Field of Fire

by Roderic Jeffries

  FIELD OF FIRE

  Roderic Jeffries

  © Roderic Jeffries 1973

  Roderic Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This work was originally published under the pseudonym Peter Alding.

  First published in 1973 by Long.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter One

  The driver braked as the patrol car approached the swirling knot of men who stood outside the newly closed pub. “Just a bunch of yobbos,” said the observer, as they saw the men were watching them with evident unease, which meant they weren’t so drunk as to be beyond the point of discretion. The driver accelerated smoothly away.

  The observer settled back in his seat. “Like I was saying, Fortrow City’ll walk away with the cup.”

  “Never,” replied the driver scornfully. “They play football like they’d all got wooden legs. Isn’t that right, John?”

  “Never watch ’em,” replied Detective Constable Kerr sleepily, from the back seat. One of the two baseball bats, so handy in a punch-up, rolled into his side and for the umpteenth time he pushed it away. He yawned. “What’s the time?”

  “Listen to him!” said the driver. “Only one hour out on the night turn and already he’s worrying about the time. Tired, are you? Usually in bed by now?”

  “When you do twenty hours a day, seven days a week, mate, I’ll listen.”

  The observer, whose seat belt, contrary to regulations, was not fastened, half turned round. “So what are you doing out with us, anyroad?”

  “Looking for crime. The old man reckons our arrest rate is too low.”

  “But why with us in the patrol cars?”

  “Because, left to yourselves, you wouldn’t nick Bill Sikes if he walked down the road with a mask on,” replied Kerr, careless about the low level of his repartee. He hoped Detective Inspector Fusil was suffering from acute indigestion and unable to sleep. Any other man would have had the humanity not to keep a newly wed D.C. from his bed.

  The car radio, tuned to county H.Q., transmitted a message to another patrol car to go to a house in Keighley where a mentally disturbed elderly man was said to be threatening to commit suicide.

  “Poor old boy,” said the driver. “My great-uncle went off his marbles.”

  “Runs in the family, does it?” asked the observer.

  The driver swore. “Spent fifteen years in a looney-bin. Shook everyone when he died, on account of leaving nearly five thousand quid — that was money in those days. Gave it all to a dogs’ home. Silly old goat.”

  Another message came through the radio. “Hullo, Alpha One One. Come in please. Romeo Romeo Papa.”

  The observer picked up the telephone-like transmitter. “I knew things were too quiet to last.” He pressed down the transmitting stud. “Hullo, Romeo Romeo Papa. One One, over.”

  “Go to Elwick Dock where a car is reported to have driven into the water.”

  “On our way. We’ll be there in about five minutes.”

  The driver accelerated fiercely.

  “Message timed at twenty-three forty-two. An ambulance has been called to stand by.”

  The observer replaced the transmitter. “Remember the last car that drove into the docks? There were two women and a kid in it. Funny thing. When the car was hauled out, all three of ’em looked as if they was grinning.”

  “Maybe they saw some handsome mermen.”

  Flippancy was the only way they knew of keeping at arm’s length the tragedies with which they had to deal.

  *

  Titch Napier fiddled with his glass that was still half full of whisky. “Chokey’s sounding out the Ikeys and the Toms.”

  Joyce nodded.

  “If he can find an Ikey what’s holding a debt of someone who works in the town hall, we buy it.”

  “They could ask for a bit extra, Titch, seein’ we’re eager for it.”

  “We won’t pay more’n face value,” replied Napier, without altering the tone of his high-pitched voice.

  Joyce, a very solid six foot whose face looked as if a lot of mistakes had been made when it was put together, nodded again even though he thought Napier could be wrong. He could have killed Napier with a couple of blows from his rock-like fists, yet was undeniably both afraid and in awe of him.

  “It’ll be easier, though, if we can find a Tom who’s got her hooks on a bloke what’s married. We can take photos.”

  “Yeah. That’s a great idea.” Joyce engulfed his glass with his hand, lifted it up, and finished his third whisky.

  Napier stared at the large fire that was giving off so much heat Joyce was sweating and tried to work out any other possible ways of subverting an employee at the Fortrow town hall and forcing him to give them the itinerary of the coming state visit.

  Joyce took a stick of chewing-gum from his pocket, unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. Watching his large, chunky, ugly jaw moving with bovine regularity as he chewed it was easy to be led into the mistaken belief that his intelligence was also of a bovine quality.

  Napier, whose movements were of feminine softness, sipped his whisky. “We must have our man soon, Stick.”

  “We’ll get him, Titch,” replied Joyce, in the tones of one who had infinite confidence in the ability of another. He stood up. “I’ll be moving.”

  Napier took no notice of the other’s departure. Their relationship was one in which Napier seldom did bother about Joyce, yet in return he claimed and was given absolute loyalty.

  The front door slammed shut. Joyce could seldom do anything with only the minimum of necessary force.

