Despite the Evidence

by Roderic Jeffries

  DESPITE THE EVIDENCE

  Roderic Jeffries

  © Roderic Jeffries 1971

  Roderic Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Long, London in 1971.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter One

  ‘Use some tact,’ Detective Inspector Fusil had ordered, adding: ‘If you know how.’

  Kerr tried to use some tact. ‘Mr. Williams, I can assure you that we are doing——’

  ‘And I can assure you of something.’ Williams leaned forward on the balls of his feet, thrust out his pointed, upturned chin which ended a lop-sided face, and spoke in his high, nasal voice. ‘If something’s not done right smartly, there’ll be trouble.’

  Kerr looked across at the works manager, whose office they were in, and saw he could expect no help. ‘But you can’t——’ he began.

  ‘It’s the fifth theft,’ said Williams.

  ‘The fourth, actually,’ countered Kerr.

  ‘Are you trying to call me a liar?’

  Nothing would have given Kerr greater pleasure and the words tickled the end of his tongue. But Fusil had made it quite clear that if there were any sort of trouble, he would be held to blame, no matter what ingenious excuses he tried to make. ‘We’ve only been notified officially of four,’ he said.

  ‘Never you mind telling me what’s official. I know what’s what. The first theft wasn’t reported. I said to the woman, you tell the management and call the police, but she said she didn’t want to cause no trouble over so little.’ Williams spoke more loudly. ‘I told her, you cause trouble.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did,’ muttered Kerr, before he could check the words.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said I’m sure you gave her good advice.’

  Williams’ small, dark eyes — they held the over-bright expression of ill-temper — stared with sharp suspicion at Kerr. ‘So now you tell me, why ain’t nothing happening?’

  ‘But something is. I’m here to investigate.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, that don’t seem like very much.’

  ‘It’s difficult when we’re faced with very small thefts of this nature——’

  ‘Very small? It’s only blokes paid like you by public money what can call ’em small. My missus brought me my grub, seeing it wasn’t a bingo afternoon, and I was just finishing the apple pie when Mrs. Andrews found out she’d lost three quid from her coat in the locker. I’m telling you, she didn’t call it a very small theft. She had to work, mate, for that three quid. Work, like all of us do.’

  Kerr doubted Williams actually worked.

  The works manager fiddled with some of the papers on his desk and Williams settled back on his feet, dropping his chin as if satisfied his bellicose comments had finally squashed the opposition.

  Kerr stared through the window. A blonde, dressed in pale pink overalls and linen cap, walked past the office, looking inside as she did so. She had a mouth that went up to the right. He remembered an old and experienced sergeant telling him that an odd mouth was an infallible sign of passion in a woman.

  The telephone rang and the works manager picked up the receiver and answered the call. Once the blonde was out of sight, Kerr studied his notebook. The page — numbered so that it could not be torn out if something inconvenient was thoughtlessly written down — had only a dozen lines of writing on it. Mrs. Andrews had had little evidence to give. On arriving at work at seven in the morning, she’d left the purse in her coat pocket and hung the coat in her locker in the ladies’ cloakroom. She’d not bothered to lock the locker. After a quick meal at midday, she’d gone to her purse and discovered the money had been stolen.

  ‘What are you going to do about finding the three quid?’ demanded Williams. ‘And what about all the other money that’s been pinched?’

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ said Kerr.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if that’ll be much good.’

  ‘You could be surprised.’ Kerr spoke sarcastically.

  Williams leaned forward again and thrust out his chin. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Whatever you want it to,’ replied Kerr, certain that Fusil would long since have ceased to use any tact.

  ‘I’ll be watching, mate,’ muttered Williams. He turned and spoke to the works manager. ‘It’s got to stop and that’s fact.’

  ‘It’ll all be sorted out,’ replied the works manager pacifically.

  Williams settled back on his heels, dropped his chin, and left. There was something about his thin, lop-sided face which aroused a feeling of vague compassion as well as reciprocal belligerence — a hint that the man suffered from chronic ill health, perhaps.

  Kerr snapped shut his notebook and dropped it into his coat pocket.

  ‘D’you think you can do something?’ asked the works manager. He brushed his lank hair away from his forehead. ‘All these thefts are causing a lot or trouble. . . .’ He tailed off into silence.

  ‘Sneak-thieving like this is always a difficult one, but maybe we’ll plant a purse.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘We can put a purse in a coat and hang it up in an obvious place. The notes are treated with a special powder and if someone gets this on her hands, it turns black with light and she can’t wash it off.’

  The other’s expression became still more harassed. ‘I don’t know how the people here would react to that if they got to know about it. I’m sure they’d say the management was being provocative.’

  ‘Let ’em say it,’ suggested Kerr breezily.

  ‘If only it were that simple!’ The works manager sighed. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it. ‘It’s difficult to believe now, but this place was a picnic before Williams started working here.’ He flicked open a battered gas lighter. ‘Everyone was content. Then he got taken on and ever since it’s been trouble all the way.’

