Play With Fire

by William Shaw

  ‘Only once, as a matter of fact. She told me about her father. Obviously knowing I was knowledgeable about that kind of thing. She hated the Russians. She said they had murdered her parents. Things happened after the war. Terrible things.’

  ‘Where were you at the weekend, Mr Russell? From Thursday night until Sunday morning?’

  The pink left his cheeks. ‘Is that when it happened?’

  ‘Please answer, Mr Russell.’

  ‘Thursday night I was at home.’

  ‘From when?’

  ‘From about seven, it must have been, when I got back from work. I had Friday off.’

  Mrs Caulk had left Miss Bobienski late on Thursday evening.

  ‘And your wife can confirm that?’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell. Will you have to ask her?’

  Breen picked up a paper napkin and wiped his chin. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t you trust me?’

  ‘The word of an Englishman?’

  ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘Not as difficult as it was for Lena Bobienski. I need an alibi.’

  Russell put his head in his hands and sat there for a while. Breen noticed he hadn’t seemed surprised when he had used her real name.

  ‘Everything OK?’ asked the West Indian.

  ‘I think he may have drunk too much last night.’

  ‘Pepper sauce. It’s good for headaches,’ said the man.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Breen.

  Russell looked up. ‘Wait. What if someone else could tell you? My brother-in-law was there. He can confirm I was there all evening. We had dinner that night. I remember.’

  ‘Your brother-in-law? Won’t that be a little awkward?’

  ‘He’s a man, at least. Couldn’t you just say it’s a confidential matter? I mean, you don’t actually have to tell him why you want to know, do you?’

  ‘He would need to confirm you came home and stayed there,’ said Breen.

  ‘He will. I promise. Because I was.’

  ‘OK. What about the next day?’

  ‘At ten in the morning, we left for my mother-in-law’s. Every year she holds a garden party in the Cotswolds. It’s a big family do. We drove out there and I was there all weekend. So was my brother-in-law. He’ll tell you.’

  Breen added a bit of bacon to the egg and put it in his mouth. It was delicious. The spiciness of the sweet, hot sauce cut through the fogginess that had surrounded him since he had woken. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Sure you don’t want some?’

  Russell shook his head. Breen took his time. He was enjoying the food. ‘Good,’ he said, holding up his cup to the cafe owner. The man just shrugged.

  Russell looked at his watch again. ‘I should call the office if this is going to take much longer. I would never have harmed her,’ he said. ‘You have to understand that.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen, then a business card, and wrote on it. ‘This is my brother-in-law’s telephone number. I’ll tell him to expect your call.’

  ‘There are rumours that the Soviets have a moon mission planned. Do you think they’re true?’ asked Breen.

  ‘Are you checking me out?’

  ‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’ In days, the Americans were going to land on the moon themselves.

  Russell relaxed a little. ‘Why are the Americans landing on the moon?’

  ‘Because they can?’

  ‘It’s theatre. They will beam pictures from space to show how superior they are to the Soviets. It’s Hollywood. Then ask yourself whether the Soviets would share those priorities. Of course they wouldn’t. They are secret-keepers. And Brezhnev is a militarist. He’s more concerned about responding to the Allied missile threat than a theatrical gesture. I’ve stood in Red Square as the tanks roll past on May Day. That’s the only kind of theatre Brezhnev is interested in. And the Soviet economy is growing at three per cent a year. Soon he will have more missiles than the Americans. There’s an arms race and the Soviets are winning. Doesn’t that concern you?’

  ‘I’ll call your brother-in-law this afternoon,’ Breen said.

  ‘What will you say?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’ Breen sighed. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell him.’ Breen stood.

  He paid the cafe owner and left a shilling tip. By the time he turned round, Russell had gone.

  SIXTEEN

  And, catching the 27 bus back into town, he was still in the office before anyone else had arrived.

  It was a good time to get things done, so he sat at his desk and wrote up notes of his meetings with Mrs Caulk and Ronald Russell. Tracking down the Krysia family had not been hard. The woman who had adopted Lena now lived in Warwickshire. ‘Lena left home at seventeen,’ she said, her Polish accent almost indecipherable on the phone. ‘Never sends a Christmas card. Nothing. Never grateful.’

