On the cupboard surface was lying a powerful pair of binoculars. Beside it on the floor were two suitcases, small, the soft cover type, one blue and one brown.
I did not look out of the window. The drawers down one side of the cupboard, and the shelves in the other half, were empty. I flung the suitcases on the bed, confident that they would not be locked, as the keys would have disappeared years before.
Both contained womens’ clothes. Girls’, rather, because these must have been Tina’s. Yes, Tina’s. A tattered old teddy bear was packed down the edge of one of them. I shut them quickly; I’ll never be able to examine other people’s intimate possessions without shame.
When I got downstairs again, George was explaining to Fletcher the disadvantage of having a broken hand, and outlining in what way it prevented the wearer of a plaster cast from evading questions.
‘He was just saying,’ George told me, ‘that he’s taking her things to a jumble sale.’
‘Her teddy bear, too?’ I asked. ‘See anything, George?’
‘I saw your lights flashing.’
I nodded at Fletcher, smiling, trying to pretend to myself that I didn’t hate him.
‘All it means,’ I explained, ‘is that you could have seen where George threw the shotgun. Why the binoculars?’
‘Tina’s. She liked to watch the birds.’
‘They’d be worth around twice as much as all the rest she owned. They’re yours, Fletcher.’
‘Please yourself. I like to watch birds, too.’
‘He’s being awkward,’ said George, easing himself from the mantel.
‘Let me ask him, George. Now, Mr. Fletcher, politely I’m asking you about those cases — upstairs.’
‘Should you mention them, Dave?’ George asked wickedly.
Fletcher glanced at him, frowning. ‘I packed ‘er stuff up.’
‘I happen to know she’d spoken to other people about going away. I’m suggesting she packed them herself.’
‘I did it.’
‘They’re too neat. Even a young girl knows how to pack her things. She did that.’
He shrugged, the movement of the sling causing him pain. ‘Maybe she did.’
‘Maybe, or really?’
‘Or-right. So she did.’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere. You’re saying that on the night she was killed she packed her things.’
He grumbled to himself.
‘Pardon? I didn’t hear that.’
‘I said, I suppose she must’ve,’ he shouted. ‘Then why didn’t she take them with her, if she was leaving home?’
He became frantic. ‘She wasna. She’d’ve come back.’
George interrupted. ‘I saw something once. A chap like you, in a plaster cast up to his elbow, and some not very nice people didn’t like him. They hung his arm down and poured boiling water into the cast. Nasty. When they tried to get the cast off—’
‘All right, George. Give him time. Why didn’t she take the cases, Fletcher?’
There was terror in his eyes now. ‘I dunno.’
‘Did you prevent her, by force?’
‘No. No, you ain’t gunna say that!’
‘Your kettle’s boiling,’ said George. Fletcher screamed and fell across the table trying to get out. I caught him by the collar. ‘Is that the truth?’
‘She...she took ‘em with her,’ he cried, almost weeping, gibbering with fear.
Behind him George laughed in disbelief. The kettle made a small grating sound as he slid it off the flame, and there was a pop when he turned off the gas.
‘Give me a minute, George,’ I pleaded. ‘If she took them, how is it they’re here?’
‘They was brought back.’
‘Now don’t come that...’
‘They was! I tell yer, they was brought back.’
‘Who by?’
‘By...’ He choked on his own spittle. ‘By Reuben.’
‘Reuben brought the cases back? How did he come by them?’
‘He found ‘em, in the road, by his gate.’
I released him. Not only was it so unlikely as to be true, but it also happened to fit. His head went down on the table, and now he was weeping in earnest.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I advised him. ‘There’s a small matter of grievous bodily harm to answer for.’
George patted him on the head as he walked past. Fletcher’s nose flattened against the table.
‘I brewed your tea,’ he said.
There was no question of the long way round, going back. I wanted to see Thwaites in a hurry.
‘You think you’ve got him nailed, Dave?’ said George pleasantly.
‘What for?’
‘Tina,’ he said surprisingly. He elaborated. ‘She was leaving home. Suitcase in each hand. Defenceless. He ran after her in one of his rages, and strangled her, and Reuben knew something because he found the cases.’
‘You’d do anything, George, just anything, to confuse the issue over Collis’s death.’
‘I wasn’t talking about Collis.’
‘But you were. Inversely, so to speak. If Fletcher had killed Tina, he’d have had no motive to shoot Collis, so your bit about him spotting where the gun was thrown is irrelevant.’
‘You don’t have to sound so smug, Dave. I just tossed it in.’
‘Then toss it out again. There’s the sexual assault.’
‘So?’
‘You’re not suggesting…’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. But he’s rotten enough.’
‘His own step-child? George, they’d crucify him for that, round here. These sort of people, they’re a bit old-fashioned.’
He laughed, condescending to me, now. ‘That sort of thing’s older than fashion, Dave. Remember Oedipus?’ He seemed placid.
I drove a bit faster, getting away from the idea.
The last two hundred yards was difficult. The police station was besieged, and the overflow carried into the main street.
