She pressed her face against his side with frantic passion. ‘I feel like when Lindy was born and no one wouldn’t have nothing to do with me,’ she said, naming the most unhappy time in her life.
‘There’s no call for you . . .’
‘What happened in the garden? I was watching through the kitchen window.’
He realised he could no longer protect her from the truth and he told her the facts, his voice flat from a sense of hopelessness.
‘But if you weren’t anywhere near the bank, Conrad, they can’t prove nothing. It ain’t so bad having passed on the explosive, is it, not when you was made to do it?’
He didn’t immediately answer her.
‘They can’t do nothing to you when all you was doing was trying to save me?’
He kissed her neck. ‘Sure, love.’ Why destroy her hope, he thought, before events destroyed it?
*
Kerr drove to the prison, which seen from the front had a look of a bogus gothic castle, and round the tall and grimy walls to the row of shabby houses in Peters Street and the offices of the Society for the Help of Distressed Persons.
Turnball looked out of his room, asked him to wait, and went back inside. Kerr sat down and picked up one of the magazines on the rickety wooden table. It was full of girls with few secrets. What a hell of a life the photographers must lead, he thought. A succession of beautiful girls, day after day, all eager to show off their natural talents . . . Three girls, blonde, brunette, and red-head, lined up for the morning’s work. Clothes off. Casual unbuttoning, careless disrobing, delightful wriggling as they stepped out of the last of their garments. Smooth, beautiful, shapely limbs. Three girls who unashamedly made it clear that to them he was more than just a photographer . . .
‘Enjoying them?’
Kerr looked up and was astonished to find that Turnball was standing close to him. He shut the magazine. ‘Not really,’ he said, trying to sound bored, ‘but I like to keep abreast of what’s going on.’
‘In the circumstances, an apt way of putting things!’
Kerr dropped the magazine back on the table. Turnball obviously thought a man couldn’t look at a few nudes in a purely artistic sense. And why did he leave the magazines around the place if he disapproved? The office was neat and tidy and there was only a single folder on the old and battered desk. Kerr sat down, took his notebook from his pocket, and opened it. ‘Mr. Fusil asked me to come along and have a word. You must have heard about Joe Cannon?’
Turnball entwined his short, stubby fingers as he rested his hands on the desk. ‘I’ve heard his body’s been recovered. Is it fact he was murdered?’
‘He’d been shot once and buried where the new section of the by-pass is being built. If a foreman hadn’t ordered an inspection hole to be dug they’d have laid the road on top of him.’
‘“Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.”’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘A quote from The Merchant of Venice. As always, Shakespeare had it all summed up.’
That bore! thought Kerr. ‘We don’t know much about Cannon’s murder so far, but we do think it may be tied-up with the bank robbery and we’re just wondering if there’s anything you can tell us?’ The old bastard will go out of his way not to help, Fusil had said, but take it gently in case you learn something useful.
Turnball unlaced his hands and sat back in the chair. He spoke with some interest. ‘What kind of tie-up do you see?’
‘It’s pretty clear the bank robbers knew the construction of the strong-room. The last time Cannon was sent to the nick it was for a mail theft and in the mail was an architectural description of the strong-room. Since Cannon’s been murdered, those two facts must go together.’
Turnball scratched the tip of his nose. ‘Joe was a strange man. He suffered from a kind of folie des grandeurs. He’d think up the most wonderful schemes that would have made all you chaps grey-haired overnight, but when it came actually to doing the job he’d blunder around like a near-idiot.’
There was almost a trace of regret in the other’s voice, thought Kerr, as if he would have liked Cannon’s ability to match his imagination. ‘We’ve been through the records and it seems you had a hand in recovering the registered mail?’
‘A very minor hand, indeed. Cannon called for me after he’d been arrested and asked me to help him. He was much too late, of course—but then that was him all over. All I could do was suggest that he told the police what he’d done with the stolen mail because this would count to some degree in his favour. He took my advice.’
