by Roy Lewis
‘Until they got outside?’
‘Looks like.’
Crow nodded thoughtfully. He crossed his legs at the ankles and fixed his glance on the pale blue socks Martha had put in his bag before they came away. He didn’t care for those socks, but he wore them because Martha liked them. A bit of colour to a grey personality she had laughed at him.
‘Suspects?’
Stafford tapped out his pipe and thought about filling it again, then reconsidered. He put the pipe in his top pocket and shook his head.
‘Stowford Fair draws people from all over the area. There were cars buzzing in to Stowford all through until midnight; the last of the revelry was over by about three in the morning. I suppose almost anyone could have driven from Stowford to the caravan park and smashed Lindop’s head in.’
‘What about the people on the site?’
‘Almost everyone was in Stowford, it seems. Lindop was on the site after an evening in Stowford — he was seen drinking with some acquaintances in the Miller over the way at about eight in the evening. But he must have been back there at the site about nine-thirty. The only people left in the vans at that time were a married couple. Chap called Andrew Keene and his wife. She was in labour. A daughter was born next day, prematurely — intensive care unit right now.’
‘What’s Keene like?’
Stafford shrugged. ‘Tall, thin, kind of dreamy — we’re looking into him. He’s made a statement up at the hospital today. So has his wife. We’re running a check on both of them, and on Lindop too, of course.’
‘Who owns the site — I gather from the files Lindop was site manager?’
‘That’s so. Chap called Forsyth owns the place. Says he’s going to close it down now — been unhappy about it for some time. It would seem he was out at the site the afternoon before Lindop got smashed. He was looking for his site manager. The Sharkeys — a couple who live on the site — they say he wasn’t too pleased with Lindop.’
Crow raised his eyebrows, wrinkling his domed brow. ‘It’s a start, anyway. All right, now what about this generator thing?’
George Stafford scratched his head. ‘Not something that seems to fit, somehow. It looks as though someone blew the generator—’
‘Explosive?’
‘Dynamite. Just a little — enough to knock the generator apart and fix the lights above the gateway for good. But why was it done? Keene reckons he heard the explosion about ten o’clock — which would probably be before Lindop was killed. But why blow the lights, then come down, have a scrap with Lindop in the van and do him outside with a crowbar? I mean, there was no one on the site but the Keenes and there must have been a quieter way of going about things than blowing a generator.’
‘Did Keene go out to investigate?’
‘No.’ Stafford hesitated, seemed about to go on but thought better of it. Crow waited a moment but did not ask him further — if Stafford had something on his mind it was as well to wait until he thought it ripe enough to come out. Crow nodded, uncrossed his legs, stood up.
‘Fine. So let’s get to work. I want you to chase up the file on Lindop and the others, try to get forensic to put their skates on, and if you can find out where the dynamite used to blow the generator came from, it would be helpful. Any quarries nearby?’
‘The disused one south of here — Horse Bottom, or as they say locally ‘Arse Bottom Quarry — and then the two up near Foxholes.’
‘Try the Foxholes quarries. It’s a good enough situation to start in. As for me, I’m going to do a bit of sightseeing in the Cotswold countryside.’
‘You’re going out to Lovesome Hill?’
‘As they say,’ Crow agreed gravely, ‘to view the scene of the crime.’
* * *
There would be nothing to see, of course. The local police would have combed it, the forensic people would have picked over it, the site-dwellers would have satiated their curiosity over it, and there would only be a trodden-grass area around the screens erected by the police when the body was found. Nor was there any atmosphere to be picked up — John Crow had long ago learned that the frissons that the scene of a murder could give were subjective issues only. They were impressions he had learned to distrust because they came from inside, they were not external evidence. With people it was different; a man could learn a great deal from the impressions that people made upon him. Learn about them, and learn about himself too.
The last cottage on the outskirts of the town possessed an overflowing rose garden whose blooms were scarlet against the mellow stone of the wall; Crow leaned back and half closed his eyes. It would do as an image to retain until he had to face stark realities again, like blood, and bone splinters, and death.