  She had had no contact with her since Lena had left home to find work in London. ‘I expect nothing,’ she said. ‘But a Christmas card would be nice. Is she in trouble?’

  Mint was next in, panting from taking the stairs in twos.

  ‘Oh. You’re here already,’ he said, disappointed.

  Briefcases were not common in CID, but Breen noticed that Mint had somehow acquired one. It was brown leather, similar to Breen’s, but newer and cheaper-looking. He lifted it and clicked it open.

  ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out a folder. Breen took it and removed several sheets of paper carefully bound with a green-string treasury tag.

  ‘How was she?’

  ‘Exhausting,’ said Mint.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I mean, as a talker,’ he flustered.

  Breen looked at the first page. He had given a label to each of the men, Mr A, Mr B, Mr C and so on, up to the letter L. Every label had a short paragraph after it. The notes were, he had to admit, excellent.

  Mr A was described as ‘around 6 foot two. Sweaty. Gold wedding ring. Bites nails of left hand but not right.’ The attention to detail was good. Mr A was a regular: ‘Thursdays only 11 p.m.’ Mrs Caulk had good eyes. Mr C, who dyed his hair and wore Viyella shirts, had ‘ink-stained fingers’.

  Breen flicked through it. Some were almost comic. For instance, Mr E insisted on Miss Bobienski showering before he arrived and applying Johnson’s Baby Oil to her body. Vincent Price was there. He was Mr J, who, as Mrs Caulk had said the day before, paid in single pound notes. He also had, Mint had typed, ‘a chipped tooth’.

  Others were more disturbing. Under Mr F, Mint had written ‘Rubber wear’. Mr K ‘Buys Bobienski children’s toys. Wendy doll and doll’s house furniture.’ Mr H, who was ‘early 30s’, ‘asked if he could spank L. Refused.’ Breen tried to imagine the expression on Mint’s face as Mrs Caulk told him that.

  Mr H had also asked if he could take photographs. When Miss Bobienski had forbidden it, he had attempted to smuggle a camera in (‘Kodak Instamatic’). Miss Bobienski had confiscated it and fined him £50 on top of her usual fee; obediently, he had paid up.

  Other details were more prosaic. Mr B was a foreigner who brought wine. Mrs Caulk described him as ‘Slavic’ and ‘a looker, but a bit on the thin side’. Mr G usually arrived with flowers on each visit. ‘Expensive clothes,’ Caulk had noted, though he wore ankle boots and double-breasted suits which she had thought was an unpleasant combination. Mr G, Mint had written, ‘is nice but emotional, arrives at short notice after work, sometimes drunk. Often cries.’

  Mr D was at the top of the second page: ‘Ronnie’. It was clearly the same man he had seen this morning. So D, at least, was Ronald Russell. Caulk had included the detail of the Andrew Grima ring and added, ‘Definitely married. Dyspeptic. A bit of an intellectual.’

  Mint hovered by Breen’s desk. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘It’s good,’ nodded Breen. ‘Very good.’

  Mint grinned. ‘Want tea, Sarge?’

  ‘No.’ Breen was engrossed in reading the file. ‘What is the red dot?’ On the top right-hand corner of D’s
sheet, Mint had added a small red circular sticker.

  ‘When I asked Mrs Caulk which ones she thought were more likely to have a temper, or capable of doing something bad, she picked four.’

  Breen flicked through them. She had identified B, D, G and L.

  ‘But that’s only her say-so, though,’ he added. ‘She said any of them could have been.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Breen.

  Only Mr F, who had called himself ‘Jones’, and L had let slip what they did for a living. Mr F was a chartered surveyor; L was a car dealer, and Mint had added, with no intended humour, ‘specialising in Bristols’.

  Breen took out fifteen sheets of typing paper. ‘Got a felt tip pen?’ he asked.

  Mint found one in his desk and passed it to Breen. He labelled them ‘A’ to ‘L’, and headed the thirteenth sheet ‘Haas’.

  ‘So it could be him?’ said Mint.

  ‘Logically, yes, it’s possible.’

