Underneath The Arches

by Graham Ison

  NINETEEN

  CROZIER WAS SURPRISED AT THE modest size of the warehouse that accommodated the firm of Carmody Trading Ltd at Hounslow, the address which Tinsley had given him. He drove on to the forecourt and was met by Vincent Carmody who told him to drive round to the rear of the premises.

  ‘I’ve been told to ask for Mr Carmody,’ said Crozier when he got out of the van. He had recognised Carmody immediately from one of the many surveillance photographs which Henry Findlater’s team had taken, and which now adorned the walls of the Flying Squad incident room.

  ‘That’s me. Who are you?’

  ‘Ron Crozier. Mr Tinsley’s sent me to collect some gear for the Hayden Trust.’

  Carmody looked Crozier up and down for a moment or two. ‘Ain’t I seen you somewhere before?’ he asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Crozier. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Carmody rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, back your van in here,’ he said and opened a set of double doors.

  Two men started loading Crozier’s van the moment he had switched off the engine. Boxes of clothing-jeans and sweaters according to the labels — were put swiftly on board. A few sacks of rice and half a dozen tents were followed by two crates of fell boots and about six large cardboard containers which bore no indication of their contents.

  ‘Right, off you go,’ said Carmody, ‘and no poking about in your cargo on the way.’

  ‘Don’t you want a signature or nothing?’ asked Crozier.

  ‘No, mate. We trust you.’ Carmody twisted his face into an evil grin and moved closer to Crozier. ‘And the next thing I’m doing is ringing Alec Tinsley to tell him exactly what you’re taking away from here. So if you’re thinking of nicking anything, forget it.’

  ‘I’m not into nicking,’ said Crozier.

  ‘Not much,’ said Carmody. ‘I’ve just sussed you out. Weren’t you in the Scrubs?’

  ‘So what?’ Crozier knew that details of his false prison record must have been passed to Carmody by Tinsley. ‘But you weren’t. Leastways, not at the same time.’ Fox had ensured that none of the petty criminals working for Dawes had been in Wormwood Scrubs prison at the time that Crozier was supposed to have been there.

  Carmody grinned. ‘See you around,’ he said.

  *

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Commander John Thomas.

  ‘Good morning, John,’ said the Deputy Commissioner, looking up from The Times as the head of the Complaints Investigation Bureau entered his office.

  ‘I need a direction, sir,’ said Thomas officiously. ‘I’ve received a complaint from a prisoner at Parkhurst prison.’

  The Deputy Commissioner folded his newspaper. ‘What about?’

  ‘It’s a complaint against Ray Willow, sir. It comes from a John James Stedman, serving ten years for robbery.’ Thomas glanced briefly at the file in his hand. ‘He complains that Commander Willow failed properly to investigate a complaint of theft that had been made by Stedman against Detective Chief Superintendent Fox of the Flying Squad.’

  The Deputy Commissioner groaned. ‘D’you know, John,’ he said in a tired voice, ‘I think that the Metropolitan Police will eventually sink under the weight of all the paper it generates. I reckon we use half a dozen rain forests a year all by ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Thomas. ‘But I need you to nominate a deputy assistant commissioner to investigate the complaint.’

  The Deputy Commissioner held out a hand for the file. Quickly perusing it, he handed it back. ‘Give it to Dick Campbell,’ he said. ‘He’ll make a thorough job of that load of rubbish.’

  *

  ‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ said Harry Barnes as Fox and Evans entered his office.

  ‘Yes thank you,’ said Fox, deliberately treating Barnes’s outburst as though it had been spoken without sarcasm.

  ‘I’ve broken up with my wife, you know.’

  ‘Have you? Well that’s hardly the fault of the police, is it, Mr Barnes?’

  Barnes glared at the two officers. ‘Was there something in particular you wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘Were you being blackmailed by Dawn Sims?’ asked Fox.

  Barnes looked up in alarm. ‘Why should you think that?’ He fiddled nervously with a bail-point pen, making repeated clicking noises as he pressed its knob up and down.

  ‘Well, were you?’

  Barnes dropped the pen into a pot on his desk and, recovering some of his self-confidence, asked, ‘Are you satisfied that I had nothing to do with the death of this woman?’

