Field of Fire

by Roderic Jeffries

  “Has he been dealing with anything out of the ordinary in the past few days?”

  Ormond studied Kerr closely. “What’s up, then? D’you think there was something wrong about the accident?”

  Kerr shrugged his shoulders. “You know how it is — even with accidents, we have to check up pretty closely.”

  “Yet I’ve known accidents inside the docks where you city police haven’t even appeared.”

  Kerr smiled, but made it clear he’d say nothing more.

  Ormond fiddled with a pencil. “Have you seen his wife?”

  “I came straight from her place.”

  “How’s she taking it?”

  “It’s hard to tell, really — she looked like maybe she’s using a little too much self-control, if you know what I mean?”

  Ormond nodded. “Makes you think, doesn’t it? You’re going along, like you have over all the past years, and then someone knocks at the door and says ‘Sorry, your husband’s dead’. Just like that.”

  “Yes,” agreed Kerr. “It makes you think.”

  When he left, he caught a bus back to the Old Docks and then had to walk a mile to Gunlore Road. By the time he arrived at Adams’ house his socks were wet and rain had dripped from his uncovered hair down the back of his neck. He wondered if he could get a job as courier on the Costa Brava.

  Adams was like the house in which he lived, old, weatherbeaten and slightly lopsided. At first incoherent, he quickly retired and when he returned to the hall he was wearing his teeth. He said that the previous night he’d been having a smoke when he saw a car come down the quayside swerving all over the place as if the driver were tight. The car’s sidelights had been on, but not the headlights. It had gone over the side at an angle and even by the time he’d run to the edge of the dock it had been already three parts under. There was no attempt by the driver to escape.

  Kerr thanked Adams for his help and left. Halfway down the road a tart, who was working from the top floor of one of the houses, waved at him. He waved back. At least it proved he wasn’t a ripped-up corpse on a marble slab.

  *

  Detective Constable Roger Eustace Yarrow was smooth, intelligent, and efficient. His uncle was Detective Superintendent Menton at county H.Q. and, believing in utilising all his assets, it was a relationship he frequently referred to when speaking to senior officers.

  One of the ironical things about Yarrow was that his conceited, slightly contemptuous manner seemed somehow to help him get on with informers, so that after only a few weeks in Fortrow C.I.D. he had as many good contacts as D.C. Rowan, who’d been in the force for years. Rowan and the others were baffled by this fact and irritated by it. Kerr perhaps came nearest to the truth when in a moment of dislike, and without believing what he was saying, he said that there were always masochists around who liked being kicked.

  Yarrow parked the C.I.D. Hillman by the north entrance to Durall Park. He lit a cigarette and stared through the rain-spattered windscreen at a young woman, dressed in plastic mackintosh, who reminded him of Lavinia. He wondered whether to get in touch with Lavinia again? She was fun and she was willing, but her father was a commercial traveller in babies’ ware, including plastic pots: Yarrow had his standards.

  A small, shambling man came along the pavement to the car. Yarrow leaned back and opened the rear door. “Get in.”

  “I . . . I don’t like meeting you ’ere, in daylight,” whined Cantor.

  Yarrow started the engine and drove off, without bothering to reply. Although, like any other detective, much of his crime information came from informers, so that he used them as much as he could, he had nothing but dislike for them.

  They went down a side road which brought them to a shopping centre and then round on the one-way system to the council car-park at the rear of the cinema. Yarrow parked next to a Rolls, which he studied with open envy.

  “You said you wanted news on any new mobs?” mumbled Cantor.

  “That’s right.”

  Cantor fiddled with his thick lower lip. “I’m real skint.”

  Yarrow took a couple of one-pound notes from his wallet and chucked them into the back. Cantor caught them and reached inside his mackintosh to stuff them into the top pocket of his worn-out coat. “There’s a bloke been asking round the Toms and Ikeys.”

  “Asking what?”

  “If any of ’em knows a bloke what works in the town ’all.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know, mister. ’E’s new.”

  “And?”

  “There ain’t nothing more.”

  “That’s not worth a couple of quid.”

  Cantor pressed his right fist against his mackintosh, as if to protect the money he’d just been given.

  Yarrow lit a cigarette. One didn’t have to be a genius to realise that this might be the first move to blackmail someone into giving details of the forthcoming state visit so that an assassination could be planned.

  *

  Fusil put down the telephone with excessive force. Kywood usually had that sort of an effect on him. Kywood had wanted to know why he hadn’t yet received the initial assessment of the security problems concerning the two state visits, as if there was nothing else to do in the division. Fusil looked up and continued his conversation with Yarrow. “Nothing more than that?”

  “No, sir. Just the enquiries among the Toms and Ikeys.”

  Fusil silently swore. It was the kind of information that wasn’t definite enough, yet certainly couldn’t be ignored. As Yarrow claimed, it obviously could be an attempt to get the blackmailing hooks on someone, with access to the detailed itineraries of the state visits, yet it might as easily be in connexion with something totally different.

  “I feel it should be followed up, sir,” said Yarrow.

