Murder in the Mine

by Roy Lewis

‘Mr Davies got out of the bucket and I went across to him. He told me Gyp hadn’t starved down there in the shaft. He started to walk away and I went with him. His teeth were chattering. I think he was shaken by what he’d seen down there in the pit. Then he showed me the ring, said he’d recognized it in the flash of his headlamp and it was then he’d looked beyond and seen the woman’s body. He showed me the ring. It was a sort of round thing — a brooch, I mean, not a ring — with a lightning bolt going through the middle. . .’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector.’ Crow stood looking down at Dai Chippo. ‘Perhaps you can explain, Mr Davies.’

  ‘Explain? Explain what?’ A flush came across Dai Chippo’s face, a slow stain of belligerence. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at.’

  ‘I think you do, Mr Davies.’ Crow’s voice had taken on a cold edge. ‘The brooch. . .’

  ‘All right, I found the brooch, picked it up. . .’

  ‘No. You told Tom Bailey you recognized it, not just found it.’

  Dai Chippo’s mouth opened to protest, to deny, then slowly it closed again. His lips seemed to thin, harden, and his eyes narrowed also so that he was almost squinting up at John Crow. He looked for a moment towards Dewi Jones as though seeking aid, and then in tones marked with dislike he said, ‘You got things wrong, Chief Inspector Crow. You’re not Welsh, you don’t know about these things. Tom Bailey is from Tynybedw Street in Treorchy. Welsh-speaking family; it’s his first language. He went to the Welsh school up there.’

  ‘So? His command of English seems adequate enough from this report.’

  ‘Oh aye, his English is good, no doubt about that, but what you got to remember is that sometimes a word sort of slips. You might ask a Welshman how he’s doing and he’ll say “Very well”; next time you ask he’ll say “Very Good”. It’s hanging on to the right word for idiom, you know what I mean? I said found, but when Tom Bailey reported it to you he said recognized. All right — just a mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘Your mistake, Dai.’

  Dewi Jones shifted his bulk and leaned forward, scowling. ‘That sort of tale won’t wash. Facts: you were shaken seeing that body down there; you said to Tom Bailey you recognized that brooch; each time you’ve had a chat with us you’ve been worried to death. Better come clean, Dai. It’s no good trying to hold out — you’ll just make things difficult for yourself.’

  Dai Chippo sat still and no one spoke. Outside, the muted sounds of traffic in the main street through Tonypandy was like the buzzing of bees on a summer afternoon. The three men were silent, Crow and Jones waiting for Dai Chippo to speak, the fish-fryer himself gnawed by doubt and anxiety. It was almost a minute later that he stirred himself, brushed a hand across his face as though removing cobwebs of indecision.

  ‘The hell with it,’ he muttered.

  ‘You did recognize that brooch?’ Crow asked quickly.

  Dai Chippo nodded miserably.

  ‘So you knew the woman?’

  ‘No. Never did. Just saw her the once, up on Pentre hill. She was standing there, just below the shop. I saw her, I got an eye for a woman, she was a bit of all right. I walked past her, saw her coat, and she turned and the lamplight gleamed on that brooch. I remembered it, when it flashed like that, just the same way, down in the shaft. But I never knew her, just saw the brooch.’

  ‘You saw it just the once, and remembered it?’

  Crow’s tone was incredulous and Dai Chippo looked miserable, but defiant. He nodded his head.

  ‘That was the way of it.’

  ‘All right. When did you see her? What time was it?’

  ‘About ten in the evening. Getting dark. They’d turned on the lights . . . maybe it was ten-thirty, can’t be sure.’

  ‘And the date?’

  ‘June the sixth.’

  Crow looked at Dewi Jones but the inspector’s head was lowered as he made notes on the pad in front of him.

  ‘You don’t remember the time,’ Crow said slowly, ‘but you remember the date with precision.’

  ‘Well, it fits doesn’t it? It’s the date stamped on the ticket you found in her pocket, isn’t it?’

  This time Jones’s head came up and his glance met Crow’s. There was an angry coldness in Crow’s eyes and Jones got the message: the valley people might close their mouths when an English policeman passed their way, but the inbred gossiping didn’t stop when Welshman spoke to Welshman, whether he was a policeman or not. Jones didn’t like it and his mouth was hard. It was a criticism of his men, his force, and Crow’s annoyance was justified.

