Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

  Massey said nothing, which was a good deal less than he would have liked to say.

  Murray Talbot, J.P., T.D., drove home from his office in South Street. He turned right into the High Street, right again past the police station, happening to notice Mercer coming out; then drove across the new bridge, along the first ‘feeder’ road to the by-pass, through the underpass and onto the Laleham Road. The sight of Mercer had temporarily shifted his thoughts away from his own troubles, which had kept him late at the office. These stemmed from two ridiculous building contracts which his late senior partner had let them in for, both of which would cause an uncomfortable loss to the firm of Jocelyn and Talbot, General Contractors. Unless Weatherman could get him out of them.

  He was still thinking about Mercer when he opened the front door and was met and given his evening ration of a single kiss by his wife.

  He went into the drawing room, mixed himself a gin and Italian vermouth, warmed his backside in front of the electric log fire, and felt better.

  He said, “We shall have to do something about that chap Mercer.”

  “Mercer?”

  “The new C.I.D. man.”

  “Oh, him. What’s he been up to?”

  “First, he’s made a mess of that murder case. Made a wrong identification. Then he pulled in old Hedges, who obviously had nothing to do with it. I mean, it wasn’t his daughter they found, so how could it have been him? And when he had him inside he beat him up, I believe. And now Hedges is raising the roof. Can’t blame him really. I think I’ll have another. It’s been a hard day.”

  “I’ll do it. Half and half?”

  “That’s the girl. A bit more gin than vermouth. Not content with that, he’s upsetting his own men. Bob’s beginning to hear complaints already.”

  “Poor old Bob.”

  “And his latest move – I imagine it’s really a sort of smokescreen to hide his own inefficiency – he’s trying to throw suspicion on Jack Bull.”

  “But that’s absurd. Jack’s as sound as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  “Of course he is. He’s a damned good chap. And a damned sight better than Inspector Jumped-up Mercer.”

  “Suspicion of what?”

  “Bob said something about driving competitors out of business by crooked methods.”

  “But that’s nonsense. He often says that he’s got far too much work to do and he wishes there was another garage in the place.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I’ll tell you something else. At least, I’m not sure that I’m really meant to tell even you, as Pat Clark told me in confidence.”

  “No secrets between husband and wife.”

  “Well, then—”

  Mr. Meakin was waiting in the hall of Bankside Mansions when Mercer got there. He was plainly nervous. He said, “I hope it isn’t more trouble with that top-floor pair. Lease or no lease, I’ll have them out. I warned them last time, and this time I mean it. Just say the word.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” said Mercer, “but the matter I’ve come about concerns the ground-floor flat in your annexe. The one overlooking the river.”

  “Colonel Stanley—”

  “And it happened on Friday November 14th nearly two years ago.”

  Mr. Meakin said, “Oh,” conducted a mental roll-call and said, “Miss Dyson.”

  “Correct. Were you here when she left?”

  “Walked out on us. Leaving five weeks’ rent owing.”

  “Which her employers paid for her.”

  “They paid the rent. But they didn’t settle the dilapidations. That girl was a compulsive smoker. She seems to have left burning cigarettes everywhere. On the mantelpiece, on the tables. She ruined the top of a nice chest of drawers. It cost me forty-five pounds to have the damage put right. If I can find her, I’m going to collect it.”

  “Tell me about when she left.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell, Inspector. I called, myself, early the following week, to speak to her about the rent. We don’t like to let arrears run beyond the month. There were three or four milk bottles outside her door, a pile of newspapers, a box of stuff from the laundry and a parcel from the cleaners. I thought that justified my going in, so I used my pass key. It was quite clear that she had gone. Drawers and cupboards were empty and all her personal things were gone—photographs and that sort of stuff.”

  “Had she emptied the larder?”

  “No. Not that there was a great deal in it. Coffee and sugar and breakfast cereals. I gather she took most of her meals out.”

  “You mentioned a parcel from the cleaners.”

