Dead Money (A Detective Inspector Paul Amos Lincolnshire Mystery)

by Rodney Hobson

  “So who manned the gate when he went for a ciggie after nine o'clock?" Foster triumphantly left the question hanging in the air.

  Swift shot Amos a glance but he deliberately ignored her look.

  "Thank you, Mr Foster," he said calmly. "You have been most helpful. We know where to find you if we need you again."

  “Can't see why you should," Foster replied truculently. "I’ve already given you your two top suspects."

  “I’ll be the judge of that," Amos responded coldly. "But thank you for your cooperation, anyway."

  Foster was clearly not sorry to see them go. Once they were out on the landing with the caretaker’s door closed behind them, Swift turned to Amos.

  “You realise if what he says is true anyone could have walked in and murdered Jones," she said. “It doesn't have to have been one of the residents."

  “The point had crossed my mind," Amos said dejectedly.

  Chapter 12

  Amos sauntered casually up to the sentry box as the guard watched him with a cautious eye.

  Neither spoke until the officer was at the door of the little hut.

  "You were on duty on Friday night," Amos said more as a statement than a question.

  "Yes." The reply was perfunctory.

  This is going to be heavy going, Amos thought, but at least he had the guard trapped inside the box.

  "Did anyone come in that evening who was not a resident?"

  The guard took out a red covered book.

  "All visitors are recorded here," he said, opening the book at the relevant page.

  Amos could see just three entries. A young lady had visited 7B, arriving at 7pm and leaving next morning, collaborating the story of the young man in that flat, who said that the woman had been in his flat all night.

  A couple had called for 9C about a quarter of an hour later. They were booked out at 11 pm. This, too, fitted in with the statement given by the residents of the relevant apartment.

  No-one else in Killiney Court had admitted to having outside company that evening. Yet one person was shown to have signed in at 9pm on Friday evening without any record of his or her departure, either that night or subsequently. Amos sighed. The record keeping was so haphazard it was pointless.

  Amos scrutinised the childlike scrawl that passed for a signature.

  “Joan … Jean … John,” Swift ventured over his shoulder.

  The surname was illegible but the box demanding the visitor’s name in block letters offered more scope, though the contents were equally poorly written.

  “It couldn’t be John,” ventured the nightwatchman. “I remember. It was a woman.”

  “Joan Thornton, then,” Amos decreed. “That second letter isn’t an E. Did you see her leave?”

  “No, no,” the sentry replied a little too eagerly. “She must have stayed the night and left after the next guy came on duty. I can’t tell you who it was. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Well, at least we can decipher the flat she visited,” Swift offered in consolation. “That must be 5C. I know the 5 looks more like an S but it can’t be any other number and that letter is definitely C.”

  Swift stopped short.

  “I talked to the woman in 5C myself,” she continued after a moment’s pause. “I could hardly forget her. She was very tubby tummed – pregnant,” she translated quickly as she caught Amos’s enquiring eye.

  “She was so far gone I was afraid the shock of being interviewed in a murder inquiry would send her into labour. I remember she particularly said that no-one ever visited her.”

  “Midwife?” Amos asked. “The baby’s father?”

  “No-one,” said Swift flatly. “She was quite definite.”

  “These people walked in?" Amos turned back to the keeper of the gate.

  "Visitors have to use the two bays outside the barrier to park," the guard responded. "We're instructed not to let them drive in. All the bays inside are allocated, one to each flat."

  "Supposing one of the residents drives in with a passenger. Do they have to be logged in?"

  "No."

  "So non-residents can get access to the block without being recorded?" Amos persisted.

  "Don't blame me," the guard retort. "I don't make the rules. We're only told to take the names of unaccompanied visitors. Residents who bring guests in with them are expected to take responsibility for them. You can't keep a check on everybody."

  "In fact," said Amos suddenly, "you can't even account for everyone who comes in on foot, can you?"

  "It's all here in the book," the guard answered defensively, "like I told you.”

  He was studying the officer's features closely, trying to work out what Amos knew.

  The inspector paused for a few seconds.

  "You were on duty from noon to midnight?"

  “Yes."

  "But you weren't at your post all that time, were you?"

  "The caretaker just kept an eye open while I nipped to the toilet a couple of times. I was only gone half a minute. Blimey, I have to go to the toilet occasionally," the guard added belligerently.

  Amos was unflustered. "It wasn't the toilet I was thinking of," he remarked casually. "How many cigarettes did you smoke in that time?"

  The guard was clearly rattled. "Only one or two. Nick kept an eye on things for me. I wasn't gone long.

  "Look," he added, “you won't tell the security company will you? They don't have to know. I'd get the sack if they found out. We're not supposed to smoke. Some of the residents don't like it so I make sure no one sees me. You don't have to tell the boss, do you?"

  By the end of his outpouring the guard was practically pleading.

  "It depends on how far you collaborate," Amos replied coolly. "We could start with the truth about Friday night."

  "Look," said the harassed guard, "I did go for a smoke a few times while Nick was around. He kept watch from under the building so he could spot anyone coming and call me. As a matter fact, he did call me out a couple of times but I got back to the barrier in time to check people in.