  ‘I’ll see who let it out,’ he said bitterly.

  Crow nodded, turned back to Dai Chippo and asked, ‘All right, it fits, but have you any other reason for thinking it was the sixth?’

  ‘Very good reason. The sixth was a Tuesday, right? The shop closes on Tuesday afternoons, doesn’t open till Wednesday lunchtime. That’s why I was out in the street that time of night. Been to the Club. If we’d have been open that night I’d still have been serving, getting ready to close a while after the pubs emptied.’

  ‘Your wife—’

  ‘Mrs Davies,’ Dewi Jones interrupted sourly, ‘wouldn’t let Dai out at night, except Tuesdays. You’re under her thumb, good and proper, aren’t you, Dai? And the gossip about the date. . .that was in the shop, was it? Which wife of which copper told you that titbit, hey?’

  ‘Diawlch, man . . .’

  ‘When were you in Middlesbrough last, Mr Davies?’ Crow asked, cutting across Jones’s embittered tones.

  ‘Middlesbrough?’ Surprise raised Dai Chippo’s voice, emasculated it. ‘Never been there in my life, man!’

  ‘Durham? Newcastle upon Tyne?’

  Dai Chippo shook his head. ‘Not been up there. Went to Whitby once, when I was in the Army, and stayed a while at Catterick Camp, but I never did get further north than that, ever. Not ever.’

  Crow walked back across the room and folded his arms. He lowered his head, thrusting it forward like a bird of prey about to strike.

  ‘So it wasn’t up there you met Donna Stark?’

  ‘Donna Stark? Who the hell is . . .’ Dai Chippo stopped speaking, his mouth opened and closed and he began to blink rapidly. He swallowed hard.

  ‘The woman in the pit . . . you know who she is?’

  ‘The woman in the pit, the woman whose brooch you recognized, the woman you saw at the top of Pentre hill on the 6th of June, yes, we know who she is. We received the information today, it’ll be in the newspapers in the morning. Durham police finally traced her. Mrs Donna Stark. And you still say you didn’t know who she was?’

  * * *

  After Dai Chippo had left the room Crow stared moodily at Dewi Jones. The inspector was still frowning, still thinking about leaks of information, but conscious of the silence he looked up to Crow.

  ‘Well, sir?’ He grimaced. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘Could be he did just meet her on the hill . . .’

  ‘No,’ Crow said decisively. ‘He’s lying, of that I’m certain. It doesn’t ring true — he would never have recognized a brooch on a woman after months like that, not when he had seen her only once. That man hasn’t told us everything, not yet.’

  ‘We could hold him, sir, question—’

  Crow shook his head. ‘We’ll let him stew a bit, wait until he starts to relax and think the worst is over, then come after him again. I’m going up to the north, to learn a bit more about the deceased Mrs Stark. After that, maybe we’ll have something to throw at our fish-frying friend, something that’ll make him say a few more words than he’s inclined to do at the present.’

  ‘The Chief Super is still up there, sir,’ Jones said doubtfully.

  Crow looked at Jones and smiled; the smile became conspiratorial, and after a moment Jones joined in it.

  ‘And with a bit of luck, maybe I’ll manage to avoid him,’ Chief Inspector Crow remarked.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jo
hn Crow enjoyed the drive north.

  To begin with there was the drive itself. Once the car had left the Heads of the Valleys Road and swept past the industrial areas, there were the dipping curves of Monmouthshire to be enjoyed. The road became uninteresting as it sliced monotonously through Birmingham and Staffordshire, with only the distant lift of Cannock Chase to suggest hills and trees, but once past Cheshire there was the promise of the most scenic motorway in England. The traffic was moderately heavy, with people still streaming like lemmings for the Lake District, but the hills rose magnificently beyond, the Pennines loomed up, the road drove its way through rugged cliff faces and they crossed Shap and began the run down to Carlisle.

  They had made one stop shortly after they passed Stafford; they made a second, before they left the motorway outside Carlisle and took the Newcastle road, cutting off across the Military Road to avoid the heavier traffic and to afford Crow a few glimpses of the Wall at Housesteads. After that it was a swift, undulating drive towards Newcastle.

