Full Fury

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Your faith in yourself?’ I sneered.

  ‘I knew the gun had to be somewhere. The only way my confidence faltered was in believing we would find it. But I knew—’

  ‘From your damned theorising!’

  ‘It was the only possible solution.’

  ‘No,’ I shouted. ‘I can give you two or three others. Wild ones, but they’re there. You had no right to decide that. It was only a theory.’

  ‘He admitted it. In detail.’

  ‘Who the hell did you think you were? Judge and jury? God himself?’

  ‘You’re being offensive.’

  ‘And you’ve got the utter nerve to say I’m offensive!’

  He stared at me stubbornly. I just couldn’t break through to him. Was he psychotic or something? All his training and experience as a policeman should have prevented him from even considering such a course.

  ‘As a policeman,’ he maintained coldly, ‘it was part of my duties to ensure that the ends of justice were not—’

  ‘Ends of justice, hell! You had no right!’

  ‘Kindly control yourself.’

  I looked at him in disgust, and banged a cigarette so hard against my plaster cast that it broke in two. The retriever looked in tilted puzzlement at my anger.

  ‘You killed two men. Not just Gaines, but old Hutchinson, too.’

  ‘That is complete nonsense.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see anything? In the end that poor devil took his own life, and it all grew from that adverse report. At the time you knew he hadn’t missed it. But that didn’t stop you. Oh no. Hutchinson had to go.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ he said sharply, and caught me in mid-stream. He was actually righteously angry. He stabbed the pipe stem at me. ‘I’ve let you go on. But I’m not going to be called a fool, and an insincere one into the bargain. Why d’you think I chose the cow byre when I wanted somewhere to plant it?’

  ‘Near the body, perhaps.’

  He dismissed that idea impatiently. ‘Rubbish. I knew there was going to be somebody who’d have to take the blame. Do you imagine I’d do that casually, without a thought? No. I made enquiries. Quietly, of course. I got all the records, everybody who was on that first search. Even you.’ He gave a disparaging smile at what he recalled. ‘And Hutchinson was an obvious choice. You’ll have to take my word for that.’

  ‘Your word!’

  ‘Very well. If you insist, I’ll tell you he was no good. Incompetent and lazy. There was a list of complaints as long as your arm. And dishonest with it. We knew he’d covered on at least three burglaries, and there was an armed robbery we weren’t happy about. Couldn’t prove anything, or he’d have been out on his neck long before. But he was rotten through and through. We were well rid of him, and the opportunity was too good to miss. It had to be the cow byre.’

  ‘And you told him this?’ I felt cold. ‘Young Paul.’

  ‘Not about the gun. Of course not.’

  ‘About his father.’

  ‘He had to know. It wasn’t healthy for him to go on cherishing that absurd idea that his father was some sort of martyr whose life had been ruined by his dismissal. Certainly I told him.’

  I wanted to get out of there. I wondered whether Paul had faced it with his sloppy bewilderment. Now, of course, I was beginning to realize why he had come to me. Unable to accept it from Crowshaw, he’d been searching for something, anything, to rescue the image. And on the other side had been the vaguely-menacing figure of Carter Finn. So Paul had called in the big guns. It was a pity this particular gun had only been able to go pop.

  ‘You could have spared him that.’

  ‘I’ve got no time for sentimental evasion.’

  I looked away from him. What the hell was I going to do about it? There’d have to be a report to the Home Secretary, and Myra would find herself right in the middle of it again. Finn wasn’t going to like that. That was something I could look forward to with pleasure, anyway.

  ‘I don’t know how you’ve lived with it.’

  He made no answer. I turned to him again. He was watching me intently. I’d expected some sort of appeal. After all these years, let it lie; that sort of thing. But in his eyes there was a deep-felt and unutterable relief.

  ‘You know what I’ve got to do,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know that you need to do anything.’

  ‘You’ve got no conscience,’ I shouted.

  Then he lost his temper. He blasted at me. ‘Then why the hell d’you think I bought this place?’

  My left hand jumped with a spasm of pain. He ignored it.

