The Second Jeopardy

by Roger Ormerod

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘What’s y’r game, Fletcher?’

  Fletcher walked past him and fell heavily into the easy chair. ‘In my own place, it’s Vic.’

  ‘All right. What’s y’r game, Vic?’

  ‘Wanted you to see that. Recognize her?’

  ‘It’s Angela.’

  ‘Bet she wasn’t laughin’ when you killed her, Harry.’

  Harry walked round the room. ‘Why can’t y’ cut out the crap?’ he demanded. ‘You know I didn’t do it.’ He jerked open a drawer in the sideboard that stood against the rear wall. ‘Where’s that gun?’

  ‘You’re not scared, Harry? Shook yer a bit, though, ain’t it? But you wasn’t believin’ what I said, so I thought you’d better see for yerself.’

  ‘So now I’ve seen. You lived here with her. For six months…’

  ‘It took that long to get it like this. A right rat-hole it was, before she came here.’

  ‘Cost a bit to do up, I bet.’

  ‘Sure did.’

  ‘Her money?’

  ‘And mine.’

  ‘So she’d got money? You knew that?’

  ‘Sit down, Harry, for God’s sake. The gun ain’t anywhere in this room. There’s a chair over there. Not comfy, but it’ll save me twistin’ me bleeding neck.’

  Harry sat. His mind was charging around like a bouncing ball, thudding from the insides of his skull. Hadn’t Virginia said (or given him the impression) that she had cleared-out Angela’s place? Otherwise she wouldn’t have known about the missing pink shoes with the stiletto heels. But surely Virginia hadn’t been here? Not here…

  ‘You got any of her stuff here?’ he asked. ‘Her personal stuff.’

  ‘Think I’d throw it away?’

  ‘Mind if I take a look?’

  Fletcher was watching him with amusement, enjoying the panic in Harry’s mind, even if nothing showed through the battered mask of Harry’s face. He waved an arm negligently. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Later,’ said Harry, further questions he wanted to ask jostling in his mind for precedence. ‘Did she keep her old place on? The place she was in before…’

  ‘Know what you mean,’ cut in Fletcher, only a flicker in his eyes betraying any annoyance. ‘Don’t know, do I? It was nothin’ to do with me.’

  ‘But she could afford to?’

  ‘Could ’ave, I suppose. I’ll make a pot of tea…’

  ‘Later,’ said Harry, having detected Fletcher’s unease. ‘You knew she’d got some money, then?’

  ‘I told yer. Sure I did.’

  ‘So you knew she was slummin’, gettin’ a thrill from livin’ with the dregs?’

  Fletcher looked pained. ‘Harry! You’re my guest. So don’t be insultin’.’

  ‘But you knew. Look at you. Hardly a maiden’s dream. Where’d the excitement be, the romance, the thrill…’

  ‘Listen feller, you’re way outa line. You ain’t been inside all y’r life, but you certainly ain’t done much livin’ outside. It’s a different world. What y’ think the thrill was? In the other room, in the double bed. That’s what it was.’

  ‘Oh Christ…the great lover.’

  ‘It ain’t all soft words and perfume behind the ears, Harry.’

  ‘Reckon not,’ said Harry, who didn’t know how to pronounce soft words, and who sometimes wondered behind whose ears the perfume went these days. ‘You knew about her car?’ he asked.

  ‘She parked it on the street outside.’

  Harry tried to rattle him. ‘So you were happy enough to live on her money?’

  It didn’t work. Fletcher put back his head and laughed, though through it his eyes didn’t leave Harry, and they were cold. ‘Man, you don’t know nowt from nowt,’ he said. ‘I earn money, Harry. Time to time, I earn it. Not often. But it’s good when it comes.’

  ‘Doin’ what?’

  ‘I’m an entryprenoor, Harry.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I arrange things. I know people and what they want, and know how I can help ’em get it.’

  ‘You’re a crook then. Same as me.’

  ‘Give over, Harry. You never bin more’n small time. I move in circles.’

  ‘Sean O’Loughlin sized circles?’

  At the name, Fletcher blinked. ‘Not that big.’

  ‘Charlie Braine sized circles?’

  ‘I knew Charlie.’

