The Victory Snapshot
Barrie Roberts
© Barrie Roberts 1997
Barrie Roberts has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1997 by Constable & Robinson Ltd.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Author’s Note
The Metropolitan Borough of Belston does not exist. If it did, it would probably be one of the so-called ‘Black Country Boroughs’ that lie north-west of Birmingham; since it doesn’t, it isn’t. All characters and events in this story are completely fictitious, with one exception.
The one exception is the crime around which this story revolves. It did take place, though not in the Midlands. As in the story, the criminals were never sought, arrested nor punished, which raises interesting speculations as to who they were and what became of them.
Barrie Roberts 1997
Table of Contents
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1
‘Cadaveric spasm’, declaimed Dr Macintyre, giving all six syllables a resonant Scots roll over his tongue, ‘is the pathological phenomenon least understood by the writers of cheap detective novels, to whom it serves as a gruesome device in their ill-thought-out plots. It is, in fact, never found in cases of stabbing and rarely in gunshot or head wound cases. Nevertheless, it is present in this instance.’
He paused, and gazed down at the long, pale corpse on the steel mortuary table before continuing. ‘Deceased’s right hand was tightly clenched. Examination revealed … ’
This time he stopped to look around him. The only witness to his lecture was a pallid detective constable, standing as far away from the table as possible and trying not to listen to Macintyre’s oration. The constable was longing for fresh air and a cigarette; only the voice-operated cassette recorder was paying attention.
Macintyre picked up a steel implement from a trolley and applied it to the cadaver’s clenched fist, prying the bony fingers open, one by one. Something dropped from the hand and rang on the satin steel examination table. Picking it up, the doctor straightened and drew a deep, noisy breath. The reels of the recorder stirred silently as he continued, ‘ … a small object firmly held … ’
*
No, I wasn’t there on that particular occasion, but I’ve had the rare privilege of watching Dr Macintyre at work, and that will be the way it happened. Doc’s province, the Borough Mortuary, is discreetly tucked away up an alley alongside the Guildhall. It doesn’t have a sign on it. The customers don’t have to find their own way; they all get chauffeur-driven.
While Doc was making his discovery I was in a better-known part of the building — the magistrates’ court. The Crown Prosecutor was on his feet, cross-examining a lanky, blue-eyed Irishman who kept irritating the magistrates by trying to put his hat on in the witness box.
‘Now, Mr Murphy, when did you come to Belston?’
The Irishman looked confused. ‘I can’t just recall,’ he said, ‘if that was before Christmas or after Christmas.’
The tubby, silver-haired Prosecutor rolled an unbelieving eye at the Bench. ‘You don’t know where you spent Christmas?’ he asked, wonderingly.
‘Oh, yes, sir. I was in Manchester for Christmas. I remember that, sir.’
The Prosecutor smiled. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘So you came here after Christmas?’
It wasn’t better. Murphy shook his head. ‘Oh no, sir. I wasn’t saying that. You see, I always spend Christmas in Manchester, wherever I’ve been. If I was here before Christmas I’d have gone down to Manchester for Christmas and if I was somewheres else before I’d have gone to Manchester for Christmas and then come here after.’
‘Come now, Mr Murphy,’ said the Prosecutor, ‘you can do better than that. What religion are you?’
‘I’m a Roman Catholic, sir,’ replied Murphy, stoutly.
‘Good,’ said the Prosecutor. ‘So you know when Christmas is?’
‘I know it’s 25th December, sir, but I don’t know what day that was. I think it was Wednesday this year.’
Along the lawyers’ table from the Prosecutor, at the defence end, I was leaning over my papers and trying to stifle snorts of amusement. Christmas Day had been a Monday, and I suspect that my client well knew it.
Entangled in Murphy’s logic, the Prosecutor retreated and attacked from another direction.
‘You brought a caravan and a lorry from Manchester last winter,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to tell the court that you can’t remember even roughly when that was?’
‘But I didn’t,’ protested Murphy.
‘You didn’t what?’ asked the lawyer.
‘I didn’t bring a trailer and a lorry. I had two trailers and me big lorry and a transit van.’
‘Right,’ said the Prosecutor. ‘So you brought four vehicles here. You must remember when that was.’
‘No, sir,’ said the Irishman. ‘You see, me wife would have driven the lorry and me oldest boy had the transit. I came up by the train, but I don’t know when that was.’ He paused. ‘It was snowing when I came,’ he added helpfully.
I couldn’t help it; I snorted again, audibly, and earned a reproving frown from the chairman.
Eventually even the Prosecutor saw that he was getting nowhere. After brief closing speeches, the clerk had a whispered word with the chairman of the Bench. He said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to adjourn to the back room for a cup of tea?’, and the magistrates, whose verdict of guilty had been legible on their faces since before the defence opened, agreed with alacrity.
The clerk rose and shuffled his papers. ‘Their Worships are retiring to consider their decision,’ he announced. ‘All rise!’