  And this afforded Crow’s second enjoyment: the thought of meeting Frank Luffman again. It had been at least ten years since they had last met; they had known each other for a long time before that, professionally and socially (Martha still wrote to Joyce Luffman from time to time); and since Frank had given up his diving activities and was now acting merely as an office-bound head of the skin team assisting in river searches, it was going to be easier to spend some time with him and learn a few local facts without going through official channels and perhaps upsetting the Chief Superintendent already working in the area.

  But first of all, Crow had to inform the Chief Superintendent that he was in Newcastle, and obtain any details already gathered concerning Donna Stark. The Chief Superintendent offered no objections — he was about to return to Cardiff anyway, having completed his investigations in Newcastle and Durham, and was quite prepared to hand over the file to Crow.

  John Crow studied it that evening, while he had a drink in the quiet hotel he had picked out for himself in Jesmond. He sat in the lounge bar quite late that evening, reading the reports and staring at the photographs of Donna Stark.

  There were three of them. Two were merely snapshots and did little more than emphasise that she had a good figure and dressed smartly. The third was a professional job, taken in a Durham studio perhaps five years earlier.

  Crow stared at it for a long time.

  A murder investigation usually held a basic problem for the investigator — he never really knew the dead person, never really learned what he or she had been like. Everything was second-hand — impressions, statements, letters, diary entries, the ephemeral particles that were all that remained of a person, flickers from a candle that had gone out, shadows on a wall. Crow felt this deeply; he was a sensitive man unable to treat a cadaver merely as just another corpse to deal with in professional terms. It had been a person and he felt unable to adequately cope with his job unless he knew what that person had been.

  Photographs helped.

  They helped not only in what they showed as in what they hid. This photograph from the Durham studio showed head and shoulders of a blonde woman, hair parted straight, almost severely, but falling more casually across one eye. Her face was square, slightly heavy-jawed, but she had been a handsome woman with a resolute mouth and bold aggressive eyes. Those eyes interested John. The woman who had stared so aggressively at the camera had also taken the precaution to hide those eyes. The make-up was heavy—perhaps she had had fair, almost invisible brows and lashes and needed the security of pencil and eye-shadow. But her lashes were not her own: heavy and black they were like a protective curtain — she could lower them and escape, conceal and run. But the camera had held no fears for her.

  As he sipped his lager Crow grimaced, thought himself fanciful. But the fact remained, Donna Stark had had something to fear in the end. Maybe she had feared it even then. Aggression and confidence — take the world, shake it, milk it, use it; caution and precaution—keep escape routes available, watch for danger, plan, run, escape . . .

  * * *

  It was interesting.

  James Klein also was interesting, but in a different way. John Crow went to see him next morning, driving across the Tyne Bridge, along the motorway to Durham, through the town and up among the quiet closes near the University. Klein lived in a mock Tudor cottage that would have cost him a considerable amount of money with its long green lawns, view of the Cathedral and the river and the distant Cleveland hills. But it hadn’t cost him what Crow had guessed, for the file said he rented the property.

  The file also allowed Crow to guess why Klein would be, essentially, a man who needed a front for his own inadequacies. They were not apparent in his bearing or his appearance. He was of middle height and stockily built, well dressed in a lemon shirt open at the throat and grey, well-cut slacks. He held his shoulders well back, hands locked behind his trim waist, and his thick, slightly greying hair was as carefully placed as the expression on his face. He oozed the confidence and control of a man whose career was built on quicksand; he showed the smooth social ease of a man who had had to claw up to his present position in the social community. His voice was resonant and deep, his accent modulated, the offending Tyneside smoothed away.

  ‘Chief Inspector Crow, I’m pleased to meet you.’

  He made it sound as though he meant it, but his cold eyes had seen too many policemen to like seeing another.

  ‘I’m rather surprised, I admit, to receive another visit — it’s as though it’s open hunting season around here for CID men at the moment, but of course I’ve no objection to helping in any way I can. Not that there’s much I can do to help, as I told the Chief Superintendent only last —’

  Crow nodded, turned, looked at the settee and Klein made a hasty gesture, offering him the seat. Crow sat down; the leather was smooth and expensive. He looked up; Klein remained standing near the stone fireplace, hands still locked behind his back.