  ‘Knew him? So you know he’s dead?’

  ‘Knew him before. What d’you think? Sure…he’s gotta be dead.’

  ‘O’Loughlin doesn’t think so.’

  ‘He’d know better’n me,’ Fletcher said equably.

  ‘But you did know Charlie Braine?’

  ‘Did one or two tricks f’r him. Before your time, Harry. Log books, sort of. Small time stuff.’

  ‘So you’d know Cynth?’

  ‘Met her. Hardly spoke, though. What is this. What’s all the questions? You ain’t the police, an’ you’re doin’ it lousy.’

  Harry stirred. The chair was hard, the cross-stave wedging against his kidneys. ‘You brought me here, so you must’ve expected questions.’

  ‘I’ll make that tea.’

  ‘Can I see that gun o’ yours?’

  ‘Scared it ain’t real, an’ you might be wettin’ your pants over a toy?’ Fletcher leaned back and gave it thought, then as he leaned forward, the movement masking his hand, he was suddenly holding the pistol. For a second he grinned, the muzzle aimed at Harry’s left eye, then he tossed it in his palm and offered Harry the butt.

  Harry found himself holding two pounds of beautifully engineered steel, every loving ounce of it having been put together with the sole purpose of projecting a bullet rapidly and taking a life. It was a six-shot revolver, along the side of the barrel the impressed information: LAWMAN MK 111, beneath it the description: .357 MAGNUM.

  Harry knew nothing about guns, and didn’t want to. His examination was cursory. He saw only that the visible portions of the cylinder showed the noses of four cartridges.

  ‘Where’d you get this?’

  ‘Had it for years. I told you, I arrange things. This character wanted t’ get outa the country quick. I knew a guy…forged passports…I fixed it up. That gun was part of the payment.’

  ‘Did Angela know about these deals o’ yours?’

  He laughed. ‘Lordy, no. I gave her what she wanted, an’ she was happy. The clubs and the pubs an’ the smoke, an’ a few stories about things that fall off lorries. She thought it was just great.’

  No she didn’t thought Harry. Angela would have thought it was paltry stuff, so that Charlie, who’d been intending to rob a jeweller’s and finish up with a bank haul as a bonus and vanish under the nose of the boss-man, Sean O’Loughlin, was the tall white knight with the glamour that caught her breath. It was ironical, he decided (though he thought of it as being a laugh), that Vic Fletcher, if he’d been honest about his true criminal activities, could have counted on Angela’s admiration and love for ever. Well, her admiration, anyway. She had been a volatile young woman. In Harry’s language: skittish.

  He handed it back. ‘You didn’t get any clue she was into something?’

  ‘What was she into?’ asked Fletcher, disposing of it inside his clothing. ‘Getting hijacked by you, and killed at a lay-by?’

  ‘You know it wasn’t like that. It don’t look like it was somethin’ casual. She was into somethin’, and it got her killed. Didn’t she give y’ one hint? That mornin’…did she just drive off?’

  ‘How’d I know that? I was outa town, sitting by a phone all day an’ waiting for a call.’

  ‘And did it come?’

  ‘I got a call — yes — but not the right one.’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘Bad luck when I got home and found she was gone.’

  ‘No farewell note?’

  ‘Nothin’.’

  ‘And she left her stuff?’

  ‘All of it. So she wasn’t into somethin’, was sh
e? I’ll make that tea.’

  This time Harry was clear out of questions, so he nodded, levering himself to his feet. ‘I’ll take that lookaround…’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Harry was left alone in the sitting room. Whatever personal possessions Angela had left in there he’d already seen. A quick dig through drawers uncovered nothing but domestic equipment. He followed Fletcher into the passageway, in which Angela’s personality had not ventured, heard him rattling away in the kitchen, so helped himself to a handful of bedroom doorknob.

  Her presence in here was less marked, although the wardrobe and dressing table were hardly what Fletcher would have bought for himself. The bedclothes, though, had been changed any number of times since Angela’s death. The bedspread need not have been her choice. The bedsprings might well have rebounded to a large number of subsequent adventures.