  Fox recognised Barnes’s attempt to deflect the question. ‘I take it that you were being blackmailed then,’ he said.

  For a few brief moments, Barnes studied the surface of his desk. ‘Yes.’ He spoke softly without looking up.

  ‘How was she blackmailing you, Mr Barnes?’

  Barnes looked up, his stare a combination of both resolve to stand his ground and loathing for this policeman who had forced him to face the unpalatable truth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m not prepared to discuss my relationship with her any further.’

  ‘You may have to do so in court,’ said Fox.

  ‘Then you’ll have to subpoena me,’ said Barnes with a flash of grim determination.

  *

  ‘It’s Ron Crozier, guv,’ said Crozier. He had waited until he had arrived home before telephoning Fox.

  ‘How’s it going, Ron?’

  ‘I picked up a load of gear from Vince Carmody’s slaughter today, guv. Which means Harry Dawes’s slaughter, of course.’

  ‘Nice one, Ron. Tell me about it.’

  ‘They’re at it, guv,’ said Crozier, ‘and the Hayden Trust seems to be well involved.’ He went on to tell Fox that Dawes’s right-hand man was now operating as Carmody Trading Ltd and described all that he had seen in the warehouse at Hounslow.

  ‘D’you want me to hang in there?’

  ‘For the time being, Ron,’ said Fox. ‘You don’t think they’ve sussed you out, do you?’

  ‘No, sir, definitely not.’

  ‘Right, Ron. Keep it up for another day while we sort out what to do next.’ There was a pause. ‘Any indication of when you’re doing the next run?’

  ‘No, sir, but I could try and give you a bell.’

  ‘That’d be good, Ron,’ said Fox, ‘but don’t put yourself on offer.’ He paused. ‘Better still, don’t bother. I’ll switch Mr Findlater and his team to cover both the depot at Epsom and Carmody’s place at Hounslow.’ There was a chuckle. ‘Don’t be surprised if you get nicked in the next day or so, Ron.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to nick me, I’d better ring my brief now, guv,’ said Crozier.

  ‘Saucy bastard,’ said Fox.

  *

  It had gone midday the following day before Fox was able to get hold of Detective Inspector Evans. ‘Where the hell have you been, Denzil?’ he asked.

  ‘Court, sir,’ said Evans.

  ‘Good God!’ said Fox. ‘What with?’

  ‘The three men and the woman we nicked the morning we did those raids, sir.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Denzil?’

  ‘You remember when Henry Findlater’s lot saw cars picking up gear from a Transit van, sir, in a lay-by on the A23, south of Croydon somewhere?’ began Evans patiently, ‘as a result of which we raided a number of drums. You came with me when we nicked Tom Wilson for handling a stolen personal computer …’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Fox.

  ‘He had a girlfriend called Judith Ransome who was wearing a see-through nightdress, guv.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course I remember, Denzil. How did you get on?’

  ‘All went down, sir. Fined two hundred and fifty pounds each.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Fox. ‘I sometimes wonder why we bother.’

  Evans looked apologetic on behalf of the judiciary. ‘Was there something you wanted to see me about, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Denzil. Believe it or believe it no
t, the Crown Prosecution Service has decided not to charge Hope-Smith with rape.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me, sir,’ said Evans. ‘The evidence was a bit thin.’

  Fox gave his DI a sour look. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he said and lit a cigarette. ‘The victim, Denzil, or the ex-victim, I suppose we should say …’

  ‘Trixie Harper, sir.’

  ‘Yes. What d’you know about her?’

  ‘Only that since she made the allegation, she’s moved, sir.’

  ‘Where to? Any idea?’

  ‘Not offhand, guv, but I’m sure that Mr Wadman at Chelsea will have it.’

  ‘Find out where she’s gone to, Denzil. I’ve a feeling that a little chat with that young lady might be beneficial to our enquiries. Use my phone.’

  To Evans, that proposal appeared to be another Tommy Fox shot in the dark, but he telephoned Chelsea and found that Trixie Harper had moved to Holland Park. ‘When d’you want to see her, sir?’ he asked.

  Fox stood up. ‘Now, Denzil,’ he said.

