Ransom Town

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Did I tell you I saw Jean this afternoon?’ she asked.

  ‘You mentioned it earlier on.’ He didn’t like Jean for several reasons, the most pertinent of which was that she always tried to patronize him.

  ‘She told me about a new little dress shop that’s started up in Donaldson Street. She said it’s really chic.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t . . .’ He stopped.

  She smiled. ‘You hope I didn’t what, love?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered miserably, as he returned across the room and handed her the glass.

  ‘She said I ought to see it, so we went along together for a quick look-see.’

  He did not have to guess what was to come.

  ‘Jean said their clothes were really nice – nothing cheap and shoddy – and she was absolutely right. There was a blue and red pleated outfit in the new line that’s all the thing now and it was an absolute dream. Actually, I tried it on, but it was too small for me.’ She giggled. ‘The woman in the shop is a bit of a lesy and she told me I was a shade too big a girl for it. I got scared that she was going to try and hold hands.’

  Girl? Had the description ever been more inappropriate?

  ‘You’d have really liked me in it, Brian. If only it had fitted.’ She spoke very casually. ‘She did say she could get my size.’

  ‘You told her to forget it? We can’t afford to buy anything more. You did tell her that, didn’t you, Betty?’

  ‘Come off it, love. The clothes weren’t really expensive – not when you realize what they are.’

  ‘But . . .’ He went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself out a Scotch. ‘Then is she ordering this other size?’

  ‘I suppose she must be.’

  ‘Can’t you begin to understand . . .’

  ‘There you go again! Why do you always have to spoil everything by getting so stuffy? What’s the harm in just seeing the dress? That doesn’t mean I have to buy it. And even if I did buy it, as Jean says, the best is always a bargain. . . . Come on, sweetie, smile.’

  He sat. What did other husbands do in this sort of a situation? Force their wives to see financial sense? But he had never been of a masterful nature and whenever he tried to insist he was all too conscious of sounding petulant, not authoritative. . . .

  ‘When you look all angry like that, Brian, you really scare me!’

  He’d never even begun to scare her, not even when her cruelty – for she was cruel – goaded him almost (it was forever almost) beyond endurance. At times he wondered if she were a psychological masochist whose cruelty towards him was triggered by his inability to treat her with harsh contempt.

  ‘Come over here and have a cuddle. Tell me you don’t really want to frighten me.’

  How ever many times before had it happened? The really absurd thing was that if only he could treat her with indifference, his abject part in the coming scene wouldn’t happen.

  She said, in a low, husky voice: ‘I want you to be extra nice to me because I made a very special promise to myself.’ She giggled coyly. ‘Do you know what I promised?’

  Even as he told himself that this time he wouldn’t be a fool, he crossed to the settee. She gently nibbled his ear, then trickled her lips down his right cheek. ‘In your heart of hearts, you do like to see me well dressed, don’t you?’ She paused. ‘You know, love, it’s truly a lovely dress and even Jean was envious and said she wished it suited her.’

  ‘How much is it?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘Just a teeny, weeny bit more than the last dress you bought me.’

  He’d never been allowed to know what that had cost.

  She finished her drink and put down the glass. ‘If the right size really does suit me and I look as smart in it as I did in the wrong size . . . You wouldn’t really mind too, too much, would you?’ She moved her hand up his leg. ‘I’d be ever so, ever so specially grateful.’

  He kissed her with a wild hunger which experience had taught him was incapable of satiation.

  ‘My, we are all eager!’

  In the bedroom she undressed with provocative casualness. Then when she was naked, she said she needed a clean nightdress but couldn’t find one and kept brushing past him, evading his hands with giggling good humour.

  From the moment he’d first met her, he’d been physically attracted to her with a passion that at times seemed little short of madness. It stripped him of self-control and self-respect.

  She decided not to wear a nightdress after all and climbed into bed. When he joined her, she kissed him and her hands caressed his body, bringing fire with their touch.

