Crude Carrier (10 page)

XIII

Julie used five minutes of the stripe on the back of her BT telephone card before she located a number for Reginald Pierce on Primrose Lane, Rochester, Kent. By then, it was almost eleven at night and too late to call. All the books on “How to Be a Detective” offered techniques for the care and handling of interviewees, and ringing a telephone so late in the evening was not highly recommended.

She transferred lines at Oxford Circus for Victoria Station, letting the first train pass to note if any other passenger stayed behind on the vacant platform. On the following train, she moved rearward through three or four of the almost empty cars and exited just as the doors were closing at the next stop. Then she caught the next train, scanning the few passengers for any familiar face. All the standard maneuvers told her she was clean.

At Victoria Station, she dropped ten pence into the turnstile that guarded the stairs down to the women's loo. This late, it was empty of all but a few bundles of rags sleeping here and there on the ill-lit landing or against the glaring white tiles of the washroom. She took her time, listening for footsteps on the echoing floor. Climbing up the stairs, she paused inside the turnstile to survey the vast and cold station with its closed shops and slowly moving janitors. Their wide brooms slid noiselessly across empty concrete floors. Half shadowed against distant closed shop fronts, an armed policeman rocked slowly back and forth on tired feet.

Departure times and station names on the flutterboard listed the next train to Rochester at 04:59—a milk run that stopped at every station. Flickering lights on the notice board monotonously telegraphed its messages, among them the familiar “Delays Southeast Due to Leaves on the Line.” Another string of glowing letters stated that morning expresses to Dover started at 06:00 and ran every thirty minutes through the rush hours, stopping at—among other stations—Rochester. Julie noted a couple of likely times and then went back down the wide and echoing stairs to the Tube to feed her day pass into the turnstile slot. The little card did not pop up on the other side of the gate this time. Julie glanced at the clock over the closed ticket windows: 23:58. This long day's pass had expired.

A hazy midmorning sun brought out bands of yellow leaves that marked the hedgerows. Between them, the fields were bright green with recent rain or plowed to bare, dull earth that waited for winter seed. Pale gray sheep dotted gentle emerald hills, and then the farmland would disappear behind an abrupt blur of stained and mossy brick. The train sped past long and narrow gardens serving row homes whose back doors faced the railway. Next would come a cluster of apartment façades with blank and curtained windows overlooking the track, followed by the sudden and close graffiti on retaining walls and concrete platforms. Smaller stations clattered past the windows, and then they lurched and rocked across rail junctures through thinning houses and into the green countryside again.

It took a full hour to reach Rochester. Once a major port, the small city perched on the high banks of the slow Medway River. The train curved and slowed as it crossed a trestle bridge over the muddy flats and brown water of the river's estuary. A handful of tired-looking coastal freighters and lines of grimy barges were anchored at the sides of the channel. On the far shore, a large and modern marina held rows of pleasure craft—sail and motor—all battened against autumn weather and looking lifeless on the flat water. The south bank rose steeply, held by stone retaining walls. Roadbeds angled up between redbrick buildings toward the tall remnant of a shattered stone keep that lifted above slate roofs like a broken, yellowed molar. Julie's guidebook said the fortress had been founded by the Romans, built by the Normans, and destroyed by Cromwell.

Rochester platform, like most of the others, was short on paint but long on litter and warning posters. At midmorning, with outbound trains almost empty, Julie was one of only four adults to alight in the thin sunshine and damp, chilly air. The small group made its way through the station to the cul-de-sac that opened on a busy thoroughfare. Two of her fellow passengers were women, one white-haired and bent with osteoporosis, the other heavyset and wrestling two small children. The only male was a teenager with a half-shaved scalp and gold rings dangling from his ears, nose, and eyebrows. All of which made Julie feel better about being followed. If the punk rocker was a tail, he wouldn't be hard to see; if either of the women were, she could outrun them.

A small knot of drivers stood out of the wind near a line of cabs, smoking and talking. As Julie neared the first car, a beefy figure raised his eyebrows. “Need a taxi, miss?”

