Death On a Sunday Morning (Detective Johnny Inch series Book 8)

by J F Straker

  ‘A mess, isn’t it?’ Grover said, as they walked round the Vauxhall. ‘I’ve seen wrecks before, but this beats the lot.’

  ‘Nowadays one tends to associate bombed-out cars with the I.R.A.,’ Kaufman said. ‘I wonder if they’re responsible for this.’

  ‘It’s a bit early for guesswork.’ Grover was watching a uniformed constable approach them across the yard. The man came up and saluted. ‘Yes, Constable?’

  ‘It’s about that car, sir,’ the constable said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘They were bringing it in as I went on duty this morning, sir. I had a look at it, and the number seemed kind of familiar. But it wasn’t until about half an hour ago that I remembered why. I’ve booked the gentleman twice for illegal parking. Very unpleasant he was about it, too.’ The constable produced a notebook. ‘I called in, sir, and was told to report back here for confirmation.’

  ‘Good,’ Grover said. ‘Who’s the owner?’

  ‘A Mr Latimer, sir. Lives over at Buckington.’ He consulted the notebook. ‘James Felix Latimer, One Church Cottages, Buckington.’

  ‘Thank you. Nice work, Constable. “Thanks for the memory”, to quote the song.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Is Mr Latimer dead?’

  ‘He is if he was in the car,’ Kaufman said. ‘Very.’

  The constable saluted and moved away. Grover looked at his watch. ‘You’ll have to handle this, Derek,’ he said. ‘Sorry to land you with it—it could be gruesome but I’ve got this Press “do” in ten minutes. Anyway, yours is the better bedside manner. You’re a natural with tearful females.’

  ‘Only the older ones, unfortunately,’ Kaufman said. ‘And there may not be any females. The woman in the car was probably his wife.’

  ‘True. Still, take a W.P.C. with you, just in case.’

  Kaufman also took Detective Sergeant Pullin. Pullin was young and newly promoted to the division. The visit was likely to demand tact and sympathy rather than great detective ability, but working with a man, even on a routine assignment, was the way to know and assess him.

  One Church Cottages was a small semi-detached villa at the end of a cul-de-sac. The woman who opened the door to them was large and buxom and in her middle forties, with a disfiguring birthmark on her left cheek. Her rather sour expression gave way to surprise and then, as she noticed the policewoman’s uniform, to the dawn of alarm.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked sharply. ‘What’s happened? Is it James? My husband?’

  ‘You are Mrs Latimer?’ So who was the woman in the car? Kaufman wondered. ‘Wife of James Felix Latimer?’

  ‘Yes. But what’s happened? Has he had an accident? Is he—is he hurt?’

  It would be easier, Kaufman said, to talk indoors, and with a muttered apology she ushered them into the small front sitting-room. He saw no gain in delaying the tragic news, and as gently as he could he told her what they knew: that her husband’s car had exploded in flames while climbing Cuckswell Hill, killing both occupants instantly. ‘We believe the explosion was caused by a bomb placed in the boot,’ he said. ‘However, although we have confirmation that the car belonged to your husband we don’t know for certain that he was in it. Someone could have borrowed it, with or without his permission. We hope you can help us there.’

  There had been no tears, no expression of grief. She had listened stony-faced, the nervous clasping and unclasping of her hands the only sign of agitation. Now she said tonelessly, ‘You want me to identify the—the body?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet, anyway. In fact, visual identification may prove difficult, if not impossible. The bodies—’ He caught the policewoman’s eye and broke off. She was right, he thought. Leave it at that. ‘Would you like Miss Hersey here to make a pot of tea? I’m sure you could do with a cup.’

  ‘All right.’ Her gaze strayed to a glass-fronted cupboard in which were glasses and bottles of spirits. Maybe tea isn’t her tipple, he thought. Maybe she needs something stronger. ‘But it’s James, I know it is. I told him not to drive home last night, but I knew he would. He never listens to me, you see. He—he—‘

  The tears came then, great sobs that shook her large frame and caused her heavy breasts to leap in unison. She had difficulty in getting her breath, gasping frantically between sobs, and the policewoman went to her and held her, murmuring words of comfort and sympathy. When eventually the sobbing ceased and her breathing became easier she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief the girl gave her, and then sat staring down at her hands as she twisted the handkerchief round and round her fingers. Kaufman went to the cupboard and poured a generous tot from an open bottle of whisky.