  ‘The second gun had to be here,’ he said wearily. ‘Somewhere. All I’d done was put one in to save time.’

  ‘Time,’ I breathed. Gaines’s time.

  ‘The trial wasn’t going to wait. His second gun was here, I knew, somewhere on the farm. All right, so I planted one. It got the trial out of the way. But I was going to make sure the real second one—Gaines’s second one—was found. I bought this place. A Chief Inspector with two hundred acres! The mortgage about broke my back. But I had to have it. Then once it was mine, I started in on it. If you want a job doing well, do it yourself. I did it. Yard by yard, working outwards from the house, marking it off. Organised, you understand. Digging down. Because I had to find it. Three years I was at it, every spare day I could get here. Drover must have thought I was mad. I very nearly was, by that time.’

  He stopped. I watched him move around restlessly. ‘And then?’

  He didn’t reply at once. He marched over to the Welsh dresser and jerked open a drawer, took from it a bundle wrapped in cloth, and tossed it on to the carved oak table. It unwrapped itself as it fell. I was looking at the rusted remains of a Colt thirty-eight automatic pistol.

  I didn’t touch it. From behind me he spoke tiredly. ‘Gaines’s second gun. In the orchard, a few inches under. Must have worked its way down over the years, or got tramped in.’

  ‘The number?’

  ‘Just decipherable. That was lucky.’ He didn’t seem inclined to go on. I turned to look at him. He’d waited years for this, dreading it, and now welcoming it. His back was straight, his eyes level. He was filling his pipe calmly.

  ‘So you managed to trace it?’ I asked.

  He smiled sourly. ‘I traced that one. Yes, of course. It had been bought, a number of years before the murder, by Neville Gaines, and quite legally.’ Such quiet and dignified triumph. He’d waited ten years to tell somebody that.

  ‘So you were justified. Gaines’s other gun.’

  ‘I was relieved.’

  He’d been relieved. That made it just fine. And now everybody was happy. I touched it with the tip of my finger.

  ‘How many were fired? Do you know?’

  ‘It’s about rusted solid, but I managed to get the magazine out. Three were fired. Then it must have jammed.’

  Ten shots, then. We’d found nine bullets, or evidence of nine bullets. That had been mighty close.

  ‘Must have done,’ I said. ‘But still… the orchard.’

  ‘I know. We know Paterson didn’t go there. I’ve had time to think about that. Paterson didn’t do so, but we can’t say Gaines didn’t. Maybe in the chase he lost Paterson in the dark, looked for him in the orchard, and couldn’t find him. The third shot jammed the gun. Perhaps he let off a shot at a shadow in the orchard and got nothing from this gun, and simply tossed it away. He’d got the other, the one he bought from Lovejoy, and he went on and finished the job with that.’

  I felt completely deflated. ‘Anybody else seen it?’

  He shook his head. ‘Myself, and now you.’

  ‘Can I borrow it?’ I had to get away and think.

  He looked at me bleakly. I wasn’t going to let it go. Was that what he’d expected?

  ‘Get a full lab report on it,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose it would be as well,’ he conceded.

  I rolled it up again with one hand, and stood there with it
held in front of me. ‘Then I’ll be off.’

  He nodded. What could we say to each other?

  The sun had come out. Along the distant road two cars were moving fast. I could just hear them. I turned.

  ‘I suppose you’ve cleared it now?’

  He was in the yard with me, and cocked his head in query.

  ‘The mortgage,’ I explained.

  ‘It’s clear.’

  ‘Then you’re all right, aren’t you!’

  He didn’t admit it. He stood and watched me get into the Porsche and fumble the gear lever into first. The sun went in again as I drove away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Freer was in his office. He made an effort to be non-committal. ‘Get your drink?’ he said.

  I rolled the gun on to his desk. He stared at it.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you where I got that,’ I told him. ‘All I’m asking is a favour.’

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, pleasantly enough.

  ‘I don’t feel like sitting.’

  ‘Then look out of the window. What d’you want me to do?’

  ‘To start with, don’t trouble to trace it back.’

