Underneath The Arches

by Graham Ison

  Fox waved a deprecating hand. ‘We get free tickets at the Yard from time to time,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t spoil it,’ said Jane and stood up to get Fox another drink.

  *

  Alan Wadman, the detective chief inspector at Chelsea, stood up and shook hands. ‘Hallo guv’nor,’ he said. ‘Come to talk about Hope-Smith?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fox peered at Wadman’s notice board before sitting down. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Doesn’t look promising, guv. I don’t think we’ve got a chance of getting a result here. The girl, Trixie Harper, is adamant that she was raped and the divisional surgeon confirms that sexual intercourse took place. But Hope-Smith, in his statement under caution, claims that she was willing. He said that she undressed voluntarily and willingly engaged in sexual intercourse. However, there’s no denying the evidence of the bus driver that he saw her, wearing just a towel, in the street outside the premises or that she was screaming her head off.’

  ‘Are the CPS going to give it a run?’ asked Fox.

  Wadman laughed. ‘There’s no telling with that lot,’ he said. ‘Still banging on about the fifty-per cent rule.’

  Fox nodded moodily. He was familiar with the policy that the Crown Prosecution Service would only go to court with a case in which they thought they had a more than even chance of getting a conviction. ‘Well, I know what I’d’ve done, before they set up that comic opera outfit,’ he said. ‘I’d’ve put him on the sheet and let him try and talk his way out of it.’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping to persuade them to do,’ said Wadman, but he didn’t sound too confident of succeeding. ‘How’s your murder enquiry going, guv?’

  ‘It’s not,’ said Fox.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘MRS PATRICIA BARNES?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am Detective Sergeant Rosie Webster of the Flying Squad.’

  ‘What d’you want?’ The woman peered at Rosie suspiciously, apparently unable to comprehend that the tall elegant blonde on her doorstep could possibly be a police officer.

  ‘May I come in?’ Rosie inclined her head and gave the woman one of her most fetching smiles.

  ‘Oh, yes, I suppose so.’ Mrs Barnes stood back to admit Rosie and showed her in to the sitting-room.

  ‘My detective chief superintendent came to see you the other day —’

  ‘Well someone did. Is this about the murder of that wretched girl?’ Mrs Barnes was clearly puzzled by this second visit from the police within eight days.

  ‘It is, Mrs Barnes, yes.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see what that’s got to do with us.’

  ‘But you knew her, Mrs Barnes, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I told the policeman that.’

  ‘You also told Mr Fox that your husband hadn’t been at home on the night of the fourteenth of October, the night of Lady Dawn Sims’s murder.’

  ‘Did I?’ Patricia Barnes looked blankly at the electric fire and its twinkling artificial logs.

  ‘This is a serious matter, Mrs Barnes,’ said Rosie. ‘And if your husband was not here on that night, he may be arrested.’ She was getting a little tired of Mrs Barnes’s apparent indifference to the gravity of the police enquiries.

  ‘Arrested?’ Suddenly Patricia Barnes shook off her apathy and concentrated on what Rosie was saying. ‘Why on earth should he be arrested?’ She seemed quite shocked at the possibility.

  ‘We are interviewing everyone who knew Lady Dawn and who is unable to account for their movements on the night she was killed. Your husband claimed to have been with you on the fourteenth of October, but you told Mr Fox that he wasn’t here. That does tend to make us suspicious.’ Rose waited patiently to see what Mrs Barnes would say to that.

  ‘He was here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Then why did you tell Mr Fox that he wasn’t?’

  ‘Miss, er —’

  ‘Webster.’

  ‘It is Miss, is it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘I thought that career women always liked to be called Muzz.’

  ‘Not all of us,’ said Rosie and smiled.

  ‘Then you probably won’t understand what it’s like to have a husband who’s a womaniser, my dear.’

  ‘How d’you know that he is?’ asked Rosie, who knew all about womanising men.

