by Roy Lewis
‘That’s it.’
‘You didn’t see the person who passed you, or which way he was going?’ Stafford asked.
‘Aw, come on, I was otherwise occupied! Me and Ruby was snuggled down, going great guns, or about to! But whoever it was, he was going away from the site.’
‘He?’ Crow asked.
‘Or she. I just wouldn’t know.’
Crow hesitated. ‘You say that after that Ruby cooled. Did she look up when this person passed?’
Glanville licked his lips and made a doubtful gesture with his hand. ‘Well, I can’t rightly be certain — I was kind of . . . burrowing, you know? But her face was above me, and I guess she could have seen, though with the fug we had going . . . but one thing was clear, it scared her right off.’
Crow looked at him sharply ‘Scared her?’
Glanville was startled. He glanced quickly at George Stafford and then back to Crow, as though he felt it was he who was about to be charged with the murder of Chuck Lindop. He fluttered his hands.
‘Well, yes, didn’t I make myself clear before? I tell you, we was going great, and it takes a lot to cool a woman off in that state. But one thing does it. I’ve had it happen before. There was a piece down in Broadstairs that I was with once when I really had to do the French farce bit, you know, hopping out of a window, and it was just like that. They freeze, man, their mouths go sort of open and loose and their eyes go wild. She was like that.’
‘You didn’t tell us.’
‘No, well, in a way it was an impression I got at the time that sort of got . . . lost. I mean, there was this chap passing us, she started shaking, and I looked around, saw nothing for her to get worked up about and I suppose my own urgency got the better of my common sense. I wanted us to settle again, but she wanted out. And that made me mad. I mean I couldn’t see anything to worry about.’
‘But she was worried?’
‘I reckon she was,’ Glanville said. ‘She’d have been out of that car fast if I hadn’t been grabbing her. I tell you, she really wanted out . . .’
* * *
After Glanville had gone, in rather subdued fashion, Crow and Stafford sat silently in their room. Stafford pointed out at last that Hartley had been waiting for well over an hour but Crow said the waiting would do him good. Stafford read over Glanville’s statement as Crow checked it with Ruby’s: they tallied. The couple had left Stowford just after ten, arrived at the site just after ten-fifteen, Ruby had left the car about ten-forty and Glanville had left just before eleven. But Ruby had made no mention of the man in the lane. Glanville said he remembered the time because Ruby had asked him to check it when they arrived at the site, but Ruby made no mention of that. More importantly, she made no mention of her sudden, and, if Glanville’s impressions were to be given credence, frightened cooling. Crow stared at the statement, then took Glanville’s statement and read through that.
There was something there that bothered him. Something at the back of his mind. The man in the lane? Someone walking away from the site at ten thirty-five? Or something else, something irrelevant at first sight but important, nevertheless.
He sighed. It was gone. Best to leave it.
* * *
There were some people the gods never favoured. They were small when all around them were tall. They lacked confidence when others brimmed over with it; they were followers when others were leaders; they had mean, lined faces when others had open countenances that could be a positive asset in life. The man who sat looking at the floor in front of John Crow was such a man. He was just five feet four inches tall, fifty years old and no matter how much he paid for his clothes he always looked ill-dressed. His skin was grey and patchy, what little hair he had was thin, and drawn forward in a vain attempt to hide the extending bald patch in the front. The only remarkable thing about him was his eyes. They hardly seemed to fit in his mean, wizened face. They were brown and soft, intelligence gleamed out of them, but an intelligence stained with cunning. They were not nice eyes, but they were not bad eyes; they darted glances that were like the flash of a pike after a stickleback, acquisitive and hungry, but they had a hurt in them too, a deep dissatisfaction with life and the way it had treated their owner. Fifty years of age, and here again, in front of the police. It was never-ending, it would never end. His lean fingers picked at the button of his jacket, never still; he did not look up when Crow spoke at last.
‘Inspector Stafford, I’ll have to tell you about Mr Hartley.’
Crow leaned back in his chair and smiled. He shook his head, ran one hand over its baldness, and clucked his tongue.
‘We’ll settle for Mr Hartley, since he seems to want to be known by that name, but I’ve known him for years as Frederick Hartley Semmings. Isn’t that right, Fred?’