  Fusil was about to tell him to stop running the division when he realised he was in danger of letting his dislike upset his judgement. “All right. Make enquiries all round and find out more. It’s a tenner for some hard info.”

  “Very good, sir.” Yarrow turned smartly and left.

  Would Yarrow, wondered Fusil longingly, ever make the kind of solid mistake that would allow him to get it really hard in the neck without fear of what his uncle might say or do?

  Chapter Six

  Eric Appleton had a large frame, but even so he was beginning to look quite fat. His face suggested a great deal of character, the ability to take difficult decisions without fuss or favour, and even the surprisingly high pitch and softness of his voice did nothing initially to deny this. Only after several meetings did one gradually appreciate his essential weakness.

  He often told Melissa Lockwood that his wife didn’t understand him. Since she couldn’t begin to count the number of men who’d told her this, she ignored his confidence with contempt, yet to a large extent he was telling the truth. His wife neither understood his constant physical demands at an age when, in her opinion, he should have virtually forgotten about such things, nor his feeble embarrassed attempts to make her act the dominant partner. So he visited Melissa as often as he could afford to — which wasn’t nearly often enough — and displayed great ingenuity in explaining to his wife where the money had gone that he’d spent on whoring.

  On arrival at the flat he kissed Melissa’s full lips and began to fondle her, fully expecting as usual to be sharply told to wait. But instead she responded, with ever-growing enthusiasm.

  He had never known such a burning, frantic passion. Even his imagination was outstripped . . .

  There were several bright flashes. He only vaguely wondered what they were, being otherwise engaged, but then she climbed off him. He heard a man laugh. He slowly turned and in the doorway was a man with a camera. Eric Appleton was first shocked, then terrified.

  *

  Kerr walked through the parade room, on the walls of which hung photos of wanted men, an Identikit picture of a suspected murderer, snaps of local villains, two exotic nudie calendars, and a list of local
chemist shops and when they were open outside normal hours. Beyond was a corridor leading to the front office. Here, an elderly woman, dressed poorly, two front teeth missing to give her a gappy appearance, was listening uncertainly to the desk sergeant as he tried to tell her where to go to enquire after a purse she had left on one of the buses. Kerr lifted the flap of the counter and went behind.

  “D’you want something, then?” demanded the sergeant, breaking off his conversation with the woman.

  “A quick look at the Stop Book, Sarge.”

  “You couldn’t try asking, could you?”

  Maybe the sergeant was unhappily married to a woman who couldn’t cook, thought Kerr. He flipped through the pages of a battered book until he found the entries for the previous Tuesday, carefully entered up by the duty sergeant from the notebooks of men on patrol. There was no record of any stop on suspicion within range of the retired army officer’s house from which had been stolen some valuable Benin bronzes. He sighed. It had been a long-shot that any constable would have unwittingly stopped the thief and then let him continue.

  The telephone rang and the sergeant answered the call. “Yeah . . . He’s here.” He passed across the receiver. “It’s for you. Don’t take too long. We’re busy enough, without taking on C.I.D. work.”

  “I’m sorry about this, Sarge. Shall I tell the old man you say no more C.I.D. calls are to be switched to the front desk?”

  The sergeant looked at Kerr with dislike, but said nothing because the D.I. was not the man to worry about a mere sergeant’s feelings.

  The call was from the county forensic laboratory. Completed tests showed Swaithe had drowned in salt water and that at the time of death his blood alcohol had been point four per cent — if he hadn’t been a hardened drinker, he would have been either at the point of stupor or past it.

  Kerr replaced the receiver. The facts all fitted and only the two fully opened car windows remained as queries. If Swaithe was that tight, mightn’t he have wound them down and not even been aware of the act?

  Fusil hurried in from the road and his expression said something had recently annoyed him. He stopped and stared at Kerr. “Busy?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve just been checking on the Stop Book.”

  “You look as if you’ve finished. Get out to Pendleton Bray and give Sergeant Braddon a hand.”

  Kerr sighed. And he’d thought he’d be able to slip silently away back to Helen, who must be feeling rather like a widow. How naive could he get? “County lab, sir, have just reported that Swaithe was drowned in salt water and was virtually blotto at the time of death.”

  Fusil rubbed his forehead at a point where his black hair was beginning to thin. “Then that clews it up.”

  “Except for those windows.” Kerr spoke with unusual, and self-doubting, stubbornness.

  Fusil took out his pipe and tapped the bowl on the palm of his left hand. “With nothing else to go on, it remains an accident . . . When you see Sergeant Braddon, tell him to finish questioning all the people, no matter what the time.”

  That, decided Kerr, was one message which could conveniently be forgotten.

  *

  Chokey Parsons possessed an air of controlled brutality that appealed to some women. It appealed to Claire and since teaming up with him she’d stopped working the streets and had kept house for him in the two rooms she rented from an elderly woman with an arthritic husband.

  She had a strangely moving face that spoke of much trouble squeezed into only a few years. Her work had of necessity given her a veneer of toughness, but when a man like Parsons came along she was strangely vulnerable. Her ponce, a Cypriot, had originally talked about taking Parsons for twenty quid a day, but Parson had scared him right out of it.

