No Comebacks

by Frederick Forsyth

  'Which was?'

  'He was captured. Taken prisoner by the Germans in Rommel's autumn offensive of that year. Spent the rest of the war as a farm worker at a POW camp in Silesia, eastern end of the Third Reich. Liberated by the Russians, October 1944. Repatriated April 1945, just in time for the end of the war in Europe in May.'

  'Anything about his marriage?' asked Hanley.

  'Certainly,' said Major Dawkins. 'He was married while a serving soldier, so the Army has that on file, too. Married at St Mary Saviour's Catholic Church, Edmonton, North London, 14th of November 1945. Bride, Violet Mary Smith, hotel chambermaid. She was seventeen at the time. As you know, he got an honourable discharge in January 1946 and stayed on in Edmonton working as a storekeeper until 1954. That's when the Army has its last address for him.'

  Hanley thanked Dawkins profusely and hung up. Larkin was thirty-four, turning thirty-five, when he married a young girl of seventeen. She would have been a lively twenty-six when they came to live in Mayo Road, and he a perhaps not so lively forty-three. By the time she died in August 1963, she would have been a still-attractive and possibly sexy thirty-five, while he would have been a perhaps very uninteresting and uninterested fifty-two. Yes, that might have caused problems. He waited with impatience for the visit of Professor McCarthy.

  The state pathologist was as good as his word and was seated in the chair facing Hanley by 2.30. He took out his pipe and began leisurely to fill it.

  'Can't smoke in the lab,' he apologized. 'Anyway, the smoke covers the formaldehyde. You should appreciate it.'

  He puffed contentedly.

  'Got what you wanted,' said Professor McCarthy easily. 'Murder beyond a doubt. Manual strangulation with the use of a stocking, causing asphyxiation; coupled with shock. The hyoid bone here' — pointing to the area between chin and Adam's apple — 'was fractured in three places. Prior to death, a blow to the head was administered, causing scalp laceration, but not death. Probably enough to stun the victim and permit the strangulation to take place.'

  Hanley leaned back. 'Marvellous,' he said. 'Anything on year of death?'

  'Ah,' said the professor, reaching for his attach^ case. 'I have a little present for you.' He reached into the case and produced a polythene bag containing what appeared to be a 6-inch by 4-inch fragment of yellowed and faded newspaper.

  'The scalp wound must have bled a bit. To prevent a mess on the carpet, our murderer must have wrapped the area of the scalp wound in newspaper. While he built his oubliette behind the false wall, no doubt. By good fortune it's recognizable as a piece of a daily newspaper, with the date still discernible on it.'

  Hanley took the polythene bag and through the transparent material, with the aid of his reading spotlight and magnifying glass, studied the newsprint fragment. Then he sat up sharply.

  'Of course, this was an old piece of newspaper,' he said.

  'Of course it's old,' said McCarthy.

  'It was an old piece, a back number, when it was used to wrap the wound in the head,' insisted Hanley.

  McCarthy shrugged.

  'You could be right,' he agreed. 'With this kind of mummy, one can't be accurate as to the exact year of death. But reasonably so.'

  Hanley relaxed.

  'That's what I meant,' he said with relief. 'Larkin must have grabbed the newspaper lining a drawer, or a cupboard, that had been there for years untouched. That's why the date on the paper goes back to March 13th, 1943.'

  'So does the corpse,' said McCarthy. 'I put death at between 1941 and 1945. Probably within a few weeks of the date of that piece of newspaper.'

  Hanley glared at him, long and hard. 'Mrs Violet Mary Larkin died during August 1963,' he said.

  McCarthy stared at him and held the stare while he relit his pipe. 'I think,' he said gently, 'we're talking at cross-purposes.'

  'I'm talking about the body in the morgue,' said Hanley.

  'So am I,' said McCarthy.

  'Larkin and his wife arrived from London in 1954,' said Hanley slowly. 'They bought Number 38, Mayo Road, following the death of the previous owner/occupant. Mrs Larkin was announced as having run away and left her husband in August 1963. Yesterday, we found her body bricked up behind a false wall while the house was being demolished.'