The little man flicked a quick, plaintive glance in Stafford’s direction but said nothing. Crow smiled again.
‘Don’t be misled by his meekness, Inspector Stafford — not until you’ve heard about Fred. I met him first — when was it, Fred? Twenty years ago? When you were first put inside? The thing is, Fred’s got a record, almost as long as the rope he used to use as a cat. A man of parts, our Fred. He started life as a locksmith’s apprentice, fell in with the wrong crowd, started opening doors, getting in through windows and then graduated to roofs. One of the most successful cat burglars in London at one time. There was a five-year spell when he almost made the top flight, so to speak. Isn’t that so, Fred?’
‘That’s all in the past, Mr Crow,’ the little man pleaded.
‘Maybe so,’ Crow said. The smile faded from his lips, and he stared at Hartley dispassionately. ‘The trouble was you were always a bad picker, weren’t you? You used to pick the wrong roof, the wrong house, the wrong companions. There was always something to go wrong.’
The narrow shoulders lifted despondently. ‘I never had the luck, Mr Crow.’
‘A good cat needs the luck,’ Crow said in a soft voice. ‘How many years in the last thirty have been spent inside, Fred?’
Hartley didn’t want to say the word but it struggled out as though it were determined to emerge in spite of him. ‘Twelve,’ he said.
Stafford grunted. ‘Unlucky is the word!’
‘You’ll appreciate my surprise,’ Crow remarked, ‘when I came face to face with my old friend Fred Hartley Semmings at Lovesome Hill.’ He waited for a moment, then added, ‘Have you thought over what I said yesterday, Fred?’
Hartley shook his narrow head unhappily. His fingers picked an anxious pattern over his jacket as he said, ‘I don’t think you got what I was trying to say to you, Mr Crow. I’m retired.’
‘Villains don’t retire,’ Crow said, ‘except into the nick.’
‘Really,’ Hartley protested. ‘I mean it, Mr Crow. You got to understand the way it’s been with me. Thirty years I been doin’ jobs, I freely admit it—’
‘You’ve got no choice. Your form is well known.’
‘All right, but things is different now. I changed. I retired. I . . . well, to give it to you straight, Mr Crow, I pulled a job about three years ago that gave me a bigger haul than anything I ever did before. I’m not going to tell you what it is, naturally, but for a while I thought it was going to be the one that would put me in the big time. Give me . . . recognition.’
Stafford’s mouth was open. Crow smiled at him as Hartley paused, then went on, seemingly oblivious.
‘There wasn’t a copper in London got the knot on me; the lift was one where the sufferer couldn’t squeal; I tell you, Mr Crow, it was a good job, and I was about to get respect. Then—’
‘As usual,’ Crow said drily.
‘Like you said, as usual, things went wrong. There was this bird—’
‘There’s always a bird.’
‘She took me, fleeced me, everything except a couple of thousand I’d stashed away for a rainy day. So I decided I’d retire, get out while the going’s good. I looked around, found the bungalow up at Lovesome Hill, it was in a ro
ugh state, I been two years putting it to rights, and here I am.’
‘Retired,’ Crow said.
‘That’s it.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Crow said coldly. Hartley spread his hands and looked despondent but not surprised; with his luck would anyone ever believe him? He glanced towards Stafford to make his point but Stafford just grinned at him.
‘We’re investigating a murder case, Mr Hartley.’
‘Now wait a minute.’ Life was injected into Hartley’s cold veins. He sat up, looked around him as though he could already see the walls of a prison cell closing in on him. ‘Let’s get this straight. I never got involved with any heavy stuff in my life.’
‘There’s always a first time.’
‘Not for me. Not with murder!’
‘So it’s just coincidence you happened to be up at Lovesome Hill, a man with a record as long as my arm, not fifty yards from the spot where a man got murdered the other night?’
‘I swear!’ Hartley was agitated, almost bouncing in his chair. ‘Coincidence, believe me. Unlucky I’ve been, but never so unlucky as to get tied up with murder!’
‘So let’s talk about burglary, then,’ Crow said affably.