  ‘Very well, if it’ll make you happy.’

  ‘Drop it into the lab and let them look at it. Just that. I want to know if it jammed, and why, and how many shots were fired.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘It’ll take a bit of time.’

  ‘I haven’t got any time. I’ll phone later today.’

  ‘You’ve got no patience, Mallin, that’s your trouble. Nobody’s got any patience these days.’

  I headed for the door, and got my right hand on to the knob.

  ‘What’s the matter with your hand?’ he asked.

  ‘Knocked it against a hard object.’

  ‘I told you, he doesn’t like you any more.’

  I grinned at him. But Carter Finn was going to love me, wasn’t he? I was going to bury Neville Gaines several feet deeper under the yard at Pentonville. I turned to go again, but Freer hadn’t finished.

  ‘What do I do with it afterwards?’ he asked. ‘Send it back to Crowshaw?’

  I could never stand intelligent policemen. ‘Stick a label on it,’ I said. ‘You might be needing it.’

  It was five to one, a reasonable time, I thought, to call on Elsa. If we were still speaking I might persuade a bit of lunch out of her. I rather fancied grilled steak.

  The house was quiet outside. I parked and found my way in. It was not quiet inside. I found her weeping in the long lounge, her face covered by her hands.

  ‘Elsa…’

  She lowered her hands. She had walked into a door. Her left eye was swollen and already changing colour. Somewhere upstairs Doris was on a panic search for repair materials.

  ‘David!’ Elsa howled. ‘It had to happen now!’

  I comforted her a little. Her lips tasted salty.

  ‘What can I do?’ she whimpered.

  I showed her my hand, which she hadn’t noticed before because she was too involved with eyes. ‘They’ll think I’ve broken it beating you up,’ I said, cheering her a bit.

  That did it. Tears stormed down my shirt and her fists hammered on my chest at the thought of it. Then she went silent. She detached her face and looked at me solemnly.

  ‘But David, you’re right handed.’

  I fell off the settee, laughing. Did I tell you we were on the settee?

  ‘It isn’t amusing,’ she said pathetically. ‘How can I possibly face them like this. How can I go through with it?’

  I’ve mentioned the celebrated Mallin temper. It went. I stood up and told her that if she thought a simple black-eye was going to postpone our wedding, she’d got another thing coming. I told her I wasn’t going to go through all this preparation and strain again. I told her it was all I could do to put it off till tomorrow, and if she thought… And so on.

  I’ll never understand women. She stared at me as though I’d brought a stranger in with me, then flung her arms round me while he was still with us, and gave him such a warm welcome that it very nearly didn’t get put off until tomorrow. I let it all flow along. You have to make what you can of the opportunities that present themselves.

  Then Doris appeared with some plasters that were no use at all, and I got a couple of pork sandwiches out of it in the end, the steak going on Elsa’s eye.

  ‘It feels awfully clammy,’ she said.

  I told her that for some reason I didn’t understand it would be most effective.

  ‘Now you just run off on your silly case,’ she said at last, and off I went, cheerful as the devil until I got in the car and remembered what I’d still got to do.

  When I’d been at Birmingham City Police HQ, Lovejoy was very well known indeed. For longer than the records went he had been living in two rooms over a cake shop in the Stratford Road, and we’d left him undisturbed. We might have got him on minor charges, but it was more useful to know where we could put our hands on him, and any crime that threw up a weapon sent us charging round there to try and dig into his naïve innocence. What he didn’t know about guns was not worth studying up, and the rumour was that if you wanted to start a war, Lovejoy would see you went in fully equipped.

  On the way through the city I dropped in at the flat to see if there was any message from my brother. There wasn’t, so I had an attack of nerves and phoned the hotel. Ted was there.

  ‘We’re here now,’ he said. ‘Relax, Dave.’

  ‘The buttonholes and the corsage for Marjorie,’ I said.

  ‘Elsa told me to say they’d be delivered to the hotel.’

  ‘That all right then. Can I come over?’

  ‘I’ve got to get moving, Ted.’