  ‘This may help,’ he said.

  She drank greedily. Kaufman would have choked over so much neat spirit taken at such speed and guessed she was far from unused to it. But when she handed back the glass he did not refill it. Tea, he told the policewoman. Mrs Latimer might or might not want it, but he did. Already it had been a long day.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, for a start, tell us what you know of your husband’s movements last night,’ he said.

  She knew nothing, she said. Her husband was the Southern Area representative for Wedderburn and Banks, who manufactured agricultural machinery, and he had left after lunch the previous day for a sales conference that evening in London. That was the last she had seen or heard of him.

  ‘Saturday seems an unusual day for a business conference,’ Pullin said, speaking for the first time.

  ‘It was more a social get-together than a conference,’ she said. ‘An excuse for a booze-up, really. That’s why I wanted him to stay the night. He’s—he was a heavy drinker.’

  ‘Where was the conference held?’ Kaufman asked.

  ‘I don’t know. In a hotel, I suppose. Or a pub.’ For the first time since the tears she looked directly at him. He saw that her eyes were red and swollen. ‘Both occupants, you said. You mean he wasn’t alone?’

  ‘No.’ Kaufman hesitated. But if she didn’t get it from him she would get it from the media. ‘There were two people in the car. A man and a woman.’

  ‘Woman?’ The monotony of her tone sharpened. ‘What woman?’

  ‘We don’t know. We don’t know if she was young or old or anything about her. The bodies were badly burned. Not that they would have suffered,’ he added quickly. ‘With an explosion like that they would have died instantly.’

  ‘A bomb. You said a bomb.’ It seemed that the facts were gradually becoming clear to her. ‘But that means he was killed deliberately, that it wasn’t an accident.’ Confused, she looked from one to the others. ‘I don’t understand. I mean well, why would anyone want to murder James?’

  Kaufman shrugged. ‘That’s something we have to discover, Mrs Latimer. Had he any enemies that you know of?’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose. He wasn’t popular. I mean he was—well, overbearing. If he didn’t get his own way he could be difficult. Nasty, even. But no one would kill him for that, would they?’

  ‘It seems unlikely.’ The I.R.A. were still in Kaufman’s mind. ‘What were his political views?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think he had any. He never voted. He said one party was as bad as another. Incompetent windbags, he called them.’

  The policewoman brought tea. Mrs Latimer balanced a cup on her spacious lap but did not drink. Kaufman welcomed his. Breakfast had been snatched early and hastily in the canteen, and talking made him thirsty.

  ‘Could his companion have been a friend?’ he asked. ‘A neighbour, perhaps, whom he chanced to meet in London and offered a lift home?’

  ‘No.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But I can tell you one thing about her. Whoever she was she was young.’

  ‘Oh? What makes you say that?’

  ‘She was a pick-up, wasn’t she? Must have been. He was always picking up girls on his travels. Only they had to be young. They didn’t necessarily have to be pretty. Just young.’ She shook her he
ad in a gesture of resignation. ‘I told him it would lead to trouble.’

  But not this sort of trouble, Kaufman thought.

  Pullin was surprised. ‘You mean he actually told you about the girls he picked up?’

  ‘Sometimes he did. When I taxed him with it. I could tell, you see. He was different. More—well, more cocky, I suppose. Like he’d achieved something new. Except that it wasn’t new. Not with him.’ Inconsequentially she added, ‘He was fifty-three.’

  ‘Well, we still don’t know for certain that your husband was in the car,’ Kaufman reminded her. ‘He may have taken your advice and spent the night in London. If he did—well, where might he have stayed?’

  ‘With my brother-in-law, I suppose. Hugh Ayres, my sister’s husband. They live in Chiswick. Hugh works for the same firm; James got him the job. He’d have been at the conference too.’

