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

by J F Straker

  ‘She knew a lot of people,’ Collier said. ‘Many I never met.’

  ‘Which is why I want that list of names I mentioned yesterday,’ Grover said. ‘Did you find your wife’s address book?’

  ‘I didn’t look.’

  ‘I’d be glad if you would. Now, sir, please.’

  He was absent for about ten minutes. When he returned his face looked drawn. Grover guessed he had found the search a harrowing experience.

  ‘I can’t find it,’ Collier said. ‘I doubt if she kept one. I think I told you she did most of her correspondence over the telephone.’

  Grover nodded. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘I am still convinced that your wife’s death was premeditated, that the killer was known to her. Particularly the latter. So many things point to it. He smokes expensive cigars, you say his voice was cultured; that doesn’t sound like the average kidnapper. And how did he know there would be money in the safe? Come to that, how did he know there is a safe? And then there’s that minimal ransom demand.’ He shook his head. ‘I know you disagree, sir, but to my mind it all adds up.’

  ‘Yes.’ Collier hesitated. Many of the facts on which the superintendent based his conviction were false. But not all. ‘Where I disagree, Superintendent, is with your belief that my wife’s death was premeditated. To be honest, though, I think you may be right in saying the killer was known to her.’

  ‘Oh?’ Honesty from Collier would make a pleasant change. ‘What made you change your mind?’

  ‘I remembered something the kidnapper said. No, not remembered. I’d never forgotten it, nor anything else the bastard said. But it assumed a new significance.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘When he rang the first time he told me I would find our brass bedstead empty. That would confirm she had gone, he said. My immediate thought was that the very fact he knew about the bedstead was confirmation enough. He must have seen it when they took her, I thought. He hadn’t, of course. They wouldn’t have gone upstairs, they would have taken her when she opened the door to them. I realised that later. But by then his reference to the bedstead had lost its significance. Or that particular significance.’

  Grover nodded. ‘And now?’

  ‘Well, how did he know we had a brass bedstead? Gail wouldn’t have mentioned it. Not to her kidnappers. But she might have mentioned it to a friend. A friend might even have seen it.’

  Or a lover, Grover thought. Was that where he should be looking? Did that explain why the man in the photograph was unknown to Iris Vernon? If Gail Collier had taken a lover from outside the district she would be unlikely to flaunt him among her friends and neighbours. It was still more unlikely she would introduce him to her husband.

  ‘Well, see what you can do about that list, sir,’ he said. ‘Have another look for that address book, eh? Otherwise—well, we’ll have to rely on your memory, won’t we?’

  ‘It’s far from cast-iron, I’m afraid,’ Collier said. ‘But I’ll do what I can. I can’t help you with that man in that photograph, though. I told you, I don’t know him.’

  ‘No, sir. But some of your wife’s friends may. Which is why I need that list. Hand it in at your local police station, will you? They’ll see that I get it.’

  When the house was finally clear of policemen Collier went upstairs to the room he had shared with Gail, took off his jacket and shoes, and lay down on the bed. Three nights had passed since they had slept in it together, two days since she had died, and handling her intimate possessions in his search for the address book had filled him with a desperate urge to feel close to her again. He put his head where hers had lain and inhaled deeply, hoping to breathe in what little of her scent remained on the pillow. But there was no scent. Either two days was too long or Mrs Wise had changed the bed linen. Gail was gone, and in no way could he bring her back. He would never see her again, never touch her again, never hear her voice again. She would live only in his memory; and although he told himself her image would never fade it brought him no comfort. It was her physical presence he needed, and he turned on to his stomach and beat his clenched fists against the pillow in an agony of despair.

  It was some time before he felt sufficiently composed to go downstairs and start on the list the police had requested. It would be too incomplete to be of much use, but he would give them what he could. Basically he was on their side. He had lied to them, and their attitude suggested they knew he had lied. What they could not know, and doubtless would not believe, was that his lies had done nothing to hamper or divert their investigation. Even to save himself he would not do that.