  *

  It was a medium sort of girl who opened the door. She was of medium height, medium build and had medium-length brown hair. And she wore a midi-length dress.

  ‘Miss Harper?’

  ‘Yes.’ The girl gave the two policemen a curious look.

  ‘We’re police officers,’ said Fox. ‘We’d like to have a word with you if we may.’

  ‘Oh, not again,’ said Trixie Harper. ‘I thought that was all over and done with.’ She led the way into a bed-sitting room which the landlord had the temerity to describe as a studio flat, and sat down.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry to trouble you,’ said Fox, seating himself opposite the girl. ‘I’m Thomas Fox … of the Flying Squad.’ He waved a hand towards Evans who looked extremely uncomfortable perched on the edge of a divan. ‘And that is Detective Inspector Evans.’

  ‘Have you come to tell me why you’re not taking action against that bloody man Hope-Smith?’

  ‘Alas no,’ said Fox. ‘That case was nothing to do with me. The police at Chelsea were dealing with that.’

  ‘Where are you from then?’

  ‘New Scotland Yard,’ said Fox, ‘but I would rather like to talk to you about Hope-Smith, Miss Harper.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I am investigating the murder of Lady Dawn Sims and —’

  ‘D’you think he might have done it? Well, it doesn’t surprise me.’ Trixie Harper’s face took on a vengeful expression.

  ‘At the moment, I don’t know who was responsible for her death,’ said Fox, ‘but Hope-Smith certainly knew her.’ He paused. ‘Intimately.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did, the bastard.’

  ‘Miss Harper, I have read the statement you made to the woman officer at Chelsea and I have no wish to dwell on that unpleasant incident, but is there anything else that you can tell me about Jason Hope-Smith? How long have you known him, for instance?’

  ‘Only since he moved into the flat below mine.’ Trixie Harper gave that some thought. ‘A matter of weeks really,’ she added.

  ‘And that was the first time he had taken you out, was it? The night that he —’

  ‘The night that he screwed me, you mean?’ The girl smiled at Fox.

  ‘Er, yes, that’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’ Fox was somewhat taken aback by Trixie’s response. It wasn’t at all the sort of reaction he had expected from a woman who had alleged that she had been raped. He glanced across at Evans. ‘Put your pocket-book away, Denzil,’ he said, and turned back to the girl. ‘Miss Harper, I don’t care what you said at the police station, and I’m not bothered what you said in your statement, but I do want to learn as much as I can about Hope-Smith.’

  Trixie Harper looked from Fox to Evans and then back to Fox. ‘He suggested that I went on the game,’ she said.

  ‘What made him suggest that?’

  ‘I’m a stripper,’ said the girl bluntly. ‘But I’m hoping to be an actress one day.’

  ‘Did he know that?’ Fox had noticed that the girl’s occupation had been shown on her statement as ‘artiste’, and some inner feeling had prompted him to bring Evans with him instead of Rosie Webster. Many women were quite happy to tell men things that they wouldn’t want a female officer to hear.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he find that out?’

  ‘I told him.’ Trixie crossed her legs and gave Fox a half-smile.

  ‘When?’

  ‘About the second time I met him, I suppose. We arrived at the front door at the same time one night. It must have been just after midnight, I think, and I’d just got out of a taxi. I’d done a cabaret in a West End club which finished late.’ Trixie sighed. ‘But then they usually do,’ she said. ‘Anyway, he asked me what I’d been doing and I told him.’

  ‘And presumably that made him think —’

  ‘That I was an easy lay? Yes. Most men make that mistake. Just because you take your clothes off for a living, they seem to think that you’re willing to jump into bed with them at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘And you weren’t, of course.’

  ‘I was actually.’ Trixie looked directly at Fox and smiled.

  ‘So he didn’t rape you at all.’

  ‘You did say you didn’t care what I’d said at the police station, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘A couple of weeks later, he invited me out to dinner. We both had a lot to drink. I suppose I must have had nearly a whole bottle of wine at the restaurant, and then we had some brandy with our coffee when we got back to Jason’s flat. He asked me to do a strip for him, a sort of personal cabaret —’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I reckoned he’d paid for it. It was a very good dinner.’ Trixie smiled, as though aware that everything in life had to be paid for. ‘So I finished up sitting on his lap, naked, with him pawing me. I suppose you could say he’d paid for that too.’

