DEATH WATCH

by Marie Rowan

  “What did Roberts say when he found you were gone?”

  “Nothing, for he didn’t find out. He’d headed straight to the bar minus his coat which he’d slung onto a sofa in the lounge, ordered several doubles and stood at the bar downing them as fast as he could. I headed up the back stairs to the room, guessed where he’d be and joined him, picking up his coat as I went, as if I’d been in the hotel all along.”

  “Did he finish his dictating?”

  “No, but he paid me the usual fee. And that’s all there is to it, Inspector Pollock, unless I’m being invited to stay for some curry.”

  “All booked, I’m afraid, Miss Malone.”

  “Ah, well, am I free to go?”

  “You are and we’re most grateful for your help.” He shook hands with this remarkable woman as did Jacobstein.

  “Are the wee Irish linen tray-cloths in yet, Mr Jacobstein?” whispered Wullie Roberts’ former secretary mischievously. Without waiting for an answer, Euphemia Malone left. Flett followed her downstairs.

  “That woman is something else, Jake. We are now moving. What was that lousy bastard doing in that coal-yard and what were those noises Effie heard? I’ll bet she’s got a good idea by this time. Is Roberts still in his office, Jake?”

  “Noel will know. He’s been supervising the surveillance. I’ll give him a shout.”

  “When we’re finished here, I think that’s our next port of call and this time Roberts stands a fair chance of swinging if he doesn’t kill himself first.”

  “If he does, Ben, he’ll be our first actual suicide this week.”

  Chapter 9

  Ben Pollock sat behind his desk. It was temporary just like his promotion. He regarded the contents of Lena Dolan’s bag. They lay beside the ones that had been overlooked.

  “It’s like looking for inspiration from a whitewashed wall, Jake.”

  “Only not so colourful, Ben. So, Roberts is next on the list? He was still at his office twenty minutes ago and as far as Noel knows, nothing has changed.”

  “He certainly is our first and with a bit of luck, might just be the last. Now let’s revise what we have on him in case he’s now installed his solicitor in the off-chance we come back.”

  “As far as he knows, we’d only be fishing if we did,” said Jacobstein.

  “Fortunately, Jake, that thought will relax him, drop his guard, maybe, and he’ll be happy to open his big mouth and put his foot in it. So, Jake, the list.”

  “Let’s start with old but gold news. The man has money, a wife and a thirst that’s out of control for extra-marital affairs,” Jacobstein began.

  “He might look and frequently act like a neanderthal but actually isn’t. Backed up by a good supply of pound notes, he can turn on the charm when it suits him.”

  “Right, put him down as a chronic lecher. Makes my wee present of an Irish linen tray-cloth look a bit paltry.”

  “Quality, Inspector Pollock, quality not quantity. And it was bought in JAE.”

  “Must remember to tell Shameena that. She’ll be impressed.”

  “To continue,” said Jacobstein, “he had already met Meg Hughes at the interview and had promised her a job in the not too distant future. Was enthralled by her, his secretary tell us. I’ll omit that meeting in the back-close in the early morning although we know Meg, Lena and Farrell were there, but we don’t know for certain that there might have been a fourth, namely Wullie Roberts.”

  “I’m fine with that, Jake.”

  “Roberts said he met Meg Hughes for just a moment at the door of the café, she refused a coffee and he went on his way. Not so, for a witness says Roberts sat talking to the girl for at least ten minutes. Why lie about that? Had he arranged to meet her, but she had got a better offer?”

  “For a man with a considerable amount of money from, shall we say, coal, he wasn’t doing very well.”

  “Maybe she just didn’t fancy the full set of false teeth,” Jacobstein suggested seriously.

  “Continue, Sergeant Jacobstein, let’s hear the worst and best and remember, the worst for the coalman might just be the best for us.”

