The Murder Line (C.I.D. Room Book 8)

by Roderic Jeffries

  Why? Why? Raymond had sworn he didn’t know and she’d believed him. He’d almost wept when he’d told her that he’d have done anything — anything — rather than take those shots. He could have refused, she thought dully, if he hadn’t been so absolutely concerned for his own skin.

  Was she to be blackmailed? But she hadn’t that sort of money. Yet if it wasn’t blackmail, what? Could she defeat the object by telling Fred, the moment he returned, what had happened? But he’d never believe her story. From the day she had begun working seriously, his jealousy had prompted him to believe she was having an affair. So what would his reactions be when he saw photos of a man apparently about to mount her? Could he think other than that she had posed for those photos, that they were part and parcel of some terrible perversion or commercial pornography?

  She cursed her love for the extra things in life which had made her undertake this work and so had laid her open to this terrible dilemma: she cursed Raymond for being such a coward.

  The front door banged shut and soon Rowan came into the room. He said something, which she failed to catch, looked at her as he patiently waited for an answer, and then suddenly became worried, with a screwed-up look on his long, narrow face. “What’s up with you, Heather?”

  “Nothing,” she answered, trying to calm herself.

  “But you look so…” He tried to find the right words. “You looked as if you’d just had some terrible news?”

  “It was only someone walking over my grave.”

  “Then tell them to get the hell off it.” He came across and put a hand on either side of her neck in a gesture of comfort. Why, she thought wildly, did there have to be disaster before he could bring himself to show the compassion and love that in the past would have broken down all her prideful resistance? Why couldn’t he have done it in time to prevent disaster? She gripped his hands with her own.

  “Heather, something is wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I tell you. I’m just feeling tired and depressed.”

  “Then I prescribe a very strong drink.”

  She watched him pour out a whisky and a gin and tonic and wondered how much sympathy he’d show should he ever learn the truth?

  Chapter 6

  Rowan’s attitude towards crime and criminals was typical of the middle-of-the-road policeman. Law was necessary in any stable society and lawbreakers must be captured and punished in order to protect society. He knew only perplexed contempt for those, way-out left wingers, publicity seeking radicals, committed soft-liners, knuckle-headed do-gooders, who mixed up cause and effect and tried to make a man’s past environment count for more than society’s future health. A man sinned, he had to be locked away: reformation must be of secondary consideration, leniency was stupid because the criminal treated this as weakness. In only three types of crime did Rowan experience the same sharp hatred of the criminal as Fusil so often knew: violence which hurt the innocent, child molestation, and drug pushing. Most of all, he loathed the drug pusher, the pedlar, the main supplier, because they blasted the lives of so many. Hard drugs reduced humans to animal level. He’d seen girls of sixteen selling their bodies to sailors, careless about anything but the need to make enough for the next shot: he’d seen the emaciated bodies of sixteen-year-olds who, in death, looked like eighty-year-olds.

  He spoke roughly. “Come on, Liz, I’m not soft. You know what’s going on.”

  Liz was thirty-nine and beginning to look much older. She sat on the bed and fidgeted with one of the buttons on her tight dress.

  “It’s worth a couple of tenners for some solid info,” he said.

  She spoke with angry sarcasm. “D’you think you’re talking about a fortune?”

  “It will soon be beginning to look like one to you.”

  She cursed him, but only out of habit. After a while, she said: “Twenty quid don’t do much good if you’ve got your throat cut.”

  “So the pressure’s that bad, is it?”

  She looked away. “Beat it, copper,” she said, suddenly and violently.

  “Liz, how come they’ve got you so scared? You’re tough. You’re not just up from the country with the dew fresh behind your ears.”

  She laughed bitterly. “The last time I saw the country, I didn’t know there were three sexes.”

  “Then how come they’ve got you like this?”

  “Look,” she said, “if there are more of them and they’re bigger, you’re scared or you’re dead.”

