Dead Man Walking

by J F Straker

  “Do I make a statement?”

  “If you wish. Not otherwise.”

  “I think I will.” She was making no effort to pack. “Are you in a hurry to lock me up, or may I try it out on you first? I’m afraid it won’t amount to much. I’ve very little information on how the organization works, and none at all on its members. Except Dennis Cooper, of course. And you know about him.”

  “Damn the others!” he shouted, the policeman swamped by the lover. “It’s you I want to hear about. Since you obviously haven’t a heart, I’m hoping to discover what makes you tick.”

  “Shouldn’t you caution me first?”

  “No. This is between you and me as people.”

  She moved restlessly about the room in her stockinged feet as she talked, and he sat on the bed and watched her. It was Cooper, she said, who had introduced her to the Co-operative. She had been accustomed to feeding him scraps of gossip, and if he could use them in the paper he paid her. It had grown from there.

  “Morally, I suppose, I’m not very bright,” she admitted. “Not in that sense, anyhow. But if men are stupid enough to discuss their affairs in public I don’t see why one shouldn’t take advantage of it. A bar isn’t a confessional. The Co-operative paid well — much better than the paper — and a girl can always do with extra money.” She spoke quietly, her soft, clear voice giving no hint of stress. “For special assignments, like dating a man and persuading him to talk, the price really rocketed. And so it should. Some of the customers expected —”

  “Cut the sordid details.” He didn’t want to know. Imagination was more than enough. “How about the business here? That must have been quite a highlight in your criminal career.”

  “You’re determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you?” she said. “However —”

  The morning after the bank raid Cooper had mentioned that the Co-operative suspected it might be a local job, and had advised her to keep her ears open. Since Charlie Goodwin had previously confided in her that he expected shortly to be in possession of a large sum of money, she had suggested to Cooper that he might be worth investigating. Particularly since he and Wheeler and Sinclair had been together in the bar once or twice the previous week, and had obviously been discussing something of a very private nature.

  “Why should Goodwin confide in you?” Johnny asked. “He hoped to marry me. He thought the money might persuade me to say yes.”

  “He was on the right lines there,” Johnny said bitterly. “You do most things for money, don’t you? Whose bright idea was it for you to get your hooks into me? Yours or Cooper’s?”

  “Dennis thought it might be useful to know what the police were thinking.”

  “I bet he did. But why me? Why not the head man himself?”

  “He isn’t the type.”

  “And I am?”

  “Well, aren’t you?” she taunted. “And Humphrey didn’t seem interested. What’s with him? Doesn’t he like girls?”

  “Yes. It’s just that he’s a better judge of character than I am. What did you manage to pick up for your trouble?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “But something. Like a lot of other young men, Johnny, you think all women are fools. It never occurred to you that your crack about having to see a man about a dog might make sense to me. But it did, you know — which is why you and Humphrey spent a fruitless night watching the kennels. I admit I didn’t get your remark about taking up politics. That was because I didn’t know about the canvasser. But I passed it on, just in case.” She gave a wry smile. “For an ace detective, Johnny, you’re not very bright at times, are you?”

  “Apparently not.” She had turned to gaze out of the window, and he scowled at her back. The taunts hurt almost as much as her deception. “Come to that, you’re not so bright yourself, are you, or you wouldn’t have put me on to Parrott’s Oak?”

  “I didn’t realize its significance. Not until you came over all enthusiastic. Then I told Dennis.” She turned slowly. “I was worried the Co-operative might think I’d changed sides. But Dennis reassured me. He said later it wasn’t important.”

  Johnny lit a cigarette. His throat was dry, and he coughed, racking his side.

  “Go on about Goodwin,” he said.