‘What the hell is it, George?’
He’d got the window down his side, and was shouting questions as I edged through. He withdrew it, his face red.
‘They are old-fashioned. They don’t like the police arresting Andy Partridge for exterminating Collis.’
‘Oh Lord!’
I managed to get into the relative quiet of the pub yard, but even from there you could hear the rise and fall of the angry and dangerous tumult.
‘You go on in if you like, George. I’ve got to see Thwaites.’
‘Not me, mate. I’m gonna join in the fun. I don’t like it, either.’
And like a great over-grown schoolboy he marched off towards the centre of it, practising as he went. ‘Fascist pigs! Commie gauleiters!’ No harm in embracing all his dislikes together.
‘We’d better go round the back,’ said Williamson from the shadows. ‘We’ll never get in at the front.’
‘I wanted to see him.’
‘He wanted to see you. Alone.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
I hadn’t realised that Thwaites’s office overlooked the street, but it was at once evident. Thwaites was standing a little back from the window, hands in his trousers pockets, watching the scene with interest. I felt insecure. Thwaites was relaxed.
He did not ask me to sit down.
‘They’re going to take this place apart, brick by brick,’ I said.
‘I intend to put a stop to it.’
‘There’s no love lost for Collis.’
‘I’ll go along with that.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Go and look out of the window.’
I went. At the sight of my face there was a howl that made me flinch, but then they were distracted. A shout went up and became a roar, and beneath me, into the streetlight, stepped Andy Partridge.
‘The mist’s lifting,’ I said.
‘Soon see things clearer.’
I turned to face him. ‘Why have you let him go?’
The tension behind me in the streets was flying
away on the gusts of wild welcome. ‘Because I didn’t think he’d done anything.’
‘There’s a thousand people out there you’ve convinced he did.’
‘Mass hysteria.’
I considered him. ‘You had the footprint and the tyre print.’
‘Nothing in themselves.’
‘The blood on the leather coat.’
‘He said he had an accident, a little while back. Somebody put his coat under his head. He and Collis have the same blood group.’
‘Stretching it a bit, aren’t you?’
Thwaites shrugged. ‘There was also the question of the gun.’
‘He could have seen where the gun was thrown into the ditch.’
He was shaking his head slowly, that half smile of his on his lips. ‘The wound was made by the discharge of two barrels.’
‘My partner says no.’
‘Your partner, Mr. Mallin, is known to me. He was weapons expert for the Midlands, when I was a constable on the beat. But no expert could tell more at a glance than the Medical Examiner on the table.’
‘He seemed definite.’
‘Coe was talking about both barrels at the same time. Close to, you get a sort of oval wound. This was round, you see, that’s what put him off. Two barrels, one after the other, precisely in the same spot.’
I was silent for a moment. Then I realised I was fitting it in, seeing how that left George. ‘He’s quite a character,’ said Thwaites.
‘You mean it wasn’t that gun?’
‘I mean that if it was, then Andy Partridge didn’t use it. Think about it. There’d be quite a bit of wangling involved...’ He plucked at his lip. ‘I remember the first time I saw him. Sergeant Coe, at that time. I was in on a job in Brum, digging out two characters who’d strangled a child they’d kidnapped. They’d got shotguns, now I come to recall it. Coe was the plain clothes man who’d traced them to an old warehouse. He went in alone, round the back. We waited, two dozen of us, for his signal, but all we got was one hell of an uproar, guns going off, and screams. When we got in there, one of ‘em had hardly got any face left, and the other...they never mended his arm properly.’
‘Why’re you telling me this?’
‘I knew he wouldn’t make Inspector. Takes the law into his own hands. Lets his feelings dictate to him.’
‘Which you never do?’
He laughed easily. ‘I’ve trained myself. It makes life easier. But your friend...you realise he killed Collis, of course.’
I was aware that it had gone quiet outside. I went to the window, but there was no sign of George in the empty street. Never around when I needed him.
‘You can rely on George to be unpredictable.’
‘You agree it’s very possible, then?’
‘All I can be certain is that he wouldn’t deliberately lie to me. If you’re correct, then it’s been one deception after the other.’
‘I don’t find that difficult to accept.’
‘Not difficult,’ I admitted, ‘if you’ve trained yourself, as you claim to have done.’
‘He’s capable of it?’
‘Of course. Capable of anything.’
‘And clever enough?’
‘Look here — what did you get me here for? If you think I’m going to fill in all your gaps, then you’re going to be unlucky.’
At last he went and sat down at his desk. Still there was no paperwork in evidence.
‘I don’t need your help in that way,’ he said at last. He shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, I can put a case together from one end to the other, and tell you exactly what he did and why...except for one small point.’
‘Now we’re coming to it.’
He steepled his fingers, a habit of his. ‘That meeting, Collis and his sister-in-law, was carefully arranged. Secretly. Coe says he followed the woman in Collis’s car. We have to accept that, too, because he describes it on his tape, exactly as she tells it.’
‘You’ve played it over?’
