*
The photograph of Alfred Rachan appeared in the Gazette. Knowledge of his present whereabouts was wanted by the Fortrow police, but he was not to be made aware of any police interest in him.
*
P.C. Elwick strolled down the high street of the Midland town of Sasshurst, to the north of Birmingham. He stopped and admired his reflection in the window of the furniture store. Two days ago he had completed his probationary period of service and now he was a fully-fledged P.C., both feet firmly on the ladder which led straight up to chief constable.
He looked through his reflection at the furniture. It was a hell of a price. Fifty-eight quid for a chair that looked like half an ostrich’s egg perched on top of three knitting needles.
He walked on. A couple of luscious bits of crackling went by in the opposite direction and when one of them caught his eye, she giggled. He came to a cinema and the advertisement for the film said it was real hot stuff. He made a mental note to go and see it.
The sergeant appeared, walking up from the crossroads. Elwick straightened his shoulders. The sergeant was a bit of an old fool, but he advised the inspector on the men’s six-monthly reports. The sergeant stopped and asked if everything was in order? Of course it was. P.C. Elwick was in charge.
The sergeant carried on, back to the station, and Elwick walked down to the traffic lights, where he turned right. He came to the gunsmith’s and stared at a row of shotguns and .22 rifles. When he’d been a kid he’d done some shooting and proved himself to be no mean shot. He wouldn’t mind having a crack at a pheasant or two. He turned away and came face to face with a man who had just stepped off a double-decker bus and whose photo had been in the latest issue of the Gazette.
He saw the expression on Elwick’s face and began to run. Instinctively, Elwick grabbed hold of him. He kicked out but just missed Elwick’s shin and Elwick slammed home a blow of which the Marquis of Queensberry would have greatly disapproved.
That, said Elwick to himself, as he dragged the man to his feet, had shown memory and initiative. It was only as he began to force the other to walk along the pavement in the direction of the police station that he went on to remember the request not to allow Alfred Rachan to realise the police were interested in him.
*
Fusil sat in his office, listening to the voice over the telephone. “He what?” Anger thickened his voice. “Can’t the young fool read? It’s a very great pity your P.C. didn’t get kicked where it really hurts… Look, when I take the trouble to ask all police officers to… All right, so it’s happened. Where’s Rachan living then? You what? You don’t know? Goddamn it, man, there must have been something on him? No papers of any sort? What about money? Fifteen quid in one-pound notes… You do realise, don’t you, that we must find out where he lives at once? There’s over ninety thousand quid at stake and we’ve got to get it before it disappears…”
When the call was over, Fusil slumped back in the chair. It was typical of this case that they ended up with a man who had stepped off a bus and that was that. Ninety thousand pounds lay around somewhere, but no one knew where. Rachan was married and his wife had a record. Almost certainly, he’d spent his weekends with her when he’d been living with Mrs. Sparrow and ‘visited his cousin’. Right now, she’d be guarding the ninety thousand and when he didn’t return she’d very soon become uneasy. The next thing, she’d vanish and by the time the law caught up with her, if it ever did, the money would be too well hidden ever to be discovered.
He slammed his fist down on the desk. Goddamn the stupidity of the constable. The inspector on the telephone had tried to shield his man by saying that if Rachan hadn’t been arrested he might have vanished from sight altogether, but that was sheer bull. Once the police had known he was in the area, they’d have found him again and watched him until they could pick up the ninety thousand.
He filled his pipe. In so far as he was professionally concerned, the case was virtually over. He had cracked it and proved himself to be a damned good detective in the cracking of it. But until the ninety thousand was recovered the case could not be closed and after all the blood he’d sweated on it, that was the only result he was interested in.
He lit his pipe. He must travel with Fish or Weaver, preferably Fish, to Sasshurst and obtain an official identification of Rachan, alias Blether. It occurred to him that without the money to prove Rachan’s direct connection with the robbery and murders it was going to be a hell of a job to present the evidence in such a way that a jury could clearly follow every move.
He spoke to the switchboard operator and asked the other to get him the Moxon Security Company. Miss Wagner, the C.I.D. secretary, came in and fussed around, wanting to know if the typing was ready for her. He told her that it wasn’t and he’d let her know when it was — as he always did. She remarked that he usually forgot and was quite unperturbed by his subsequent rudeness. She thought him a wonderful man.