  “So how many of them are there?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “And now they’re in drugs as well?”

  “Are they?”

  “If you’re caught pushing, Liz, you’ll be inside so long you won’t come out until you’re long past retiring age.”

  Her mouth tightened.

  “Give me the picture now, before you get drawn in so tight you haven’t room to wriggle.”

  “And get meself measured for a coffin? Get moving.”

  “You won’t get far if we have to keep a very close eye on you. They tell me it’s bad for trade to have coppers around all the time.”

  She swore.

  “I want information, Liz.”

  “I don’t know nothing.”

  He noticed the beads of sweat on her brow. “Who’s in the mob? Who laid the crutch-hold on you? Local lads?”

  She suddenly showed some fighting spirit. “D’you think any of the locals’d make me lose sleep?”

  “Then it’s an outside mob completely?”

  She realised she’d said something of importance. Her mouth tilted into lines of stubborn fear.

  “Where’s the heroin coming from?” he asked.

  “What H?”

  “That’s being pushed by all of you.”

  “Not by me. Not by anyone I know. D’you hear that, copper. Not by anyone.”

  He slowly stood up. This interview had been little different from all the others. The organisation had proved to have moved in too quickly and too efficiently: their use of force, threats, and bribery, had been sure.

  She looked up and just for the moment there was an appeal on her face. “I wish to God…” She stopped.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “I wish to God you coppers’d leave us girls alone to make a living,” she said vehemently.

  He left the ramshackle house and returned to the street. From the pavement, he was able to look down a crossroad to the Old Docks and through an open gateway he could see the bluff bows of an old tramp ship, patched with rust, foredeck seemingly a chaotic jumble of derricks, runners, guys, beams, and hatch boards, as a general cargo was loaded. By what route, or routes, was the heroin coming in? Who headed the organisation? Wasn’t there just one informer in Fortrow with the courage or the cupidity to give the police a lead?

  *

  Murphy parked near the market, now being prepared for the Saturday trade of bankrupt stock, fruit, and vegetables. He passed without a second glance. Although a highly intelligent man, he was interested in nothing which lay outside his immediate concerns.

  He reached the main post office and crossed to the end counter where he booked an international call to Hong Kong: he tried always to make outgoing international calls from public telephones so that no one would ever wonder why he made so many calls to Hong Kong and New York, and this even though he’d a good cover story. He was told there would be half an hour’s delay. He left and walked briskly along the High Street. It amused him sometimes to walk with a stream of pedestrians, becoming for the moment apparently as anonymously grey and unimportant as they. Not that he knew any suggestion of humility when he did this: the only effect was to confirm him in the knowledge of his own superiority.

  He returned to the post office promptly on the half hour and had a wait of only a further five minutes before his call was through. He spoke to Mr. Chu Fahsien and said that he was very sorry about the delay in accepting delivery of the plastic novelty goods, but that everything was being sorte
d out and it would be days only before he’d be able to make final acceptance. Mr. Chu said he was happy to hear that. Listening to his slightly sibilant voice, mispronouncing an occasional word, Murphy pictured the middle-aged man, fairly tall for a Chinese, with a broad face, cheerful smile, and vaguely almond black eyes which were seldom still. He’d tell New York the troubles in Fortrow were almost at an end, thought Murphy, so provided only that it could be confirmed Longman’s arrest had been an unfortunate coincidence — which was beginning to look likely — no lasting harm was done, although New York would be wary for a time. He said goodbye, rang off, paid for the call and left the post office.

  *

  Wearily, Rowan walked into Causeway Buildings. There was an old saying that you could tell how good a detective was from the blisters on his feet: by such standards, he was brilliant.

  The porter recognised him and stared with hostility, but said nothing. He crossed to the lift, went up to the third floor, and rang the doorbell of apartment 3B. Soon, Violet Carter opened the door.

  “May I come in?” he asked, “or are you busy?”

