Mistress Murder (6 page)

‘I don't know. It stinks to me. I reckon he got wind of her being shacked up with me and fixed her.'

‘But she had a car crash – aren't the rozzers as quiet as the little lambs themselves?'

‘Pah! Those country coppers wouldn't notice it if the back of her head was blown off … they've all got pure minds out there. If Golding wanted to fix her, he'd do it all right. He's another smart Alec, but he won't get the drop on me!' He finished with a roar and did a bit more chest tapping.

Irish looked puzzled.

‘What's all the beef about? She was only a dame; he wasn't getting at you.'

Conrad swung around from the window, his great body in a half crouch, hands open and elbows crooked, as if he was coming out of his corner in the ring.

‘Look, I pay you to snoop into other people's business, not mine!' he snarled. ‘Now shurrup and beat it!'

O'Keefe, quite unabashed, coughed and jingled his loose coins again.

‘I had some expense, what with Minnie and that.'

Draper unwound and dipped into his breast pocket. He unrolled a note from a thick wad of fivers and flung it at Irish.

‘Now grease off – and keep your ears to the ground.'

His private eye oiled out through a crack in the door and left the self-appointed king of the bookies to himself. Conrad lit another cigarette with fingers that had become even more unsteady. After a few puffs, he ground it out in an ashtray.

‘If Golding killed my bint, I'll fix him – he can't do this to me.'

A tremor that was only partly rage shook him and he clutched the comer of the desk.

‘I'll have a fix – just for my nerves,' he muttered. ‘This is a special occasion.'

He crossed the room and slipped the catch down on the lock. Going back to his desk, he unlocked a drawer and took out a small chromium tin, from which he took a spirit lamp, syringe, and tea spoon. From another part of the drawer he took out a flat tin and removed the lid to expose a collection of little polythene bags, the size of a railway ticket. He tore the top off one, tipped the few grains of white powder from it into the spoon, and added some water from a carafe on the desk. He lit the lamp with his lighter and boiled the few drops of fluid. While it was cooling on the ink stand, he took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeve.

Handling the syringe clumsily in his shaking fingers, he sucked up the fluid in the spoon and jabbed the needle into a fold of skin which he pinched up on his arm. As Conrad pushed home the glass plunger, a swelling appeared indistinctly in the flesh which he rubbed away impatiently after pulling the needle out.

Draper put all his apparatus away and slumped down in his chair to wait for the heroin to take effect. He was a newcomer to the drug and was still taking infrequent jabs into the skin, not into a vein like the more advanced addicts. The effects from a skin-pop were slower than the mainliners and it was ten minutes before he felt the welcome calmness spreading through his system like a wave of comforting warmth.

He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. Leaning back in the chair, he addressed a nude mural on the opposite wall.

‘I'll find you, Paul bloody Golding. I'm going to screw a few thousand out of you and then take over your racket.' His face hardened, even through the euphoric haze of heroin.

‘But if I find out that you croaked my bird, sonny, I'll kill you!'

Chapter Four

A stubble-haired man in blue dungarees came into the charge room of Oldfield police station. He was carrying a short piece of twig and had a worried look on his round face.

‘Sarge, is the inspector in his office?'

Burrell looked up from his Occurrences book and nodded.

‘What's up? A sawn-through steering column?'

His facetiousness was lost on the vehicle examiner, a constable in the Traffic Division. Part of Johnson's job was to report on the road worthiness of vehicles involved in accidents or on charges of negligent maintenance.

He held up the dirty bit of stick.

‘Look at this … from that Alpine outside.'

Burrell brushed up his moustache and peered at the thing. It was a fairly straight twig about a foot long.

‘What's so wonderful about it?'

The mechanic turned the twig in his fingers.

‘It .was jammed under the throttle control rod. How the hell did it get there?'

The sergeant looked at him with new interest.

‘Was the throttle stuck open?'

Johnson shook his head.

‘No, but it might have been before the crash. The stick looks as if it was broken off.'

