“If it’ll take me, it’ll take you.”
So he went down first and I held the torch for him. Then I tossed it down and followed.
The first thing was to confirm that Wallach was dead. One touch with the back of the hand on his cold skin was enough.
“Shot,” said George, waving the torch. “Heart shot, looks like. No exit wound. What’d you say — thirty-two?”
I wouldn’t have known. But George is an expert in that line. Before he retired from the Force he’d been the Midlands ballistics man. Show George a shooting and he’s in heaven.
I didn’t want to look at the other, but there was no way out.
It was a man, from what was left of the clothes. The air was dank, and deterioration had been steady. The clothes were shredded and crumbling, and as they had fallen from him they had taken away portions of putrefied flesh. Here and there bones were showing. The face was the shape but not the colour of a skull. His skin had shrunk like a grey parchment cover to the bones, and his teeth grinned horribly through a gap where the lips had been. There were no eyes.
George said: “Gunshot too.”
“What? How the hell can you tell?” The confines made our voices sound strange.
“Where’s your observation, Dave?”
It was down in my belly, churning away. He reached over, almost touching the thing, pointing to what might have been a bullet hole amongst the tatters, a hole just below the ribs, and God, one of them was visible.
Cash’s voice rang out, distant. “They’re coming... coming. Where the devil’s everybody!”
There was panic in his voice until I called out. My own wasn’t too steady. “Down here. Be up in a minute.”
George was prowling. He can’t help himself. Every detail has to be observed. Me, I’m not a detail man. I like to work on human behaviour and motivations.
“His hand’s missing.”
I jerked round. He was stabbing the light at it. It was a detail I could have dispensed with, but sure enough, there was no right hand attached to the near-skeleton. It seemed to have been torn away at the wrist joint, and something about the whiteness of the exposed bone — the other exposed bones had a mottled yellow look — indicated it had been detached recently.
“Let’s hope,” I said sickly, “that it had a gun in it.”
“What gun?”
“The one he shot himself with,” I said impatiently. “If, in fact, he was shot.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “For a moment I thought you meant the one that killed Wallach.”
“It’s no time to be funny.”
“Which was an automatic,” he told me. “There’s a thirty-two shell case here. A clean one.”
“George,” I said, “let’s not try to be clever, eh? There just had to be a gun in that missing hand. All right, I’ll go along with you for now about the trapdoor, and admit it could’ve been bolted inside. That would make it suicide. I don’t want any of this murder nonsense inside a bolted cellar. So he had to have a gun in his hand.”
“If you say so, Dave.”
“Let’s get out of here, you big fool.”
“Worried about Duxford?”
“Worried about my stomach.”
He looked at me in surprise. Before we left I took a last look round; it was unlikely that the police would let us get another look at it. It was a plain, unused cellar, twelve by ten or thereabouts, with blank walls all round. As it seemed unacceptable that anybody would bolt himself inside there without a light, I wondered what he had used. The floor was so bare and dusty that I would surely have seen any remains of candle wax, though I had heard somewhere that mice eat candles. Perhaps they do. There were mouse droppings around, and close to the body some strange shreds of fibre, something in the wool line. Then I saw that he had, after all, provided himself with light. Wedged almost beneath the body, between it and the wall, were the rusty remains of a hand lantern, electrical type. Observing the rust, I was conscious how damp the place was. The chill was beginning to get at me.
“Aren’t you ready?” asked George.
“Waiting for you.”
I went first up the ladder. The night air was sweet, the evening calm and quiet, apart from the police sirens and their winking lights. A large dark car was edging towards us across the site, bumping and nearly stalling, but continuing with dogged persistence. When it came near, “it’s Duxford driving,” said George as though the persistence was habitual to the man.
You have preconceived ideas about people. I’d imagined him to be a smart, sharp type, missing nothing, so I hadn’t expected this mild-looking individual, who got out of the car and sniffed the air and hunched his shoulders.
Ken Duxford was around forty, plumpish, with a black moustache. His face was going to develop jowls, and one day those dark eyes would disappear entirely in their pouches. He was wearing a zipped charka and denim slacks, and beamed at us in friendliness.
“Might have known,” he said enigmatically. “It’s George Coe, isn’t it?”
“Got something pleasant for you, Ken. In a cellar. Something old and something new.”
Duxford appeared not to be listening. His eyes were considering me carefully, and I realised how keen they were.
“Your friend?”
George introduced us. Duxford nodded. “Heard about you.” His smile could have meant anything. He raised his voice, not looking round. “Miller, Fletch, you get statements from these two, and I’ll go take a look before the super gets here.”
“You’ll need a torch,” I said.
He raised his right hand. “Got one.”
I wondered if he’d expected a cellar. “Hang around, Mr. Cash,” he went on. “We’ll get to you.”
He seemed pleased about the whole business, and his efficiency was a thing of easy custom. Get statements, two men to do it, and leave Cash until last. He’d assumed George and I had been together down the cellar, and he wanted our statements before we could compare notes.
Cash, I saw, after a minute or two of hesitation, decided to drift off home, probably for a shot of something to restore his wellbeing. I wished I could go with him.