  ‘I would appreciate your co-operation Mr Klein,’ Crow said softly. ‘I realise you have already made a report to the Chief Superintendent, but it’s always useful in matters such as these to have two opinions—’

  ‘Like doctors,’ Klein said, and laughed.

  ‘Much the same sort of job in a way,’ Crow agreed, and smiled. ‘Make an incision, turn aside the protective skin, slice through the concealing fat, get at the truth underneath. Even if it’s cancerous.’

  Klein did not care for the comparison he had started. Brusquely, he said, ‘Yes, well, I gather your visit is in connection with Donna Stark.’

  ‘That’s right. I’d like you to tell me about her.’

  ‘I’ve already told the—’

  ‘Tell me how you came to meet her, how long you were together, when you last saw her, what she was like. Anything. Everything. You know what I mean?’

  Klein knew. He was no fool. Crow didn’t want the obvious answers, the times and dates and places that the Chief Superintendent had asked for. He wanted facts, but he wanted impressions too, and reasons. Klein knew. He didn’t want to.

  ‘There’s not a lot I can tell you I haven’t told already. I mean, it’s all been taken down in the statement I signed—’

  ‘I’ve seen the statement. It tells me you met Donna Stark at a nightclub some years ago. You knew her for about two years, then you started an affair with her, she lived with you for about thirteen months, then you and she quarrelled, she left, and you’ve heard nothing from her or about her since. Right?’

  Klein nodded stiffly.

  ‘Now tell me the rest,’ Crow said softly.

  Klein studied him for a moment, let his cold eyes flicker over the long bony figure. He considered.

  ‘You’re Murder Squad.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Taking notes?’

  ‘No notes.’

  Klein grimaced. His arms relaxed somewhat, he withdrew his hands from behind his back. He walked the room, poured himself a dri
nk from a decanter of whisky on the cabinet in the corner and then walked back, stared out of the window across the lawns to the Cathedral.

  ‘I’ve got a lot to lose, Chief Inspector.’

  Crow made no reply. After a moment, Klein sipped his whisky then turned decisively, as though he had reached a decision. It was a good performance; Crow knew nevertheless that Klein would be saying nothing he did not want to say, giving nothing away he was not prepared to give.

  ‘I’ll put it to you straight,’ Klein said, gesturing with his glass. ‘You’ll know all about me if you haven’t already found out, so I’ll tell you. I was born in the Scotswood Road and I went through the lot . . . juvenile courts, Borstal, two years inside. Then I struck lucky, and saw sense. I got tied up with a man called Brown who gave me an inside run and I’ve been straight ever since. I learned the car business in my twenties and I threw over my old friends. I had a down when I was thirty-five, and it threw me for a while—but I bounced back, and here I am now. I built up my own car-hire business and it’s solid, well pretty solid anyway. And I moved to Durham, I made good connections. Connections that were too important to be broken by Donna Stark.’

  Crow crossed his legs at the ankles and contemplated his cuffed shoes.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  Klein took another drink then sat down, draping one leg over the arm of the chair. He put his head back, stared at the ceiling and chuckled.

  ‘If anyone had told me twenty years ago I could end up marrying a bird who’d be coming into a fortune when she was twenty-five I’d have thrown him into the Tyne for ribbing me. But that’s how life’s worked, Inspector Crow. And that’s why I couldn’t afford Donna Stark.’

  ‘You wanted to get married’

  ‘I intend getting married next month. And don’t think this investigation into Donna will stop it . . . Grace knew all about Donna. But Donna had to go—’

  He stopped suddenly, his eyes flickering alarm in Crow’s direction.

  ‘That is, what I mean . . . look, I met Donna a few years back, she was married, I saw her a few times, we had a few giggles together. But I was going through a bad patch and I needed . . . solace. She gave me it. I didn’t see her for a while after that, but when I began to build up the car-hire business she came around again. She was always good in bed, I was fancy free, she’d left her husband, so what the hell! We got together. I fixed her a flat in Chester-le-street and we had a good time. It’s in the report, the dates and all that. But then Grace happened.’