Mistress Murder (20 page)

‘My sister's teapot! She had a good one given her for a wedding anniversary last month. It would do fine, as we'll have to offer Jacobs something genuine or he may smell a rat.'

‘Can you get it?' asked Benbow.

‘Yes, I think so,' said Parry optimistically. ‘I can talk her into lending it to me for a couple of hours … it can't come to any harm, can it?'

Around noon, a police car pulled into a side turning off Bute Street in Cardiff's dockland.

The notorious Tiger Bay area, now respectable with its new high-rise flats, lay quietly under a pale winter sun as Bray clambered out of the Vauxhall, clutching a cardboard box with reverent care.

Parry leaned out after him and pointed down the street. ‘Second on the left … and for God's sake look after the ruddy thing – there'll be another murder if anything happens to it.'

The sergeant took an even firmer grip on the boxed-up teapot and set off down the road. He passed a line of empty condemned tenements, then turned a corner and made his way towards James Street, a busy road reminiscent of the days when this was the busiest port in the world. Before he reached it, he came to a small shop with steel grilles set behind the window panes. Above the brown painted door was the simple legend
Paul Jacobs – Antique Silver
.

With a sudden intuitive feeling that this was the end of the search, he pushed the door open. The interior had been partitioned off so that there was only a small cubicle inside the entrance, with a counter facing the door. An inner door with two Yale locks was set in the high wooden partition to his left.

Bray stood clutching his box, wondering whether to rap on the green baize counter for attention. Then silently an elderly man appeared behind the counter. He had half-moon spectacles on his nose and wore a grey linen shop-coat.

‘Can I do anything for you?' His voice matched his mild and rather remote manner.

‘I'd like this teapot valued, please.'

Bray lifted the top off the box and pushed back the tissue paper to reveal the glistening bloom of solid silver.

The old man nodded slowly. ‘Do you want to leave it?'

Bray shook his head.

‘No, I've had an offer for it today and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't being robbed – if you get me,' he ended lamely.

He had prepared this patter but now, in front of the calm old assistant, it seemed to fall flat on its face.

The man in the grey coat seemed incurious.

‘It'll take a few minutes. Will you wait, please?'

He began to shuffle off with the box and Bray gabbled at him.

‘It will be Mr Jacobs himself who will look at it? I've had such good reports of his valuations – I'd like him to do it.'

The other looked at him mildly over the tops of his lenses. ‘Certainly, if that's what you want. Just wait.'

He glided away, leaving Bray with the impression that he moved on small wheels instead of feet. Bray prepared himself for a long wait but within a couple of minutes another person materialised from behind the partition.

In spite of the hard crust that Bray had grown after years in the Metropolitan Police, he felt a sudden tensing as he faced what might be a double murderer. He saw a man of average height, with a composed, smooth face, fair hair swept back over his forehead, and a small moustache – a new feature according to the scanty descriptions.

At that instant, Bray, the Doubting Thomas, the thorn in Benbow's intuitive side, felt that this was Golding. He suddenly found that Jacobs – or Golding – was speaking.

‘… quite a nice piece. A pity that the handle has that tiny split, it stops it from being perfect. Still, if I were selling it, I'd ask about thirty-eight guineas.' He turned the elegant vessel around under the shaded light to admire it. ‘Yes, say thirty-eight. If someone gave you forty for it, they wouldn't go far wrong.' He looked up, a faintly apologetic smile on his face. ‘Of course, I couldn't give you quite that, if you intend selling it.'

Bray hurriedly reassured him, imagining Parry's face if he went back and told him that he'd sold his sister's anniversary pot.

Bray had seen with satisfaction that the dealer had left good fingerprints on the silver. The sergeant had carefully polished it before he left the police station and had been careful only to handle it by the rim afterwards. Jacobs wrapped the teapot up and handed it back across the counter.