‘Did he talk about the letters and parcels—what they contained, and so on?’
‘No. But as far as he would have been concerned, anything that didn’t have money in it would have been a dead loss.’
‘D’you know if he opened everything?’
‘I don’t know as fact, but I can use my common sense. He must have done, mustn’t he, to find out how many contained money in one form or another?’
Turnball most annoyed, decided Kerr, because of his constant air of moral superiority. ‘Would you know if Cannon saw much of Conrad Downring?’
Turnball shrugged his shoulders with slight impatience. ‘Since they shared a cell at one time, the answer to that must be fairly obvious.’
‘So did Cannon ever mention Downring?’
‘If he did, I’ve no recollection of the fact.’
‘But he might have done—maybe in connection with one of the imaginative schemes you were talking about earlier?’
‘Perhaps. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t tell you.’
He really enjoyed being able to refuse the police worthwhile co-operation, thought Kerr—was that about the only way in which he could openly reinforce his belief in his own importance?
‘Have you any idea when you last saw Cannon?’
Turnball swivelled round in his chair, unlocked the filing cabinet, and pulled out one of the drawers. He found the card he wanted. ‘I met him, quite by chance, just after he’d come out—five months ago. As he didn’t want anything specific from me, he spoke as briefly as he could and scurried away.’ Turnball shut the drawer and turned back. ‘This isn’t a job you do if you’re looking for any degree of gratitude.’
‘Then why do it?’ asked Kerr, made more tactless than usual by the other’s attitude.
Turnball smiled condescendingly. ‘It’s become a wholly materialistic world, but there are still the very few of us who are stupid enough to have what we call, for want of a better expression, a social conscience.’
Kerr stood up. No wonder his wife had rushed off with one of the released convicts!
*
‘Well,’ said Kywood over the phone, ‘it seems you’ve at last managed to come to some decisions, then?’
Fusil, standing in the hall of his house, kicked the bottom stair in a child-like expression of impotent anger.
‘So you arrested Downring?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not entirely satisfied.’
‘After all you’ve told me? You look here, Bob. I don’t care whether you’re satisfied, I want . . .’
Fusil held the receiver away from his ear as Josephine came into the hall from the kitchen. ‘Who is it?’ she asked. ‘Kywood,’ he mouthed. ‘Then tell the bloody old fool to dry up.’ Fusil hoped he’d managed to cover the mouthpiece in time.
*
Downring was drinking heavily and Valerie kept looking across the sitting-room at him, her face creased with lines of worry.
The telephone rang. Downring stood up. ‘I’ll answer it,’ he said, his words slightly blurred. He noticed the look she gave him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded belligerently.
‘Nothing.’
‘Can’t a bloke have a pint when he wants?’
‘Of course . . . Are you going to answer the phone?’
He crossed to the door, concentrating on making his feet move as he wanted
them to.
When he reached for the telephone, he stubbed his finger on it and cursed. He picked up the receiver. ‘Yeah?’
‘’Evenin’, Banger.’
Fear jerked aside the fumes of the beer. He wasn’t immediately sober, but he knew exactly what he was saying. ‘What d’you want?’
‘You, mate, that’s what. You loused up the last job good and proper, so this time you’re coming, personal.’
‘I ain’t doing any job.’
‘Then you don’t think much of your missus. The way the boys feel after last time, if you don’t act helpful your woman’ll find life rough.’
In his imagination he saw Valerie assaulted by several faceless men. They tore off her clothes and raped her.
‘Get the putty on Monday, Banger, and this time make certain it works.’ The connection was cut.
He replaced the receiver, hesitated, then returned to the sitting-room.
‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘The police,’ he said, at the last moment unable to tell her the truth.
‘What do they want now?’
‘Just a load more questions.’
She spoke with force. ‘Conrad, you’ve got to tell them the truth.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But they know you had the explosive in the shed.’