  The obvious source for names was Gail’s personal telephone directory. It lay on the table beside the telephone, open at the page indexed ‘0’, and he began to copy down names and numbers. Then he paused, struck by a puzzling thought. The directory was always kept with the others in a drawer; how did it come to be on the table? It had not been there when he rang Jock on the Sunday morning, and he had not used the telephone since. The police had used it, of course, but if they had needed to consult a directory it would not have been Gail’s. So unless Mrs Wise…

  Yes, Mrs Wise said, she had used the telephone. She had made her customary Monday call to the butcher, but she knew the number by heart and had not needed the directory. Nor had it been on the table when she tidied and dusted the room later in the day; had it been there she would have replaced it in the drawer. She was puzzled by his interest in such an apparently trivial matter. But the only other person who could have been in the room, other than the police, was the intruder on the previous night, she said. Perhaps he had moved the directory while searching the drawer for valuables.

  Perhaps, Collier agreed. But he knew that that was not the answer. In the drawer the directory would have been closed; whoever had removed it had opened and set it at that particular page. Why? No one would break into a house merely to use the telephone. Even if he had, why Gail’s? Why not an official directory?

  It was an enigma to which he could find no reasonable solution.

  14

  Grace Fox was a competent cook, although in Grover’s opinion she lacked imagination and flair. The grapefruit was well chilled, the steak tender, the trifle inoffensive if lacking in flavour. But although not unenjoyable the meal was designed to fill the stomach rather than delight the palate or the eye, and to Grover, never a big eater, the latter qualities were as important, if not more important, than the former. That the wines were good but out of sympathy with the food did not surprise him. Ernest Fox was practically a teetotaller and no connoisseur, and Grace was cast in much the same mould. The daughter could have done better, he thought. Arabella’s choice of food and wine should certainly have been more inspired, for she dined out more frequently than in. But then Arabella would have had no say in the choice, she was almost as much a guest in her home as Derek or himself. It surprised Grover, as no doubt it surprised others, that such a God-fearing and straight-laced couple as the Foxes should allow their daughter so much freedom. Arabella was not yet eighteen, but she used her home more like an hotel. Sometimes she slept there, sometimes she didn’t. And rumour had it that she seldom slept anywhere before the small hours of the morning.

  It was probably at Arabella’s insistence that Derek Kaufman had been invited, Grover thought. Count me out if he’s not, Arabella could well have said; and because her doting parents saw her so seldom Grace had no doubt persuaded her husband to agree. ‘Come and dine with us this evening, George,’ Fox had said. ‘No shop during the meal, of course; unfair to the ladies, eh? But I’d like to discuss the latest developments, and talking comes easier on a full stomach and in congenial surroundings.’ As an apparent afterthought he had added, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m inviting Derek too. He may have something to offer.’ It sounded reasonable, and Grover would not have given it a second thought had he not known that when Adam Harkin had been invited under similar circumstances Joe Farmer, his Number Two, had not. But then Arabella had not been chasing Farmer as she was c
urrently chasing Kaufman.

  Kaufman had wanted to refuse the invitation. It’s becoming just one damned conference after another, he had complained to Grover. And that’s what this is, isn’t it? Just another conference. Grover had known he was dodging the issue; it wasn’t the conference that disturbed him, it was Arabella. She was a pretty girl, although flat-chested and uncomfortably tall, and from his limited knowledge of her Kaufman had decided she was shallow and egocentric and probably permissive, and preferred to avoid her company. Grover had been sympathetic but firm. You can’t refuse, he had said; the Gaffer may call it an invitation, but to you and me it’s an order. And not to worry. Arabella may play footsie under the dinner-table, but it won’t go any further.

  No listening to records in her room; the Gaffer wouldn’t wear it. I’d bet on that. She may think you’re the greatest thing since Robert Peel, but to her father you’re just another bluebottle.