  “Yes. That was rather surprising. It was a very nice tweed coat and skirt. It must have cost a good deal of money. I suppose she forgot about it.”

  “Did anyone see her go?”

  “Actually see her leave the flat, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s no reason why they should have done. It was rather a dirty night, I seem to remember. There wouldn’t have been many about, and the back door of her flat opens onto a path which leads through the far end of the recreation ground and straight out into the town. That’s where she’d pick up a bus for the station, by the old bridge. I believe someone saw her at the station.”

  “So I’m told,” said Mercer. “Was the back door locked?”

  Mr. Meakin had to think about that one. Then he said, “Yes. Both doors were locked.”

  “And the only keys were your master key, and the keys she had.”

  “That’s right. I had to get a new set cut for Colonel Stanley.”

  “Now let me guess something. When you came in that morning, all the curtains were drawn, tight shut. In the living room and the kitchen and the bedroom. Right?”

  Mr. Meakin looked at him. There was a hint of worry in his eyes. “You’re right about that. But I can’t say it struck me as odd. If she was there that evening, she’d naturally have drawn her curtains.”

  “Even in her bedroom. When she had no intention of sleeping there?”

  “That was a bit odd, perhaps. Tell me, Inspector—I don’t wish to appear inquisitive, but is something wrong?”

  Mercer said, “Between you and me, Mr. Meakin, I don’t think you’re ever going to collect that forty-five pounds.”

  He drove back into the town thinking about it. When he was putting his car away he noticed a light in Jack Bull’s first-storey flat. The main entrance to the flat was through the shop, but there was an iron staircase leading up from the yard to the back entrance, and that was where the light was. He guessed it was the kitchen. He climbed the stairs and rang the bell. The door was opened by Vikki. She was wearing an apron over her working outfit, and a pair of rubber gloves.

  “Why, look who’s here,” she said. “Come in. Excuse my gloves. I’m just starting the washing up.”

  Jack Bull sat at the head of the big kitchen table. There was the remains of a supper for two on it. He was smoking a cheroot and looked relaxed and comfortable.

  He said, “Surprise! Surprise! What can we do for you, Inspector?”

  “I saw your light,” said Mercer, “and it reminded me that I hadn’t paid my garage bill.”

  “Why bother. It doesn’t amount to a row of beans. Send him a chit at the end of the month, Vikki. Four weeks at twenty-five pence a week.”

  “I don’t like running up bills. It makes me nervous.” Mercer extracted a sizeable wad of five-pound notes from his hip pocket and peeled one off. “I understand that the going rate for a lock-up garage is one twenty-five a week. That’ll cover a month.” He handed the note to Vikki who tucked it into her apron pocket. She said, “I’ll give you a proper receipt in the morning,” and showed her small white teeth in a grin.

  Bull seemed to be on the point of saying something sharp, then changed his mind. He said, “When you’ve finished washing up, honey, could you bring us all a nice cup of coffee next door.”

  The room next door was a surprise. In f
ront of an open fire were a couple of fat, low-slung, leather armchairs which looked as if they had come out of an old-fashioned London club. There was a box of cigars on a table between the chairs. There was a drink cabinet in one corner and a wide-screen television set in the other. The pictures on the walls were mostly framed photographs. Regimental groups, with names carefully written in underneath. Pictures of tanks and guns and army vehicles. Pictures of parachutists dropping out of aeroplanes. One enlarged photograph of a very pretty girl in the uniform of a Wehrmacht nursing sister.

  “She was the first thing I saw when I came round from the anaesthetic. After the Krauts had had my arm off,” said Bull. “I can’t tell you how much it cheered me up. Have a cigar?”

  Mercer took it. It was a good cigar. He also accepted a glass of whisky. Vikki brought in three cups of coffee on a tray, drank hers composedly, and said, “Well, if that’s all for now, I’ll be going.”

  “Must you?”

  “I want to wash my hair tonight.”

  “O.K.,” said Bull. “See you tomorrow.”