  Kaufman made a note of the brother-in-law’s address and asked if she would like him to get in touch with her sister. Or perhaps a relative or friend nearer to home? No, she said. Well, how about a neighbour to keep her company? No, she said again. She would ring her sister later, but for the present she preferred to be alone.

  With the whisky bottle, Kaufman thought, following her gaze. She had not touched the tea. ‘Is that your husband?’ he asked, pointing to a framed photograph of a man and a woman that stood on the cupboard. The woman was obviously Mrs Latimer.

  She nodded. ‘It was taken some years ago, when we—’ She stopped. ‘Not that he’s changed much. You want to borrow it?’

  ‘Please. And it might help if you could tell me the name of your husband’s dentist.’

  ‘Dentist?’

  ‘Teeth can be a valuable aid to identification,’ he explained.

  In the car the policewoman said, ‘Not a very happy couple, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

  ‘Not very,’ Kaufman agreed. He wondered who had started on the bottle first.

  If Ayres and Latimer had been together at the conference it was probable that they had left together; and if they had left together it was also probable that, apart from the woman in the car, Ayres had been the last person known to Latimer to see him alive. ‘He might even be able to suggest where the bomb could have been planted,’ he said hopefully to Grover on his return to division. ‘If he didn’t plant it himself, that is.’

  ‘An unlikely way to settle a family squabble,’ Grover said. The Press had long since departed. So had Fox. That pleased Grover. He liked and respected the Chief Superintendent, but he preferred to have his patch to himself. ‘But Cuckswell is under seventy miles from London. A two-hour journey at the most at that time of night. If Latimer left when the pubs closed—well, what delayed him?’

  ‘The woman?’ Kaufman suggested. ‘A young pick-up, if Mrs Latimer is right.’

  ‘Possibly. But how long would that take? Twenty minutes?’

  ‘That depends on whether you bother with preliminaries, doesn’t it?’ Kaufman said. ‘But Mrs Latimer called the get-together a booze-up. She also said her husband was a heavy drinker. So maybe he pulled in somewhere to sleep it off. That could be how he came to pick up the woman.’

  ‘Or the bomb.’ Grover stood up. ‘Anyway, see how it goes with Ayres. In the meantime I suggest we adjourn for lunch. It’s been a long time since the breakfast I didn’t have.’

  7

  At nine o’clock that Sunday morning Collier was still seated by the telephone, waiting for it to ring. He had left the room only for hurried visits to the lavatory: hurried and frequent, for anxiety and anger had loosened both his bladder and his bowels. Occasionally he had cat-napped in the chair, waking stiff-necked at the slightest sound that penetrated the room; but although there was an extension telephone in the bedroom it had never occurred to him to go to bed. Nor had he eaten. More than twelve hours had elapsed since his last meal, and constant rumblings in his stomach would have reminded him of its emptiness had he heeded them. But he felt no desire for food, the thought of it sickened him. Normally only a moderate drinker, he had relied on whisky and cigarettes to sustain him.

  It was strange, he thought, how unimportant the money had become. Once he had parted with it he had hardly given it a second thought. It had been important before, and he knew that when the nightmare was over and Gail was safely home it would be important again, that he would move Heaven and earth to recover it. But it was Gail and only Gail who mattered now, there was no room in his thoughts for anyone or anything else. He loved her and needed her, and without her his life would lose all meaning and savour. And it was the very strength of his feeling for her that tied his hands now; the only action open to him was to alert the police, and that could be dangerous. The knowledge of his helplessness added to his torment, and there had been times during his vigil when he had wanted to hurl the telephone across the room and rush into the night to look for her.

  Nine o’clock. Mechanically he counted the chimes, as he had counted the chimes of all the previous hours; and as the last note died he knew that he could stand it no longer, that one more hour of silent waiting would drive him crazy. He had to talk to someone, and without pausing to reflect on the consequences he picked up the telephone and dialled Jock Bristowe’s number, his fingers drumming impatiently on the table as he waited for Jock to answer. I want you here just as fast as you can make it, he told him; you and the others. And when Jock, abruptly roused from heavy slumber, bemusedly asked what the hell was up, Collier replaced the receiver without reply. The news would keep, he didn’t want them discussing it on the way down, formulating plans. And already he had occupied the telephone for too long. The kidnappers must not find the line engaged when they should at last decide to ring.