  “Not right now.” She spoke with tired indifference. Once inside, he studied her face: there were lines about her mouth now that made her look older and tougher and the skilled observer could have judged her profession. “I’ve come back,” he said, “to ask if you’ve heard anything? Anything that’ll help us?”

  She spoke harshly. “So you’re not getting anywhere looking for whoever did Vince in?”

  “Not yet.”

  Abruptly she turned and crossed the hall into the sitting room. He followed her. The room was slovenly untidy, with overflowing ashtrays, cushions on the floor, dirty plate, knife, and fork, on the coffee table, empty bottles in the fireplace. She slumped down in a chair. “I said you wouldn’t get nowhere.”

  “We will… But it takes time.”

  “Who are you conning? Give you splits the next century and you won’t get nowhere. They were professionals what did Vince in and it’s a professional mob running things and that’s why you won’t even reach the starting line.”

  “We have our moments,” he said quietly. “Has anyone from the mob contacted you again?”

  “No.”

  He was not surprised. They were clever enough to know not to use her now even though she had great earning potential for them. They had foreseen that she might have been in love with Vincent Wraight. “Have you asked around at all?”

  “I’ve asked, but no one’s talking. If they’d talked, d’you think I’d be sitting here and not getting the bastard what did Vince…”

  “Leave it to us,” he cut in. “This mob’s too rough to tangle with.”

  She looked at him with scorn.

  He’d been hoping she would have learned something useful. But she hadn’t. So now he must continue bashing the pavements, developing still better blisters.

  *

  The telephone rang and immediately Heather knew an ugly, chest-thumping tension. She waited for several rings, stood up and crossed round the end of the settee to the phone. “Five seven three double two,” she said, her voice high.

  “Is that Mrs. Rowan?”

  The voice was so brisk and impersonal that initially she knew a relief believing this could not be the call she had been dreading. “Yes, it is.”

  “You’ll be glad to hear the photos have come out well.”

  She gripped the receiver with a hand that suddenly trembled. “What… what do you want?”

  “Full cooperation. We’ve something we want collected from a ship. Carry out the job successfully and we’ll give you all the negatives and prints.”

  “What d’you mean, collect something? Collect what?”

  “Go to the tobacconist in Whitelaw Road and say your name’s Mrs. Rowan and he’ll give you a parcel. In it will be a brassière and girdle, your size, and a dock pass saying you’re working for a travel firm. Put the bra and girdle on and go into the docks and aboard the Southern Planet. On C deck, starboard side, there are women’s lavatories. Be in the right-hand cubicle at eleven-thirty. A woman will enter the next cubicle to it and will whistle a bit from ‘Tipperary’. You whistle a bit from ‘God Save the Queen’. She’ll pass over a bra and a girdle and you give her yours. Put on the one she gives you and return ashore. If anyone asks questions, you’re looking at things for your boss who’s fixing up package cruises. When you get home, put the bra and girdle in a brown paper parcel, seal the parcel with wax, address it to Smith, and leave it at the same tobacconist.”

  “And the photos?”

  “They’ll be posted to you in a blue envelope. So make certain it’s not your husband who opens the mail.” He cut the connection.

  She replaced the receiver. She did not think about why she’d been ordered to do what she had, only that if she were successful she’d get the photos and could destroy them so that Fred would never know.

  *

  Brigadier Row, sitting very upright, cleared his throat. He fiddled with a coat button and stared quickly at the chief constable, at Detective Chief Inspector Kywood, and then at the far window. “I don’t normally interfere with matters than can be said to be wholly within your jurisdiction,” he said, his voice not as resolute as usual.

  The chief constable, a retired colonel who’d been appointed years before when many chief constables of small police forces came from the armed forces, nodded: his expression, usually fairly easily interpreted, was enigmatic.

