Blood and Judgement

by Michael Gilbert

  Petrella found him studying a ten-magnification enlargement of a thumbprint, and put his problems to him.

  “Six weeks? Certainly, we’ll get a nice set of prints. Unless the rats–”

  Petrella said that he hadn’t seen any sign of rats.

  “Why, the other day,” said Sergeant Blinder, “they brought us a girl, been nine weeks in the water. In the water, I’m telling you.”

  Petrella nodded. Fragments of Sergeant Blinder’s discourse reached him. “Skin nearly detached – paraffin wax injection – made a mold – lovely job.” He was wondering, not for the first time, in just what curious vacuums of their own creation the scientific branches of the CID existed. Did their minds ever relate the detached fragments of skin and bone, of tissue and adipocere, to the living creatures of which they had once formed part, creatures with desires and fears and Schedule A tax? Was it lack of sensibility or was it merely the protective armament of habit?

  “Two inverted arches and a characteristic delta,” concluded the sergeant triumphantly.

  “You’d be able to tell me if you had a record of this girl?”

  “Give me four clear prints off one hand and I’ll tell you in a couple of minutes. Single prints – well, that’s more difficult.”

  “You shall have both hands,” said Petrella, and made his escape.

  There were other things to do. There were the missing persons lists to check, not very hopefully. He had a few details of height and supposed weight and age, but not really enough. “Give us a mole on the chin or a squint in the left eye, and maybe we can help you,” said the clerkly Inspector East, who presided over these mysteries. “When relatives report a missing person they don’t say, ‘She was five foot six and a half inches high and approximately nine stone in weight’ – they say, ‘She’d got a cleft palate, Inspector, and Lord, didn’t she spit when she talked.’”

  Petrella laughed. “We may be able to do better later on,” he said. “If you could keep a general eye open for any woman who went missing in the last fortnight of September.”

  Inspector East promised that he would do what he could.

  The mention of the last fortnight in September put Petrella in mind of something else. He felt in his pocket and pulled out the carefully folded copy of the Evening Standard. There was something he had meant to check.

  “Bit out of date, aren’t you?” said the inspector, looking over his shoulder. “I’ve got a midday edition if you’d care to borrow it.”

  “This is something I picked up near the body,” said Petrella. “I thought so – you see? The middle sheet is missing. It goes straight from page ten to page fifteen. I wonder what was on it.”

  “Short of seeing the missing page, I don’t know how you’re going to find out.”

  “I might do that, too,” said Petrella.

  Outside it was dark and a thin drizzle of rain was falling. He took a bus along the Embankment and walked the short distance up Farringdon Road, pushing into the tide of home-going office workers, heads down, umbrellas up, individually insignificant, potent in mass as a lemming migration.

  The Standard, being an evening paper, observes rational hours, but Petrella found the back numbers department still open, and introduced himself.

  “Do what we can,” said the man. “Any particular edition?”

  “This one calls itself a late night final.”

  “On the streets about three o’clock. Hold on a minute.”

  The man disappeared. Petrella waited. A boy of the type bred only by London newspaper offices wandered in, whistling; kicked the wainscoting three or four times as if he was getting his own back on life, and wandered out again. Then the man reappeared.

  “Bit short on that edition,” he said, “but I found one for you.”

  Petrella spread it out on the table. The middle sheet was made up of pictures and news items. The passage of six weeks had given most of them a curiously dated look. “Test cricketer in car smash.” In September a test cricketer was still news. By November he could kill himself and the papers would take no notice.

  What he wanted was tucked away in the bottom corner of the page.

  POLICE SEARCH FOR JAIL BREAKER

  “Chris (‘Monk’) Ritchie escaped yesterday in transit from Wormwood Scrubs, where he had been serving the first weeks of a five-year sentence, to a permanent prison at Parkhurst. He slipped the handcuff attaching him to the warder, Seldon, who was conducting him, knocked down another warder, ran the length of the coach, and jumped from the moving train. London gangster Ritchie received his sentence for breaking and entering and violence. He is five foot nine, heavily built, with dark hair and face, and has a scar running from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Police are watching his known haunts, including his flat where his wife Rosa still lives.”

  (Petrella smiled at this careful indiscretion.)

  “Note for those interested. ‘Monk’ is thought to be short for ‘monkey’. Ritchie once performed as part of a two-man trapeze act in a circus. He certainly showed some of his old skill when he exited from that train yesterday!”

  Petrella folded the paper carefully, thanked the man, and went outside. It had stopped raining. He thought he would walk some of the way home. He found that his mind worked better if he kept moving. And here was something to think about.

  For the first time in this tangle of loose ends, in this case which was not yet a case, an outline had appeared; a tiny, but identifiable outline which had shown itself for a moment before dislimning and fading back into the surrounding obscurity.

  For Petrella had given evidence at Monk Ritchie’s trial; and Monk’s wife, Rosa, had been there and been pointed out to him.

  A pleasant, dark-haired woman of about thirty-five. He had remembered feeling sorry for her.

  4

  The King of Nowhere

  “Well, it could be Rosa Ritchie,” agreed Gover. “But it’s not going to be easy to get an identification. Not after all that time in the open.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “Had she got a record? I never heard of it.”

