The C.I.D Room
Page 11
‘I never ask stupid questions.’ Kerr took a cigarette.
‘Still on about the gold, eh?’
‘Not for once. This time it’s an accident in town, and if you’ve been staffing the ship today you can maybe help.’
‘I’ve been on her since she docked. Always excepting the times I’ve nipped ashore for a bit of sustenance.’
‘D’you unload any old hawsers today? Like you did from the Sandstream?’ Kerr noticed the sudden change in Evans’s expression and was immediately reminded of how, on the Sandstream, the other had been shocked to learn that Captain Leery had been around whilst the ropes were being unloaded.
Evans finally spoke. ‘Yeah.’
‘When d’you discharge them?’
‘This morning.’
‘Was the vehicle like last time, a white Volkswagen, open-backed van?’
‘Can’t say I noticed.’
‘What firm does the van belong to?’
‘No idea.’ Evans suddenly tried to give the impression of helping. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I just don’t know.’
Again, Kerr wondered what had got Evans jumping so hard? Since he couldn’t possibly be mixed up in the hit-and-run case, his interest must lie with the ropes. ‘Who signed the dock pass for the ropes?’
‘I…I did.’
‘Can I see the carbon?’
‘Look, I…’ Evans became silent. He lit another cigarette, then slowly stood up and left the smoke-room. He returned a minute later and handed Kerr the inch-thick book of dock passes. Kerr opened it. The first twenty-one pages were carbon copies of passes issued, while the remaining one hundred and fifty-eight pages were both top and carbon copies. He checked the last carbon, made out to Mr. P. Smith for two hawsers. He turned back to the previous carbon and immediately noticed that the carbon writing was much blacker. He used the sheet of carbon in the book and found it gave as black a copy as the one previous to that issued to P. Smith. He was fairly confident that the entry on the top sheet for the ropes had been a different entry from the entry on the carbon copy. Probably the top one, handed to the dock police, was for three hawsers whilst the one remaining in the book, providing the record for the shipping company, was for two hawsers.
Kerr looked up suddenly to find that Evans was staring intently at him. Evans immediately looked away.
‘You can’t tell me what firm Mr. Smith works for, I suppose?’ said Kerr.
‘No.’
‘I need the information for the hit-and-run case.’
‘I tell you, I don’t know it.’
‘I’ll have to start digging to find out what it is.’
‘I just don’t know it.’
Kerr could do no more than that. He had to discover the name of the firm, and if in finding that out it became obvious Evans had been fiddling old hawsers, then he would have to take the rap. ‘About what time were the hawsers unloaded?’
‘I suppose it was near enough mid-day.’ Evans tried to change the conversation. ‘Are you getting anywhere with finding the gold?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘I’ve been thinking and it beats me how the stuff’s pinched.’ Rapidly recovering much of his poise, he also became his usual loquacious self. ‘Someone’s making a packet. Think what you could do with all that dough.’
‘I keep thinking.’
‘It’d be Australia for me. Sun, fresh air, and living in a place with a future, not like this bloody country. How much gold’s been pinched, now?’
‘Something over twenty thousand quid, if you mean what’s it worth as melted-down gold.’
‘Twenty thousand! That would buy a future, all right. And what about the other ships — are they losing a fortune?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Just the Sandacre and Sandstream, sister ships, the oldest pair in the fleet, eh? I’ll tell you something. I sailed on a forty-year-old ship once and there was a red-head who came aboard in Sydney. When we reached Hull, I went down the gangway on all fours, straight I did. Listen, she used to…’
Kerr listened, certain it was all lies, yet at the same time very envious because there might just be some truth in what the other claimed.
*
It was just after ten that night. Aboard the Sandacre, in the smoke-room, Evans poured himself out a large whisky. Because he was on the shore staff he had no direct access to duty-free cigarettes and spirits, but the ship’s chief officer had, as was the custom, brought him in a bottle of whisky and a hundred cigarettes.
He walked for’d and stared through a port. The foredeck was lit by arc-lamps on the Samson’s-posts and it was clear that the rising wind was beginning to pluck at the hatch tarpaulins. He would have to check the lashings of all the tarpaulins before he turned in. He finished the whisky, stared at the empty glass, and suddenly swore. How in the hell had the detective discovered about the hawsers? If head office learned about them he, Evans, would be for the high jump. There were several traditional fiddles, but tradition didn’t prevent the perpetrator from being sacked if uncovered.
Would the detective make a full report? He looked a reasonable sort of a bloke who’d understand the custom, yet he had made it clear he’d have to dig around to discover the name of the firm who’d bought the hawsers. The really ironic thing was that he, Evans, hadn’t a clue who they were. There was just this chap who drove the van and who’d jumped at the chance of a third hawser for a tenner. A tenner. That was all it had been. Not like the twenty thousand of the gold robberies.
He poured himself out another whisky and drank it quickly. To hell with the Sand Steamship Company. He lit another cigarette and his thoughts began to wander. The Sandstream and Sandacre were sister ships, launched within six months of each other. Their steam turbines were said to be the most reliable engines the company had ever had and no one knew why all later ships had had diesels.