  Napier brought out his chased silver cigarette case. The cigarettes were perfumed. About six months ago a man had been fool enough — or ignorant enough — to call him a queer because he smoked perfumed cigarettes. After four days in hospital the man had recovered consciousness, but he must have wished he hadn’t.

  Napier stood up. He was four feet nine and a half inches tall. His lack of height and feminine softness no longer embarrassed or angered him, unlike a time in his early teens when it had driven him very close to suicide because of the way other people treated him.

  From overhead came the noise of creaking floorboards. Jenny was pacing the floor of the bedroom as she waited for him with a scared dislike she could never quite hide — had she been able to hide it, he would no longer have found her amusing.

  His mind flicked back to the past. He remembered some of the things his brothers and sisters had done to him. When really young, he’d been a bit of a pet to them, being so unlike their crude selves, and they’d treated him with a rough kindness. But then when he’d stubbornly refused to grow in size as he should, when his features remained feminine in nature, they’d come to loathe him as the ignorant always loathed a freak. His parents had stupidly tried to convince friends that in truth he’d been adopted and wasn’t really theirs.

  School had been completely bl
oody. The other boys had mocked and teased him with the youthful maliciousness that few adults could even equal and one or two of the older ones had pursued him with intent because they thought that with his looks he must be a complete pansy.

  School had taught him that life was cruel and the weak were knocked down and kicked.

  He finished his whisky and poured himself out another. The boss boy in the fifth had been called Travers. He’d been incensed when Napier — unusually intelligent by way of compensation — came top of the class in the mid-term exams and with two of his mates had grabbed him one lunch-time, stripped off his outer clothes, dressed him in a skirt, and turned him loose in the middle of the play-ground. He smiled. Two nights later, Travers had been walking home through the rain after buying a meal at the mobile fish-and-chip stall. The knife had slid into his back with surprising ease, considering all the bone it might have hung up on. Just before they operated on him, and when pain and fear had reduced him to a blubbering wreck, he’d told the waiting policeman that although he hadn’t seen his assailant he must have been Napier. The police were never able to prove anything.

  School had taught him a second fact about life: violence cleverly executed made all men equal in size.

  Somewhat ironically — or so he saw it at the time — his fellow schoolmates had begun to show him a rough companionship even though convinced to a boy, despite a seemingly perfect alibi, that it had been he who’d knifed Travers.

  School had taught him a third and final lesson about life: it was better to be feared than liked.

  He slumped down in one of the armchairs. Over the past few years he’d become really successful, so that now people were keen to work for him even though they feared him because they instinctively knew that his powers for vicious evil were virtually limitless. It was clear his reputation had spread wide, since he’d been approached to do the assassination even though it was outside his field. The reward was considerable. A quarter of a million quid, one-tenth already paid on agreement.

  He’d keep his team small by using as much contract work as possible. Perhaps his biggest problem at the moment was where to find the gunman — presuming the method of assassination would be shooting. The killing of a political head of state driving in a state procession called for a man of special qualities: someone whose nerves wouldn’t affect his trigger finger.

  Napier finished his drink. He carefully put the dirty glass on top of the cocktail cabinet, switched off the lights, and went upstairs. Jenny was wearing the black nylon nightdress he liked so much. She did not make the mistake of embracing him as they stood: she was five feet six inches tall.

  When he told her to, she climbed into bed and waited for him. He frightened her, yet there was a measure of pleasure in her fear. He might look effeminate, but he was far from that in bed: he knew how to awaken sensations in her she had not experienced before.

  Chapter Two

  It was well after midnight. Kerr returned to the patrol car, parked a secure six feet back from the edge of the dock. “Get back on to H.Q. and ask ’em when the hell the frogmen are coming.”

  “O.K.,” said the observer.

  Kerr returned to the dockside and stared down at the scummy water, stained variegatedly by oil slicks and with dunnage and rubbish floating in it. A portable searchlight was directed at the point where the car was reported to have dived in, but the powerful beam hardly penetrated beneath the surface. He looked at his watch. Although he’d again called for the frogmen, in practical terms it now made no difference how long they were in coming since any occupant of the car must be dead: but the sense of shocked futility kept him cursing their absence, just as men of the patrol cars at traffic accidents would repeatedly call for medical help when it was horribly obvious that any help must be too late.

  A fork-lift truck bounced over the movable crane rails and stopped: the driver jumped down and joined the knot of men who were being kept back by dock police. Kerr stared at the onlookers and wondered why they voluntarily waited at the scene of tragedy? If they’d met even a tenth as much as any serving policeman, they’d never linger but would move on as quickly as they could.

  Kerr lit a cigarette and reflected how marriage seemed to have made him so much more liable to suffer vicariously other people’s misfortunes. Obviously, this was due to Helen’s influence: she was distressed by almost anybody else’s problems.

