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

by Roderic Jeffries

  There was a notice on the door of number fourteen which said that Margot ‘gave French lessons’. He rang the bell and the maid let him in. When he said he wanted to see Margot, she just jerked her head towards the stairs.

  There were four doors around the square landing upstairs and on three of these were the names of women. He knocked on the door labelled “Margot”.

  She opened the door and said automatically: “Hullo, love. Come on in.” Then she studied him, summing him up professionally, and instantly became wary. “I don’t think…”

  “C.I.D.,” he said shortly. He entered and went over to the only chair and sat down.

  “Why can’t you leave me alone?” she protested. “I’ve a friend coming soon and I don’t want you around, lumbering things up.”

  “Tell your friend to come back later,” he answered. “If he’s eager, he’ll keep.” He studied her.

  She thumped down on the corner of the bed. She decided she daren’t protest too hard at his behaviour or he’d pass the word round to have her place watched really hard. “What d’you want?” she demanded.

  “Information,” he answered briefly.

  “You won’t get nothing from me. As I’ve told all them other splits, I don’t know nothing and if I did, I wouldn’t say.”

  “You and Steve Allen worked together.”

  She reached over to the bedside table, careless that her short skirt rode up over her thighs, and picked up a pack of cigarettes. She lit a cigarette.

  “They took Steve apart, didn’t they? Beat him up close to croaking. Why?”

  “How would I know?”

  “What was it? Didn’t he like the mob taking over from him?”

  “If you know all the answers,” she sneered, “quit asking the questions.”

  “They made a right and permanent mess of him. How’d you find him mentally when he came out of hospital?”

  “I didn’t. I never saw him.”

  “Come off it. He visited you.”

  Her voice rose. “Who’s telling them bleeding lies?”

  “He wanted some folding stuff to help him along.” She drew heavily on the cigarette and stared fixedly at the door.

  “And while he was here, he learned something, didn’t he? Something you told him?”

  “I didn’t tell him nothing.”

  “You told him the day the next consignment of heroin was due in.”

  She was very frightened now and she exploded into a torrent of words. “You’re crazy, mister, I didn’t tell him nothing. I don’t know nothing about H. He wanted some money and I gave him a tenner and that was the end. He left and I ain’t seen him since.”

  “How did you learn about the heroin?”

  “I just told you…”

  “So now try again.”

  She got up and crossed to the bedside table to stub out the cigarette. “Get out,” she said.

  “Like a shot. Once you’ve given me the news.”

  “I don’t know nothing.”

  “Why not make it easy for yourself?”

  “Make it easy?” she sneered. “That’s all you splits can say. But what kind of easy? Easy to get my throat slit? D’you think I’m tired of life? I don’t like it much, but I ain’t that tired of it. So I don’t know nothing. Plain bloody nothing. And you can’t prove anything else.”

  He was sorry for her because she was so scared, but he had to break her down. “Have you been peddling heroin as well as entertaining?”

  “No.”

  “A lot of the girls have been. The courts are getting sharp these days with anyone who peddles. The last bloke I heard about drew a ten-spot from the judge.”

  “So?”

  “I’d say if you were lucky, you’d get three, unless the judge had a bad do of rumble-guts. Wouldn’t be much help being a woman because we’d have to tell the court you’re a Tom and that gets everyone very sanctimonious.”

  She told him to leave the house in terms that came straight from the gutter.

  He slowly stood up. “I’m going to search this room.”

  “Like muck you are! D’you think I started yesterday? If you ain’t got a search warrant, you’re not searching anything.”

  He walked across to the wardrobe and she stepped close to her panic button. “Don’t play it rough,” he said casually. That way, you’ll be in the deep end and there won’t be anything I can do to help you out.”

