Hire Me a Hearse

by Piers Marlowe

  Bill Hazard suddenly jerked upright, shoulders braced.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Meaning you think it could, that it?’

  ‘But it’s fantastic. You think we’ll find the professor buried in his own garden?’

  ‘I’m not going to be surprised if we do. Let’s put it like that, Bill.’

  ‘But what about Wilma? She knew him.’

  ‘She knew the man Peregrine Porter introduced her to as the professor when she was already a good friend of a certain Jeremy Truncard, Bill. In fact she had slept with him and for her own sense of fun had told him she was going to have his baby, which really made him flip. Probably put him in the right schizophrenic mind for LSD-25.’

  ‘Which proves what?’

  ‘If the real professor is pushing up the daisies in his own garden Jeremy Truncard really has been put under hypnotism — by a charlatan. Let’s go, Bill. I’m sick of the smell in this office. It’s had too many people in it for too long.’

  ‘That exotic stink is the tang of the Orient,’ Hazard grinned. ‘When you get home your missus will ask you where you’ve been.’

  ‘She doesn’t ask awkward questions in front of the youngster,’ Drury said, reaching for his hat. ‘Too often he knows the damned answers.’

  Chapter 10

  But, in one sense at least, Frank Drury was disappointed.

  He didn’t find the remains of a murdered psychiatrist under several hundredweight of his own garden behind the house called Twin Trees, presumably from the guardian copper beeches standing like sentinels at the main gate giving on to the road.

  When he and Hazard arrived they found both Sussex and Kent C.I.D. officers in two cars and a South-east Regional Crime Squad car parked beside the others out of sight of the road. They had come in answer to the call Drury had dispatched from the Yard’s radio room, which he visited on his way down to join Hazard, who had collected a car, but on a Saturday had been unable to locate a couple of spades.

  This omission was adequately filled by the two county C.I.D. crews.

  There was a Kent chief inspector named Clarke who seemed to be the rating police office of the group awaiting Drury’s arrival from London. Several of the plainclothes men had already been working under Drury’s orders indirectly since the Broomwood blast. A few of them, in their own resigned way, hadn’t thought too much of the Metropolitan superintendent. He didn’t shout and he didn’t walk four steps when one was sufficient. He cut no sort of figure unless one tried staring him out, then one felt like a chunk of ice trying to outstare the sun.

  Clarke came up. He gave Drury a sloppy-handed salute and a grin that was close to being a smirk.

  ‘Four spades. Hope it’s enough, sir,’ he said, trying the sardonic touch.

  It didn’t faze Drury.

  ‘I hope so, Chief Inspector. Now, where to set your lot working up a sweat.’

  Drury was conscious of the faces pulled as he turned his back. Hazard purposely kept his eyes averted. He had been warned by Drury on the way down.

  ‘Give them time, Bill. They’ll soon change their ideas, or they’ll change mine.’

  He was only partly right. They all had their ideas changed, and very drastically.

  First Drury walked round the garden with its trees and lawns and flower-beds and shrubberies that were beginning to acquire an uncared-for look. He came to a pause at a rockery, with a lot of reasonably new rock plants that were still struggling to make growth.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll make it,’ Drury told Clarke, who frowned and tried to look as though he knew what the hell the London superintendent was talking about. Drury let him down easily. ‘There’s plenty of walls and northern aspects in this garden to shelter a rockery,’ he pointed out. ‘Yet some silly so-and-so decides to set it here, facing south, right in the full glare of the sun, no shade, no trees, only a lot of rain from the south-west to rot the roots.’

  Clarke said a little uncertainly, ‘I’m not much of a gardener myself. Some of the others might be.’

  ‘Good,’ said Drury, ‘because this is where they start digging.’

  By the time the hole was just over three feet deep the muttering and sweating C.I.D. locals were changing their mind about the crazy sod from the Big Smoke. First they came upon some bloodstained linen and a towel with powder marks round a bullet hole, all well muddied and grimed, and shortly afterwards a spade went into something resistant and soggy.

  ‘Hey, here’s something,’ said the digger.

  ‘Easy now,’ said Clarke, who hadn’t taken off his coat.