Fletcher took George into the back of the sergeant’s car. Miller murmured: “Somewhere we can talk?” I couldn’t do other than offer him a seat in the Porsche. “Sheer luxury,” he said, stretching himself in the passenger’s seat. “Make some money, you private chaps. That’s for sure.”
“We get by.”
It would have been irrelevant to mention that the Porsche had been an engagement present from my wife. It’s Elsa who has the money. In fact, she was busy keeping an eye on some of it at that very moment, over at a factory where she owns a considerable bundle of shares. She was doing an award presentation or something. I ached for Elsa.
He took a statement, grunting because he didn’t have to prompt me and it upset him. I made no attempt to hide the fact that we had been down in the cellar. It drew a comment from him.
“Naughty!”
“We had to check he was dead,” I said innocently.
Just then a convoy of police cars drove past us — we were parked near the main gate.
“It’s Supt. Meakin,” said Miller.
“You about finished?”
The statement, yes. For some minutes I had been toying with my keys, which were still hanging from the ignition lock, without realising, other than subconsciously, that something was wrong. Now it penetrated. The key fob had gone. This was an affectation of Elsa’s, a gift to me of a solid silver ingot with my initials engraved on it.
“You finished?” he repeated impatiently, wanting to be there to display his efficiency to the super.
“Yes... oh yes.”
I followed him back across the patch. George was waiting, scowling. “That Fletcher... pushing things, trying to be smart. Wanted to impress his super.”
Everybody did. “It’s Meakin,” I said, watching the superintendent adjust his gloves and straighten his immaculate alpaca coat
.
“Randy Meakin,” said George in disgust. “A right bastard. Never get anything straight from him. He plays with you to see what he can get. Gets plenty from the women, I hear.”
“Why is it that you know everybody, George?”
“When I was weapons man I was all around the district.”
Supt. Meakin was standing at the open trapdoor looking down. “What’ve we got, Duxford?” he shouted.
A shaft of light shot up at him and there was an indistinct voice. Then Ken Duxford appeared from the hole.
“One dead and cold, about a day old. It’s a chap called Wallach, I think. He was a kind of foreman on this site. And one dead a few years.”
“Marty Coleman?”
“There’s a gold cap where the dentist said.”
“So you were right, blast you.” There was no anger in the comment.
Duxford grinned. “It was on the cards, sir. Want to come and have a look?”
“I suppose I must?” said the super ruefully.
“Oh you must.” The sergeant obviously knew his man and understood the feigned meekness and deference. “Better take that coat off, though. The missus would be mad...”
Meakin tossed his coat to one of the men. His voice was negligent. “Ten minutes, then you can all get down and do your little bits. Touch nothing till the medical examiner’s seen them. All right, Sergeant, all right. I’ve climbed down cellars before.” His voice receded. We heard a final plaintive bleat. “No, I shall not be sick on the floor, Sergeant.”
“Marty Coleman,” I said. “We’ve got a name for him, George. You know him, too?”
“Heard of him. I can’t recall the background, though. We’ll dig it out.”
“George,” I said, “you’re forgetting something. Our case is finished. We found Fred Wallach, so we charge for one day and expenses, tell the police where to find us, and go home.”
“Go home!” he said. “What... now?”
I sighed. “It may well be a classical locked-room situation, but it’s not ours.”
“Marty Coleman,” he said, considering. “A robbery of some sort. They never got it back, as I recall.”
“Then he must have taken it with him, because it wasn’t down there.”
“I don’t know how Elsa can stand you,” said George. “Here comes Cash now. You ask him.”
“For our money?”
“About Marty Coleman.”
“How would he know?”
“It’s his district. Damn it, he lives next door.”
Cash wandered up, hands deep in his pockets, his cap even firmer down than usual. The cigarette was in his mouth, being mangled.
“A right do, this, right on my own doorstep.”
“George thinks you’d know about him — Marty Coleman.”
I should have realised that up to that moment Cash could not have known anything other than the fact that Wallach was down there. The shock finally disintegrated the cigarette. He spat out the shreds. “You mean they’ve found him? Down the cellar, was he? Well... there’s a carry-on for you.”
He shook his head, scratched his ear, and conjured up another cigarette, apparently from inside his cap. “This calls for a drink. You’d better come inside.”
I didn’t know what we were celebrating, but the idea of a drink was inviting. We followed him through the little gate in the fence and up his drive. But he did not take us to the front door. He led the way past his wooden garage, along a narrow shut-in alleyway, to a side door deep in a porch.
“Missing pane,” he said as we passed the garage. “Told you, didn’t I?”
I couldn’t see anything in the dark. He was fumbling at the door. “Hardly relevant, is it?” I said.
“Only trying to help,” he complained.
“Damn you, Sandy, get off the step.”
There was a plaintive protest from a cat. The door opened and we waited for the light to come on. “Better come in,” he said. “I’m in a bit of a mess, here.”
He was certainly in a bit of a mess. Half a houseful of crockery was awaiting his attention. I had the horrible thought that by a drink he might mean tea, but no, he led the way on, into a large hall, and then, strangely, up an ornate and wide staircase and finally into a huge room with the window that overlooked the site. It held so much furniture that he might have been storing it for a few families.