  “Clothes? Teeth?”

  “Teeth would be best. Or you might pick up a print or two from her flat. Have you located that yet?”

  “It’s a couple of rooms in Corum Street. I haven’t had time to go down there yet. The trouble is, she wasn’t living alone, she shared with another girl. Who’s probably relet them by now.”

  “But if Rosa didn’t turn up one evening, why didn’t the other girl report–” Gover stopped. “No, of course. If she shared rooms with Rosa she’d know about her private life. She’d assume Rosa had gone across to France with her husband.”

  “Which she may have done.”

  “She didn’t go with him,” said Gover. He waited for a moment or two while his careful mind sorted it all out.

  “Monk – if it was Monk – crossed alone. He left Victoria by the night train. There was a bad slip-up over that. A very bad slip. The stopper wasn’t put on at Newhaven until the next morning. Someone lost his job over that. But that didn’t bring Monk back. A railway detective and a customs man both swear it was Monk. He wasn’t disguised.”

  “He took a risk.”

  “Well, it came off. That’s the thing about risks. If they come off, they’re good ones. And we checked the tickets. There was one return ticket, bought over the counter, for cash, that day at a big travel agency in the Strand. The outward half was used, the inward half’s never been handed in. Which means that someone went to France six weeks ago and hasn’t come back yet.”

  “If it was Monk, why take a return?”

  “If you’re pretending to be a tourist, what else would you take?” Gover paused again. “It’s not conclusive, I agree. The ticket’s valid for three months. The owner may still turn out to be an absent-minded professor, with friends in Paris. All the same, I think it was Monk.”

  “Yes,” said Petrella.

  “But I don’t think he took R
osa with him. And what’s more, I don’t think he meant to. He had to see her. She was his banker. She’d got all his money. Money she’d been slowly realizing from the proceeds of his jewel thefts, which they’d stowed away somewhere.”

  “Yes,” said Petrella. Another tiny little piece fell into place. “But why would he meet her beside a reservoir in North London?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Gover. “And you ought to know better than to ask. You can’t answer detailed questions at this stage. All we can get at is the outline. Anyway – they do meet there. And they quarrel. And he shoots her. Now why would he do that?”

  Petrella said, “Because she wanted to go with him. And it didn’t fit in with his plans.”

  “Or because he’d heard that she’d been carrying on with his Number Two, Boot Howton?”

  “Or because she didn’t produce enough money, and he thought she’d been cheating him?”

  “Or for all three reasons. Or for no reason at all. A man like Monk, fresh out of prison, no sleep for two days, a gun in his hand. He wouldn’t want a lot of reason, would he?”

  Petrella agreed. It had been a constant surprise to him, the totally inadequate reasons for which people killed other people.

  “There are two ways of getting at this,” said Gover. “I’m assuming, for the moment, that the woman is Rosa. We can plug away at the girl who shared the flat – what’s her name, by the way?”

  “A Mrs Jean Fraser.”

  “Well, you can look after her. You’re the right age for girls. Then there’s Boot and the boys. Monk must have made contact with them after he got out, don’t you think? He had to get the gun from somewhere. I’d better have a word with them.”

  “You don’t think,” said Petrella, “that we’d better swap jobs. You take Jean, and leave the boys to me?”

  “Certainly not,” said Gover. “I’m a quiet man. I’ll take the safe job. But you might see if you can find out for me where they hang out.”

  Next morning Petrella did some telephoning and managed to catch Detective Sergeant Luard of S Division. Bill Luard, a Cornishman, had occupied the next-door cubicle to Petrella at recruit training school, and they had liked each other and had kept up with each other, as far as their jobs allowed.

  This was a piece of luck for Petrella, since detective officers are normally as jealous as tipsters of their private contacts and sources of information.

  “See you tonight, when I come off duty,” said Luard. “The room over Pino’s at King’s Cross. Remember, I took you there once? Don’t get there before eight. If I’m not there, wait outside.”

  At a quarter past eight, Petrella hopped off the trolley bus at the stop under the arch and took his bearings.

  Pino’s lay at the blind end of Hope Street. It had net curtains in the windows. One step down from the pavement brought you into a room with two cross-legged bamboo tables, a counter and a tea urn. Not even the oldest regular could remember anyone ever being served from the tea urn, which was thought to be strictly for ornament. Upstairs there was a larger room and this was apt to be full at all hours of the day, for Pino, who derived his name from his birthplace in the Philippine Islands, brewed strong tea and excellent coffee, and his wife, who was as black as he was, was a good cook.

  When Petrella poked his head round the door, all conversation ceased until Luard spotted him, jumped to his feet, and came across. Then the conversation switched on again where it had left off. For Pino’s was a club, and in its way as exclusive as the Athenaeum. More so, really. It might have tolerated a bishop, but no Conservative Member of Parliament would have got past the tea urn.

  “Come on,” said Luard. “Coffee, Pino. Let’s take this table, then we can talk.” Two men in oily denim overalls got up and said they were going anyway, and Petrella squeezed in onto the wooden bench beside Luard.

