by Mike Ashley
It began with a 999 call switched through to Salisbury nick at 9.25 one Monday morning. I was in the office waking myself up with a large espresso. My boss, a deadbeat DI called Johnny Horgan, never appeared before 10, so it was up to me to take some action. An incident had just occurred at a sub-post office in a village called Five Lanes, a short drive out of the city. The call from the sub-postmistress was taped, and is quite a classic in its way:
“Police, please . . . Hello, this is Miss Marshall, the sub-postmistress at Five Lanes. Can you kindly send someone over?”
“What’s the emergency, Miss Marshall?”
“Well, I’ve got a gentleman with a gun here. He asked me to hand over all the money, and I refused. I don’t care for that sort of behaviour.”
“He’s with you now?”
“Yes.”
“Threatening you with a gun?”
“At this minute? Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t be phoning you, would I?”
“He’s gone, then?”
“No. He’s still here as far as I know.”
“In the post office?”
“On the floor, I believe. I can’t see him from where I’m speaking.”
“Are you injured, Miss Marshall?”
“No. I’m perfectly all right, but you’d better send an ambulance for the man.”
I decided CID should be involved from the beginning. Having told the switchboard to inform DI Horgan, I jumped into my Escort and burned rubber all the way to Five Lanes. I’m proud to say I got there two minutes before uniform showed up.
The crime scene was bizarre. The post office door was open. A man lay on the floor in front of the counter with a gun beside him. He was ominously still. And two old women were buying stamps. They must have walked around the body to reach the counter. The doughty Miss Marshall was serving them. Crazy, but I suppose they remembered doing things like that in the war. Business as usual.
We put tapes across the entrance to stop a queue forming for stamps and I took a deep breath and had a closer look at the git-em-up-guy. He was wearing a mask – not one of those Lone Ranger jobs, but a plastic President Nixon. I eased it away from his face and didn’t care much for what I saw. I can’t handle death scenes. I felt for a pulse. Nothing.
My boss, Johnny Horgan, arrived soon after and took over. He was supposed to be the rising star of Salisbury CID, an inspector at thirty-one, one of those fast-track clever dicks, only two years older than me. “Did you call the hospital?”
“I just got here, guv.”
“The man is obviously dead. What’s the ambulance outside for?”
The sub-postmistress spoke up. “I sent for that.”
DI Horgan phoned for the meat wagon and a pathologist. Meanwhile, we got the full version of the hold-up from Miss Marshall:
“No one was here at the time. The man walked in wearing some kind of mask that made him look very peculiar.”
“Nixon.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Nixon, the ex-President of America.”
“He didn’t sound like an American. Whoever he is, we don’t walk about wearing masks in Five Lanes, so I was suspicious. He pointed a gun and said, ‘This is a gun.’ I said, ‘I can see that.’ He said, ‘Give us it, then.’”
“How did you respond?”
“I told him not to be ridiculous, to which he replied, ‘Hey, come on. I’ll blow your frigging head off.’”
“He actually said ‘frigging’?”
“I may be unmarried, but I’m not mealy-mouthed, inspector. If he’d said something stronger, I’d tell you.”
“So what did you say to that?”
“I said, ‘Go on. Pull the trigger. You won’t get the money if you do. I’m all locked in. And don’t even think of trying to smash the glass.’ He said, ‘Lady, who do you think you are? It’s not your dosh.’ I said, ‘It’s not yours, either. You’re not having it.’ To which he replied, ‘Jesus, are you simple? This is a stick-up.’”
“What happened then?”
“I led him to believe that I’d pressed an emergency button and the police were already on their way. He said, ‘Frigging hell.’ He took a step back from the counter and I thought for a moment he was about to give up and go away. Then he said, ‘I’m not quitting. I’m not a quitter.’”
“Just like Nixon,” I remarked.
My boss glared at me.
Miss Marshall continued, “He lurched forward again, and I wondered if he was the worse for drink, because he reached for the glass wall of my serving area, as if for support. Then he lowered the gun, I think, and said, ‘Oh, shit.’” She gave Johnny Horgan a look that said how about that for a maiden lady.
“You hadn’t touched him?”
“What are you suggesting? That I assaulted him? I was shut in here.”
“And nobody else was in the shop?”
“Nobody except him and me. To my amazement, he swayed a little and started to sink down, as if his knees had given way. It was like watching a lift go down. He disappeared from view. The last thing I saw was the hand pressed against the glass. I expect there are fingerprints if you look.”
“And then?”
“I looked at the clock. It was twenty past nine. Sitting on my stool here I had the same view I always do, of those notices about ParcelForce and the postage rates. The man had disappeared from sight. To tell you the truth, I half believed I’d imagined it all. It’s a fear you live with when you run a post office, having to deal with an armed robber. I was tempted to unlock my door and have a look, but what if he was bluffing? So I stayed here and called 999.”
“Good move.”
The local pathologist, Dr Leggatt, arrived and didn’t take long with the stethoscope. “Calling the ambulance was optimistic,” he told us.
