Field of Fire

by Roderic Jeffries

  The chief constable said, “I’ll now ask Superintendent Dalby to cover the facts.”

  Dalby stood up. He was a man who on initial acquaintance gave the impression of an easy-going character, but yet who, in a very short time and without any deliberate intent, made it quite clear that in fact he was anything but. “You’ve got these two state visits coming up, gentlemen, and I’m here to help you as far as I can over the problems of security.” He picked up a sheet of paper. “The Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, Dr. Jiri Pakac, arrives on Friday, April the fourteenth. The president of the central African republic of Dejai, President Kano, arrives on the following Saturday week. Both men are coming in on ships and for some reason are making a state ride through this town to the railway station . . .”

  Plomb rudely interrupted. “Under the royal charter of Edward the Fourth, Fortrow has the right and duty of providing a civic welcome to any visiting head of state.”

  Dalby met Plomb’s pompous and belligerent speech with a short smile. “I’m all for custom, sir, but sometimes it makes life very difficult for us. An open carriage offers just about the greatest security risk there is.” He turned away from Plomb. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind everyone of the number of Czech nationals in this country who have a very real — and, may one add, justified? — hatred of the present regime. Some of them would kill Pakac with the greatest pleasure and it’s their kind of fanaticism that’s so difficult to guard against.”

  Fusil doodled a man with a rifle in his hand.

  Dalby put down one piece of paper and picked up another. “I understand that the usual course of the procession is just under two miles long. It comes up Dock Road and High Street, turns right into Bombay Road and then goes round Parstone Square to the station.

  “I had a quick run over the route in my car before coming here. It’s quite obvious there are a very great number of rooms, offices, and warehouses overlooking it, every one of which is a potential hiding-place. The assassination of President Kennedy showed us that.”

  Dalby’s words might have been slightly melodramatic, thought Fusil, but they had probably begun to bring home to people how enormous a security job this was going to be.

  “This town’s coped with visiting royalty and heads of state before now,” said the chief constable irritatedly.

  “Quite so, sir,” replied Dolby smoothly, “but not for some years, I understand, and certainly not in the present world climate of violence. I think we ought to remember that assassination attempts have become more and more frequent.”

  There hadn’t been a state visit since he’d come to Fortrow, thought Fusil. These days, dignitaries usually flew in to the country. But, coincidentally, Fortrow was to suffer two such visits within nine days, the Czech coming in a recently launched Polish destroyer and the president of Dejai in an old British corvette that was now part of, perhaps all of, the Dahomian navy — after eight years of border disputes, Dahomey and Dejai had signed a treaty of everlasting friendship.

  “Every single building along the route is going to have to be searched . . .” continued Dalby.

  Fusil silently cursed Dr. Jiri Pakac, President Kano, and Edward the Fourth who really was the cause of all this trouble. Inevitably, and despite help from the Special Branch and the county force, most of the extra work was going to land on the Fortrow police.

  “Anything suspicious, however slight, must be reported. Any break in routine, the unexplained visit . . .!”

  It was strange, decided Fusil, how people from London always seemed to think that county policemen were slightly stupid. Did Dalby really think he had to spell out everything in minute detail?

  “And most important of all, we must have immediate word of any new villain moving into the area. Every grasser must be . . .”

  Fusil looked at Plomb. Did he yet realize quite how much extra money the police were going to need? Perhaps he’d lead the council into tearing up the charter of Edward the Fourth.

  *

  From the time of his first post mortem, when he was on a Scene of Crime course at the county detective training school, Kerr had tried to maintain an amused contempt for the proceedings. It was the only way he knew of keeping at arm’s length the terrible knowledge that death was final, stupid, undignified, and offensive to the living.

  The pathologist examined Swaithe’s lungs and air passages. He found water, oil-stains, a few pieces of very fine grit, and some microscopic diatomaceous matter. The right side of the heart had suffered marked congestion and cynanosis. “He died from asphyxiation due to the inhalation of water,” he said, typically not using the single word ‘drowned’. He stared at Kerr over his bi-focals. “The next question must be, did he die in fresh or salt water?”

