by Roy Lewis
Crow frowned, and shook his head.
‘I don’t think he intended trying to kill her. But he could see all his ideas going up in smoke, he felt cornered, and he just didn’t really know what to do. His intellect is not of the greatest. He felt trapped, I think, and his reaction was to beat his way out of it. She tells me she screamed when they quarrelled, he hit her, she fell, and then he kicked her a glancing blow on the head. After that, as far as I can make out, he just wanted to get away from there. And I arrived. I was lucky. His head hit the windscreen in that smash, and he went staggering away, half dazed. Otherwise, I could have been the one at the bottom of the quarry.’
Andrew licked his lips. ‘Did . . . did Mrs Lindop say that Samson admitted killing her husband?’
‘No. They didn’t talk about it. He just wanted her to have the arrangement with him that she’d had with Lindop. He didn’t admit it to the gipsy, either, but we think we’ve got a case circumstantially: Lindop’s blood on Samson’s shoe, his diary — detailing the hotel deposit box — in Samson’s pocket; the timing of events the night Lindop died. And yet . . .’ He stopped speaking, looked at the young couple and smiled gently. ‘It’s a funny thing, being involved in so much crime. My wife, she says I’m like an old woman, with the feeling I get about things. And I’ve got an odd feeling about this. But maybe she’s right. I am getting to be an old woman.’
Neither Andrew nor Sara spoke. Crow hesitated, began to rise, then looked behind him as he saw Andrew’s face stiffen. A nurse was advancing down the ward with a bundle in her arms. Crow smiled. ‘Talking of old women, and here we have a young one.’
The nurse smiled at the three of them and put the baby in the cot beside the bed. She told Sara she would be back with the bottle in just a few minutes and then she walked away again, out of the ward. John Crow watched her go, then turned to the cot. He leaned over it and looked at the baby.
‘She’s a fine child,’ he said after a moment. Andrew was staring at him blankly. Sara sat rigidly in the bed, seemingly unable to move. She made no attempt to touch the child. Crow watched the little girl as she screwed up her face, knuckled a tiny fist against her cheek.
‘She’s doing well for a premature baby,’ Crow said quietly.
Sara found her voice. ‘I . . . I should be able to take . . . take her home in a week or so.’
The silence grew around them as Crow continued to watch the baby’s small movements. But he was no longer seeing the child, he was listening to the words people had said, watching the images cross his mind, selecting, discarding, checking. A minute ticked past and the three were silent. At last Crow turned his head to look at Andrew.
‘It’s an odd thing how remarks spark off a train of thought,’ he said. ‘The nurse, she’ll bring the bottle in a few minutes. That’s what it was all about the night Lindop died — a matter of minutes. It’s been fluttering away at the back of my mind for some time.’
Andrew moistened his lips, but said nothing.
‘The timing always bothered me,’ Crow said. ‘You went to Lindop’s van at ten; you left at ten-fifteen. Ruby and her salesman arrived at about the same time, say ten-seventeen, and then she joined you at your van after she saw Samson hurry up the lane at about ten thirty-five.’
‘Yes.’ The word came out as a whisper. Crow stared at Andrew dispassionately.
‘We’ve assumed Hogarth Samson arrived at the site, almost literally, a minute before Ruby did, having walked from the bus-stop and the ten-twelve bus from Stowford. But what if he had come off the later bus?’
‘The ten-twenty?’ Andrew frowned. ‘I don’t see—’
‘If he had, Ruby would have seen him going down the lane to the site, so we’ve assumed he must have come off the earlier bus, and arrived at Lindop’s van as you left. But all that proceeds on the assumption that Ruby was correct in her statement.’
‘I still don’t understand—’
‘It’s been buzzing around in the back of my mind,’ Crow said softly. ‘Something the salesman, Glanville said. When he and Ruby arrived in the lane he switched on the radio, almost immediately, to get some soft romantic music to put her in the mood. They had looked at his watch and he’d told her it was ten-fifteen — but that watch was unreliable that night. The point is, they arrived, Glanville switched on the radio, and almost at once he switched it off again — because it wasn’t soft music he was getting, it was a report of a fracas in Chester Street between some gipsies. It wasn’t a regular broadcast, it was a local ham breaking into the frequency. But you see, it changes the whole situation. That broadcast went out at ten twenty-eight.’
