Death on the Koh-i-Noor (Edwin Scott Crime Trilogy Book 3)
Page 20
He had diagnosed a stroke, when it was clearly a case of strychnine poisoning.
He had insisted on having a key to the pharmacy. This had given him access to drugs such as opiates for his own use (? a psychopath), or strychnine (to kill).
Perhaps Captain Butterworth had caught him with the drugs or confronted him about them.
He was not the drunk he pretended to be (he had become suddenly alert during the appendicectomy).
He roamed the ship at night.
He had gone ashore at Balboa, allowing him to arrange the break-in of my cabin.
His knowledge of medicine was quite rusty: he had left most of the difficult work for me.
His CV didn't tally. What exactly had he been doing the last few years?
Somewhat hoarse, I trailed off into silence. There was a long pause, during which the tape-deck continued to turn gently, emitting a regular faint squeak. Finally:
“Well, thank you, er ... Dr Scott ... We've finished with you for the time being. We've got your finger-prints and contact details ... But I may have to bring you back if I need further information.”
As I stood to leave, he smiled suddenly, and clicked his fingers:
“The film, please.”
I'd almost forgotten. I took it from my pocket and gave it to him.
“Could you let me have a copy of the prints?” I ventured.
“Very droll ...”
Epilogue – Illumination
About a week after leaving the ship, and just prior to taking up my new post at the London Hospital, I was invited to meet Detective Chief Inspector Pitt again. He and Detective Sergeant Harrison awaited me in the small first-floor office they had commandeered in the police station at the centre of Southampton. Brian Pitt was sitting behind the desk, smoking his pipe, and chatting quietly to his sergeant, as I was shown in. I took a step toward the upright chair he'd indicated.
“You don't remember me, Eddie ...”
It was the first time I'd heard him speak. A gravelly quality of the voice, the mocking tone ... a couple of cogs meshed in my brain, and a memory appeared fully-formed:
It was New Year's Eve, nineteen-fifty-four, and I was seventeen. We danced as though in a trance, locked in a tight embrace.
“I've never seen anyone stand up to Rory like that before. You were wonderful ...”
Time passed ...
“Let's go to my flat,” whispered Hazel.
We collected our coats from the cloak-room, and wrapped up warmly.
“This is bliss,” I thought, taking her gloved hand, as our shoes sank into the carpet of soft snow in the alley behind the ballroom. “I wish this night would last forever ...”
Three figures emerged silently from the shadows: before I could react, my arms were pinioned from behind; Rory Harrison faced me, his features picked out eerily by the sudden flare of a match as he lit his cigarette. He nodded curtly to Hazel:
“Beat it, Babe.”
She had dropped my hand as if she were scalded, and now she ran out of the alley. I was too numb to feel anything other than mild disappointment. Rory reached into his pocket.
“His flick-knife!” The thought raced through my brain ... but the hand emerged again, apparently empty; for a long time he stood motionless, bent forward with hands clasped as though in prayer, face briefly illuminated from below each time he took a drag from his cigarette ... Suddenly he launched himself at me. Gold flashed on his clenched fist, just before it struck (“Knuckle-dusters, he's using brass knuckle-dusters ...”); my left cheek exploded with pain, and I felt the skin break. Though I didn't see the arm swing a second time, his armoured fist landed on the bridge of my nose, sending showers of brightly coloured lights before my eyes. Abruptly everything became muffled: sound, sight, even pain. I found myself lying on my side in the snow, with all three assailants putting in the boot to my back, stomach and chest. Everything seemed far, far away, as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
“I'm bleeding internally,” I thought. “I'm dying.”
A long way away, I heard a police whistle; then silence, then running footsteps, then silence again ...
“You all right, son?”
The comfortable stout elderly copper seemed relieved when I moaned, rolled over, and opened my one good eye ...