Burrell came around the desk.

‘Let's ask the guv'nor.'

He tapped the inspector's door and a moment later the three men were huddled over the stick in the inner office.

‘See, there's grease on this end,' Johnson pointed to stains on the bar. ‘But the other end has snapped.'

‘Could it have got there at the time of the crash?' hazarded Burrell.

‘How … there was no hedge there? The car came down the road, through a wire fence and over the grass bank – no bushes anywhere near. This is a hazel branch.'

They adjourned to the station yard and leant over the twisted remains of the red Sunbeam. The engine had been pushed back in the frame by the impact, but the twin carburettors were undamaged.

‘The stick was jammed under here,' explained Johnson, indicating the gap between the butterfly control arm and the venturi tube of the rear carburettor.

Burrell studied the front of the scuttle which separated the engine compartment from the inside of the car.

‘Look, see those scratches … they could have been caused by the other end of the stick.'

On the flat partition, which was undamaged, there were several wavering lines gouged in the coating of black grease. These were at the same level as the butterfly control.

Johnson nodded excitedly.

‘If the stick was longer, it would reach from there to the carburettor.'

The inspector, a lifelong sceptic, straightened his back.

‘But it isn't, is it?' he said.

Burrell took the stick from Johnson and looked at the broken end again. ‘If we could find the other bit that matched this … and if it was the right length … and if it had grease on the end …' His voice trailed off.

The inspector moved. ‘Come on, my car's over there,' he said.

Within five minutes of starting to search the bank of the culvert on Cuckoo Hill, Johnson had found the missing twig. It was directly under the parapet, in the centre of the skid marks. It was half as long as the first piece, it had black grease on one end and the other end had broken in such a way as to make it clear to the most obstinate juror that it had once been continuous with the bigger twig.

‘This is it,' enthused Johnson. ‘Some bloody jiggery-pokery here all right.'

The inspector took it more soberly.

‘You mean our troubles are just beginning. I'm already wishing I'd never heard of you, Johnson.'

The practical sergeant was studying the two bits, which he held end-to-end. ‘If it's the right length, that will add a bit more weight to our argument.'

They drove back to Oldfield and visited the local Rootes agent. The mystified owner led them to a new Alpine in his showroom and watched them while they vanished under the bonnet. To Johnson's delight, the total length of the two twigs exactly fitted the distance between the scuttle and the throttle control.

They went back to the police station and held a council of war.

‘I'm going to speak to Headquarters about this,' decided the inspector. ‘This is going to be a London job, through and through. If our chaps have got any sense, they'll give it to the Yard straight away. No point in the County arsing about with it; all the background is going to be up in Town.'

Johnson looked as if his pension prospects had been snatched away from him, but the inspector's forecast was quite right. Before lunch, the Divisional Detective Chief Inspector had been down to verify the facts and after speaking to the chief constable on the phone, had rung the Central Office of the Metropolitan Police to ask for assistance.

At four thirty, the Yard men arrived, a chief inspector and a detective sergeant.

The senior man was the well-known Archie Benbow, known to the Met as Admiral Benbow. He was a thickset man with bulbous features, bearing a startling resemblance to Mr Khrushchev.

His assistant, Alan Bray, was a very young sergeant, recently made up from detective constable. He was bursting with enthusiasm and his appearance generally reminded the cynical Sergeant Burrell of a keen country curate.

The two newcomers went over the car again and studied the pieces of stick, which Johnson was guarding as if they were the Holy Grail. They adjourned into the inspector's office and sat around the table.

Benbow removed his Moscow-type fedora and folded his hands on the stained wood before him. He was well aware of the stock joke about his resemblance to the Soviet ex-leader and did all he could to perpetuate the gimmick. His belted raincoats and large hats were all part of the act, but this harmless farce took nothing away from his ability as a first-class detective.

He started the ball rolling. ‘Now then … what's been done so far?'

The Oldfield inspector went on the defensive at once.

