Killer in the Shade

by Piers Marlowe

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Murphy asked sourly.

  ‘Look at the name on the stern, Joe.’

  ‘I don’t have to. I saw it back in the boathouse.’

  ‘Well, don’t you think it funny — even in a wild way appropriate?’

  Murphy scowled. ‘What I think is only a damned fool would call a boat by such a name, and only a bigger fool would be ready to go driving around in a boat so named.’

  ‘And what does that make us?’ Rollo asked quietly.

  Murphy swore with a strange pothouse fluency that would have been impressive if Rollo had been waiting to hear. But he had restarted the engine and had put the gears in reverse. He gave the craft plenty of throttle.

  Whether this manoeuvre might have pulled Mudlark free of whatever underwater reef she had nosed into was not to be demonstrated, for at that moment the engine coughed and died.

  ‘We’re out of fuel,’ Rollo announced.

  The idea came to Dan Simpson after swallowing a cup of coffee that was lukewarm and too sweet, just the way he hated it. He went to Rollo’s desk, hunted through his private papers until he found the phone number he wanted. He rang the Cadman home, spoke to Carol and learned that Drury had been talking to her about what her fiancé had done the previous evening. He then said, ‘Would you be prepared to go down to Sussex with a photographer? I think your boy friend’s going to get a real exclusive which will be worth pictures. But you’ll have to point him out to my man with the camera.’

  ‘Won’t he recognize Joe Murphy?’ Carol asked.

  ‘He’s a free-lance. I can’t spare anyone else.’

  Carol thought about it and said, ‘What you mean is, Mr Simpson, you don’t want another staff man running foul of the police.’

  ‘Any time you want to work for a newspaper, Miss Wilson, ring me,’ Simpson said. ‘I work with so many damned fools it’s nice to know there’s still a few youngsters with a head they know how to use. Will you go?’

  ‘After that, how can I refuse?’

  ‘I was hoping you couldn’t,’ Simpson said shamelessly. ‘He’s a fast driver and free with his hands whatever the speed, but I’ll warn him off that course. Just to remind him, keep your engagement ring on display. Oh, and his name’s Pettifer — Sam Pettifer. He’s charming when he wants to be, drinks like a fish when someone else is paying, and has littered E.C.4 with bruised female hearts. But to be fair, I don’t think he’s ever quite broken one. He’s got a better sense of timing than an astronaut on a moon flight. Oh, yes — thanks.’

  He rang off.

  Forty minutes later she opened the front door to a smiling young man with a beard and merry eyes and a camera dangling from a strap round his neck like a kerbside photo tout’s. He wore an open velvet jacket over tight-fitting jeans and a dazzling pink shirt with a wide blue tie, as big as a bib, covered with psychedelic whirls and blobs.

  ‘My,’ he said, showing teeth that somehow made his whiskery mouth inviting, ‘ready and waiting. You are Carol Wilson?’

  ‘I am. Let’s go. Sussex is some way over the horizon, in case your geography’s faulty.’

  When she was beside him in the E type he took off as though fully confident that the car would grow wings. She glanced at him and tried to keep her voice neutral when she said, ‘And you’re Sam Pettifer. I must say you look with it, Sam.’

  His retort came without pause.

  ‘And I’ve been told to keep it, girlie. Only goes to show what a bad reputation can do for you.’ He grinned at her with interesting insolence. ‘You get promised a bonus for not being yourself.’ The grin spread. ‘I mean for being good. And a close next to hot dollies, in my dossier, comes cold cash.’

  ‘So we’ll keep this strictly commercial.’

  He sighed theatrically, enjoying himself. ‘I learned early, the hard way, one can’t have everything.’

  She humoured him just to assure him she wasn’t unfriendly.

  ‘Whatever do you do to compensate?’

  ‘I go around expecting surprises. Pleasant of course, because I never waste time expecting the other sort.’

  He certainly drove fast.

  By the time he had cleared Billingshurst on the A29 he was in front of the car driven by Bill Hazard, with a thoughtful Frank Drury beside him, smoking a pipe and considering the chance of getting an early night for a change — always supposing the West Sussex police had performed as he had hoped.

  He knew someone was in for a big surprise.

