “I can’t claim it’s an original one.”

  Duncan drew on the cigarette.

  “You are quite certain you weren’t out in the Fiat at ten-forty-five on the night of the twelfth of last month?”

  “Dead and buried certain.”

  “Then that covers everything. Thank you for your help.”

  Duncan could not hide his surprise. “You mean, that’s the lot?”

  Fusil puffed at his pipe b
efore saying: “What else should I ask you about? If you weren’t out in the Fiat, you obviously can’t help me any further.”

  Duncan stood up, stared at Fusil for a moment, then hurried out. Fusil collected up his papers and tucked them into the file. He had just closed the file when Grant entered.

  “Well?” demanded Grant. “What is the situation now?”

  “The evidence, sir, is that your wife’s car did not leave the garage on the evening of the twelfth after seven. In that case it obviously can’t have been the car involved in the accident.”

  “What about the paint, the registration number, the stop light, the broken headlamp?” Grant rapped out the words as if they were a series of orders.

  “They obviously have to be coincidences.”

  “Is that the end of the investigation: does the case go back into cold storage?”

  “I should like your ruling on that point, sir.”

  “I have no ruling on it.” Grant cleared his throat, seemed to be about to say something more, then remained silent.

  “I’ll be on my way,” Fusil said.

  *

  Once again, Kywood was waiting in Fusil’s office and he spoke as soon as Fusil entered. “Well? What happened? …For God’s sake shut the door so we don’t have the world and his wife listening in.”

  Fusil went over to the desk and dropped the folder on to it. “The chief constable is unable to say whether the car was out that night. Mrs Grant says it definitely was not out after seven. Duncan Grant says he knows nothing about the accident.”

  “Then the crime vehicle wasn’t their Fiat.” Kywood took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “A case like this can take years off a man’s life, especially when the evidence begins to look a bit tight.”

  “When I questioned him, the chief constable’s exact words were that he cannot say whether the car was taken out or not.”

  “Yes, yes, you told me that just now.”

  “If it had been your house and your family, wouldn’t you have been able to say?”

  “I don’t see that that matters.”

  “I do. And so does the chief constable.”

  “For God’s sake, Bob, give over. You’ve been juggling with a stick of dynamite and thankfully it didn’t fall and blow us all to hell. So now get rid of the bloody thing and forget it.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  Kywood jammed his handkerchief back in his pocket. His voice coarsened with anger. “What in the devil do you mean?”

  “If this case concerned a Mr Jones and his car’s paint matched the crime paint, his car’s registration letters fitted, his car had a ridiculous accident which could have been engineered to cover up previous and incriminating damage, his car had a defective stop light… Would you rest content to accept the word of Mr Jones’s wife and son that the car wasn’t out on the road at the relevant time?”

  “But this car doesn’t concern a Mr Jones?”

  “Quite.”

  “Look, Bob, the world isn’t perfect and never has been. So get down off your high horse and recognise that fact.”

  “What are you really saying? That there’s one justice for the ordinary man and another for the wife or the son of a chief constable?”

  “You’d twist a saint’s words round into the devil’s preachings. All I’m bloody saying is that this case goes back into cold storage.”

  “On whose orders?”

  About to answer heatedly, Kywood had second thoughts and checked himself.

  “I asked Mr Grant what he wanted. He specifically refused to give any order.”

  Kywood fiddled with his lip. He spoke bitterly. “You’re always looking for trouble, aren’t you? Too keen by twice to make a name for yourself.”

  “All I’m concerned with is…”

  “Don’t you give me the same old crap about justice. I know as much about that as you do.”

  “We owe a duty…”

  “A duty to see the world keeps moving along as smoothly as possible. And if you don’t admit to having shut your eyes to things in the past, you’re a liar. There isn’t a policeman who doesn’t shut his eyes at some time or another because if he shuts them justice gets done and if he opens ’em the law’s observed but someone gets hammered by an injustice… The chief constable called you to check out his wife’s car. You’ve checked it out and all the evidence is either ambiguous or contrary. So there’s an end to it.”

  “Not for me. I’m remembering that there’s an old man in hospital.”

  “I’m ordering you to…”

  “Obviously, sir, we’ll have to take the matter to the chief constable for his ruling.”

  Kywood’s face flushed. He stood up, crossed to the desk, and rested his clenched fists on the table. “Let’s talk about your real motive. You want to create a dirty big stink so that the borough force lands in the mud. You reckon it would be a great day if we got swallowed up by the county force because then there’ll be so many more jobs around for a smart boy like you.”