  ‘Love,’ she said, ‘you will let me buy that dress as a special treat, won’t you?’

  He’d have granted her the world at that moment.

  ‘I knew you would,’ she whispered, her tone both complacent and contemptuous.

  *

  There were six lock-up garages, three on either side of the extension to the road which formed a dead-end. The nearest street light was thirty yards away and a plane tree, set in the pavement, stood between it and the garages so that even in winter they were largely in shadows.

  The car stopped when the front of its bonnet was level with the two middle garages. Two men, one of them with a package in his right hand, climbed out of the car. They forced the lock of the middle left-hand garage so expertly they might have been using the key and lifted the door. The man with the package turned it upside down, then put in under the petrol tank of the Vauxhall inside. They returned to their own car and drove away.

  The parish clock, half a mile away, marked the half-hours and the hours. The drizzle turned into rain. Then, at four-thirty-one, the sulphuric acid in the bottle inside the package under the Vauxhall finally ate through the cork stopper and flowed down on to a mixture of potassium chlorate and powdered sugar. The fire was immediate and violent.

  Chapter Nine

  Josephine Fusil dished the eggs and bacon and placed the two plates in front of her husband and son, Timothy, who sat at the small kitchen table.

  Timothy looked curiously at her. ‘Aren’t you having any, Mum?’

  ‘No. I’m on a diet.’

  ‘Since when have you been on that?’ asked Fusil.

  ‘From the moment I weighed myself yesterday afternoon in the chemists and discovered our scales are under-reading by over half a stone.’

  He smiled briefly. ‘Why panic? I’d describe you as a fine figure of a woman.’

  ‘Which is a way of telling me I’m getting fat, but you daren’t come out and tell me so frankly. Coward!’ She picked up the bread board and put this on the table. She was a handsome rather than a beautiful woman, largely because her face was filled with lines of character. Reserved by nature, some of the P.C.s’ wives referred to her as always being pleasant to the peasants; but the truth was that she viewed rank with the same detachment as wealth or social position and like her husband she valued a person for what he or she was, not what he or she possessed.

  Fusil cut open his eggs so that the yolks ran out on to the toast underneath. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back for lunch today: we’ve work enough on our plates to keep us going twenty-five hours a day.’

  She put in her place setting a plate with two slimming rolls on it and then sat. ‘I’ve told you before, I’m not having you work yourself into an early grave, so you get back, even if it’s only for a short time.’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I’m playing for the Probables against the Possibles this afternoon, Dad,’ said Timothy. He didn’t resemble either of his parents in looks, but he did seem to have inherited their ability to make level judgements in most matters.

  ‘Score a couple of goals. It would be great to see you in the team.’

  ‘Old Twitchers seems to think I’ll make it. The only thing is, Rog and me are really playing for the same place in the team and he’s pretty good.’

  ‘Kick him in the shin at the start of the game when the ref’
s not looking.’

  ‘Bob, that’s not funny!’ said Josephine. ‘You know I don’t like you talking in that way.’

  Fusil winked at Timothy. His wife had never learned to appreciate his sense of humour.

  The telephone rang and Fusil started to rise. ‘You stay where you are and I’ll take it. My breakfast can’t get cold,’ said Josephine, with a quick look of distaste at the slimming rolls.

  Fusil added sugar to his coffee and drank. He mopped up the last of the egg yolk on a piece of toast, added a corner of bacon, and ate. Josephine returned. ‘Who is it?’ he asked, his voice muffled.

  ‘Your office. I told them you’d be along soon, but there seems to be some sort of panic on.’

  He began to get up.

  ‘I’ve rung off, so you can just finish your breakfast before getting back on to them: I doubt the panic will get any worse in that time. Here’s the fresh toast and marmalade and do you want any more coffee?’ She stared directly at him, daring him to leave until he’d finished his meal.

  In just one respect, he thought sardonically, Josephine and Miss Wagner were alike – they both thought they knew best how he should run his job. As soon as he’d finished, he went out into the hall and rang the station.