  Brigadier Row could sense the antagonistic atmosphere. He spoke a shade louder, forcing more command into his voice. “But I am alarmed about the rising crime figures. I had a word with the chairman and he fully agreed to my discussing them with you.”

  The chief constable, looking far more the typical retired army officer than Row, said: “Yes, sir?” He was an able man, despite his walrus-like appearance.

  “The numbers of muggings have risen over ten per cent in the last six months.”

  The chief constable looked at Kywood. Kywood said: “That’s unfortunately true, sir. But nationally they’ve gone up even more. It’s a case of crime imitating well publicised crime. Muggings have hit the headlines…”

  “I’m well aware of that, Kywood.” Row succeeded only in sounding petulant. “But none of that excuses our failures.”

  Kywood leaned back in his chair, on the far side of the oval table, his rather beady brown eyes fixed on Row.

  “Housebreakings have risen by seven per cent in the last month.”

  “It’s never very safe,” said the chief constable, “to quote figures over so short a space of time.”

  “Are you denying the extra housebreakings?” demanded Row.

  “No, sir. I’m merely saying…”

  “And it’s the same with robberies. There is a sharply rising incidence of crime. You cannot get round that fact.”

  Kywood rubbed his square chin, which offered so inaccurate a guide to his character.

  “Yet despite these soaring crime figures, I’m told the entire Fortrow police force is spending its time doing no more than chase up the prostitutes.”

  Kywood said: “Who told you that, sir?”

  Row looked at Kywood with dislike. “Does it make any difference? Despite all this extra crime, the police are concerned only with the town’s prostitutes. Damn it, we’re all men of the world. Prostitutes are a way of life and nothing…”

  “We are concerned with investigating the death of Wraight, sir,” said Kywood.

  “A man living off the earnings of a prostitute.”

  “Killed because an organisation is trying to move into town. It’s got to be crushed before it gets so tight a hold that in practical terms it can’t be.”

  “Organisation. What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “A new mob, sir, sharply organised, taking over the prostitutes and the drug traffic because that’s where the big money is. Using every possible means to make people cooperate with them: killing as an example, perhap
s blackmailing…” Kywood’s tone of voice invested his last word with special significance.

  Brigadier Row slowly flushed. He fiddled more quickly with the button of his coat. “I still think you’ve got your priorities very wrong,” he muttered. “You should be concentrating far more on the general crime, the kind that affects the ordinary law-abiding citizen and not immoral criminals.” He stood up. “The chairman fully agrees with me on that score.” He turned and strode out of the conference room.

  The chief constable took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to Kywood. Kywood flicked open his lighter.

  “Well?” said the chief constable.

  Normally, Kywood never expressed an opinion that could put him out on a limb, yet now he said, his voice bitter: “They’ve got him. Blackmailed him into trying to get some of the heat lifted because we’re upsetting the trade of the Toms.”

  The chief constable smoked, puffing furiously at his cigarette. “Yes… It’s bloody to see what can happen to a man… Especially a man like him. What d’you reckon they’ve got him on? It can’t be money because he’s wealthy. Drugs?”

  “I very much doubt it. Women, more like. Probably he’s been hot after the Toms and someone’s got proof and has squeezed him hard enough to come here.”

  “I’ve met Mrs. Row…” The chief constable smoked for a while. “You’ll do all you can to get proof of what’s undoubtedly happened and if you succeed he’ll be charged.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know, I know… It’s near impossible to get proof of blackmail and in a court of law his visit here would not be held to be an attempt to subvert justice. Nevertheless, you’ll try.” The chief constable stubbed out his cigarette. “Naturally, you’ll ignore everything he said… It’s a cancer. The town’s going to start to go rotten.”

  “No, sir,” snapped Kywood. “They’ll never get that far. With our force, we’ll cut ’em out of it before they can cause too much damage.” There was a pride in his voice that many would have said so opportunist a man could not have possessed.

  “I hope to God you’re right! …They’ll try to subvert one or more policemen.”