Clearly she was not taking me seriously. “But not on Saturday, Grace. It’s Friday night, you know.”
You see, I’d only just realised that I’d made a mistake back there. Nobody was going to panic if I’d suggested Monday. But tomorrow I wanted it.
Tomorrow was not soon enough, really. And now there was a blasted weekend blocking me. Not blocking me from getting the money, of course, but from making an acceptable pretence of having obtained it.
Grace drove me home. The journey was pleasant, our time passing in idle conversation in which the words ‘arrest’ and ‘complicity’ were used by her frequently. But she had accepted that I was a nothing in this, an old ex-copper who was gracing the scene more in a spirit of nostalgia than anything else. Mind you, she didn’t apologise for having landed me in the dock.
Before she got Peters to drive away, I held open the door. “Did you trace the car, Grace?”
“Which car?”
“The blue sports car.”
“Oh…that. It belongs to a Carol Turner. Last address in Tamworth.”
“Well?” I was impatient. “Parents?”
“It’s a council house, George. New tenants in. The previous ones were killed in a car crash.”
“And the girl? Where did she go to, Grace?”
“Nobody seems to know.”
I stared at her profile. She was telling Peters to drive on. “And nobody cares?” I slammed the door furiously.
It was all I could do to nourish any interest in the drugs. Now I seemed to be going ahead with it more for Grace than for myself. But nevertheless, in the morning I did find the energy to drag myself round to the station for the train into Birmingham. It was the nearest city I could afford to visit. I was expecting to be watched, and made no special effort to detect my watcher. It was necessary only to create the impression that I was collecting cash for the transaction, and for this purpose I was carrying an obviously empty document case.
Larry levered himself from an iron stanchion and approached me along the platform.
“Well…Mr Coe. We meet again.”
I could have told you that he’d crop up again, either (if his association with Berenice was purely casual) to discover whether his alibi had been fractured or merely sprained, or (if his relationship with her was more sultry) to try to convince me that it was not. It was the fact that he should turn up there that was so surprising. I’d expected one of the gang to keep an eye on me, but if Larry was the chosen one, this was so subtle as to be frightening.
He seemed no longer to be annoyed with me. He was even pleased we had met. His clothes consisted of a tee shirt and flared jeans with buttons down the cuffs.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.
“Me? I’m never cold.”
“So she inferred. Going to Birmingham, are you?” I’d deduced this from the fact that the next train from this platform went nowhere else.
“Now I’ve got somebody to talk to. Makes my day, it does.”
I grunted, displeased. It didn’t do to let him know that I also wished for conversation.
I wished, actually, to take him by the throat and drag him into the gents, and beat the truth out of him. I was tired of playing around, and he was of minor importance to me. But I was having to learn that violence was becoming less of an asset to me, now that any active youth could’ve bowled me over. So I had to be diplomatic. But sarcasm I allowed myself.
“Don’t tell me you’re taking a trip, just for somebody to talk to.”
“Got some shopping,” he admitted, though what he was wearing clung so close to his skin that I could see no bulge indicating money. He nodded to the document case. “Business?”
“You could say that.”
And we did not speak again until the train pulled in and we were sitting opposite each other with the case on the rack above him.
“Did you see her?” he asked casually.
“I did”
“I bet she was annoyed.”
“She was.”
“Yeah. I bet.” He thought about it. “Women don’t like these things talked about. You know. Romance and all that. It makes everything…kind of curdles the cream.”
“You said you hardly knew her.”
“Well…” He waved his fingers. “You don’t have to.”
“I suppose not.” I was wondering what the hell he was talking about. Had he forgotten that I could prove he hadn’t been with her in the room? Or had he thought of a way round it? “But she’s very touchy,” he conceded.
“I noticed that.”
“She’d say anything.”
“She said everything, son. She confirmed completely all I’d worked out about the light switches.”
“The rotten bitch!”
“You annoyed her, you see.”
Silent factories streamed past the window. Only one plumed a column of smoke.
“What’d I say!” he complained.
“You annoyed her by criticising her for putting out the light.”
“I never mentioned the bloody light.”
“When you phoned — or since?”
“She won’t even see me. Won’t speak to me. Just hangs up.”
“There, you see. But maybe she’ll forgive you. They do, you know. Tears and recriminations, then they throw themselves into your arms.” A lot I knew about it! “All you’ve got to do is apologise nicely.”
“She’ll never forgive me,” he said mournfully, staring at his nails, which were remarkably clean.
I was about to pounce in with the punch line to which I’d been leading. I was going to say: for killing Henry? But something stopped me. I realised that it was he who had been leading me, not the other way round. I waited to see what he’d produce.
“I’m not proud of it,” he admitted reluctantly. “What I did.”
“What was that?”
“It was me switched off the light.”
I considered this revelation. “Confession,” I said, “is good for the soul. Now tell me how you came to use the wall switch.”
“I happened to be standing by it.”