  Mrs Barnes looked at Rosie with a pitiful smile. ‘You can always tell,’ she said. ‘A sudden improvement in their appearance, an excess of after-shave, and an evasiveness when you ask them where they’re going or where they’ve been.’ She shook her head at the futility of it all. ‘And Harry, because of his job, always shelters behind the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘Does he do work of national importance then?’ Fox had told Rosie that if Barnes were to rush down to Fleet Street and give them the entire contents of his filing cabinets, they would probably throw it all away.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Mrs Barnes in resigned tones. ‘But he is a womaniser, and I knew the moment he set eyes on Dawn that he wouldn’t be able to resist her. The one thing that puzzles me is that she bothered with him. Harry’s just a dowdy little civil servant, but she was a good-looking girl. There must have been dozens of young men who would have taken her fancy.’

  ‘And that’s why you told Mr Fox that he hadn’t been here that night, was it? A sort of revenge.’

  Patricia Barnes nodded and stared at the fire again. ‘Yes, my dear,’ she said eventually. ‘I realise that I shouldn’t have done it, but I thought I’d teach him a lesson. Worry him for a change, the way he worries me with his philandering.’

  ‘I see,’ said Rosie. ‘I take it that you’re prepared to make a statement, saying that he was here that night, then?’

  ‘If that’s what you want, yes. Will this get me into trouble?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Rosie smiled and took a statement form from her briefcase. There was no way that the Crown Prosecution Service would consider a case of wasting police time. And she knew that Fox wouldn’t even ask them when he had heard the reasons for Mrs Barnes’s original lie.

  *

  Gentleman John Hooper stopped his car near a phone box in Greenford and rang Tommy Fox. He had been a policeman for too long to make confidential calls from his office. ‘I’ve put the bubble in for your man Crozier,’ he said when eventually he was connected to the head of the Flying Squad.

  ‘Well done, John. And what did the great man have to say to that?’

  ‘Said he’d deal with it personally, guv,’ said Hooper.

  ‘Did he now? That’s interesting. Tell me, John, as an old Fraud Squad officer, what d’you think about the state of health of Hayden’s companies?’

  Hooper thought about the question for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘I haven’t been able to examine the books — he doesn’t trust me that much — but let me put it this way. If I had some spare cash, I wouldn’t invest it in Hayden. Nothing concrete mind, just a gut feeling.’

  ‘Thanks, John. I owe you one,’ said Fox and replaced the receiver.

  *

  Commander Raymond Willow was in a foul mood. The train from Waterloo had been late and the ferry crossing to the Isle of Wight choppy. And the sarcastic sneer on John James Stedman’s face as he was brought into the interview room at Parkhurst Prison did nothing to improve that mood.

  ‘I have interviewed Miss Sandra Nash …’ began Willow.

  ‘Oh good. So you found her.’

  ‘It is not good, Stedman. Your complaint was a pack of lies, wasn’t it?’

  ‘How d’you reckon that then?’ Stedman lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. His whole attitude was one of disdainful nonchalance.

  ‘Because Miss Nash stated to me that you gave her the two hundred pounds that you allege Detective Chief Superintendent Fox stole from you, and she further states that the seven compact discs and the two dresses were her property anyway.’

  �
�Yeah, that’s right,’ said Stedman and looking past Willow, grinned at Sergeant Clarke who was perched uncomfortably on a hard chair some feet behind his commander.

  ‘So you made a false statement to me?’ Willow leaned forward in what he believed to be a menacing attitude.

  ‘S’right.’

  ‘You do realise that in certain circumstances, that could be construed as an offence, I suppose?’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Stedman. ‘When I’ve done me ten years’ bird, come back and talk to me about it again.’

  ‘Why did you tell these falsehoods then?’ asked Willow.

  ‘I’ll tell you why, copper,’ said Stedman, leaning forward with an earnest expression on his face. ‘That slag I was living with reckoned she was going to stand by me, so I give her two Cs to tide her over like. And that was the last I saw of the little cow. She never come and see me when I was on remand down Brixton. And she never showed up at the trial neither.’

  ‘What’s that got to —’

  ‘So I thought I’d flush her out. I knew you geezers would track her down and that’s all I wanted. So now you can tell me where the little bitch is.’

  Willow smiled triumphantly at Stedman. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mister Stedman,’ he said. ‘It’s confidential information.’

  ‘But that’s bleedin’ outrageous. She nicked two hundred quid off of me.’