  'You didn't tell me how long the Larkins had been at that house,' McCarthy pointed out reasonably. 'You asked me to do a pathological examination of a virtually mummified body. Which I have done.'

  'But it was mummified,' insisted Hanley. 'Surely in those conditions there could be a wide range in the possible year of death?'

  'Not twenty years,' said McCarthy equably. 'There is no way that body was alive after 1945. The tests on the internal organs are beyond much doubt. The stockings can be analysed, of course. And the newsprint. But as you say, both could have been twenty years old at the time of use. But the hair, the nails, the organs — they couldn't.'

  Hanley felt as though he was living, while awake, his only nightmare. He was bulldozing his way towards the goal line, using his strength to cut a path through the English defenders during that last Triple Crown final match in 1951. He was almost there, and the ball began slipping from his hands. Try as he might, he could not hold on to it...

  He recovered himself.

  'Age apart, what else?' he asked. 'The woman was short, about five feet three inches?'

  McCarthy shook his head. 'Sorry, bones don't alter in length, even after thirty-five years behind a brick wall. She was five feet ten to eleven inches tall, bony and angular.'

  'Black hair, curly?' asked Hanley.

  'Dead straight and ginger in colour. It's still attached to the head.'

  'She was about thirty-five at the age of death?'

  'No,' said McCarthy, 'she was well over fifty and she had had children, two I'd say, and there had been remedial surgery done, following the second.'

  'Do you mean to say,' asked Hanley, 'that from 1954, they — until Violet Larkin walked out, and Larkin alone for the past fifteen years — have been sitting in their living room six feet from a walled-up corpse?'

  'Must have done,' said McCarthy. 'A body in a state of mummification, which itself would occur within a short time in such a warm environment, would emit no odour. By 1954, assuming she was killed, as I think, in 1943, the body would long since have achieved exactly the same state as that in which we found her yesterday. Incidentally, where was your man Larkin in 1943?'

  'In a prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia,' said Hanley.

  'Then,' said the professor, rising, 'he did not kill that woman and brick her up beside the fireplace. So who did?'

  Hanley picked up the internal phone and called the detectives' room. The young sergeant came on the line.

  'Who,' asked Hanley with deliberation, 'was the man who owned and occupied the house in Mayo Road prior to 1954 and died in that year?'

  'I don't know, sir,' said the young man.

  'How long had he been in it?'

  'I didn't take notes about that, sir. But I recall the previous occupant had been there for thirty years. He was a widower.'

  'He certainly was,' growled Hanley. 'What was his name?'

  There was a pause. 'I never thought to ask, sir.'

  The old man was released two hours later, through the back door in case anyone from the press was hanging around the front lobby. This time, there was no police car, no escort. He had the address of a council hostel in his pocket. Without saying a word, he shuffled down the pavement and into the mean streets of the Diamond.

  At Mayo Road, the missing section of chain-link fence where the house had once been was in place, closing off the entire car park. Within the area, on the spot where the house and garden had stood, was a sheet of level concrete in the last stages of drying. In the gathering dusk, the foreman was stomping over the concrete with two of his workers.

  Every now and then he hacked at the surface with the steel-capped heel of one of his boots.

  'Sure it's dry enough,' he said. 'The boss wan
ts it finished and tarmacked over by tonight.'

  On the other side of the road, in the rubble field, a bonfire burned up the last of a pile of banisters, stairs, roof joists, ceiling beams, cupboards, window frames and doors, the remnants of the plank fence, the old privy and the chicken house. Even by its light, none of the workers noticed the old figure that stared at them through the chain-link wire.

  The foreman finished prowling over the rectangle of new concrete and came to the far end of the plot, up against where the old back fence had been. He looked down at his feet.

  'What's this?' he asked. 'This isn't new. This is old.'

  The area he was pointing at was a slab of concrete about 6 feet by 2.

  'It was the floor of the old chicken house,' said the worker who had spread the ready-mix concrete that morning by hand.

  'Did you not put a fresh layer over it?' asked the foreman.