  ‘A message is in, sir, of a fire in a concrete and asbestos lock-up garage in Steerforth Road early in the morning, first reported to the fire service at four-forty-seven. By the time the fire unit arrived one of the garages and the car in it were well alight and the car’s a complete write-off. The reason why the fire people have been on to us is that apparently there’s a strong chance it was arson, although I can’t tell you what makes ’em say that.’

  ‘I’ll be at the station in ten minutes. Get on to the fire investigation officer and arrange a meeting at the site in half an hour.’

  After replacing the receiver, Fusil lifted his mackintosh and hat from the hall stand. ‘I’m off,’ he shouted.

  ‘Don’t you forget, I want you back here for lunch,’ Josephine called back.

  *

  Kerr arrived at the bank at ten minutes past nine, some time after he should have started work: but since he wasn’t reporting direct to the station, neither Fusil nor Campson would be able to know for sure when he had started.

  The clerk at the ‘Enquiries’ counter used an internal phone to learn that Hanna would be free in ten minutes. Kerr sat down at one of the small tables and picked out a leaflet from the box on it. The advantages of a bank personal loan, buy today and pay tomorrow. But detective constables didn’t buy today because they were never in a position to pay tomorrow.

  ‘Mr Hanna’s free now. Will you go through?’

  Hanna was tall and thin, with a deeply lined face and a craggy nose which together made him look as if he were always worried. His sandy hair was thinning and he grew it long and carefully brushed it across his skull to try and cover up his growing baldness. He came round the desk and shook hands. ‘I gather you want another word with me?’

  ‘Sorry to bother you, but there are still one or two points I need to clear up.’

  ‘Of course. Do sit down.’

  After sitting, Kerr looked at the leather photograph frame on the desk and he was, because of the positioning of the frame, just able to see the photo of a woman. She looked so angular that if he’d sat behind the desk he would have left the photo in a drawer.

  Hanna waited for Kerr to speak, then became more and more fidgety when nothing was said. He cleared his throat. ‘You . . . er . . . You think I can help you some more?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ replied Kerr confidently.

  ‘But as I said last time, I know absolutely nothing about the bank robbery.’

  Kerr smiled.

  ‘Why can’t you understand? I knew where the plan of the alarm system was kept because it was my job to know, but I haven’t looked at it since I first came to the branch, four years ago.’

  ‘Are you quite sure of that?’

  ‘I swear I haven’t opened the locker in those four years.’

  ‘But I suppose you frequently go down into the strong-room?’

  ‘Well, of course I do. I may need one of the confidential files or books. And it’s my job to check in deliveries of fresh currency and to check out loads of old currency which is going for pulping.’

  ‘And you’ll often be down there on your own?’

  ‘I’m not the only member of the staff who goes down there alone. Any of us can . . . I tell you, I haven’t touched the box in which those plans are kept in four years.’

  ‘Tell me – have you ever been approached to give confidential information?’

  ‘Good God, of course I haven’t! . . . What I mean is, if I had I’d have reported that immediately. There’s a standing rule that anything the slightest suspicious has to be reported immediately to the manager and to internal security.’

  ‘No one’s offered you a large sum of money?’

  ‘I’ve just told you. Look, I’ve worked for this bank ever since I left school. I don’t want to sound boastful but I’ve every chance of getting a managership soon so I just couldn’t be such a fool as to throw everything away by not reporting that kind of an incident.’

  ‘Didn’t someone once say that every man has his price? They could have tried a very large bribe.’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter how large. I’ve a family. D’you think I’d ruin their lives as well as my own?’ He spoke more excitedly. ‘If it were ten thousand, twenty thousand, it wouldn’t matter. I couldn’t ever let my family down. My house is on a mortgage. We get special rates because I work in the bank and there’s still a lot of the capital to be paid and if I did anything wrong and was sent to jail where would my family be?’