  "Look," he added eagerly, opening the red book again. "Here are the entries for that afternoon. You only asked about the evening so I didn't point them out to you earlier."

  Amos was not, in fact, particularly interested in the earlier arrivals, both of whom were recorded leaving before Jones had returned to the block. However, the sentinel's attitude and admission confirmed Foster's revelation that he left his post and disappeared behind the block where he could not see who was coming or going.

  "But Foster was not there in the evening, was he?" Amos persisted. “And we’ve no idea whether this mystery woman – Jean, er Joan, Thornton - left that night or not?”

  The wretched guard looked around like a frightened, cornered rat. Amos gave him a bolthole.

  "I shall not report this matter to your employers unless I have to. But I must know how many times you left this post unattended and for now long. If you don't co-operate I have no choice but to talk to the firm. I hope you can see that."

  "Three times for about five minutes. No more."

  Think of a number and double it, Amos advised himself. He probably left the gate half a dozen times for up to 10 minutes at a stretch.

  "The barrier was down all the time," the guard added sullenly. "No one drove in or out."

  "It doesn't take much to duck under the bar and walk in, though, does it?" Amos retorted. "We can just about rule out the elderly and the arthritic," he added with heavy sarcasm. "Everyone else is a suspect."

  The guard hung his head ashamedly. He made to speak, then thought better of reminding Amos of his promise not report the incident to his boss.

  "Well that's it, then," Amos told Swift a few minutes later. "Everybody and his dog is a suspect now. Jones had business dealings with half the town. Where do we start?"

  Chapter 13

  "I think," Amos told Swift next morning, "we had better pay another visit to Jones's office. If we have to interview all his bu
siness contacts we'd better find out the extent of the bad news."

  "Just when we'd worked our way through the Killiney Court residents and thought we were narrowing it down," Swift grumbled. "Shall I get someone to go and get a list?" she asked, hoping to deflect what would patently be a laborious task away from herself.

  "That won't be necessary," her boss replied simply. "I want to go down there myself. You'd better come with me."

  Swift drove. Traffic was heavy for no obvious reason so it was half past nine by the time they arrived. Although it was now well past office opening hours, the nerve centre of Jones's business empire was stricken by lethargy. Three secretaries stood around gossiping in a small group, leaving the phone to ring in the far corner.

  Miss Jade Nolan, Jones's rock upon whom the office stood fast while he was out wheeling and dealing, was drowning in a morass of papers. She was close to tears, overcome by genuine grief at the cruel loss of her leader and by the frustrations of enforced inactivity. No one knew who now owned the company, who was in charge, what decisions had to be made nor what to decide anyway.

  The office, the empire were in limbo. Nolan seemed almost relieved to see Amos and Swift. Few people in this investigation had been, Amos mused. The office manager stood up, leaving the paper Everest to its fate.

  "Inspector Amos," she said with something approaching enthusiasm. "I wasn't sure we would see you again. You seemed to lose interest last time you were here, if you'll pardon my saying so."

  "Granted," Amos replied. "I doubt if you will welcome my return, though," he continued frankly. "I'm afraid we're going to turn your whole routine upside-down."

  Amos did not need to be told that this last remark was ludicrous. The routine had clearly already been sent topsy-turvy. There was nothing to disturb but chaos.

  The officer continued briskly: "We shall need a full list of all the people Mr Jones did business with. We shall need details of all the deals he was working on when he died. We also need to know of any companies or individuals that he competed against and anyone who might have held a grudge against him, anyone who lost out to this company."

  "I suggest you work in Mr Jones's office," came the response. "All the documents relating to current deals are filed in his desk drawer. He had a copy of them all and so did I. All of the older deals and documents are in the filing cabinets over there."

  Nolan indicated three cabinets, each with four drawers. Amos groaned inwardly.

  "I'll have a look through the current files. I'm afraid we will have to take them all away for a thorough search."

  "You won't need the older files, will you?" Nolan asked. "Like I say, I've got copies of all the pending the deals but not those that have been completed."

  "All the files," said Amos firmly. "You surely have it all on computer disks, don't you?"

  "Mr Jones wanted it all down on paper. He didn't trust computers in case they crashed and lost all the records."

  But she looked away from Amos's steady gaze. She knew he could take what he needed. The office was in too much chaos, the staff too demoralised to mount resistance.

  Amos slid open the desk drawers in Jones's room. The one at the bottom had runners for taking files. There were no more than half a dozen. Amos took the three bulkiest ones and handed the rest to Swift.

  "What are we looking for?" she asked.

  Amos shrugged his shoulders.

  "Anything," he replied simply.

  Amos studied the first file in his batch. It was Scott Warren's. He read it carefully, despite having scrutinised it on his first visit.

  Swift was already closing her third file long before he had finished. She pulled the two unopened files next to Amos’s elbow across to her side of the desk and looked up at the higher ranking officer.

  He nodded and she opened the first one. Swift had finished the other two files by the time Amos had completed his probe of the Warren dossier.

