The C.I.D Room

by Roderic Jeffries

  Prudence had liked the material, but before she was ready to receive him in bed again she’d demanded he had the material made up into a dress. He had had to go to Gladys and ask her to lend him the money. Gladys had written out a cheque on the account into which she paid all the interest on the £21,000 the court had awarded her. The bitter irony of this had not been lost on him.

  And now… Now it was no longer a few yards of silk brocade. It was gold charms worth five thousand pounds when melted down: and next time it would be nine thousand pounds’ worth — if there was a next time.

  To break free from the nightmare, he had only to tell Heywood-Smith it was all finished. But then there would be no more money and no money meant no Prudence. Because she had steered him past those boundaries in love-making, he knew a frenzied desire to go past them again and again and again. She had gained a terrible power over him, knew this, and delighted in the fact.

  He slowly walked to the far end of the cargo shed. Between this and the next shed, and level with the stern of the Greek tramp whose hull was rust-streaked from rails to waterline, was a call-box. He walked towards it, through a mass of rotting oranges that had spilled out of a broken crate. When he reached the call-box, he stopped. Sweat slowly gathered on his face. A fork-lift truck jolted past, carrying two large bales. He groaned softly, then hurried into the call box and dialled a string of numbers. Heywood-Smith answered the call. Leery put sixpence in the coinbox. ‘It’s on,’ he said, voice hoarse.

  ‘My dear fellow, what excellent news,’ replied the other.

  *

  It was mid-August. July’s very hot weather had given way to a far more familiar and irritating mixture of warmth, cold, sun, rain, zephyrs and gale-force winds.

  Fusil, on a wet and windy day, left the central magistrates’ court, situated in the same building as Western Division H.Q., and walked out on to the pavement. The wind flicked his hair across his forehead and into his eyes.

  A large, over-dressed man came out of the building by the same door Fusil had just used. A second man, in traditional lawyer’s black coat and striped trousers, followed him out.

  The first man saw Fusil, came across, and spoke jeeringly. ‘That was kind of the magistrates.’

  ‘Bloody daft.’

  ‘Feeling sore, Mr. Fusil?’

  ‘I always feel sore when an old lag gets away with a job.’

  ‘Now don’t you start shouting me guilty.’

  ‘Going to sue me for defamation of character?’

  The solicitor whispered to the man, who shrugged his shoulders and then spoke to Fusil once more. ‘You want to wake up. You’re finished. The boys are calling yours the safest patch in the county.’

  ‘Try it for safety and I’ll slap you inside so fast your feet’ll burn.’

  ‘You’re sharp. Things goin’ sour? Can’t get more’n ten per cent on the gold for working it soft?’

  The solicitor spoke more urgently and the man pushed past Fusil and went along the pavement. The solicitor looked at Fusil and shrugged his shoulders apologetically. Fusil ignored the gesture. He tried to calm his anger. That man had been guilty of a series of squalid confidence tricks, carried out against a dozen elderly women. The evidence had been tight except on one small insignificant point, but because of this point the Bench had declared there was no case to answer. That epitomised the state of the law today: it was ruled by liberals. The liberals were eager to believe the police were guilty of brutality but always unable to understand that a few stout blows had been necessary in self-defence: they demanded constant protection from the criminals, but refused to allow the police effectively to protect them: they sympathised with the criminals, never the victims: they dedicated themselves to ensuring the freedom of the innocent and were indifferent to the fact they were freeing the guilty.

  That jibe about the gold had hit him below the belt. It was ridiculous to worry about a con-man’s sneers, yet the other’s words did worry him. He hadn’t solved the theft and unless something more turned up, he wasn’t going to. It was no fault of his. He and his men had worked like hell, but got nowhere. He could feel certain the thief was one of a few people, but suspicion alone never put a man behind English bars. Even the method used to steal the gold wasn’t yet clear. If only they had been able to give more time to it, but there had been an increase in pickpocketing and the borough council had taken fright because Fortrow might be given a bad name which would result in fewer summer visitors and less money in the tills. The watch committee had directed the chief constable to give top priority to stopping the pickpocketing and the gold theft had had to take a back seat. To some, nothing was more important than monetary profit.