  ‘No she didn’t,’ said Willow. ‘You gave it to her and doubtless the officers in whose presence you did so will testify to that fact.’

  ‘You sure you’re a copper?’ asked Stedman and glanced at Clarke. ‘Don’t half talk posh, your guv’nor, don’t he?’ he said, and looking back at Willow, added, ‘Well, in that case, you can bugger off, squire.’

  *

  Fox listened carefully to Rosie Webster’s report of her interview with Harry Barnes’s wife. ‘She has a point there,’ he said eventually.

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘Why should a girl as attractive as Dawn Sims be interested in a bloke like Barnes. You’ve not seen him, of course, Rosie.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, he’s not exactly good-looking.’ Fox shook his head. ‘There’s more to this than meets the eye,’ he added.

  *

  ‘Crozier!’ Alec Tinsley, the overseer of the Hayden Trust’s depot at Epsom, stepped out of his office and bellowed across the warehouse. ‘Come in here a minute.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Tinsley,’ Detective Sergeant Ron Crozier crossed to the glass-walled cubicle that Tinsley dignified with the term ‘office’ and closed the door behind him.

  ‘I’ve got a special job for you, Crozier. Take the van, the blue Commer, and go to this address.’ Tinsley handed Crozier a slip of paper. ‘There’s some stores to be picked up and brought back here. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Tinsley.’

  ‘Good. Now there’s just one thing, Crozier. Some of the gear what you’ll see down there has come from suppliers who don’t want their shareholders to know that they’re contributing to charity, see? So mum’s the word. Don’t tell no one.’

  ‘D’you mean it’s a bit dodgy?’

  ‘What d’you mean, dodgy?’

  Crozier shrugged. ‘Well, you know, a bit iffy like.’

  ‘No, it’s not a bit iffy like,’ said Tinsley, ‘not that you’ve got any room to talk about things being iffy, Crozier.’

  ‘What’s that s’posed to mean?’

  ‘I know all about you, my son. Nothing goes on around here without Alec Tinsley getting to hear about it, I can tell you. Done a bit of time, have we?’

  Crozier introduced a defensive and downtrodden whine into his voice. ‘We all make mistakes, Mr Tinsley,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t call doing five years for burgling a house and beating up the occupants making a mistake, my son. I’d call it downright deliberate.’ Tinsley fixed Crozier with a condescending stare. ‘But play your cards right, Crozier, and keep your trap shut, and who knows? You might even finish with a nice little bonus in your pocket. But not one that the DSS’d know about, either. And just remember this. You might be a bloody villain, but you don’t frighten me. Expert in unarmed combat when I was in the army, I was.’

  ‘When d’you want this stuff collected, Mr Tinsley?’

  ‘No time like the present, lad. And one other thing …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your little secret’s safe with me. But if that bastard Hooper gets to hear about you then so will Mr Hayden. And that’ll be good-bye Crozier.’

  ‘Who’s Hooper, Mr Tinsley?’

  Tinsley lowered his voice. ‘He’s an ex-copper who tells Mr Hayden everything what goes on. You want to watch him and keep your lip buttoned if he ever comes poking around. Got it?’

  ‘Bloody filth,’ said Crozier and spat on the warehouse floor.

  *

  The complaint made against you by John James Stedman has in effect been withdrawn, Mr Fox,’ said Willow stiffly.

  ‘Thought it might be,’ said Fox cheerfully. ‘Going to do him for wasting police time, guv?’

  Willow ignored that jibe. ‘Well, after interviewing Miss Sandra Nash —’

  ‘The scrubber he was living with, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Willow. ‘It seems that Stedman gave the two hundred pounds to her.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I saw him do it.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘And the fact that he did was noted in both the property register and in Detective Inspector Evans’s pocket-book. Did you examine the property register by any chance?’ asked Fox with a smile.

  Willow glanced at Sergeant Clarke who shook his head. ‘We haven’t actually got around to that yet,’ said the commander.

  ‘Pity,’ said Fox. ‘Might have saved you a bit of time if you’d done that first … sir.’

  ‘But,’ said Willow, determined not to be outdone, ‘there still remains the complaint against you which was made by Mr Harold Dawes. A complaint of harassment, you may recall.’