  There was a long silence after she had gone.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Bull, “but it isn’t so. I wish it was.”

  Mercer said, “Bad luck.”

  “She’s just about the most extraordinary girl I’ve ever met. To look at her, you’d think she was a cut-out from the middle page of Playboy, wouldn’t you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “How wrong can you be? She does her work in the office better than any girl I’ve ever had before. In fact she does half of Rainey’s work for him, when he’s too pissed to do it himself. He says she’s a natural mathematician, and he ought to know. He was a senior bloody wrangler or something.”

  “Useful round the house, too.”

  “She cooks my supper for me most nights, and washes it up. I’ve got a sort of feeling she’s sorry for me. And damn it, I don’t want her to be sorry for me. All I want her to do is to take her clothes off and get into bed.”

  “And she won’t?”

  “No.”

  “Have you suggested it?”

  “Like a worn gramophone record.”

  “You ever try getting rough with her?”

  Bull looked at him out of the corner of his eye and said, “Come, Inspector. That’s no way to talk. Anyway, I’ve only got one arm, and she’s probably a black belt at judo and a triple dan at karate.”

  He hauled himself out of the chair, fetched the whisky bottle, pulled the cork out with one hand, topped up both glasses, and put it down within easy reach.

  “And what do you make of Sinferry, Inspector?”

  “You’ve been here longer than me. You tell me what you make of it.”

  “It’s a bright little, tight little place,” said Bull. “No better and no worse than a lot of others, I expect. It’s got its fair share of dirt and more than its fair share of phoneys. Have you met Murray Talbot yet?”

  “Our revered Justice of the Peace?”

  “Chairman of Magistrates, and Busted Flush. When he’s not dispensing justice, he’s doing his best to ruin a very sound builder’s and contractor’s business, which he inherited from his father and his grandfather before him. You’ve seen him performing on the bench. He looks just like your commanding officer taking Defaulters, doesn’t he? Fierce little moustache, eagle eye, voice trained to keep the other ranks in their place. It’s all bluff. He’s a badly cooked loaf. Hard crust, soggy in the middle.”

  “Speaking from personal experience?”

  “Certainly. If he wasn’t soft he wouldn’t accept presents from me, would he?”

  “It depends on the presents.”

  “Bloody expensive presents. A colour television set, a dozen of Scotch, free service for his car.”

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  “It’s always useful to have the law on your side.”

  “Have you bought Bob Clark as well?”

  Bull blinked. Then he grinned, and said, “That’s an odd question from his faithful second-in-command.”

  “I’m not his second-in-command,” said Mercer. “That’s a mistake a lot of people make. He runs the Uniformed Branch. I run the Plain Clothes Branch. In any station the head of the Uniformed Branch has one rank up on the head of the C.I.D. to give him the impression he’s in charge of both. But he isn’t.”

  “You’re all part of the same family.”

  “That’s right. And like all the best families, we spend most of our time quarrelling. Mind you, we co-operate fast enough if an outsider tries anything on. Tell me, what’s your honest opinion of Bob?”

  “I wouldn’t insult him by classing him with Murray Talbot. Bob’s dead honest, personally brave, and a bit stupid. There were a lot of senior officers like him in the army. The only thing they were afraid of was responsibility.” When Mercer said nothing, he added, “Since you asked me.”

  Mercer was sprawled in the low comfortable chair, his legs stretched out, his arms hanging down. One hand held his glass, the other was resting on the carpet, wrist bent, fingers outstretched and quiet. He said, “You’re an odd man, Jack.”

  It was the first time he had used Bull’s Christian name.

  “Odd! How?”

  “So honest in some ways. So crooked in others.”

  “I must be a more complex character than I thought.”

  “For years you’ve been overcharging people who rely on their cars for transport but know damn-all about them. I don’t suppose you’ve often gone as far as you did with old Mrs. Tyler. That must have given you a bit of a fright.”

