Underneath The Arches

by Graham Ison

  Fox’s Ford Granada pulled up outside Dawes’s house in Putney. Before they had turned into the street, Fox had ordered Swann to fit the magnetic blue light to the roof and switch it on and, as they stopped, Fox gave the siren a quick burst. So many curtains twitched that there was almost a gale.

  Followed by Gilroy, Fox swept up the short path and hammered on the door, pushing it wide as soon as the nervous face of Harry Dawes appeared. ‘Well, well, Harry, I didn’t believe them.’

  ‘Didn’t believe what?’

  ‘My informants told me that you were still alive.’ Fox grinned. ‘But by the look of you, I’m not so sure that they were right.’

  ‘What d’you want?’ asked Dawes, but the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that he knew exactly what they wanted.

  ‘A little chat, Harry,’ said Fox, taking Dawes’s elbow and steering him into the sitting-room. ‘I must say that you’ve got some very nosy neighbours.’

  ‘It’s all that bleeding noise you made, ain’t it? That siren and blue light and all that stuff. That’s bleeding harassment, that is.’

  ‘You think that’s harassment?’ asked Fox, shaking his head slowly as he looked round the room. ‘I must say that this is all very tasteful, Harry,’ he continued. Apart from Dawes’s favourite Rexine-covered chair, there was an uncut-moquette three-piece suite in brown, a large patterned Axminster carpet, and brown velvet curtains. A log fire crackled in a grate that was surrounded by a high mesh guard. On either side were long, highly-polished brass fire-irons, standing to attention. ‘Yes, very tasteful indeed.’ In fact, Fox thought that the whole ensemble was hideous, but he had greater things in store with which to upset Dawes than a criticism of his furnishings.

  ‘I s’pose there’s some reason for your visit, Mr Fox?’ asked Dawes nervously.

  ‘Of course, Harry.’ Fox settled himself into one of the armchairs and crossed his legs.

  A woman appeared in the doorway, carrying a tea-tray. She was about fifty, with grey hair and a wrapover, sleeveless floral overall. ‘I’ve made some tea for your visitors, Mr Dawes,’ she said, smiling at Fox and Gilroy.

  ‘Just put it there will you.’ Dawes, barely able to disguise his annoyance, indicated a carved Indian table. The last thing he wanted was to encourage Fox to stay any longer than was absolutely necessary. ‘This is Mrs Wright, she does for me,’ he added.

  ‘Really? Well we have something in common there,’ said Fox as Dawes’s daily closed the door behind her. He waited until Dawes had poured the tea and handed the cups round before speaking again. ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem, Harry. And as I’m known to be a generous man, I thought I’d share it. Make it your problem too, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Dawes’s hand shook slightly as he stirred his tea. ‘Biscuit, Mr Fox?’

  ‘How kind,’ said Fox. ‘It’s about this dead body, you see.’

  Dawes spluttered and choked over his tea and Fox nodded knowingly, although he had thought that such things only happened in films. ‘What body?’ asked Dawes when he had got his breath back. Eddie Swinburn hadn’t said anything about a dead body.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve heard all about it, Harry,’ Fox continued. ‘I can’t believe that your army of snouts hasn’t been running down here to Oxford Road to keep you informed.’

  Dawes, his composure now somewhat regained, shook his head. ‘I don’t know nothing about no body,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear. In that case I’ll explain. Some four or five days ago …’ Fox paused. ‘No, let’s get this right. On the fifteenth of October, last Monday in fact, two of your operatives, namely Mr Budgeon and Mr Chesney, entered your lock-up at Lambeth —’

  ‘I’ve never heard of them,’ said Dawes hurriedly.

  Fox ignored him and sipped his tea. ‘And to their horror,’ he continued, ‘they discovered the dead body of a young lady.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Which,’ said Fox, ‘must have come as a terrible shock to their respective systems. Particularly at six o’clock in the morning, wouldn’t you say, Harry, old thing?’