Fred Hartley Semmings opened his mouth and shut it again slowly. A vein beat steadily in his narrow temple and his eyes flickered away from Crow’s to study the floor intently. He had the feeling he had suddenly been trapped into an admission even though he had made none; it was as though he had been built up, scared into the thought of having to face an unwarranted murder charge, and now the other, lesser thing, seemed almost welcome. It was old, familiar ground and he felt safer on it.
‘I told you, Mr Crow. I retired.’
‘And I told you I didn’t believe you,’ Crow said cheerfully. ‘Tell me about Cobham Park, Fred.’
‘Cobham Park? You must be joking! I had nothing to do with that mess!’
‘How did you know it was a mess?’ Crow asked quietly.
Hartley’s glance came up this time, and he stared at Crow unwinkingly. He seemed to be calculating chances, weighing the odds. He pursed his lips. ‘You know how we pros look at things. Anything I’m not involved in is bound to be a mess.’
‘Won’t do, Fred. I want real answers. I told you last night. You’ve been sitting too close to a field where a murder took place. I don’t like coincidences and I don’t believe in them. I gave you last night to sweat it out of your own system; if it isn’t coming out, then I’ll sweat it out of you.’ Crow frowned suddenly. ‘You know me, Fred. You know I mean what I say. You know I can make life bloody difficult for you, I can tag every step you make, I can harass you from breakfast-time till supper-time and drag you out of bed in the middle of the night. I can send you back to the Smoke, and I can put you inside. I could make sure we find something on you today and put you before the beaks; with your record you wouldn’t stand a chance.’
‘You wouldn’t do that, Mr Crow.’ Hartley’s eyes were glittering now. ‘You wouldn’t plant stuff on me.’
‘Not if you started answering me honestly. But play silly buggers with me, and I’ll do likewise with you.’
Hartley licked his lips. He seemed almost to have forgotten Stafford’s presence. He pondered on Crow’s words, chewed them over, and his eyes were fixed on Crow’s cold face.
‘Cobham Park,’ he said at last.
‘Tell me,’ Crow said.
‘I was offered . . . The place had been cased, there was jewellery in there, I was told. I went out one night on my own, took a look, saw it was an easy enough pull . . . but I didn’t like it. So I backed out. I swear, Mr Crow, I had nothing to do with that lift. It was a messy, bungled job — they didn’t get nothing out of it, and they carved their way in. Any alarm system would have cooked for them, but they were lucky and got out even if they didn’t get much loot.’
‘So who was it?’
‘Aw, come on, Mr Crow, you don’t expect me to shop them!’
Crow rose slowly and walked across to the window. The pavements were dry now, the sun bright on the roof tops. The Broadway was quietly busy, people shopping, women gossiping, as though the fair had never been, as though a man hadn’t been killed out at Lovesome Hill. Without turning, he said quietly, ‘There was an occasion once, over the Fulford Hill robbery, when you came to see me, Fred.’
There was a short silence.
‘That was different, Mr Crow.’
‘You wanted a favour.’
‘And I paid for it—’
‘By shopping Macmillan. Oh, I know you could square that with your conscience, but that’s not my problem. What I do know is this: once a man turns snout, he can do it again. And will. You know what I thought when I saw you yesterday, Fred? First thing that flashed through my mind? Call it intuition, but it snapped right at me. Fred Hartley Semmings, I thought — and Northleach Hall. It would be a big job, a job for Fred. And that’s why you’re here now, one of the reasons, anyway. Northleach would be your style, and the London mob’s not prowling this area. There’s no experienced cats around here, not like you; even if you are over fifty you can still show them a thing or two.’
‘No, Mr Crow. I told you, I’m retired.’
‘The hell you are!’
‘Truth, Mr Crow.’ Hartley looked up at Crow as he turned from the window. ‘I swear. I couldn’t do Northleach any more than I could do Cobham Park. I got a dicky heart.’
* * *
He’d always been unlucky, Fred Hartley Semmings. And this had been the last of the blows Fate was dealing him. A successful burglar needed nerve, and he needed a pulse that ran steady and true. A good lifter needed to be calm and easy — and light on his feet if trouble came his way. But that life must have been over for Fred the day he was told.
‘Tell me, Fred,’ Crow said, and sat down with his elbows on his knees.