  Kerr watched the specimens taken to determine the chloride content of the left side of the heart — a strangely knobbly-looking thing, hard to connect with the traditional and romantic image.

  The pathologist again looked at Kerr. “We progress as we eliminate — always provided we don’t eliminate everything.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kerr could never decide how best to answer the pathologist. Sometimes it seemed the other spoke in his dry and dusty manner as a kind of private joke, but on the one occasion that Kerr had cracked a quick joke in return he’d been accused of unbecoming levity and disrespect.

  “We now prepare for one last set of tests. Was he sober at the time of death or under the influence of alcohol?”

  The exhibits officer, an elderly P.C. who never seemed to lose his good humour, stepped forward. The pathologist’s assistant held up the corpse’s right arm and pressed on it to send the sluggish blood down and the P.C. tapped the vein, filling two bottles which he sealed. Two more bottles were filled with urine.

  When the pathologist began to peel off his gloves, Kerr went over to him. “Can you give me a preliminary finding, sir?”

  “I found nothing inconsistent with death by inhalation of water, though I cannot say whether this was fresh or salt. The bruising on the forehead is typical of bruising suffered against the steering wheel in any car crash.”

  Which translated, thought Kerr, meant it was ten to one Swaithe had been killed by driving into Elwick Dock and had not been murdered elsewhere and made to plunge into the water in an attempt to fake an accidental death. So what about the opened front windows? One might not have suggested much, but two . . . “Would you be kind enough, sir, to let us have your full report as soon as possible?”

  “Naturally,” snapped the pathologist.

  Who was the old fool, thought Kerr, who’d first suggested that politeness paid?

  The pathologist stripped off his green overalls and cap and washed with special soap. Kerr had a word with the exhibits officer, walked past the assistant who was pushing all the loose bits back into the body, and went outside.

  Tonight, he decided, Helen and he would go out to the local and have a basinful of beer, to prove to themselves they were alive and kicking. That was, of course, after he’d interviewed Mrs. Swaithe as Fusil had ordered. Kerr looked at his watch. Already it was nearly six o’clock. Poor Mrs. Swaithe. Surely it was only right and decent to leave her to her grief at least for the rest of today?

  He climbed into the C.I.D. Hillman and drove through the back streets to number twenty-one, Leppard Lane, a semi-detached police house. It was wonderful to come back to a home and not some anonymous police hostel which always seemed to smell of stale socks. He unlocked the front door and went in to a delicious smell of cooking and after kissing Helen hullo he eagerly asked what was for supper. She told him and then a trifle caustically wondered if he was at all interested in what kind of a day she’d had?

  *

  Melissa Lockwood was listening to Brahm’s violin concerto — she found a unique and precious emotional satisfaction from some classical music — when the telephone rang.

  “Have you heard from the gent yet?” asked Parsons.

  “He�
�s coming tomorrow afternoon at four.” Whatever was going on, must be dangerous.

  “Good on you, love. Remember — real advanced stuff.” Parsons laughed loudly before ringing off.

  She returned to the sitting-room and the music and after a while forgot her fears and drifted back into her own personal Cockaigne.

  Chapter Five

  Napier put out the photographs in sequence. “They’re good, Stick,” he said, as he studied the photographic re-production of Fortrow High Street from New Dock Road, past the ancient South Gate around which the road split into two, to the main shopping area.

  Joyce looked pleased and rubbed his pock-marked chin, something he often did when vaguely embarrassed. He took out a piece of chewing-gum from his mouth and dropped it into the nearest ashtray, unwrapped a new piece and started to chew that. Most praise or curses left him unmoved, but even a few words of commendation from Napier gave him pleasure. There was a strange, shifting pattern to their relationship. Napier was always the dominant man, yet at times Joyce felt possessively responsible for the other, almost as if there were a direct blood relationship between them.