  There were no women’s toilet articles on the dressing table, but in its drawers he discovered dusting powder and creams, tissues and powder puffs, hand creams and nail varnish, mascara and eye-shadow. Possibly hers. He tried the wardrobe. Half of the clothes inside were carefully segregated from the other half. On one side, his. On the other three dresses, two pairs of slacks and a pair of jeans, and a trouser suit on a man’s hanger. To his inexpert eye they seemed to be about her size. He recalled her as not much taller than five feet. On the floor of the wardrobe were sitting, side by side with Fletcher’s spare joggers and pointed shoes, her sandals, her low-heeled walking shoes, and a pair of shoes with stiletto heels. They were blue. He parted her clothes and discovered her pale blue two-piece costume.

  Angela had not meant to go away…or perhaps she had. She had not been the type of person to worry about discarding a few clothes, but the sort who’d place bets on two horses in a two horse race. There had been for her a thrilling impetuosity about Charlie Braine’s scheme, something madly wild that would catch her adventurous spirit and set it alight. But the practical corner of her mind would have told her that it could all so easily go wrong, and in case Charlie failed to turn up at their arranged meeting place, she had left her retreat open and could return here to Vic Fletcher’s.

  So much for the passionate love affair this flat had witnessed. To Angela it had been an exciting adventure into new pastures. She hadn’t really grown up. Hadn’t been given the chance to grow up. But to Fletcher it had been the love of his life, something on which he still brooded. But he’d said it himself: the passion had been expended in that double bed. Perhaps he hadn’t grown up, either, and never would now, if he cherished to himself a memory so immature.

  For a moment Harry felt the temptation to tell him all they’d discovered, and explain what that meant regarding her intentions. That would chop him down to size, might even get him off Harry’s back. But Harry hadn’t a vicious brain-cell in his head, and in any event he no longer felt in any danger from Fletcher. He picked up the shoes with the stiletto heels and took them out into the passage, as Fletcher edged his way from the kitchen with a tray in his hands. The tea things were set on an embroidered traycloth. Perhaps Angela had taught him that.

  ‘These hers?’ said Harry.

  ‘They’re not mine.’

  ‘I thought…possibly another woman.’

  Fletcher snarled with such fury that Harry almost dived for the gun while Fletcher had both hands busy. Then he recovered.

  ‘You’re a bloody clown, Harry. Watch it. You’ll go too far one of these days.’

  Harry grinned, and held the door open for him. Fletcher marched into the sitting room.

  ‘What was she wearin’ that day?’ Harry asked to his back.

  Fletcher replied without turning. He had it off pat. ‘Pleated grey skirt, maroon cardy over a pink blouse, grey shoes.’

  It in no way agreed with what Harry remembered her wearing. ‘Not pink shoes? Stilettos, like these?’

  ‘She din’t have any pink stilettos.’

  So Angela had so far rejected one life for the more splendid one Charlie presented that she’d returned to her own place and changed into a different outfit. It was something else he decided not to tell Fletcher. After all, he wanted to sleep that night, not keep waking to check his throat was intact.

  Yet he did sleep, and soundly, his mind undisturbed by thoughts of where he might be sleeping the next night, or where his next meal was coming from. He had a simple philosophy…something would turn up.

  The next something would be Virginia at ten o’clock, and this was his first thought when he awoke, to find Fletcher bending over him with a cup of tea.

  ‘This is great,’ said Harry. ‘I owe y’, Vic.’

  ‘What you owe me is some action. You’re gettin’ nowhere. Breakfast in a few minutes.’

  They ate from plates on their laps. Harry, chewing, was wondering how Angela had met Charlie. Fletcher himself had to be the connection.

  ‘I suppose it was you what introduced ’em,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Eh?’ said Fletcher, not having access to Harry’s thoughts.

  ‘Charlie and Angela.’

  ‘Can’t remember doin’ that. I wouldn’t, would I? Y’ know what Charlie was like.’

  ‘No,’ said Harry, who’d known him only in the single setting, his spraying shed.

  ‘Anything in skirts.’

  ‘Mostly they’re in jeans.’

  ‘Just a sayin’, Harry.’ He eyed Harry with interest. ‘You’re telling me they knew each other?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘I’ll do y’r washing up.’

