He laughed, and the laugh turned into a snort, and then into a strangled snore.
Five minutes later the girl reappeared. She picked up the glass, which had rolled on to the floor, and stared down at Art, full length on the sofa, his face red and sweating, his mouth wide open. There was no expression in her blue eyes at all.
First she moved over and shot the bolt on the door. Then she went to a cupboard in the corner of the room. It seemed to have household stuff in it. She selected what she needed, and came back.
When the storm broke Petrella was sitting in the charge room at Patton Street talking to Chief Superintendent Watterson.
“This should cool their heads,” said the Superintendent. “They’ve been jazzing it up since opening time.”
“Has the great man put in an appearance yet?”
He was answered by the telephone. It was Ma Lamson. Her voice had in it anger, vexation and an edge of fear. Petrella found it difficult to make out what she was saying.
He said, “Hold on a minute,” and to Watterson, “She says Art hasn’t turned up, and she’s worried something may have happened to him. I can’t really make out what she wants. I’d better go down and have a word with her.”
“Watch it, Patrick. They all know it was you pulled him in. They’ll still be hot about it.”
“No one could be hot in this weather,” said Petrella. The rain was coming down solidly. He drove down to Grendel Street in a police car, stopped it at the end of the street, turned up the collar of his raincoat and went forward on foot.
The street was empty, its gutters running with water. Overhead the banners of welcome flapped, damp and forlorn. The band had cased its instruments and hurried home.
Only Ma Lamson kept vigil at her upstairs window. The rain, blowing in, had soaked her white hair which hung, in dank ropes, on either side of her pink face.
“Where is he?” she screeched. “Where’s my boy? Art wouldn’t let us down. Something’s happened to him, I know. ‘E’s got enemies, Inspector. They’ll have been laying for him. You’ve got to do something.”
Petrella stood in the pelting rain and looked up at the old woman. The release of the storm had cleared his head. It had done more. It had made him almost light-headed. He felt a hysterical urge to laugh.
Restraining it, he promised that a general alert should be sent out, and made his way back to Patton Street.
He said dreamily to Watterson, “It was pure Old Testament.”
“What are you talking about?”
The Superintendent knew that Petrella had a reputation for eccentricity. He had once quoted poetry at a meeting of the top brass at Scotland Yard, and had got away with it because it was Rabbie Burns, who happened to be the Assistant Commissioner’s favourite poet.
“The mother of Sisera looked out of her window and cried, ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?’”
“Who the hell was Sisera?”
“He was a king in Canaan. When he was on his way back to a triumphant welcome, organised by his mother, he was lured into the tent of a young lady called “And what did she do?”
“He asked for water, and she gave him milk. She brought forth butter, in a lordly dish.”
“I see,” said Watterson doubtfully. “And what happened then?”
“Then she took a mallet in one hand and a tent peg in the other, and she smote him. At her feet he bowed, he fell. Where he fell, there he lay down, dead.”
“What you need is a holiday,” said Watterson firmly. “You’re going on leave first thing tomorrow, if I have to stand in for you myself.”
Five days later, when the police, alerted by worried neighbours, broke into the third-floor flat of Bruno’s girl, Jackie, they found Art Lamson.
Jackie had driven a six-inch nail clean through the middle of his forehead, and had then cut her own throat. But Petrella knew nothing of this. He was helping his small son to construct a sand fort and adorn its battlements with sea shells.
Autumn
Rough Justice
It was a fine morning in early October when Detective Inspector Patrick Petrella became Detective Chief Inspector Petrella. The promotion had been expected for some time, but it was nevertheless agreeable when a copy of District Orders and a friendly note of congratulations from Chief Superintendent Watterson arrived together on his desk at Patton Street Police Station.
He had been six months in Q Division and had been carrying out a mental stocktaking. A few successes, a lot of routine work done without discredit, one or two undoubted flops. One of the worst had been his failure to secure the conviction of Arthur Bond. If ever anyone should have been found guilty and fined or even gaoled it was—
“A Mr. Bond asking for you,” said Constable Lampier, projecting his untidy head of hair round the door. Lampier was the newest, youngest, least efficient and most cheerful of the constables at Patton Street. Repeated orders from Sergeant Blencowe to smarten himself up generally and for God’s sake get his hair cut had had a superficial effect. Like brushing a puppy which immediately goes out and chases a cat through a thorn-bush. “Mr. Who?”
“Bond. He’s the geezer who keeps that garage. The one we didn’t make it stick with that time—”
“All right, all right,” said Petrella. “Don’t let’s conduct a post mortem. Just show him in.”
Mr. Bond was not one of his favourite people. He had a big white face, a lower lip which turned down like the spout of a jug and a voice which grated more when he tried to be friendly than when he was in his normal mood of oily arrogance. On this occasion he was making no attempt to be agreeable.
He said, “You’ve got no right to say the things you’ve been saying about me. I’m telling you, I’m not standing for it.”
“If you’d explain what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll explain, all right.”
He opened his briefcase and threw a document on to the table. It was a photocopy, and to Petrella’s astonishment, it was a copy of a report he had himself written the day before.