Five minutes later the police driver said over his shoulder, ‘About another half-mile or so, sir.’ Crow opened his eyes and looked about him. Stowford had disappeared in the hollow of the hills behind and the squad car was moving along a straight road that crossed the hill and dipped into a slow slope beyond. From the hill he could see in the north distance a low limestone ridge, patchwork fields, clumps of woodland and winding valleys. Nearer to hand a half-mile stretch of tree-edged road and the farmhouse to the right, about a mile off the road, the squat bungalow fronting the road at the edge of the lane. Between and beside the two buildings was a sprawl of cream-dotted green — Lovesome Hill Caravan Park.
The thought of a caravan park in the Cotswolds would be pleasing to some; to John Crow it was distasteful. He had seen the way these caravans blighted the coasts of the south-west, and if the same happened to the Cotswolds the area could change overnight. But as the police car drove on to the Lovesome Hill site Crow had to admit it had its attractions. The belt of trees screened the site from the road, there was a nakedness about the area that was green and pleasing, there were only about twenty or thirty vans on the site and a number of them were unsold. Life could be quiet and pleasant here, he thought — if you like that sort of thing.
He told the driver to stop near the gate, and then he got out and walked down the site, a tall, gaunt, bony figure with a long stride, slow and determined. He approached the car parked near the first van, glanced at it, passed it and walked towards the small worn area where the pathologist and policemen had worked.
It looked innocent enough now.
There was nothing to be seen, of course, nothing significant. But it gave John Crow a picture of the scene where the murder occurred, and things like this could help. He was still standing there, looking about him, when he heard movement in the van at his back. He turned.
The man standing in the entrance of Lindop’s van was short and thickset, almost bald, angry, frustrated, and upset. He was glaring at Crow from beneath strips of bushy eyebrows and his hands were stuck deep in his pockets.
‘Good evening,’ Crow said.
‘Another policeman, I suppose. Or a reporter.’ The speaker looked again at Crow and obviously settled for the former description. Crow introduced himself.
‘My name’s Forsyth,’ said the little man aggressively. ‘I own this site — and it’s brought me nothing but trouble. To hell with it now, I’ll close it down as soon as you people get out of the bloody way.’
Crow paced forward, hands behind his back. He looked carefully at the van.
‘Your site manager lived and worked in here?’
‘That’s right. Served as an office, and he lived here as well. Bloody good, easy job if you ask me. But that wasn’t enough for him, was it?’
‘Wasn’t it?’
Forsyth snorted. ‘You got the bloody books, haven’t you? I came along when I heard Lindop had been . . . murdered . . .’ He hesitated, almost eschewing the word and then hurried on. ‘But by the time I arrived your people had taken over the van, looking for fingerprints and all that nonsense, and they took Chuck Lindop’s papers and books too. Well, you can tell me what fiddles he’s been up to.’
Crow shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you yet because I haven’t inspected the
books. Er . . . shall we go inside?’ When, after a momentary hesitation Forsyth stepped back into the van, John Crow followed him, looked around the interior with a certain interest, and then smiled. ‘Now, you were saying . . . fiddles? Just what had Chuck Lindop been up to?’
Forsyth looked around him distastefully, as though Lindop’s depredations still stained the caravan. ‘Like I said, I can’t be sure because I’ve not gone through the books he kept, but I got a pretty good idea what he was up to. I been talking to the people on the site, and it looks as though he was fiddling me all right. Maybe it was my own fault for not keeping a tighter rein on him, but he was a bloody slippery customer, you know, and he could be . . . persuasive.’
‘So what was he up to?’
‘Well, he was supposed to keep a record of overnighters and pay me the rent, keeping a commission for himself. From what I gather from the Sharkeys, there was never a lot of people stayed overnight, but there were certainly more than I got paid for. Now that’s small beer, and it doesn’t bother me too much. I lose, but it’s the permanents I’m more concerned about. And that’s where he was really milking me, I suspect.’