“Wasn’t me,” said Johnny Horgan. “I knew he’d croaked as soon as I saw him.”
“You can’t tell by looking.”
I said, “I checked for a pulse.”
“We all agree, then,” said the pathologist with just a hint of sarcasm. “This is a dead man.”
“But what of?” said Johnny Horgan.
Dr Leggatt answered curtly, “I’m a pathologist, inspector, not a psychic.”
“Heart?”
“Weren’t you listening?”
“He’s not a young man.”
“Do you know him, then?”
Fat chance. Johnny didn’t know anyone in the county. He was fresh from Sussex, or Suffolk, or somewhere. He turned to me. I’m the local guy. But I was trying not to look at the body. Green in more senses than one, I was.
I saw my boss wink at the pathologist as he said, “His first one.” His eyes returned to the corpse. “Fancy dropping dead in the middle of a hold-up.”
“It could happen to anyone.” Like most people in his line of work, Dr Leggatt had a fatalistic streak.
“Anyone stupid enough to hold up a post office.”
“Anyone under stress,” said Leggatt – and then asked Johnny with a deadpan look, “Do you sleep well?”
The DI didn’t respond.
The doctor must have felt he had the high ground now, because he put some sharp questions to us about the conduct of the case. “Have the scene of crime lads finished?”
“All done,” said Johnny.
“Pockets?”
“He wasn’t carrying his calling card, if that’s what you mean.”
“What’s the gun?”
“Gun? That’s no gun,” said Johnny, glad of the chance to get one back. “It’s a toy. A plastic replica.” He turned to the postmistress, who up to now had preferred to remain on her side of the counter. “Did you know the man, Miss Marshall?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“But you told us—”
“Without the mask, I mean.”
“You’d better come round here and look.”
Miss Marshall unlocked, emerged from the serving area and took a long squint at the body. She was less troub
led by the sight of death than me. “He’s a stranger to me. And I didn’t know it was a toy gun, either.”
“You were very brave,” Johnny told her, and muttered in an aside to Dr Leggatt and me, “Silly old cow.”
He went on to say more loudly that he’d like her to come to the police station and make a statement.
“What did you call her?” Leggatt asked, after she had been escorted to the police car.
“I meant it,” said Johnny. “She might have had her stupid head blown away for the sake of Post Office Counters Limited.”
Leggatt gave Johnny a look that was not too admiring. “What happened to good citizenship, then? Some of you coppers are born cynics. You’ve no idea what it takes for a woman to stand up to a gunman.”
“Have you?” Johnny chanced it.
“As it happens, yes. My sister stood up to one – and didn’t get much thanks from you people. You don’t know how often Miss Marshall will wake up screaming, reliving what happened this morning.”
“Hold on, doc,” said Johnny. “I said she was brave.”
The pathologist didn’t prolong it. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get this body to the mortuary.”
“Yes, and we’ve got to find his next of kin,” said Johnny.
When he said “we”, he meant me. He’d already decided there wasn’t anything in it for him.
I may be squeamish with dead bodies, but I’m fearless with the living, especially blondes. It was the day after the hold-up and I’d come to a flat in Salisbury, the home of a recently released prisoner. Jack Soames had served four years in Portland for armed robbery of a building society. Check your form runners first.
The chick at the door said he wasn’t in.
“Any idea where he is?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday morning. What’s up?”
Bra-less and quivering under a thin T-shirt, she looked far too tasty to be shacking up with a middle-aged robber. But I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Are you a close friend of his, miss?”
She made a little sound of impatience. “What do you think?”
“What’s your name?”
“Zara.”
“And you spent last night alone, Zara?”
“That’s my business.”
“Jack wasn’t here?”
She nodded.
“When he went out yesterday morning, did he say where he was going?”
“I’m his crumpet, not his ma.”
I smiled at that. “He could still treat you like a human being.”
“Jack’s all right,” said Zara. “I’ve got no complaints.”
Don’t count on it, I thought, sleeping with an ex-con.
Zara said anxiously, “He hasn’t had an accident, has he?”
“Does he carry a gun?”
“What?”
“Don’t act the innocent, love. We both know his form. Was he armed when he left here?”
“Course he wasn’t. He’s going straight since he got out.”
It was time to get real. “There was an armed raid at a sub-post office yesterday and a man died.”
“The postmaster?”
“No, the robber. It’s just possible he was Jack Soames. We’re checking on everyone we know.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Would you be willing to come to the hospital and tell us if it’s him?”
Zara looked, squeezed her eyes shut, and looked again. I watched her. She was easier to look at than the corpse.
“That’s him, poor lamb.”
“Jack Soames? You’re certain?”
“Positive.”
I nodded to the mortuary assistant, who covered the dead face again.
Outside, I thanked Zara and asked her where she wanted me to drive her.
She asked, “Will I have to move out of Jack’s place?”
“Who paid the rent?”
“He did.”
