Cairns was large and fat, and his manner was bumptious so that it was easy to take him for a fool. However, those who had the wit to look beneath his bumptiousness could judge that he was sharp and possessed of a cunning, vindictive nature. His wife was thin and desiccated and she believed herself to be a lady.
Cairns led Kerr and Smith into the sitting-room, which was over-furnished in presumptious taste. “A couple of detectives, my love, who say they’ve come to ask some questions.”
She looked at them, noted their ill-fitting suits, and nodded curtly.
“Grab a chair, gentlemen, and tell me what your pleasures are in the way of drinks. As I always say, when the weather’s damp, the only way to stop from going rusty is to keep well oiled.” He laughed heartily.
Kerr asked for a gin and tonic. Smith for a beer.
“And you, my love,” Cairns said to his wife, “what can I tempt you with?”
“You can’t tempt me,” she answered shortly, clearly not realizing what inference could be drawn from her answer.
“Perhaps just a taste of that delicious cherry brandy we brought back from Holland?”
“I told you, I don’t want anything.”
Cairns was delighted by her answer. “Agatha always knows her own mind and has done ever since we were married.” He took three glasses from a bamboo cabinet and put them on the top. “Well, gentlemen, let’s hear what’s responsible for giving us the pleasure of your company?”
“We’re interested in Tuesday morning,” said Kerr.
Cairns uncapped a bottle of tonic. “Now I wonder why? Two important detectives come to our little home and want to know about Tuesday morning!”
“Were you here?”
“Was I here!” He chuckled. “With my lovely wife to look after me, d’you think I’d be somewhere else?”
On those terms, Kerr thought, he might have been expected to be anywhere else he could be. “Were you in all morning?”
“Never set foot outside the door, not even to go for a walk along the shore.” He finished pouring out the drinks, put the glasses on a silver salver, and carried them across. After handing them each a glass, he raised his own. “Drink up, drink deep. As I always say, the first is for the boys, the second is for the men.”
“And your wife was here all morning as well?”
“That’s right, isn’t it, my love?” She gave no indication of having heard him. “Not a lady for coffee mornings with the local society, if you know what I mean, and who can blame her?”
Or the local society, thought Kerr. “Did anyone call here during the morning?”
“Well, now, that’s a good question: a very good question. But before I answer it, I think it’s time I learned what all this is about. I’m always ready to help the police. As I’m always saying, that’s part and parcel, and the string and sealing-wax, of every person’s duty. And in any case, I’ve a great respect for the police: a very, very great respect indeed. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to know why you’re asking the questions?”
“We’d like to confirm something we’ve been told.”
“What can you have been told that could have any connexion with me?”
“There’s someone who claims to have been here on Tuesday morning. We need to confirm that he was, in fact, here.”
“Then the next question has to be, why must you confirm?”
“Because we’re making enquiries concerning a bank robbery in Fortrow.”
Cairns expressed great surprise. “D’you hear that, Agatha? A bank robbery and they’ve come to our humble home to ask questions about it! As I always say, this may look just a nice, sleepy little seaside place, but we’ll be a second Soho yet! Take just a month ago. There was a burglary only five houses along. Imagine that!”
“There are dozens of burglaries every day,” said Smith, finally allowing his irritation to surface.
“I know. I know. But don’t you see, they only ever happen to other people in other places. That’s what makes everything so different when it comes close to home. As I said to my dear lady wife —”
“Did anyone come here Tuesday morning, or didn’t they?” demanded Smith.
“We were lucky and had a very old friend drop in. And I have to say, we were positively delighted. Weren’t we, Agatha?”
Her expression suggested she was never delighted.
“What was the name of this friend?”
“Bill — to his friends — Moody. One of nature’s gentlemen, in the fullest meaning of the word.”
“When did he arrive?”
“You’ll want me to be exact, won’t you, and that’s going to be difficult. I can’t say I noticed exactly.”
“Roughly.”
“Well, then, I think I can say it was between ten and a quarter past. Now that’s not going to be far wrong, even if it could be a couple of minutes.”
“How long did he stay here?”
“He wanted to leave soon after he’d arrived. But as I said to him — didn’t I say to him, Agatha? — we didn’t see him so often that he could rush away like that. I told him, he simply had to stay to lunch. Agatha’s a wonderful cook. A meal cooked by her is a meal too good for a mere king. And I bribed him with the promise of a bottle of Latour. A great man for the claret, is Bill. Knows as much, no, more, than most of the experts.”
“Did he stay to lunch?”
“Could you refuse a lunch cooked by Agatha?”
“When did he leave?”
“Must have been a little after four. I asked him if he’d like some tea. Said he couldn’t eat or drink another thing after a meal of perfection. He paid Agatha the delightful compliment of saying —”
“So he was here from around ten in the morning to just after four in the afternoon?”
“Absolutely, precisely so.”
“Whilst he was here, did he leave the house at all?”
“Not once. As you may recall, it was not a day for walking the beaches.”
“Did anyone else call whilst he was here?”
“No one.”
His wife spoke for the first time. “Frank.”