  Then, in pen, he started filling in all the key details on each sheet. He was still doing that when Creamer arrived. ‘Meeting, OK, Paddy?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Give me ten minutes.’

  ‘Righto.’

  On the fourteenth, he wrote ‘Florence Caulk’.

  ‘Really? A woman?’ said Mint.

  ‘Gut feeling says it’s not her. But you have to keep an open mind.’ Mint peered at sheet ‘D’ and said, ‘How did you find his name already?’

  ‘The ring. I went to the shop.’

  At the bottom, Breen had written ‘Claims to have alibi but needs checking’.

  The map Mint had worked on yesterday was pinned onto the partition wall of Creamer’s office. Breen took it down and started replacing it with the sheets of paper with drawing pins he’d borrowed from Miss Rasper. By the time he’d put the fourth sheet up it was clear they hadn’t enough space. ‘Help me with this desk,’ he ordered Mint, and they moved it back two feet so that they could get at more of the wall.

  He added a new sheet: ‘Weapon’. On it he wrote: ‘Champagne bottle?’

  ‘Florence Caulk said she’d tidied a bottle away on the Friday when she arrived,’ explained Breen.

  When they’d finished, Breen, Mint and Miss Rasper stood looking.

  ‘One of them, is it?’ said Miss Rasper.

  ‘I think so,’ said Breen.

  ‘Well, I hope you catch the bastard,’ she said. And the office went silent for a second, because in the weeks she had been here, nobody had ever heard her use a profanity before.

  When Creamer rounded the corner and saw the collection of sheets of paper, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, very good. Very good indeed.’

  ‘What about my desk?’ grumbled the detective whose desk Breen had pushed aside, but no one was listening.

  Creamer inspected each page, one by one.

  ‘Was this your work, Sergeant Breen?’

  ‘Constable Mint, sir. He interviewed the prostitute’s maid.’

  ‘This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. A team-based approach.’

  Mint looked down at his shiny black shoes, embarrassed. Behind Creamer’s back, one of the CID men flicked him a V-sign.

  ‘You can rule the woman out, though. I spoke to Dr Wellington just now. From the angle and force of the blow that killed her he is convinced we are dealing with a man.’ The rest of the men had gathered round now. Creamer pulled a pen from inside his jacket, turned and put a cross on Mrs Caulk’s sheet. ‘From the position and nature of the fatal impact, Dr Wellington believes that the victim was probably beaten from the front by someone who was able to lift the weapon above her head –’ he lifted his arm and brought it down – ‘so before receiving a further traumatic hit to the back of the head, from the same blunt instrument that would have almost certainly been the cause of death. But the bruises were not well developed, which suggests that she was killed soon after the beating started.’

  Creamer looked around at his men, his hand still gripping an imaginary weapon, clearly enjoying the attention. ‘Anything else we can use to rule any of these out?’

  ‘Timing?’ suggested someone.

  ‘Wellington is still having difficulties ascertaining the time of death, however, so we are still left with a window of up to two days, unfortunately.’

  ‘One day,’ said Breen, ‘if we accept that it was the killer who deliberately disabled the lift.’

  They stared at the sheets some more.

  ‘When will we be able to search the place?’ asked Creamer.

  ‘The forensics men should be finished any time,’ said Breen. ‘So as soon as we get the call through about that, we can get in.’

  ‘Right. So. How do we track these fellows down?’ said Creamer. ‘Details, details, details. Where do they work?’

  ‘I was thinking Mr C might be a printer. He had inky fingers. Or a clerk of some sort,’ said Mint.

  ‘Some kind of desk job?’

  ‘Doesn’t exactly narrow it down.’

  ‘Mr A’s short fingernails on the left hand might make him a musician,’ said Breen. ‘Violin. Or guitar.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Creamer. ‘But not a lot of use. London is full of them.’

  They stared at the wall. ‘Mr J paid in single pound notes,’ came Miss Rasper’s voice from behind them. ‘I’ll bet he worked behind a till.’ They turned and stared at her a second. She had joined them again, peering at the wall.

  ‘Good,’ said Creamer finally. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘One thing I forgot,’ said Mint quietly. ‘I didn’t put it on the list.’

  ‘What?’

  Everybody looked at him.