  She hesitated, her finger on the button, trying to evaluate his threat. He opened the cupboard door, reached in amongst the clothing, and after a short while he brought out the medicine bottle with the yellow capsules. He handed it to her and unthinkingly she took hold of it. When she realised what she’d done, she dropped the bottle, but he was ready for this and he caught it. He then held it by the plastic lid so that her fingerprints shouldn’t be disturbed. “These days they’re selling H in capsules,” he said

  “You… you planted it!” Fortrow had for so long had a police force free of venality that she was truly shocked by this open show of crookedness. “You’re a split yet you planted it.” She cursed him, again using gutter language only this time her voice expressed fright.

  He wrapped the bottle in a handkerchief and dropped this in his coat pocket.

  “I’ll tell the court you planted it…” she began wildly.

  “I’m a split, ducks. Courts believe me, if they can. Anyway, the Toms of this town are pushing heroin so we’ll find someone who bought heroin from you — or if we can’t, we’ll chat up someone who owes us a strong favour.”

  She became more wildly bewildered. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for this naked use of planted evidence and false testimony. Her mind pictured a judge sentencing her to long imprisonment and she began to panic.

  He spoke quietly and with persuasive smoothness. “Tell me who you heard the info from and I’ll forget everything. Even leave you the bottle with the heroin.”

  She moistened her lips with her tongue. If they ever discovered she’d grassed… Yet if she didn’t grass… Like anybody else threatened by two opposed dangers, she chose to avert the more immediate one in the blind hope that the other would just fade away. “Pete Faraday,” she whispered, as if to speak loudly was to betray herself.

  Chapter 15

  Detective Chief Inspector Weir was the kind of man Fusil would become if only he could learn to compromise when this was obviously advantageous, to accept that political pressures while unwelcome were inevitable, to keep one eye cocked towards public relations, and to understand that there was more to running a successful police force in a democracy than catching crooks.

  He shook hands with Fusil in the latter’s office. “Hullo, Bob. How long is it since we last met? Three, four years?” He had a pleasant easy manner, but his authority always stayed with him.

  Fusil offered a chair and they sat down. For a while they reminisced about the time when they served in the same division of another county force, then Weir brought their conversation round to the present case after saying that a detective sergeant from county would be joining him later that day and could he have some sort of office for the two of them.

  Weir smoked herbal cigarettes and one of his failings was an urge to convert other smokers to the same habit. He offered a pack to Fusil and looked upset when Fusil bluntly refused. “D’you still stink the world out with that filthy pipe of yours? If you saw what it did to your lungs and mouth, you wouldn’t. At your age, you ought to start thinking of your health more.”

  “At my age,” retorted Fusil, “I’ve precious little health left to think about.”

  Weir lit a herbal cigarette. “There’s no convincing some people until they drop down dead… All right, let’s have the facts in this case, including all those that won’t appear in any official report.”

  Fusil gave a résumé of the facts.

  Weir leaned back in his chair and smoked with great care, exhaling in measured puffs. “You’ve painted the picture of a bloke who’s good
but moody, usually efficient but can be unreliable, high on intelligence and low on personal relations. So what’s biting him? Trouble at home?” he asked shrewdly.

  “I’ve heard a rumour or two to that effect.”

  “What about money problems?”

  “I doubt in those simple terms. His wife models and she’s supposed to do fairly well and so she’ll be bringing a fair amount into the house. But when a man gets offered a real greasing… thousands of quid…”

  Weir waited, but Fusil didn’t finish. “A wife earning more than the man can cause a lot of trouble. It must have occurred to you, Bob, that the motive for Rowan’s betrayal, if he did betray, can easily lie outside the usual one of money?”

  Fusil nodded, not willing to admit that he still knew too much bitter anger at the thought of Rowan’s turning traitor to have worried deeply about motive.

  “You’ve no ideas?”

  “None, sir, of any value at this stage.”

  Weir had to relight his cigarette. “We’ll start off with all the usual checks — bank accounts, savings accounts, unusually high standard of living… But I’d say we’re going to have to use our imagination. What are the chances we find it’s something to do with his wife?” Fusil didn’t try to answer.