“God bless my soul!” Cairns slapped his side and laughed boisterously. “What would poor old Frankie say to being forgotten like that? I’d just like to know, that I would.”
“Then the next time you see him, ask him,” said Smith. “What’s the rest of his name?”
“Frank Shotover. And I’ve known him from the days when I could touch my toes without thinking anything about it!”
“What time was he here?”
“I’m blessed if I can really answer.” He turned. “Agatha, my angel, can you tell them when Frank walked in here, as large as life and twice as noisy?”
“A quarter past eleven,” she answered.
“There you are! As I always say, if you want to know the time, ask Agatha.”
“What’s his address?”
“Frankie lives just along the road, in a bungalow that used to be owned by Karina. You remember Karina, the ballet dancer with steps as light as a butterfly’s.”
“Never heard of her,” said Smith.
*
Frank Shotover was a foxy-looking man, with a nervous tic under his right eye, who favoured suits with loud check patterns and ties which didn’t match the shirts.
“Yeah, I called in to see the Cairns,” he said, his voice touched with the flat twang of the Midlands. “Great bloke, Roger, just so long as you’re not in a hurry.”
“D’you know what day this was?” asked Kerr.
“’Course I do.”
“When was it, then?”
“Tuesday.”
“Was there anyone else around besides the Cairns?”
“There was another bloke, yeah. Great sense of humour.”
“What was his name?”
“Now you’ve got me cornered — Bill. I know that much. But Bill who? . . . Moody, that’s it!”
*
Fusil looked up. “So he’s alib
ied?” he said, in a tired voice.
Kerr, standing in front of the desk, ran his fingers through his curly brown hair. “It could seem that way.”
“Where’s there room for any doubt?”
“Nowhere, really. Only both Cairns and Shotover were too glib and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they’ve got form.”
“Find out if they have.”
Kerr left. Fusil picked up his pipe and relit it: the draughts shredded the rising smoke almost immediately. The alibi seemed unshakeable. Yet Moody had been named by two sources and Kerr obviously thought there was a good chance it was faked, and it never paid to ignore the impressions of the man who questioned a witness. Yet was there enough here to warrant his detailing men to check out the alibi further should Kerr report that Cairns and Shotover did have criminal records? If time were spent on this, time could not be spent on investigating other crime: a criminal might escape arrest because he had decided to pursue a hunch rather than concentrate on hard fact.
He slumped back in his chair. He was, he knew, a fool to worry over his inability to do the job as well as it theoretically ought to be done. Other D.I.’s wisely didn’t. There was nothing they could do to alter the facts. The crime rate had soared, and many crimes had become far more complex, yet all police forces were undermanned if one considered what their complements should be were they to do their job thoroughly. At heart, the trouble was that the ordinary person was not prepared to pay, in taxes, as much as would be needed if he were to live within the degree of security he was always demanding.
Security. Nine boys had had the right to live secure lives, yet nine boys had disappeared and must be presumed murdered. By comparison, all other crime paled into insignificance. Except, he thought bitterly, to those who suffered it.
Chapter Six
Over the week-end the weather remained dull, with cloud-filled skies: throughout, there was intermittent light drizzle, making the normal gloomy British winter days ever gloomier. For Norma Tyson — she called herself Jordan, but had never altered her name by deed poll — terror was added to the gloom.
Jordan became violent whenever he was drunk, but usually the violence was short-lived because he had a habit, it was one of his less obnoxious ones, of passing from drunkenness to insensibility very quickly. On Saturday he drank heavily in the morning and he hit her once or twice, more out of habit than ill-will, then he collapsed on the sofa: on Saturday evening, he came back from the pubs and hit her once or twice and then collapsed in an armchair. Sunday morning followed routine up to the point where he could be expected to pass out. He did not. After a while, Norma began to scream: the noise infuriated him — he liked life to be quiet and peaceful — and he shouted that if she didn’t shut up he’d belt her one. She didn’t shut up and he belted her more than one, and in the end she lost consciousness. People heard her screams, but it was a neighbourhood in which woman-beating was an old British custom.
She regained a hazy consciousness, but she was in considerable pain and so scared of further assault that she lay where she was throughout the afternoon and early evening.
He was a man of habit, and so he left the house when it was time for the pubs to open. She heard the crash of the front door as it was slammed shut. The worst pain was in her side, nearly half-way down: and when she moved it came in waves of ever-increasing ferocity which peaked with a savageness that made her scream. She shouted for help, and when no one answered her calls she panicked, believing herself to be dying. She dragged herself out of the front room into the tiny hall and across to the rotting front door. After ten frantic, agonizing minutes, she at last managed to pull the door open.
Several people saw her, lying on the doorstep and moaning, dried blood from her nose staining her face, and it was to the credit of the neighbourhood that one of them finally went over to see if she could help. An ambulance was called and this drove her to the general hospital.
*
She hadn’t loved Jordan, but had dutifully looked after him and had been passively grateful for whatever kindness he had cared to show her in between bouts of drunkenness. Yet the effect of the savage beating was radically to alter her feelings towards him and to induce such a hatred that it was as if she had loved him with passion before. And because she now hated him, she told a doctor that her injuries had been caused by him, knowing full well that her evidence would be passed on to the police.