  Goodwin had told her on the Tuesday evening that he had the money; they could get married by special licence, he suggested, and honeymoon abroad. Since Cooper had said to keep him dangling, she had promised to consider it. He had been out when she visited the garage the next morning — “I met you and Humphrey there. Remember?” — but they had spoken in the bar that evening. Now his demands were more urgent. There was no further talk of a special licence. They must go at once and get married abroad; and if she could not leave at such short notice he would go on ahead, and wait for her to join him. On further instruction from Cooper — it was always Cooper who was her contact with the Co-operative; she had no knowledge of the headquarters, or the Gislaps, or Mrs Bollender — she had told Charlie that she would come to the garage the next evening with her answer, and had hinted that it would be yes. Would he leave the back door unlocked, as she might be late? And although even a day’s delay had seemed to worry him, he had reluctantly agreed to wait.

  “So you set him up for a killing, eh?” Johnny said. “Bully for you!”

  She showed emotion at that.

  “I didn’t know they were going to kill him,” she protested. “I thought they were just going to make him hand over the money. I didn’t particularly like Charlie, but I wouldn’t knowingly have connived at his death.” She shrugged. “Dennis said afterwards that it was an accident, like Jess Wheeler’s.”

  “And of course you believed him.”

  “No. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

  “Amazing.” The sneer was not a success. “But let’s get back to us. I’ll say this for you, Karen: you’re a bloody good actress. All that tender solicitude after your friends had worked me over! Most convincing. It had me fooled, anyway.”

  “I wasn’t acting then,” she said.

  “No? Don’t tell me avarice isn’t your only weakness. How did you manage to set it up?”

  Her eyes searched his face. But whatever she looked for she did not see. Presently she shrugged, and in a small, flat voice told him what he wished to know. She had promised Cooper she would arrange for them to have dinner at that particular inn, although she had been unable to give an exact time. But they had been even later than she had anticipated, and when Johnny had left the table during the meal she had slipped out to see if the men were there.

  “As, presumably, they were,” Johnny said.

  “Yes.”

  “And what was the actual purpose of the exercise?”

  “Dennis said they wanted to warn you off. It hadn’t worked with the Mule, and they hoped a direct warning might be more successful. I told him it would only make you more determined, but he wouldn’t listen. I think by then he’d got a sort of thing about you.” She sighed. “I never expected them to be so brutal. It — it was horrible.” She took a step towards him, started to raise her arms, then let them fall. “I didn’t want you to be hurt, Johnny. Honest, I didn’t. I agreed to help them simply because I was afraid that if you went on with it you might find out about me. I didn’t want that to happen.”

  “I bet you didn’t!”

  “Oh, not in the way you mean. I — well, I admit I deliberately set out to trap you, to use you. I’d done it with other men, so why not you? You were just as much a stranger. Only this time I didn’t manage to remain detached. After a while I realized that — well, that I —” She broke off, and looked at him appealingly. Johnny scowled back, and she said, with some heat, “Oh, to hell with you, Johnny Inch! Why can’t you understand?”

  “But I do,” he said coldly. “I understand perfectly. It has suddenly occurred to you that if you play your cards well the old magic may still work. Well, it won’t. Not any more. You can’t charm your way out of this, Karen.”

  �
�I didn’t expect to. It wasn’t what I —” She sighed, and shook her head. “Oh, what’s the use? Forget it.”

  Johnny wished he could. It was, he told himself sadly, something he would never forget. Love before had never been like this. Nor had it ended so painfully.

  “You didn’t mistake my meaning when I telephoned you from Sinclair’s house yesterday evening, did you?” he asked. Shun all sentiment, keep his mind on the job. That was the only possible way to stay sane. “You knew I wanted Cole.”

  “Yes. But —”

  “And you didn’t forget your handbag. You kept my message from the Boozer deliberately.”

  “Yes.” She decided on one final attempt to make him understand. “But not to help my friends, as you call them. Dennis said that the Co-operative had never killed a policeman because none had ever got close enough to make it necessary. It was a sort of boast with them. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t kill if they had to, and I was afraid they might kill you.” Her voice died to a near whisper. “You won’t believe me, of course, but I’d have done anything — anything, Johnny — to stop them.”