  What he didn’t know was that the someone he hadn’t considered was himself.

  The young female assistant behind the cosmetics counter spoke to the man in the cap who was waiting his turn at the chemist’s counter. The man was holding his side and his face was twitching. His eyes were screwed up as though the sunlight outside had affected them.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she inquired.

  The man in the cap turned and stared at her through his almost shut eyes.

  He took a hand from his pocket while still holding his side with the other, and said, ‘I’d like a crepe bandage and a lint bandage. Both of them as long as you’ve got.’

  ‘I’ll see what we have,’ she said and went behind the man in the white coat who was explaining to an elderly woman why he couldn’t supply her with what she required without a doctor’s prescription. As the woman was deaf and persistent, he had his work cut out in making her accept refusal.

  The girl from the cosmetics counter took a crepe bandage wrapped in transparent paper from a wall box and an ordinary lint bandage from a glass case.

  ‘That all?’ she inquired of the man in the cap, who seemed to be more bowed than a couple of minutes before.

  ‘Some safety pins.’

  She looked in two more wall boxes, consulted the chemist having a hard time with the deaf elderly woman, and came back to announce that they had no safety pins, but would a box of Band-Aids do, as she presumed he wanted them to fix the bandages.

  ‘They’ll do,’ he nodded, his voice gruff as though he was in pain. ‘And give me a pair of polaroid sunglasses.’

  She looked surprised at this request but said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  She brought the box of Band-Aids, put it beside the bandages on her side of the counter, and held out a pair of dark polaroid spectacles.

  ‘Perhaps you would try these on to see if they fit?’ she suggested. ‘They’re two pounds thirty-six.’

  She held out the polaroids over the counter. He reached for them with the hand that had been holding his side. That was when she saw the blood on his fingers, and looking down glimpsed the dark stain that had come through his clothes.

  Perhaps, as someone working behind a cosmetics counter, she did not require as stern a stomach as an assistant behind the counter where pharmaceuticals were sold. She screamed.

  The man in the cap swore, dropped the polaroids on the floor, and as he turned around trod on them without noticing, for he knocked another customer sideways in his hurry to get out of the shop.

  On the pavement outside he hesitated, gasping, shaking his head as though to clear it, then stumbled to the kerb, hesitated again, and began running across the road.

  There was a shout. A car’s horn blew. Tyres squealed as they locked on a hard, unyielding road surface, but they couldn’t stop in time.

  The man in the cap who had run from the chemist’s shop went down under a bus whose driver couldn’t avoid him. There was a sudden red stain on the offside front wheel of the bus and on the bright green paintwork above the tall tyre.

  Chapter 12

  Drury and Hazard arrived at the hospital, accompanied by a uniformed superintendent of the West Sussex police, about five minutes after Humphrey Peel died.

  The Yard superintendent asked the constable who had accompanied the ambulance, ‘Did he make any statement?’ but was answered by the doctor.

  ‘He didn’t recover consciousness. Nothing we could do. He had been shot and was probably dying when he ran into the road, but the bus ki
lled him. The bullet hole was clean, but the bus made a real mess.’

  Drury nodded at the form concealed by a stained white sheet.

  ‘Thanks, Doctor.’

  Hazard glanced at him. Frank Drury looked like a man who had been forced to accept a defeat of sorts. The expression on his face was one his assistant had seen only rarely in the past.

  The local superintendent, whose name was Charcombe, stayed to have a few words with the constable, and then joined the two men from Scotland Yard. On the way back to police headquarters there was little conversation, none of it about the man who had somehow cheated them by dying, as Bill Hazard considered the tragedy. But then, Bill Hazard was still feeling resentment against all criminals who had been associated with Humphrey Peel and the bad taste left by his close encounter with Jackson Rennie still lingered and would for days. He had yet to achieve complete objectivity as a detective.

  Drury’s mind was elsewhere and ranging widely. It was brought back to the immediate region around the city when, upon arriving at police headquarters, he was informed of the spotting of Rollo Hackley’s car and the discovery of the corpses in the rear lounge of the house named Calanque.

  The panda patrol car had been called in.

  He spoke to the two constables who had witnessed the boat being driven away towards the open water of the harbour.

