Some Die Eloquent (2 page)

Larky Nolson was doing more than just nod to Detective-Inspector Sloan now. He was getting up from his seat beside Mrs Nolson and coming over. Sloan, too, rose to his feet and then carefully made his way to a square of open space behind the clinic waiting area. Choosing your own ground was something you learned to do early on when you went on the beat. It was half-way towards winning.

Larky Nolson, however, had not come to do battle.

‘Long time no see, Inspector,' he began.

‘That, Larky,' responded Sloan easily, ‘is quite all right with me.'

‘Too long,' said the little man meaningfully.

‘I can bear it.'

‘Don't be like that.'

‘The longer the better,' said Sloan firmly. That, in essence, had been the sentiment prevailing in the Crown Court too.

‘That man …' Larky sucked his teeth.

‘Which man?'

‘Called hisself a judge.'

‘A good one.'

‘Him a judge!' said Larky richly. ‘He wouldn't even know which way was up.'

‘Black from white,' declared Sloan. ‘That's all he needs to know.'

Larky sniffed. ‘And the lawyers were no better.'

‘They're not in it for their health,' said Sloan obliquely.

‘You can say that again,' said Larky indignantly. ‘And there wasn't much to choose between them if you ask me – mine or theirs.'

‘The legal profession's duty,' recited Sloan piously, ‘is to the court.'

‘You'd have thought, though,' grumbled Nolson, ignoring this, ‘that mine could have got me less than he did.'

‘With your record?'

‘If he was half as clever as he thought he was I'd have been a free man.'

‘I expect he knows a villain when he sees one.'

‘The other brief didn't help either. Your man.'

‘He isn't meant to,' Sloan reminded him. ‘He's there to prosecute.'

‘Persecute, more like. Real nasty, I thought he was. Where did you get him from? The Kremlin or somewhere?'

‘Too many short sentences about,' said Sloan briskly.

‘He made it all sound so much worse,' persisted the burglar.

‘Safes don't fall open on their own,' observed the policeman.

The safe was a sore point with Larky. It had been difficult to open and that had been his undoing. He changed his ground.

‘That your wife you're with over there?'

‘It isn't anyone else's,' said Sloan evenly.

‘Your first?' enquired Nolson.

‘Yes, as it happens it is.'

‘They're the worst,' said Larky patronisingly.

‘Are they?'

‘Didn't think,' sniffed Nolson, gaining strength, ‘that I'd ever see you here, Inspector.'

‘Say that again, Larky, and I'll hit you.'

‘Another little copper on the way.' He rolled his eyes. ‘Give me strength.'

‘Causing an affray,' said Sloan, moving forward irately. ‘That's what I'll get you for, Nolson …'

The little man backed away. ‘It's as quiet as houses, Inspector. Honest …'

It wasn't as quiet as anything.

Hospitals were never quiet. And never still. At that moment the turgid procedure of the out-patient clinic produced a movement. A Sister appeared and a woman disappeared through a door. Both men looked back towards their wives.

‘I'm next,' muttered Larky inappropriately.

Sloan started to make his way back to his own wife's side. He was diverted by the sight of another face he knew.

Dr Dabbe was Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District Hospital Management Committee. He was also Police Surgeon to the Berebury Division Police Force.

‘Ah, Sloan, there you are.'

‘Good afternoon, Doctor …'

The pathologist looked past Sloan and along the rows of heavily-pregnant waiting patients, murmuring under his breath ‘“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)”'. He picked out Mrs Sloan and waved to her.

‘They said I'd find you here, Sloan.'

‘Did they?' said Sloan impassively.

‘You're wanted,' said Dr Dabbe.

‘Where?'

‘Here.'

‘In the hospital?'

‘Yes,' said the pathologist.

‘Oh, I am, am I?' began Sloan.

‘Come along; man …'

‘Who wants me?'

‘I do, of course,' said Dabbe impatiently.

‘Where?'

‘In the mortuary. Really, Sloan, I haven't got all afternoon to waste.'

Neither had Sloan. He stood indecisively between his wife and the police surgeon. Margaret Sloan was giving him a look quite as enigmatic as that of the Mona Lisa …

‘There's no time to hang about,' said the doctor. ‘Morton's are already on their way.'