Chapter 16
Detective Inspector Pritchard sat in his office in Sasshurst Central Police Station and munched the last of the sandwiches that was his lunch.
His detective sergeant came in. “We’ve just heard from the bus company, sir, and the bus must have been either a number six or a number twelve. Number six starts down at the depot and goes out to Haver, number twelve comes in from Birmingham and carries through to Gilstead.”
He pushed his empty cup to one side. “Rachan wouldn’t have got on at the depot and then off almost immediately at the lights.”
“Not unless he found he was on the wrong bus.”
“No. He’d been on the Birmingham bus.” Pritchard stood up and walked over to the large-scale map of the area and measured up. “So that means there’s something like nine miles of built-up area to choose from. Still nothing from the ticket-collector?”
“No, sir. We’ve each questioned him in turn. He seems a bit simple.”
“Can’t you squeeze even a hint of something useful out of him?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what about the used tickets?”
“We’ve been through the lot in the bin and none have his dabs on them.” Pritchard unwrapped a stick of chewing gum — for the fifth time that year he was trying to give up smoking — and put it in his mouth. He began to chew. Rachan wasn’t going to talk. Throughout the interrogation earlier, held in the interview room, Rachan had sat either silent, but with a look of murderous hate in his pale blue eyes, or else he had been jeering at the police. His one remaining hope was that his wife would spirit the money away long before the police discovered where he had been living.
There had been some money on him, but no papers to suggest where he had come from. Even now, they only knew he had probably been on a bus from Birmingham. So what did they do? Distribute photos of him, call at all the houses within reasonable distance of all the bus stops along the nine miles of road? The mind boggled at the work involved and, unless fantastically lucky, the operation would take so long that Rachan’s wife would have departed long before any policeman knocked on the door of her house.
Why had Rachan been on the bus? Villains of his calibre used cars, expensive ones, to prove to everyone, and most of all to themselves, how successful they were. The most probable answer was that his car was in a garage for repairs or service. There could be a possible line of enquiry here, but once again time was the enemy — how many garages were there in the area? Hundreds, probably.
The detective sergeant broke into his thoughts. “Is that the lot for the moment, sir?”
“Yes.”
The detective sergeant left and Pritchard went on chewing.
The D.I. from Fortrow would be along in the late afternoon or early evening and he wasn’t going to stop loudly criticising the Sasshurst police. Sure the P.C. had arrested Rachan when the orders had been merely to observe and report, thought Pritchard with defensive anger, but the P.C. had been faced with making a split second decision and in such circumstances it was as easy to be wron
g as right.
The telephone rang. It was the senior scientist from the county forensic lab. Rachan’s clothes had yielded up a lot of dust and dirt of no significance and a large quantity of sawdust: the sawdust was mainly oak, but there was also a little softwood.
Pritchard replaced the receiver. He unwrapped a fresh piece of chewing grim. Rachan’s suit had been an expensive one, the kind a real villain wore. He’d never have sawn wood in that — if, indeed, he had ever done anything so innocent in his life as saw a piece of wood. Then how could he have got sawdust on to his clothes? Had he recently visited a saw-mill or a place where wood was sawn up?
Pritchard pressed down one of the intercom switches and called the detective sergeant back into the room. He gave orders for lists to be drawn up, with the help of the other police forces that would be involved, of all saw mills and all manufacturers of wooden articles which lay within one mile of the nine-mile bus route from Birmingham.
By four-fifteen that afternoon, after a tremendous effort on the part of three different police forces, Pritchard was studying the lists of wood-working firms. He ran his forefinger down the hurriedly — and often badly-typed names and addresses.
“Harry,” he suddenly cried out excitedly, “here it is!” He pointed to an entry at the bottom of the third page. “They’re manufacturers of oak garden furniture and their place is within a couple of hundred yards of the bus route. I’ll bet a thousand quid to a penny that’s the place.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” replied the detective sergeant, who was a born pessimist.
*
The manager of the workshop where the garden furniture was made looked at the photograph of Rachan and shook his head. “No, never clapped eyes on the bloke.”
Pritchard swore.
“What makes you reckon I might have done?”
“We’re pretty certain he’s been around here.”
“That’s still possible.” The manager spoke angrily. “There’s a path through by the side of the sheds over there and although it isn’t a right-of-way the public use it to get from one road to the other. We can’t shut it off during the day because our own staff…”
“Thanks a lot,” said Pritchard.