  ‘Right before she was going, Mrs Caulk said maybe we know who it is already.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mint. ‘I asked her why she said that. She was a bit coy at first, like she didn’t want to say. So I pressed her and said we’d have to keep her in if there was something we thought she wasn’t telling. I’m not sure. We could do that, couldn’t we? Withholding evidence?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Constable?’ said Creamer.

  ‘Well. In the end, after I said we could arrest her, she said she thinks one of them was a copper.’

  There were a few seconds’ silence.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Inspector Creamer.

  ‘When Miss Bobienski said she was going to advertise in Private Eye, Caulk advised her against it. Said it might attract the attention of the Vice Squad. Miss Bobienski just laughed at her and said she had a friend who could sort all that out.’

  ‘A policeman?’

  ‘That’s what she thought Miss Bobienski meant, yes.’

  ‘You mean, one of the victim’s… customers… may have been a policeman?’

  Breen turned back to the sheets of paper. ‘Which one?’

  ‘She didn’t know. Miss Bobienski never told her which one. Only that one was a copper.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Inspector Creamer.

  ‘Sure she wasn’t just trying to wind you up?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Mint.

  ‘Ah,’ said Creamer, looking down at his shoes.

  ‘I know it’s not good, one of ours visiting a prostitute,’ said Mint, looking around the room, puzzled. ‘But it might be useful, no? Whoever he was, I mean… Perhaps he can tell us something, if we can track him down? Maybe we can figure out who it is?’

  There was a heaviness in the room; nobody spoke.

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ said Mint.

  ‘OK, everybody, back to work,’ said Creamer quietly. ‘That report you gave to Sergeant Breen,’ he said to Mint. ‘I’ll take that, please.’

  Breen took the sheaf of papers off his desk and handed it to the inspector who retreated to his office, closing the door behind him; through the glass you could hear him talking on the phone.

  Miss Rasper’s electric typewriter sprang noisily back to life.

  ‘What just happened?’ said Mint.

  Constable Jones said,
‘Don’t you get it, teacher’s pet?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you thick?’ Jones sneered; he enjoyed having someone to pick on. Until Mint had arrived, Jones had been the junior officer around here. ‘Why do you think McPhail was interested in this case, all of a sudden?’

  The typing stopped again.

  ‘You don’t think it was him?’ said Mint.

  Jones burst out laughing. ‘That would be something, wouldn’t it?’

  Miss Rasper pursed her lips.

  Breen said, ‘If it’s a copper, a senior copper especially, that would explain why they’re keeping an eye on us, why McPhail was so interested. And why the beat coppers were warned off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I had a whisper that the beat coppers were warned off Harewood Avenue after dark.’

  One of the men whistled.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Unfortunate.’

  ‘One of ours? I mean, it’s just around the bloody corner, isn’t it?’

  ‘Something that won’t look good in the papers,’ said Breen. ‘Right now the boss will be phoning McPhail to let him know what you’ve turned up. Don’t expect a medal.’

  ‘And don’t be surprised if our lot doesn’t get pulled off the case, neither,’ added Jones.

  Mint looked shocked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Take a car. Go and find Mrs Caulk. If she’s not at Heatherley’s, check her flat. Bring her back in,’ Breen said. He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll need to talk to her again.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarge,’ said Mint, looking down at his desk. ‘I mean, I just thought. Do you think that’s why they took the beat officers off the street? They wouldn’t do that, would they? Not to protect a copper.’

  Breen didn’t answer, though he had been thinking the same. ‘Before you go. Was that the only copy of that report, Mint?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’ve got a carbon.’ Mint dug inside his new briefcase, drew out a second folder and handed it to Breen. He leaned towards him and whispered, ‘What if they are protecting somebody big, though? A senior policeman.’

  ‘We don’t know anything,’ said Breen.

  ‘Admit it, though. It’s what you’re thinking.’

  But Breen was already on the telephone. Mint turned away, looking troubled. Ronald Russell’s brother-in-law was a civil servant at the Ministry of Agriculture. An officious switchboard operator demanded to know the nature of his business. Then, when he was finally put through, the brother-in-law demanded in a taut voice, ‘Why do you need to know?’