  ‘I do indeed, sir,’ said Fox. ‘A malicious and unwarranted complaint if ever there was one.’

  ‘Yes, well be that as it may, I have to tell you that I intend now to pursue that complaint.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fox. ‘That’ll be interesting for you.’

  *

  ‘Come in, Tommy.’ Dick Campbell, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations, put down the evening paper and indicated a chair. ‘Problems?’

  ‘Only one, sir,’ said Fox. ‘And it’s called Willow, a commander on One Area.’

  ‘What’s he been doing to upset you?’

  ‘This murder of Lady Dawn Sims, sir —’

  ‘Oh, yes, how’s it going?’

  ‘Slowly,’ said Fox. ‘But you may recall that the body was found in one of Sliding Dawes’s slaughters.’

  Campbell nodded. ‘In Balham, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Lambeth, sir.’

  ‘Well, how does Commander Willow feature in all this?’

  ‘I’ve had an obo on Dawes for some time now, sir, and I’m convinced that he’s tied into this topping somehow. I’m not sure how, but there’s something there. Anyway, Dawes, cunning bastard, made a formal complaint of harassment. Objected to the obo apparently.’

  ‘Well, how did he know it was there? Your blokes losing their grip or something?’ Campbell smiled. He knew that that would not be the case, but he couldn’t resist baiting Tommy Fox when rarely the opportunity arose.

  ‘It was deliberate, sir. To put the frighteners on Dawes. Then I took it off and put it back on again a couple of days later, discreetly. So that he’d think it’d gone altogether.’

  ‘What’s the problem then, Tommy?’

  ‘The problem is that Commander Willow was appointed to investigate the complaint and he’s going to go steaming down to Putney to take statements, just when I reckon that everything’s about to come on top. And if he does, it’ll throw the cat among the pigeons. Frankly, I don’t care how man
y statements he takes, but I’d rather he did it in Brixton, after I’ve nicked Dawes.’

  Campbell laughed. ‘I think you’d better have a Scotch to soothe your nerves, Tommy,’ he said and waved a hand towards his cocktail cabinet. ‘Help yourself, and pour one for me while you’re at it. Be back in a moment.’

  DAC Campbell went to the office next door, received a nod of approval from the Assistant Commissioner’s secretary and tapped lightly on Peter Frobisher’s door.

  After Campbell had left, the AC telephoned the Deputy Commissioner who in turn telephoned Commander John Thomas, the director of the Complaints Investigation Bureau at Tintagel House.

  Following a short conversation with the Deputy, Thomas telephoned Commander Willow at One Area Headquarters. ‘Thomas here,’ he said.

  ‘Thomas who?’ asked Willow.

  ‘John Thomas at CIB. I believe you’ve got an outstanding complaint against Detective Chief Superintendent Fox of S08, Raymond?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Willow guardedly. He was beginning to get paranoic regarding anything connected with Fox. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Put it on hold until you hear from me again, Raymond, there’s a good chap. Deputy Commissioner’s directions.’

  *

  ‘The Crown Prosecution Service bloke’s been on about Budgeon and Chesney, guv,’ said Gilroy.

  ‘Who the hell are they?’ asked Fox.

  ‘The two we nicked the morning we discovered Dawn Sims’s body in the lock-up at Lambeth, sir.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’d forgotten about them, Jack. Put them on the sheet for robbery, didn’t we?’

  ‘The CPS solicitor wants to know when we’ll be ready to go for trial. He says the beak’s getting a bit touchy about constant remands in custody.’

  ‘Daresay he is,’ said Fox with a yawn and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. ‘Tell him that other arrests connected with that case are imminent and it would be prejudicial to try those two at this stage. You know the form, Jack. Tell him something like that.’

  ‘And are they, sir?’

  ‘Are they what?’

  ‘Are other arrests imminent, sir?’

  ‘Well they are, but not that imminent, Jack. I’m going to the theatre tonight, so crime will have to wait.’ Fox took a clothes brush out of his wardrobe and handed it to Gilroy. ‘Just have a flick round the back of my collar, Jack, there’s a good fellow,’ he said.