Crow frowned. ‘How could he not declare rents from permanent site residents?’
Forsyth shook his head glumly. ‘That isn’t the problem. I been looking at all the empty vans on the site. Some of them tally, some of them were brought on, okay. But there are two that don’t.’
He looked at Crow expectantly. Crow stared back, then shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t see the point.’
‘I have an arrangement with a firm in Oxford,’ Forsyth explained. ‘They sell me vans at a fixed price. I sell those vans here on the site: buyers pay for van plus site, which gives me a nice profit. If they want to leave the site they can, taking the van with them, for a further fixed fee. That leaves room for a new van, and a further sale for me. At least, that’s the way Lindop was supposed to work it.’
‘And he didn’t?’
‘Damned right he didn’t. It seems he worked two fiddles. One was to insist on an option to purchase the van at his own, low price — he did this to a couple of people, retired chap called Orton, for instance — and then sell the van off the site, second-hand, at a higher price. The other fiddle is the one that really gets my goat. He’d fixed up his own arrangement, as far as I can gather, with a van company. A fly-by-night firm, I think, not too much bothered about ethics, maybe they even pinched the vans themselves in the first place, I don’t know, I’ve not been able to check on them, anyway. But the system was that Lindop bought vans from them as a site fell vacant, put that van on and sold it, and never told me what was happening. In other words, Lindop was taking the rake-off that should have been coming to me as site owner.’
Crow nodded thoughtfully. ‘Did you speak to him about this?’
‘Didn’t have the chance. Been suspecting it for some time, but each time I came out to see him he just happened not to be around.’
‘But you spoke to some people on the site the day he died.’
The bushy eyebrows drew together as Forsyth considered the implications behind Crow’s first statement. He teased at his lower lip with a yellowing dog-tooth. ‘Well . . . yes, I did. That’s how I got the pieces of information I’m giving you now. And a bit more.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Have you spoken to Andrew Keene yet?’ When Crow shook his head, Forsyth grinned maliciously. ‘It looks as though I wasn’t the only sucker around here. That Keene lad, he’s pretty soft and pretty green. All right, Lindop was swindling me, and if I’d had proof before he got killed I’d have shot him off this site at a rapid rate of knots. Come to that, I’ve still not got the proof, not until I’ve seen his books. But young Keene, maybe he can raise some proof for us. You see, he can’t prove the van he’s living in was his.’
‘He bought it from Lindop?’
‘So he says. But he can’t produce any piece of paper to say so. And where does that leave me? I’ll have to go to law about it, for an opinion, but it seems to me that if the Keenes are living in a van on my site and they can’t prove they paid good money for it, I’d be entitled to reclaim the van.’ He squinted suspiciously at Crow. ‘Wouldn’t you see it that way?’
‘I’m not sure I would. I don’t know all the facts.’
Perhaps something of Crow’s feelings showed in his face, for Forsyth said defensively, ‘I’m a businessman. This site is an investment. Lindop’s been bleeding me, and I can’t afford to be sentimental about these things.’
‘Did you ask Keene about his receipt?’
‘Spent an hour or so with him while he looked for it that afternoon. If you ask me, it never existed. A dreamer, that lad, doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.’
‘I presume he was worried about the matter?’
Forsyth shrugged. ‘Suppose so. But his wife — she wasn’t worried, she was hopping mad. At me, maybe; but more at him. Her husband.’ He paused reflectively. ‘I reckon she’ll have given him a good roasting that evening.’
* * *
The Keene caravan was empty and locked. Crow was tall enough to be able to look through the wide end window which gave a prospect down along the site to the sloping farmlands beyond, and the interior of the van looked homely, tidy, clean. There was a copy of the Guardian on the window seat, and a paperbacked book with a lurid cover beside it. He tried to read the title, but was unsuccessful. He stepped back away from the van towards the trees and looked across towards Lindop’s van, where the body had been found. The site was the last one before the gate some thirty yards beyond, and set in a direct line with the lane, effectively barring access to anyone who entered the site. No one could come on to the caravan park without passing the Lindop van.