When I had last seen him, Rory Harrison had sported a pencil moustache and prominent sideburns. His hair (black and glossy from copious use of Brylcreem) spilled across his collar, a quiff dropping over his forehead in the Elvis Presley style. He had worn the standard Teddy-boy uniform: loose black jacket covering his backside, velvet lapels, bootlace tie, drainpipe trousers and winkle-picker shoes. Like Brian Pitt, he'd been in the same year at my school. He had been the school bully, and, with two boys from the local secondary modern school, had formed the core of a Teddy-boy gang, who used to loiter around dance halls and bus stops. He had been expelled from school for stabbing a senior boy behind the fives courts one winter.
I had always been cautious, even timid, my motto being “Discretion is the better part of valour”. I would cross the street to avoid a confrontation. However, if struck, my adrenaline-induced reaction to the pain was to retaliate instantly. This is what I had done with Rory, catching him on a couple of occasions with a lucky punch and knocking him off his feet. It had resulted in a severe loss of face for him, a dent in his façade of invincibility; thereafter he had crossed my path on several occasions – I still shudder at the memory of those encounters; he had terrorised me for the rest of my school-days and my early time in medical school, until I had moved away from Clapham Common, and into the students' hostel in Whitechapel.
Now, his brown lace-up shoes were polished like conkers; the jacket of his blue three-piece suit hung over the back of his chair; the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, providing a glimpse of powerful biceps; he still exuded a sense of physical strength, but more muted. His hair was cut short, and his sideburns and moustache had disappeared. There was a sardonic, slightly wistful smile on his face.
“Ah, I see you do recognise me now ...” There was still the trace of a South London accent, though the voice was deeper, more mellow. “Hazel and I are married ... We have two kids ...”
“I know ... She wrote.”
“Rory is poacher-turned-gamekeeper,” Brian Pitt's voice interrupted our reminiscences. “He's been with me at Scotland Yard for four years ... a good thief-taker ... on their wave-length ... makes a first rate detective sergeant ...”
Harrison coloured, but smiled shyly, clearly pleased with the praise.
“Well, now that you two love-birds are reunited, we'd better get back to the business in hand ... and there's someone I want you to meet ...” Pitt pressed the inter-com: “Is the D.C.I. there? Well, send him in when he arrives, please ... So, first of all, Edwin, thank you for coming back. You won't be surprised to hear that the remnants of gin that you produced for us did indeed contain strychnine – so this was another definite attempt on your life ... Well then, there's still a few points to clear up ... On going through the ship's log, we came across the captain's report where you informed him of the attempted break-in to your cabin, in the port of Balboa; however, we could find no record of this in the report of the duty officer. Could you tell us about the incident?”
I went through it all again, word for word as far as I could remember, even repeating the strange phrase about the “Parma cheese”.
“What about the Captain's murder? Did you find any strychnine there, Brian?”
Pitt puffed reflectively on his pipe:
“Forensics found a large quantity in the stomach – enough to kill a small army. We searched the ship from top to toe ... In the pharmacy we discovered strychnine in a jar labelled 'stomach powders'; also 50 Kg of high grade cocaine in a secret compartment behind one of the cupboards.”
“And a small quantity of cocaine in Mr Slater's cabin,” added Harrison.
“I'm still not clear ... If Slater was the murderer, why did he us
e a knife on Graham Parkin and Wendy Alexander ... why not strychnine? And why was Wendy killed? Was she a member of the gang?”
We were interrupted by a knock on the door. A tanned healthy smiling figure was ushered in. I hardly recognised the senior surgeon of the Koh-i-Noor.
“Let me introduce you to Detective Chief Inspector Hardcastle.”
His stoop and tremor had gone, and he looked ten years younger. Rory Harrison brought another chair from next door, and Hardcastle sat down.
“Apologies for keeping you waiting, Brian ... The traffic was horrendous ... Well, Edwin, sorry to have spoilt your theory; yet it was quite useful in its way ...”
