Robbery with Malice

by Barrie Roberts

  He tapped his nose with a finger and closed the front door firmly behind me. As I walked back to the cab I felt embarrassed at suggesting that he consorted with killers. With hindsight, I suppose I shouldn’t have done.

  11.

  To be strictly accurate we ought to call him Lon or Erik, but we’ve called him Claude the Phantom for years. It started back in the old days when enquiry agents made a lot of their living in matrimonial work — following suspected spouses about. Claude had a bumper season with an adulterous couple who were into opera. Night after night he sat in the stalls of every amateur operatic society from Coventry to Stoke on Trent. Claude’s real name is Gordon Rains and some office wit recalled that Claude Raines had played the Phantom of the Opera. It was only after the nickname had stuck that anyone remembered that Lon Chaney played the part first and anyway the Phantom’s real name was Erik.

  I asked him to find Banjo Cook for me. Not much to go on — just a name and a nickname and the fact that he usually hung around Belston — but I knew that if anyone could find Cook, Claude could.

  I was right. Two days later Claude reported that he’d tracked Cook to a boarding house on the Wolverhampton road, a place called ‘Bert’s Café’ though it hadn’t been a café for years. I hadn’t asked Claude to interview Cook, largely because I didn’t know what to ask him and I wanted to do it myself and play it by ear.

  I guessed that the best time to catch Cook might be early evening — before he settled into a pub somewhere. When the office closed one afternoon Sheila and I went along there.

  It was a pretty sad place. The downstairs front had been Bert’s Café, then a sex shop and lastly a junk shop. Its plate glass was cracked and dusty and partly boarded up. To the right of the old shop entrance was a private door, over which a sixty watt bulb glimmered through a dusty fanlight.

  I tried the private door and it opened, letting us into a narrow, dirty hallway with a payphone on one wall. Thirty feet back the hallway gave on to a wide, dark room lit only by a flickering television set. When my eyes had adjusted to the gloom I could see that there were battered couches and armchairs round the walls. Huddled on one of them was a little old man with lank grey hair.

  ‘We’re looking for George Cook,’ I said.

  His gaze remained fastened on the television. I repeated my remark, louder.

  Still without turning his head he said, ‘Cook? Banjo Cooky? Top flat, mate. Through there and up the stairs.’

  He pointed into the gloom behind the TV and I could see another door. I thanked him and we followed his indication. Behind the door was a stairwell with uncarpeted stairs climbing away into the darkness. After a search we located a light switch that worked and, four flights up, we came to a dead end on a landing outside what had to be the top flat.

  Knocking produced no response, so I tried the door. It opened and Sheila followed me into Cook’s flat. The light was on and the room we had entered — apparently his sitting-room — was stiflingly hot from a paraffin heater turned high.

  The light and the heater made me hope that Cook was in residence. I called his name. As I did so the door slammed behind us and a voice hissed, ‘Keep quiet and don’t move — either of you!’

  We spun around. A man crouched with his back to the closed door. He was a stocky, fresh-complexioned man with close-cropped hair and a hard face.

  ‘Are you George Cook?’ I asked.

  He laughed, shortly. ‘No, I fucking ain’t,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ I asked. Everything about the man was threatening but I was trying not to escalate the situation.

  He laughed again, the same ugly little bark. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I know where Georgy is, but it don’t matter to you.’

  He slid his right hand into his leather jacket and a knife appeared in his hand. He swung it in front of him.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what’s your business with Cooky?’

  ‘None of yours,’ retorted Sheila.

  He took a pace towards her. ‘Shut your mouth, bitch!’ he snarled. ‘I was asking yer boyfriend.’

  ‘Don’t call me a bitch, you snotty Pommy scumbag!’ she said.

  He lunged at her with his fist, keeping me back with the knife in his other hand. As soon as he moved, Sheila moved quicker. Her booted foot came up hard, taking him right in the crotch.

  He howled and collapsed backwards. The knife skittered across the lino as he fell on to a couch, clutching his injury. I grabbed the weapon but Sheila swiftly took it from me and moved to stand in front of the man, who now huddled on the couch emitting a mixture of groans and obscenities.

  ‘Find something to tie this bastard up, Chris,’ she commanded. ‘I’m going to whittle a few pieces off him while we find out who he is.’ Her face looked as if she meant it — his looked as if he believed it.

  I stepped through the door into a hallway. Three doors off it had to be the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Looking for the bedroom, where I might find ties or belts, I tried the first door. It was the bathroom.

  I went back into the sitting-room. ‘I’ve found a rope,’ I said, ‘but there’s someone hanging on it — it must be Cook.’

  It was just the distraction our guest needed. As Sheila glanced at me in surprise he scrambled over the arm of the couch and out of the door. We heard his footsteps clattering down the four flights of bare stairs.

  I went back into the bathroom and Sheila followed. The body of a black man, about thirty-five, hung by a short cord from the shower fitment. I had touched his neck on first finding him. He was definitely dead.

  We called the police from the payphone below and waited for them in Cook’s sitting-room. Sheila’s attack of bravado had vanished on seeing the body and we huddled on the couch smoking.