“Sit down,” he said, but the chairs had been tossed any old where, so that the ones on their legs pointed in strange directions, and any two persons seated in that room would have been lucky to see each other. George and I stood. We watched him operate his only piece of practical furniture, a cupboard in which he kept his drinks.
And there his personality triumphed. Neatness prevailed. Every bottle stood at attention in orderly ranks, dozens of them, hundreds perhaps — it was a deep cupboard. Cash was a connoisseur of everything.
“Scotch,” said George.
“Which?” demanded Cash with quivering pride. There was a choice of seventeen brands.
I let George choose for us. I bow to the expert every time. The scotch flowed like golden fire onto my troubled innards, and when I looked round for a chair the ginger cat was on the nearest.
“So you know about Marty Coleman,” said George, and Cash knew. This was his home. He’d been born in that house, and even from a lad he could recall that the district had reeked with crime.
“Had a run in with the cops myself,” he recalled. “Once or twice, when I was about sixteen.” He had removed his cap. “Till I got wise. There’s better ways.”
“Such as?” George asked with interest.
“Property. Ten years ago — fifteen you could see this whole area coming down. High class it’d been, till the nobs moved out to Western Park and the Buffs. Then I watched it change to slums. So I started buying, and now it’s paying off.”
Not too late for him, I hoped. The whites of his eyes were yellowed and his cheeks showed an unhappy flush high on his prominent cheek bones.
“Marty Coleman?” I asked, not particularly wanting to know but eager to get it over.
“Oh, that’d be thirteen, maybe fourteen years ago. There was this Lubin — went to school with him, I did — Karl Lubin. A tearaway ‘till he settled down and took his crime seriously. Worked just with one mate, maybe two.”
On that dark, rainy evening thirteen years before it had been two mates, one to stand by the door in case there was any last-minute customer, and one to hold the bag. Lubin himself was holding a sawn-off shotgun. It was his first bank job.
“A little, old-fashioned bank. Over there.” Cash gestured wildly with his glass. “About where that new block of flats is.”
“It’s coming back now,” said George.
The idea had been to drop in at the bank at the last minute, just before they closed, when it was expected that the tills would be loaded. There had been only three tills, and Lubin had chosen the one with an elderly man as cashier. Load the bag with big stuff, he’d said, fivers. And this the cashier had done, all those old white things, and you can get a lot into a decent-sized bag.
But it was Lubin’s first job and he was jumpy. The one at the door...
“Marks, they called him,” said George. “I remember now.”
“Remember now,” repeated Cash, watching his lips. “Supposed to be a stranger around here. At least, so they said. It didn’t mean anything to me. Dutch Marks, he called himself.”
The one at the door known as Dutch Marks should have left the car engine running, and got back to the car when the bag was full, leaving the other two a clear run. Marty Coleman was carrying the bag. They really needed a fourth, a pro car driver, but Lubin was greedy. This Marks, he left it a bit late. Witnesses said he seemed to be petrified, there by the door, and when he got to the car the engine would not start.
When Karl Lubin and Marty Coleman ran out, it was to a dead car with Dutch Marks going wild with the starter. Then the manager ran out shouting, “police, police,”
as he certainly wouldn’t have done unless he’d thought they had left. For some reason, quite uselessly, Lubin shot him, and he died later in hospital.
There was nothing left but to make do on foot, and they seemed to have split up. Marty Coleman, Lubin said when they caught him, took the bag of white fivers, and that was the last anybody saw of Marty Coleman and Dutch Marks. It was assumed that Coleman got clear away, to live in luxury. Probably Dutch Marks had been operating under a pseudonym — they all three wore comic masks for the job — and simply reassumed his real identity in obscurity. But the outcome was that Karl Lubin got twenty years, during which time he must have heard that the loot, if it was still around, had become worthless when the white notes were called-in.
“So,” said George, “if that was Marty Coleman down in the cellar, he didn’t get away with the money.”
“Money,” whispered Cash.
“Because it wasn’t down there.”
“Down there.”
“And because he’d bolted himself in.”
“In,” said Cash. “Had he?”
“So it would seem. These houses around here — you say you were here then — who lived next door at that time?”
“Oh... nobody. Not more than one in five had people in. The whole row was near derelict then.”
“It explains something,” said George, looking at me meaningly.
Time was getting on. I wondered if Elsa had got home. “It explains where Dutch Marks disappeared to,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter.”
George frowned. “How d’you mean doesn’t really matter?”
“Marty Coleman had a bolt-hole to hide in. Probably he’d got it prepared for emergency, the cellar in the empty house next door. So maybe he would fit a bolt inside, in those circumstances, though why he’d bolt himself in and then shoot himself I can’t imagine. And don’t really care. But tonight he didn’t have any of that money down there with him. So, if Lubin was picked up, then Dutch Marks, somewhere along the line, probably relieved Coleman of it, and made his way to the Seychelles or somewhere.”
“Under his real name,” said George.
“Real name,” repeated Cash. He didn’t do it to me, not out loud, I noticed. Perhaps my words aren’t vital enough.
The Weight of Evidence Page 4