Field of Fire

by Roderic Jeffries

  Napier spoke with understanding affability: no one could guard absolutely against police informers, and in any case no real harm was done. So the police knew someone had been making enquiries — that was all and that wouldn’t get them very far. Joyce, beside Parsons in the back seat, kept telling jokes he’d recently heard and laughing immoderately at the punch lines — for a man who seldom was subtle, he was acting with great subtlety. Tim Foley, driving the Jaguar he’d stolen that morning from the car-park at Bagshot station, was his usual taciturn self, seldom speaking unless spoken to, concentrating wholly on his driving even though they were merely cruising through the back streets of Bratby Cross.

  Napier asked: “I suppose you’ve no idea who grassed?”

  “No, I ain’t, Titch. Been trying to find out, of course.” Parson’s voice thickened. “If I could grab ’im, I’d rough him up, good. That’d tell the others to keep their mouths shut.”

  “It would indeed,” said Napier, and smiled.

  Joyce told a joke that was old before he was born. Foley changed down for each corner, even when the car could easily have gone round in top. For four years, until the accident which had left his face scarred by burns, he’d raced at club events and now he always drove with a perfect technique even when it seemed unnecessary. That way he could, at one word of command, change to driving with a controlled violence that would lose other drivers, even coppers, within the first half mile.

  Parsons looked through the window at the mean streets and the rows of terraced houses. “Where d’you say we was going?”

  “To meet a bloke,” replied Napier

  “What’s it about?”

  “Them photos you took.”

  “They was good, wasn’t they? The silly bastard, Appleton, is so scared ’is wife’ll get a butchers, ’e’ll do anything you want.”

  “That’s great, Chokey, just great. If you never do nothing more, you’ll end up by having done this just right.”

  Parsons wondered why Napier’s voice was slightly odd. But still he heard no personal warning signals.

  They reached the outskirts of the suburb and the houses and small factories gave way to countryside which was looking barren and waterlogged. They began to climb and once on top of the hills they turned on to the Barton Road. A quarter of a mile further on, where the bare branches of trees met overhead to form a canopy, they went down a small lane. In summer there was considerable traffic on the hills because there were a well-known beauty spot, but in winter they were usually deserted. The land was poor and the farms of necessity big so that houses were few.

  Foley stopped at a lay-by.

  “Just a short walk from here,” said Napier.

  They climbed out on to the road and Napier led the way across to woods which consisted mainly of scrub oaks, hornbeam, ash, and birch, with an undergrowth of dead bracken and brambles.

  “We ain’t goin’ in ’ere?” asked Parsons.

  “That’s right,” said Napier.

  “But I ain’t got right shoes on, Titch.”

  Napier looked down at Parsons’ shoes which were highly polished and obviously expensive. “No cause to worry, Chokey,” he said, and this time smiled openly.

  Parsons experienced the first uneasiness because there had been an element of cruelty in the other’s smile, but he soon became far more concerned in trying to avoid the soggier patches of earth as he followed Napier into the woods. A low ash twig whipped at his face and made him swear. “Why the ’ell do we ’ave to meet the bloke in a place like this?”

  “To make certain we aren’t interrupted.”

  Again Parsons noticed the tone of Napier’s voice and this time his uneasiness grew into fear. He stopped. “I ain’t goin’ . . .”

  Joyce, immediately behind Parsons, slammed down a sand-filled sock on the right-hand side of Parsons’ neck. Parsons collapsed from the knees up, like a tall chimney whose base had been blown out. Joyce rolled him over, face downwards, and tied his hands behind his back with string. He rolled him back and gagged him with a handkerchief and duster, bought that morning from a multiple store in London.

  Napier spoke to Foley. “O.K., Tim, get the stuff from the car.”

  Foley left, to return to the car. Napier searched to his right and found an area where only tussocky grass and some bracken grew. “We’ll dig the hole here, Stick — deep enough for him in a sitting position so as his eyes are on a level with the ground.”