  'I did not. It would have raised the level too high at that spot. There'd have been a fierce hump in the tarmac if I had.'

  'If there's any subsidence here, the boss'll have us do it again, and pay for it,' said the foreman darkly. He went a few feet away and came back with a heavy pointed steel bar. Raising it high above his head, he brought it down, point first, on the old concrete slab. The bar bounced back. The foreman grunted.

  'All right, it's solid enough,' he conceded. Turning towards the waiting bulldozer, he beckoned. 'Fill it in, Michael.'

  The bulldozer blade came down right behind the pile of steaming fresh tarmac and began to push the hot mountain, crumbling like soft, damp sugar, towards the rectangle of concrete. Within minutes, the area had turned from grey to black, the tar raked flat and even, before the mechanical roller, waiting behind the spreaders, finished the job. As the last light faded from the sky, the man left for home and the car park was at last complete.

  Beyond the wire, the old man tinned and shuffled away. He said nothing, nothing at all. But for the first time, he smiled, a long, happy smile of pure relief.

  PRIVILEGE

  THE TELEPHONE RANG just after half past eight, and as it was a Sunday morning Bill Chadwick was still in bed. He tried to ignore it, but it just went on ringing. After ten rings he hauled himself out of bed and down the stairs to the hall.

  'Yes?'

  'Hello, Bin? Henry.'

  It was Henry Carpenter from down the road, a man whom he knew socially, but not well.

  'Morning, Henry', said Chadwick. 'Don't you have a lie-in on a Sunday morning?'

  'Er, no,' said the voice. 'I go for a jog in the park, actually.'

  Chadwick grunted. He would, he thought. Eager beaver type. He yawned.

  'What can I do for you at this hour on a winter's day?' he asked. Down the line, Carpenter seemed diffident.

  'Have you started into the morning papers yet?' asked Carpenter. Chadwick glanced towards the hall mat where his usual two lay unopened.

  'Nope,' he said. 'Why?'

  'Do you take the Sunday Courier?' asked Carpenter.

  'Nope,' said Chadwick. There was a long pause.

  'I think you should have a look at it today,' said Carpenter. 'There's something about you in it.'

  'Oh,' said Chadwick, with rising interest. 'What's it say?'

  Carpenter was even more diffident. His embarrassment was evident in the tone of voice. Clearly he had thought Chadwick would have seen the article and would be able to discuss it with him.

  'Well, you'd better look at it for yourself, old boy,' said Carpenter, and put the phone down. Chadwick stared at the buzzing telephone and replaced it. Like all people who hear they have been mentioned in a newspaper article they have not yet seen, he was curious.

  He returned to the bedroom with the Express and Telegraph, handed them to his wife and began to pull trousers and a polo-necked sweater over his pyjamas.

  'Where are you going?' his wife asked.

  'Just going down the road to get another paper,' he told her. 'Henry Carpenter says there's something in it about me.'

  'Oh, fame at last,' said his wife. 'I'll get the breakfast.'

  The corner newspaper shop had two copies left of the Sunday Courier, a heavy, multi-supplemented newspaper written, in Chad-wick's view, by the pretentious for the pretentious. It was cold on the street so he refrained from delving into the numerous sections and supplements here and then, preferring to restrain his curiosity a few minutes more and look at them in the comfort of his own home. By the time he returned his wife had the orange juice and coffee on the kitchen table.

  He realized as he started into the paper that Carpenter had not given him a page number, so he began with the general news section. By his second cup of coffee he had finished that, thrown down the arts-and-culture section and similarly discarded the sports section. That left the colour magazine and the business review. Being a self-employed businessman in a small way on the outskirts of London, he tried the business review.

  On the third page, a name caught his eye; not his own, but that of a company which had recently collapsed and with which he had had a brief and, as it turned out, costly association. The article was in a column that prided itself on its investigative intent.

  As he read the piece, he put his coffee down and his mouth fell open.

  'He can't say this sort of thing about me,' he whispered. 'It's just not true.'