He said, “Where on earth did you get that?”
“Never mind where I got it. You got no right to say those things.”
“I do mind where you got it. And I insist on an explanation.”
“If you want an explanation, ask the editor of the Courier.”
“I certainly will ask him,” said Petrella grimly, “and I hope he’s got an explanation, because if he hasn’t, he’s going to be in trouble.”
“The person who’s going to be in trouble,” said Mr. Bond, his lower lip quivering with some indefinable emotion, “is you. This is libellous. I’ve got my rights. I’m going to take this to court. You can’t go around taking away people’s characters. You ought to know that.”
“If you produce this document in court, you realise you’ll have to explain exactly how you got hold of it.”
“No difficulty. The editor gave it to me.”
“Then he’ll have to explain.”
“You don’t seem to realise,” snarled Mr. Bond, “It isn’t him or me who’s in trouble. It’s you.”
When he had gone Petrella telephoned Sergeant Blencowe. He said, “Yesterday I sent a batch of confidentials by hand to Central. Find out who took them, and send him up.”
Five minutes later the untidy top-knot of Constable Lampier made a second appearance round his door.
“So it was you, was it?” said Petrella.
“That’s right, sir.”
“Then perhaps you’ll explain how one of the documents got into the hands of the editor of the local paper.”
“Lost the wallet, sir.”
“You lost it.”
“Had it taken.”
“Explain.”
“Went up by tube. Victoria Line from Stockwell. Train was very crowded.”
Petrella considered the matter. So far there was an element of plausibility in it. Junior constables on routine errands usually travelled by public transp
ort and, as he knew himself, the Victoria Line could be crowded.
He said, “What actually happened?”
“I don’t really know,” said Lampier unhappily. “The carriage was full. I was standing near the door. I put the wallet down on the floor, by my foot. When I got to Victoria it was gone. I made a fuss, but it wasn’t any use. Someone must have slid out with it the station before.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“I did, sir. That afternoon. Soon as I got back. To Sergeant Cove.”
Petrella was on the point of telephoning for Sergeant Cove when he spotted the report. It was at the bottom of his in-tray. He had been so pleased with reading about his own promotion that he hadn’t got down to it.
The editor of the Stockwell and Clapham Courier was an elderly man with a face like a bloodhound. Petrella knew him of old as a nurser of grudges and no friend of authority. He said, “The papers were dropped in here by hand this morning. We get a crowd of people in and out of the front office. No one noticed this one in particular. If they’re yours you’d better have them.”
He pushed across a bundle of papers. Petrella picked them up and looked through them. As far as he could see they were all there. He said, “Was there a covering letter?”
“There was.”
“Can I see it?”
The editor hesitated. Then he said, “I don’t see why not.”
The letter was typewritten. It said, “Dear Editor, I picked these up in a public house in Victoria Street this afternoon. I think they might interest you, particularly the stuff about Mr. Bond.”
The note was unsigned.
“These are official documents,” said Petrella. “You should have sent them straight back.”
“How was I to know? They’re not marked ‘Top Secret’ or anything like that.”
“They’re on official paper.”
“Doesn’t mean a thing. Anyone can get hold of notepaper.”
“If you didn’t know, why didn’t you ring up and find out?”
“Why should I go out of my way to help the police? What have they ever done to help me?”
It was an outlook Petrella had heard expressed before, though never quite so baldly.
“All right,” he said. “I agree there was no actual obligation on you to do anything. So why did you have one particular document copied, and send it to Mr. Bond?”
“Mr. Bond happens to be a friend of mine,” said the editor. “I thought he ought to know about it.”
“And that’s the whole story?” said Commander Abel.
“That’s it, sir.”
“Tell me about the previous case.”
“We’d heard a lot of talk about that particular garage. People who put their cars in to have a tyre changed, and when they came to collect them found the engine taken down and half a dozen things apparently needed putting right. And straight over-charging for any job that was done. It’s difficult to prove. Then we thought we had got something that would stand up. This man, Mr. Ferris, put his car in for an M.O.T. test. When he went to fetch it he got a bill for nearly a hundred pounds. The point was, he’d just had the car overhauled by a garage in Southend, where he’d been staying. A complete 5,000-mile test. He lodged an official complaint. We had to take it up.”
“But you couldn’t make it stick.”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Bond had it all lined up. One of his mechanics gave evidence. A real old villain. Blinded the bench with science. Our Mr. Fairbrother’s a good magistrate, but he’s not a motorist. Invoices for spare parts, all in order. Work sheets showing time spent on the overhaul. If a man came in for a test it had to be made roadworthy. He’d told the gentleman that. He’d agreed. The job had been done. Here was the evidence.”
“Then what was wrong?”
“The whole thing was wrong,” said Petrella slowly. “The mechanic was in it, of course. He made up his own time sheets. The spare parts were bought for cash, from car breakers up and down the borough. The sort of people who keep no records. The invoices themselves were dirty little scraps of paper. And I fancy most of them had been altered.”