  *

  Rowan pressed home the coins into the coin-box and the line was clear. He spoke to Records at New Scotland Yard. “Fortrow Borough Police here: Detective Constable Rowan.”

  “Yeah? Well, we can’t all live in decent, respectable towns, so don’t apologise. What’s the latest trouble?” asked a cheerful voice.

  “I need all the gen you’ve got on Pete Faraday.”

  “Let’s have some more details, then, to narrow the field.”

  “There’s nothing more, except he’s working for a top mob and they are specialising in Toms and heroin.”

  “One thing you aren’t aiming to do, is to make life easy. What’s wrong with making your own county records sweat this one out?”

  “They’ve nothing on him.”

  “O.K. I’m kind-hearted to a degree, so I’ll see what we’ve got. You can ring back later in case I’ve got some news. You’re sending in a PX form, of course?”

  “It’ll be in the post in the next couple of hours.”

  “Don’t forget to get your D.I. to sign it: the last one we had through that wasn’t countersigned nearly drove us crazy.”

  Rowan thanked the other man and rang off. County Records might well have a file on Faraday, but they would know that D.C. Rowan had been suspended.

  He had coffee at a downbeat cafe, walked back into the centre of town and spent an hour or so in a couple of bookshops, then rang London again. After asking if he was always this eager and if so how come he wasn’t detective superintendent, the other man told him that Pete Faraday was thirty-five, six feet tall, well-built, dark haired, small scar at right hand corner of the mouth, and a snappy dresser. Graduated through Approved School and Borstal to one term in prison for armed robbery: other convictions escaped through the machinations of clever lawyers. Tough, sharp, clever. Worked for one of the South London mobs before that was forcibly dissolved. Suspected of organising prostitutes in Birmingham three years back. Present address and associates not known. Did Rowan want the file sent on down and, if so, would he add a T supplement to the PX form.

  It took Rowan the rest of the day and up until eight that night before he finally learned where Faraday was living.

  *

  “What are you doing?” asked Heather, as she opened the oven door.

  “As little as possible and that as seldom as possible,” Rowan answered. He perched himself on the edge of the kitchen table.

  She checked that the steak and kidney pies were almost ready, closed the oven door, and stood up, a few beads of sweat on her brow. She crossed to where he sat and put her hands on his shoulders. “Fred, I asked you a question. Please answer me: dead straight.”

  He debated what to say, then told her the truth. “I’m doing all I can to identify the man at the top of the mob.”

  “Why?”

  “When I know who he is, I can do something about getting hold of the photos and the parcel.”

  She drew in her breath sharply. “But… but how?”

  “Once I’ve identified him, I’ll think of a way.”

  She visually searched his face. “Fred, you suddenly looked… Cruel. I’m scared. I’m scared for you and about you. You’re changing.”

  “You’re imagining things,” he said, almost roughly.

  “You’re becoming hard. Yet you’ve always been so kind and gentle.”

  He wondered how she could have forgotten all the terrible things he had said in the past to her and he marvelled at the power of the love she knew for him.

  Her grip on his shoulders tightened. “What exactly are you doing? What have you done today?”

  He reached up and caressed her hands with his thumbs. His voice, though he tried to speak quietly, became harsh. “I blackmailed a woman into giving me information I had to have.”

  “You… you blackmailed someone? You’ve got to be making a bad joke, Fred. You’ve always said what a horrible crime blackmail is.”

  “They blackmailed you. There’s a saying, you can only fight fire with fire.”

  She spoke fiercely. “And there’s another saying, you can’t play with fire without being burned: and also you can’t touch pitch without being dirtied.”

  “If I’ve got to be dirtied, then that’s the way it is.” His voice rose. “God Almighty! d’you think I care what happens to me, only so long as I can free you?”

  “I… I don’t know that it would be worth it: not if you were so terribly changed.”