  ‘He looked a right miserable basket.’

  ‘Someone told me his wife gives him hell at home and that’s why he’s so much trouble at work.’

  ‘It’s nice to know someone may be making his life miserable for him,’ said Kerr cheerfully. ‘Well . . . We’ll do what we can and make further enquiries, but if we don’t get anywhere we’ll have to plant that wallet somewhere about the place.’

  ‘Then you’re certain it’s someone who works here?’

  ‘Not a hundred per cent certain: only ninety-nine.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ muttered the works manager, and he fidgeted with the cigarette, rolling it between thumb and forefinger.

  Kerr buttoned up his mackintosh. He felt sorry for the other, who looked so miserable, but couldn’t understand why he took things so seriously — life was far too short for that.

  They shook hands and Kerr left the office. As he walked across to the main doors, at the far end of the shed, he passed the tables at which women were packing the plastic medi
cal equipment the factory produced and he saw for the second time the neat little blonde. She returned his gaze with a brazen interest that suggested she wouldn’t shout for help if he stopped and asked whether she was busy that evening. Kerr walked on. As an engaged man of some months’ standing, he was above and beyond temptation. Still, he thought, as he opened the door and stepped outside, it was nice to know he hadn’t forgotten how to pick out the hot ones.

  It was dusk and the drizzle, which had been falling since noon, had turned into a steady rain. He turned up the collar of his mackintosh and pulled his hat more firmly about his head. It was the kind of night to spend in front of a warm fire with a warm woman. He suddenly swore. He’d just remembered there’d be no warm fire for him tonight because Helen was taking a couple of days off work to go up to London, where she was staying with friends.

  He crossed the courtyard to the rusting C.I.D. Hillman. The car was ancient and temperamental and refused to start until he got the choke setting exactly right. Then the hand brake stuck on. He switched on the headlights — because the yard was poorly lit — and only one worked. Why the hell, he wondered, didn’t they stick another penny on the rates and give the Fortrow police some decent cars?

  The ten-minute drive to Tidemouth Road and east division H.Q. was through mainly residential streets in which the houses were semi-detached, comfortable but lacking in any architectural grace, and with small gardens. Helen’s dream was for them to live, after the marriage, in the country, in the hills behind Fortrow where the quiet farmhouses were nearly all old and their soft red and blue bricks and many shades of brown roof tiles could not have been more in sympathy with their surroundings. There was only one thing wrong with her dream. Old farmhouses in the country nowadays cost a packet and as a detective he was most unlikely ever to be able to afford to buy one. His natural optimism suggested a possible solution. Maybe Helen had an ancient, rich uncle who’d dangled her on his knees when she was young, who remembered her with a catch in his throat, and who in his will had given practical expression to his affection. Some people said that it wasn’t a good thing for a wife to have more money than her husband — it was even worse for them both to be poor.

  He parked the Hillman a hundred yards down from the police station. He wanted to use it that evening and if he did as he should, and returned it to its rightful parking space in the courtyard, D.C. Rowan or Detective Sergeant Braddon might take it first.

  He entered the police station through the rear entrance and went up to the C.I.D. general room. Rowan was sitting at his desk, typing. He looked up. ‘The old man’s been shouting for you.’

  ‘He’s always shouting,’ replied Kerr. ‘Still, in order to keep him below boiling point I suppose I’d better go in and see what he wants.’

  ‘He’s left the station and won’t be back tonight.’

  ‘That’s the first good news of the day.’ Kerr crossed to his table, which served as a desk, and sat down behind it. He took his notebook from his pocket and opened it at page 41, put it down on the table and searched amongst the jumble of papers for a witness statement form. After a while, he looked up. ‘Got any witness forms, Fred?’

  ‘No.’

  He’d probably a dozen staring him in the face, thought Kerr uncharitably, but just wasn’t going to help. Kerr pulled open the right-hand shallow drawer and found an even worse jumble of papers.

  Rowan pulled out his typing, separated the two pages, and dropped the carbon on to the typewriter. ‘The sarge said to remind you to make certain the copies of previous convictions in the Frayton case are delivered to the court by ten tomorrow.’

  ‘Hell! I haven’t had ’em signed yet. Did the old man say when he’d be in tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  Kerr picked up a pencil and began to tap his teeth. If Fusil were late the next morning, it might be very difficult to get Frayton’s list of previous convictions, signed by the divisional detective inspector to show none had been left out, to the clerk of the court in time. Still, Fusil was an early starter.

  Rowan stood up, yawned, and crossed to the stand where his rather grubby mackintosh was hanging.

  ‘Feel like a jar or two tonight?’ asked Kerr.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’ll fill your boots with solid muscle.’

  ‘Beer’s good for nothing but the belly-ache.’ Rowan removed his mackintosh and left the room.

  What did you do when life became that miserable? wondered Kerr. Pick up a couple of lead weights and jump into the sea? No wonder Rowan’s wife didn’t spend overmuch time at home. He picked up the telephone, which proved to be connected to an outside line, dialled the Farnleigh police station and asked to speak to P.C. Templeton. ‘Doing anything tonight, Don?’ he asked.