  ‘Now look here,’ said Dawes truculently, ‘if you’re trying to row me into a topping, you can forget it. I don’t know nothing about no dead bodies and I don’t know nothing about no lock-up in Lambeth neither.’ He reached out unsteadily and put his cup on a table. ‘And I ain’t never heard of —’ He paused. ‘Whoever you said they was.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Fox. ‘D’you know, Harry, if you’d gone on the stage in your youth, you’d have made a fortune. And the only time the Old Bill would’ve knocked on your door would have been to ask for your autograph.’

  Dawes stood up, shaking. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ he said. ‘This is harassment, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox mildly, ‘you actually mentioned that before. But before we push off, Harry, old dear, we’ll just have a look round. Just for old time’s sake.’

  ‘Oh no you won’t. I ain’t invited you.’

  Fox produced a sheet of paper from his pocket and waved it gently in Dawes’s direction. ‘You’ve seen one of these before, Harry, surely?’

  Dawes collapsed into his favourite armchair again. ‘This ain’t the nineteen-sixties, you know,’ he said. ‘It don’t work like that any more. People’s got rights.’

  ‘That's true,’ said Fox. ‘Among which is the right not to have their property stolen, and not to be murdered.’

  Fox and Gilroy strolled round the house, but they knew there wouldn’t be anything of interest. Harry Dawes had been too long at the game to be caught out that easily. Fox knew that he had another slaughter somewhere, but at the moment he didn’t know where. He was hoping that Dawes would be reduced to such a state of panic that he might be tempted to move the vast stock of illicitly-acquired goods that Fox was sure he had.

  ‘I shall telephone my solicitor,’ said Dawes with a sudden show of truculent hostility.

  ‘Feel free,’ said Fox. ‘In fact, use your telephone as often as you like. We haven’t got it tapped, Harry.’

  Fox knew that the Home Secretary would not grant an intercept warrant for Dawes’s phone just to help the police solve a few robberies, but in telling Dawes that his phone was not tapped, Fox was certain that the old villain would think that his every word was being monitored by the police. And that meant that Dawes would have to go out to meet his contacts … or that they would have to come to him. Either way, it would suit Fox admirably.

  *

  ‘Mr Fox, I am Commander Willow of One Area Headquarters and this is Sergeant Clarke.’ Willow indicated the pale-faced individual beside him. ‘And I am investigating a complaint made against you by a Mr John James Stedman of Buckhurst Hill —’

  ‘Parkhurst,’ said Fox.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Willow looked up from his thick file of documents and adjusted his gold-rimmed, half-lensed spectacles slightly. His wife had told him that they gave him an air of authority. Fox thought they made him look a bit of a prat.

  ‘I think you mean Parkhurst.’

  ‘The complainant is serving a sentence of imprisonment in Parkhurst at the moment, Mr Fox, that’s true, but he is appealing.’

  ‘Not to me, he’s not,’ said Fox.

  ‘Yes.’ Willow looked uncertainly at Fox before returning his gaze to his file. ‘He alleges, and I quote, that when you executed a search warrant at his premises at 27 Winsome Terrace, Buckhurst Hill, in the County of Essex, a search which resulted in his arrest, you stole the sum of two hundred pounds, seven compact discs —’ Willow interrupted himself. ‘I have a list of the titles here.’ He tapped the file in front of him. ‘And two ladies’ dresses.’

  ‘He said all that? Couldn’t string two words together when I nicked him.’

  Willow wrinkled his nose. He did not like the language of the Criminal Investigation Department. ‘I understand that his solicitor prepared the complaint,’ he said, ‘which was sent to the Commissioner by Mr Sted
man’s MP.’ He had hoped that this particular crumb of information might impress Fox, but then he hadn’t met Fox before.

  ‘Well I wish you luck with it,’ said Fox, ‘but I do have a murder to investigate.’ He glanced at his watch.

  ‘Be that as it may, Mr Fox, there —’

  ‘And,’ added Fox confidentially, ‘if you’ll take a word of advice from me, you can’t trust a word that little bastard says. He’d shop his grandmother for two-penn’orth of cold tea if he thought he could sell it for a profit. He’ll probably finish up making a complaint against you.’