After paying the valuation fee, Bray left the shop feeling a little unreal. Not many detective sergeants could have paid seven-and-six to a man they intended arresting for a capital offence, he thought as he walked back towards the police car. For now he was utterly convinced that Jacobs was Golding. He felt sure that checking the prints was going to be almost a formality and that within minutes they would be back to take him into custody.

He would have been less elated if he could have heard the conversation in the back room of the shop immediately after he left. As the door shut with a valedictory buzz, Jacobs went back to the office behind the partition. His old assistant turned from polishing plate, brushing reddish dust from the front of his coat.

‘Funny business, that chap,' he said slowly. ‘From London, by the sound of him … wonder why he wanted that piece valued?'

Jacobs glanced idly at Ben. ‘What's so odd about that? It's our job, isn't it?'

The old man stared pensively at the plate.

‘I know that teapot … it was only sold from Carter's up in the town about a month ago. I recognised the cracked handle. Why would he want it valued again – Carter's price is reliable enough?'

Jacobs' attention was caught now.

‘Are you sure it was the same one, Ben?'

‘Yes, not only the handle but there was a little dent on the base. I remember seeing it in their window.'

A tickle of suspicion began in Paul's mind, as the old assistant went on, ‘I thought at first this London fellow might have stolen it but he insisted that I got you to look at it personally – he would hardly have done that if he'd pinched it.' Ben paused and scratched his head slowly. ‘Didn't seem like a thief anyway – thought he had more the manner of a policeman.'

Paul Jacob had the same sensation that he had had when he walked past his flat in Ferber Street the week before – a sudden clanging of alarm bells in his brain, then a feeling of the ominous nearness of danger.

He turned abruptly to his safe in the corner. ‘I've got to go home, Ben … just remembered some papers that I need.'

The old man noticed him pulling out some papers and a bulky envelope which he stuffed rapidly into his briefcase. A moment later he was gone.

About half an hour after Bray had returned to the car with the sacred teapot, two police cars swept down the long, straight stretch of Bute Street, hurtling towards the antique shop. Parry and Bray were jubilant after their recent successful session in the fingerprint section of Headquarters, but Archie Benbow was strangely worried.

‘Too damned easy for my liking. Find a bit of dust, then a threepenny stamp, a set of prints that match and bingo! Much too smooth, there's got to be a catch in it somewhere.'

There was a catch in it. When they got to the shop, their bird had flown.

Parry made the reluctant Ben shut up the shop and go with them.

‘Said he was going home, did he?'

‘Yes, to get some papers,' said Ben, mystified.

‘Passport and money most likely – how the hell did he rumble us?'

They hurried to the cars and shot back to town, blue lights flashing and gongs going. Parry picked up the radio handset and contacted Information Room.

‘Get a car to Oakdene Crescent – quickly. Intercept a grey Ford Zephyr belonging to Paul Jacobs of Number Seven. I don't know the registration number yet.' Ben had told them the make and colour of the car but had no idea of the number.

The two cars raced towards Llandaff, but on the way Benbow dropped Edwards at the main railway station with instructions to watch the barriers for Jacobs.

While they sped across the city, Parry spent most of the time at the radio. He called for a rapid search at the Taxation offices for the registration number of Jacobs' car and put out a general call to adjoining forces for them to pick the Zephyr up at sight – as soon as it could be identified.

A third patrol car joined them as they reached Llandaff and when they screeched around the comer into Oakdene Crescent, they found yet another black Vauxhall parked outside Jacobs' house. Benbow hopped out and ran to it. The driver, who had answered the first radio call, waved towards the house.

‘He's gone, sir, the car's not in the garage.'

Parry, Bray, and the Admiral hurried up to the front door, leaving the other uniformed men to spread around the back of the property. Before they could ring the bell, the door flew open and an indignant woman in an apron erupted onto the porch to demand to know what was going on.

‘Are you Mrs Jacobs?' asked Benbow harshly.

A voice from inside the hallway answered over her shoulder.

‘No, I am! What are those men doing in the garden? Who are you?'

Parry rapidly introduced himself and the Yard man.

‘Where is your husband, Mrs Jacobs? Has he been here this morning, within the last few minutes, I mean?'