‘Not much to tell,’ Hartley said despondently. The resistance seemed to have drained out of him now. ‘Five years ago I did a job — the one I told you about, only it wasn’t so big. On the way back I had to scarper a bit, and I ended up pretty breathless. First time I noticed. Six months later I sat down in the street. Just sat down. Like someone hit me in the chest. Could hardly breathe for the pain. And I couldn’t speak. That scared me, not being able to speak. So I saw the doc.’
‘What was the verdict?’
‘He said I’d been lucky! I mean to say, lucky! Asked me what job I did, told him I was a clerk, he said fine, you’ll live to a ripe old age, if you take it easy. I almost laughed in his face. Until the next time, when I slid through a window and almost never got out again. That was it, Mr Crow, believe me. I took what I had, fenced it, and got out of the Smoke. I needed a quiet life — it had to be a quiet life. It was that, or the long sleep!’
‘That’s why you turned down Cobham Park?’ Crow asked.
Hartley nodded. ‘Oh, I was tempted, you got to understand that. When I got the tickle I agreed to look the place over, and I did. It was easy. I could have done it — but I didn’t dare. So help me, Mr Crow, I wanted to but I couldn’t. I’m ready to admit the wanting, but you must understand, it could have put me in the cemetery. So I refused, I backed out, they did it, and they made a mess of it.’
‘All right, Fred, let’s get on with the rest of it. Northleach Hall.’
Hartley licked his lips. He raised his left hand and began to massage his chest with a light pressure, as though reminding himself of reasons and excuses.
‘I got approached again.’
‘And said no, for the same reasons?’
‘For the same reasons. But they kept on . . . and then, well, I guessed how I could take the heat off myself.’
Crow nodded. ‘You rang the police.’
‘You got to understand, Mr Crow,’ Hartley insisted with a hint of torn pride. ‘I’m no snout. That Macmillan thing, that was different, I needed a favour and you got to buy favours from coppers, even coppers like you. And this was different too. I was under pressure,
you understand. He said he wanted me; said the first job got screwed up because I wasn’t there to help out. This time I had to go. So I agreed; I played for time; and then I made that call. It was a way of stopping it before it ever got started. And there’d be no way of knowing I’d grassed. It would just be that the job wasn’t on any more because the police were nosing around. It was safe, and it was foolproof.’
‘Who was it, Fred? Who was it pressured you over Cobham Park and Northleach?’ The words came out unwillingly, like a spoon from thick treacle. It almost hurt Hartley physically to speak.
‘Chuck Lindop. It was that bastard Lindop.’
* * *
In the late afternoon John Crow went back to his room at the hotel and took a bath. He had left Fred Hartley Semmings with Stafford, making his statement, checking it, signing it. Fred was not averse to staying at the station overnight; in fact, he almost seemed to want it. He was nervous, and he was scared — and he had reason to be. While he dressed, Crow thought back over what Fred had said.
‘Lindop was a real bastard. He knew how to put the screws on a man. I met him first in a pub at Stowford — he came up to me, said he knew me, and he did too, God knows how, though he said he had contacts in the Smoke and I’d been pointed out to him once when he was a kid, and what a coincidence we should meet like that in Stowford. I let him rattle on, didn’t mind, cos he was buying, you know, and then suddenly I began to get his drift. He was sounding me out about a job.’
The mere thought of the conversation with Lindop had twisted Fred’s mouth as he recounted it to Crow.
‘He tried to tell me he was big time, experienced, said he’d done more than a few heists in his time, but believe me, Mr Crow, I knew he was an amateur. The pros, the real pros, they don’t need to talk like that, and they don’t need to winkle out old deadbeats like me. No, the fact was, Lindop wanted to do a lift but he wanted me to be there — and I told him flat. He could go to hell.’ Fred’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘You know, he just laughed? Laughed, went away, didn’t see him for a couple of weeks and then he called at the bungalow. He told me this was my last chance, he had a job fixed, Cobham Park, and he wanted me in. I refused. So off he went. I took a look at the place out of interest like I told you, but I wasn’t involved. Next thing I heard, it had been done, rough job, and no real gravy at the end of it. That’ll teach him, I thought.’