  ‘People only get sent to jail if they’re caught. Before that happens, they always think they’re far too clever to be caught.’

  ‘But I’ve always been too scared to do anything. I don’t mean that’s the only reason I’ve never been dishonest, but I . . .’ He trailed off into silence, then said: ‘You’ve got to understand, it’s not me.’

  ‘You know, of course, that we’ve checked all the accounts of everyone who works in this bank?’

  ‘Yes, and there isn’t a penny in mine which shouldn’t be there: not a single penny.’

  ‘You’ve no other bank or savings account which so far you’ve forgotten to mention?’

  ‘I’ve told you about everything.’

  Kerr stood. ‘Well, thanks very much, Mr Hanna. I’ll say good-bye, but I expect I’ll be seeing you again.’

  ‘Why won’t you believe me when I tell you the truth?’

  ‘I’ve never said I don’t.’

  Kerr was not the most modest of men and he left the bank congratulating himself on his handling of the interrogation. Not once had he made a definite accusation, yet Hanna had been left in a muck-sweat. Five years to detective inspector? Yet why not make that detective chief superintendent while he was about it? He grinned. A man should at least be ambitious.

  *

  Fusil stood by the side of Jepson, the fire investigating officer, and stared at the blackened lock-up garage at the end of Steerforth Road.

  ‘One of the blokes on the pump unit was a real old hand,’ said Jepson. ‘It was he who noticed the smoke.’

  ‘How accurate a guide is that?’

  Jepson spoke didactically. ‘It entirely depends on what you mean by accurate. It is not proof in the terms a court uses, but it does give the basis for a very educated guess.’

  ‘If you’re right, what was the fire bomb made of?’

  ‘Potassium chlorate and powdered sugar provided the base and sulphuric acid the trigger. When those three things come together, there’s an instantaneous and violent fire. The bomb was set under the fuel tank of the car and when things got hot enough that blew up.’

  Fusil turned up the collar of his mackintosh to keep at bay the light rain which was once more falling. This had probably been arson. But arson by the ransom mob or by t
he car’s owner who had insured it for more than it was worth? Had the garage been locked and, if so, was the lock a simple or a complex one? Would a terrorist, probably an amateur in crime, be able to pick a lock?’

  ‘It’s becoming bloody,’ said Jepson. He spoke as if he seldom swore. ‘If they decide to fire an occupied building, I can’t see what’s to stop them. Unless you’ve now some idea of who they are?’ He looked questioningly at Fusil.

  ‘We haven’t the beginning of a lead.’

  ‘Then the ransom must be paid.’

  ‘Pay it and within the month every town in the country will be threatened: villains are great plagiarists.’

  ‘But how many people may be burned to death if it isn’t paid?’

  ‘That’s the kind of question which keeps a policeman awake at nights.’

  Chapter Ten

  Bressett, who because he was junior and too good-natured to object loudly enough was given an unfair amount of the boring routine work to do, was trying accurately to type a T23 form when the telephone message came through. Albert Mickey’s fingerprints were known and his C.R.O. file was numbered 262/M/4155.

  He rang Records and asked for details of file number 262/M/4155.

  Albert Mickey. Aged forty-nine, born in London. A string of arrests and convictions for minor offences: several times suspected of further minor crimes but not charged due to lack of evidence. Married to Ada Partridge eighteen years previously, separated at some unrecorded date, known to have lived for short periods with two women, for one of whom he was suspected of having pimped. No known relations (wife’s address not known), no special associates.

  After asking for the file to be sent on, Bressett rang off. Mickey appeared to be a small time crook who was without much imagination, perhaps old fashioned enough not to use violence. In criminal terms, a failure. So what could he have done to warrant his being murdered (if he had)?

  Bressett went along the passage to the detective sergeant’s room. Campson was speaking on the phone and Bressett had to wait nearly five minutes before passing over the paper on which he’d noted the details from Mickey’s file.