Then Margaret Sloan raised her hand in an ironic gesture of absolution. Detective-Inspector Sloan, a free man now, turned to the pathologist and said with alacrity, ‘Which way?'

The mortuary was on the ground floor of the hospital and admission from the outside world was by way of two sets of double doors. The outer set kept the curious at bay. The inner pair led to the mortuary itself.

By the time Dr Dabbe and Detective-Inspector Sloan reached the department a vehicle was already neatly sandwiched between the two sets of doors – looking for all the world like a barge trapped between lock gates on a canal.

A plump young man clambered out of the driver's seat as they approached. He nodded to the mortuary attendant and then gave the engine bonnet an affectionate slap.

‘Nice, isn't it?' he said to the world at large.

‘Very, Fred,' said Sloan.

And it was. As an undertaker's van it was a masterpiece both of strict convention and ambiguity.

‘We've just taken delivery,' said Fred Morton proudly. ‘It's the latest thing.'

It was white – like an ambulance – and indeed had two red crosses on the smoked, darkly opaque windows of the rear double doors, but there was also a precautionary black stripe running round the white walls, pointing a warning note. The neighbours would learn nothing from a visit of a van like this. Only the cognoscenti – the police, the fire people, real ambulancemen – would know what to make of it and its cargo.

‘I said to Dad that we've got to move with the times …'

‘I remember,' remarked Dr Dabbe, ‘your father saying that to his father.'

‘We've still got that hearse,' said young Morton reverently. ‘You can't touch Rolls-Royces. Fitted into the stable a treat, of course, otherwise Grandad would never have had it.'

Morton and Son, Undertakers, Nethergate, Berebury, went back a long time.

Fred Morton moved round to open the rear doors. ‘There's one thing Dad won't let go, though.'

‘What's that?' asked Sloan curiously. Undertaking was a conservative trade and Morton and Son were more conservative than most.

‘The sign above the shop.' He sighed. ‘I just can't get Dad to change it for all that it doesn't make sense.'

‘What does it say?'

‘Superior Funerals!' He groaned. ‘In black and gold lettering with scrolls – I ask you.' He opened both the van doors as he spoke. ‘Here you are, Doctor. Beatrice Gwendoline Wansdyke.'

‘And what, exactly,' enquired Sloan as he walked into the mortuary proper with the pathologist, ‘did Beatrice Gwendoline Wansdyke die from?'

‘Diabetes,' said Dr Dabbe. ‘Or so I am told.'

‘And?'

‘And nothing,' said Dr Dabbe blandly, ‘unless I find something else as well.'

‘So what's the problem?'

‘The problem,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘is not so much what she died from as what she died with, if you see what I mean.'

‘No,' said Sloan uncompromisingly, ‘I don't see what you mean. What did she die with?'

‘A quarter of a million pounds', said the doctor.

CHAPTER II

Sharp was the hope and hard the supposition.

‘A quarter of a million pounds,' said Superintendent Leeyes flatly. ‘That's what I told the doctor.'

Sloan was in the mortuary office using the pathologist's secretary's telephone to ring the police station.

‘Just sitting there,' said Leeyes. ‘Doing nothing.'

‘Sitting where?' asked Sloan. As assorted bank and train robbers had found to their discomfiture, money of that order of magnitude took up a lot of space.

‘In her bank account.'

‘Not under the bed or anything like that?'

‘Nothing like that,' said Leeyes firmly. ‘In her bank account. That's how we heard about it.'

‘From the bank?' said Sloan startled.

‘No, no,' said Leeyes. ‘Well, not exactly.'

Sloan waited for enlightenment.

‘Constable Blake's wife,' said Leeyes, ‘overheard two young girls – bank clerks, actually – talking in the checkout queue at the supermarket yesterday dinner-time.'

‘Ah.'

‘Says one to the other, “Fancy dying with a quarter of a million pounds in the bank.”' Leeyes grunted. ‘“Before you can enjoy it,” says the other. “Shame, isn't it. Mind you, she was old …” Those were their words, Sloan.'

‘Then what?'

‘Mrs Blake – smart woman, Mrs Blake …'

‘Used to be in the Force. Before she married Ted.'

‘Ah, that explains it. Well, she tails the pair of them …'

‘Back to the bank?'