  As he waited for the men to arrive he considered what he should say and tried to anticipate their reaction. That they would be furious was obvious. But what else? Would it be possible to turn their fury to advantage? Almost from the beginning he had realised that only they could have given the kidnappers the necessary information. Wouldn’t that be equally clear to them? In which case their anger against him might be at least partially diverted to anger among themselves. He was not the only loser; unless all three were guilty, which seemed unlikely, two of them were losers too. So there would be questions and argument, accusations and counter-accusations. Wasn’t it possible that in such a heated atmosphere the culprit might give himself away? They were rough and tough and none of them was over-gifted with brains, although they had a low cunning which had so far kept them out of trouble. Collier sweated as he considered the possibility. One little hint, he thought, just one, and I’ll have the truth out of the bastard if I have to beat him near to death to get it. I won’t be alone, either. There’ll be plenty of help from the others.

  Alarmed, perhaps, by the urgency of his tone they were there soon after midday, earlier than he had expected. Watching their faces across the table as he told them what had happened he saw anger and dismay and disbelief, and wondered which was uppermost. In many respects they were alike: aged between thirty and forty, dark haired and clean-shaven, medium in height and build, and all of them Cockneys; Bristowe was known as Jock because he disliked his given name of Jocelyn. Collier had used them more than once and they had come to accept him as a leader, but he had no illusions about their villainy; they obeyed his insistence on no violence when they worked with him, but snatches of talk had revealed that violence was not foreign to them. Gail had disliked them. Or the two she had met; he could not recall which. It was the only occasion on which any of them had ever been to the house, for he preferred to keep his criminal activities detached from his home life; but an attack of gastric flu had prevented him from meeting them in Town, and it had been imperative that he see them. Gail’s dislike could have sprung from the fact that their visit had interrupted one of her dinner-parties, but she had professed to sense an antagonism. I don’t know their connection with you, Henry, she had said, and I don’t want to know. But I don’t think they like you. I think they resen
t you. Or that’s the impression I get.

  They certainly resented him now. In at least one of them the resentment had to be false. But though he watched them closely as he talked, in none of their faces could he discern anything that might conceivably be interpreted as an indication of guilt. Nor could he detect a false note in the storm of angry abuse that erupted as he finished. Either the long hours of anxious waiting had robbed his eyes and his ears of their sharpness, or the traitor was more cunning than he had supposed.

  ‘Let’s get this straight, Guv’nor,’ Jock said, when the oaths and the threats began to lose steam. ‘Some bloke rings you up, says he’s snatched your missus and to cough up or else. So you coughs up. Not just a few grand, but the whole bleeding lot. That what you’re telling us, is it?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you,’ Collier said.

  ‘But it weren’t your’n!’ Bunny Warren shouted. ‘Not all of it. Some of it’s ours. And it’s not our missus what’s been snatched. None of us is even married. So why the bleeding hell should we pay for yours?’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘You bloody did!’ Bunny banged a fist on the table. Whisky leapt in the glasses. ‘You could have told the bleeder to go stuff himself.’

  ‘How long since you give them the money?’ Jock asked.

  Collier looked at the clock. He had looked at it so often that he could see it with his eyes shut.

  ‘Just over nine hours.’

  ‘So why ain’t they come back to you? How d’you reckon?’

  Collier shuddered. That was something he didn’t want to reckon. ‘I’m hoping they’re just being careful,’ he said. ‘Making sure their tracks are well covered.’

  Bunny snorted. ‘I’ll say they’re well covered! They could be in bloody France by now. With our bleeding money, damn you!’

  ‘You sure you weren’t dreaming, Guy?’ Terry Horne said. He was the calmest and least vituperative of the three, yet Collier found his calmness more threatening than the others’ wrath. ‘I mean, you’d be tired like when you got back, wouldn’t you? So maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe you just dreamed it, eh?’