  ‘If you’ve got to. Want a word with Marj?’

  What can you say to that? ‘Of course.’

  Ted’s wife is a matter-of-fact and unshakeable woman. ‘David,’ she said, ‘how’s Elsa?’

  ‘She’s got a blackeye.’

  It bounced off. ‘Has she, poor dear? Never mind. Tell her to wear a thick veil.’

  With this thought in reserve, I drove along to Lovejoy’s.

  You can count yourself lucky if you can park around there, but I found a notch in a side road and walked back. There was a narrow alleyway between a cake shop and a motor cycle emporium next door, and round in the back yard an outside stair up to Lovejoy’s place. It wasn’t quiet. In the yard next door somebody was blipping a two-stroke. When I got up there, there wasn’t anybody at home

  I went down into the cake shop and bought a black-currant flan and asked for Lovejoy. The girl said he’d gone.

  ‘This morning,’ she said. ‘He took a case and went.’

  ‘Any idea where?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to tell me.’ She tossed her head. ‘I don’t care if he never comes back.’

  I couldn’t imagine what might have been between them. ‘Did you see him leave?’

  ‘I’ve got something better to do.’

  ‘I mean… taxi, was it?’

  She sniffed. ‘Some big grey car pushed its way in and waited for him.’

  I thanked her and stood on the pavement to enjoy my flan and car fumes. Carter Finn was still throwing in obstruction tactics. What’d he got to worry about?

  Then I became aware that somebody was operating a car horn persistently. Amongst the din I detected my name. ‘David! ‘

  Karen was out there in the traffic stream because she couldn’t get to the kerb, with behind her a string of traffic building up, and fresh horns joining hers. What could I do? Stand and argue about it, until the jam stretched right back to the Rotunda? I got into the Rapier, and she edged away.

  ‘You can’t park anywhere,’ she complained.

  There was a box of paper handkerchiefs in the glove compartment. I used one to get the cream off my fingers, and tossed it out of the window.

  ‘Lucky you spotted me,’ I said.

  ‘I’d been round the block three times.’

  She
was wearing a two-piece in maroon jersey wool. Very smart she looked in it, too. The Rapier slid through the traffic neatly and precisely, heading nowhere in particular.

  ‘Waiting for you to come out,’ she said.

  She had a small smile, I saw when I glanced sideways, and a quite determined frown.

  ‘Quite a coincidence.’

  ‘Not really. Not at all.’ She slipped down to second and nipped into a side street. ‘I followed you from your place.’

  ‘Which I suppose you’d been watching for hours?’

  ‘Only one hour.’

  ‘Hoping I’d turn up?’

  ‘What else have I got to do?’

  It could be gratifying, the thought that a beautiful young girl should have nothing better to do than park outside my place, just hoping I’d turn up. I had to assume it was Paul who’d told her where it was.

  ‘It’s your lucky day,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it? Yours too.’

  ‘I think you’d better let me out, and I’ll walk back.’

  She had a pleasant laugh. I wondered what the hell she had in mind.

  ‘I knew you’d be looking for Mr Lovejoy.’

  Did she. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘If dear Carter wanted him out of the way, then obviously he knew you were going to be looking for him.’

  Carter Finn was a good guesser. ‘And you want me to find him?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s no good hiring a man, then obstructing him at every turn. Carter’s stupid.’

  ‘You should tell him that.’

  ‘I’ve told him.’

  ‘What’d he say?’

  ‘Told me to drop dead.’ She laughed again. This was not the girl who’d tangled with emotions in that living-room.

  ‘Well, I mean,’ she said, ‘the best thing’s obviously to get it cleared, and you won’t be finished with it any quicker if you have to search out Mr Lovejoy.’

  She was either being very naïve or rather clever.

  ‘You know him, do you?’

  ‘He often comes to the club.’ She glanced at me. ‘We talk.’

  ‘Then wouldn’t it be quicker for you just to tell me what it is you think Lovejoy ought to tell me?’

  ‘Why should you believe me?’

  Why indeed? ‘Because you have an honest face.’