Murder in the Mine

by Roy Lewis

  ‘And there wasn’t room for two of them.’

  ‘Grace is the one who’ll come into money?’

  Klein took a stiff drink.

  ‘Money is important. And she’s not a bad looking woman. But she told me Donna had to go. So Donna went.’

  ‘Quarrel?’

  Klein laughed with a real amusement.

  ‘That’s an understatement! She played hell! Tore a strip of skin off my cheek, kicked me where it hurts most, but after I told her a few home truths she went packing. Thing is, Chief Inspector, Donna was a funny woman. She was . . . how can I put it? Tough. She could swear with the best of them. She knew what life was about. She’d seen a lot of it in her thirty years. She’d worked as secretary in some crummy firms before she got a job in a lawyer’s office, but it all added up to experience. Tough. But that wasn’t all. She could make you feel great. She could make you feel she was innocent. She could act like the original bitch and then make you feel she was a pussy cat. She could twist a man around her finger and make him think he was God Almighty. So she was tough and she was an actress but she was also scared as hell. You know what I mean? She had a few years to make good; she had to take what the good years could give her. She believed that she needed her ship to come in while the sailors were still around because when they’d gone there’d be nothing left in life. She had to make good now, and if that wasn’t on, it was time to leave.’

  Klein laughed again, and shook his head.

  ‘That’s the whole scene, Chief Inspector. It’s no good thinking I might have knocked her off because she was getting in my way with Grace. It wouldn’t have been necessary, ever. Fact was, Donna Stark could be a bitch and scratch my face open but she was also a realist. There was no percentage in keeping the game going; she knew she’d get nothing more from me, so she cut her losses and went.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The greener grass.’

  ‘And that was?’

  Klein shook his head. His grey eyes seemed colder than ever, disinterested.

  ‘She said she was going to see Jack Scales. But he wouldn’t have been the green grass. A lift over the fence, maybe, but the green grass, that would have to be something different . . .’

  * * *

  ‘So what do you think, Frank?’

  They stood in the shadow of the Tyne Bridge, leaning on the rail at the darkening quayside as the freighter slipped her moorings and headed downstream for Tynemouth and the North Sea. Frank Luffman had welcomed John Crow in his home at Westerhope, allowed him to be fussed over by Joyce, but when evening had come had pulled him out of the house, driven down to the river and here they now stood in the twilight as the traffic rumbled above their heads across the bridge and the lights of the city twinkled above them.

  Frank Luffman lit his pipe and puffed at it, inspected it, lit it again.

  ‘Can’t tell you anything about Donna Stark you don’t know already. Jimmy Klein now, he’s a different kettle of fish. Well enough known on Tyneside.’

  ‘I’d appreciate anything you can give me,’ Crow said.

  ‘Aye, well, you’ve got to remember the limitations on anything I say,’ Luffman replied, scratching his lean cheek with the stem of his pipe. ‘It’s only hearsay. I been with the rivermen a long time up here, we’ve pulled a few things out of the river in my time, and a few of them have been suicides who couldn’t face the consequences of their frauds. I’ve asked around and I’ve heard Jimmy Klein could have been one of them, if he’d been a different kind of feller.’

  ‘His background is shady?’

  ‘More than that. Your files will have told you he was a tearaway when he was younger. Maybe he still is, hey?’

  ‘Donna Stark is dead,’ Crow said quietly.

  ‘Aye. But Wales is a long way from Tyneside. Still, the picture I’ve got is much the same as you got it from Klein. Seems he picked up with this girl Stark, lived with her a while, then dropped her when this other piece showed up and flourished her fivers.’

  ‘But what were the things he didn’t tell me?’

  Luffman smiled, linked his arm through Crow’s, drew him away from the rail and together they walked up towards the Manors and Dog Leap Steps.

  ‘The first thing he didn’t tell you was he needs this marriage to Grace Rendell. He needs her money.’

  ‘His business is shaky?’

  ‘Overstretched. He’ll be in water deeper and blacker than the Tyne unless she hauls him out — and believe me, the Tyne is pretty deep and pretty black.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘You mean that’s not enough of a motive for murder?’