“As I was telling you, we can’t shut it off…”
Pritchard and the detective sergeant returned to the car. Pritchard drove along to the next turning to the left, went down that to crossroads and turned left again. They approached the rear entrance to the workshops and the path that was used by the public and immediately noticed the garage on the opposite side of the road. Pritchard drove into it.
“This bloke?” said the foreman, as he looked at the photograph “You’re asking me if I know him?”
“That’s the question,” said Pritchard.
“Sure, I know him. That’s his car over there. Someone backed into it and smacked the front in.” He pointed to a cream Buick convertible. “Can’t get the spare parts.”
“D’you know where he lives?”
“Round the corner, at number forty.” The detectives hurried back to their car and Pritchard called up H.Q. on the radio and asked for the nearest patrol car to be sent along immediately.
Pritchard, with two P.C.s behind him, knocked on the door of number 40, Greatwood Avenue. Mrs. Rachan opened the door, saw them, and tried to slam the door shut. She was too late. When they entered, she called them all the names she could lay her tongue to. When they found and opened the large suitcase on her bed and so uncovered all the money, she seemed to be on the verge of hysterics.
*
Fusil, Kerr, and Fish, arrived at Sasshurst railway station at five past eight that evening. Fusil was not in a good mood and didn’t speak on the taxi-ride to the police station: the long train journey had shown both detectives how little they had in common with Fish.
They were shown in to Pritchard’s room by the duty sergeant. Pritchard shook hands with Fusil and was about to speak when Fusil forestalled him.
“Have you carpeted that damn fool constable?” He was not being intentionally rude, but was merely completely obsessed with the case and so careless about putting things in a reasonably tactful manner. It was difficult — or impossible — for an outsider to appreciate this.
“No, I haven’t,” replied Pritchard.
“It’s a pity he’s not in my force.”
“Maybe, but he isn’t.” Pritchard’s voice had a snap to it now.
Fusil at last appreciated the need for a different approach and he was searching for the right words when the other spoke again.
“Anyway,” said Pritchard, “there’s no real harm done.”
“No what?” Fusil promptly forgot the need for that different approach. “You say there’s no real harm done? What d’you call it, then, when that stupid young fool by disobeying orders makes absolutely certain we never recover the money? I suppose you’ve given him a medal? …One thing’s goddam certain now. It’ll need a miracle to recover the money.”
“Or, perhaps, some smart police work?”
“And where’s that going to come from?” asked Fusil, with furious sarcasm.
“As a matter of fact, we rather pride ourselves up here.”
“Do you?”
“Not without some justification, I hope.”
“I suppose you can hope.”
“Wouldn’t you think we were justified — having recovered the stolen money only a few hours after we first knew it was in the area?” Pritchard, not hiding his satisfaction, used his foot to push a suitcase out from behind his desk.
Kerr grinned. Fusil wanted to say something, but just for once all words deserted him.
*
Kerr walked down Prior Lane to number 16. He knocked on the door and Helen opened it. “Well, hullo stranger,” she said.
“Helen, I’m terribly sorry about last night.”
Her brown eyes calmly studied him. “I waited by the cinema from half past seven until half past eight. I was whistled at and ogled. In the end, I came home.”
“That old basket, Fusil, suddenly dragged me off to Sasshurst.”
“Really?”
“Helen, I couldn’t refuse to go.”
“You might just have telephoned, though?”
“I tried twice from the station, but your office was engaged each time. I was trying a third time when Fusil came up and threatened to kick me straight back into the uniformed branch if I wasted another second.”
She swept a lock of hair back off her forehead.
“Can we…” For once, he spoke diffidently. “Can we go out tonight, instead?”
“Phineas has asked me to go out.”
He swore under his breath.
“He suggested the new country club.”
“It must be nice to have that sort of money to fling around,” he said bitterly.
“He’s coming at eight to pick me up.”
“I’d better clear out of it, then. I can’t offer anything better than a plateful of spaghetti at Joe’s.” He turned. Money — you could try to fight it, but you’d lose, always.
“Don’t you think, John…” She stopped.
“What?”
“Don’t you think it might be an idea to go down to the callbox to ring Phineas and say I’ve just discovered I’ve got a most awful headache?”
He swung round. She was smiling and there was untold warmth in her gentle brown eyes.
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Murder Among Thieves (C.I.D Room Book 3) Page 17