  Napier indicated one of the photographs. “Those look like warehouses?”

  Joyce came round the table. “Yeah, Titch, that’s right.” Like many men who were nearly illiterate in the conventional sense, he had a photographic memory. “That one there . . .” he jabbed his thick forefinger on the photograph, “that’s for sale. Looks like there ain’t no one using it at the moment. Make a good place.”

  “Much too obvious, Stick. That’ll be the first place the law turns over.”

  “They won’t really turn nowhere over if they don’t learn nothing about what’s going on.”

  “Sure. But however close we play it, there’s always the chance of a leak which we don’t know about. So from now we reckon the law’s in on it — that way, we play it real careful.” Napier lit one of his perfumed cigarettes and fitted it into a long ivory holder. With carefully waved hair, over-smooth skin, and feminine gestures, he’d have been remarkable even if of normal size. “What are we going to use, Stick? Gun, Bomb, rocket?”

  Joyce’s jaws chomped on rhythmically. If he’d been planning an assassination, he’d have thought of a gun or a bomb, but never of a rocket. That was just one of the differences between himself and Titch.

  Napier crossed to the window and looked out at the common on which the kids were playing football. A rifle was often an assassin’s weapon, but the marksman had to be brilliant and without nerves. A fully automatic weapon seemed to offer obvious advantages, but there was inevitable loss of precision and all automatics pulled off target. A shotgun would give a circle of up to thirty inches and if the shot size was AAA, or better, the pellets would have considerable striking velocity — but the maximum certain lethal range even with large pellets was only about twenty yards. Bombs had been used often enough, but the thrower had to get within close range and his act of throwing was unmistakable: further, bombs had a habit of not going off, or delaying those vital fractions of a second so that the victim was just out of lethal range when it did go off — and the odds were low on the bomb-thrower escaping. A small mortar seemed attractive, but how to zero it in, how to judge exactly the second to fire, where to find the mortar expert? Rockets? They had the same sort of drawbacks as mortars plus the extra size of the launcher. An explosive charge laid out days beforehand and triggered off by radio? But, as he’d told Joyce, they must plan under the assumption that the police would have their suspicions and therefore no manhole or other hiding-place would go unsearched. A bomb planted on the carriage, timed to go off during the procession? Security men would search the carriage before it was used. More fancifully, a helicopter dropping a bomb . . .

  Out on the common, one of the boys kicked a goal. Immediately there was a scuffle, the upshot of which appeared to be that the goal was disallowed. Kids were pure savages, he thought, remembering his childhood misery. Yet they could also be lovable. His sister Rachel — alone in the family, she’d befriended him — had two daughters and he loved them more than anyone else in the world.

  He returned from the window and stared down at the photographs. What was going to be the surest, safest, and easiest way to kill a man in the state coach?

  *

  It was a damp, depressing, overcast, gloomy day and as the bus drove towards Dritlington Kerr thought of the holiday brochure he’d brought back to Helen two days before. It had been sheer day-dreaming, of course, to begin to think he and Helen could afford to go on a holiday this year — after furnishing the house, the only thing they had were debts — and yet . . . St Tropez. The Mediterranean, azure blue: golden sands. Long-legged, bronze-bodied women, wearing the latest in costumes, topless. Beautiful, proud, symmetrical, rose-tipped bosoms, jauntily demanding to be caressed . . . Hell, he thought, what if Helen could climb into his mind? He cheered up. There could be no harm in imagining such delightful scenes, since his interest was in beauty, not carnal possibilities. If a dozen half naked Venuses board the bus then and there . . . The leading red-head had a magnificent, flame-filled, passion-moulded body, hungering for the awakening . . . He wouldn’t, he assured himself, have a single doubtful thought or impulse.

  The bus stopped and suddenly Kerr realised he’d arrived. He hurried downstairs and jumped off the platform just as the bus drew away from the stop.