  ‘I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this complaint, Mr Fox. Mr Stedman is alleging that you have committed a crime, a serious crime.’ Willow was starting to feel out of his depth. Rapidly promoted, he had attended every course at the Police College and had filled one staff appointment after another. His great hope now was to secure a post as a deputy chief constable in some quiet provincial police force. But he was suddenly engulfed by a feeling of misgiving that this complaint wasn’t going to be resolved as easily as he had at first thought. ‘I think it might be useful, Mr Fox,’ he continued, ‘if I could start by taking a statement from you setting out the circumstances under which you arrested Mr Stedman.’

  ‘Be very useful indeed, I should think. To you, sir,’ said Fox. ‘But I’m not making any statements.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘You see, sir,’ said Fox helpfully, ‘as I am the subject of the complaint, you are obliged to caution me that I need not say anything, but that anything I do say —’ He broke off. ‘I’m sure you’re familiar with the caution, sir, but I have a copy of it here somewhere if you’d like me to find it.’ Fox started opening the drawers of his desk.

  ‘Mr Fox,’ said Willow with a weariness that hadn’t been apparent at the start of the interview, ‘I don’t want to take too much time over this complaint, and —’

  ‘Neither do I, guv’nor,’ said Fox and smiled.

  *

  ‘Well, Denzil, what have you to tell me?’

  ‘I’ve got the report from Fingerprint Branch, sir,’ said Evans.

  ‘Anything interesting in it?’

  Evans shrugged. ‘Don’t know at this stage, sir. Most of the marks were identified as Dawn Mitchell’s, but there were others.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir. They’re not on record. But there are more of one set than of any of the others.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean, Denzil?’

  ‘There were a lot of prints, all belonging to one person, that were found in the sitting room and the bedroom.’

  ‘Really? How fascinating. But as far as we know, she lived there alone, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I think we’ve identified her, guv’nor.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Fox. ‘Well get on with it.’

  ‘You’re going to like this, guv.’ said Evans. ‘She appears to be the daughter of Lord Sims. Well, Earl Sims to be strictly accurate.’

  ‘And how do you arrive at Dawn Mitchell being the daughter of someone called Sims? I mean to say, Denzil, it’s not as if it were a place name like some peers have, is it?’

  ‘I thought you’d ask that,’ said Evans.

  ‘I just did,’ said Fox.

  ‘T'his, sir,’ said Evans and laid a letter on Fox’s desk.

  ‘What’s this then?’ Fox picked up the letter and scanned its contents.

  ‘Letter from what looks very much like Dawn’s sister, guv. There’s a load of grief about their father being worried about her, up here in the Smoke, and how she really ought to get in touch. All that sort of thing. And it’s signed “Jane”.’

  ‘But I still don’t see how you came to the conclusion that —’

  ‘I’ve been doing some checking, sir.’ Evans had an expression of triumph on his face that he had arrived at a solution before Fox. ‘And the Yorkshire address on the letter is the address of Lord Sims. According to Who’s Who and Burke’s Peerage, his wife is dead, but there is a son, Viscount Swaledale, who is twenty-seven and heir to the earldom, and two daughters, Jane and Dawn. Dawn is thirty years of age and Jane is thirty-five, and divorced.’

  Fox handed the letter back. ‘You know, Denzil,’ he said, ‘you’re getting quite good at this detecting business.’ He stood up and stared out of the window of his office. ‘It looks as though we’re going to have to go to Yorkshire.’ He paused. ‘Whereabouts in Yorkshire, Denzil?’

  ‘West of Richmond, sir,’ said Evans. ‘It’s about two hundred and seventy miles from here. On the Dales.’

  Fox grinned. ‘That’ll give Swann something to complain about,’ he said. ‘And it’ll get Pussy Willow off my back.’

  ‘Who’s Pussy Willow, sir?’ Evans looked puzzled.

  ‘Commander Willow of One Area seems to think that he’s investigating a complaint made against me by that little toe-rag Stedman,’ said Fox. ‘Saucy bastard.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Evans, unsure whether Fox was referring to Stedman or Commander Willow.

  *

  ‘Mr Daly, thank you for seeing me,’ said Commander Willow. ‘This is Sergeant Clarke who is assisting me in my enquiries.’