  “I wonder who Jim was,” Amos commented as he closed the folder. “Jones seems to have paid someone of that name pocket money to check on how much mail Warren got each day and how often the express couriers called.

  “That’ll be Jim Berry.” Swift responded promptly. “He’s in all these files as well. He seems to do all Jones’s leg work for him. All the menial jobs and running about. Jones paid him peanuts but he seems to have been a willing worker nevertheless. Anything Jones wanted was always done within a couple of days.

  “Jones has written notes on the file every time Berry reported back. Sometimes he is referred to as Berry, sometimes as Jim, occasionally by his full name but it’s clearly all the same person. He has a real gift for finding out all sorts of information.”

  Amos glanced at the entries in turn. On each note a payment was recorded, £5, £10, once £20, all trivial amounts for what was usually a vital piece of information. Jones apparently placed great store by what Jim Berry dug up, for he always acted on the basis of what Berry provided, as witnessed by the final note on each sheet that bore the informant’s name.

  “Berry must have had a lot of friends in a lot of places,” Swift ventured.

  Amos thought for a while and the two sat for a couple of minutes in silence. Then the chief inspector rose from his chair, pushed the Warren file across to Swift with the words “Take a look through this for a moment,” and sauntered to the door, out into the main office and without asking, made his way to the filing cabinets containing records of deals gone by. The office minions watched him, bored but mildly amused.

  Amos pulled the top drawer. It clanked metal on metal but it would not budge.

  “It’s locked,” Miss Nolan remarked coldly and unnecessarily. “Those are confidential documents.”

  “The key?” Amos asked, more as a demand than a question.

  The head-by-default of the Jones empire produced the required item reluctantly. She unlocked the cabinets.

  Amos pulled out the top drawer, keeping his body between it and Nolan to stop her seeing what he was looking at. Nolan sniffed and walked slowly back to her desk. Left to his own devices, Amos glanced along the row of files. Each was clearly labelled, mostly with the name of a company on a Perspex tab.

  Amos flicked them forward one by one. The As were sparse but quite a number were deposited among the Bs: Baines & Stokes, Barker and Sons, Bailey Contractors, Beswick George but no Berry, no Berry and something. Amos proceeded methodically through the top three drawers. Finally, towards the back of the bottom batch, he discovered: Wardle & Berry.

  It rang a bell with him. Amos followed the business world very little except when it impinged on his work, but Wardle & Berry had been quite a well known electrical wholesaler in its day. You never heard of it now.

  Amos extracted the file and straightened up. Miss Nolan was not pleased and coughed a phoney “ahem” but the officer wandered back into Jones’s inner sanctuary and closed the door behind him. Swift was still ploughing through the Warren file but she was getting on faster than Amos had done.

  Wardle & Berry was another thick dossier. Amos skimmed through, stopping to study certain pages in greater detail. Soon Swift had finished with Warren and Amos passed selected documents from Wardle & Berry across to her. Swift whistled.

  “So Jones destroyed Berry’s business,” she commented.

  “It gets better,” Amos returned. “When Jones financed the rival business that drummed Berry’s lot out, it looks as if Wardle was in cahoots with Jones. Look at this’” he went on, passing more pages to Swift. “Jones paid Wardle off rather handsomely while Berry ended up with nothing.

  “In fact,” Amos picked up excitedly as he turned more pages in the folder, “Berry went bankrupt and Jones got all the stock and the vans for peanuts. Then he sold them at a profit to the rival wholesaler he was backing. So Jones won twice over, Wardle got out comfortably, and Berry went bust.”

  “It’s enough of a motive for murder,” Swift said, reading what Amos was obviously thinking, “but how long ago was this?”


  Amos shuffled through the papers again. “About five years ago,” he answered.

  “So why did he wait so long for his revenge?” Swift posed. “If he was working for Jones he must have had lots of opportunities to settle the score before now. And why wait,” she added suddenly as the thought struck her, “until there was a security guard installed outside Jones’s home? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I think it’s time we asked Berry himself,” Amos said. He ambled to the door and opened it.

  “Do you mind if we use the phone?” he called across to Nolan.

  “I’m surprised you bother to ask,” she replied frostily. “You seem to have helped yourself to everything else.”

  Amos closed the door and muttered “I’ll take that as a yes” to Swift, who giggled. He picked up the handset, rang the office and asked to be put through to Sgt Burke.

  “Listen carefully,” Amos told the seargeant. “I want three officers down here at Jones’s office pronto with a van and cardboard boxes, and I want a search warrant for Jim Berry’s home ready for me when I get back to the station, plus a team standing by to tear his home apart. Move it.”

  Amos replaced the receiver and went back to the Wardle & Berry file while he awaited the arrival of the three officers. When they duly pulled up outside, he went out to the pavement to greet them.

  Amos dropped the filing cabinet key into Sgt Burke’s hand. “You stay inside to make sure no-one tries to remove any files behind your backs,” Amos instructed him. “The other two load the entire contents of the drawer in Jones’s desk and the two filing cabinets in the main office.”

  As the three arrivals marched in, Amos signalled to Swift to join him outside. They stayed only long enough to see Nolan watch open-mouthed as the ransacking of the precious documents began.