The Killing of Katie Steelstock (23 page)

“In that case,” said her father, “you’d better pack up your things and take yourself off to somewhere you’ll be appreciated.”

“Jack!”

“Since you treat me like dirt,” said Sally, “the sooner I stop polluting your house the better.”

“You can’t go away like this,” said her mother. “Where will you go?”

“To London,” said Sally, who was as close to tears as her mother was. “Patricia Cole will let me share her flat. She told me so.”

“She won’t want you at this time of night,” said her father, who saw that he had gone too far. “Cool down. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“I’ve done all the talking I’m going to do,” said Sally and slammed out of the room.

“Bit of luck finding you two here together,” said Sergeant Shilling.

Tony Windle and Billy Gonville looked at him cautiously. Sergeant McCourt they knew and, to a certain extent, trusted. They were not so certain about this smooth-faced young man from London.

“Anything we can do for you?”

“Just to think back to Friday morning. I imagine you both went up to London as usual.”

“As usual.”

“That would be the eight forty.”

“As usual.”

“And both went down to the station in your cars.”

“We both went down in Gonville’s car. Mine was out of action.”

“Yes. I remember. Your local practical joker had put yours out of action. By the way, have there been any other incidents of that sort?”

“If there have, we haven’t heard of them.”

“Odd. Mariner, Vigors and you.”

“Not really,” said Tony. “Most people round here lock their cars up at night. Vigors and Mariner hadn’t got round to putting their cars away. The damage was done during the evening. That’s why everyone thought it was kids. We haven’t got a garage, so mine was easy meat. While he was at it, the joker might have fixed Billy’s, too. They’re parked together in our back yard.”

Billy said, “Is Scotland Yard worried about it?”

“Not really. But it was cars I came to ask you about. When you parked yours at the station, did you happen to notice Limbery’s car?”

They looked at each other. The conversation so far had been casual enough. Were they now getting to some point that mattered?

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Tony. “It’s a ropy old Morris Traveller. A respray job. It was parked at the far end.”

“By the pedestrian access?”

“Just beyond it.”

“I understand that Katie went up to town that morning on the eight forty. I wondered if you happened to notice where
her
car was parked.”

So that’s it, said the two young men simultaneously to themselves. It was Windle who answered. He said, “We could hardly have noticed Katie’s car. It wasn’t there.”

“Oh?”

“Walter ran her down to the station. I expect her mother fetched her. That was the usual arrangement when she went to town.”

“But—” said Shilling.

“I know,” said Tony. “She had a car of her own. But she doesn’t seem to have been keen on using it. Lately, that is. She drove round in it a lot when she first got it. New toy. Then she seemed to get tired of it.”

“The fact is,” said Billy, “she liked other people to do things for her. If Tony’s car hadn’t been out of action she’d have expected him to drive her to the dance that night. Although it was only four hundred yards straight down the road.”

“Is that right?” said Shilling. An idea was beginning to shape itself in his mind. He thought he would try it out on Knott.

When he had gone, Tony heaved himself out of his chair, took two large glass-bottomed pewter tankards out of the sideboard and filled them from a cask in the corner. He handed one to Billy, who sank half of the contents in two gulps and then said, “It
is
odd, when you come to think of it.”

“Very odd,” said Tony. “For the first few months of this year she was hardly out of that car. Drove it all over the place, took it up to London. Then – it didn’t happen gradually – she just seemed to stop using it.”

“Do you think it could have been her? Young Roney?”

“It might have been. He said it was a small red car. Of course, they’re common enough.”

He was referring to something that had happened in the first week of March.

Roney Havelock, walking home from school in the dusk, had been hit by a car driving on sidelights only. That part of the street, between River Park Avenue and West Hannington Manor, was unlighted. When he saw that the car was going to hit him, Roney had jumped for safety. Some outlying portion, possibly the driving mirror, had caught in his coat and hurled him onto the side of the road. He had cracked his head on a fencepost and knocked himself out. The next motorist to come past had been his mother, who had picked him up, taken him straight to the Hannington Infirmary and telephoned the police. By that time Roney, who was suffering from concussion, had been able to make a statement. He hadn’t noticed the car until a moment before it hit him. It was small and red. That was all.

“There could be nothing in it,” said Tony. “Katie’s car is small and red—”

“Lot of them about.”