The red-faced driver knew where Primrose Lane was—“A bit west, miss. Not too far, you'll see”—and talked almost as fast as the meter ran about the local landscape and what Julie might be doing in Rochester. Only half listening, Julie said yes, she was American; yes, it was her first visit to the town; yes, the castle was an interesting ruin. No, she did not know that Charles Dickens had spent a good part of his childhood here.

“You'll have to see the Dickens Museum, you will, miss—just down the High Street from the station. People come from all over to see that. And the Dickens festivals. Two of 'em: Christmas Festival in December, Summer Festival in June. Quite the affairs, both, but my favorite's the Christmas Festival. People all dressed in the costume of the day, music, food—”

The scratchy voice described that festival then shifted to the Summer Festival and listed its virtues as the cab swerved through automobile and bus traffic, lorries and vans, bicycles and crossing pedestrians heading to work. Up a steep hill, past wide football fields into neighborhoods of row houses, then half-timbered duplexes with small gardens, larger single homes with deeper lawns and taller fencing, and an occasional estate sheltered behind high brick walls. Finally the taxi turned into a winding lane with little traffic and few cars parked along the curbless verge. Pairs of semidetached homes were spaced down the gently curving street. “Here you are, miss. Number 42.” The cabbie was impressed by the address. “Quite the nice neighborhood your friends live in.” He took Julie's money and handed her a smudged business card. “Just telephone this number for a lift back, will you, miss?”

Julie, eyes on the plain white car parked a bit down from the house, nodded. Ahead of it was another white car with a blue light mounted on the roof. On the door was a silver-and-blue seven-pointed star topped by a crown. The center of the star held a rearing white horse. Around its borders blue letters spelled “Kent County Constabulary.” An impassive policeman in a dark blue uniform answered her knock. When he heard what Julie wanted, he frowned and said, “You'll wait right here, please,” and closed the door.

Two or three minutes later, a short, blond man in a light brown suit opened the door to study Julie for a long moment before speaking. There was no surprise or admiration in his stare, merely assessment. “Might I ask what business you have with Mr. Pierce, please?” It was the familiar way police had of asking a question but making a demand. The corners of the man's mouth were pinched, and an unfocused, half-stifled anger radiated from him.

“I want to interview him about an accident that took place aboard his ship a few months ago.” Julie showed her private investigator's identification card.

The policeman read it carefully. It bore Julie's photograph and looked very official. But it carried no legal weight at all in the States, and apparently even less in England. “Might I see your passport, please?”

Julie handed him the dark blue booklet. The man read first the identification page and then leafed carefully through the sheets for the stamps marking British Customs.

“You came in through Heathrow two days ago?”

“Yes.”

“Might I ask where you've spent these last two days?”

“London. I talked to the people at Hercules Maritime who own Mr. Pierce's vessel, and to the cargo broker who handles that ship.”

“And where in London are you staying, Miss Campbell?”

“Hotel Russell, Russell Square. Has something happened to Mr. Pierce?”

The policeman ignored the question. He slipped Julie's passport into his coat pocket. “I'd like a word with you, if you don't mind. Would you accompany me to the police station, please?”

She would accompany whoever had her passport. Which they both knew.

The policeman's title was inspector, his name was Moore, and his assignment was homicide. Julie could picture the blond man as a schoolchild, pink cheeked, smaller than his mates, with wide blue eyes and a round pink mouth singing in the church choir on a village Sunday. But that child had been lost somewhere and what remained was the slightly curly blond hair, thinning now, the sallow cheeks of an office dweller, and eyes whose innocence had been replaced by a flat and almost emotionless distance as he stared across a Styrofoam cup and nodded. “Go on.”

“There's not much to add. Mr. Wood told me that Pierce was home on leave and Mr. Braithwaite gave me his address. I wanted to ask him what he knew about Rossi's death. You tell me he's been killed.” Julie stuck to pertinent facts that left out a lot of things.

Moore started to say something when his telephone rang and he answered it with his name. Face expressionless, he asked, “What time?” And then, “A signed chit? Very well.” He hung up and noted something on the same pad where he had copied information from Julie's passport and jotted as she spoke. Then the flat eyes met hers. “You breakfasted at your hotel this morning, is that right?”