  He wanted to believe her. And the look in her eyes, the tone of her voice, suggested he would be right to do so. But he could not. The hurt was too deep to be healed by a few soft words and an appealing face.

  “It sounds fine,” he said. “There’s just one flaw. Why did you suppose I’d be safer alone than with support from the police?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head in helpless negation. “I guess I was so upset I wasn’t thinking straight. But at the time it seemed best. If there were a lot of you there might be shooting. On your own —” She brushed a tear angrily from her eye, annoyed at this sign of weakness. “Oh, go to hell! What does it matter, anyway? Ring for the bloody tumbrel, and let’s be done with it.”

  From the doorway Sherrey said quietly, “The tumbrel is already here, Miss Moore.”

  6

  On the assumption that the best antidote for a broken heart is hard work, the superintendent ensured that for the rest of that day Johnny was fully occupied. Not that he believed Johnny’s heart to be broken; Johnny fell in and out of love too frequently for the damage to be permanent. But while it lasted it probably hurt.

  To the superintendent it was a satisfactory day — professionally speaking, perhaps the most satisfactory day of his career. As he had anticipated, decoding the Co-operative’s list of members had been a simple task. Heading it were the names of Lucinda Bollender and Frank Gislap, and on his return from the Yard he had dispatched Nicodemus with a warrant to arrest the woman and bring her in, leaving for himself the unpleasant task of informing Johnny that Karen Moore was also on the list. It had been a relief to discover that Johnny already knew.

  Unexpectedly, Gislap had intimated that he wished to make a statement, and before visiting Cooper in hospital Sherrey called at the nick, taking Johnny with him. They found Gislap sullen but resigned. His solicitor had suffered a change of mind. With the evidence massed against him, Duffy had told Gislap, nothing could be gained by maintaining his previous silence. Give the police the works, Duffy had advised; be helpful, get them on your side. It’s the best you can hope for. Gislap had retorted angrily that if that was all he had to offer he could get the hell out. And Duffy had gone, happy to be relieved of an awkward customer and what promised to be a difficult and unrewarding assignment.

  The anger had not lasted. Alone again in his cell, Gislap had sadly come to the conclusion that Duffy had probably been right; and if he were going to sing it had best be now, before either Lucinda or Cooper had their say. Both had cause to wish him ill. He was particularly anxious that the police should not see him as the mastermind behind the organization. That role belonged to Lucinda Bollender, and it was best they should know it.

  He made no attempt to hide his anger against Lucinda. It was Lucinda who had telephoned him while he was talking to Sherrey the previous evening. Incensed at Goodwin’s death, she had demanded the how and the why; and what, she had wanted to know, had brought the police to the farm? He had told her to be patient, that he could not talk then; he would explain later. But Lucinda Bollender was not a patient woman; suspecting trickery, she had decided to investigate. That, Gislap declared bitterly, had been an act of criminal folly; a choice of adjective that caused Sherrey’s lips to twist in a wry smile. Without her interference, Gislap said, his anger mounting as he glared at the stark walls of the cell, the police would still be looking.

  That’s as may be, Sherrey said. But they had not come to hear Gislap blow his top. If he wished to make a statement, would he please get on with it? For a start, how had the Co-operative originated?

  Through Lucinda Bollender, Gislap said. The restoration of Bresne Park was almost a mania with her, and when it became apparent that her wealth was unequal to the task her reaction had been to search for further wealth rather than to curb expenditure. Crime had seemed to offer the greatest possibilities, and Gislap suspected that it was knowledge of his criminal record in Canada (although she had never revealed how she came by that knowledge) which had prompted her to lease Elmstead to him in preference to other applicants.

  He had been sceptical when the proposition was first mooted. What reason had she to suppose that the underworld would come flocking to her banner? he asked. Every reason, she had retorted. It was the era of big business, and the Co-operative would certainly be that. It would offer steady work based on first-class information and planning and using modern techniques and equipment; the pay would be regular, with fat bonuses. If a member were unlucky enough to be caught he would get the best defence available, supplemented if necessary by perjured witnesses and fixed juries; and if convicted he could count on an organized escape. Security, protection, insurance, all along the line. Why shouldn’t they come?

