A GLIMPSE OF DEATH
Roger Ormerod
© Roger Ormerod 1976
Roger Ormerod has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1976 by Robert Hale Limited.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER I
They gave me a peaked cap and a dark blue suit with badges on the lapels. MP. That was for Marston Pharmaceuticals. Oh, and a black tie. Then I was a works policeman. The white shirt was my own There was no adverse comment about my limp. “You’ll do fine, Mr Coe.” But of course, on the money they were paying they’d have difficulty getting people to take it on. Two twelve hour shifts! You’ll do fine — hobbling round with your stick, slapping stickers on the screens of selected visitors, sitting in your little hut and saying morning sir, evening sir, as the big cars sweep through, ignoring the fact that everybody should have stopped to be cleared.
But that was during daytime, when there was at least something to look at and somebody to talk to from time to time. The snag was that we worked week and week about, and the night shifts were murder. This was my second week on nights and I’d already got through all the sexy paperbacks in the gate hut drawer, and I could have howled with boredom. Every hour I was supposed to plod around No. 2 lab and the M6 stores. There was never anything to see.
On Monday and Tuesday there wasn’t. On Wednesday night I had found something to look at. It was a lighted window, second floor, in the row of terraces on the opposite side of the street. It just shows how low I’d drifted, trying to find interest in a lighted window with a three inch gap in the curtain on the one side, through which I could inspect the lighted dial of a radio set. It told me that he had his radio on. I deduced that, because I’m a detective. Used to be. George Coe, sneaking up to the landing window of the office block, because that took me level with the lighted window, and waiting to see whether a certain wife was visiting a certain young man, whose radio was on but which I couldn’t hear.
There was fifty quid in it for me. It doesn’t sound much, but I didn’t have to do much. Just spy. I felt bloody lousy.
It was a fine, clear night in November. The time was eleven-twenty. My leg was aching, though I was taking as much weight off it as I could with the stick I’d bought as soon as I could throw away the crutches, and as I say I felt lousy. But I’d have felt worse if the fifty quid wasn’t swimming closer to my pocket. I watched his shadow moving occasionally across the curtain.
Eleven-twenty, and she appeared. I’d expected a car, because her address was three miles across town, but this street was old and decayed, and very quiet, and a parked car would have drawn attention to itself. So she’d left it somewhere — probably one of the company’s car parks, which would now be deserted — and walked the rest of the way. She strode rapidly like a man, her head back and with no suggestion of secrecy, her auburn hair almost black in the poor light, and there was no doubt that it was the correct woman. She was just as he’d described her.
He had introduced himself to me by tripping over my left leg, which I’d just managed to make reasonably comfortable by stretching it out to one side of the table. The annoying thing about it was that he had made a circuit just in order to do it. I’d watched him leave his companion at the comer table, pick up two pints at the bar, then circle round to my table. This was the Monday, and I’d dropped in at the Potted Shrimp to fortify myself against the first night of boredom.
I was just about to poke in a rib or two with my stick when he spoke, and instead I just sat and looked at him.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t notice.”
Polite enough — the words — but the tone dull, with some sort of personal disgust, as though it pained him to apologise. He was not a big man, rather slim, and with a poise that turned his stumbling into a mockery. His face was thin, his mouth wide, and everything about him was a lie, including his eyes. They were deep-set and dark, and said nothing, which in itself was another lie. Because he had contempt for me, the contempt of a balanced, athletic man for an older man who was also a cripple. So I was naturally interested.
But I too can lie. “It’s all right. No apology needed.”
Then he sat opposite and slid one of the glasses towards me, moving my peaked cap in the process. “You’re George Coe,” he said. I just waited. “Work up at Marston’s.”
“You’re very observant.”
“No. 3 gate,” he amplified.
“You’ve enquired, too.”
He pressed on, though his eyes were hungry. “And you look like a man who could use fifty quid.”
I took the stick by its crooked handle and rested its rubber ferrule against my side of his glass. “And you’d like me to unlock a gate,” I said gently. “And look the other way.”
His nerves were good. He leaned forwards across the table, his eyes on me, and his hand went nowhere near the glass. “You’ve got it wrong, old man. Let me explain.”
And what he explained was that my importance to him rested in the fact that I was at No. 3 gate, that being almost opposite to the bed-sitter occupied by a young man called Larry. “Larry who?”
He shrugged. “Just Larry. She dropped out his name. But I’m sure she sees him. All I want is for you to watch out for her. No trouble for you, I’m sure. Fifty quid, if you’ll tell me when and for how long. Then you can leave it to me.”
That bit I wasn’t happy about. He seemed capable of anything.
“I don’t do that sort of thing,” I said mildly.
“I heard you were a private detective.”
“Not now. I didn’t do it when I was.”