  ‘Come right on in, gentlemen, and sit yourselves down.’ Although Joe Daly was styled the legal attaché at the United States Embassy in London, he was in reality the resident FBI agent and the man to whom all British policemen referred whenever they had matters connected with America. ‘Tell me what I can do for you.’

  ‘I’m investigating a complaint made by one John James Stedman against Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox of the Flying Squad,’ Willow began importantly.

  Daly laughed. ‘What’s Tommy been up to now?’ he asked as he placed coffee in front of the two policemen.

  ‘Oh, you know him, do you?’ Willow blinked.

  ‘Know him? I should say I do. And so does every God-damned crook in London, I should think. I’ll tell you this, Commander …’ Daly leaned forward slightly and tapped the coffee table with his forefinger. ‘The people of this great city ought to be very grateful that they’ve got men like Tommy Fox protecting them. Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, well, er, probably,’ said Willow.

  ‘And if this hood Stedman who’s stirring up this trouble for him got put inside by Tommy Fox then he oughtn’t ever to be let out of the slammer. No, sir. Anyway, I digress. What is it that I can do to help?’

  ‘I’m trying to track down the woman that Stedman was living with,’ said Willow, staring at the file now open on his knees. ‘Her name’s Sandra Nash.’

  ‘A United States citizen, is she?’

  ‘No, but I believe that she left for the States immediately after Stedman’s arrest.’

  ‘Is that a fact? Well, Commander, hundreds of people go to America, every day I imagine.’

  ‘I was hoping that there might be some way of finding out where she is now?’ Willow didn’t sound too hopeful.

  Daly laughed, a deep rumbling laugh. ‘I’ll give it a shot,’ he said, ‘but visas aren’t required any more for ninety days or under.’ He drew a notepad towards him. ‘Give me a few details and I’ll see if I can do anything. But don’t hold your breath.’

  FIVE

  SWANN, HAVING TRIED EVERY TACTIC he knew to avoid driving Fox to Yorkshire, eventually admitted defeat. But he grumbled for the entire journey, muttering to himself and roundly abusing any other motorist who he thought had got in his way … which was most of them.

  The country seat of the Earl Sims was on a remote part of the Yorkshire Dales, but Fox’s first priority was to find a decent inn where he and Gilroy — and Swann — could stay for the night.

  The local police station was a stone-built house in the centre of a small village. The sergeant eased himself out of his chair and strolled across to the counter. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said affably.

  ‘Good afternoon. I’m Detective Chief Superintendent Fox, Metropo
litan.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’ The sergeant glanced briefly at Fox’s warrant card, but appeared unmoved by the sudden arrival of a senior Scotland Yard officer. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen from London then?’ he asked and smiled benevolently.

  ‘Wondered if you could recommend somewhere to stay.’

  ‘Oh aye.’ The sergeant ran a hand round his chin. ‘Happen you’d like a cup of tea, sir,’ he said, ‘having come all that way, like.’

  ‘No thanks, sergeant, we’re in a bit of a hurry.’ Fox had no desire to languish in a Yorkshire police station listening to tales of sheep-stealing and the like.

  ‘Aye, I s’pose so.’ The sergeant looked thoughtful and then reeled off the names of a number of bed-and-breakfast establishments in the area, assuming that the Metropolitan Police were as parsimonious about expenses as his own chief constable.

  Fox thanked the sergeant and left, mentally dismissing the information he had been given. After a lengthy search, he and Gilroy eventually lighted upon a country inn with low beams and a crackling log fire.

  After dinner, they adjourned to the bar where they had a few drinks and listened to the gossip of the locals who knew, by some arcane grapevine, of the presence of the Scotland Yard officers in their midst. But, try as they might, they did not learn why the London policemen were there.

  The following morning, Swann drove Fox and Gilroy for miles across deserted Dales roads until, at almost midday, they reached the Simses’ house, a large rambling pile set in grounds that must have amounted to several thousand acres of woodland and grass.

  ‘This is definitely the way to live,’ said Fox as he tugged at the wrought-iron bell-pull beside the massive front door and gazed around the gravelled forecourt.

  A Filipino dressed in a black alpaca suit answered the door and gazed at Fox for a moment or two before speaking. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Good afternoon. I’m Thomas Fox. I’ve come to see Lady Jane Sims.’