  ‘I’ll do it. Mustn’t hold you up. What did y’ mean by Angela an’ Charlie…’

  ‘I oughta rush. Got an appointment at ten.’ And Harry managed to get away without giving an answer.

  He was waiting in the square at ten, but she was late. The phone had caught her in the hall on her way out.

  ‘It’s Paul, Virginia. Is your father there?’

  ‘He left early. Try his office.’ She had detected urgency in Sergeant Tranter’s voice. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Harry’s barge got blown up last night.’ A pause. ‘Virginia?’

  ‘How is…was he there? Paul, is he all right?’

  ‘If it was timed to catch him at home, they got it wrong. It went up just before he got there.’

  She released a long breath, giddy with having held it. ‘You said “they”. Who, Paul? Do you know?’

  Paul Tranter was in a dilemma, and having to think fast. His information was that Virginia had been venturing where no sane policeman stepped, but he’d hoped to be speaking to her father, who would be able to exert more authority with her. Perhaps. At the same time, he didn’t want to alarm her. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I heard our Harry’s been asking around. The word is out that he could have annoyed a gentleman called O’Loughlin. If so, he’s lucky to have lost no more than his barge.’

  ‘It was all he’d got. Has it all gone?’

  ‘There was nothing but a smell of singed canal this morning,’ he said cheerfully, not wanting to make it seem too dramatic. ‘I thought…if you’re seeing him in the near future…’

  ‘Who? Harry? I could well be. Is there a message, Paul?’

  ‘Only that I’d like to have a word with him. And soon.’

  ‘I’ll tell him that.’

  She hung up. The conversation had wasted only three minutes, which she could easily have made up. But she did not hurry. There were a number of matters to consider, one of them being that Harry was now in a situation where he might listen to reason, and her father had already phoned three rose-growing friends to enquire about magnesium deficiency, and to no good effect. So Virginia had asked Ada to air the rooms over the garage, just in case.

  Harry had been waiting for five minutes. It had given him time to decide that destroying the barge had not been Fletcher’s idea, as Fletcher seemed quite confident that he needed no more subtle encouragement than his Lawman Mk 111. So Baldy was the obvious suspect, and it need not have been intended as a warning
. He might well have believed Harry to be in residence at the time. From this conclusion it was easy to progress to the next step. The death of Harry could have been intended as a warning to Virginia, adding flavour to her eventual death with a sprinkling of terrified anticipation. In that event, Harry decided, he would have to be near her as much as possible. Consequently there had come a time when pride had to be put aside. He could be closest to her by going to work for her father.

  Each decided to allow the other to introduce the subject.

  He climbed into the Mercedes. ‘You’re late.’

  ‘So I am. You could’ve used the time for a shave.’

  He looked decrepit, having slept away all Ada’s careful ironing and pressing.

  ‘My barge got burnt-out last night,’ he explained.

  ‘Vandals?’ she asked casually.

  ‘Must’ve been. So I spent the night with Vic Fletcher.’

  ‘That,’ she said, overtaking a 39 bus, ‘must have been interesting. I hope you grabbed the chance and gathered plenty of useful information.’

  He told her, as fully as he could remember. ‘So it’s certain he was living with her,’ he finished. ‘Though it doesn’t seem to’ve been as serious for her as it was for him.’

  ‘That sounds like Angie. I can see why you didn’t have time to get a shave.’

  ‘He hadn’t got a razor. He’s trying to grow a beard, so he threw it away. On the principle of throwing away your lighter when you want to give up smoking.’

  ‘If you’ll remember, it wasn’t me who threw it away.’

  ‘You swapped it for a pistol,’ he remembered. ‘Fair exchange. Where are we going?’

  ‘To see Cynthia. You know that.’

  She glanced sideways in time to see his nod, and to detect the single line of his frown.

  ‘Have you got it with you?’ he asked. When she didn’t reply, he added: ‘Baldy’s pistol.’

  ‘It’s in my bag. I daren’t leave it for Ada to find.’

  ‘You’d better let me have it.’

  ‘But you’re scared of guns, Harry.’ She chased a Lotus for half a mile, then gave it up. ‘The bag’s on the back seat.’