“So now you’ll be needing the money,” he said smoothly, managing to make it sound like an insult.
Then he gave me an old envelope for when I’d got something to report, and would have returned to his former companion only he’d left, and I was already regretting that I hadn’t tipped the beer into his lap. To remove the regret, I drank it.
But just then fifty pounds had a most seductive sound. After the beating-up, they’d told me that my left leg was going to be shorter than the right, so I’d kissed goodbye to the last paltry remnants of my detective agency. And now I’d spent a few months on Social Security and I was about as low as I’d ever been. Fifty pounds sounded like the patter of rain on my arid fortunes, and I needed another white shirt. And perhaps a special pair of shoes.
I cursed him all through that shift, for having dangled it beneath my nose.
And maybe a little transistor radio for my lonely room?
So Monday night I spent cursing Henry Saturn, and Tuesday night I spent telling myself that there was no harm in it — was there? Anyway, I noticed that the light in the second floor room of No. 73 didn’t come on at all during Tuesday night, which simply indicated that I was weakening.
Then, on Wednesday night the light came on. I saw it as I limped back from my ten o’clock walkabout. It would have taken a stronger will than mine to ignore it completely, and I found that I could see more clearly from the darkened corridor of the office block, my point of view being lifted above the steel-mesh fencing.
I hoped that whatever was going on would be worth the pain it would probably provoke. And I wondered why they weren’t doing it to the sound of music.
It was peacefully quiet, and went on being quiet for another fifty-five minutes. At half past midnight she came out. I wasn’t sure it was the same woman, at first. Well, I mean to say, the light hadn’t come on again. But it was. She walked away with the same brisk step.
That was when I began to feel uneasy. Anything that is not reasonable behaviour makes the skin prickle up the back of my neck. And now I was presented with the fact that she’d dressed in the dark, and quietly left him alone. It wasn’t quite right. The other way round and I’d not even have queried it — a man leaving his woman and dressing in the dark. But maybe I’m old-fashioned, and they do demand their equality, these young women.
Anyway, there I was, my neck still prickling long after she’d walked off to pick up her car, and it occurred to me that I’d missed both the eleven o’clock and the midnight tours. This realisation suddenly came together with the fact that the light was still off across the street, and became an extreme uneasiness. I left the office block quickly, locked it with my master key, and galloped away in an ungainly gait for No. 2 lab and the M6 stores.
Marston Pharmaceuticals is bounded on three sides by nearly a mile of chain-link fencing, and on the fourth by the canal and its wall. No. 3 gate looked out on Foster Rd, which is just a straight run of terraced houses the other side of the street. They’d been built for the original workers at the factory, which in those days made railway wheels or something. Foster Rd is a cul-de-sac, at the far end crossing the canal by only a narrow pedestrian bridge. In that furthest comer the chain-link fence meets the wall along the canal, and stops.
I saw the gap in the fence when I was still fifty yards away.
They’d simply cut it down the corner and peeled it back, not far because it hadn’t needed a van. All they’d have used was half a dozen men, hefty enough to carry out the boxes, over the bridge, and to a van or wagon waiting the other side of the canal. There was a corner light on a concrete stanchion, so they’d been well supplied with illumination. Not to worry. That stupid old fool of a night guard was busy. So they’d strolled through, levered the necessary doors, and plundered the M6 stores.
The same stupid old fool lumbered back to his hut and hit the alarm button. All over the factory the loudspeakers raised their howl of despair. I gave it three rises and falls, then cut in with the mike button.
“Robbery at M6 stores. Robbery at M6 stores.” I could hear the Tannoy blasting it out into the night.
Then I rang the police — and waited. I waited where I was because they’d been and they’d gone, and there was nothing I could do about it, and I could curse better sitting down. Then I thought about the gate and went to unlock it and swing it wide for the police.
From the direction of the control centre I heard the wailing rise and fall as the main works force bore down on me with their van. It arrived two minutes before the first police car, and I didn’t get time to explain to my boss, Chief Downes. He looked sick and grieved, and seemed to know only one swear word.
Then there was a whole swarm of cars, and the police took over. After I’d shown a sergeant the gap in the fence, nobody seemed to object when I wandered back into my hut and sat down. A young copper kept me company.
He looked at me with the kind concern of the young for the old. “They beat you up, pop?”
“They didn’t beat me up. I’m always like this.”
No, not always. The uniform, the largest they had, had seemed tight on me before, but now hung loose and despondent. My face felt drawn. My leg ached like hell.
“You chased ‘em off?” he asked.
“I didn’t even see them, son.”
“No?” He looked puzzled. “They must have worked fast.” When I didn’t react, he raised his voice. “They must’ve worked fast.”
“And quietly. I’m not deaf.”