The Prosecutor and I stood up, the idlers in the public gallery slouched to their feet, a bored pressman half-stood and the usher at the back woke and rushed to the door that led into the retiring room, whipping it open just as the three magistrates reached it.
Behind me I could hear legs being stretched in the public seats. I sat and played Hangman with myself on my scrap pad while I imagined Their Worships’ deliberations.
In the panelled room behind the court they would have poured themselves tea and be standing around chatting, stretching their own legs. Major Billingham, who had been impatient ever since Murphy pleaded ‘Not guilty’, would be looking at his watch. Billingham was new to our Bench and had been glancing at his watch throughout the defence case. Now he would be telling the chairman that he’d heard my cases were long drawn-out jobs, but half a day for an obstruction by a tinker was going it a bit strong.
The chairman would chuckle and warn him that he’d have to get used to me. He would explain that every town has its ‘layabouts’ lawyer’ and I was Belston’s. ‘Came here about ten years ago as assistant to old Humphreys,’ he would say. ‘Lasted about six months before they had some kind of row, then he set up on his own. Started out with one room, one desk, two chairs — that sort of practice. Makes his living defending tinkers, hippies, drug addicts, Pakis, blacks, all the anti-social elements — even rac
ist hooligans.’
He would finish sipping his tea and tell his colleagues, ‘Let’s get back in there and pot his bloody client. That’ll teach him to waste our time.’
They were still chortling at this pleasantry when they filed back into court and their clerk brayed, ‘Be upstanding for Their Worships.’
*
My name is Tyroll, Christopher Tyroll, Solicitor of the Supreme Court. Thirty-five years old, single (not my choice — my ex-wife’s), religion vaguely Christian, politics vaguely leftish. Smoker, moderate drinker. Medium height, slim and darkly good-looking according to my mirror, ‘slight and skinny and looks like some kind of foreigner’ if you believe my professional colleagues. Sole support of an assistant solicitor, an articled clerk, a secretary, a typist and an office junior, all corporately known as ‘Tyrolls’ — an overburdened legal aid practice which threatens to go into liquidation about thirty times a month, even in February.
Paddy Murphy was philosophical about his conviction and polite about my unsuccessful efforts. Outside the court he scratched his balding head, jammed his battered old tweed hat firmly in place, shook my hand warmly and sauntered off in search of a drink. I would have joined him, but you can’t interview clients with your breath smelling of booze, so I hefted my briefcase and headed for the Rendezvous.
The Rendezvous Café has stood in the shadow of the Guildhall as long as anyone can remember. It was born in the twenties and it shows. Almost every year someone tries to get it pulled down, on the perfectly truthful basis that its peeling frontage and enamelled signs offering forgotten brands of cigarettes and soft drinks are an eyesore and a blot on the square, but it survives.
Its longevity is due to powerful friends. Most of the lawyers in Belston have known the Rendezvous since their childhood, and come to love it when they were articled clerks. It’s the last port of call for a hurried cuppa before court in the morning, a place to meet clients and witnesses, and a place to have a leisurely afternoon cup with toasted teacakes before returning to the office. In their later careers, as local politicians, none of its denizens have ever been able to order its demolition.
For half an hour in the morning it’s a maelstrom as lawyers, policemen and half the town’s petty villains press at the counters for mugs of tea. Later the victims return, cursing at their fines, and on market days you’ll find it full until the last stalls close, but today it was empty.
Two overalled ladies, one maternally plump and one neurotically thin, lolled at the counter discussing last night’s EastEnders. In a cubicle at the rear, where the afternoon sun did not penetrate, their sole customer hunched over a mug of orange-coloured tea.
I pushed through the glass door, which had jammed slightly as long as I had known it, dumped my briefcase on to a stool by the counter and sat on the next one.
‘Afternoon, Mr Tyroll,’ said the larger of the two counter-hands, moving along to my position. ‘Been potted again, have you?’
I smiled, ruefully. ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds for obstructing Edward Street with a caravan,’ I reported. ‘It would do Edward Street good if they bombed it! A tea and two buttered Chelseas, please, Ruby.’
She turned to pick up the huge brown teapot. ‘You defending that Darren Gormley?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘The rapist?’ Pouring tea expertly with one hand, she nonchalantly wielded a pair of plastic tongs with the other, transferring two Chelsea buns from a display case on to a plate.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he isn’t a rapist.’
‘Why’s he been charged, then?’ she demanded.
‘Because,’ I said, ‘he had the misfortune to fall into Inspector Saffary’s hands at the wrong time.’
‘Oh, that Saffary,’ she said, pushing the plate and cup across. ‘You know what they calls him, don’t you?’
I shook my head.
‘They calls him ‘The Tailor’ ’cos they reckon he stitches people up proper. I hope your fellow’s guilty if Saffary’s got his knife into him,’ and she chuckled, wheezily.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t just come in here for the tea and buns, it’s because you cheer me up.’
As I paid her and left the counter, balancing plate and cup in one hand, briefcase in the other, she called after me, ‘Dr Mac’s down the back. He’ll cheer you up. Always got a funny story about dead people’s bits and innards, he has.’
