A Traitor's Crime

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Then you condemn him for this?’

  ‘On the contrary. I’ve a very great respect for someone who can do what he did. But I’m thinking of background as a lasting environment. Similar backgrounds in marriage give similar tastes and outlooks on life and they’re damned important after the first flush of love has worn off and it’s a case of living together with as few rows as possible.’

  ‘John, you’re being pompous, cynical, and highly obnoxious. You had too much port: port always makes you livery.’

  ‘I am not livery.’

  ‘Oh no? Just stop and listen to that tone of voice.’

  He chuckled. There was little fear of his being allowed to become too pompous, cynical, or obnoxious, not while he was married to Mary.

  ***

  In south west London, two men, aged twenty-five and thirty-one, stood on the deserted pavement and stared at the all-night chemist’s shop. Both were suffering from early withdrawal symptoms, nervousness, restlessness, anxiety, and soon they would begin frequently to yawn, to sweat, and their eyes and noses would run.

  The shop was well lit and they could see the place was empty except for the white-coated assistant who was sitting behind the counter, reading.

  They were becoming more and more desperate. Their agonising craving for heroin was growing in intensity, yet they were broke and no pusher was going to offer them shots on credit.

  At this time of night few people would normally have been about and even their number had been reduced by a sudden summer storm, only just past, of unusual intensity. The two men, keyed up to a state of hysterical tension, were on the point of moving when a uniformed constable turned the far corner and walked up the pavement. They had just enough self-control left to appear at ease so that the constable, as he came level with them, gave them no more than an incurious glance.

  The moment the constable was out of sight, they went into the chemist’s shop.

  The assistant looked up. He was an elderly man, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, with a light brown wispy moustache. Something about their attitude caught his attention and he hastily got down from the stool.

  They acted with homicidal fury. They attacked the assistant with short lengths of lead-filled pipe and went on hitting him even when he lay sprawled out on the floor, blood flowing from his head.

  The elder of the two recovered his senses and led the way through the shop to the dispensing area. There were two wall cupboards and both were locked. They smashed in the wooden panels of the first cupboard and frantically searched through the bottles and cartons on the four shelves. At the rear of the bottom shelf they found two bottles, one quite a bit larger than the other, marked Morph Hyd and Diamorph Hyd. They couldn’t decline mensa, but they knew what morphine hydrochloride and diamorphine hydrochloride were.

  They stuffed the two bottles into their pockets, then ran out of the shop. Two roads away was a public lavatory open all night and they went down into it and into two adjoining cubicles. There, with hands that shook violently, they prepared the heroin and injected themselves.

  They were both arrested the next afternoon, by a uniformed constable who had been told they were wanted at the duty parade, only an hour before. In their desperation of the previous night they had worn no gloves and their finger-prints had been found all over the bottles in the cupboard at the chemist.

  They were questioned in separate interview rooms at the police station. As time passed from their last shot, so they became more desperate. In the end each told all he knew. For the last few weeks they had been buying their supplies of heroin in Flecton Cross because each shot was ten shillings cheaper than in London, but their money had run out until they hadn’t even the rail fare from London to Flecton Cross.

  ***

  Frederick Turnbell — chairman of the watch committee — was a man of sixty-one and normally good humoured. He had been born in Flecton Cross and his grandfather had been the town’s first mayor. He had inherited from his father a small factory which manufactured cast-iron cooking utensils. A far-sighted man, he had built a factory to manufacture plasticware as soon as this was possible and at a time when some experts were prophesying plastic goods would never become popular. Ever ready to expand, he had soon built up his business into a major manufacturing unit. His hobby, if that was the right word, was Flecton Cross. Few people knew how much of his wealth he gave back to the town.

  Margaret Turnbell and Mary Keelton went through to the sitting-room of Turnbell’s beautiful Queen Anne house whilst their husbands remained in the dining-room.

  Turnbell passed over the cut-crystal decanter of port. ‘Help yourself, John.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Keelton.

  ‘Now then, what’s the trouble?’ Turnbell had a direct manner — too direct for many, who found him rude.

  Keelton filled his glass. Turnbell kept a very good port. ‘It’s drugs.’

  ‘Pep pills — that sort of thing?’

  ‘Much worse. It’s the hard stuff: heroin. We seem to have become something of a distribution centre.’

  Turnbell helped himself to port. He pushed a silver cigar box across.

  Keelton took a cigar, removed the band, and pierced the end. He lit the cigar. ‘A man … lad, really … called Barnes was picked up not so long ago suffering from severe withdrawal illness. He said he’d got his supplies here and that was the first inkling we had of what was going on. The next thing was a whisper telling us who was running the racket and where we’d find a load of drugs — a raid proved to be abortive. Now, I’ve just had word from the superintendent of the vice squad in London that two junkies belted most of the life out of a chemist’s assistant and pinched morphine and heroin from the shop. They were picked up yesterday afternoon and they claim they’ve been getting their supplies from here, in Flecton Cross, because the price is cheaper than in London.’

  Turnbell lit his cigar, then carefully blew out the match and put it in the polished brass ash-tray. He was a methodical man. ‘Were these men in London telling the truth?’