“But it
was
then that she practically gave up using her car, particularly after dark”

“The police never pinned it onto anyone.”

“That’s right,” said Tony. “They started making a lot of inquiries. I remember Ian coming to talk to me about it. My car’s red and smallish. Luckily I’d got an alibi. Then, somehow, they seemed to lose interest.”

“I notice,” said Billy, “that you didn’t mention any of this to the Sergeant just now. All you said was Katie had given up driving lately. March isn’t exactly lately.”

Tony finished his beer, took both mugs and refilled them. He said, “If Katie did knock young Roney down, she may not even have known that she’d touched him. And it can’t have anything to do with her getting killed five months later.”

“I suppose not.”

“And anyway, I don’t trust Shilling. And I don’t like his boss.”

“The White Rat.”

“He’s simply in it for what he can get out of it. I was talking to Pritchard at lunch yesterday. You know the chap I mean?”

“Conk Pritchard?”

“No. That’s his brother. This was Dozey Pritchard. Their father’s something in the Solicitors’ Department at Scotland Yard. He was saying that if Knott pulls this off he’s a snip for promotion to Commander. All he wants is a conviction. It doesn’t matter to him whether he’s got the right man. It’s a race between him and another chap on the Murder Squad called Haliburton. He was the one who pulled off that kidnapping job at Exeter, remember?”

Billy considered this, staring into his tankard as though he could see the truth rising with the bubbles from its amber depths. He said, “Do you think Johnno did do it?”

Tony said, “No, I don’t. Do you?”

“It’s out of character. Sticking poor old Eddie through the arm in front of an admiring audience. That was Johnno all over. But lurking on a dark path and beating Katie’s head in. I just can’t see it. And who the hell’s that?”

The telephone was in the hall. Billy went out. A one-sided conversation followed, which consisted mostly of Billy saying, “What?” and “Oh” and finally “Hold on a second.” He came back and said, “Well, what do you know? That’s Sally Nurse on the telephone. She wants to know if she can come round and spend a couple of nights here.”

“Has her house burned down?”

“She’s had a fight with her father and walked out. A friend in London had offered her a share of her pad, but the friend’s gone abroad and locked the place up. Won’t be back till Monday.”

“I don’t mind, if you don’t,” said Tony. “She can use the sofa.”

“Safety in numbers,” said Billy with a grin. “All right. I’ll tell her.”

“I didn’t get a lot out of them,” said Shilling. “Except that it’s clear Katie’s car wasn’t in the car park that day. I checked that with Walter. But I did get the beginnings of an idea.”

Knott grunted. He preferred facts to ideas. But he had enough respect for his assistant to listen.

“It’s that business about the practical joker. He drained old Vigors’ radiator and he let down Mariner’s tyres and then, sometime on Thursday night, he immobilised Windle’s car by pinching the distributor.”

“Wolf man,” said Knott.

“Well, it might be, of course. But it just occurred to me. Suppose the first two were dummy runs and it was only the third one that mattered. If Windle’s car hadn’t been out of action, he’d have driven Katie to the dance. That’s for sure. Since he couldn’t, she had to use her own car.”

“Couldn’t Walter drive her?”

“Walter would be taking her mother. If she went with them, she’d be tied to them for the evening. No, failing Windle, I think she’d be bound to take her own car. Not a certainty, I agree, but highly likely.”

“Yes,” said Knott. And again. “Yes. I take your point.”

“That was a perfect setup for the killer. Katie’s up in London. Her car’s standing all that day in her stableyard, which is easy to get at and nicely hidden from view. All he’s got to do is to slip the note through the window. Katie finds it there
when she comes out to drive to the dance.
She wouldn’t want to leave it lying about. Not with all that LYPAH business in it. Natural thing would be to tuck it away in her bag. It’s almost the only way he could be certain it
would
finish up there.”

Knott was thinking about it, twisting it this way and that, slotting it into the pattern he had created.

He said, “It’s all right in one way. He’d have to know quite a bit about Katie and her habits. The fact that she’d probably get her brother to drive her to the station instead of taking her own car. And the supposition that if Windle’s car wasn’t available she’d take her own car to the dance. And that’s the sort of knowledge Limbery would have. In another way it doesn’t fit quite so well. It argues a very careful forward-thinking killer.”