  “When we asked him for his agenda that evening, he lied. Why? Miss Malone has told us all, namely, that Roberts left the hotel, and she followed out of curiosity because he was not his usual self. He went into his own office building and thirty minutes later, exited at breakneck speed from the side-door that leads from the coal-yard onto Great Eastern Road, thence round back into the lane where his cab was waiting and off back to the hotel where he made a sizeable contribution to that establishment’s bar takings. Sometime later, Meg Hughes’ mutilated body was discovered in that same coal-yard having been strangled and, more or less, totally disfigured by stoning. What a death, Ben, makes me sick we haven’t made an arrest yet.”

  “Now, Jake, had Meg in fact made a date with him but scrubbed him when the quiet man appeared on the horizon? Did that make him angry? Did he catch them together? Did admirer No 2 hop it fast knowing that Roberts was not above resorting to his back-up boys?” Pollock shrugged his shoulders.

  “Could have happened that way, Ben. Humiliation plus a bit of backchat from the girl and his temper blew? Or was he just suggesting payment in kind for the job offer?” Jacobstein was running out of ideas.

  “I wonder if he had a hand in Lena’s death? A drugs deal gone wrong? No Farrell to deal with so was Lena putting a bit of pressure on Wullie? I wonder who sent that message? Farrell had something belonging to Lena that she wanted back badly. Did Roberts want it back, too? Was it just money he owed Lena and Timmy? Right, Jake, let’s.” But the door slammed off the wall and stopped Pollock in mid-sentence. Roberts strode in, his solicitor behind him – or so an educated guess surmised. The desk sergeant was hot on his heels.

  “Take Mr Roberts and his friend down to one of the interview rooms, Sergeant Manley. Any free one will do. He’s not noted for being fussy. We’ll be down directly.” With that, Jacobstein turned his back on the troubled pair.

  “I’m going no place. You just listen to me.”

  “Right, Inspector Pollock, sir, are you ready?” Jacobstein moved off as he spoke and held the door open for his boss. Pollock scraped the contents of Lena’s bag into the drawer without speaking and left.

  In a few minutes, all four men were seated in No 1 interview room, Roberts’ blood-pressure sky-high, his solicitor slumped in a chair, almost comatose. The man had obviously seen it all before and was about to retire anyway.

  “So, what’s your problem, Mr Roberts? I assume you have one but if not, don’t despair for I’m about to give you one. Caution him, Sergeant Jacobstein.”

  “What for?” yelled Roberts.

  “For being involved in peddling drugs.” Roberts was duly cautioned and given a drink of water to revive him. “I intend interviewing you regarding the afore-mentioned charge, Mr Roberts, and this is your chance to confirm or refute any accusations or even mild suggestions I make. The questions I will ask are merely to supplement answers or information I already have. No tricks, no traps, we don’t run to these shenanigans here.”

  “That’s why I’ve brought Crawford Conrad here and I might add that this is the first police station I’ve been in that reeked of curry.”

  “And hopefully the last one for a long time or forever even, sir.” Roberts’ mouth gaped as he looked from Pollock to the sleep-deprived Conrad. That solicitor was nobody’s fool. “Right now, let’s get down to business. Now, Mr Roberts, on Friday evening of this week, the body of a young woman, hardly more than a girl, named Margaret or Meg Hughes, was found murdered in a most brutal fashion at the foot of the coal-righ in your firm’s extensive premises.”

  “I know that!”

  “We know that you know that, sir. What we’re trying to ascertain is exactly when you knew that.”

  “I can read! The newspapers are full of it.”

  “Being able to read must come in handy when filling in income tax forms.” That barb hit home an
d Roberts shut up. Jacobstein made a note in the margin of his notebook. “Now, are you maintaining that you first knew of the young woman’s death from reading about it in a newspaper?”

  “I do, I mean I don’t. I mean I got the details from the newspapers and the runaround from you.” Conrad’s elbow slipped off the desk and he woke up. It made no difference to his contribution. Pollock shook his head.

  “That makes things just a bit more complicated, Mr Roberts, for we have a witness willing to swear you were seen fleeing that yard after the victim was last seen alive and before her body was discovered there. And that was some time before we spoke to you in the kitchen of The Clay Pipe public house.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “You were seen fleeing out of that yard, sir.”

  “Fleeing? Rubbish!”

