“They didn’t christen you Ginger,” I said, exploring a nasty idea. “What’s your real name?”
“It’s Walter. But why —”
“How would she think you were Wallach?” I shouted. “With all that hair sticking out! She knew it was you...”
“She never calls me Wal. Not for ages.”
I was across the room at him, unstable with fury. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, he’d had to go on. His own wife, estranged, buying herself something fancy in case he came back... But the bile was in my mind. My anger was equally with myself. I had nothing to go on, either. Nothing we had said over the phone was positive. I hate phones. You can’t see the expressions.
“She welcomed you,” I said, grabbing hold of a bunch of shirt. “And you threw the case at her!”
“Easy, Dave,” said George. “It’s not the point.”
“Then what in heaven’s name is?” I demanded.
He detached me. “He was mad furious,” said George. “That’s the point, whether he’d got good reason or not. So he’d leave there — we know he did, at three — and he’d transfer his violence to Wallach. That’s what the police’ve got. They’ve got a suspect who can operate the crane, and who now turns out to have been heading for Wallach with murder on his mind.”
Dyke was looking sullen.
“Well?” George challenged him. “Hadn’t you?”
“I tried to get at him.”
“Tried? Why didn’t you succeed?”
“I tried to lift the shed off him, but I felt the load come on. I didn’t know it’d lift the slab an’ all, so I eased it off. You could see — he’d know I’d gone to Clare’s, and know I’d be back for him. So he’d bolted the shed down. When it come to it, he’d got no guts.”
And yet Wallach, if he’d been that scared, could have got out some way or other, using sufficient violence. I was feeling calmer. It had done me good. I was thinking straight again.
“And was he in there?”
“Couldn’t see anything through the window. It was dead dark in there. He’d be lying low.”
“So no doubt it was you smeared the putty. I expect you left your fingerprints all over the glass.”
Dyke ran his hand through his hair and got his fingers tangled. He grimaced.
“So,” said George, “with all this, and fingerprints too, the police still let him go.”
“Because there was nothing premeditated about it, George. If Dyke did it, then it was in anger, and he’d have to grab what weapon there was. So we’re back to the same gun business, the gun that must have been in that corpse’s hand.”
“Where is that hand?” George wondered.
“You’re not listening, George. It’s what’s bogging them down. Isn’t it at all possible that that gun would still work?”
He sighed. “I’ve thought it over.” And George is the expert. “Assume a well-oiled gun, even go so far as to assume it might be well-greased. Then possibly — and it’d be stretching it — just possibly the action would still move. Maybe it’d even fire a cartridge. But Dave, there’d already been one shot from that automatic. That would’ve cleared the barrel, and the charge itself always fouls the bore. That bore, after this time, would’ve been rusted to hell. I know that. Fire a cartridge with that gun, and it’d explode in your hand.”
I hadn’t told him how positive Collison had been. “It’s a poor thing to depend on.”
“What is?”
“All we’ve got saving Dyke here is your trapdoor being bolted inside. It’s because of that we can say the gun was down there for thirteen years.”
“Isn’t he lucky!” said George.
I agreed. Lucky Dyke, that Clare had only chucked him out. In her place, I’d have brained him, assuming he’d got any. But I could consider him now more dispassionately. He had, after all, straightened me out a little in my thoughts about Elsa.
But I still hated him, and when he mumbled something about protection as we were leaving, I thought for one moment he meant from me.
“Protection?” asked George, interested. “Has something happened?”
“I’m being followed.”
“You would be. Every inch. By a whole team of C.I.D. men.”
“There’s two of you. I think one of you ought to protect me.”
“I wonder if you maybe saw something that could be dangerous to somebody.”
“When could I...”
“Think. When you collected the van. Or when you took it back.”
“There was the light.”