I nodded appreciatively. “Imaginative.”
“With my back to the door. She was trying to get out, you see. So I leaned on the door and put off the switch.”
“You’re trying to tell me you raped her?” I asked, not attempting to hide my disbelief.
“Man!” he cried. “You think I’m made of wood? You try sitting with that woman for over an hour, nothing to do…”
“Play your tapes.”
“We’d heard ‘em. Nothing to do but look at her. You’ve seen her. Use your imagination. Use your memory.”
“Haven’t I been a romantic old fool!” I said ruefully. “There I was, imagining some sort of blissful situation, passion lurking behind your eyes and desire behind hers. Me jumping to the conclusion that she was bereft — absolutely in despair — because you weren’t there to take her in your manly arms. And all the while it was just a bit of energetic manly domination. Hooray for women’s lib!”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I’m just disillusioned, son. Sad and old and just a little tired.”
“You caught me on the hop, see, at the pub. Talking about why the lights went off, and in what order. Man, I was confused. All I could think was to phone her and ask her not to say why I’d put the light off. I mean…you don’t want it to get around.”
“Of course not. You’ll have ‘em all after you.”
“I pleaded with her.”
“What happened to the manly domination?”
“But I only made her angry.”
“She already would be. If you’d raped her. I reckon she wouldn’t be too happy to be asked to cover up for you.”
“No. As I said, she won’t even answer the phone now.”
“Mind you,” I conceded, “it was very obliging of her to think what she could say to me. And very quick thinking.”
“Oh, she’s quick.”
“I was prepared to accept it.”
He frowned. “She made it all up.” We were slowing. The Rotunda stood on the skyline.
“Made what up?” I asked.
He just looked at me.
“If,” I said, “you haven’t spoken to her, how do you know what she might have told me about the light switch? How d’you know it’s now necessary for you to produce this fanciful and spurious story of rape and pillage?”
“It’s not…”
“It’s a load of rubbish, Larry. Berenice told me that you weren’t in that room. She told me that she put off the light so that Henry would get a report that once again she’d allowed herself to be influenced by another man’s charm. She told me, in effect, that she’d decided to toss you to the lion. She was going to leave Henry to deal with you.”
“She wouldn’t…”
“Would she not? Do you really know her very well?”
“I know her.”
“Better, perhaps, than I’d realised?” He stood up, lifted my document case from the rack, and tossed it to the seat beside me. His face was dark. Now he was not sure how he’d affected my thinking.
“We’re coming in,” he said.
I reached over and caught his arm. The dirty tiles of New Street Station were drifting past the window.”1 haven’t got much time, Larry. None to waste swapping theories with you. I know you were out of that room. I need to know where you were. Very soon you’ll have to tell me. If you were in on the robbery, that’s one thing. But if you killed Henry Saturn, I’ve got to take you. You understand? I may not be able to hand you over to the police alive.”
He shook his arm free angrily. For one moment his eyes met mine. They were full of shock. All the rest had been light banter, and he didn’t like the face of reality. Then he turned away from me and marched away between the seats.
Perhaps I could have settled it there and then, simply by noticing whether he continued to observe me, and thus indicate that he was one of the gang. But it would mean little. What I had just told him could very well influence him into watching me, anyway, if only to preserve his own skin.
I shrugged, and continued with the camouflage.
CHAPTER X
It will be appreciated that my presence in Birmingham was merely to establish a background against which it would be acceptable that I had acquired £25,000 on a Saturday. I played it out, but I was tired, and I wasn’t feeling inventive.
I chose a suburb where the large and dignified residences lurk behind extensive lawns and restful shrubbery. I chose a house where I could hear the happy laughter of a number of children. I walked up to the front door.
“Good afternoon, madam,” I said. “I’m an inspector for the Social Security office, and I wonder if I can see your family allowance book.”
One in a thousand asks for proof of identity.
“On a Saturday?” she asked, wondering only at the untiring efforts of the Civil Service.
“It’s an emergency. We’re trying to trap a forgery gang.”
“Oh!” She looked startled. “You’d better come in.”
She left me in the spacious hall while she went and fetched her book. I examined it in detail, questioned her as to her family, and checked her name. I smiled encouragingly.
“Well, this one’s alright, anyway,” I said, and handed it her back. Then I left, with her Birmingham phone directory lending weight to my document case and my supposed mission.
It is a well-known fact in criminal circles that the really top-line crooks live openly honest lives in large houses, and that these gentlemen, knowing a thing or two, would never trust their loose cash to the banks. This is also known by the police, but just you try proving anything. But I walked away from that house rapidly — as I would if I’d now acquired the money — not only because the lifting of a telephone directory is a technical theft, but also because I’d recognised her name on the allowance book as the wife of a Chief Superintendent in Birmingham City Police. Crime squad, to boot.
I hoped that Grace hadn’t observed my manoeuvre. She might have wondered how he had managed to lay his hands on £25,000 so quickly.