  “Running wildly, if you prefer, Mr Roberts, but whatever words were used, and Sergeant Jacobstein will give us them in a moment, the fact remains that you were seen by a very reliable witness entering your office building and subsequently leaving your premises some time later at great speed by that side door.” Jacobstein coughed slightly.

  “The exact words were, Inspector Pollock, ‘came storming out of that side door’.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Jacobstein.”

  “I was never there that night. I was in The Ardhu.”

  “Not according to the lady you were with.” Roberts’ brain birled round hopelessly then that old, male get-out kicked in.

  “I told her we were through. Bought her a nice dinner and some sweeties. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Roberts smirked and felt very pleased with himself. His solicitor, though, sensed the inevitable and stuck his notepad back in his briefcase.

  “I’m sure, Mr Conrad, your solicitor sitting here, is about to advise you not to continue living in a dream world, Mr Roberts.” Conrad nodded his agreement or perhaps he was just falling asleep again. “My own advice to you would be to stop prolonging the agony and tell us the truth. For some reason or other, the normal board meeting of your unregistered company dealing in drugs was not taking place in the street that night. You had planned on going to your legitimate premises that evening. Why?”

  “I was meeting someone.” Pollock suddenly saw the light.

  “Owen Farrell?” Roberts nodded reluctantly.

  “You didn’t wait very long.”

  “Long enough. I was in charge and he was late. I wasn’t begging. There are other dealers. Just thought I’d teach him a lesson. I’d told the main door man to keep the entrance door locked on him. I’d go out the side door and get Costello to lock it after me. But I discovered Costello blind drunk and knew he’d probably left the side door open, yet again, anyway. As I walked towards it, well, you know what I found and how I reacted. I raced back to where the cab was waiting and headed straight back to the hotel. I had a few stiff drinks and then Miss Malone joined me. She’d been worried because I’d been away so long.”

  “Hope you paid her well.”

  “The whole thing was a business meeting. She didn’t know it but she was really working for that other company, too.”

  “Right then, sir, we’ll keep you here for a bit and then I’ll have a discussion with my superintendent and get his view on the charges. I must tell you that you’re in very serious trouble. We’ll leave you and Mr Conrad here, tea and biscuits will be supplied. There will also be a policeman outside this room and if you attempt to leave or cause any disturbance, you’ll spend the night in a cell.” With that, Pollock and Jacobstein made their way back to their office.

  “Think he did it, Ben?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something about all of this that I just don’t like. Some things fit, big things like that loudmouthed swine being in the coal-yard waiting for Farrell who was at the time just floating dead in the Clyde courtesy of a push from Lena Dolan. Farrell dead and Roberts cooling his heels waiting for a corpse to turn up. But it’s the little things in this that bother me, Jake, for they’re here and they shouldn’t be. And what’s this? Bell’s writing.” Pollock lifted a small piece of notepaper. “‘One plus one makes sense of it all’.”

  “What does that mean?” Pollock shook his head. “Ned Bell is completely round the bend.” He thrust it into the desk drawer and looked at the other things in the drawer.

  “What little things, Ben? The things that don’t fit.” Pollock slammed the drawer shut. “The mug, the scarf, the clasp. God, that’s it. One clasp plus one clasp doesn’t equal the Suffragettes. My God, they’re the same purple and green. It equals Jacobstein’s American Emporium. That wasn’t Lena’s bag at all, it belonged to one of your assistants. The mug from JAE, the scarf from JAE and the clasp in the bag all in JAE’s colours. That bag went over the banister by mistake. Probably pretended to drop something from the third floor, when she met Lena, Lena looked over and our killer upended her.”

  “But who?” asked Jacobstein as Sergeant Manley raced in and threw a folded sheet of paper onto Pollock’s desk. “From DC Flett. Inspector Bell says it’s urgent.” Pollock unfolded it and read it out loud. “Dolina McMurtrie, JAE.” He threw it to Jacobstein as he raced for the stairs. “Where’s Flett?” he screamed at the desk sergeant behind him

  “Outside JAE. He sent the note from Inspector Bell.”