  The diggers cleared away more earth, and found a blanket that had been sewn at both ends. It was a grey Army type blanket with some red stitchwork. The bundle stank when it was lifted out of its secret resting-place and lowered on a strip of grass.

  Drury held out a hand to Hazard, saying nothing. The big inspector took out his pocket-knife, opened it, and pushed the handle between Drury’s fingers.

  ‘Think you know whose body it is, Superintendent?’ asked Clarke, unable to keep back the excitement he felt.

  ‘I think so, Chief Inspector.’

  But Drury thought wrong.

  Very, very wrong.

  His hand holding Hazard’s knife released the sewn-up ends with a few quick slashes, and he rolled the bundle over and opened it. He and the others were suddenly staring at a naked figure, not much to look at except for the head. The body was nut-brown in colour, and incongruously a jock-strap remained fastened round the waist, modestly covering the withering genitals. The eyes were wide, dark, and in some dull way seemed to be enjoying a joke in which no one could share. There was a long mane of dark hair flecked only here and there with an occasional grey streak, and the beard was curly, covering a good deal of the neck and reaching almost to those mocking dead eyes.

  ‘God Almighty,’ said Bill Hazard.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said the chief inspector.

  As expressions of surprise the words amounted to approximately the same thing.

  It was Drury who said, ‘The real Janssi Singh, which just about tells me all I needed to know. Bill.’ Drury spun to face his assistant. ‘Get into the house any way you can. Get the Commander on the phone. Even if he’s at home in the bath. Hold him talking. Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can make it, and tell him also people are going to miss their Sunday golf tomorrow morning. I don’t know how many, but the number will include some of our own top brass, certainly a Home Office spokesman, and I should say a bigwig from the Pakistan High Commissioner’s Office in Lowndes Square and from the Indian High Commissioner’s Office in Aldwych. Their duty officers are going to change their ideas about the English weekend. Oh, and one other thing while you hold him and talk sense at him, Bill, not a whisper to the news agencies or to Fleet Street. Thank God it’s the weekend and Sunday is still ahead.’

  Hazard hesitated to depart on his mission. The Regional Crime men and the local C.I.D. officers looked at him, thanking God they didn’t have a chief who tossed them to the lions this way. None of them dare risk a look at Drury.

  ‘Well, Bill, shake the lead out,’ Drury snapped.

  ‘Suppose the Commander — ’

  ‘Suppose he nothing, Bill. Keep him talking. If he rings off ring back. Keep ringing back. My guess is before you’ve told him half what you know he’ll be chewing your ear off. I’ll take over when I’ve used the Regional Squad’s radio.’

  Hazard turned and ran towards the house.

  Drury jerked his head at Chief Inspector Clarke and pointed to the dead Hindu.

  ‘Better cover him up or a few thrushes and blackbirds will get the wrong idea.’

  Someone sniggered. The sound was covered up with a quick bout of coughing.

  Drury pointed to the senior officer of the Regional Crime Squad, who was in his shirt-sleeves with mud up to his serge-covered knees.

  ‘All right, let’s go. I’m going to use up a lot of juice, so afte
rwards you’d better have your battery recharged.’

  It might have been a joke to lessen the tension. The Regional Crime Squad man couldn’t know. To be on the safe side he gave a half-hearted laugh.

  Drury made no further sound. He was striding towards the parked cars.

  At half-past ten that Saturday night Drury arrived home. He had Bill Hazard with him, and Mrs Drury had a hot meal waiting to serve up on the table. She smiled at Hazard and grinned at her husband after giving him the sort of quick under-the-lids glance that anxious wives who know when not to ask questions specialize in. Like the wives of detective superintendents in charge of a murder case that is still a subject for national headlines.

  At eight minutes to eleven the phone rang.

  Mrs Drury was out of her chair like a teenager. She didn’t bother to call her husband. She spoke crisply, with an economy of words she had learned the hard way, and when she came back from the hall, where the phone was kept, she said simply, ‘Frank, they’ve got Claude and Cedric at Mrs Marshall’s.’

  ‘Anything about a man named Porter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or Bayliss?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or Warrender?’