  Joyce took a stick of chewing-gum from his pocket, unwrapped it, carefully put the wrapping paper in his mackintosh pocket and the chewing-gum in his mouth.

  Foley returned with two spades, three pairs of wellingtons, and a box full of beer in cans. He looked at Parsons with quick surprise to find him still alive, then put the cans down and handed one of the spades to Joyce.

  The soil was heavy yellow on top of the blue gault, made puddingy by wet, and the digging was very hard work, so that within a few minutes both Joyce and Foley had taken off their mackintoshes and coats.

  Napier stood by Parsons and watched him recover consciousness. He saw the first look of astonishment, the attempt to move his hands, the fast-growing terror when he discovered he couldn’t. Parsons scrabbled with his feet, eventually twisting round until he could get on his knees. Napier kicked him on the side of his head and he fell heavily on to his shoulder. He frantically tried to speak, but could only produce a meaningless mumble.

  Joyce, wellingtons caked with mud, came across to measure with the handle of the spade the distance from Parsons’ eyes to his buttocks. Parsons’ efforts to escape became frantic.

  Ten minutes later, Joyce said: “I reckon it’s right, Titch.” His voice was slightly puffed.

  “O.K. Try him in it for size.”

  Joyce tried to pick up Parsons on his own, but Parsons thrashed his legs so violently that Foley had to help. They sat him down in the oblong hole, now with water in the bottom.

  “Fill it up,” said Napier softly. He hunkered down and put his hand on Parsons’ head, stroking the flesh.

  They filled in the hole, leaving a depression round Parsons’ head which went down to his neck. Joyce and Foley were tough, but they were careful not to look at Parsons’ eyes: Napier never looked away from them.

  Eventually, Napier took a large plastic bag from his mackintosh pocket and carefully slit the bottom. He fitted this over Parsons’ head and used clay to make a watertight seal. He stood up. “All right. Let’s start in on the beer.”

  Foley almost stammered when he said: “What’s up now, Titch?”

  “Like I just said, we drink the beer.”

  “But . . . but what about ’im?”

  Napier just grinned. “Give me a beer. We’ve a lot to get through.”

  Foley crossed to the box and pulled out three cans of beer. He pulled off the tab from each tin in turn, dropped the tabs in the box, and passed the cans around.

  Chapter Eight

  Fusil was a man with so much ambition that but for the steadying influence of Josephine, his wife, he might easily have let that ambition ruin his life. It was ambition as much as anything which made him so sharp at all times and so impatient with anyone who bumbled, even when such person was his immediate superior.

  “I don’t see why you’re so certain. The fact someone’s questioning prostitutes to find a man who works in the town hall doesn’t necessarily prove there’s an assassination plot,” said Detective Chief Inspector Kywood in an aggrieved voice.

  As Fusil stared at the sleek, round face of the other, which ironically suggested strength of character, he thought how hard Kywood was trying not to understand because certainty of an assassination plot would double his ulcer count. “I can’t see it can suggest anything else.”

  Kywood slammed his hand down on the top of his large, expensive desk. “Goddamn it, Bob, I could think of a dozen other reasons for such enquiries.”

  “Can you name a couple?”

  Kywood stared at Fusil with a questioning dislike.
Why in the hell had he been saddled with a D.I. who seemed to delight in complicating things in a less than tactful manner?

  “They want a man who works in the town hall because they’re going to blackmail him into finding out the details of the itinerary,” said Fusil wearily.

  Kywood fiddled with his lips. He daren’t ignore Fusil’s warning altogether in case it was justified and the thought of what would happen to him if he didn’t order an investigation and then there was an assassination attempt was enough to make him shiver. Abruptly, he changed the conversation, weakly hoping the dilemma would sort itself out, given time. “I’ve been through your proposed security checks.” He tapped the folder immediately in front of himself. “They’re all right as far as they go.”

  “But you reckon something’s missing?”

  “You’ve certainly covered most of the ground, Bob, but not quite all of it.” Typically, having flashed his authority, Kywood now became all friendly to try to disperse any sense of lasting offence. “There may be one or two points to pick up now, Bob, but it’s a good bit of work, for all that. You can be sure I’ll tell the chief constable.”