From his pocket, he laboriously extracted a pipe and a tobacco pouch; he filled and tamped the bowl of his pipe, and proceeded to light it with an ancient brass lighter. It was several minutes before he could commence his narrative:
“As a matter of fact, I've been working under cover for the last couple of years for the drugs unit at Scotland Yard, investigating a cartel smuggling cocaine out of Panama. I'd been an Army doctor, and was posted to the Far East – India, Malaya, Hong Kong, and eventually back to Cyprus; rather like our good Chief Inspector Pitt, I transferred to Military Intelligence; when I was demobbed I ended up at New Scotland Yard ...”
“Customs and Excise discovered that there was a close temporal relationship between the docking of the SS Koh-i-Noor at Southampton and the cocaine reaching the streets in the UK,” interposed Pitt. “So our masters contrived to place Charlie on board to investigate.”
“I managed to get taken on as senior surgeon about eight months ago, even though my Medicine and Surgery were pretty rusty ... you were a great boon professionally, Edwin, when you arrived! The only person who knew of my links with Scotland Yard was the Captain ... I soon realised that there was a whole gang of them on the Koh-i-Noor; but they must have got wind that there was an undercover agent on board, and they were getting uncomfortably close to me ... At first they suspected poor Fiona Henderson Scott: her father's a High Court Judge who had presided in a recent high profile drug trafficking case – an unfortunate coincidence ... with an unfortunate outcome for her ... Next, they somehow got wind that it was the ship's surgeon, but they didn't know which one; so they decided to take us both out, to hedge their bets: I was attacked by some ruffians in Balboa, but I shot one, and the rest fled (you remember you kindly stitched up my hand afterwards) ... you were targeted in Sydney and in Hawaii, and they tried to poison you on board ship ... The murders and the attempted break-in in Balboa gave me vital clues to the identity of the gang ... You had mentioned the break-in to the Captain, but he hadn't found it in the ship's log.”
“The pharmacist, Mr Slater, had to dispose of the incriminating evidence in the envelope in the Captain's safe,” once more interrupted Brian Pitt. “ As you know, Edwin, the message read something like: 'Undercover Agent on Board SS Koh-i-Noor. Modern Day Sherlock Holmes. I do not Care about the Money. I Want Out.' But the important bit was the thumb print, which would identify the killer. Charlie had been treating Captain Butterworth for raised blood pressure, so Mr Slater brought him his powder (really strychnine), which he added to a glass of brandy. The key to the safe was on the Captain's fob-chain (this was common knowledge among the crew), and Slater was able to dispose of the incriminating evidence ...”
“I had to diagnose a more innocuous cause of death, so as not to alarm the gang,” smiled Charlie Hardcastle. “You diverted suspicion from me very effectively, and I was happy to spend the rest of the voyage in the relative safety of the cells.”
“So why did Roy Slater cut the throats of Graham Parkin and Wendy Alexander; why not use strychnine on them?” I asked.
“It was not Slater's thumb print we found on your film, Edwin. It was Mr McFee's!”
I was thunderstruck.
“He was the leader of the gang on board,” continued Brian Pitt. “Captain Butterworth suspected Mc Fee since the episode at Balboa, and was in constant fear for his life; he had kept a loaded pistol in a drawer in his cabin.”
“I have given this some thought,” I ventured. “The symptoms that the Captain complained of to me were not due to low doses of strychnine – they were probably just the side effects of his blood pressure and indigestion medication, compounded by quite justifiable anxiety.”
“The Captain's murder occurred whilst McFee was on the Bridge, providing him with a rock-solid alibi. The timing was probably arranged deliberately ... Coming back to the murder of Graham Parkin, Edwin, as you correctly surmised, the first radio officer was the third member of the gang. He took radio-messages from the group in Panama, detailing who would bring the cocaine on board at Balboa, the quantity to expect, and the time and password for the handover. He had panicked when you told him your theories about the death of Fiona Henderson Scott; he contacted the cartel, wanting to terminate his employment ... and was instead terminated himself by Christopher McFee. Mc Fee had to leave the wireless room in a hurry to wash the blood from his hands, and therefore didn't have time to burn the evidence completely before the body was discovered. When he returned he must have realised that the thumb-print was at least as important as the message itself. He therefore volunteered to take the envelope with the charred message to the safe on the Bridge, hoping to destroy the print on the way; unfortunately for him, the Captain had intervened, and transported it personally to the safe in his cabin. The reason that no matchstick was found in the ashtray was that McFee had used his cigarette lighter to dispose of the message slip.