Ah! A light. Hopeful, that was. George dug into it. Dyke had collected the van about one. As he’d walked over to it — pitch black he said it was — he thought he saw a light over by the shed. In it, even. But then it went out, and he thought it’d just been a streetlamp or something, way in the distance. Nothing significant. He hadn’t thought to mention it.
We left him, not offering protection because there wasn’t much danger to anybody in his having seen a stray light. He’d said it seemed to move, though. All the same, we checked with the police.
Duxford said they hadn’t got anybody watching Dyke.
“Where’s he going to go?” he asked. He raised his eyebrows. “Not back to her, I bet.”
“The fiver,” I said heavily, leaning over his desk.
“Nothing positive. There’s no list of the numbers.”
“Lubin?” asked George.
“He’d paper the wall with them, if he’d got ‘em. But he hasn’t got ‘em, has he. We picked him up after the bank job too smartly for that. Before my time, of course, but I’ve checked back. Meakin was on it. Says the stuff was in a Welsh tweed bag — fancy thing, it was. You know the squared patterns they use. And Lubin wasn’t running with any Welsh tweed bag.”
I didn’t say anything. I had remembered the woollen-type fibres I had seen on the floor of that cellar. The mice would’ve loved it for their nests, and I didn’t suppose the mice took much notice of bolted trapdoors, whichever side the bolt was on.
They’d love the fivers, too, come to think of it. Luxury nests, those would be.
As we left the Station, Dyke came dashing up, all of a tizz-wazz.
“Told you, didn’t I! Didn’t I say?”
“Now what?” George demanded. “Somebody’s had a go at me, that’s what.”
He seemed quite proud of it.
Eight
What had happened was that Emmett Cash had phoned Dyke at the George and told him he’d left the crane in a dangerous condition. It was a bit officious, perhaps, but Cash overlooked the site and couldn’t help noticing. By dangerous was meant that the boom was angled and the steel ball at full height. You couldn’t blame Dyke, what with all the interrogations and things going on. But say this for him, in spite of its being so late he had a conscience where his work was concerned.
I suppose he had more affection for his crane than for his wife.
Anyway, he’d walked down there a matter of fifteen minutes — and at that time the site was dark and deserted. The police had drained it of clues, and gone away. Then Cash had shouted his name from across the site.
“Dyke — that you?”
They’d walked towards each other in the dark, and Ginger Dyke told us he could’ve sworn the crane had been moved. As it was, they would have met beneath the suspended ball, but Cash got there first, just as somebody threw the release lever.
It missed him. “Meant for me,” claimed Dyke. “Told you, didn’t I?” He was becoming irritating.
But a flying housebrick had caught Cash on the shoulder, and when we got to his place he was sitting amongst his clutter and demanding police protection for himself.
Duxford was with us. This was because he’d been standing on the Station steps when Dyke came running up. As the Porsche will take only two less, really, with George in it — he’d offered Dyke a lift. Though Duxford would have come along anyway.
He was inclined to write it off as an accident. A machine fau
lt, he said, though Dyke protested. There was going to be no protection for anybody, it seemed.
We left Dyke tucking his crane away. It’d got one of those latticework booms, and he explained that it was higher than when he’d left it.
While we were there, we asked him to show us where he’d seen the light. George and I stumbled with him across the site. The van had gone to the police yard, but he located where it had been, and from that point there was nothing but the shed. I mean, no streetlamps away in the distance. Just open space and part of Cash’s blank wall.
“Seemed to move sideways,” he said. “Then go out. But it looked like a streetlamp. Not a torch.”
The only streetlamps anywhere near and still working were behind us.
We could make nothing significant out of it, and even if Dyke had mentioned it casually, that bit of knowledge seemed to offer no danger to anybody.
All the same, George chose to take the matter seriously. One of us, he thought, should watch Dyke. We tossed and I lost, so on Thursday that was what I was doing.
All that day it rained steadily. There was really nothing for the lads to do until the full construction team turned up, but they hung around. And so did I. It was giving me too much time for thought. Elsa hadn’t phoned.