  So what was he supposed to do? wondered Fusil. Remember Kywood in his prayers?

  They discussed the problems of searching all the buildings along the route before and on the days of the state visits. It was more than just a question of logistics: every extra man from county would have to be paid for by the borough force and so the job had to be carried out thoroughly, yet with as few extra hands as was reasonably possible.

  Fusil left Kywood’s office at six-forty-five and went down and out to the courtyard where he’d parked his old and rusting Vauxhall. He drove out to Bratby Cross and a pub where the décor was dirty, the drinks as cheap as anywhere in Fortrow, the smell of the stale beer mingled with the smell of people, and the men and women who drank there were mostly poor and dishonest.

  It was half an hour before Engels shuffled into the bar. No sign passed between them, but Fusil left shortly afterwards and drove to a grime-stained laundry which boasted it had been founded in 1924 and looked at least twice as old. He parked the car and went down an alley to another road where the shadows were many. He worked several informers — more than many D.I.s would have said were really feasible — and each of them took a different precaution to try and keep his police contact secret.

  After a time long enough to cause Fusil to swear with impatience, Engels came shuffling along the road from the other direction, clearly having walked a near circle after leaving the pub. Fusil passed across a pound. “I want to know about the new mob in the area,” he said abruptly.

  “Like I told you before, Mister Fusil, there ain’t any.”

  “And I’m telling you, there is.”

  “I’ve been asking round and the only foreigner is the bloke what was chatting up the Toms.”

  “Then you’re not looking in the right places. Let’s talk about this bloke. Who is he?”

  “I can’t find no one to tell me.”

  Fusil took two more pounds from his pocket and passed them across. “I want his name, quick.”

  “’E’s no age and ’e’s tough.”

  “I know that already. I want his name.” It was time he put pressure on the more amenable prostitutes, he thought, something he hadn’t wanted to do in case news of the police’s interest hadn’t yet got back to the villains. Detective work so often consisted of trying to estimate what the opposition knew and then working within that limit.

  “I’ll do what I can,” promised Engels, “but it ain’t easy.”

  Fusil returned to his car and sat behind the wheel. It was already nine-thirty. As he’d promised faithfully to be home by seven, another half-hour wouldn’t make things much worse with Josephine. He drove off to visit a nearby pub in the hopes of meeting another informer.

  *

  Detective Sergeant Braddon was not a man of great imagination, but when he shone the torch down on the head of the dead man, nostrils just submerged, eyes bulging, he mentally reconstructed the prolonged moments of death and he suffered a quick sense of terror at being faced by such vicious evil.

  The telephone call had come through just as he’d been about to leave the station after laboriously typing out with three fingers the last of his more pressing reports. ‘Go up to the hills,’ the anonymous caller had said, ‘and in the woods opposite the first lay-by near the Devil’s Dyke you’ll find something interesting.’ He’d wondered whether to send Rowan, who was on night duty, but had decided that despite the lateness he’d better handle the job himself, since it might be a hoax. The search in the woods had not been a long one. At first, he hadn’t fully understood what he’d found, then he’d realised what the man had drowned in and he’d shivered from stark disbelieving fear.

  Very reluctantly, he knelt and examined the face close to. The liquid distorted the torch light and the gag made it difficult to visualise the face as a whole, but it did immediately occur to him that this could be the man who’d been questioning the Toms and the Ikeys.

  He returned to the C.I.D. Hillman and used the car radio because he’d not brought a transceiver from the station. He asked operation room at county H.Q. to get a message through to Fortrow to report the finding of the murdered man.

  He remained outside the wood, assuring himself that it was best to do this so that he could direct other people to the corpse: but he knew that in truth he was reluctant to return on his own to the scene of so appalling a murder.