  “What are you up to now, Patrick?”

  Petrella explained, as well as he could, uneasily aware that an old woman in black was drinking in every word he said.

  “Don’t worry about Kate. She’s deaf,” said Luard. “Aren’t you?” he bellowed suddenly. The old woman bobbed and smiled.

  “I can give you what you want. In fact, I’ll be glad to. It’s about time those boys were shaken down. They’ve been getting too big for their boots lately. You know it used to be Monk Ritchie’s crowd. When he and Meister ran it, it was almost respectable. Housebreaking, shopbreaking. That sort of thing.”

  It didn’t sound very respectable, but Petrella knew what Luard meant.

  “Now Meister’s gone up for that banknote job and Monk’s out of the country, Boot Howton’s taken it over. It’s a real shower now, I promise you.”

  “Intimidation?”

  “I suppose you could call stamping on people’s faces intimidation,” agreed Luard. “Here comes the coffee.”

  “Who else is in it? Ritzy Moritz I’ve met.”

  “It varies. The main characters are Moritz, Jacko and ‘Curly’ Thompson. Howton runs it. He’s the one that makes it tick. When he goes down – and that can’t be too soon as far as we’re concerned – it’ll fall to the ground.”

  “Until someone picks it up again,” said Petrella. Criminals were part of his job, but criminals like Howton and Moritz and Jacko filled his soul with the weariness of deep disgust. Corner boys of crime, men without any purpose beyond making money and avoiding work, men who lived from prison sentence to prison sentence, causing the maximum of trouble, inside and outside, and doing no good to anyone, least of all to themselves.

  “–enjoyed your coffee?” said Luard.

  “It’s first class,” said Petrella. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking. Where do they hang out now?”

  “You’ll find them, any evening, in the back room of a pub called the King of Nowhere.”

  “King of Nowhere?”

  “In Parrock Street, Camden Town. Got a back entrance on the canal, so I’m told. You want to watch that when you go after them.”

  “I’ll tell Gover about it,” said Petrella.

  “Nothing to do with me, really,” said Luard. “But what’s it all about?”

  “You remember that woman we found up on the reservoir?”

  “Yes. I saw something about it. Suicide, wasn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t suicide,” said Petrella. “And it could be Rosa Ritchie – Monk’s wife. We’re not sure yet.”

  Luard whistled as he worked out the implications of this.

  “What do you think?” he said. “Did Monk knock her off, because she’d been going with Howton, or did Howton and the boys knock her off to stop her telling Monk what she’d been up to, or did they all do it together, because her accounts wouldn’t add up?”

  “We’d thought of all those,” said Petrella. “And it could be any of them. But, since Monk’s not available, we’ve got to get what we can out of his friends.”

  “The only way you’ll get anything out of them’s with a big sharp tin opener,” said Luard. “You’ll have to excuse me now. My boyfriend’s turned up.”

  Petrella saw a little man looking round the edge of the door and guessed that it would be the informer whom Luard had arranged to meet.

  “Thanks for everything,” he said. “Can I pay for my coffee?”

  “It’s on the house.”

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez,” said the Highside coroner’s officer severely, addressing himself to an audience which consisted of Inspector Gover, Dr Summerson, Detective Sergeant Petrella, Sergeant Oddson, a junior reporter from the Highside Mercury, and an old man connected with the next case. “All manner of persons who have anything to do before the queen’s coroner for this borough draw near and give your attendance.”

  Everyone sat down. The Highside coroner, Mr Pearly, a twinkling little man, his natural gaiety undimmed by twenty years of looking upon death, nodded to his old friend Dr Summerson and waved to his officer, who whisked Sergeant Oddson into the box where he told the court that he was a Detective Sergeant in the Photograph
ic Section at New Scotland Yard and that he wished to produce and identify four photographs, two general photographs of the Binford Park Reservoir and two of a body recently found there.

  The coroner examined the photographs closely and said he thought they were very good. Sergeant Oddson looked gratified and made way for Dr Summerson.

  The coroner, seeing him in the box, apparently forgot that he had waved to him a short time before and said, in tones of deep surprise, “You are Ian Monteith Summerson, a registered medical practitioner and a pathologist at Greys Hospital?”

  Dr Summerson admitted that he was.

  “And you performed an autopsy upon the deceased woman?”

  Dr Summerson admitted this, too.

  “All I shall ask you, at this juncture, Dr Summerson, is the cause of death.”

  “The cause of death,” said Dr Summerson, “was a revolver bullet of .455 caliber, fired at very close range, which entered the base of the heart bag, and lodged in the spinal column.”

  The single reporter nearly swallowed the rubber off the end of his pencil as it dawned on him that he was in possession of an exclusive and undoubted scoop. A lot of people had known about the discovery of a woman at the reservoir but it had been generally supposed that she had died of exposure.

  He bolted for the door, collecting a disapproving glance from the coroner’s officer as he went.

  Gover was already in the box.

  “You are Charles Gover, a detective chief inspector in Q Division and you are in charge of the police inquiries into this case?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Have you concluded your inquiries?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I understand that it will assist you if I adjourn this case.”