  “Not even for Tracy’s sake?”

  She was silent.

  He lowered his hands and put them round her waist and gently pulled her even closer to himself. “Heather, my darling, when it’s your family or them, it can’t matter what weapons are used: all that matters is that no harm comes to the family.”

  “But haven’t people been using that sort of argument for centuries to justify the most beastly things?”

  Right then, he didn’t know, or care. History was the dead past. All he knew was that there was no act so appalling that he could not commit it if by committing it he might save his family.

  *

  From the driving seat of his car, Rowan watched the constable walk down the well-lit pavement at regulation pace and he was sardonically astonished to discover that he experienced a sudden tension. The constable drew abreast of the Mini, on the far side of the road, and did not look across but walked on, towards the shops which offered so much more obviously attractive targets for criminals than the houses he was passing.

  Rowan settled back in the seat. He longed for a cigarette, but could remember at least two villains who’d been identified because injudiciously lit cigarettes had momentarily illuminated their faces when they were casing prospective marks. There was irony in the fact that he was putting all his police knowledge into service in the cause of villaining. Villaining? he suddenly thought. He was nothing but a rank, raw amateur about to gamble at odds no level-headed punter would look at.

  The house down the road in which Faraday lived was in darkness, but the street lighting enabled him to make out its general outline. It was detached, not large, with two upstairs windows and downstairs one bay window and one door. To the side was a wooden door, giving access to the back garden, and six feet of wooden fencing. His information had been solely that Faraday was living here: with whom, under what conditions, he didn’t know.

  He was wearing new plimsolls, one size too large, with two pairs of thick woollen socks to take up the slack space: if he left a footprint, it would be of a brand of plimsoll sold in tens of thousands and of a foot which took a larger size shoe than he did. He had on new blue overalls, bought at another multiple store, with the name tab cut out: afterwards — assuming there was to be an afterwards — they would be
burned. He had two pairs of thin plastic gloves in his pockets and a new beret, name tab removed, to put on his head so that no incriminating traces should settle in his hair. In a small bag was a hammer, a tin of strong adhesive, mutton cloth, a flick knife, a flexible strip of plastic, a cosh, a torch, a ball of string, an unworn nylon, and some crude skeleton keys made by himself.

  It was nearly one o’clock. He’d thought a lot about Faraday, trying to fill in from the sparse details Records had given him what kind of a man he would be faced by. Faraday surely wasn’t the boss — he hadn’t the experience, the age, or probably the ability, to create so successful an organisation. He was smart, sharp, tough, and it was no good planting heroin in his place and threatening him with imprisonment if he didn’t talk: he’d laugh at that sort of gambit. A bribe wouldn’t work. He’d be making so much in the organisation that a real fortune would be needed even to tempt him. Violence…?

  Clouds drifted across the sky to cut off the moon, now in its first quarter, and the leaves of the trees began to rustle as a breeze started. A motorbike went up the road, with a woman on the pillion seat: two cars, one going very slowly and the other overtaking it as they drew level with the Mini, went down the road, heading towards the centre of the town.

  He heard a distant clock strike once: a quarter past one. Time to move. He suddenly knew a reluctance so great that it took all his willpower to force himself to leave the car. Fear or foresight? he wondered, as he put on a pair of gloves.

  He crossed the road and walked along the pavement, moving without hesitation because should anyone be watching — no one was in sight, but in any suburban road there was always the possibility someone was awake — it was hesitation, the suggestion that the person was not entitled to be doing what he was doing, that would attract attention. He opened the three foot high gate, which squealed faintly, and walked along the fake crazy-paving to the wooden side door. He tried the handle to make certain it was locked — two years before they’d arrested burglars who’d spent much of the night trying to cut through the back of a safe when in fact it had inadvertently been left unlocked — and it was. He took from the bag the half dozen, double ended, skeleton keys and the second one forced the lock.