  The Sandstream was due to dock the next day. The crew and their quarters would be searched and the crew would be interrogated. In the full flush of his pessimism, he was prepared to bet a packet that the result of all this activity would be nothing: plain bloody nothing.

  *

  Fusil had been back in his office for three-quarters of an hour when the telephone rang. He was told that Kywood wanted to speak to him.

  He tapped on the desk with his fingers. What the hell was it now? Kywood had been checking and rechecking every move he made and with the Sandstream due in port the other was like a man possessed.

  The telephone clicked twice. ‘Is that you?’ demanded Kywood.

  ‘Fusil here, sir.’

  ‘Wellington says a load of gold’s missing from the Sandacre.’

  Just for a second, Fusil refused to believe what he’d just been told.

  ‘D’you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Fusil tightly. His fingers stopped drumming.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say? My God, man, there’s twenty-seven thousand quid’s worth gone.’

  ‘Is that the insured value or what it’s worth as gold?’

  ‘What’s that matter? It’s been stolen. And right from under your nose. The chief constable’s shouting the place down.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Get over here at once.’ Kywood slammed down the receiver.

  Fusil slowly stood up. Angrily, he stared across at the window and the uninspiring view of houses beyond. This time, there could be no argument — if the gold thefts weren’t solved, he was for the scrap heap.

  10

  The T.S.S. Sandstream docked at 9.34 a.m. the following morning. Three tugs brought her into No. 5 Berth, New Docks, immediately aft of a 23,000-ton passenger ship.

  One of the tall travelling cranes hoisted the gangway into position and as soon as this was secured port and customs officials boarded and a dock policeman stood guard at the head of the gangway. Kerr was detailed to take six uniformed constables and search the seamen’s accommodation and the after deck houses.

  The seamen showed angry resentment at having their cabins and gear searched and the reason for much of this resentment became clear when more and more contraband was discovered amongst their effects: as Kerr and the others moved from cabin to cabin, they were followed by a stream of curses.

  After finishing in the accommodation, they moved out to the after deck and checked all the winch houses at the foot of the derricks. Here, they found more contraband.

  Kerr and another constable went right aft, through the doorway between the paint locker and lamps’ stores and down the two flights of ladders to the steering flat. Under one of the two hydraulic motors, they found six bottles of gin: under the other, four hundred cigarettes in tins of fifty. In a locker were another six bottles of gin. Kerr walked for’d, past the huge rams, to the bulkhead and found that on the deck, just short of the bulkhead, were two inspection plates. He sent one of the constables off to find an engineer and the two men returned a few minutes later. The engineer said that under the tank tops were double bottoms, filled with fuel oil. Kerr asked for the plates to be lifted. After much swearing, and coming and going, this was done. The level of oil was just below the tank top. Kerr shone the torch down and then used a sti
ck to feel around in the oil. He discovered nothing. The tank tops were replaced.

  Some twenty minutes later, Kerr made his way for’d and up to the boat-deck, where he found Fusil and Braddon in one of the lifeboats. Braddon had opened one of the water tanks, under a thwart, and was trying to use a mirror probe to look inside.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Braddon, as he looked over the boat’s gunwale.

  ‘Nothing except for fags and booze.’

  ‘The whole crew’s smuggling: the customs’ll have a field day.’

  If they find it all, thought Kerr. He wasn’t going to tell the customs what he’d come across. His sympathies were all with the smugglers.

  Fusil sat down on the after thwart. ‘You know something,’ he said, speaking in a strangely uncertain manner and to no one in particular, ‘if the gold is still aboard we’ve as much hope of finding it as a needle in a haystack the size of Buckingham Palace. Hammered together, the gold won’t take up any space at all: there must be ten thousand places aboard to hide the stuff.’

  ‘They’ll have to get it ashore,’ said Braddon.