  ‘As far as we know at the moment they were.’

  Turnbell leaned back in his chair. ‘Wouldn’t take much of that to get this town or the force a bad name.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get a bad name and the Home Secretary can force through an amalgamation on us, just like that.’ He puffed at his cigar for a time, then spoke again. ‘Why this town, John?’

  ‘We’re reasonably close to four main points of entry into the country — Dover, Folkestone, Lympne and Lydd — and goodness only knows how many minor ones. What’s more, we haven’t the organisation to counter the racket, as a town like London has.’

  ‘Do you want to ask London’s help?’

  ‘Not a very good time to do that, is it?’

  ‘Not with this renewed attempt from the Home Office for amalgamation, no.’

  They were silent, then Keelton spoke. ‘I’d like to push up the money we’re offering informers.’

  ‘You want a higher overall limit on the special purpose fund?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You won’t get it, John, not with the rates already going up a lot and the ratepayers’ association making the noise they are.’

  ‘But it’s the best way for quick results and we’ve got to have quick results. It’s no good offering a fiver for this sort of information. Brierley’s tough and the others working with him are at least as tough. Only a really good bribe … ’

  ‘There’s no need to try to convince me. What kind of total had you in mind?’

  ‘Somewhere around an extra two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘All right. I’ll see you get it.’ Turnbell smiled. ‘Can you keep it outside the books?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do that, then. Joe, the bastard, goes through the books with a dozen fine tooth-combs and there’s no point in giving him the chance to start asking questions.’ Turnbell tapped on the table with his fingers. ‘Do the best you can, John.’ He corrected
himself. ‘Hell, that’s a damned stupid thing to say. You’ll do your best. How about another port?’

  Keelton refilled his glass. Perhaps Turnbell would not have been so pleasantly co-operative had he been told there was also a possibility of police corruption.

  ***

  August started as a month of unsettled weather. A day of hot sunshine was followed by a day of thunderstorms, some violent. On the third day, clouds rolled in from the south-west to give a dull, almost chilly day, so familiar to the long suffering holidaymakers who mainly avoided Flecton Cross and stayed at the seaside towns.

  Keelton had just finished receiving a verbal report from Detective Constable Praden — something he insisted on in every major crime, much to Astey’s annoyance — when the telephone rang.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  Praden, a cold, withdrawn man, who had roughly spurned his fellow policemen’s attempts at sympathy when his wife some two years previously had died so tragically, left.

  Keelton picked up the receiver and was told there was a call for him from a man who refused to give his name.

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Keelton here.’

  ‘Try Jamaica Road, Guv, tomorrow evening. Number seven. The goods is due in at five.’

  ‘Thanks for … ’ He stopped as the connexion was cut. He wondered what Camps looked like now and how he was making a living?

  ***

  After a day in which the house in Jamaica Road was kept under surveillance, the raid took place at eight o’clock. Brierley opened the front door to Astey, who was accompanied by Elwick and two uniformed constables. One uniformed constable went through to the kitchen to open the back door, the other three went into the front room where they found Pears, a coloured West Indian with a record of violence, Fingal, a small rat of a man, and Joe Prater, ‘Stuttering’ Joe, a moon faced man who at times stuttered badly and who had a record of small-time villaining.

  ‘If I’d’ve know you was comin’, I’d’ve baked a cake,’ said Fingal, with heavy facetiousness.

  ‘I’ve reason to suspect you have unlawful drugs in this house,’ said Astley.

  ‘We wouldn’t d … d … do something li … like that,’ sniggered Prater.

  ‘Not us, man,’ said Pears, in his deep, baritone voice.

  ‘Just after five o’clock, a parcel was brought into this house by one of you. Where is it?’

  ‘How d’you know that?’ asked Brierley, with mock surprise.

  ‘We’ve been watching the house,’ snapped Astey.

  ‘You ’ave! Fancy! Chick, did you so much as guess that?’

  ‘Never so much as guessed it,’ replied Fingal, and giggled.

  Astey had flushed red. ‘Where’s the parcel?’

  ‘What parcel was you talking about?’ queried Brierley, with smirking innocence.

  Astey swung round. ‘Search the house,’ he snapped, his voice thick with anger.

  ‘Got a warrant?’ asked Brierley.

  Astey didn’t bother to reply. At that moment, Detective Sergeant Simlex came into the room, a small, cylindrical brown-paper parcel in his hand. ‘In the kitchen, sir.’

  ‘That ain’t nothing,’ said Brierley.

  ‘Open it,’ snapped Astey.

  ‘You can take my word on it, ’onest, it ain’t anything,’ said Brierley, with an even more brazen and hypocritical servility.

  The parcel contained two pounds of tea. Brierley, Fingal, Prater and Pears made no attempt to conceal their extreme amusement.

  The house was searched and in one of the bedrooms upstairs a uniformed constable saw on the floor a model of Justice holding her scales, in a silvery metal, bearing the legend ‘The Old Bailey,’ that looked what it was — a souvenir sold to tourists who were not particular about taste. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. The souvenir belonged to Bob Elwick and the other must just have lost it.