  ‘Nobody else was mentioned, Frank,’ she said gravely. ‘Now I’ll serve the coffee. What about something to help you both — ’

  Her words slowed expectantly but her husband was shaking his head.

  ‘We’re driving. Best not. If anyone gets through again put them back to Central. I’ll contact them, and tell them I will, when I reach Hornsey.’

  ‘You got enough tobacco?’ she asked, watching him drink his coffee. ‘Matches?’

  He drained the cup, shook his head when she pointed at the pot again, and went and kissed the top of her head. His face was just a little longer amid the tight curls than any casual kiss would have required.

  ‘Stop fussing.’

  ‘I’ve never fussed since you were a sergeant,’ she told him, and tossed Hazard a smile. ‘What would be the use?’ Her voice changed subtly. ‘Is it big?’

  ‘As big as anything I’ve handled.’

  ‘So it’ll take time?’

  ‘It could take days, even weeks. My guess is a few fast hours will wrap it up.’

  Drury didn’t acknowledge the quick look of interest this statement earned from his assistant, for Bill Hazard had been enjoying the gloomiest thoughts about how long this case would be protracted, and what the outcome might do to a number of promising Scotland Yard careers, including that of Detective Inspector William Hazard.

  She followed them to the door, kissed her husband on the mouth and squeezed his shoulder.

  ‘Good luck, Bill,’ she said to Hazard, and in the softness of the night her voice was warm and friendly and echoing with a pride of which she did not feel ashamed.

  She remained watching them as they piled into the police car. She saw that Hazard had purposely placed himself to beat Frank to the driver’s seat. She smiled to herself in the velvet darkness of her own front doorstep, feeling grateful that her Frank had a man like Bill Hazard siding him.

  She hoped it wouldn’t rain, though there were plenty of clouds. Rain late at night made the roads skiddy, and Saturday there were too many late drivers beating it up. The figures for late-night road casualties were always depressing, she felt.

  The engine of the car roared awake, headlights burned along the street of middle-class homes with tidy front gardens, and as the car pulled away from the kerb with its winkers flashing Bill Hazard gave a quick toot on the horn.

  She put both hands to her mouth, and blew that departing car a kiss. No one would see it, but somehow she felt better for blowing it because she sensed it would reach them, even if only she knew.

  She went back into the hall, shut the front door, and turned into the small dining-room to start collecting the plates and cutlery.

  The door was left open. She heard the small voice calling, ‘Mummy, was that Daddy come home?’

  ‘Only for a meal,’ she called back. ‘Stay there. I’ll come and tuck you in again.’

  She put down the used crockery and a handful of knives and forks and spoons that rattled as they spilled on to the tray she always kept on the sideboard.

  She wasn’t hurried.

  Not now.

  She went up the stairs and into the small bedroom, as they referred to the boy’s room, and she was composed and close to being content.

  He had managed to get home.

  That was the great thing. That was what mattered to her.

  Always.

  Flora Marshall was scared. Her fear was like a caged mouse leaping about inside her head, first peering out of one eye, then the other. Her breath smelled of bottled stout, and she was burning up cigarettes as though she had been told they were going out of fashion. Claude and Cedric sat one at each end of the worn settee that had once been green with a surface of velvet nap raised in a grotesque flower design. They had been brought to this house by a Flying Squad car, which was parked outside with the driver at the wheel. The two other members of the crew made the small back sitting-room in Hornsey look crowded.

  One of the Flying Squad men with an idea of being funny said, ‘There’s nothing to stop you lot talking among yourselves.’

  ‘Go and screw a rusty nail,’ Claude told him.

  ‘Like one in a coffin?’ the Flying Squad man retorted, no whit abashed by such a sullied pleasantry. ‘Like your coffin maybe?’

  The next piece of advice was in much more basic English that betrayed no spark of original inventiveness.

  ‘Here, here, now,’ chided Flora. ‘No good getting like that. You always had it in for the Heavy Mob since they nicked you for that warehouse job. Live and let’s hate each other, I say. Anybody feel like a cup of tea?’

  She was told what she could do with the tea if she bothered to brew it. But not by either of the grinning plain-clothes men, one of whom let his tongue sag through his teeth.