  ‘You took a hell of a risk,’ I said.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she said. ‘As long as he was by the door with a knife, he’d got us cold. If we’d rushed him, one or both of us would have got hurt. If you’d challenged him he’d have ignored me and gone for you with the knife. It had to be me. He wasn’t expecting trouble from a mere woman.’

  ‘A mere woman!’ I exclaimed. ‘Where’d you learn to kick like that?’

  ‘Australian Rules football,’ she grinned.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I know it’s pretty rough, but that’s not in the Australian Rules.’

  ‘Well, no, but you do learn to kick hard and straight.’

  Minutes later the police arrived and I was relieved to see that John Parry was with them, though I can’t say he was particularly pleased to see us.

  ‘I don’t think’, he said, ‘that you understand the division of responsibilities properly. The police are supposed to detect murders and your lot are supposed to get the perpetrator acquitted in the face of the evidence. Anyway, what were you two doing in these unsalubrious surroundings?’

  ‘I came to call on a possible witness,’ I said.

  ‘George Cook?’ he asked. ‘Well, he’s witnessed a lot of things in his time. Which were you interested in?’

  ‘Belstone Lane,’ I said. ‘Someone thought he might know about it.’

  Parry whistled. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘you do surprise me!’

  12.

  We were a long time making witness statements, after which Parry had us back at the police station ploughing through books of photographs to see if we could spot our attacker. We found him in the end, a man called Eddie Poxon with a long record of violence.

  I reckoned that I owed Sheila — if only for saving my life for the second time in a few months — so we dined that evening at the Jubilee Room, the poshest that Belston has to offer. I was not the best company and eventually she complained.

  ‘Come on, Chris,’ she urged. ‘You’re mooning around like a — ’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ I interrupted. ‘Not in here. I’ll get barred for life and I’m not mooning around — I’m thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘That I had one lead in Walton�
�s case. I didn’t know what it meant, but I think it was a lead. That was Cook and now he’s dead.’

  ‘Who do you think killed him?’ she asked. ‘I mean, our friend with the knife presumably did, but why?’

  ‘Well, the obvious answer is to stop him talking to me, but who the blazes knew I was looking for him?’

  ‘Claude’s been asking round for him for a couple of days, hasn’t he?’

  ‘But why would they think he was working for me? He does jobs for several firms.’

  ‘Other way round,’ she said. ‘Someone knows you’re in the Belstone case and is afraid you’ll find Cook, so he keeps eyes and ears out for anyone looking for Cook and along comes Claude. It doesn’t even have to be someone who knows about you, just someone who knows that there’s fresh interest in the case.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose that might have set somebody’s alarm bells ringing — but whose?’

  ‘The Payday Gang?’ she suggested.

  ‘What would be the point? If they did the Belstone Lane job and they’re afraid of getting fingered for murder, killing Cook would just draw attention to the case. What if the police catch Poxon and he talks? They’d be worse off than they are now.’

  ‘But if you were to succeed in getting Walton off …’ she began, but I snorted.

  She ignored me and carried on. ‘… wouldn’t the police have to reinvestigate the case?’

  I snorted again. ‘When the Court of Appeal finally let the Birmingham Six out,’ I said, ‘the West Midlands police announced that they were going to reinvestigate the biggest mass murder in British history.’

  ‘And … ?’ she said.

  ‘And a few weeks later coppers were joking about going round all the Irish pubs in Birmingham asking if anyone remembered a bloke called Paddy who used to drink there in 1974. If — and it’s a bloody big if — Walton gets out, the police won’t want to know. His appeal is no threat to the Payday Gang.’

  ‘Who else, then?’ she said.

  ‘Well, so far the only people who we know are anxious to stop Walton are the police.’

  ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that Poxon was a police hit man?’

  I grinned. ‘Not really,’ I said, ‘but I ought to remind you that you once sat in this very room and told Mac and me that you didn’t believe our theories about your grandfather’s death.’

  As if on cue, a Scots voice hailed us as Dr Macintyre appeared beside the table. ‘John Parry said you might be here,’ he said.

  ‘Pull up a chair,’ I said. ‘Join us for coffee, Mac.’

  ‘I was hoping’, he said, ‘that there might be something a wee bit stronger.’

  We removed to the lounge and ordered something stronger.

  Macintyre smacked his lips after a hearty swallow of whisky. ‘Aah!’ he said. ‘That takes away the smell of death.’

  Sheila grinned. ‘Tell me, Doc,’ she said, ‘do you only visit friends in restaurants when you’re fresh from an autopsy?’

  He shook his head. ‘A post-mortem, lassie. The Yankees have autopsies — we have post-mortems, though I suppose it doesnae make a deal of difference from the customer’s point of view.’ He shook his head again and applied himself to his drink.

  ‘Mac,’ I said, ‘do you think you could stop rambling and boozing long enough to tell us why you came?’

  ‘Oh, aye, aye,’ he said. ‘I’ve just finished with yon fellow you found — Cook, wasn’t it?’

  ‘And what about him?’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Somehow I thought he might have been.’

  He looked hurt. ‘If you’ll let me finish. He wasnae hangit till after he was dead.’