  ‘And Hope-Smith was fully dressed all this time, was he?’

  ‘Yes. But it didn’t take him long to get his clothes off.’ Trixie smiled again. ‘And then he suggested we went in to the bedroom. I must admit that I quite fancied him, up to that point.’

  ‘What happened to change your mind, Miss Harper?’

  ‘We’d spent about an hour screwing,’ said Trixie in matter-of-fact tones, ‘and we were lying there smoking a cigarette …’ She paused to take a packet of cigarettes from a side table and offered one to Fox. ‘And that’s when he came up with this outrageous suggestion,’ she continued, puffing smoke into the air.

  ‘That you should become a prostitute?’

  ‘Yah!’ Trixie uttered the word with an upper-class drawl. ‘He gave me some sob-story about being unemployed. He said that he could set me up in a decent apartment and arrange for some high-class clients. And that we could split the proceeds fifty-fifty.’

  ‘What did you say to that?’ asked Fox.

  ‘I more or less told him to sod off, but he persisted, saying that it would be easy money. I said it might be for him, but I’d be the one on my back doing all the bloody work. He just laughed. So I thought I’d teach him a lesson. I grabbed a towel and went downstairs and out into the street. Then I started screaming my head off.’

  ‘I see.’ Fox had taken an instant dislike to Hope-Smith the moment he had met him and he was quite amused at the way Trixie Harper had sorted him out. But he was a police officer and couldn’t really condone the false statement to the police that she had been raped by him. ‘So the whole of your story to the police at Chelsea was a fabrication?’

  ‘You did say that you didn’t care what I’d said to them, didn’t you?’ Trixie inclined her head and smiled.

  ‘Yes, I did …’

  Fox must have sounded dubious. ‘Actually I’ve just made all that up,’ said Trixie and looked out of the window, an impish expression on her face.

  Fox grinned. ‘I shan’t say anything to the Chelsea police, Miss Harper,’ he sai
d. ‘It appears that no harm’s been done, apart from giving Mr Hope-Smith an uncomfortable few days.’ He knew that the Crown Prosecution Service would not consider proceedings on the grounds that the girl would undoubtedly change her story again at court. And apart from anything else, there would be an outcry that a girl who was possibly a victim of rape was being harried by the police. ‘And did you see him again, after all this?’

  ‘Only the once. We met on the stairs two days later. He threatened to beat me up if I didn’t tell the police the truth.’

  ‘Did you tell the police at Chelsea that he’d threatened you?’

  ‘No. After all, he was right, wasn’t he? I just upped and left. Moved in here.’ A look of concern crossed Trixie’s face. ‘You won’t tell him where I’m living, will you?’

  Fox smiled and shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

  ‘What d’you make of all that, guv’nor?’ asked Evans on the way back to the Yard.

  ‘I reckon the thing that really upset her was Hope-Smith’s suggestion about the financial arrangements,’ said Fox. ‘Offering her only half of what she earned falls into my definition of a diabolical bloody liberty.’

  *

  Dick Campbell’s secretary laid a sealed envelope on his desk. It was addressed to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations, and carried the injunction that it should only be opened by him.

  ‘Just arrived from Commander Thomas of CIB, sir,’ said the girl.

  ‘Ah, that’ll be the result of that ridiculous complaint against Tommy Fox, I suppose,’ said Campbell and ripped open the envelope. For a few moments, he stared in disbelief at the latest entry on the minute sheet of the file that the envelope had contained, and then slung the file on the desk. ‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ he said. ‘Brenda, find out the times of trains and ferries to the Isle of Wight, will you?’

  TWENTY

  FOX HAD SENT FOR DI Findlater and instructed him to mount a surveillance on the Hayden Trust depot at Epsom and the premises of Carmody Trading Ltd at Hounslow. As usual, Findlater had mildly complained that he hadn’t enough men, but that had had no impact whatsoever on Fox. Next Fox had sent DI Evans to Bow Street magistrates court to get search warrants in respect of the same two warehouses.