  Grover would have won his bet. When, towards the end of the meal, Arabella suggested that Kaufman should accompany her to a party she was attending later that evening her father intervened before Kaufman could think up a polite way to refuse. Sorry my dear, Fox said, I need Derek, we have business to discuss. In that case, Arabella said, you can join us later, Derek, when Daddy is through with you; any time up to breakfast, we’ll still be going. Thanks, Kaufman said, I might take you up on that. Grover smiled, knowing, as he suspected the Gaffer also knew, that Kaufman had no intention of doing any such thing.

  It was the discovery that the tyre tracks found in the entrance to the field adjoining Pinewood corresponded with those in the woods east of Foresters that had prompted the invitation. To the police it seemed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Mrs Wise’s midnight intruder had been no casual thief but was somehow linked with the kidnapping and murder of Gail Collier. It seemed also to connect him with the bomb outrage. Gail Collier had been kidnapped from Pinewood House and her body found at Foresters: Latimer’s Viva had parked in the woodland west of Foresters and it was probably there that the bomb had been planted. So the connection was established. How was it to be interpreted?

  ‘Let’s start by getting the facts clear,’ Fox said, when the three men had taken their coffee into his study. ‘What kind of tyres are we talking about?’

  ‘Goodyear,’ Grover said. ‘But not just any Goodyear. In both instances the tread on the front wheels was worn unevenly, due to incorrect alignment. Forensic have no doubt the tracks are identical.’

  ‘But not the footprints, eh?’

  ‘No. The same size, but different soles.’

  ‘Right. So either the same car was used by different men, or by the same man wearing different shoes.’ Fox adjusted the sling round his neck. He had managed the meal one-handed, although Grace had had to cut up his steak. ‘I suppose there’s no doubt that whoever parked his car in the field entrance actually entered Pinewood?’

  ‘No doubt at all,’ Grover assured him. ‘Soil found on the sitting-room carpet contains the same mixture of earth and cow dung.’

  ‘But no traces elsewhere in the house, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So either Mrs Wise disturbed him before he got going, or he was interested only in the sitting-room. Yet nothing was taken.’

  ‘Not according to Collier. But he could be lying. He seems to have lied about practically everything else.’

  ‘Mrs Wise said nothing had been taken, didn’t she?’ Kaufman said. ‘Anyway, why would Collier lie about that?’

  Grover shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just as I don’t know why he lied on other occasions. They all seem to be equally pointless.’ That was true. He didn’t know. He had an idea, but he didn’t actually know. ‘But he lied. I know that.’

  ‘Establishing an alibi?’

  ‘Presumably. But for what?’

  ‘Cheating on his wife?’ Fox suggested. ‘Preserving an image?’ Grover grimaced and shook his head. ‘No? No, perhaps not. Well, that leaves crime. It sounds a bit far-fetched, I suppose, but what other alternative is there?’

  The objection to crime, Grover said, was that the alibi, if it were an alibi, was too fragile, it wouldn’t stand up in court. Certainly Collier had seen the film he claimed to have seen, but he could not substantiate his statement that he had seen it on the Saturday, or that he had visited a restaurant afterwards. ‘If he had wanted an alibi for a felony charge one would expect him to plan something more positive,’ Grover said. ‘Very unprofessional.’

  ‘So he isn’t a professional,’ Kaufman said. ‘Or there was no felony and he really did go to the flicks. Perhaps he committed a traffic offence on the way home and hoped that by altering his time of arrival he might get off the hook.’

  ‘No chance. He was too shocked by his wife’s death to worry about a traffic offence.’

  ‘More coffee, either of you?’ Fox asked. Both men declined. ‘How about a brandy?’ Both accepted. Fox poured two brandies and a ginger ale for himself. ‘I know you, George,’ he said. ‘You don’t knock theories until you have one to offer in exchange. So let’s have it, eh? I bet you’re itching to propound it.’

  ‘There’s really only one left, isn’t there?’ Grover said. ‘He committed a felony, but he was so confident he would never be sussed that he didn’t bother to prepare an alibi. So when, quite unexpectedly, he found himself being questioned about his movements that evening he lost his cool and invented one.’