“Yes.”

The inspector nodded. “Your statement of your whereabouts seems to hold up, Miss Campbell.” He pushed her passport across the desk. “You may go.”

“I take it Mr. Pierce was killed last night. Would you mind telling me how it happened?”

He stood, brown suit wrinkled with long wear and, in the glare of the office's fluorescent lights, showing a few stains on the lapels. He opened the door with its panel of frosted glass. “The sergeant will direct you out.”

“Was it an accident? Murder? Suicide?”

“Just accompany the sergeant, miss.”

The sergeant, summoned by a button, took the cue. “Right this way, miss.”

“I'm working on a case that might involve Pierce, Inspector. I've told you what I know. It might help me if I knew how and when he died.”

The man's anger surged again and he stared at Julie for a long moment. She wasn't certain what the inspector was looking at, but the anger wasn't personal, it was general. It was the broad disgust for humanity that often came when a cop had seen too much too recently. “He and his wife and his five-year-old daughter were shot to death. You will discover that much in the tabloids shortly, I expect. Any information beyond that is the Crown's official business, for which you have no authorization. Sergeant!”

“This way if you please, miss.”

The sergeant escorted Julie along the clean-swept hallway to a bomb-proofed door with a small, reinforced peephole at eye level. “One block to your right, miss, and then another right will carry you to the train station. Good day, miss.”

The thick door closed behind her, a heavy lock clicking firmly into place. So much for professional courtesy between the Kent County Constabulary and the private sector. In American movies, the police inspector was always willing to tell the PI details of a homicide, knowing that by the end of the film the PI would solve the crime for him. Unless the inspector turned out to be the bad guy, which gave a thrilling twist to what was labeled a realistic plot. Too bad it wasn't that way in life. And too bad that without local contacts, Julie wasn't going to find out any more than would be in the newspapers.

But a couple of conclusions could be drawn: First, the deaths took place last night or more likely this morning. Her alibi, as far as Inspector Moore was concerned, was the two hours between her documented presence at a London hotel and her appearance at Pierce's door. Second, a murder-suicide would not generate a need for suspects, so a fourth party must have killed the three members of the family.

The police would find out soon enough if Pierce's wife had a lover or if Pierce had an enemy or if some family dispute had boiled over into carnage. But the killer could also be a stranger who had a police record, and thus family members who might describe him had to be silenced. And the murders could be related to the death of Herberling. Maybe even to Rossi. But why? Why would Rossi's death be so important that any witnesses to it would have to be silenced? As well as any insurance detective looking into it?

Had someone been afraid that Julie would interview Pierce? That the ship's officer might let something slip about Rossi's death?

Officially, Rossi died in a shipboard accident. Such deaths happened almost every day of the year, and the evidence had been disposed of by sea burial. No one could question the cause of Rossi's death now. Even if Rossi had been murdered, there was no evidence to compel Pierce to admit to anything. Then why were he and his family killed?

The train slowed as it neared Victoria Station. The trip back had passed quickly while Julie was deep in thought. The huge dead stacks of Battersea Power Station, a glimpse of the Chelsea Bridge and the almost empty Thames below, then the slowly lurching roadbed led through a narrowing web of tracks to the square concrete piers of the platform and the train's final metallic squeal of dry brakes.

If Pierce's murder was related to Rossi, then Julie and her father were facing something much bigger than a cover-up of one sailor's death. Something that made four lives—even that of a five-year-old child—expendable. If Julie was guessing right, money was why she was followed. Money could explain one killing in New York and three in England. No weapon had been found at the scene of Bert Herberling's murder in New York, Percy had said. And she would bet none had been found here, either. But the same weapon would not be used for both killings. Each gun would have been permanently disposed of immediately after use. Wiped clean, dropped in a river, dumped into fresh concrete, buried. A professional killer would do that. A professional who charged professional fees. But if someone spent enough money to hire a killer—or was desperate enough to do it himself—that someone must have thought of the lives as an investment for a lot of profit. Because money had to be somewhere at the bottom of it. Look for the money: the First Commandment of detective work. There lay the highest probability of motive.