  Luffman’s breath grew shorter as they began to climb the narrow steps leading up towards the streets above.

  ‘Ah, well, the rest is the interesting story of what happened after he met Donna Stark but before they lived together.’

  ‘He told me they met in a night club.’

  Luffman nodded. He stopped, turned, looked back down the steps towards the dark quayside.

  ‘Bloody hell, since I gave up the swimming a few years back my body’s not been the same. Out of bloody breath, on Dog Leap! We’re getting old, John!’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Aye, well they met in a night club, hey? Could be. But there’s some who say they had a professional contact as well.’

  ‘What sort of professional contact?’

  ‘Top of the steps, for God’s sake, and I’ll tell you. All right for you . . .bloody long skinny legs and no belly. . . when you swim and dive and give it up . . . bloody pot . . .’

  Grey Street proved easier, the incline still steep but not tearing the breath from Frank Luffman’s lungs. They strolled past the Theatre Royal and reached Grey’s monument. Luffman leaned against it, watched the people and the cars and shook his head.

  ‘Newcastle’s changing.’

  ‘James Klein . . .’ Crow said patiently.

  Luffman laughed.

  ‘You’re too bloody persistent, John. Tynesiders don’t like to be rushed. My time in the Met, it was all too pushed. We like to promise the moon, and deliver it. . . one of these days. All right, James Klein. Thing is, he was being chased up for fraud about the time he got really friendly with Donna Stark.’

  ‘He told me he had a down period about then.’

  ‘Down it was,’ Luffman said grimly. ‘Klein was sales manager of a large firm here in Newcastle – Northeast Credit it was called. Sounded like a finance firm but it wasn’t; dealt in cars mostly, motor dealers, vehicles ranging from three hundred to three thousand quid, good fast turnover. He got the job through some connection he’d made as a youngster but he and his friend Brown—dead now—certainly didn’t part friends. The fact was it was suspected for a long time that Klein had been responsible for certain irregularities in the firm’s accounts.’

  ‘Suspected?’

  ‘Never proved.’

  ‘So what’s this got to do with Donna Stark?’

  Frank Luffman nodded across towards the Eldon Centre. ‘Come and have a beer,’ he said.

  * * *

  The man who joined them in the bar was small, thin and repressed in appearance. His suit was of quality cloth, perhaps worn for the occasion but his shirt and tie were untidy, collar ends curling, tie not straight. His underwear would be a week old, Crow thought to himself.

  He was introduced as Donald Rich. He shook hands but released Crow’s bony fingers quickly as though he feared retention of his own. He tried to smile but his mouth was nervous and his teeth were bad and he gave up the effort even before it really started. He accepted the beer Luffman bought, took a long swallow but was in no way encouraged or revived. He seemed to wish very badly that he wasn’t there.

  ‘This is Mr Crow,’ Luffman said. ‘The chap I said would like to have a talk.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Luffman.’ Donald Rich did not look at Crow. The prefix ‘Mr’ did not fool him; he knew Luffman and he knew who Crow was. For that matter Crow was already makin
g a guess about Rich too—he’d seen enough of his kind in the past. A snout and an informer: Rich had all the mannerisms of the cheapest. The best were confident and assured; Rich’s kind dwelt on the fringes of information, asked a great deal, got little and gave little. Crow glanced at Luffman, surprised that he would bring such a man to John Crow. Luffman smiled.

  ‘Donald used to work with your friend. At Northeast Credit.’

  Crow led the way to the table in the corner. They sat down, Luffman to Crow’s left, the two facing the nervous Donald Rich isolated across the table.

  ‘I met Mr Klein for the first time this morning,’ Crow said. ‘He seems to have done well for himself.’

  He could not have chosen a better way of loosening Rich’s inhibitions and fears. If the man had been reluctant, rage removed the reluctance; if he had been cautious, bitterness wiped away the caution. He said three words, sharply, obscenely, and left Crow in no doubt as to his feelings towards James Klein.