‘They can’t prove it was used at the bank. It doesn’t matter what they know so long as they can’t prove nothing.’ He sat down in his chair, picked up another bottle of beer and opened it.
Chapter Sixteen
Sunday, the first of October, was warm and sunny and what wind there was came in from the south, bringing with it the faint tang of the sea. On the beaches to the east and west of the mouth of the Fort hardy families picknicked. Ships, picking up pilots, were sharply visible in the clear air: several sailing boats added to the scene with their blue, red, and striped sails.
Because it was so pleasant a day, because he usually arrived much later on a Sunday, and because the Sunday Telegraph had another article on the perils of middle age without exercise, Fusil walked to the police station.
He arrived a little breathless and this worried him because it wasn’t all that long ago that he could have run a mile without any effect whatsoever. Perversely, he ran up the back stairs instead of taking them at his usual rate and this predictably made him more breathless. In his office he sat down, took his pipe from his pocket, and began to fill the bowl. Suddenly he remembered the warnings against smoking and he dropped it into the tobacco pouch. He felt awful.
There was a knock on the door. ‘Well?’ he shouted.
A young uniformed P.C. looked round the door.
‘Come on in, man,’ snapped Fusil, ‘you’re not a bloody Cheshire cat.’
The P.C. shuffled just inside and stood to attention. ‘P.C. One Three Four, sir. I was the one . . . I mean, I’m the P.C. who was detailed to help question the people in Acton Road.’
‘Where the hell’s that?’
‘It’s where the Selbys live, sir.’ The P.C. naively showed his astonishment at finding God could nod.
Was middle age making him forgetful? wondered Fusil. ‘All right, I’m in the picture now. What’s there to report?’ Without thought, he took his pipe from the pouch and finished filling it.
‘I just wondered if anyone had told you that Mr. Selby is moving, sir?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t know whether the information was of any importance, sir, which is why I’ve come straight to you and not just made out a report.’
Fusil was impressed by the earnestness of the P.C. ‘Glad you used your initiative.’
The P.C. turned smartly and left. Fusil lit his pipe and puffed at it. He’d virtually finished with the Selby case and there seemed no reason now to reverse that decision. After the tragedy, it was perfectly reasonable to suppose Selby wouldn’t want to go on living in the same house. In any case, since he was abroad so much he’d only need a smaller house: indeed, maybe he was intending to settle abroad to gain what tax advantages he could.
The pipe was going well. Fusil tilted the chair back until he could rest his feet on the desk. The facts all suggested that Selby couldn’t have murdered his wife and but for the insurance policy that would have been an end of it. . . . Perhaps Kywood had been right for once when he said . . .
The chair fell back against the wall and awoke Fusil with a start. He dropped his feet on to the ground and rubbed his eyes. Was middle age ripening into old age in a matter of days, that he should fall asleep in the middle of the morning?
He pulled across the in-tray and tipped out of it all the paper-work he should have done the previous day.
*
Kerr was just about to leave the office to go to Helen’s house for the evening—what deliciousness would Mrs. Barley have cooked for supper?—when the telephone rang. He answered the call. ‘Kerr speaking.’
‘Please,’ said a woman’s voice that was filled with distress, ‘you’ve got to help me. I’m in terrible trouble.’
In the past, before his engagement, his greatest fear in life had been that a woman would tell him she was in trouble. His voice rose. ‘Who’s that?’ He began to recall the names of girls he had known.
‘Valerie.’
‘Valerie who?’
‘You know. You came to our home yesterday and searched it. You . . . you looked like you was really sorry for us and that’s why I’m phoning. Please, you’ve got to help.’
He was relieved to learn his fears were groundless. ‘I’m sorry, but . . .’
‘I’m going crazy with worry. He’s . . . Conrad’s gone out and I know it’s to see them. I’m so desperate. You must come now.’ She cut the connection.