  ‘So what did he die of?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘He had no marks of a fight — no contusions or abrasions — but he was killed by a single blow to the neck.’

  ‘A karate chop?’ I said.

  ‘Aye, something of that sort. He must have been taken by surprise and killed with the one blow.’

  Sheila frowned. ‘And then he was strung up to make it look like hanging? Would that work?’

  ‘It has been known,’ he said. ‘A fellow called Emmett Dunne killed his lover’s husband with a chop to the throat, then hanged him up. The pathologist said it was suicide.’

  ‘So how do we know it wasn’t?’ she asked.

  ‘Because suspicion was aroused later and Professor Camps re-examined the remains. That reminds me, did I ever tell you about Francis Camps and the Spanish rape case?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘and you’re not going to. Sheila and I have had a long evening and I think it’s time we turned in.’

  ‘You shouldnae go messing with dead folks that don’t concern you,’ he grumbled, as though he owned every cadaver in town.

  13.

  If I had any hope, it was that the police would pull in Poxon and he would talk, but it was a fairly slender hope. Nobody employs hit men who blab about who paid them. Poxon, however, disappeared from all his usual haunts leaving no forwarding address.

  Something else turned up as well. Three large cartons of documents from Walton’s former solicitor. On a snowy weekend I took them home, gritted my teeth and settled into reading them. Sheila’s bundles from the Public Records Office were crowding me out of my study, so I stacked the boxes in the lounge and settled into an armchair by the fire.

  Just under the lid were a couple of booklets of photographs in the royal blue card covers of the Central Midlands police. The first booklet contained shots of the vehicles in the lane taken from several angles. The second had pictures of the dead and injured men lying in their blood. Both of them bore exhibit numbers from the trial. The defence could not have argued that there had never been a robbery or that it wasn’t in Belstone Lane or that nobody died or was injured, so most of the pictures were irrelevant, but crisp colour enlargements of blood and injury prejudice a jury wonderfully.

  The essential bundle would be the statements made by prosecution witnesses and I dug that out and ploughed into it.

  First was a statement by a witness who was never called at the trial. His evidence was accepted by both sides. He was a plan-drawer, who had produced a map of the Belstone Lane area.

  Belstone Lane ran down his map in a series of shallow curves, making a T-junction at the bottom with the main road into Bellsich. Right of the junction was a roundabout which was the beginning of Bellsich High Street. Along the lane he had marked the homes of various witnesses.

  Next was a statement by the Mantons security manager:

  *

  Name: Desmond Murphy

  Age/DOB: 45. 14041935

  Occupation: Security manager

  Who states: This statement, consisting of 3 pages, each signed by me, is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.

  *

  After which he had dated and signed it before plunging into his narrative.

  *

  I am a former detective sergeant in the Central Midlands Police and I am now employed as Security Manager by Mantons Stores, based at their headquarters at Stoke on Trent. I am responsible for all the company’s security arrangements in the Midland area, including the transit of cash.

  The company operates a chain of general stores in several parts of the Midlands. Cash collections are made from these stores on Saturday evenings by a fleet of security vehicles operating from our headquarters.

  Yesterday I assigned three vehicles to the Belston area which is the usual number. Each van has a crew of two, a driver and an assistant. All of the vans are white transits with no identifying name or logo on them.

  Each van travels by a different route on each trip. I assign the routes and nobody else is aware of them until I give the collection sheets to the drivers when they leave headquarters.

  Each van calls at a number of our shops. When each sh
op closes a manager or assistant manager waits for the security van to collect the takings. Using three vehicles allows us to call at each shop within a few minutes of the shop closing.

  As well as several branches in Belston, we have two shops in Bellsich, and one van from Belston always travels to Bellsich to make the collections there before returning to headquarters. I always route that vehicle through Belstone Lane, rather than using the main road. I dislike having to use the same route but Belstone Lane is a quiet residential road, whereas the only alternative route from Belston to Bellsich is through a number of side streets which would, in my view, constitute a security risk.

  From time to time I carry out spot inspections of the security vans’ collections. After I have issued the collection sheets to the drivers, I pick a number of the shops and go there by car to wait for the relevant van to arrive. I can then observe that the van’s crew and the shop’s manager or assistant manager are carrying out the security routines properly.

  Yesterday I picked two of the Belston shops and observed the crews of Vans 1 and 2 picking up their collections. I had scheduled Van 3 to make a collection on the Orchard Estate at Belston and then pass through Belstone Lane to pick up at the Bellsich High Street shop.

  After visiting Belston I went on to Bellsich High Street and waited in my car outside our shop for Van 3 to arrive. I was there about 15 minutes before they should have got there.

  I waited nearly half an hour but Van 3 did not arrive. Eventually I realised that something had gone wrong and I returned to headquarters where I was informed that Van 3 had been attacked and robbed in Belstone Lane and that Driver Morrison and Guard Williams had been injured.

  *

  It was signed and dated again at the end.

  Next were a batch of statements from residents in Belstone Lane, all very similar:

  *

  Name: Arthur Barrett

  Age/DOB: 43. 18071937