  A thickset man, scarred face black with stubble, dressed in a leather lumber jacket, came up to Kerr. “Are you a policeman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t you bleeding well do something, instead of just standing there?”

  “We’re waiting for the frogmen.”

  “The poor bleeder’s in the car down there. Why don’t you use a crane?”

  “We tried to get one going, but couldn’t find an operator in time,” replied Kerr shortly. There were few night shifts these days and it had taken a quarter of an hour to discover that the nearest crane in operation was in the New Docks, nearly two miles away.

  The man cleared his throat, then spat. “Poor bleeder.” His voice was filled with antagonism.

  Kerr didn’t bother to answer any further. The police were often accused at the scene of a tragedy of not doing all they should: it seemed some onlookers tried to shift the sense of shame they themselves felt at being so impotent.

  The man slouched off. A second patrol car drove up at speed and came to a stop with a quick squeal of over-stressed tyres and out of the back stepped two men, one much taller than the other, both P.C.s already in their wet suits. Kerr ran over. “The only eye-witness says the car came along here, weaving from side to side, and went over about three foot to the left of that bollard. It hit nose first and sank very quickly.”

  “Sounds like the windows must have been open.” said the taller man.

  “Yeah, it does.” Kerr spoke hesitantly. It was a cold, damp night, more like January in character than March. Not the kind of weather in which the average motorist would have a window down.

  The frogmen went round to the boot of the car and the driver helped them into their bottles. When they’d put on flippers and masks, they walked awkwardly over to a steel ladder, buckled where a ship had hit it a glancing blow many years before, and climbed down into the water. Just before the first man submerged, he switched on the powerful torch he carried.

  The light quickly grew dimmer in the scum-filled water, then vanished. The men above waited. From a distance, they heard the deep blast of a ship’s siren, sounding mournful, doom-laden. A train, drawn by a squat diesel engine that kept stopping and revving with thumping blasts of noise, rumbled along the main tracks which were at right angles to Elwick Docks.

  The light reappeared and the frogman surfaced, close by his companion. He swam over to the ladder and climbed it, water streaming from him. Kerr met him as he stepped on to the dockside. He pushed up his face mask. “There’s just one bloke inside and both front windows are right down. The car’s upside down, so it’ll be a bit of a job to get him out. D’you want him separate or can he come up with the car?”

  If the body were left, it might get badly bruised when the car was hauled out of the dock and such bruises could obscure other injuries which were relevant to the mode of death. “Get him out now, will you.”

  The frogmen returned to the water and this time his companion dived as well as he. Kerr went over to the onlookers and asked them to find some form of cargo tray and a length of stout rope. Several men hurried off to get what he wanted.

  The body was brought to the surface after twenty minutes and was loaded on to a six-foot-square cargo tray. Then, to Kerr’s orders, the cargo tray was hauled up by hand.

  Kerr studied the dead man. He was in middle age and his face, muddled by death, was puffy: where it was not oil-stained, the skin of his cheeks was flushed. His brown eyes were open and bulging, his mouth was half open and around the lips were both foam and part of an oil-stained rag. His right hand was clenched tight
and between the fingers and thumb was a piece of thin driftwood.

  Kerr crossed to the first patrol car and picked up from the back seat his transceiver. He switched on and spoke to the night sergeant at eastern division H.Q. and asked for the police doctor to be called, a camera to be sent out, and for the usual undertakers to be contacted to take the body back to the morgue. He paused. Did he tell the sergeant to rout out Fusil? The dead man bore no obvious signs of physical injury and only the two opened front windows lent any strength to the suggestion that this wasn’t a perfectly straightforward accident. No, he decided, on the evidence available there was no reason for calling out the D.I.

  He returned to the body and undid the buttons of the sodden, oil-stained, grey-worsted coat. In the inside pocket was a wallet, which he ballooned to let out the water and then eased out the content. There was a five-pound and two one-pound notes, a cheque book, a slip of paper with some ink writing that had run and was now indecipherable, a dock pass in the name of E. P. Swaithe, a bill from a wine merchant’s in Dritlington, and a membership ticket for a club cinema. The driver of the first patrol car was standing nearby and Kerr looked up. “There’s a name, but no address. I’ll buzz the station to see if they can pick that up from a telephone or street directory.” The driver handed him his transceiver and he put the request to the night sergeant, adding the information that it was likely E. P. Swaithe had lived in Dritlington.

  The sergeant came back within a few minutes. “Hullo, Blue One. There is an E. P. Swaithe who lives at twenty-three, Fairfield Close, Dritlington, and no one else with those initials listed.”

  “Sounds like our bloke, Sarge. I’ll be going along there as soon as I’m finished here, so can I collect a W.P.C. in case there’s a wife?”

  “You don’t think I’m going to allow any of my girls out at this time of night with you?”

  “Come off it, Sarge. I’m a married man now.”

  “In that case, I’ll tell her to wear a padlock and leave the key with me.”