  'What's the matter, dear?' asked his wife. She was evidently concerned at the stricken expression on her husband's face. Without a word he passed her the paper, folded so she could not miss the article. She read it carefully, emitting a single short gasp when she reached the middle of it.

  'That's terrible,' she said when she had finished. 'This man's implying that you were in some way a part of a fraud.'

  Bill Chadwick had risen and was pacing the kitchen.

  'He's not implying it,' he said, his anger taking over from his shock, 'he's bloody well saying it. The conclusion is inescapable. Damn it, I was a victim of those people, not a knowing partner. I sold their products in good faith. Their collapse cost me as much as anyone else.'

  'Could this do you harm, darling?' asked his wife, her face creased with worry.

  'Harm? It could bloody ruin me. And it's just not true. I 've never even met the man who wrote this. What's his name?'

  'Gaylord Brent,' said his wife, reading the byline from the article.

  'But I've never even met him. He never bothered to contact me to check. He just can't say those things about me.'

  He used the same expression when closeted with his solicitor on Monday afternoon. The lawyer had expressed the inevitable distaste for what he had read and listened with sympathy to Chadwick's explanation of what had really happened in the matter of his association with the now-liquidated merchandising company.

  'On the basis of what you say there seems no doubt that a prima facie libel of you has been uttered in this article,' he said.

  'Then they'll damn well have to retract it and apologize,' said Chadwick hotly.

  'In principle, yes,' said the lawyer. 'I think as a first step it would be advisable for me to write to the editor on your behalf, explaining that it is our view you have been libelled by the editor's employee and seeking redress in the form of a retraction and an apology, in a suitably prominent position, of course.'

  This was what was eventually done. For two weeks there was no reply from the editor of the Sunday Courier. For two weeks Chadwick had to endure the stares of his small staff and avoid other business associates where he could. Two contracts he had hoped to obtain slid away from him.

  The letter from the Sunday Courier eventually came to the solicitor. It was signed by a secretary on behalf of the editor and its tone was politely dismissive.

  The editor, so it said, had considered the solicitor's letter on behalf of Mr Chadwick carefully, and was prepared to consider publication of a letter from Mr Chadwick in the correspondence column, subject of course to the editor's overriding right to edit the letter.

  'In other words, cu
t it to ribbons,' said Chadwick as he sat facing his solicitor again. 'It's a brush-off, isn't it?'

  The solicitor thought this over. He decided to be frank. He had known his client for a number of years.

  'Yes,' he said, 'it is. I have only had dealings with a national newspaper once before on this kind of matter, but that sort of letter is a pretty standard response. They hate to publish a retraction, let alone an apology.'

  'So what can I do?' asked Chadwick.

  The lawyer made a move. 'There is the Press Council, of course,' he said. 'You could complain to them.'

  'What would they do?'

  'Not much. They tend to entertain allegations against newspapers only where it can be shown that distress was caused unnecessarily due to carelessness by the paper in its publication or by blatant inaccuracy on the part of the paper's reporter. They also tend to avoid claims of a clear libel, leaving that to the courts. In any case, they can only issue a rebuke, nothing more.'

  'The Council cannot insist on a retraction and an apology?'

  'No.'

  'What does that leave?'

  The solicitor sighed. 'I'm afraid that only leaves litigation. A suit in the High Court for libel, claiming damages. Of course, if a writ were actually issued, the paper might decide it did not wish to proceed, and publish the apology you ask for.'

  'It might?'

  'It might. But it might not.'

  'But surely they'd have to. It's an open-and-shut case.'

  'Let me be very frank with you,' said the solicitor. 'In libel there is no such thing as an open-and-shut case. For one thing, there is in effect no law of libel. Or rather, it comes under common law, a great mass of legal precedents established over centuries. These precedents may be open to differing interpretations, and your case, or any case, will be different from its predecessors in some slight shade or detail.

  'Secondly, one is arguing about a state of awareness on your part, a state of mind, of what was in a man's mind at a given time, the existence of knowledge and therefore of intent, as against ignorance and thence of innocence of intent. Do you follow me?'