Why they stood around in the wet, with nothing to do, I don’t know. I suppose the main gang was due, otherwise they needn’t have got in any panic about getting the shed erected. But there was no sign of any gang. It wasn’t as though there was anywhere the little group could go. The police had efficiently sealed the shed.
For a while they crammed into the confines of Ginger’s cab, where Ron Taylor tried to convey the finer points of poker that he’d picked up at Beefy Walters’ place. I wandered over hopefully, but couldn’t get more than my head in. Cash seemed to have most of the winnings, and they were all relieved when he climbed down from the cab after me, and went home.
The game didn’t last long after that — the cab was too cramped for anything but misery — so out they all came again into the wet and kicked around an old can for a while.
Cash was unable to stay in the comfort of his own place. He was becoming quite concerned about it, I could see from the Porsche, waving his arms about and scattering bits of cigarette everywhere.
I went over to hear him being concerned.
“Can’t stand it, watching ‘em from that window,” he told me. He turned to them. “Why the hell don’t you all go home?”
He had no authority to send them away. They shrugged. Ron Taylor and Reaman were employed by one subcontractor, Potter and Lane by another. And Dyke, of course, would not think of leaving his crane. Cash tried asking them in to his house, but they’d still, technically, have left the site, so it was no help.
“I’ll run you all home,” he offered, getting agitated about it and stabbing the air with his cigarette. Presumably he had some sort of vehicle tucked away in his rotting garage. But they were all afraid to make a move. “I’ll phone your bosses,” Cash offered, but Ron Taylor said he wouldn’t go — we didn’t know his missus.
“Well at least you, Ginge,” said Cash.
“The crane —”
“It won’t bloody-well run away. You can’t live in it. Ain’t you got a wife somewhere?”
“I’ll stay here.”
“It’s not too far, is it? Give her a surprise.”
“Oh... it would.”
“No, really... it wouldn’t be any trouble.”
Dyke turned to me. “Mind if I sit in your car?”
“I’d mind even less if we go back to the hotel for a bit.”
That was in case Elsa phoned. I was damned if I would. Dyke reluctantly agreed to come back with me, and for an hour or two we sat in my room. Or rather, I sat, and watched him mooching around moodily. But eventually I became bored with it and led him into chatting, hoping something useful would emerge. All I got was the impression that he was systematically pumping me to see how far I’d got with Clare.
Then it occurred to me — he hadn’t wanted somebody to watch over him, he’d needed a reason for keeping an eye on me.
Around four in the afternoon he realised that I wasn’t going to gratify his obsession, and he said uneasily that he ought to be getting back. “Got to keep an eye on the crane.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
I remained seated, watching him drag his feet as he headed for the door. It was clear that he was wondering why I wasn’t tagging along. I stared him out with one of my blank looks, and his footsteps disappeared the wrong way for somebody getting back to his crane. He was going to watch that I didn’t sneak out.
I was so mad that I almost did, if only to annoy him. But that phone on the bedside table held me. A whole day had gone and she had not called. Alone, my thoughts had free rein, and I was unable to draw them in. I found myself pacing, misery growing inside me and my mind racing down murky avenues I would have said it did not know how to explore. Looking back at it now, I realise with shame that I did not once consider that she might have been in danger or come to harm.
George got back about nine, looking pleased with himself. Really, he’d come up with nothing for his day’s work, but he’d be pleased enough with that so long as its discovery involved a little violence here and there.
“What’s up, Dave?”
“I’ve been worried.”
He raised his eyebrows, knowing I did not mean it was for him. “Where’s the client, then? Who’s supposed to be doing the protecting?”
“He’s in his room,” I said angrily. Then I managed to control my nerves. “What did you get?”
“Been asking around about the gun. Marty Coleman never carried one.”
“If we’re going to believe you about that trapdoor, he certainly shot himself with one.”