  Kaufman got up to collect the brandies. ‘Lost his cool?’ he asked, handing one to Grover. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It was the discovery that he had lied about the time that made us suspicious. He’d have done better to stick to the truth.’

  ‘What sort of felony, George?’ Fox asked. ‘Or doesn’t your theory go that far?’

  ‘It’s on the way,’ Grover said. It was already there, but he preferred to let reason precede fact. ‘He had several thousand pounds in his safe this morning, which I suspect represents his winnings at the Highway Club on Thursday. So where did he get the five thousand he claims to have paid in ransom? Not from the Highway. Previous to Thursday he hadn’t been there in weeks.’

  ‘We have only his word that he paid out five thousand,’ Kaufman said. ‘It could have been less. Or nothing. He could have refused to cooperate. Come to think of it, that would explain why his wife was killed, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have refused.’ Grover sipped brandy appreciatively. It was good brandy. ‘He idolised her.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘Everyone who knew them.’

  Frowning, Fox pulled reflectively at an ear lobe—a habit which, according to a member of his headquarters, accounted for its size and prominence. ‘It doesn’t sound that way to me,’ he said. ‘He must have known five thousand wouldn’t buy her release, that they would want more. So if he had more in the safe, why didn’t he hand it over? Why stick at five thousand?’

  ‘I don’t think he did,’ Grover said. ‘I think it was considerably more.’

  ‘Like a hundred and twenty grand, eh?’ Kaufman suggested. ‘Is that what you’re thinking?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grover said, slightly annoyed that his thunder should have been stolen. ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, George!’ Fox said. ‘That’s a pretty big leap in the dark, isn’t it? Collier a bank robber? I’ve yet to meet the man but—well, is he the type?’

  ‘There isn’t one, is there?’ Grover said. ‘All right, I agree I’m guessing, that I could be wrong. But I’d say it’s not an uneducated guess. Gambling would provide excellent cover for the sudden possession of unusually large sums of money. “I won it at the races!” How many times have we heard that?’

  Fox nodded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, take the time he arrived home. The actual time, not his version. According to Adam the gang are believed to have left the bank at around one-fifteen, and Hickworth is—what? Thirty miles from Westonbury?’

  ‘Thirty-two,’ Kaufman sa
id.

  ‘Anyway, something like an hour’s run, provided it’s taken steady. And he would, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t afford an accident. And an hour puts him in Hickworth at the time the Waltons say they saw him. Collier says midnight because that sounds a less suspicious hour than two-fifteen. Or that’s how a guilty man might reason. He wasn’t to know he’d been spotted. And another thing. We were puzzled that the Landors should have been left in the vault for over eighteen hours when two or three hours would have enabled the gang to get clear away. It was suggested—by me, I think that something cropped up to make them forget. Well, something certainly cropped up for Collier. He arrived home to find his wife had been kidnapped.’

  Fox unscrewed the top of another bottle of ginger ale and topped up his glass.

  ‘We ought to have Adam here,’ he said. ‘But didn’t he say the leader of the gang was tall? Around six feet, according to the Landors.’

  ‘So is Collier,’ Grover said.

  ‘All right,’ Fox said. ‘I’m not arguing so far. And if your guess is on target he must have taken the money home with him. Or someone did. The timing wouldn’t have allowed for a carve-up on the spot.’

  ‘Which suggests they must have worked together before,’ Kaufman said. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have trusted him. Has Pinewood been searched, George?’

  Grover shook his head. ‘No reason. We checked for traces of the kidnappers and Sunday night’s intruder, but that’s all. Anyway, if you’re thinking of the money, forget it. It won’t be there. You can bet your life on that. If my guess is right the kidnappers have it. All of it. A hundred and twenty grand is more the sort of sum they’d demand, isn’t it? And if Collier felt for his wife the way I think he did he’d have handed it over without so much as a whisper.’

  ‘Just like that, eh?’ Kaufman said. ‘Suitcases and all.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘Let me get this clear,’ Fox said. ‘Are you suggesting that the kidnappers had prior knowledge of the robbery? That they knew this large sum would be available as ransom?’