  ‘Describe the men you saw,’ he told the spokesman of the pair, who had related what had transpired after they had seen the wanted car parked at the end of a private road off the road to Selsey.

  The young constable’s description was close enough for Drury to recognize. He turned to Bill Hazard, who nodded and said, ‘That’s them.’

  ‘The bloody fools,’ growled Drury. ‘If this is a stupid caper just to get a story for the Gazette, I’ll roast the pair of them.’

  Superintendent Charcombe and his two constables stood like graven images, listening without understanding.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the answer,’ Hazard said carefully. ‘Oh, they came for a story and they were smart enough to do it before there was any embargo from the Yard. But I think they were trying to help when they got in that boat and took off.’

  ‘Because those sacks were not found in the Viva?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hazard nodded. ‘Those sacks are somewhere. My guess is in the boat.’

  ‘If you’re right, Bill, there’s another question.’

  ‘I know,’ Hazard agreed. ‘How did they know anything about the sacks? I think we’ve got to put one and one together. Hackley could have picked up enough at the Weddons’ place to have tumbled to what was going to happen and, again, Murphy has other pals at the Yard and when they got that map out of the bureau and they put their heads together — well, it didn’t take long to realize things were moving this way. After all, Peel had almost boasted to Hackley about the raid he had set up.’

  ‘But neither Hackley nor Joe Murphy knew about our calling on Dick Barrett last night or what I pressured him into agreeing to do.’

  Bill Hazard grinned. ‘If they had, would they have bothered to come down here?’

  ‘Only for the story,’ Drury grunted. ‘But I get your point, Bill. It doesn’t make them any less bloody fools. Now we’ve got to find them. If we wait for them to be picked up, perhaps in Hampshire or even Dorset, this little ripple is going to widen into one damn big wave of adverse publicity.’

  Hazard began to look discouraged.

  The local superintendent coughed. ‘Perhaps I could help if you put me in the picture,’ he told Drury.

  ‘Very well,’ said the Yard man. ‘This is our problem, Charcombe.’

  In a few words he explained why he wanted the two men who had been seen disappearing in the Mudlark picked up before they landed anywhere outside West Sussex, and why he had no wish for the story about their taking the boat to become public property, as it would if some local reporter got hold of it and sold it to a Fleet Street news agency.

  ‘I can handle the Gazette. I can’t do much with the whole of Fleet Street and the local papers throughout the South of England,’ he told the local superintendent, who was smiling. ‘You find it amusing. So would the whole damned country. I don’t want the funny side played up. Peel was a killer, and there’s too damned much on the record to be sorted out.’

  One of the constables coughed, apparently following the example of the senior local man.

  They all looked at him and the young constable flushed. But Drury saw the grim look on his face, and realized the other felt he had something to offer and had plucked up enough courage to risk talking out of turn.

  ‘What is it, constable?’ he asked. ‘Anything you can suggest that will help I’m ready to listen to. You saw something you think I should know, that it?’

  The constable glanced apologetically at Charcombe, who gave him clearance with a wave of the hand while watching him with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the constable. ‘In the boathouse, when we got to it, there were these petrol cans, all full. Ten cans, making twenty gallons of fuel. The cans were stacked to one side and they weren’t dusty, so they were fairly new — I mean, they’d been stacked recently. But there were no empty cans anywhere and so — ’

  ‘Constable,’ said Drury, smiling at the young man, ‘you don’t have to go on. I get the point. Very shrewd of you, and thank you for telling me. You mean the boat’s fuel tank must be practically empty because the fuel had not been taken on board, and as there was no empty can lying around none had been used since the last time she returned to the boathouse, possibly months ago. And the chances are her fuel tank had only a few pints left.’

  ‘Well, yes, sir, but that would mean whoever took the boat wouldn’t get far, and if they ran out of juice in mid-harbour — ’

  Drury wasn’t listening. He had turned around to face the local superintendent.

  ‘I think, Charcombe,’ he said, ‘if you can fix us up with a harbour patrol craft we might just possibly have a chance of keeping this affair in the family, so to speak.’ He turned back to the still flushed constable. ‘Very shrewd indeed, constable, and thank you for speaking up.’