Macintyre looked up as I approached his table. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘Fresh from defending the wrongdoer and punishing the children of the rich — how are you, Christopher?’
I dumped my burdens and slid into a seat opposite the doctor. ‘Not in a mood for your raillery, Doc. Ruby says you’ll cheer me up with a funny story about the innards of dead bodies.’
‘Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?’ asked the Scotsman.
‘Either’ll do,’ I said, sipping my tea.
‘Well, peculiar then,’ said the pathologist. ‘One of your clients became one of mine this morning.’
‘That’s not peculiar. Most of my clients live round here, some of them die round here, and you get to pick over the remains of any unusual deaths. Who was it?’
‘You make me sound like a carrion bird,’ complained the doctor. ‘It was an old man called Brown, lived across by the park.’
‘Not really a client. I bought his house for him and made his will, that’s all. I don’t think he liked me very much. The first time he came to my office he said, ‘You’re the fellow that defends gypsies, aren’t you?’ When I admitted my follies he said, ‘Can’t stand ’em myself — a dirty, shiftless lot, but they’re getting a hard time since that stupid Act and someone’s got to stand up for them. That’s why I came here. I want someone who’ll stand up if the going gets tough.’ After which tribute he allowed me to draw his will and buy his house, but you’ll understand that we never exactly socialised.’
‘What going?’ asked Mac.
‘What ‘What going’?’
‘Why did he think the going was going to get tough?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was just a form of words. Why do you ask?’
‘Because he’s dead, laddie.’
I took another long draught of tea. ‘How did he die?’ I asked.
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Macintyre. ‘He was mugged, or so it seems.’
‘Mugged?’
‘Aye. Apparently he used to walk round the lake in the park every morning as a constitutional. This morning somebody mugged him. Mother and kiddie going to feed the ducks saw his feet sticking out under the bushes.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s terrible. He must have been eighty or more. What a way to end!’
‘Aye,’ said the doctor. ‘He was a big old fellow, put up one hell of a scrap.’
‘Did he?’
‘Oh yes. Bruises and knuckle abrasions — he must have landed a punch or two — and his walking stick had blood and tissue on it that wasnae his.’
‘What killed him?’
‘That’s one of the funny things,’ said Macintyre. ‘He was battered all right, and it looked like someone had had gloved hands on his throat, but the actual cause of death was a single blow to the neck.’
‘A karate chop?’
‘Aye, that kind of thing.’ The pathologist leaned across and took my second Chelsea bun, attacking it with relish. ‘That’s all this town needs — Ninja muggers in the park!’
‘Be my guest,’ said I. ‘Do you really think it was an Oriental?’
‘No. If anyone asked my opinion, based on the body, I’d say the police should be seeking a tall, young, strong man, with brown hair, wearing soft footwear and sporting a fresh injury and maybe bloodstained clothing. Possibly an ex-soldier or a martial arts practitioner.’
‘Why tall, brown-haired and soft-shoed?’ I asked.
‘Ah, Watson, Watson!’ exclaimed the Scot. ‘Tall, because ye cannae easily strangle anyone who’s much taller than you, but someone tried to strangle the old fellow and he was six foot tw
o. Brown-haired, because he took a clout on the head from the walking stick and left hair and blood behind. With soft shoes, because he attacked from behind, which means he came up quietly on the gravel path by the lake.’
‘Brilliant, Holmes!’ I said.
‘Superintendent Howard didnae think so,’ said Macintyre. ‘He’s got a completely different idea.’ He called to the ladies at the counter, ‘Ruby, June, have you got the afternoon paper?’
Ruby moved slowly down the cafe with it and gave it to him, folded inside out to expose the TV page. He turned it right way out and passed it across the table. I put down my cup and took in the front page headline:
OAP MURDERED IN PARK Police Appeal For Witnesses
85-year-old Walter Brown, a retired local government official of Grenville Street, Belston, was found dead in the town’s park early this morning.
Mr Brown, who made a practice of walking in the park as soon as it opened, had been murdered, apparently by a mugger. His watch and wallet were missing.
The body was found by Mrs Eileen Probert, 31, of Brean Walk. She had been taking her seven-year-old daughter, Dorothy, to feed the ducks in the park.
Mrs Probert told us: ‘I was just breaking up the bread for the ducks when Dotty said that there was a man asleep in the bushes. Well, you do get drunks there in the summer, but when I looked I could see he was dead, so I called the police.’
Detective Superintendent Howard of Central Midlands Police said: ‘This poor old man was savagely struck down while enjoying a morning walk. We are looking for witnesses who may have seen anyone acting strangely in the vicinity of the park or the lake at about eight this morning.’
Police have issued a description of a man they want to interview. He is described as about 5’ 10”, dark-haired, unshaven and wearing a zip-up leather jacket and dark jeans or trousers.
I looked up from reading. ‘So you’ve got an ex-soldier about six feet with brown hair and Howard’s got a dark, scruffy, shorter bloke in leather jacket and jeans. Where did he get that from?’
The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1) Page 1