He looked at the bottle, hesitated, poured himself another whisky. Aboard, he could drink as he liked, but at home his wife nagged him into being the next worse thing to a teetotaller.
It was odd, he thought hazily, that the gold thefts had been from two sister ships and only from them. Why hadn’t some of the other ships been hammered? Was there something special about the two? The only physical difference peculiar to them that he could think of was that, because of the wool trade experiment, numbers 5 and 6 upper ’tween decks ran together.
He finished the whisky and suddenly thought he would go down number 5 and have a look around. He chuckled. It would be hell’s funny to uncover the truth when everyone else had failed, and who knew, there might be a ten-quid hawser lying around in some corner.
The keys to the booby-trap were in a cupboard in the chief’s cabin, which was where he was sleeping. He went aft along the alleyway and down the ladder to the main deck and there he made the discovery he was walking unsteadily. He sniggered. If his wife could see him now, she’d blow her top.
He unlocked the padlock of number 5 hold, swung the heavy lid up and over, and let it drop back on to its rest with a loud crash. He paused. If someone saw him, it might be thought he was pilfering cargo. Still, no one was around to see anything.
He switched on his torch, then climbed down the first ladder to the upper ’tween. He leaned forward and shone the torch down into the square. It was a powerful torch and he could see that the lower hold was half filled with cargo. He raised the beam up to the port locker in the lower ’tween. The door was shut. Tomorrow, they were going to load the valuable cargo, some of which might be gold. Perhaps another ten thousand quid’s worth would be stolen. That would make thirty thousand. Thirty thousand would let a man cut a path through life a mile wide.
His mind suddenly became less hazy and he wondered just what in the hell he was doing down the hold? What did it matter that the Sandacre and Sandstream were sister ships? Good luck to the blokes pinching the gold: the insurance companies were there to make good the loss. Why hadn’t he stayed in the smoke-room where the whisky was?
He died instantly when his head slammed into the edge of a crate in the lower hold.
13
It was 10.30 the same night. The C.I.D. Hillman was parked on the top road that ran along the Crossford Hills and from there Kerr and Judy could look across the lights of Crossford and the darkness of the countryside to the lights of Fortrow. Beyond Fortrow was the white occulting light that marked the lighthouse on the tip of the point.
‘Can I have a cigarette, John?’ she asked.
He gave her one and struck a match. In the sudden flare of light, he could see her face, beautiful and promising. It might look promising, but it was a hell of a liar.
She snuggled against him. ‘It’s been such fun tonight.
He wondered whether she was secretly laughing at him. The meal had been good, the bill had not been too astronomical, and he had left the restaurant in high hopes: when he’d suggested a drive up into the hills and she had immediately agreed, his high hopes had become even higher. But once in the hills and parked out of sight of the road, she’d made it quite clear that all his hopes had been false ones.
A car went along the road behind them and as it turned the corner, on the crest of the hill, the lights stabbed the darkness beyond the land. She yawned. ‘We’d better be going, John. I’ve got such a busy day tomorrow.’
She kissed him quickly — a consolation peck, he thought morosely — then she pulled away and sat on her half of the bench seat.
He started the engine and drove out of the natural layby. If only he could be certain whether or not she was just a bitch. But surely no one as attractive as she could be just a bitch? And hadn’t she suggested that the next time they went out together she might be a little freer with her natural assets? If the night were dry and reasonably warm and he had a rug… She had struggled against him only because she recognised his appeal for her was an ultimate and total one. The strength of her enslaved passions frightened her, but there had to be an end to resistance and she knew she had reached the end of hers. In a voice that was only a whisper, she brokenly confessed that she loved him beyond any mortal restraint: nothing, not even the fires of hell, could still the tumult within her…
‘Did I tell you Norton Edwards was in the studios the other day?’ she asked.
She’d told him at least half a dozen times already.
Edwards was said by the newspapers to be making over thirty thousand pounds a year.
‘He’s a real sweetie.’
‘Is he?’
‘He’s so natural. He talked to me quite naturally.’
‘How very noble of him.’
‘He could be all upstage. Some of them are. There’s a singer whose wife…’
He ceased to listen. He drove through the outskirts of Crossford and into the main road, at the point where it ran parallel with the river for three-quarters of a mile. At the end of this stretch there was a T junction, with the main road turning right and crossing the river. Traffic lights controlled the turning and were set at red. He braked the car to a halt and stared out through the off-side window. If he’d been a TV star, earning thirty thousand a year, perhaps she’d not have been so certain of herself up in the hills. A warming thought occurred to him. If he had been such a man, perhaps he wouldn’t have bothered to take her out anywhere, knowing a dozen women twice as beautiful, twice as svelte, twice as exciting.
Traffic coming straight across was held up for a while and as he idly looked along the line of cars, he saw Captain Leery in an Austin. Leery looked hurriedly away. Since he was the only person in the car, Kerr wondered what made him so jumpy?
‘Don’t you think that was wonderful of him?’ Judy asked.
‘What?’
‘John, have you been listening to a word I’ve said?’