  He had decided she could probably be right.

  Once the Co-operative was in being she had left management and recruiting mainly to him, although the subterranean headquarters had been her idea. The nucleus was already there, and if the organization reached the size she envisaged they would need to keep records, somewhere to store stolen goods they could not dispose of immediately, somewhere for members to hide when the heat was on. It would prove invaluable. Gislap had argued that its possible usefulness would not warrant the cost, but she had insisted. And since it was her money they were spending he had not objected further.

  “The nucleus was already there, eh?” Sherrey said. “How come?”

  It had been built, Gislap said, somewhere around the end of the eighteenth century, by one Julius Bollender, a wealthy and eccentric recluse; there was a smaller but similar construction in Hertfordshire, of an earlier date, and it had probably been modelled on that. Julius’s descendants, however, had not inherited his enthusiasm for grottoes. The pseudo-Gothic entrance had been allowed to disintegrate, effectively sealing the grotto from access and almost erasing it from memory.

  “Until Mrs Bollender resurrected it?”

  “Yes.”

  “For criminal purposes?”

  Not originally, Gislap said. She had come across an old plan of the estate, and with her passion for restoring Bresne she had decided to restore the grotto also. It was, however, of low priority; before work on it could start Crime Co-operative had been conceived, and she decided to put the grotto to a practical use. It lay almost directly beneath one end of the farmhouse, which had been built a century later. A tunnel from the farmhouse cellar had been dug to provide means of access, and some of the fireplaces bricked up, and the chimney shafts extended downward, to give ventilation.

  “And the bogus air-raid shelter?”

  “That was where the original entrance had been. It was for her ladyship’s personal use. She didn’t want to be seen at the farm too often.” Gislap scowled. “It was all those mechanical contraptions that really got among the expenses. They cost the bloody earth.”

  He was evasive about the well. It was there, and they had use
d it; it had provided a means of disposal for the rubbish that accumulated in the grotto. But it had never been used for murder. Cooper, he thought, had lost his head in a situation which was outside his experience and ability to handle. There could be no other explanation for his behaviour.

  Both detectives suspected he was lying. Neither made any comment. Until the well had been explored — an undertaking which might prove to be impracticable — they must accept Gislap’s assurance.

  On the growth and activities of the Co-operative Gislap volunteered nothing. The police had the records, he said; it was all there, they did not need him to spell it out for them. Nor was he prepared to give the names of the men and women who had dealt with Goodwin and Wheeler and the Sinclairs. If they couldn’t be traced through the records, then good luck to them. He was pointing no finger at men against whom he had no grudge.

  “Who wrecked my car?” Johnny asked.

  Gislap fondled his beard. It had been Cooper’s idea, he said, at Lucinda Bollender’s instigation. She had thought SIN were getting too warm, that they needed a deterrent. It was with the same purpose that Cooper had arranged the attacks on Johnny and the superintendent. But again Gislap was naming no names. “It was a daft scheme, anyway,” he concluded. “None of it would have happened had I been consulted. You chaps don’t quit that easily, eh?”

  They received this with silent scepticism. Gislap was shifting the blame too freely.

  “You dealt with Wheeler and the Sinclairs on the Monday,” Sherrey said. “Why was Goodwin allowed to remain unchallenged until Thursday night?”

  Gislap shrugged. “He was Lucinda’s boyfriend.”

  “So how did he come to be murdered?”

  “Cut that out,” Gislap said quickly. “No-one was murdered. Not Goodwin, not Wheeler. Both deaths were accidental.”

  “It’s a point of view.” Sherrey, flushed with success, was not disposed to argue at that stage. He was also aware that his questions had not been confined solely to removing ambiguity, that they had gone closer to cross-examination than was justified. “Can you throw some more light on this business between Goodwin and Mrs Bollender?”