  “Would it interest you to know that I hadn’t begun to think along those lines?”

  “No, it bloody wouldn’t.” Kywood stamped out of the room.

  Chapter 8

  Josephine looked across the room at her son. “You’d better make tracks for bed, Tim.”

  “But the next programme, Mum…”

  “Ends far too late for you to watch it.”

  He sighed, then stood up. He was a stocky, well-built eleven-year-old with a cheerful, slightly devil-may-care face. He said good night, looked wistfully at the credits which were coming up on the television screen, and left.

  She said to Fusil: “Do you want to watch anymore?”

  He shook his head.

  She stood up and crossed to switch off the set. “Bob, what’s sent you into such a long brown study?”

  He reached across to the small table and picked up his pipe. “I’ve been trying to sort out in my own mind which is the more important, justice or politics.”

  “It’s not like you to ponder that sort of question.”

  “In theory, there’s no argument, but in practice…”

  She smiled, perhaps regretfully. “In practice things are never quite as neat as they ought to be, are they?” She wished he could have accepted that fact from the beginning of his career. He was a man who’d always wanted to believe in ideals.

  He scraped out the bowl of his pipe. “I suppose things are complicated for me in that right now it doesn’t look as if justice can be served, whatever happens.”

  “Don’t forget I’ve no idea what you’re on about.”

  He knocked the scrapings out of his pipe. “Do you remember Mrs Grant?”

  “Could I ever forget her? I’ve never so longed to pick up a custard pie and hurl it as that night at her house.”

  He smiled for the first time that evening. Josephine had the happy knack of being able to simplify emotions.

  *

  Kerr reported to Fusil at nine-ten, Saturday morning. “Sergeant Braddon said you wanted a word with me, sir. I thought, though, I ought to check through the crime lists before coming along.”

  A hundred to one, thought Fusil uncharitably, Kerr was covering up the fact he had arrived late. “I want you to get out to South Flecton and visit all the pubs and anywhere else that would be open to the public during the evening and check if you can find anyone who remembers seeing a bloke on Thursday, the twelfth of May. There’s a possibility, but no more, that the place you’re looking for is in the northern half of the suburb. Here’s a photo.” He pushed across a newspaper photograph. It had been cut in half to leave the bearded Duncan Grant in the foreground. There was no caption.

  Kerr picked up the photo. “Isn’t there anything else to go on? The twelfth of May’s getting a bit like history.”

  “He was probably fairly tight.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Use Jones.”

  Kerr looked curiously at Fus
il, then back at the photograph. “It’s not a very clear shot. And there’s not all that much of him visible under the hair.”

  “Why not leave all the excuses for failure until later?”

  Kerr said cheerfully: “Just taking elementary precautions, sir.”

  “There’s one thing that could be in your favour. He’s the kind of bloke who’s very satisfied with himself and I’m guessing that when he’s had a skinful he gets objectionable. He may have imprinted himself on someone’s mind.”

  And he may not, thought Kerr, as he left. He went along to the C.I.D. general room, spoke briefly to Yarrow, and collected the well-thumbed list of public houses in Fortrow, drawn up in both alphabetical and geographical orders.

  Down in the courtyard, the C.I.D. Hillman was parked just beyond one of the dog handlers’ vans. He crossed to it. This was an odd briefing, he thought, made odder by the obvious fact that the man’s name wasn’t Jones. Why had Fusil fed him a dope name? Fusil was sharp, but he implicitly trusted those who worked under him and had never before held back important facts in a case… What the hell? It was a nice, sunny day, it was his weekend off, and there was no extra pay for spraining his brain with too much thinking.

  He drove out to Flecton Cross and began the boring job of questioning the staff of all the public houses in the northern half of the suburb.

  The interviews were most similar in character. “No, I haven’t seen him… You know the real trouble these days, don’t you? They all look alike. A load of hair, parted by a nose… What’s his name? …Jones? Now that really helps, doesn’t it?”

  The pattern changed at the Fox and Grapes. The landlord was a humanitarian. “You look all hot and bothered. So how would a pint sound?” He winked. “Of course, it ain’t opening time yet and some of you coppers are particular.”

  “No one’s ever told me about opening times.”

  “Come on through, then, and I’ll draw a pint for each of us. It’s the real stuff, mark you, out of the wood. Never serve anything else here — none of that aluminium gas that some places have the nerve to call beer.” The landlord led the way along a passage to the public bar. “Would you like to make yourself a millionaire?”