  CHAPTER IV

  The following morning, Saturday, Keelton sat at the desk in his office and studied the typewritten report. It was obvious the villains had been expecting the raid — the parcel of tea was typical of the ‘humour’ of men like Brierley. But had the raid been expected because of a tip-off or because one of them realised the house was under surveillance? One could assemble the facts and use them to turn either possibility into a certainty.

  He swore. He had been chief constable for seven years and had come to trust implicitly those who served under him. If anyone had suggested one of his men would turn crook, he’d have called that man a liar to his face. But … but had a policeman begun to work with the villains? Or had one vicious whisper and a few coincidences twisted the truth out of all shape?

  A knock on the door interrupted his angry, confused thoughts. He was surprised to see Miss Prester come in since it was a Saturday and she did not normally work that day. She coughed, which was her way of saying she was sorry to interrupt, but she had something important to tell him.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  She stood in front of the desk, a shapeless figure with the kind of face that said she had been born to be a spinster. ‘I forgot something last night and came back to collect it, Mr Keelton, and Mrs Timmins has just had a word with me.’

  He waited. She never could make any report concisely.

  ‘She’s on the switchboard in the mornings this week, from eight-thirty until twelve-thirty, when she goes home to get lunch for her husband who works for the council.’

  He resisted the desire to tell her to get to the point.

  ‘She says there was a call yesterday morning which she happened to overhear. It was all by mistake because she was trying to get Superintendent Webstone and she’d left … ’

  ‘I’m quite sure it was pure accident,’ he cut in.

  ‘She’d never deliberately listen in, not Mrs Timmins. The point is, Mr Keelton, it’s struck her as rather an odd sort of telephone call and she’s wondering if it’s of any importance.’

  ‘With reference to what?’

  ‘Well, you know.’ She smiled nervously.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Well, it’s … it’s … ’ She flapped her hands about.

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘To … Someone talking.’

  So the news of a possible informer within the force was already common knowledge, he thought angrily. Probably it had been completely naive of him to think such news could be kept quiet, even for so short a time. ‘What was this telephone call?’

  ‘Mrs Timmins heard someone say he wanted to put a pound on a horse called Dusky Boy yesterday and his account number was two thousand.’

  ‘What’s so significant about that?’

  ‘Mrs Timmins likes a little flutter now and then.’ Miss Prester spoke as if this were something daring. ‘She looked through the papers to see which race Dusky Boy was in, because she rather liked the name, and there wasn’t any horse of that name in any of the races. At the time she just thought it was an odd mistake, but now … ’ She became silent and flapped her hands once more.

  Keelton lit a cigarette. The house that had been raided had been in Jamaica Road, which tied up with Dusky Boy: the account number had been two thousand and that, in twenty-four hour system of time, was eight p.m. ‘Has she any idea where the call came from?’

  ‘The C.I.D general room, Mr Keelton.’

  ‘Miss Prester, d’you think you could find me a copy of yesterday’s paper that gives the races?’

  ‘I’m sure I can,’ she said eagerly. ‘I take the Daily Express and I never throw a paper away before it’s a week old. So often one wants to refer back to something one’s read and … ’

  ‘Would you mind getting me yesterday’s copy,’ he interrupted.

  She hurried out of the room. He rubbed his hand across his forehead. He was suddenly feeling desperately tired, sickened by the near certainty that this telephone call had been from a traitor.

  She returned as he was stubbing out his cigarette. He suggested she sat down, but she remained s
tanding, an ungainly lump of a woman who hated having told him what she had because she knew the pain it would give him.

  He turned to the racing page and checked through all the runners in all the races. There was no horse called Dusky Boy. Would there have been races run that would not have been listed in the paper?’ ‘Miss Prester,’ he said, ‘is Mrs Timmins still in the station?’

  ‘She’ll be here for quite a while yet.’

  ‘Would you ask her to get someone to relieve her at the switchboard and then come up and see me.’

  After she had gone, he sat back in the chair. He lit another cigarette.

  Mrs Timmins was young, smart, and quite unawed by his rank, even though she had been a W.P.C until her marriage.

  ‘Will you tell me the message exactly as you remember it?’ he said, once she was sitting down, her fashionably short skirt riding up well above her shapely knees.

  ‘I cut into the call by mistake, Mr Keelton. A man said: “Put a quid on Dusky Boy for me today. My account number’s two thousand.” Then he rang off.’

  ‘No other names were mentioned?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you any idea who was at the other end?’

  ‘It was a man and all he said at the conclusion was: “Right”.’

  ‘And you can be quite certain the call came from the C.I.D general room?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He brushed his neat moustache with his right forefinger, as he so often did when worried or deep in thought. ‘Can you say who it was this end?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Can I have an opinion?’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Mrs Timmins, this may … ’

  ‘It’s that it wasn’t until this morning I began to wonder. I could be remembering the voice so wrong that it wouldn’t be fair to say.’

  She was right, he thought. ‘Have you any idea of the number that was called?’

  ‘No. As I said, I cut into the conversation after it had begun.’

  He looked at her. ‘Mrs Timmins, could I ask you not to report this to anyone else — not even to your best lady friend?’ He smiled, to take any sting out of his words.