‘He leaves his car open. We have a copy. Their respective movements are confirmed up to one specific time — when he lost the BMW. Now — you get my point — for George Coe to have killed Collis he would have had to be able to get to the meeting place before she did.’ He hummed to himself, considering his words. ‘And she herself barely had time.’
‘That’s what she said. In the post that morning...’
‘We’ve done some checking. She gets her post delivered around 7.15. The postman remembers a package that morning.’
‘A package?’
‘Anything larger than an ordinary letter is a package. This was ten inches by eight. She showed me the envelope. It had his official name and office address printed in the top left-hand corner. The postmark was 5.30 the previous day, the postage first class. She had destroyed the contents. You see how impossible it was for a third party to know about the site of the meeting.’
‘But nevertheless, you say that George knew.’
‘I say that he had to. I simply do not know how.’
I stared at him, fascinated. ‘You’re asking me to find that out for you?’
‘You’d be doing me a favour.’
‘Bring him in, why don’t you, charge him, question him...’
He was looking at me with a slight smile, then he spread his hands expressively.
‘But you’re completely naïve!’ I burst out. ‘To imagine I’d do such a thing!’
‘You know me,’ he said blandly. ‘You know the type. I press ahead with my career. No feelings involved, Mallin, and no regrets. I’m not going to have an unsolved murder on my books. Come what may. And what will come, sooner or later, is an arrest and a trial, and some poor blighter is going to get it in the neck, just to make sure my reputation doesn’t suffer. You wouldn’t want that — now would you. For your friend, you’ll help me, because he’ll only suffer if I build up a good case against somebody else.’
‘Oh, cut it out.’
‘Then you’ll help?’
‘Anybody as pitiful as you deserves a hand-out.’
‘You’re very understanding.’
‘I’ll get some truth out of him somehow. But not for you, Thwaites. For me, mate, for me.’
‘I’ll look forward to seeing you again, then.’ I made for the door. ‘I didn’t say I’d be
back.’
But he held the smile, sweeping me with it right out into the corridor.
Had I remembered to bring my pipe? Yes, I had. I knocked it out viciously on his wall, then marched away, ramming the tobacco home too tight in my agitation. Then I headed for George, where I knew he would be, the public bar of the Crown.
Reaching there was one thing, getting in was another. Being the nearest pub, naturally they had all headed there, bearing aloft, I heard later, Andy Partridge in a haze of delight. It wasn’t simply a matter of being freed from arrest. He knew it, the whole blasted town knew it. The triumph was that he had killed Collis, was known to all and sundry to have killed him, and he’d got away with it.
They packed the corridors and wedged open the outside doors. The Snug was unbearable, the Smoke Room was thick, but it was in the Public that he reigned. I forced my way through, swearing, but the mood was such that I aroused laughter rather than resentment.
They had Andy on a bar stool in the centre of the bar, with a space around him. He clutched a glass dazedly, his face beaming and hot, his eyes blurred with tears. Nothing like this had ever happened to Andy. If he cleared his throat, they cheered. The din was immense, and it was his noise. He possessed it, and they possessed him. It was his heaven.
George was just to one side of him at the bar, in a proprietorial position, like a trainer basking in the reflected glory of his lightweight.
I said: ‘George, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Give the man a bitter,’ he shouted. He was obviously several ahead of me.
‘How you can drink with a murderer...’
My words were drowned in a tu
mult of jeers and laughter.
‘Shake his hand, Dave,’ George roared. ‘Go on, Andy, stick out your fist.’
‘It’s too sore.’ He blushed, even redder than he had been.
‘I suppose everybody thinks it’s just bloody marvellous,’ I said, looking round to challenge the opposition. ‘It’s all a great bit of fun. But I’ve just come from the Station. You listen to this, Andy my lad. Because you could well be sitting on a bundle of dynamite.’
‘They let me go,’ he appealed. ‘They said I was free.’
‘For now, you young fool, for now.’
‘Leave him alone,’ somebody bellowed. I held up my hand.
‘They’ve got a case against you, Andy. Make no mistake.’
‘Footprints, Dave? Tyre prints? What’s that?’ George was suddenly more sober.
‘More than that. There’s the gun.’
There were cheers for that gun. Andy grinned delightedly.
‘There’s the fact,’ I cried, raising my voice, ‘that you followed the red car. Always you followed Collis, wherever he went, and if he was in a red MGB, then you followed that.’
Andy licked his lips. Then he grinned. ‘Sure I followed him.’
‘Then you blasted him, and went and hid in the trees because there was another car coming.’
‘What’s this, Dave?’
I waved George down. ‘Let him have a good look at it. It ain’t funny. What about it, Andy?’
He clung desperately to his triumph. ‘It’s what you said.’
‘Then it’s true? Say it out loud.’
‘I blasted him, and hid in the trees.’
Another cheer. Andy was doing well.
‘Then afterwards you followed her?’
He shook his head. There was a general inrush of breath. Out in the corridors, in the Snug and in the Smoke Room, they were silent, craning to hear. I had them now, my audience. Andy’s audience. We held them with the mention of a woman.
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