  ‘So it’s you! I hadn’t heard from you for so long I thought you must have died, or something.’

  ‘Didn’t you know? I’m engaged.’

  ‘So what’s the doctor say?’

  ‘You don’t know what life’s about. Come on now, d’you feel like a night out?’

  ‘I suppose I might. You bringing your woman, are you?’

  ‘No. Helen’s gone up to London for a couple of days so I’ll be on my own.’

  ‘Then I’ll lay on a woman for each of us. You can have the little blonde. She stutters, so she takes far too long to say “No”.’

  ‘I don’t want anything like that.’

  ‘You what? You really ought to go and see a quack.’

  *

  Kerr had drunk at least one pint of beer too much. He recognised this the moment he stepped out of the smoke-filled bar into the wet, very blustery night. A light on the corner wall of the small country pub divided into two. He shut his eyes and waited for several seconds. When he looked once more, there was only one light.

  ‘I . . . I reckon we’d best be . . . getting straight back,’ said Templeton, speaking slowly and carefully.

  It occurred to Kerr that it might be better if he didn’t drive, but they were several miles out from Fortrow and he certainly wasn’t going to trust himself to the pillion seat of Templeton’s very ancient motor bike. . . . And was Templeton in any safer state? In any case, the Hillman had to be back at the station by eight-thirty tomorrow morning or, as sure as God made little apples, Fusil would discover it was missing. He’d threatened to send straight back to the beat the next man he found using the C.I.D. car for private motoring.

  ‘You . . . you’re tight!’ Templeton spoke scornfully. He came to a halt by the entrance to the small car-park by the side of the pub.

  ‘Give over. I haven’t had enough to get me singing.’

  Irrationally, Templeton suddenly conceived it his duty to dissuade Kerr from driving. ‘You . . . you aren’t fit to take the car.’

  ‘Look who’s talking! You can’t even stand up straight!’

  ‘As straight as . . . as . . . as a needle,’ muttered Templeton, as he slowly swayed from side to side. ‘You . . . you leave the car and I’ll take you. . . .’

  ‘You take me? When you’re so tight you can’t see a foot in front of yourself? Give over.’

  Their argument became more heated and more childish. Finally, after each man had accused the other of messing up the evening, they parted. Templeton scrambled on to his bike and Kerr climbed into the Hillman, hastily sitting down as soon as he could.

  The world was on the quiver and Kerr lit a cigarette. Had he really drunk all that much beer, he wondered vaguely, or was he out of training because of his engagement? He closed his eyes for a minute and then found the world had stopped quivering. He suddenly laughed. Poor old Don Templeton had been as tight as a tick and yet it had been he who’d accused Kerr of being too drunk to drive. Kerr switched on and started the engine, satisfied his previous doubts were ridiculous and he was perfectly safe to drive back to Fortrow. He started the windscreen wipers as the rain suddenly bucketed down, engaged first gear, and drew out of the car park, passing Templeton, who seemed to have gone to sleep on
his bike.

  His route lay through lanes that never stopped looping, as if determined always to discover the longest way between every point. On either side at first were banks and thorn hedges, which gave the effect of driving through a cutting, then he came to woods whose bare branches, thrashing to the wind, met and entwined overhead to form a tunnel. He drove slowly, sufficiently sober now to realise that his judgement was affected, and because of this he had plenty of time in which to brake to a halt when he came round a corner, that first appeared gentle but suddenly tightened up into a hairpin, and saw in his headlights the large car which had crashed into a tree.

  He scrambled out of the Hillman and hurried through the rain to the Jensen. When a few feet away, he was able to make out a man, sprawled over the steering wheel. Part of the man’s face was visible and the injuries were obvious and severe. Kerr had little doubt he was either dead or dying. His right hand was caught up, and as Kerr struggled to open the driving door, he noticed the heavy gold ring and that the top joint of the middle finger was missing.

  Kerr had almost succeeded in freeing the door, which, although not apparently damaged, had clearly been distorted in the crash, when he thought he heard someone behind him. Glad of help, he began to turn. He received a violent blow on the back of his head and immediately lost consciousness.

  Chapter Two

  Kerr knew a time of pain and wild chaos, then he became aware that the constant bumping and shaking was real. He opened his eyes. A face, shifting at the edges through being out of focus, loomed into view and a man’s voice said it wouldn’t be long before they reached hospital. His memory returned abruptly. He tried to ask some questions, but the man told him to rest. Although only a few seconds before the questions had seemed pressing, now he was content to forget them.

  At the hospital a young doctor with a too-smooth air of efficiency examined him and then called in a second, and more friendly, doctor. The latter, after a further examination, said that, apart from a cut, which they’d stitch, a bump, and some bruising, everything seemed fine, but they’d take an X-ray just to make certain. Kerr hated both doctors for so lightly dismissing a headache which was pounding the top of his head loose.