  ‘You don’t think he deserves his . . . ah . . . success,’ Crow said quietly.

  ‘He got it by stampin’ on other people’s faces, Mr Crow. But he’ll get it himself, in time, if I has my way he’ll get it. The coppers got nothing on him, couldn’t fix him, turned on me instead, but I been listenin’ and lookin’ around, and one of these days when I’m ready I’ll be taking a file of papers around to the station and they’ll pull him in and throw the book at him.’’

  Crow let the vicious, vehement words die away in silence. Puzzled, he glanced at Luffman and then back to Rich.

  ‘You’re keeping a dossier on Klein?’

  ‘I hate the bastard! He cost me three years — and my reputation.’

  Donald Rich wasn’t a police informer. Crow had misjudged him. He caught the gleam in Luffman’s eye and realised Luffman had guessed at Crow’s misconception and had been amused. But there was no amusement in Donald Rich. He was full of sourness and hate.

  ‘You’d better explain what you mean,’ Crow said. ‘You were with James Klein in Northeast Credit. Is that where it happened?’

  Rich scowled at his beer. He felt he deserved better than beer out of life and Klein had taken it away from him. He would have forgotten the limitations of his own character and capabilities: he had found the scapegoat for his failures in Klein and his whole life-style would now breed on that hate.

  ‘I was the man who got the credit for the whole thing. I was the one the police turned to when the case against Klein fizzled out. I was the one who got hauled up at the Assizes, got fixed with a term of imprisonment of three years. The barrister I got stuck with. . .you know who it was? Some character just two years out of the mental home! He didn’t even read the papers I wrote! I put it all down, I explained in detail how it couldn’t have been me, I didn’t have the know-how, I didn’t have the access to the papers, I was never near the blasted office when the papers were rigged, but did he mention this in court? Did he, hell! He hadn’t even read the papers! Legal-aid, you can stuff it!’

  Rich tried to drown the fires of his resentment in a long draught of beer. It failed; the heat still burned in him and his eyes glared angrily around the room. Crow leaned forward.

  ‘I haven’t got the picture yet, Mr Rich.’

  Donald Rich finished his beer. He became sullen, the corners of his mouth drooping, and his eyes stared at the puddle of beer stains on the table in front of him.

  ‘No one’s wanted to see this particular picture. Why you, now?’

  ‘Because I brought Mr Crow here, Donald,’ Frank Luffman said quietly, tapping out his pipe in an ashtray. ‘You know me, I’ve listened. I’ve done nothing because there’s nothing to be done. You’ve served your term, you’ve talked to me, I’ve listened. All right, now you have a bigger chance. You know Mr Crow’s an important man. He’s not bringing you help; he’s not offering you any. But he wants to listen. And if he hears the right words, and they fit . . . who knows?’

  There was an implied promise in the words, even if they were as non-committal as Luffman could make them, and Crow was vaguely uneasy. It was holding out something to Donald Rich that would probably not be possible to obtain. But Luffman had used the words and John Crow had to go along with them.

  ‘I’m listening, Mr Rich.’

  Donald Rich hunched forward over his almost empty beer glass. He rubbed a hand over his jaw; the rasping sound suggested he had shaved none too closely and his shirt cuff was frayed.

  ‘I was at Northeast Credit,’ he said huskily. ‘I was working on the books — accounts clerk, in James Klein’s office. That’s why they saddled it on me.’

  ‘Saddled what?’

  ‘The frauds.’

  Crow sighed. ‘Tell me.’

  Before Rich could reply, Luffman tapped his pipe bowl loudly on the table.

  ‘The truth, Donald, remember that!’

  For a moment Rich seemed to struggle with himself, eyes flickering, considering whether to go on at all. But he had taken too many body blows and he needed to talk.

  ‘All right, I’ve done my time. I admit it. I was light-fingered. I was in Accounts, there were opportunities. . .you got to remember, Mr Crow, cars were coming in, the turnover was so quick, checks from the auditors were less than efficient. I tell you, any fool could have milked the company. It was there for the taking and plenty of people took. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t take too. So that’s what I did. I pulled out fifty quid here, fifty there. It was easy. Cash transactions on the cheaper cars, work a fiddle with the salesman out front, no duplicates on invoices and type them up later, split the money . . . It was a system, it worked.’