  *

  As soon as the first ground search was completed, Fusil ordered the third portable searchlight to be set up behind the dead man’s head and eight feet back. Then, with light bathing the ground, he and Rowan carried out a second ground search, watched by the waiting P.C.s and Braddon. They found no more than had already been uncovered: a number of foot imprints which made it almost certain there’d been three other persons in brand-new wellingtons — which would, of course, by now have been destroyed. The size of foot of each of the three would be ascertained and from that and in conjunction with depth an estimation of height and build would be made, but such estimates were notoriously inaccurate.

  Fusil looked at his watch. Nearly an hour since he’d telephoned the pathologist’s home and spoken to the wife. Like all wives, she’d probably refused to let him leave until he’d eaten and drunk something in preparation for what must obviously be a long night.

  A soft drizzle began, to add to their discomfort. Fusil ordered Braddon to put a sheet of clear plastic over the head to keep the rain from it and the plastic distorted the man’s face further, unfortunately making the bulging eyes seem as if they were watching the searchers.

  Fusil ordered the search to be extended beyond the immediate vicinity of the body, leaving out any large clumps of bracken or bramble which must wait for daylight. He stepped back and stared unseeingly into the partially defined jumble of branches and trees. The murder had been so nauseatingly executed that it must have some ulterior motive — surely it was meant to serve as a warning to any would-be informer, which confirmed the probability that this was the man who’d been making enquiries amongst the town’s prostitutes. Whoever had ordered this murder must be perverted, in the broadest sense, and utterly vicious. Such a man could well organise a successful assassination because he’d be quite careless how many people were killed. Fusil’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the pathologist and his assistant, who were followed almost immediately by Detective Sergeant Walsh, the police photographer, looking even more lugubrious than usual. The pathologist spoke briefly to Fusil, then opened the boot of his car and was helped into wellingtons, overalls, and a very old and patched mackintosh by his elderly assistant. He followed Fusil into the woods.

  “I thought I’d seen everything,” said the pathologist, as he stared down at the dead man. He shook his head. “God knows what it was like, dying that way. And we call ourselves civilised!” He knelt down to examine the face more closely.

 
“Judging by the footprints, there were at least three murderers.”

  “There’d have to have been, wouldn’t there?” replied the pathologist, for once not pedantic, as he indicated the quantity of liquid. He spoke to his assistant. “Tom, bring large containers, extremity bags, and gloves for both of us.” The assistant returned to the road. “You can start the photographs now,” the pathologist said to Fusil. “When you’re satisfied, get your men to dig him out, but they must leave each sod intact.”

  “I thought of setting out a plastic sheet and they can pile the earth on that.”

  “Yes, that’ll do.”

  Walsh photographed the head and burial area, working very methodically and ignoring Fusil’s impatient orders to get a move one. When he’d finished, the pathologist’s assistant took samples of the liquid. The plastic bag set around the head was carefully removed.

  A large plastic sheet was placed by the side of the hole and two constables dug out the body, placing all the earth on the plastic. More photographs were taken, then the body was lifted out and placed on yet another plastic sheet. The pathologist tested the face and then arms and legs. “Rigor’s set in in the face, jaw and neck muscles, but hardly reached the arms. That gives as a very rough guide a time of between five and seven hours from death — although the method of death and the cold temperature of the clay may make the estimate a very rough one.”

  Fusil wrote the figures down in his notebook. It was now just after ten o’clock so that time of death was between three and five that afternoon.

  The pathologist took the temperature of the body with a special large-scale thermometer. “Down a couple of degrees, which roughly confirms that time of death.” He stood up and tried to brush some mud off his nylon gloves. “I can’t do anything more here. I’ll carry out the P.M. in the morning.”

  “Is it all right if we take a set of prints now, sir?”

  “Yes, provided you use only one hand and naturally don’t untie or cut the lashings.”

  It took Walsh almost half an hour to obtain a reasonable set of prints because the two hands were bound together so tightly. Fusil, by now more impatient than ever, gave orders for a patrol car to be called to take the prints to county H.Q. for immediate identification. Walsh smiled with miserable pleasure. Like all C.I.D. officers ignorant of the finer points of the science of fingerprints, Fusil had no idea how long a job it was to identify any prints.