He turned, looked down towards the far end of the site, past the empty vans to the lavatory block and the small cream caravan parked near it. There was a woman in the van; she was sitting there, looking out, staring at him. He stared back, and after a long moment she rose, disappeared, only to come into sight at the corner of the van. She stood there hesitantly for perhaps five seconds, and then she walked up the site towards him.
Crow observed her as she walked towards him. About five feet and a bit, rather stocky, a provocative walk with swinging hips, a woman who knew her way around. A lively face and a wide mouth; carefully set hair; a body clothed with deliberation and little else — or at least, as little as possible. She stopped some ten feet away from him, and looked him up and down coolly, but Crow guessed she was far from cool inside. This was an attempt to calm her own nerves, tell herself she wasn’t worried. He wondered what she had to be worried about.
‘I saw the others yesterday,’ she said, ‘working over the van. Fingerprints, all that stuff.’
‘Yes?’
‘Made them some coffee.’
‘Kind.’
The china blue eyes held his for a moment, then she grinned as she caught the twinkle in his glance. ‘You like some?’
‘That would be pleasant.’
She gestured down towards the small van and turned away. Crow followed her, feeling slightly absurd, aware of his height and boniness in a way he rarely did these days. It was just the incongruity in their shapes she was round and short and bouncy, while he was all bone and angularity. He had to stoop to enter her van; she already had her coffee percolator boiling away merrily.
‘My name’s Ruby,’ she announced. ‘Ruby Sanders.’
‘John Crow. Detective Chief Inspector.’
‘You was looking at Andrew’s van,’ she accused him.
He admitted guilt.
‘He’s at work,’ she explained. ‘Up at Foxholes — he’s in charge of the stores up at the quarry when he’s not tearing off to see his wife in the hospital. You’ll have heard she just gave birth to a daughter. Caesarean.’
‘I had heard.’
She turned aside and poured him a cup of coffee. She handed it to him, offered him milk and sugar, then took a cup
herself. She eyed him soberly. ‘Saw you talkin’ to old Jack Forsyth. Don’t want to pay heed to everything he goes on about. If he said something nasty about Andrew Keene . . .’
She let the statement die away, almost a question. Crow made no attempt to fill the void in the conversation. He sipped his coffee.
‘Did Forsyth tell you to have a word with Andrew?’ she tried again.
‘He said there might have been certain problems,’ Crow replied non-committally. ‘But I shall want to speak to everyone on the site personally, in any case.’
‘You’ve already got statements.’
‘That’s so. But it helps to talk. People . . . remember things.’
I bet, she was saying with her eyes. When you sit down and start digging into their minds I bet they remember things. Aloud, Ruby Sanders said, ‘Chuck Lindop gave lots of people problems, of one kind or another.’
Crow smiled. ‘What problems did he give you?’
Ruby hesitated. She sipped her coffee, looked uncertainly at Crow, took another sip and then put her cup down. She reached for a pack of cigarettes, lit one, sat down in the window seat and swung her legs up under her. Defiantly, through a haze of blue smoke, she tossed her head. Her hair, thickly lacquered, swayed in its styling but gave no sign of collapsing.
‘No reason why I shouldn’t tell you,’ she said. ‘I’m a grown girl, and responsible to no one but myself. And if I don’t tell you, there’s sure to be some creep around who will — and then you’ll come back and say why didn’t I tell you in the first place? So what the hell. Thing is, Chuck and I had something going for a while.’
Crow sipped his coffee and said nothing.
Ruby inspected the glowing end of her cigarette as though she had seen nothing like it before. A slight frown marked her brow as though she were looking for images that were suddenly difficult to find. Perhaps remembering a love affair with a man who was dead was more difficult than recalling one with a person she could still see on the site.