“You must have heard something.”
“I heard nothing. Look, let’s leave it to your DI, shall we? I’ll tell it all to him.”
He looked expectant, watching me react. “It’s not a him. The DI’s a woman.”
I’d just about braced myself for the criticism of some tough and brutal Detective Inspector, but I wasn’t braced enough for a woman. It would be particularly painful, coming from a woman, and if this one had risen to DI she’d have had to be just that much harder and more efficient than the competition.
“But she’s not too bad,” said the young man encouragingly, twiddling his peaked cap in his fingers.
“All right, Peters,” she said from the doorway. “You can get back to your car. But stay on call.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She glared at him as he went out, and Peters blushed. Then she came into the hut and looked at me.
She was about forty, I thought, a firm, strong woman in a dark grey two-piece with a lighter grey blouse beneath it. Her hair was light, not quite blond, with a no-nonsense hair style, and her eyes were that cold grey-blue that cuts into your mind and exposes all the weaknesses. She carried a shoulder bag in soft leather, no doubt full of feminine flim-flams, which were not very evident on her face. It also contained a pack of cigarettes, because she fetched it out and extended it to me.
“Smoke?”
“I’ve given it up.”
“Good man,” she said, with the careless condescension of a superior. “Force of circumstances.”
She looked round the hut with calm disparagement. Behind her, crowding the doorway, was a group of lesser humans, sergeants and DCs and riffraff like that, doubly poised to jump to her beckoning, both in deference to her rank and to her femininity.
“Well, George,” she said at last. “What the hell have you been playing at?”
Then I got it, from the way she said my name. Grace Pearson. I’d known her as a WPC. Damn it all, she’d tried to seduce me, that time she was at HQ on a firearms course, and where I’d been an instructor. Or maybe it was the other way around. She’d been quick and bright and perky, and had actually hit the target three times with a .38 automatic. I’d loved her for that.
“Grace Pearson,” I said gently. “Good Lord.”
“Grace Sanders now George,” she said.
I grinned at her. “Do I call you ma’am?”
“You call me Inspector,” she said firmly, “and you can start by wiping that grin off your face, and by telling me why you’re working here and how they got away with it.”
“I’m here because things aren’t too good at the moment, and I need the money. They got away with it because I’m as rotten at this job as I was with my private agency.”
She looked round. Her eyes fell on the minions behind her. Her back stiffened. “Nobody got anything to do? Sergeant, why aren’t you up at the lab? I want a list — a complete list — down to the last item. And I want it quickly.”
They melted. We were alone. She turned back to me, and she smiled. It was not the same smile as she’d used at the course, though perhaps it was the smile behind the gun when she’d pumped those three shots into the target. She smiled now, and said: “You can cut that out, to start with. I’m not interested in your self-pity. And just at this moment I don’t want to hear how short you are for cash. You understand? When they told me who was on this gate I was pleased. Actually pleased. I thought at least I’d be speaking to a professional. George’d know what I want — George’d know where we have to go, and how. But what do I get? You tell me you fell down on the job, and you tell me y
ou need money.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.”
“Now hold on,” I said angrily. “You’re inferring that I was paid off.”
“It was a long time ago,” she said flatly. “Even in those days we didn’t know each other very well.”
“We nearly did.”
She raised her eyebrows. “As I recall it, I had to fight you off.”
I laughed. “Oh, come on…”
“So what do I know about you now?” she demanded, her eyes sharp. “This break-in — your normal tours should have interrupted it. They’d need at least an hour. But…nothing. No alarm, no interference. Because George Coe was sitting on his fat behind in his little hut, thinking about how sorry he was for himself. Or maybe thinking about how pleased he’d be after he picked up his pay-off? How can I know? What d’you expect me to think?”
“I don’t expect you to think anything, Grace,” I said wearily.
She was coldly angry, and there was nothing false about it. But it was at herself that her anger was aimed. She had hoped for something, perhaps a small lead, from the experience that George Coe would have brought to the job, and all she had was a terrible suspicion, one that she hated to contemplate. And now I dared not tell her what had happened, because that would lower George Coe even more in her estimation. Either she would have to accept that I’d fallen for a naive trick to distract my attention, or that, in taking on the window-watching, I’d known all along what was really expected of me, the intention being thinly glossed by a sordid side issue — I didn’t want to anger her further.
“Just accept that I fell down on it,” I suggested.
“That soft voice of yours, eh George? You think I’m fool enough to accept what you say? Oh no, not a bit of it. I’ll see you down at the station, later on, when I’m clear here. And then we’ll have it all out. All the truth, George.”
“You want me to…”
“To go out to the car that young Peters is sitting in, and tell him that the DI says he’s to drive you to the station and stay with you.”
A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Page 1