‘Of course I have.’ He hastily turned and looked at her.
‘Then don’t you think it was wonderful of him?’
‘A very great man,’ he answered.
The oncoming cars began to move once more and the Austin came abreast of them. Leery seemed to hesitate, then he looked directly at Kerr, smiled, and waved quickly with his right hand.
The lights changed. Kerr engaged second gear, released the clutch, and put out the right-hand indicator.
‘He said I ought to have a test for TV.’
Corny bastard, thought Kerr.
*
After the police doctor the following morning had said Evans was dead — hardly a difficult diagnosis to make — the body was examined and then photographed from several angles. It was put on a cargo tray and lifted out of the hold by a crane.
The D.I. climbed from the lower hold to the upper ’tween, where Kerr was on hands and knees, searching the last few inches of deck. ‘Anything more?’ asked Fusil.
‘Nothing, sir. Just the one mark.’
Fusil moved the nearer portable searchlight a few inches to the right. He squatted down on his heels and studied the faint scratch on the steel deck. It was three inches long and had probably been made by the steel corner stud on the sole of Evans’s right shoe: it was the kind of mark to be expected if this was the accident that all the evidence suggested it was. ‘Have you heard whether they’ve finished with the dabs on the torch?’
‘The only prints on it were the dead man’s, sir.’
The D.I. stood up and massaged his right knee. ‘Was the bottle of whisky in the smoke-room newly opened?’
‘I don’t think Rowan’s been able to find that out yet.’
‘You saw Evans yesterday on a very long shot to do with the hit-and-run case?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid I never got round to following it up, though.’
The D.I. wearily thought that there never was the time to do half the things that needed doing. ‘How was Evans when you spoke to him? Sober?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Nothing unusual about him, then, except you were pretty certain he’d been on the fiddle with old ropes?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
The D.I. shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who isn’t on a fiddle of some sort these days?’
‘If that van was in the hit-and-run case, it would explain why the driver didn’t stop, wouldn’t it? If anyone checked the number of hawsers, they’d discover what was going on.’
The D.I. nodded. He stared across the hold. After a while, he said: ‘Find Captain Leery and ask him for his comments on Evans being down the hold. After that, get back to the hit-and-run case.’
Kerr climbed up top and went aft to the gangway and down to the quay. He checked the probable whereabouts of Leery with the fourth officer, who was tallying mail, and then left the docks and crossed to the far pavement and a bus stop. He thought that it was an odd world when you had a chat with a bloke one day and the next were dealing with his dead and shattered body.
Leery, in his office, greeted him pleasantly and Kerr reflected that, unlike so many blokes in far less important jobs, Leery didn’t act like Lord Muck because he was talking to a lowly D.C. Kerr asked him if he could suggest why Evans should have gone down into number 5 hold during the late evening.
‘I can’t. The traps are locked when cargo work stops and they should stay locked until work is resumed.’
‘Could he have been broaching cargo?’
‘The cargo so far in number 5 isn’t the kind of stuff anyone would want to steal. It’s mainly crated machinery and bagged chemicals.’
When he’d finished writing, Kerr looked up. ‘How many hawsers would have been sent ashore yesterday from the Sandacre?’
‘Hawsers? What have they to do with Evans’s death?’ Leery spoke sharply.
‘Nothing, sir. They’re in connexion with another investigation. Have y
ou any idea how many hawsers were unloaded?’
‘Two.’
‘Would you be surprised to learn there were three?’
‘I…I don’t know.’ Leery struggled to conceal his perturbation. ‘Chief officers usually consider old hawsers to be their perks, whatever the rules are. But even if he was selling a bit of company’s property, what does it matter now he’s dead?’
Kerr ignored the question. ‘Who buys the hawsers?’
‘One or other firm of junk dealers.’
‘Will you let me have the name and address of this particular one?’
‘I don’t know it.’
‘But you’ll be able to find it out?’
Leery spoke nervously. ‘If it was a casual arrangement I may not be able to trace the name.’
‘It can’t be all that casual because the same van collected the old hawsers from the Sandstream. You’ll remember, you spoke to the driver of that van.’
‘Did…did I?’
Kerr stood up. ‘Thanks for your help, sir.’
Leery made no reply.
14
When Heywood-Smith, answering the bell, opened the front door of his house that evening and saw Leery, his expression immediately became angry. ‘I told you never to come here unless —’
‘It’s terribly urgent,’ broke in Leery nervously. ‘The police are on to us.’
Heywood-Smith’s expression became one of contempt. ‘So you’ve said every time they’ve come along and so much as asked you the time.’
‘The detective constable’s been again and again. And this time they know.’
Heywood-Smith opened the door more fully and stepped to one side. After closing the door, he led the way into the larger sitting-room. ‘Whisky?’ Without waiting for an answer, he went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured out two whiskies. Leery took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow: the central heating was set so high that the room was like a hot-house.
Heywood-Smith sat down in one of the arm-chairs. He took a cigar from a silver cigar-box, carefully cut the end, and lit it. ‘Cigarettes are by your side, Captain.’