Andrew’s face was pale and the muscle in his cheek jumped involuntarily. Crow watched him carefully, and the words other people had used came clicking around in his head . . . a dreamy person, a loyal person, he hadn’t given Sam Dixon away even though he owed him nothing. In spite of that one piece of violence at his work, Andrew would have run away from Lindop that night, in utter humiliation, or so Inspector Stafford suggested. A loyal person, a man who almost a year ago had become moody and depressed and had taken a piece of chain to a driver called Baker . . . But what had Mrs Lindop said when they were looking for the motive behind the generator explosion? ‘. . . married to someone working at the quarry. . .’
‘I can’t see that a few minutes make that much difference,’ Andrew said.
‘No?’ Crow stared at him, not seeing him; instead, there was the darkness, and a man running across a field, another lying on the ground . . .
‘Just a minute here or there—’
‘But that’s what it’s all about, Andrew. Minutes . . . half-minutes even! You going back to your van at ten-fifteen, Samson arriving by ten-twenty as Ruby entered the lane in the car behind him, Samson killing Lindop and returning to the lane at ten thirty-five! Don’t you see? According to Glanville’s remark about that radio programme, the inference must be that his watch had stopped, he and Ruby didn’t get to the lane until shortly before that broadcast — say three minutes before, at ten twenty-five. Now we’ve not found witnesses to say that Samson was on either the first bus or the second, but if my supposition is correct, Samson could have come on the second bus, arriving at ten-twenty. It doesn’t make that much difference, I agree, a matter of minutes. But it does make it that much more difficult for him to have killed Lindop in the time available!’
‘There . . . there was ten minutes,’ Andrew muttered.
‘Ten minutes.’ Crow nodded. ‘It could have happened. Samson could have arrived at ten twenty-five, continued his quarrel with Lindop, murdered him, searched the van and found the diary he wanted, turned out the light and walked back through the lane by ten thirty-five. But it was easier to believe when we were working on the assumption he arrived at ten-fifteen . . . But, as you say, it’s only minutes . . .’
Andrew’s hands began to shake. He linked his fingers in an attempt to control them. He dared not look towards Sara.
‘What . . . what do you conclude from this?’ he asked.
‘Conclude?’ Crow’s brow was furrowed; he frowned as though the thoughts inside his head were painful to him. He glanced aside to the baby girl lying in the cot, the child that had arrived prematurely the day after Lindop died, and he looked at the mother, white-faced and tense in the bed. ‘Any conclusions I reach are irrelevant to the enquiry now. It all raises suppositions, opens up other lines of enquiry. You see, if Samson didn’t have time to kill Lindop and forensic say he died about ten twenty-five — we have to ask, who the hell did? Who else had opportunity, who else had motive? Are these questions I should now ask, when Samson is dead and Lindop is dead and everything seems to be sewn up? Or shouldn’t I just close the whole unhappy chapter?’
Andrew’s face was anguished; there was panic in his eyes. And Sara ’s too; her face was white and her breathing was quick. John Crow looked at them both, and at the baby in the cot. Slowly, he reached his decision.
‘It’s all about justice, really,
isn’t it? The wicked shall be punished. But where does the wickedness start, and where does the punishment end? And justice . . . Look at Sam Dixon and Jack Forsyth — it would seem Dixon won’t be brought to task over the generator, because Forsyth is going to close the site anyway and isn’t interested in chasing the matter up. Is that justice for Forsyth? He’s lost money over the whole thing — Sam Dixon’s lost a wife. How does he feel? And what about Honey Lindop — all right, she was weak, and worked on the criminal fringes in a petty way, but all she really wanted was Lindop. For that matter, were Chuck Lindop’s crimes so heinous?’
He turned his sad eyes on Andrew.
‘And if Samson didn’t kill Lindop, who did? If Lindop was already dead, and Samson found him there, then searched him for the diary and made off, where was the real killer? Who else was on the site? You, Andrew. But you told me you did not kill Lindop.’ Crow shook his head slowly. ‘And I believed you.’
He turned away and leaned over the cot, smiled at the baby.