A young, rather handsome D.C. with the kind of light brown hair she had always liked so much, visited her as she lay in the end bed in the ward. He had a soft voice, laced with an Irish brogue, and she was very upset that she was wearing one of the hospital’s night-dresses and not something far more feminine. She told him she had been living with Jordan for three years and that he had often hit her when he was drunk, but that this time he had gone on and on hitting her until she was certain he was going to murder her.
The D.C. was so sympathetic and so interested in her that she found herself telling him things she hadn’t intended to speak about. For instance, how Jordan kept bringing back to the house men who treated her with contempt and how he was storing a whole load of guns in the spare room even though he knew she was scared sick of guns.
*
The detective sergeant, a man who had seen everything so that now he believed nothing, said: “Here we are.”
The D.C., who was driving the C.I.D. Ford, drew into the pavement and braked to a halt. “Proper Mayfair,” he said, staring at a load of rubbish in the gutter.
“It’s soft to what it used to be, lad. When I joined, you didn’t walk down this road unless there was three of you.”
It was tough everywhere in Robert Peel’s day, the D.C. thought.
They left the car and crossed to the front door. The detective sergeant hammered on it. Jordan appeared. He was unshaven, dressed in clothes which looked as if he’d slept in them, and was not sober although not yet drunk.
“D’you mind if we come in?” asked the detective sergeant as he led the way inside.
Jordan struggled to clear his mind.
“We hear you’ve been busy lately.”
“Don’t know what you’re on about,” he mumbled.
“Busy beating up women.”
“What’s that bitch been saying?”
“She’s got a broken nose, two cracked ribs, and severe bruising of a kidney. You must be proud of yourself.”
“I didn’t touch ’er.”
“Tripped on a banana skin, did she?”
“You can’t prove nothing.”
“Let’s have a bet on that.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t touch here.”
“And on top of beating up women, you’ve been busy nicking.”
“Not me.”
“Blade, gunsmiths, just off the high street in Tuppen Road.”
Jordan’s expression registered confused consternation. He suddenly wheeled round and lumbered into the front room, where he crossed to the fireplace and searched frantically amongst a scattered pile of tins and bottles.
The detective sergeant leaned against the upright of the doorway. “Where are you keeping the guns?”
Jordan saw a tin which appeared to be unopened, but the moment he picked it up its lack of weight told him that it was empty. He threw it against the far wall.
“We’d better have a look round for ’em, then.”
“Where’s the warrant?”
“Get knotted,” said the D.C.
They found the guns in a cupboard in the second upstairs room: seven 12-bore shotguns and three .22 rifles. In addition there were 21 boxes of 12-bore cartridges.
*
Three hours later, Jordan said, as he sat at one end of the table in an interview room: “I’m telling you, I don’t know how the guns got in that bleeding cupboard. She must of put ’em there.”
The detective sergeant yawned. The D.C. scratched his neck.
The door opened, and a P.C. entered and handed over a piece of paper, then left. T
he detective sergeant read, looked up. “Seems like thirteen guns were nicked from Blade, ten of ’em shotguns. So three’s missing. One of them’s turned up in Fortrow. Been used on a job.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
There was a silence.
“Give us a drink,” pleaded Jordan.
“Can’t do that: against the rules.”
“I need one, desperate.”
“You’d better learn to do without. Where you’re going it’s temperance night, every night.”
“Just one,” he pleaded.
“Not a hope. But I’ll tell you something, all this talk’s made me thirsty.” He turned to the D.C. “Do us a favour, will you? Nip off and bring back four cans of pale ale.”
The D.C., who’d been taking notes, put down his pen and stood. He took the money the detective sergeant passed him and left. When he returned after less than five minutes, he carried a plastic bag which he put on the table. “Four of pale ale, sarge. The local doesn’t half charge and there’s only twelve p change — that’s in the bag.”
“I’d tell you to keep it if you weren’t single and I wasn’t married with a couple of kids to bring up.” He brought out two cans and handed one over to the D.C. He pulled the tab off his and dropped it into the bag. He drank slowly and with audible pleasure.
Jordan cracked after a very short time. He said that it had all been Kiwi Blick’s idea, that he’d to store the guns because Kiwi was always moving around, that Kiwi had sold the missing three guns for a couple of centuries each and had kept more than his fair share, that he didn’t know who’d bought them, and for the love of God would they give him a can of beer to ease the agony in his throat and guts.
*
Thompson looked across the sitting-room. “I’m going out for a bit to-night.”
His mother, suddenly scared, put the knitting down in her lap. “Why — why not stay at home, Miles?”
He put his cup and saucer down on the small occasional table by the chair. He smiled disarmingly. “There’s no call for you to get upset, Ma.”
“How d’you think I can not be upset?” she retorted, for once almost admitting the truth to herself.
Mitzy, who’d been lying down in front of the fire, stood, came over to where he sat, and began to whine. He leaned over and patted her. “I’ve not given you your tea, have I? Never let’s me forget, does she, Ma? Almost speaks.”
Betrayed by Death Page 4