  ‘And that’s where we must really hope to grab it, but even then the odds are all in their favour. Goddamn it, though, the gold probably went ashore before any of us even knew it had been pinched.’

  ‘A thousand pounds to a penny,’ agreed Braddon.

  A few drops of rain fell and Braddon looked up at the grey sky. ‘That’s all we bloody needed to make us really cheerful,’ he muttered.

  The search continued. At 1.30, the stevedores came aboard. Hatch tarpaulins were folded back, hatch boards stacked by hand, hatch insulation plugs lifted and stacked by shore cranes. The unloading of the cargo of frozen food began. Carcasses of lamb, telescoped and in muslin covers, were stacked on to nets, beef hearts, livers, and kidneys, came out in sacks, boxes of butter were put on boards with nets at each corner. At numbers 5 and 6 holds, bales of wool were discharged from the uninsulated upper ’tween decks.

  The crew were paid off at 3.30 p.m. As each man left the ship, he was directed to the shed where he and his kit were thoroughly searched. At 5 p.m. the officers left and even the captain, a small man with a sulphuric temper, had, despite all his protests, to suffer the search. Afterwards, each officer was questioned by a detective.

  The shore staff officers boarded.

  At 6 p.m., the stevedores covered up the hatches and left for the night. By arrangement with the police, the Sandstream had been berthed at a point where there was only one dock gate and a number of uniformed constables from the borough force helped the dock police to check the stevedores through this gate. Five men were caught with stolen food — one even had a whole lamb with him.

  At 7 p.m., Fusil, tired and disheartened, drove from the docks to the police station. On arrival, he was given the message that he was to report to Kywood at the latter’s home, which was a twenty-minute drive away. Fusil cursed the world in general and Kywood in particular.

  Kywood, whose house was on a small housing estate just inside the borough boundary, was dressed in open-neck shirt and a dirty pair of grey flannel trousers.

  ‘Could you manage a pint, Bob?’ he asked, as they went into the sitting-room.

  Fusil was at first surprised by the other’s pleasant nature, but when Kywood explained that the chief constable had ordered him to take charge of the case, Fusil decided the D.C.I. was now scared by his responsibilities and wanting all the help he could muster. Fusil sat down in one of the very well-worn arm-chairs and watched Kywood cross the room with two beer-filled pewter mugs.

  Kywood drank quickly. ‘The old man’s yelling like a hen that’s lost her chicks.’

  Fusil gave no answer.

  A look of annoyance crossed Kywood’s face. ‘What happened today?’

  ‘Sweet Fanny Adams.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘We searched the ship from end to end and top to bottom. We went through all the crew’s belongings when aboard and again when they took them ashore.’

  ‘Then no one took the gold ashore.’

  ‘There’s not much bulk to twenty-two pounds of gold — not if you know how to hide it.’

  ‘But if everyone was searched properly…’

  ‘They were. I’m just saying it’s not like trying to carry a suitcase out of the docks.’

  ‘But then if your search aboard found nothing it can’t still be there.’

  ‘You know what a ship’s like. There are more hiding places than rivets and I wouldn’t swear I’d checked every one after a week flat out.’

  ‘You’ll make another search when all the cargo’s gone?’

  ‘Sure. But my money says we won’t find a thing and I’ll tell you why. The logical and obvious time to get the gold ashore was long before anyone knew it’d been stolen and the dock police weren’t looking for anything much beyond an extra packet of fags. If that gold reached the ship, it’s only reasonable to presume it went ashore again within twenty-four hours.’

  ‘The gold wasn’t pinched up in Cumberland. It came down here, all right.’ Kywood drank heavily. ‘We’re not doing very well, Bob.’

  ‘No one can work miracles.’

  ‘It looked bad before this second lot of gold was pinched. But now…’

  There was a silence.

  ‘The chief constable’s screaming,’ said Kywood.

  ‘So you mentioned.’