  In daylight, Fairfield Close struck him as more attractive because its solid, bourgeois qualities added a certain dimension. It was not absurd to think that one day Helen and he could own a house like one of these. Perhaps when he was promoted to detective superintendent?

  Mrs. Swaithe was dry-eyed, but her face was drawn and she kept plucking at her tweed skirt. She listened to Kerr’s formal apologies for troubling her and then said abruptly: “You know I wasn’t really his wife?”

  Kerr shook his head.

  “I changed my name by deed poll before we moved down from Hull to this house.”

  “D’you know if she’s still alive?”

  “She’s alive, all right, and whenever she didn’t get her money on the dot there were solicitor’s letters . . . She wouldn’t divorce him, you see. We were going to use the new divorce law and then Ted would’ve married me, but . . .” She gestured with her hands. Suddenly realising they were still standing in the hall, she mumbled an apology and led the way into the sitting-room.

  Kerr sat down and once again was struck by how poorly the house was furnished.

  She picked up a packet of cigarettes and offered it and he lit a match for them both. “Ted was far too easy-going with her.” Her lips tightened. “I told him again and again . . .” She stopped, then added: “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Kerr remembered the body on the morgue table and the ease with which the assistant had slit it up the centre.

  “We’d still have been all right if he hadn’t drunk so heavily.” She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. “He kept trying to cut down, but it was so difficult for him.”

  Two women and too much drink — no wonder the house wasn’t well furnished, thought Kerr. How many other tragic lives were concealed behind the prosperous-looking front doors of Fairfield Close? “D’you remember anything unusual about yesterday, Mrs. Swaithe?”

  “He died,” she replied simply.

  He tried to choose his words more carefully. “Did your husband act at all unusually before he last left here?”

  She shook her head, then looked straight at him. “Why are you asking these questions?”

  “We always have to make general enquiries when there’s been an unfortunate accident.”

  The explanation seemed to satisfy her and she showed no further curiosity at his questions. Fifteen minutes later, he thanked her for her help and left.

  Because there was no direct bus route from Dritlington to the New Docks, the journey took Kerr over half an hour and not for the first time he wondered if the police would ever be given enough equip
ment — in this case, at least two more cars for C.I.D. — to do their job efficiently? The finance sub-committee always cut back the police estimates, yet they and the members of the watch committee were the first to moan and groan when the clear-up rate dropped.

  The general manager, Ormond, of J. P. Dawson & Wren, was a lanky man with long, flappy arms and a very harassed manner, as if every hour of his working day was filled with sixty-one minutes. “Poor old Ted. And to think I was talking to him at six-thirty in the evening!”

  Kerr sat down in front of the large stained and scarred desk on which was a mass of papers. The telephone rang and Ormond answered the call and almost immediately was in the thick of a row with someone. After a while, he slammed down the receiver. “Contracts mean nothing these days and gentlemen’s agreements are so much rubbish.”

  Wharfingers seemed to lead a similar life to C.I.D. officers, thought Kerr. He asked what kind of a man Swaithe had been.

  “A good worker, honest, but frankly he liked the bottle too much.” Osmond tapped on the desk with his long, bony fingers. “God knows how many times I covered up for him! Never paralytic, mark you, but very often obviously sozzled.”

  “Was he tight last night when you saw him?”

  Ormond thought back. “He’d been drinking, all right, but everything was under control.”

  “What was his job here?”

  “He was called an assistant manager, but in fact he was a labour troubleshooter. He used to be able to go up to a bunch of militant stevedores — and men don’t come more militant — and before you could turn round, he’d have ’em talking and like as not back at work. Another thing, he was our security bloke — if cargo got damaged in loading or discharging, he went along to see how and why and make out a report for everyone concerned. Kept him busy. The stevedores are always stealing — I don’t think we’ve loaded whisky without at least one sling being bashed around to break up the boxes. Yet he could keep the stevedores working even though he was stopping them from swiping too much . . . Like I said, he was good, which is why I covered for him. This firm’s going to miss him.”