‘Well, very little so far; we didn't know there was anything fishy about it until this morning.'

Benbow puffed out his podgy cheeks. ‘OK … now, do we all agree that the bit of stick jammed under the throttle means a deliberate attempt to crash the car?'

He glared around as if defying anyone to deny it.

‘So who could have done it?'

No one spoke and he went on. ‘Couldn't be the deceased … if she wanted to knock herself off, she'd go it a darned sight easier by keeping her foot on the pedal. So that means someone else did it for her – and that means murder!'

This was the first time that day that the word had actually been used and there was a thoughtful silence. Everyone had been skirting around it for the past few hours, but now the Admiral's blunt words had broken the ice and there was confused murmuring of suggestions and comments.

Benbow held up his head in best United Nations manner. ‘All right, all right, let's get the facts straight.'

His sergeant, the angelic-looking Bray, cut in with an objection, voiced with a nervous determination.

‘But no one would risk murder this way – she might not have been killed – we've all seen far worse crashes than this where the driver has got up and walked away.'

Benbow gave him a sorrowful look.

‘And how do you know the crash killed her? She might have been shot, stabbed, strangled, poisoned …' He left the sentence in mid-air.

‘The post-mortem …' Bray's voice trailed off weakly. Benbow looked at the inspector and then at the local sergeant. They both shook their heads slowly and sadly the Admiral slapped his hands on the table sharply.

‘See, Bray, keep your trap shut then you can't put your foot in it.' He smiled suddenly and disarmingly at his sergeant, taking all the sting out of his words. ‘Well, we can soon fix a post-mortem, can't we?'

Benbow looked brightly at the local policemen and their sheepish faces made his jaw drop.

‘Oh God … no … not that!'

The Oldfield inspector nodded sheepishly.

‘Buried the day before yesterday,' he admitted. ‘Sorry, but our local coroner's not too keen on holding post-mortems, especially on what he calls obvious road accidents.'

Archie Benbow sighed. ‘Still, it could have been worse,' he said. ‘She could have been cremated.' He stiffened suddenly. ‘Christ, she wasn't was she?'

‘No, she was buried … here in the local cemetery.'

The Admiral relaxed.

‘Well, we can fix that. As far as I remember, the coroner has power to order an exhumation on one of his own cases, hasn't he?'

Bray shook his head sadly at Benbow.

‘No, sir, sorry. If he's held an inquest – even opened one as in this instance – only the Home Secretary can give permission.'

Archie Benbow scowled at his erudite assistant.

‘Proper bloody genius, aren't you? Do you read a chapter from Jarvis's text book every night before you go to sleep?'

Bray grinned good-humouredly. ‘Do you want me to get it organised, sir?'

Benbow grunted his assent. ‘And get hold of one of the forensic chaps from Town to come out and do a post-mortem.'

I think Eustace Soames usually does this part of the Home Counties. And tell the Yard Laboratory to join the party as well.'

Bray went out with Burrell to the charge room to use the telephone while his boss got on with the talking. Archie tapped the pathetically thin folder which contained the few documents so far collected about the Laskey case.

‘All we've got here is the fact that this woman lived in an expensive flat in the West End and was kept by some man, so far quite unknown to us.'

The Oldfield inspector nodded. ‘That's all we could ruddy-well find out. I'm afraid, apart from the fact that she was separated from her husband, who lives in Luton. Can't see him as a suspect; he didn't want to know about her when we had him here for the inquest.'

Benbow looked thoughtful.

‘Better get hold of him again I think, and give him a working over; he may know something that he didn't think he knew at first.'

‘He was a full-blown nobody,' commented the inspector. Said he hadn't seen her for nine years and wasn't madly keen to see her for another nine … he moaned like hell when old Smythe swung the cost of the funeral on him.'

‘Well, he won't have to pay for the exhumation, if that's any comfort to him,' grinned Benbow. ‘If Bray does his stuff out there, we should have her up by first light in the morning.

Chapter Five