  She unwrapped a bottle of wine. “I got this for you, Chokey. The guy said it was something special.”

  He picked up the bottle and briefly examined it. “It ain’t bad.” He gained a lot of contemptuous amusement when women like Claire went all soft over him.

  “And I bought some steaks for grub.”

  “Then start cookin’ and stop talkin’.”

  She took off her coat and dropped it on to a chair. Her dress was short and hugging and the long zip was designed to let her get out of it with minimum trouble. When she went through the second room that was kitchen and bathroom, he picked up a bottle of whisky and poured himself out a stiff drink. He grinned when he thought how ridiculous the Appleton man had looked.

  Claire returned to the room. “I met a friend of mine this afternoon, Chokey. She told me something.”

  “Then you tell me what it was and stop making a bloody history of it.”

  Claire spoke nervously. “There’s been a split on the prowl, a smooth bastard. Wanted to know if Gert had been asked by anyone about customers what worked in the town hall.”

  Parsons cursed. His enquiries had been discreet, yet obviously the splits had got on to them so how did that leave him? Titch Napier paid well, but expected things to go right. He drew on the cigarette. Titch scared him, in a way no other man did even though he could have torn the little runt in half.

  He could keep the news to himself. But if Titch ever learned about it from any other source and so discovered he’d been flannelled . . .

  “Is it bad, Chokey?” she asked anxiously.

  “Belt up,” he shouted.

  She sat down on the foot of the bed. She saw with complete astonishment that he was scared.

  He finished his drink and poured himself another. Gert wouldn’t have been the only Tom the splits had questioned, that was for sure. The news must be right round. So almost inevitably it must reach Titch by one route or another, which meant it was best for him to hear it direct.

  “I . . . I thought you ought to know, Chokey,” she said, in a worried voice.

  He suddenly hated her, simply because she had brought the bad news. He cursed her, with a violence that made her flinch, then finished his drink and left the house.

  *

  Al Joyce rubbed his very large, crooked nose and waited. He knew the telephone conversation with Chokey Parsons had annoyed and to some extent worried Titch, but his confidence in the other was too great for him to worry.

  Napier fitted a cigarette into the ivory holder. While doing this he saw a speck of dirt on his nails and he carefully brushed this off. From the beginning he’d said they’d have to operate on the assumption the police knew an assassination attempt was to be made, but he’d naturally hoped this was purely precautionary and he hadn’t imagined they’d get the wind so early on. Most unusually, he swore aloud.

  “It must’ve been a grasser, Titch.” Joyce’s voice was vicious.

  Had it taken Stick long to work that out? wondered Napier. Informers were the biggest peril: without their help, the police would clear up only a tithe of their cases. Could he find this informer and then deal with him in a way that would warn everyone else to keep their mouth’s tight shut? How? There would be dozens of informers in Fortrow, unknown as such to anyone but the splits. Even if this one could be found, it might take weeks and something had to be done now.

  Chokey Parsons? Napier realised he might have the best answer of all. Chokey had virtually done his job and was about due for paying off anyway and the police would only gain confirmation of what they already knew. If his death were dramatic, he would serve as a very clear warning.

  *

  Helen had already developed a maturity and an assurance from her marriage and this in some subtle manner had added a touch of beauty to her long face, previously attractive but never beautiful. Marriage had also sharpened her emotions to an unusual degree, thereby astonishing Kerr. When he arrived home late that night, tired and cursing Braddon for being so time-consumingly conscientious, she met him in the hall and kissed him with a fervour that in ten seconds flat had him young again.

  “You’re late, darling. I expected you very much earlier.”

  “It’s the old man’s fault. If I hadn’t run
into him, I’d’ve been back just after five.”

  “Never mind. Come on into the sitting-room and see what I’ve bought.”

  They went into the small sitting-room and she pointed to an old-fashioned settee, low-set, heavy-and square. “It’s real leather. Isn’t it lovely?”

  He thought it looked ugly, but had already learned that truth and marriage sometimes didn’t get on well together. “It’s a beaut . . . But it must have cost a bomb.”

  She laughed. “I went to the regular furniture sale at Radfords — and this came up and no one would bid for it. I said fifty pence, expecting to be laughed at, and it was knocked down to me. Try it.”

  He tried it. It had a lumpy seat and somewhere deep within its innards a spring twanged. “It’s great! And you really only paid fifty pence?”

  “Of course, I had to give Fred something for bringing it here in his van, but I’m not going to tell you how much. Now you sit on it and enjoy it while I go and get supper.”

  After she left, he relaxed on the settee. It would soon be the weekend when officially he was off duty. Common sense dictated that he keep out of Fusil’s way after midday on Friday, so the best thing for him to do was search through the crime sheets for a job that would take him out to the boundaries of the division for the whole of the afternoon.

  Chapter Seven

  They picked Chokey Parsons up at three o’clock on Friday afternoon. Their manner was so natural and easy that he didn’t stop to wonder why they’d all come down from London, why they were all wearing gloves, why Titch Napier’s eyes expressed a strange emotion that was almost exaltation.