‘So we have to compromise,’ he said softly. ‘All of us. We can’t have complete justice; we can only, ever, have an approximation of it. The philosophers say that justice — complete justice — is the practice of entire virtue towards one’s neighbours. But in life we have to settle for less than that — not entire virtue, just a part of it.’
He raised his head and looked at Sara. ‘Chuck Lindop is dead, but there are all kinds of death and people can be reborn, just as relationships can be reborn out of destruction of something else. And as for Chuck Lindop and the rest of it . . . well, we’d be satisfied with what we have — a part of virtue.’
He straightened. His smile was a little stiff at the edges as he nodded to Sara, still white-faced in the bed. Then he turned to Andrew Keene.
‘I’ll wish you both luck,’ he said quietly. ‘But be careful how you go, Andrew.’ He hesitated, looking squarely at the young man. ‘And watch out . . . watch out for the little one.’
When he had gone Andrew and Sara sat dumbly for several minutes. Suddenly, as though by delayed reaction, Sara began to shake. Andrew leaned over quickly, gripped her hands between his own. Her eyes were wide and staring and scared. He squeezed her hands but there was no response; her dependence was absolute and he felt strong enough to support her in a way he had never been able to do before. Some of the feeling must have been communicated to her for her eyes flickered a quick glance at him, the shaking began to subside. He was in control at last; perhaps he had been for some time. But now, he knew he could cope.
‘Andrew—’
‘Hush, Sara, don’t worry—’
‘Andrew, he knows!’
‘No. No, he doesn’t know. He guesses, maybe, but he doesn’t know for sure. And it makes no difference.’
Her voice was low and fierce in its terror. ‘But if he guesses, he’ll find out, he’ll do something about it, he’ll—’
‘No. Nothing is going to happen. He as good as told us that . . .’
‘Oh, Andrew, I’m scared . . .’
So was Andrew. Not by John Crow’s visit, for he had expected it for so long that now it was over it was a relief. John Crow couldn’t know what had happened that night. He could appreciate the motivation, for it lay here in the ward, part of the motivating that could drive a person to murder in a flash of wild, unreasoning rage. But Crow might guess at what had really happened. He could picture how Andrew might have picked up that crowbar but let it drop again, to run away in desperate pain and humiliation to hide his disgust with himself in the darkness, less than a man. He would be able to understand how Chuck Lindop had shouted after him in derision, obscene, taunting words, and he would be able to imagine how Sara, standing at the back of Lindop’s van in the darkness, listening to and watching her husband’s humiliation, had stepped forward to pick up the crowbar Andrew had dropped.
It had been just one blow, but it had been struck with all the fury arising from Andrew’s humiliation — and her own. For it had all lain unsaid between Sara and Andrew; it had crumbled their marriage; she had been foolish and stupid and vain; she had fallen from grace and was suffering the consequences. She had all but destroyed her marriage and it was all there in the obscenities Lindop hurled at Andrew’s retreating back.
She brought the crowbar down once. The terror and the anger and the surge of horror at what she had done sent her stumbling back to the van, where the pains had started, brought on by the shock — violent, stabbing, early pains. She was there in her pain when Andrew returned.
Crow would have guessed as Andrew had even though Sara had never told him, not even now. It lay between them, an unspoken, secret knowledge. Like the other unspoken knowledge, in the cot.
And John Crow understood that too. He had seen it in Andrew’s eyes, and he had given Andrew his future, placed it in his hands. ‘Watch out for the little one,’ he had said, for he knew.
Andrew released Sara’s hand and leaned over the cot. He hesitated, looking at the child that lay there, and suddenly the old, struggling, worm-like agonies were no longer twisting in his stomach and his heart. She was there, his condition for compromise, his part of virtue, and tentatively, with fingers that trembled slightly, he touched the baby caressingly on her soft cheek. It was the first time he had touched her.
She will be a beautiful child, he thought.
She will be a lovely girl, and when she grows up she will be as lovely as her mother — and more so. For she would have her father’s wild, red-flaring hair.
THE END
INSPECTOR JOHN CROW SERIES
Book 1: A LOVER TOO MANY
Book 2: ERROR OF JUDGMENT
Book 3: THE WOODS MURDER
Book 4: MURDER FOR MONEY
Book 5: MURDER IN THE MINE
Book 6: A COTSWOLDS MURDER
More Inspector John Crow books coming soon!
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