  Bull laughed. He sounded genuinely amused. He said, “I dropped a clanger there all right. All the same that’s not crookedness. It’s business.”

  “It’s not a criminal offence to overcharge a mug,” agreed Mercer. “But to get away with it you had to get rid of your competitors. People your customers could easily go to if they were a bit worried about your estimates and find out that the job could be done for a third of the price. Or perhaps that it didn’t need doing at all.”

  “If I had done everything you say,” said Bull, “which I don’t admit—”

  “Naturally.”

  “—I can tell you this. I shouldn’t lose five minutes’ sleep over it. When I got back to England after the war, with one arm and no prospects, I did a lot of thinking. I realised that so far I’d been on the wrong track. I’d been a good little boy. I’d done what I was told. I’d followed the rules. If there was a form to be filled in, I filled it in and signed my name at the bottom. I went with the tide. And I suddenly realised that there were a million other jelly-fish floating in the tide alongside me.”

  “So you decided to swim against it.”

  “Not against it. Certainly not. That’s a waste of effort. But I thought I might kick out sideways. Get a little off the main track. And it was the right moment to do it. I had my gratuity, you see, and a disablement pension. But mostly, I had friends. A Special Service Battalion was a wonderful mixed bag. Saints and sinners. And the ones you got to know, you got to know properly. You sit on a bench, next to a man, knowing that in ten minutes’ time you’re both going to drop through a hole in the floor into darkness and a howling gale, and you really get to know what makes him tick. Believe me, a trick cyclist’s couch isn’t in it.”

  Bull refilled their glasses, and said, “I’m talking too much. Tell me something. Why did you really come up tonight? To extract a confession from me about my murky past? You know damn well I’ll deny it all tomorrow morning.”

  “To tell you the truth,” said Mercer sleepily, “I don’t give a damn for your murky past. Most business is dirty, if you analyse it. When you put it down, in black and white, without trimmings, what does any business amount to? ‘I win—you lose.’ And all that matters is the money at the end of the day. Sometimes I’m glad I’m just an ordinary, stupid policeman.”

  “You’re the oddest bloody policeman I’ve ever met,” said B
ull. “You sit there, drinking my whisky. Telling me I’ve been swindling people for years. Telling me I’ve driven a couple of honest competitors out of business. And then, in the same breath, you tell me you don’t care.”

  “Why should I care? It’s all past history isn’t it? And, as you say, it’s none of it provable.”

  “If you’re not interested in my past, why have you spent such a lot of time looking into it?”

  “Because,” said Mercer, and there was suddenly no hint of sleepiness in his voice, “I’m more interested in your present, and your future.”

  Eleven thirty. Midnight. Half-past twelve. One o’clock. Detective Massey got up to stretch his aching limbs, then sat down again. At twenty minutes to two he saw the side door of Bull’s shop open, and Mercer come out, and stand for a moment, talking to Bull. They were laughing about something. He made a careful note of the time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Sonchus oleraceus’. The words were emblazoned across two columns of print. Underneath, in one column, there was a photograph of Hedges. He looked like everyone’s idea of a jolly old tramp. (You weren’t to know that it was the most successful of twelve photographs, in some of which, despite the efforts of a very clever photographer, he had looked like a sex maniac; and in others like a pimp. The camera never lies, but it is possible to be selective among the different statements it makes.)

  “Those of our readers,” began the article chattily, “who are not well acquainted with botanical Latin, may not be aware that ‘Sonchus oleraceus’ is also called sowthistle. It is an old English plant, which grows in ditches and disused pastures and other such humble spots. It is remarkable for one thing. The length and tenacity of its roots. In short, it is very hard to remove. And so the authorities have found, to their cost, in the case of Samuel Hedges of The Barge, Easthaugh Island, Stoneferry, in the County of Middlesex. Some years ago the Rating authorities tried to shift him. Then the Sanitary authorities. Next there was a flank attack from the Child Welfare. His present assailants are the Metropolitan Police. Superintendent Clark, when questioned about this said—”