  He glanced inquiringly at Superintendent Charcombe, who was reaching for a phone and looking amused again.

  ‘This is going to be one to tell when I’ve retired,’ he told Drury, ‘and that won’t be so damned long now.’

  Rollo was watching the level of water against the reeds of the starboard side. He was convinced the tide had turned, and it would now be only a matter of waiting until they were floated off the sandbank. He was about to draw Joe Murphy’s attention to the level against the reeds when the Irishman shouted at him, ‘Will you look at this coming towards us, boy? I’m either dreaming or having hallucinations, and not a drop to drink since we left your place this morning.’

  Rollo straightened his back and twisted around. His mouth fell slack.

  ‘God Almighty!’

  ‘And well you can say that,’ Murphy told him with heavy humour. ‘For this is supernatural for sure. Look at that damned tie, Rollo. What would a nice girl like your Carol be doing escorting a tie like that?’

  They stood side by side in the waist of the boat watching the small rowboat coming towards them. Sitting in the stern was Sam Pettifer, velvet jacket wide, his bib-like tie flowing over one shoulder like a pennant in the breeze. He was aiming his Leica fitted with a 1:4 Tessar lens and taking shots of the Mudlark while Carol bent her supple shoulders to pulling on a pair of oars.

  ‘And she’s rowing him, Rollo,’ Murphy grunted. ‘That damned Sam Pettifer always makes his women slave for him. The man’s a bloody Arab. Bedad, this is Dan Simpson’s doing. That’s why he wanted the address, so’s he could have a story with pictures. Ain’t he the conniving fox?’

  ‘You know this character in the pink shirt?’ Rollo asked.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ Murphy was at pains to explain. ‘I know of him. I’ve seen him in pubs. I’ve seen the way women ogle him and that
’s enough to make a saint spit.’

  He spat over the boat’s side in case Rollo should be in any doubt as to the implication of his words.

  ‘What is he, for God’s sake?’

  ‘A damned free-lance. Probably makes a bomb out of porno pictures and works for kicks, just to keep the Vice Squad off his neck.’

  Making due allowance for his companion’s exaggeration, Rollo still didn’t like this view of his fiancée rowing the other towards Mudlark. It made him cringe inside.

  ‘Here, take the boathook,’ he said savagely to Murphy. ‘I’m liable to push it through his neck.’

  ‘And spoil that sweet shirt with all the blood, Rollo boy?’ Murphy grinned with mock chiding. ‘Now if you had a bucket of hot tar and a sackful of feathers I could think of a good use for both.’

  But he took the boathook.

  Amazingly when Carol was helped aboard by Sam Pettifer, using both hands, and Joe Murphy using one while he kept the rowboat bobbing close alongside with the other, Rollo’s annoyance and resentment evaporated like steam under a hot sun, for Carol threw her arms around his neck, saying, ‘Thank God you’re safe, darling!’

  Before he could speak there was a click, followed by another from a little lower, and he turned to see the bearded man with the fancy gear stooping low and aiming his Leica.

  ‘Lovely, lovely,’ Sam Pettifer crooned.

  It didn’t take long for the free-lance to relate what Dan Simpson had told him by way of instructions.

  ‘I’m under your orders, Murphy. Simpson said you’d tell me what to take, apart from background shots. Those he leaves to my discretion.’ He grinned impudently at Carol. ‘I’m well known for that.’

  For the next few minutes he was busy taking shots of the Mudlark, of the sacks piled on the bed-seats, of Rollo posed at the wheel, Murphy using the boathook, and Carol pretending to brew tea with an empty kettle and stove without Calor gas. Tiring of the newcomer’s performance, Rollo left the wheel and demanded, ‘How the hell did you find us?’

  ‘Simple, laddie,’ beamed the bearded cameraman. ‘Carol spotted your car with a helmeted Robert on guard. Oh, yes, they’re scouring the district for you. Probably have tracker dogs and their handlers beating the rushes. Make a good shot that,’ he hurriedly inserted in parentheses and then continued. ‘We couldn’t come down that private road without being stopped so we drove on to that marina to the south, and I borrowed a rowboat for the price of a few pints, ostensibly to take shots for a nature magazine — and I don’t mean the kind you’re thinking of, chummie.’