George plumped down heavily on his bed. “Lubin had a sawn-off shotgun. The one at the door of that bank — the one they say was Dutch Marks — he was seen to flash an automatic. The bank manager said that.”
“A thirty-two?”
He looked at me severely. “Bank managers don’t know things like that, Dave. And this one was dying in hospital at the time.”
“But I expect you asked around.”
“Somebody — and don’t forget that the name Dutch Marks was probably a cover — somebody bought an old thirty-two, make unknown, from Dick Foskett around that time. Along with some pre-war cartridges.”
“Which war?”
“The last one. Description — around twenty-five, slim, nervous.”
“I’d be nervous, too, visiting Dick Foskett. Where does it get us?”
“I’d say it was a good guess that this Dutch Marks went to that hold-up carrying an old automatic, thirty-two bore, with ancient charges in the cartridges.”
Why he should be so complacent, I don’t know. What he had said seemed to pump holes in his bolted cellar theory.
I couldn’t help being a bit sarcastic. “And I suppose he lent it to Marty Coleman to take down into that cellar, so that he could shoot himself once he was safe from capture.”
“We don’t know how Coleman got it,” he said calmly.
“You’re sticking to it!” I cried. “Damn it, that cellar trapdoor couldn’t have been bolted inside. Everything we find out goes against it.”
“Just give me one good explanation, then, of how that trapdoor came to be lying hinge to hinge, if it wasn’t simply thrown over.”
I couldn’t. I’d tried hard enough. The failure only made me more angry.
“Look at what else we’ve got,” I insisted. “There’s evidence of Fred Wallach muttering to himself all day about laughing. We haven’t given much thought to that, George. And there’s evidence that he didn’t try very hard to get out of the shed. All right, so maybe it was him laughing, when everybody thought the joke was on him. Perhaps he deliberately erected that shed the wrong way round. He was expecting somebody.” I was suddenly struck by one of those unbidden thoughts. “And George,
don’t you remember, he’d put steel braces on both the upper and the lower ends of the uprights inside the shed. If the idea was to strengthen it just to lift itself, there’d be no point in putting braces at the lower edges. It’s almost as though he was preparing for the whole lot to be lifted, shed and slab.”
George had got his head bent, looking up at me through his tufts of eyebrows. “Right way round would’ve been just as good, if he’d got in mind to lift the slab.”
“But it gave him a reason for being there. Oh sure, I know it’s loose, George. But he also said something about shattering.”
“Funny word to use.”
“Shattering the trapdoor, d’you think?”
“You’re stretching it. And what about the other bit? What was it? Dick Haymes.”
“Dr Dick M. Somebody mentioned he’d said Dick M. Or,” I said, inspired, “perhaps it was Dutch M. What about that, George. Dutch Marks coming back for the loot...”
“Why on earth would he do that?” George was unimpressed.
“Coming back, gun in his pocket...”
“The gun was locked away in that cellar,” he said evenly.
“Then how the hell,” I shouted, “would it still be able to fire?”
“It couldn’t. And that’s where the contradiction lies. There just have to be two guns, Dave. You can’t get round it.”
“The lab can. They’re not wrong.” George smiled. “Dutch Marks, maybe and that’s only a maybe — coming back with the one we believe he bought fourteen or so years ago. Perhaps.”
“Then you’d accept that Fred Wallach could have been on about Dutch M, not Dick M?”
“It was Ginger Dyke who said it. And he definitely said Dick.”
“Then let’s go and ask him again.” We went. It kept things moving. Dyke wasn’t in his room.
“Blast him,” I said.
“But we know where he’ll be, don’t we.”
I was becoming fed-up with that site. Of all the desolate, cheerless dumps... but I drove there with George breathing heavily beside me, and I had every intention of giving Dyke a few comments to bear in mind. I wasn’t angry enough, though, to dispense with years of cautious training.
The Weight of Evidence Page 8