Mrs Jacobs, her usual calmness shattered, looked in consternation from one to the other. ‘He's only been gone a few moments – what on earth do you want with him?'

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Jacobs, we need to question him very urgently in connection with some serious criminal charges.' Benbow, in the middle of his urgency, found time to change his voice to a gentle tone. ‘It's most urgent, I assure you.'

Barbara Jacobs complicated the tense moment by dropping in a dead faint on the floor of the hall. Her daily woman, made of sterner stuff, glared at the detectives and dropped to her knees alongside the other woman.

‘Now see what you done!' she hissed.

‘Do you know where Mr Jacobs went? Did he take the car?' Parry rattled the questions off.

‘He came home about a quarter of an hour ago – took some papers from his study and drove off – said he was in a hurry – dunno where he went.'

Parry swung round to Edwards, who had just trotted up the drive.

‘Stay here with the wife – take her down to the station as soon as she's fit. Before that, whip through the house to make sure he isn't still in there somewhere.'

With Benbow lumbering at his heels, he ran back to the patrol car and grabbed the microphone through the window.

‘Information Room, got that Zephyr number yet? Hell, tell them to take their finger out. Keep that general call out, inform Monmouthshire as well – he'll probably try to get back towards London … yes, Paul Jacobs, wanted for murder … fair hair brushed back, average height. May possibly be armed. We're coming back to Central now.'

Before they arrived at police headquarters in the centre of the city, a call came through to say that the registration number had been traced and broadcast to all cars.

They had just entered the C.I.D. office, when the phone rang and Information Room told Parry that the car had been found parked and unoccupied off City Road. As they rushed back down to the waiting cars, Parry panted over his shoulder at Benbow, ‘I don't get it – why stop in the town? I'd have laid bets on his making either for the London road or trying to get a train.'

They clambered into the car and shot off.

‘This City Road – any significance in that?' asked Benbow, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

Parry turned from the radio for a moment.

‘It's the motor trade area of Cardiff – dozens of showrooms and second-hand places.'

‘What the hell can he want there – he wouldn't have time to buy a car, surely?'

‘What about hiring a car – could he do that in this City Road?' suggested Bray.

Parry slapped his hands. ‘Of course – hiring a car – there's umpteen of those places over there. Pay your money and drive away – no questions asked.'

He reached for the radio again.

‘Relay to all cars free to join search in City Road area – check all car-hire firms for man answering description taking car in last thirty minutes – get details of vehicle if found … treat as most urgent.'

Their own car tore across the city and reached the street in record time. They parked alongside two other patrol cars which were hemming in a grey Ford Zephyr.

Uniformed police were already flitting in and out of the brightly-lit showrooms that lined the half-mile of City Road, enquiring about the recent renting of a car.

‘Could take ages – even if our theory is right,' groaned Parry. ‘There must be a couple of dozen places that rent cars, some of them in the side streets – a lot of garages do this hiring racket.'

Bray looked at the abandoned Ford.

‘A clever so-and-so like Golding might have left this thing as far as possible from his intended destination, just to fool us.'

In fact, Jacobs had not had time to go very far, but he had hopped on to a trolley bus and gone a mile from where he had left his Zephyr before finding a car-hire firm in a quiet backstreet.

He rented a modest black Morris Minor from the proprietor. The man had no reason to be interested in him, but to cover his tracks as much as possible, he had combed his hair to one side while in the trolley bus and pulled on a plastic raincoat and a ratting cap which he always carried in his car.

With an assumed stoop, he looked a different man as he paid in cash for the car, signed some fictitious name and address, and drove sedately away.

He went in the opposite direction to London, his ultimate goal. Forty minutes later, while twenty of the Cardiff police force were frantically searching the City Road motor shops, Jacobs drove into Bridgend, a country town twenty miles to the West.

He parked his Morris in the furthest corner of a public car park and walked to the railway station, swinging a small case containing a few hundred pounds in cash and two of his false passports.