He slowly replaced the receiver. To go rushing off to the help of the wife of a suspect in a heavy crime was to ask for trouble—anything might be waiting at the house from a beating-up to a staged passionate love scene that would be interrupted at the vital moment and lead to blackmail. But could any woman, however consummate an actress, have feigned the distress that had filled her voice? And he could still vividly recall the sick hopelessness in her eyes the previous day.
For most of the drive to Helen his mind was arguing with itself and when he parked in front of her house he still knew he shouldn’t go yet felt certain he ought to. He knocked on the door and Helen opened it. He kissed her on the cheek and went in. There was a delicious smell of cooking which he tentatively identified as roast lamb.
In the sitting-room Mr. Barley poured out a gin and tonic for each of them, then left, saying, with a heavy wink, that he’d help his wife in the kitchen and did they mind being on their own for a time?
Helen studied Kerr. ‘Darling, is something wrong?’
‘Not really,’ he answered.
‘But you’ve looked worried ever since you arrived.’
He spoke slowly. ‘It’s only a hang-over from work.’
‘Forget it.’
‘The trouble is, I can’t.’
‘Then tell me about it.’
‘We were questioning a bloke yesterday in his house and saw the wife. She rang me up just before I came here to go and help her because of some trouble. She sounded in a terrible state.’
‘Are you going?’
‘I . . . I don’t know.’ He explained the position, listing the dangers involved.
‘You said she really did sound in a terrible state, though?’
‘I don’t think she was faking.’
‘Then you’ve no option: you’ve just got to go.’ There was a sharp expression in her usually soft brown eyes and she held her chin high.
‘But if . . .’
‘There aren’t any ifs and buts when someone really is in terrible trouble and calling for help.’ She took hold of his hand. ‘John—if I were in desperate trouble and frantically appealing for help wouldn’t you want someone to help me no matter what?’
When he looked at her, he knew she had to be right—even if eve
nts later proved her to be wrong. ‘I’ll go,’ he said.
‘I knew you would.’ She smiled proudly at him.
He drove through the village of Entington and parked in front of the last council house. As he switched off the engine, the front door half opened and Valerie Downring looked out. She identified him and held the door fully open.
In the light in the small and shabby hall he saw that her face was twisted with grief and when she said, in a very low voice, ‘Linda’s upstairs and she mustn’t hear so we’ll go into the front room,’ he no longer had any doubts. She was a woman made desperate by worry.
Chapter Seventeen
Kerr stood in front of Fusil’s desk.
Fusil, his face cut where he had nicked himself when shaving that morning, looked up. ‘Did she tell you anything more than that?’
Kerr shook his head. ‘No, sir. That was the lot and it was all in the strictest confidence. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone, but . . .’ He stopped.
‘If you’ve any doubts on that score, forget ’em. Both from common sense and as a detective, you had to tell me.’ Fusil motioned at one of the chairs in front of his desk. ‘Sit down.’ He waited until Kerr was seated, then said: ‘How certain can you be that she was genuine and wasn’t feeding you?’
‘I’m positive. She couldn’t have fudged the state she was in.’
‘Assuming Downring has told her the full truth, then he was pressured into supplying the bank mob with the TTX. The only man he met took very great care not to show his face, but we know he stuttered and wore several gold rings on his fingers. Do those two facts suggest anyone to you?’
‘Not off-hand.’
‘They do to me and I’ll get Records to confirm.’ Fusil rang Records at county H.Q. and asked them to check out the possible identification. He replaced the receiver. ‘Has anything in particular struck you about the story she told you?’
‘Yes, sir. On the face of it, it can’t be right.’ Kerr spoke more quickly. ‘Yet she believed every word he told her and a wife always knows when a husband’s lying to her.’
The innocence of young love, thought Fusil sardonically. ‘If Downring did no more than supply the explosive—which we know was recently in his garden shed—then he was never in the bank’s strong-room. Yet if he wasn’t there, how did a thread from his coat and his handkerchief, assuming they were his, come to be present?’
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