While Commander Abel was considering the matter, the third man present spoke. Mr. Samson was the senior legal adviser to the Metropolitan Police. He said, “I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. If Bond starts an action for libel, you’ve got something to answer.”
“But surely,” said Abel, “a report like this is privileged.”
“Qualified privilege.”
“What does that mean?”
“It can be set aside by proof of malice.”
“And just how would they prove that?”
“They’d say that this officer was so annoyed about Bond getting off last time that he made entirely unjustified allegations against him in a report. If the report had never gone outside Scotland Yard, it wouldn’t have mattered. But it did. It was published to third parties.”
“That’s something that wants looking into, too,” said Abel grimly.
“You’re sure you did have that bag stolen?” said Petrella.
“Dead sure, sir,” said Lampier. “It happened just like I told you.”
“You didn’t leave it in a pub in Victoria Street?”
“Certainly not, sir.”
Petrella examined the untidy young man critically. It was a long time since he had walked a beat himself. He tried to think himself back to those days. Lampier would have got to Victoria Station at about one o’clock. He probably hadn’t had any lunch before he started. Would he have stopped at a pub for a drink and a sandwich? It was perfectly possible. Was Lampier a liar? That was possible too. Was it any use pressing him further? Petrella thought not. There came a moment when policemen had to believe one another. He said, “That’s all right, Lampier. I just wanted to be clear about it.”
Lampier, as he was going, stopped for a moment by the door and said, “Is anyone going to make trouble sir, about that paper?”
“If they do, we’ll get over it,” said Petrella.
He managed to say it confidently, but it was a confidence he was far from feeling.
The next three months were not pleasant. Routine work continued. No one said anything. Even the Stockwell and Clapham Courier was muted. There was a brief paragraph to the effect that a local business man, a Mr. Bond, had issued a writ claiming damages against a police officer. Petrella had two further conferences with the legal Mr. Samson and could feel lapping around him, like the serpents about Laocoön, the strangling coils of the law. He knew enough about the processes of the civil courts to realise that no public servant came entirely clean out of that particular mud-bath.
Towards the end of the third conference something really alarming occurred. He began to detect, in the measured utterances of the lawyer, a suggestion that the matter might be compromised. A payment to solace Mr. Bond’s wounded feelings and an apology in open court. “My client wishes it to be understood that there is no truth whatever in the statements made about the plaintiff. The plaintiff is a man of excellent character.” Like hell he was. Bond was a crook.
“We’re in a cleft stick,” said Mr. Samson. “If we plead fair comment, we’ve got to show that what you said was fair. And that really means proving the charges against Bond, which was something you couldn’t do in court, and certainly couldn’t do now. We can run the defence of qualified privilege, but that lets them bring in all the arguments that you were prejudiced against Bond, that you didn’t like him, and were sore that he’d got off.”
“Which is true,” said Petrella. “But it wasn’t my reason for writing the report.”
“If you’re as candid as that when you give evidence,” said Mr. Samson grimly, “the case is as good as lost.”
It was a few days after this that Constable Lampier brought Nurse Fearing to see Petrella. She was a middle-aged woman, with an air of professional competence about her that was explained when he recognised her as the most senior and respe
cted of the local district nurses. She said, “I rely on my little car, Inspector. If it goes wrong it has to be put right. I’ve been driving for forty years. I know a lot about cars, and I know that this garage swindled me. The man must be brought to book.”
Petrella listened, fascinated. A lifetime of dealing with nervous young mothers and panic-stricken young fathers had endowed her with a calm authority which brooked no argument. He said, “It isn’t going to be at all easy, Mrs. Fearing. I hardly think you realise just how awkward it is.”
“I’ve heard about the other case,” said Nurse Fearing. “And all the lies this man, Bond, told. How anyone could get up in court and say things like that passes my comprehension, but then, I’m old-fashioned.”
“All the same—” said Petrella. This was all he managed to say. For the next ten minutes it was Nurse Fearing who did the talking.
“I can’t stop you,” said Chief Superintendent Watterson. He sounded worried. “A member of the public has made a complaint. We’re bound to follow it up. There’s prima facie evidence. But I need hardly tell you—”
“That’s all right,” said Petrella. “I understand the position. If we lose this one, we’re sunk, Another unsuccessful prosecution. Further proof that I’m prejudiced. Right?”
“If you don’t get home this time,” said Watterson, “we shall have to settle the libel case on their terms. And that won’t do your prospects any good at all.”
“You’re understating the case,” said Petrella. “I shan’t have any prospects left.”
“Are you going to take it yourself?”
“I may be foolish, but I’m not as foolish as that. I’m getting Mr. Tasker to handle the case.”
“Tasker’s good,” said Watterson. “But he can’t fight unless you give him some ammunition.”
“We shall do our best,” said Petrella.
He sounded, thought Watterson, unaccountably cheerful for a man who has placed his own head on the block.
Counsel for the defence said, “I only propose to call one more witness, sir. You have heard Mr. Bond, and seen the documents he produced. In the ordinary way I should have submitted that this evidence was quite conclusive. The solicitor appearing for the police challenged it—”
Petrella at 'Q' Page 6