  Pollock could see the crowds ahead on the pavement but all was eerily silent, all traffic stopped. Low murmuring contained the suppressed excitement of customers urgently evacuated in small groups from all floors of the huge department store.

  “Where’s DC Flett?” Pollock asked a burly policeman stationed at the only entrance still unlocked, his comrades patrolling the edges of the spectators. “Jake, stick with me till I get my bearings. You know this store like the back of your hand and I need that knowledge and your clear head right now. Where’s Inspector Bell, constable?”

  “Inspector Bell? He’s not here, sir. I haven’t seen him for days.”

  “And exactly where is DC Flett?” The unnatural silence of the near-empty store was unnerving, only the staff themselves there, not yet brought out. They could be seen still standing, mostly to attention, behind their glass-fronted counters, immaculate and very visible.

  “DC Flett is on one of the upper floors searching for the suspect, sir.”

  “Why is he taking so long about it, Jake?”

  “Only the ground floor has counters, Ben,” explained his sergeant, “the next two floors house furniture, carpets, prams and so on. You name it, it’s there, and the fourth floor is our offices. All have more hiding places that you can shake a stick at. And the basement is actually a huge stock-room. Miss McMurtrie could be anywhere.”

  “It’s a bloody nightmare then?” said Pollock. Jacobstein nodded.

  “That’s about it.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Wait,” suggested Jacobstein and his boss shook his head.

  “And if we can’t find her?”

  “We will – eventually.”

  “Eventually’s right, Jake, but in the meantime we are allowing this mad killer to do whatever she likes. She could set fire to your Uncle Avram’s most expensive sofa and burn the whole place down.”

  “We only sell occasional tables and the like, not larger pieces of furniture.”

  “Well, his desk then! Right, Jake, here’s your big chance to show the locals you’re no longer Joe Jacobstein, an over-grown message-boy with a degree in something only dead folk speak.”

  “Eh? You’ve lost me now, Ben.” Noel Flett came hurrying down the stairs.

  “No sign of her, Inspector Pollock. I’ve left a man on each floor just in case and I mean to go over the rest of the store, especially the basement, with the other men. If she’d sussed out what was happening as we slowly cleared the folk in the store towards the doors, she might have headed for the back one, realised it was also being watched and so hid down there. Could take all day to search every inch it thoroughly.”

  “Alright, se
arch every inch. We’ll stay here for I’m about to make full use of the loudspeaker or rather Sergeant Jacobstein is.” Pollock smiled knowingly at his sergeant.

  “Maybe if Uncle Avram makes a special plea to her, Ben, tells her we’d stand by her?” Jacobstein added hopefully.

  “Offer her a pay-rise? Don’t think so, Sergeant Jacobstein. You more or less grew up with her here, she’ll figure that you will understand her motive, whatever the hell that might be. Might stop her setting fire to the place. Disgruntled employees have been known to do that, you know.”

  “Miss McMurtrie might be of unsound mind.” Jake was beginning to rise to her defence, always a bad sign before they had even arrested her.

  “Might?” said the hard-headed Pollock.

  “Well, alright, is, but she’s not a disgruntled employee. Dolina loves this store and everybody who works here. She’s a valued assistant and she knows it. That’s Uncle Avram’s way of working.”

  “Jake, I’m going to tell you what to do and you’re bloodywell going to do it and that’s that. Now get into that control room or whatever it’s called, get on the loudspeaker thing and sweet-talk her into giving herself up. Propose to her, if necessary, but get her to come out before anything else of an horrific nature occurs to her.”

  “She’s not the romantic type. Miss McMurtrie has a very practical nature.”

  “So, double her staff discount, but get her out of this store.” Pollock suddenly stopped. “For Gods sake, why’s that boy bubbling? What’s he doing behind that counter?”

  “Miss McMurtrie’s counter, Ben,” said a shocked Jacobstein, his heart going like a sledgehammer.

  “Hey, you!” rasped Pollock to the nearest policeman, “shut him up! Who is he anyway?” Jacobstein answered.

  “That’s Mackinfauld Cholmondley. He’s a special favourite of Dolina’s.”

  “Shit! What’s he crying for and why are his hands all bloodied? Oh God!”