I saw nothing of Larry on the way back. Which was just as well. Unpleasant thoughts regarding Larry were tracking through my mind. Such as the fact that I’d received an impression about the depth of their relationship. And from this it followed that his little conversation on the train could have been carefully contrived by them. Perhaps she had not only made a mistake by putting out the light; her greater mistake could have been in her explanation of it. And if I was not to accept that explanation, then I needed to discover another. The one I thought up didn’t appeal to me at all.
I saw Berenice alone in that room, worried and tense. She was waiting for Larry, impatient, and in those circumstances it’s almost impossible to keep away from the window. So she’d put off the light and stood, unobserved in the dark, surveying the street for Larry’s return, through the same gap in the curtain that had allowed me to see the radio dial.
And why was she so tense? Because Larry had gone out to kill Henry Saturn. They had planned it together, but she was not certain of Larry’s ability with the gun she’d obtained for him. She had not been certain he would return.
Oh, it was a nice, tidy theory. Except for one thing. Larry would not have returned by way of the street, because he would have known I was there to see him. So Berenice would not have watched the street. So much for theories.
I was still thinking along these lines, tense myself because I was not getting anywhere and time was running out, when I got back to the digs. There seemed no alternative to yet another interview with Berenice.
“There’s somebody to see you,” said Mrs Perkins. “I’ve put her in the sitting room.”
The sitting room was the front room. It was never used, except for visitors, though why they should consider it to be VIP treatment I’ve never understood, being tucked away in virgin territory, cold and soul-less and repressingly tidy.
I’d expected it would be Grace, wondering about the Chief Superintendent. But it was Berenice.
She had been standing by the window in a short, black coat over a blouse and slacks. When she turned I tried not to look startled at her expression. There was blank fear in her eyes, and her hands clutched her handbag fiercely in front of her, as though it provided a defence. I turned away from her and put down my case.
“You’ve got to see him,” she burst out.
Having been considering herself and Larry so recently, I thought she meant him. “I’ve had a right old jumble of lies…”
“Sarturo,” she cut in. “You’ll have to go and see him.”
“I can think of things I’d rather do.”
“He’s sent one of his men around. To see me. An unpleasant little man.”
“With a bandaged wrist?”
She snapped open her bag and plunged for her cigarettes. “Yes.”
“Did he bully you?”
“He came with a message. I warned you, didn’t I? I said Sarturo would hear that you’d been round to the flat. And you can bet what construction he put on that…”
“Why don’t you sit down? Take it easy…”
“What can you expect me to do?” she demanded, pacing around. “That…pig, throwing his threats — ”
“The one with the bandage?”
“He sneered at me. You could see he’d just love to prove how big he was with that gun in his hand.”
“What exactly, did he say?”
“Oh…” She waved the cigarette, walked away from me, then turned and walked past me. “He said that Sarturo had heard that you were angling to take over the drugs, right from under his nose, and that it was me who’d put you in touch with the gang ”
“Through Larry?”
She stopped. “How through Larry?”
“How else did he think I could have got in touch with them?”
She was impatient. “It’s around town that you’re in the marke
t. They’d have got in touch with you.”
“And he explained all this, your pig with the little gun?”
“That and what they’d do to me.”
“For what?” I asked. “If the gang could get in touch with me, then how could you be blamed?”
“For giving you the idea in the first place.”
She drew deeply, horribly, on the cigarette, paced a bit more, and clasped one elbow in the other palm. There was no disguising her fear, but her explanation for it was false. She obviously did not know that my reputation as a pedlar had grown from Sarturo, but certainly he knew. He would have no fear of my possibly whisking the drugs from under his nose. And certainly the little one with the impaired wrist could not have put the proposition to her. But the fear was real.
“I don’t think you’ve got much to worry about,” I said. “After all, he’s lost his hit man.”
She whirled on me, snarling. “It’s not bloody funny.”
“But you don’t really expect me to go to Sarturo.”
“I suppose not. It was all I could think to do.” She seemed abruptly deflated.
“Then what else is there?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at me from beneath lowered brows. “You could get out of town.”
“I think not. I’m very close to concluding a deal.”
“The drugs?” She glanced at the document case. “Then it’s true?”
That wasn’t the deal I meant. “I can’t leave now. I’m getting so close. But you could go.”
She made an impatient, angry sound. “How can I? The funeral — the police…”
“Have they told you not to leave?”
“Only to keep in touch.”
“Well then. There’s nothing keeping you. Unless it’s Larry.”
“No!” Her eyes blazed. “No.”
“You mean, no he’s not keeping you?”
“My movements haven’t got anything…” She drew a deep breath. “He won’t leave me alone.”
“Pesters you, do you mean?”
“The phone goes all the time. I see him waiting across from the flat.”
“Persistent devil, isn’t he!”
“He’s making me ill.”
“All you need to do is forgive him.”
A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Page 11