“Then I reckon you will.”
“I can go to me Mum’s place. What killed him?”
“We’ll find out this afternoon, when they do the PM.”
In her grief, she got a bit sentimental. “I used to call him Jack the Robber. Like . . . ” Her voice trailed off.
I nodded. “So you knew he was an ex-con?”
“That was only through the toffee-nosed bitch he married.” Zara twisted her mouth into the shape of a cherry-stone. “Felicity. She claimed she didn’t know she was married to a bank robber. Where did she think the folding stuff was coming from? She was supposed to give him an alibi and she ratted on him. He done four years through her.”
“And when he came out he met you.”
“Worse luck.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I tried to console her. “It’s not your fault he went back to crime, is it?”
She didn’t answer, so I decided not to go up that avenue.
She said, “What did he want to do a piddling post office for?”
I shrugged.
“Where did you say it was?”
“Five Lanes.”
“Never heard of it. He told me he was going up the Benefits Office.”
“It’s a village three miles out. That’s where he was at nine-fifteen yesterday.”
“Get away,” said Zara, pulling a face. “He was still in bed with me at nine-fifteen.”
“That can’t be true, Zara.”
She was outraged. “You accusing me of lying?”
“Maybe you were asleep. You just thought he was beside you.”
“Asleep? We was at it like knives. He was something else after a good night’s sleep, was Jack.” The gleam in her big blue eyes carried total conviction. “It must have been all of ten o’clock before he left the house.”
“Ten? But he was dead by then.”
“No way.”
“How do you know?”
“Me watch.”
“It must be wrong.”
She looked down at her wrist. “How come it’s showing the same time as the clock in your car?”
My boss was unimpressed. “Why is she lying?”
“I’m not sure she is,” I told him.
“How can you believe her, dickhead, when you saw the body yourself at just after nine-twenty-five?”
“She’s got nothing to gain from telling lies.”
“She’s muddled about the time. She was in no state to check if they were humping each other.”
“She’s very clear about it, guv.”
“Get this in your brain, will you? Jack Soames was dead by nine-twenty.”
“Would you like to talk to her yourself?”
“No, I bloody wouldn’t. You say she identified the body?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.”
I had to agree. Something was wrong with Zara’s memory.
Horgan made the first constructive suggestion I’d heard from him. “Find the wife. She’s the next of kin. She’ll need to identify him.”
I didn’t fancy visiting that mortuary again, but he was right. I traced Felicity Soames routinely through the register of electors, a slight, tired-looking woman in her fifties, who lived alone in a semi on the outskirts of Salisbury and worked as a civil servant. She was not much like the vindictive creature Zara had portrayed.
“I don’t want any more to do with him,” she said at first. “We separated.”
“But you’re not divorced?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you’re still the next of kin.”
For the second time that morning, I stood well back while the mortuary assistant went through the formalities.
Felicity confirmed that the body was her husband’s.
Zara’s steamy sex with Jack that Monday morning was beginning to look like a fantasy, but I couldn’t forget the sparkle in her eyes as she spoke of it.
“Right, son,” said Johnny Horgan when I told him I had lingering doubts
. “There’s one final check you can make. The post-mortem is at two. I’m not going to make it myself. Frankly, it’s not high priority any more, one old robber who dropped dead.”
My knees went weak. “You want me to . . . ?”
He grinned. “There’s a first time for everything. Have an early lunch. I wouldn’t eat too much, though.”
“I’m sure the body is Jack Soames,” I said. “I don’t really need to be there.”
“You do, lad. You’re standing in for me. Oh, and make sure they take a set of fingerprints.”
My hand shook as I held my mug of tea in the mortuary office, and that was before.
“So you’re the police presence?” Dr Leggatt, the pathologist, said with a dubious look at me.
I nodded. This was a low-key autopsy. The man had died in furtherance of a crime, but there was nothing suspicious about the death, so instead of senior detectives, SOCOs, forensic scientists and photographers, there was just me to represent law and order.
Cosy.
“I’m supposed to go back with a set of fingerprints.”
“No problem,” said Dr Leggatt. “We’ll start with that. You can help Norman if you like.”
Norman was his assistant.
“I’d rather keep my distance.”
“Fair enough. Shall we go in, then?”
I fixed my gaze on the wall opposite while the fingerprints were taken. Norman brought them over to me and said I could stand closer if I wished.
I nodded and stayed where I was. They were still examining the body for external signs when I started to feel wobbly. I found a chair.
“Can you see from there?” the pathologist called across.
“As much as I want to.”
“Stand on the chair if you wish.”
“Coronary,” said Dr Leggatt when he finally removed his latex gloves.
“Natural causes, then?”
He smiled at the phrase. “Any middle-aged bloke who holds up post offices lays himself open to a fatal adrenaline response and sudden death. I’d call it an occupational hazard.”
Some people call me cussed, others pig-headed. I don’t particularly mind. These are qualities you need in police work. I refused to draw a line under the case.