  ‘I get it,’ she said.

  She walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on. One of the Flying Squad men went with her. She gave him a wide-eyed look and tried to make the best of an unpromising situation by saying, ‘I don’t know if I should be out here alone with you, copper. I’ve got my reputation to think of.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he told her. ‘They’ll do all the thinking necessary about that in Holloway.’

  It was a fairly smart riposte. Anyway, it registered in the more fleshy region of Flora Marshall’s pride, and it felt uncomfortably permanent. That was the reason she was mean in spooning the tea into the pot.

  The pot was being carried into the other room, the Flying Squad man balancing cups and saucers, when a car drew up outside. It was Drury, and the rap on the front door could have shivered a cheap-quality paint.

  He was let in by the unburdened Flying Squad man, and was followed into the crowded back room by Hazard. Drury looked disdainfully at the teacups and steaming brown pottery teapot.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Pour out and then I’m wanting answers in a hurry. Anybody who wants to get smart about Judge’s Rules can do it at the station. He’ll be held till Monday and taken to Sevenoaks and charged by the Kent police. Or her.’

  ‘What with?’ asked Cedric.

  ‘To start with, accessory to murder.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Flora. ‘Here, let me pour.’

  It was a short session, but rugged. Drury had no time to waste. That was all in the past — he hoped. He was the only one to refuse a cup of tea.

  He led off with the big one. All the other questions were subsidiary, in any event.

  ‘Who planted the plastic bomb? Any of you can answer.’

  One of the men broke wind and gave a little moan. It was Claude. Cedric cracked his knuckles. Flora almost dropped her cup. Tea spilled over her lap. She swore quietly but intensely.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ Drury said. ‘Who?’

  Claude stirred on the settee. ‘We don’t k
now, but we think it was Sharal.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We let him in. He told us to get lost. That was about half-past six. It was still raining a bit.’

  ‘Mean to say you didn’t follow?’ Drury said sharply. ‘It should have looked good for some easy black money.’

  Claude said, ‘You don’t follow a man with a gun who can send you to jail even if he chucked the bloody shooter over the wall.’

  It seemed a fair argument, Drury allowed, but he said sharply, ‘How was it set up for you to go to Broomwood? All of it.’

  The pair on the settee looked at the woman who was wiping her damp lap in a preoccupied manner.

  ‘Tell him, Flora.’

  Mrs Marshall nodded as though agreeing to a voice none of the others could hear. She spoke in a sort of loud and fierce whisper.

  ‘She advertised for someone. I mean that Vicki Seeburg who married the bloke in the turban. She gave me the job, and I saw Sharal at her place, and he asked if I could recommend a couple of useful types, so Claude and Cedric got fixed up. Later he wanted someone who packed a shooter. That’s not their line.’ She pointed at the settee with her chin. ‘So they sent Jack Mulley along.’

  ‘By the way, he’s dead,’ Drury said. ‘Vicki Seeburg shot him after he’d killed a Home Office special security man. Does Paget ring a bell?’

  If none of them were lying, it didn’t. Three worried heads shook.

  Cedric said, ‘Jack Mulley didn’t talk much. A closemouthed bastard, but he loved guns. The bigger the better.’

  Claude gave him a long hard look, but said nothing.

  ‘Let’s have the rest of it,’ Drury said to the woman.

  ‘There’s not much to tell,’ she said, wiping her mouth in fingers that weren’t too steady. ‘Like I said, she’d taken me on, and one day she said I’d pinched some damned trinkets, and was going to send for the police. Mind you, she didn’t look half-way like doing it. I knew it was leading to something. I was right. I had to drink a bottle of stout, act drunk, and she’d send for a copper. Afterwards she’d withdraw the charge, and talk to that nut Wilma Haven. If I got taken on by Wilma I didn’t put up any fight. That’s what happened, just as she said it would. She was real smooth. Then Sharal told these two’ — another head jab at the settee — ‘that they couldn’t have the rise they hadn’t asked for, so he was showing them the door, but he would put in a word for them if I gave them a reference, which he thought I would. It was all like a real con.’