  ‘You laid on extra precautions for the loading of this second consignment, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had the crate opened in the security shed to make certain the steel lining was unbroken?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then if the second lot reached Fortrow, what’s the use of trying to say the first lot maybe didn’t? If the villains are working up north, they’d have pinched the second lot up north. The gold’s been pinched here, in Fortrow, in your division, and so far you know less about it than before it happened.’

  ‘I’m doing everything I can. Can you suggest anything more?’

  Kywood angrily began to say something, then stopped. He drank. ‘Keep watching the ship.’

  ‘That’s being done, sir.’

  ‘Search it with half a dozen fine tooth-combs when all the holds are empty.’

  ‘That’s coming.’

  ‘Have you fixed up about the crew?’

  ‘I saw Captain Leery and he’s agreed to lay on an entirely new crew for the next voyage.’

  ‘So if the gold is still aboard, there won’t be a single bloke who knows where.’ Kywood finished his beer. He put down the empty mug on a small table. ‘Why haven’t we got wind of the gold being put on the market? No deal this big can be kept quiet.’

  ‘We’ve tried every possible lead and they’re all negative.’

  ‘Goddamn it, get more leads. Bob, if you’re reckoning on earning a pension, get more leads.’

  *

  The Sandstream’s 8,547 tons of cargo were discharged in ten working days. On the eleventh day, she was fumigated. Hatches were sealed, accommodation doors shut, and ventilators closed. A rope barrier was put across the gangway and on it was hung a notice that bore the skull and cross-bones.

  For twenty-four hours, the T.S.S. Sandstream lay at her berth, a deserted, silent hulk filled with death. At the end of the twenty-four hours, men returned aboard to ventilate her.

  She was moved to a loading berth. As the move could be made by tugs alone and without the use of her main engines, no engineers reported aboard. The two small gangs of men who handled the hawsers and wires aboard were searched when they went ashore.

  At 8 a.m. on a Saturday, twenty-four detectives and uniformed men boarded her. They searched the accommodation, engine-room, refrigerator room, holds, winch houses, chain lockers, peak stores, after stores, steering flat, shaft tunnels, funnel house, bridge, monkey island, and crow’s nest. They found nothing. At 6 p.m., when the search ended, the tired men left the ship having achieved nothing.

&nb
sp; On Sunday, Kerr and Braddon were ordered aboard in the morning. Kerr wondered what they were supposed to do that hadn’t already been done and been proved to be useless. He asked Braddon, but the detective sergeant merely remarked that until the case was solved life was going to be hell for everyone.

  They separated and Kerr went aft. He opened up number 5 booby trap, climbed over the two-foot-high coaming and down the ladder. With his torch the only source of light, he seemed to be in an immense cavern, stretching almost to infinity. He went to the edge of the square and shone his torch below, but the beam was not strong enough to pick out the bottom of the lower hold.

  He walked slowly aft and although aware that the deck seemed strangely long, he was still surprised when he came to a second square, the square of number 6 hatch as he realised it must be.

  So abruptly that it made him jump, there was the sound of steel slamming down on steel and a shaft of light picked out the ladder of the upper ’tween. A voice shouted: ‘Who’s down there?’

  ‘Police,’ replied Kerr.

  A man climbed down the ladder. He shone his torch round and the beam picked up Kerr. Kerr, in turn, directed his torch on to the newcomer and saw the three gold bands and diamond of a chief officer.

  ‘I didn’t know you were aboard,’ said the other.

  ‘Your shore office was told.’

  ‘Shore office never passes on anything but the moans. What’s it all in aid of this time?’

  ‘We’re still searching.’

  ‘Someone still making a fortune, then? One thing, I’ll bet the gold was fully insured so it’s only the insurance companies who are up the spout. They can afford it. I’ve a brother-in-law in insurance. The bastard. Ford Zodiac, holidays in Greece, and central heating everywhere. If you’re in insurance, you’re rich.’

  ‘That’s the way life goes.’ He flashed his torch for’d. ‘I’ve just discovered these two holds are connected up.’