“Not a hot-headed fool,” agreed Shilling. “A cold-blooded bastard.”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t take it,” said Mariner.

“Be your age, George,” said Mrs. Havelock. “You know what you’re told. If you have any personal connection with the accused, you can’t sit.”

“Is that right, Gerry?”

“On the nail,” said Group Captain Gonville. “It would be quite impossible for any of us to sit. We all know Jonathan.”

“Far too well,” said Mrs. Havelock.

“Then what do we do?”

“Ask Henry.”

Henry was their clerk. He was also their mainstay. He knew all there was to know about law and procedure. Mrs. Havelock sometimes thought that he would have made a very good judge.

“I’ll give him a buzz,” said Gonville. The magistrates were meeting in his drawing room.

When he came back, he said, “Henry’s already fixed it. He’s getting Appleton from Reading.”

“Pity,” said Mariner. “This was one case I was really looking forward to taking.”

And that, said Mrs. Havelock to herself, is just why you’re not going to be allowed to take it.

That same morning the weather broke. It was the first rain since mid-July and was generally welcomed. As Superintendent Farr came into the temporary operations room behind the Hannington police station a spout from a blocked drain above the door shot a cupful of water down his back. He took off his coat and said, “Well, that’s a bloody friendly way to welcome a colleague.”

Knott and Shilling were working at their desks. Knott said, “Come in, Dennis. I can see by that happy smile on your kisser that you’ve got something for us.”

“I have and all,” said Farr. “And seeing I was coming in this direction, I thought I’d give it to you myself.” He extracted some papers from his briefcase. “First, the Met have put a name to that bod that was pulled out of the river. Lewson. Known to the criminal fraternity as Gabby. He and his brother Louie both worked for this photographer, Rod the Sod Ruoff.”

“When I saw the photograph,” said Shilling, “I thought it reminded me of someone. It must have been his brother I met when I went up to the studio to ask him about Katie. Chucker-out and general dogsbody.”

“Right. And they both have a bit of form. Nothing sensational. Insulting behaviour. Drunk and disorderly. Just a pair of bar room cowboys.”

“An odd pair to be working for a studio,” said Knott.

“It’s an odd studio. Society beauties and television personalities and a sideline in porn. I’ll send the photographs over and you can see for yourself.”

Shilling said, “I suppose ‘Gabby’ was short for Gabriel.”

Knott looked at him sharply. He suspected that his assistant sometimes pulled his leg. He said, “I don’t get it.”

“Gabriel was the messenger of the gods. Gabby seems to have been a messenger boy for Ruoff. Taking the merchandise round to the customers. I should think there was an element of blackmail about it, too, wouldn’t you?”

“I thought the same thing,” said Farr. “Some respectable citizen buys a few naughty photographs. Then he gets cold feet and doesn’t fancy having any more. So Gabby turns up at his house one evening with a wallet full of prime stuff. The last thing our respectable citizen wants is a fuss on his own doorstep. So he buys the lot to keep him quiet.”

“You could be right,” said Knott. “But has it got anything to do with my case?”

“Next point,” said Farr smoothly. “There was a ticket in Gabby’s wallet. A cheap day-return ticket to Hannington. The date was washed off, but the number on the ticket was still legible. Paddington say that it must have been issued latish that Friday. They can’t be certain of the exact time, but around five or six. Since it was a day-return, presumably Gabby planned to go back to London the same night. The last train back is the fast from Swindon, which stops at Hannington at ten minutes before midnight. That would give him about six hours. For whatever he was planning to do.”

“All right,” said Knott. “All right. That means that he was hanging around this part of the world at the time Katie was killed. That still doesn’t mean—”

“Wait for it,” said Farr. “I’ve kept the punchline for the last.” He took out another sheet of paper. “We’ve got the pathologist’s report on Lewson. Dr. Carlyle, from Southampton. He did the autopsy on Katie, too. He says, ‘An examination of both wounds leaves me in little doubt that they were made by the same weapon. The shape and size of the fracture, which it was possible to measure with precision, suggests a thinnish steel pipe, with some protuberance, or knob, at the end of it. In both cases it was swung downwards and sideways into the head, and the fact that the depth of penetration was the same in both cases suggests that the same hand struck both blows, although that last point is, of course, only surmise.’”