  ‘But you got caught,’ Crow said grimly.

  Rich shook his head.

  ‘No. We didn’t get caught. I reckon we could have gone on for years. But someone else got greedy. Not us, not the little ones milking the cow for a few drops. Somebody else.’ He finished his beer with a quick swallow. Without a word Frank Luffman rose, walked across to the bar to get another round. Crow remained silent until he returned, then leaned forward.

  ‘Go on.’

  Rich gripped the handle of the beer mug as though for strength. His eyes failed to meet Crow’s but his voice was shaky with anger.

  ‘Look, you got to take what I say on trust and that’s something they didn’t do in court. But you got to take it because I got no reason to lie now, have I, Mr Luffman? I done my time. But these is the facts! The whole business blew over because Northeast Credit was never a sound proposition anyway. Too many in for a quick quid. And the turnover of cars was rapid. Well, you know how the system works. Customer comes in, you flog him the car. He thinks he’s dealing with you when you give him credit; in fact you sell the car to a finance company who give the customer the credit and can take back the car if he doesn’t pay. Okay, that’s how it goes. But there’s credit restrictions on all this. The customer had to stump up a cash deposit before he could get the credit. That’s where the fiddles came in.’

  ‘No deposits?’ Crow asked.

  ‘No deposits, but forged documents to say they were made and then inflated prices on the cars to cover the fraud. Now let me put it to you straight, Mr Crow. I couldn’t have been involved in all that. I didn’t have access to the papers, though they said I did. They said it was me who forged the hire purchase documents to avoid the credit restrictions and they dumped the whole thing on me. But they never produced the evidence.’

  Crow frowned. He leaned back in his chair, tapped the edge of his glass with a bony finger.

  ‘If there was no documentary evidence. . .’

  ‘Ahh . . . well, there was one piece of paper,’ Rich said reluctantly, ‘and they hung the rest on that, but all the real robbing wasn’t done by me, I swear. And there was a collection of six sheets which could have proved it. HP documents, forged all right, but not by me. Inter-linked transactions and a name on one of the documents.’

  ‘James Klein?’

  Rich grimaced and nodded. Crow considered the
matter.

  ‘Klein wasn’t arraigned?’

  ‘If you mean he wasn’t brought to court the answer’s no.’

  ‘But if you knew it was he—’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Rich asserted indignantly, ‘and even if I had I wouldn’t have shopped him. I was pleading innocence, remember, and it was only later I worked out what had happened to those papers and who got hold of them.’

  ‘So what did happen to those papers?’ Crow asked.

  ‘The first link in the chain was a deal James Klein worked with a car-hire firm who were selling three Mercedes, top-class stuff. He bought them for the firm, and then forged the papers later to resell the cars, but the papers never went through the firm. I saw them, even so. Thing is, what happened to them? I tell you. They was took from the office by a firm of solicitors acting for Northeast Credit. And that was that.’

  Crow held up a bony hand.

  ‘Now wait a minute. Let’s get this clear. A solicitor who takes papers while acting for a person likely to be prosecuted cannot hold those papers back in the event of a prosecution. He will be called upon to disclose all papers relevant to the case; he would have to hand copies to the prosecution.’

  ‘If he’s got them!’ Rich jeered.

  Crow frowned.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. You told me—’

  ‘I said they was collected by the firm. Then . . . they disappeared.’

  ‘Just disappeared?’

  ‘This wasn’t mentioned at the trial,’ Luffman said. ‘The existence of the papers wasn’t even commented upon. It accounts for Klein’s non-involvement in the prosecution. The little men like Rich got hammered; Klein, he went free though, as bust as Northeast Credit was.’

  ‘The solicitors . . .’

  ‘Still in business. Respectable firm. Used to be in Eldon Square till the planners pulled it down, rot them. Moved top of Blackett Street now. But forget them, as such. Ask me about Mrs Stark again.’