“Retrieval of the envelope was one reason for the Captain's murder. Yet the clues from the attempted break-in to your quarters while you were berthed in Panama may have been equally important. Captain Butterworth noted that the event hadn't been reported in the ship's log; he confronted Mr McFee, the duty officer, with this; although the captain didn't realise its significance, McFee did. He had exchanged shifts with Mr Goodenough, so that he would be on duty that evening, to help the members of the gang to board the Koh-i-Noor safely and show them where to store the cocaine. The attempted break-in of your cabin in Balboa was not a murder attempt – it was a mistake. The Panamanians had brought the sacks of cocaine aboard; your cabin was next to the pharmacy; what you heard McFee say was not “Parma cheese” but “Pharmacia”, in other words “pharmacy”, which was where Slater was waiting to cache the sacks.
“McFee tried to kill you in Sydney, when he decided that you were the undercover agent. He followed you around the city, and dropped a slab of masonry on you from the parapet of the tower ...”
“So it was Christopher McFee who arranged my death, whilst we were on the town in Hawaii.” The words tumbled over themselves in my excitement, as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. “He hired the gang, and then rang them to intercept us on our way from Lulu's Bar to the harbour; he even told them what I was wearing, so that they could easily identify me; I actually caught Christopher on the phone when I returned to our table from the loo! Only a member of our group could have known the exact time and place ...
“But why was Wendy Alexander killed?” I still felt upset at the thought. “Was that why you interviewed her friend, Stewart?”
“We just had to rule him and Barry out – merely dotting the “i's” and crossing the “t's”. Miss Alexander was murdered because she came unexpectedly to your cabin (while you were still photographing on deck); she surprised Christopher McFee ransacking the room in search of your camera (to dispose of the copy of the thumb print, which might yet incriminate him). However, you were still taking pictures with it on deck, so he had been unable to find it. Later, McFee persuaded you to throw a party, brought bottles of beer in a canvas bag, and removed the camera in the bag, unobserved; finally, he jettisoned what he thought was the incriminating evidence. Fortunately for us, you had changed the film by that time!”
“Wasn't it pretty risky for him to search my cabin, after our trip to Nassau, when I was due to return at any moment?”
“But switchboard may well have been unmanned, while we were in port ... the phones wouldn't have been connected ...” I interjected again.
“In any case, he would have been prepared to kill you (as he did Miss Alexander); after all, he had already tried once in Sydney! McFee was supremely self-confident, arrogant, probably psychopathic; certainly a cool customer – he remained cool even when we charged him, though his mask did slip a little then ...
“A blunt flick-knife with tiny traces of blood was found in McFee's cabin (he had indeed been foolhardy). From small irregularities on the blade, our forensic team are certain that this was the weapon that killed both Parkin and Miss Alexander, and the traces of blood on the blade match both victims.”
Small quantities of cocaine had been found in McFee's as well as Slater's cabin, high grade Colombian cocaine identical with the consignment hidden in the pharmacy; they had been unable to dispose of these easily, as their cabins were below the water line and thus had no port-holes. I had not known how close to death I had been when I had embarked on the search of the pharmacy with Roy Slater and Christopher McFee.
Previously I had seen, without really registering, their fast cars and expensive women ... Subsequently, large sums of money had been found in secret bank accounts which had been traced to them.
“Both suspects should be convicted for smuggling cocaine; and we have more than enough evidence to gain a conviction for murder against Christopher McFee. However the evidence for murder by poisoning is much weaker in the case of Roy Slater – his prints were not found on the brandy glass in the captain's cabin, which had been wiped clean, and no-one saw him near there at the crucial time. Yet we may still get him on the Parkin murder, on charges of 'aiding and abetting' or 'knowledge after the fact'.”