‘Precisely. And we set about finding out who died yesterday. Only Miss Wansdyke.'

Sloan cleared his throat. ‘There's no word out about any job of that size unaccounted for, is there, sir?'

‘Not that I know of,' replied Leeyes. ‘I've got someone down here at the station going through the back numbers now to be on the safe side all the same.'

‘It's a lot of money,' Sloan said warily.

‘Better than Brink's,' said Leeyes.

‘Quite so,' said Sloan, acknowledging this.

Every policeman had his own choice crime that he mulled over in much the same way as a connoisseur swirled his wine round in a glass to get the best of the bouquet. The Brink's Incorporated job in Boston was the one that continued to fascinate Superintendent Leeyes. Done by small-time men, he never failed to remind them. And that hadn't stopped it being the most daring bank robbery in history.

‘That was in dollars, of course,' added Leeyes now.

Sloan coughed. ‘It's not exactly a crime – er-in itself, so to speak, sir, to have that much money in the bank.'

‘It may not be,' said Leeyes robustly, ‘but you must admit, Sloan, it's a bit funny for someone who lives in Ridley Road.'

‘It's very respectable up there,' conceded Sloan.

‘Exactly,' said Leeyes, who beyond a certain point did not equate money with respectability. Not new money, that is. In the Superintendent's book His Grace the Duke of Calleshire could have as much as he liked. That was different.

‘In fact,' persisted Sloan, ‘my wife would like us to think of moving that way now that.…' He felt a pang of unease when he remembered his wife. Was she still sitting in the clinic, he wondered, or had she moved forward on the ante-natal conveyor belt?

Leeyes grunted. ‘A nice quiet neighbourhood.'

‘Decent houses.'

‘Trees on the footpath.'

‘No through traffic,' said Sloan

‘Grass verges,' said Leeyes.

‘Just local vehicles.' Policemen grew to dislike cars.

‘Near the tennis club.'

‘Good gardens, too, sir.' Sloan's own recreation was growing roses. It was about the only one that went with his sort of working hours. ‘Clay soil.'

‘No trouble up there either.' The Superintendent added the ultimate police accolade.

‘Not even on Saturday nights,' said Sloan, completing the sketch of suburban delight. A Town and Country Planning Conference on urban housing amenity would have taken two days to get as far.

‘See what I mean?' demanded Leeyes illogically. ‘What would someone living up in Ridley Road be doing with that much money?'

Sloan let the vision of him and his wife taking possession of a house in Ridley Road fade and said he didn't know. ‘Though there's always the football pools, sir,' he said. ‘She might have said ‘No publicity' to them and meant it. Some people do.'

‘First thing we checked,' grunted Leeyes. ‘I don't know about you, Sloan, but it's the only way I can think of of getting your hands on that much money straight.'

‘Sad but true …'

‘It is a melancholy indictment of modern society,' intoned the Superintendent in his best Watch Committee manner, ‘that gambling seems to be the only honest path to financial glory.'

‘Inheritance?' put in Sloan quickly, before the Superintendent could hit his full oratorical style.

‘Rich uncles, you mean?' Leeyes paused. ‘That's a thought. I could put someone on to checking on big wills.'

‘They would have had to have been very rich uncles indeed,' pointed out Sloan, ‘to have left that sort of money net.'

‘Oil-rich uncles?' postulated Leeyes. That this was another melancholy indictment of modern society seemed – for the moment – to have escaped him.

‘Sugar daddy?' suggested Sloan, seeing that they were exploring arcane relationships.

‘She was a bit long in the tooth for that sort of thing,' said Leeyes.

‘Ah,' Sloan pulled his notebook towards him. He had all the policeman's desire for positive fact in an uncertain world. ‘How old exactly?'

‘Fifty-nine,' said Leeyes promptly. ‘She was due to retire next year.'

‘What from?'

‘Didn't I tell you?' said Leeyes. ‘She was the chemistry mistress at the Girls' Grammar School here in Berebury.'

‘Why?'

‘Why what, Sloan,?' he snapped testily.

‘Why was she working?' said Sloan not unreasonably. ‘If I had a quarter of a million pounds in the bank I shouldn't be working. Would you, sir?'