The Laundry Man

by Graham Ison

  ‘I think Horsfall knows more than he’s telling.’

  ‘There’s no doubt about that, Denzil.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have another chat with him?’

  ‘What and trade off a few counts on his indictment?’ Fox scoffed. ‘There’s no way that bastard’s going to wriggle out of a single one of those, I’ll tell you. No, Denzil, he can sit in his flowery dell and bloody well sweat.’

  ‘Could forensicate the drum,’ suggested Evans tentatively.

  ‘Forensicate!’ Fox sounded horrified. ‘What sort of word’s that, for Christ’s sake? You really are getting quite slovenly, Denzil. If you mean conduct a scientific search of the residence, then say so.’

  Evans looked crestfallen. ‘Yeah, well that’s what I meant.’

  Fox shrugged. ‘That’s no good. We can do it once we’ve made an arrest, but we can’t make an arrest until we’ve got some evidence. I think it’s what they call a Catch 23 situation, Denzil.’

  Evans felt like saying that that had never stopped Fox before. Instead, he confined himself to evening the score. ‘Catch 22, guv.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Catch 22, guv, not Catch 23.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of inflation, Denzil?’

  *

  But in the end, that was what Fox decided to do. Unfortunately, when the Flying Squad swooped, the suspect had gone. And no one knew where.

  ‘Sod it!’ said Fox. ‘You can’t trust anyone these days. Right.’ He glowered at Detective Inspectors Evans and Findlater. ‘I want this person found,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the DIs in unison. They were far from happy, but then policing is a far from happy profession.

  It took them a week of discreet and dedicated enquiry work, but eventually they were able to return to Fox’s office feeling pleased with themselves.

  ‘Located, sir,’ said Findlater.

  ‘Where?’ asked Fox.

  ‘In a boarding house in Brighton.’

  Fox nodded. ‘What took you so long?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was an old Victorian house with a semi-basement and steps leading up to the front door. Pieces of the concrete facing had broken off and the paintwork was so old that patches of bare wood showed through. A card which read ‘Vacancies’ was propped in one of the downstairs windows and looked as though it had been there for years. The landlady probably boasted of sea views, but to take advantage of them, one would undoubtedly be obliged to hang out of a rear window at a very dangerous angle.

  ‘Just the place to spend a fortnight’s annual leave,’ said Fox as he got out of his car. ‘Wait here, Swann,’ he added.

  Fox had paid a courtesy call on John Street police station in Brighton, just to let them know that he was on their ground to arrest a murderer. Although the Flying Squad were in possession of the gun which had killed Pogson, there was no telling whether his killer had another. At least, that was the argument put forward by the Brighton police. That prospect made them unhappy and they explained that they could not risk the possibility of armed mayhem breaking loose in their fashionable watering-place. Consequently, the local detective inspector and a team of his officers, all armed, had been sent with the Flying Squad men because the Chief Constable of Sussex wouldn’t sanction the carrying of firearms by Metropolitan officers in his area. Fox had shrugged phlegmatically at this unwanted assistance. He didn’t anticipate any trouble.

  The woman who opened the front door beamed at the three men standing on the doorstep, trying quickly to assess how much they were worth before quoting a price for bed and breakfast.

  ‘We’re from the police, madam,’ said the local DI.

  ‘Oh!’ said the woman. The smile vanished.

  There was no trouble. They knocked on the door of the bed-sitting room and it was opened almost immediately.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Fox. ‘I’m arresting you for the murder of David Pogson.’

  Fox had been undermined by the Crown Prosecution Service. Horsfall’s solicitor had spoken to the CPS solicitor handling the matter of The Crown against Horsfall and suggested that, as his client had information which might be of use to the police, some consideration ought to be given in respect of the unsolicited assistance his client was about to offer. Particularly, Horsfall’s solicitor had added, in view of the fact that his client had a complete answer to the charges. In short, a trade-off.

  Fox summarised this neat piece of legal manoeuvring in a single word. ‘Cobblers!’ he had said, but being presented with the opportunity he decided to milk Horsfall for all he was worth. ‘We’ll give it a run,’ he had said to Evans. They journeyed to Brixton Prison.

  ‘Well, Danny, old cock, how are you enjoying the health farm?’

  Horsfall, nowhere near as sanguine about the outcome of his trial as his solicitor was and having been deprived of his rich living, had lost weight. ‘D’you want to hear it, or not?’ he asked nastily.

  ‘For what it’s likely to be worth,’ said Fox. ‘But you needn’t think you’re going to wriggle out from under, old son.’

  ‘You’ve nicked this geyser, then?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Fox. ‘Now, Danny, what have you to tell me?’

  ‘He came round my office the day after Davie got topped. And he gave me a copy of the statement you found and told me that the original was in the safe deposit box, and his solicitor had instructions that if anything happened to him, he should hand it over to the police. Then he give me the gun.’

  ‘How unfair,’ murmured Fox. ‘He must have been studying your methods, Danny.’

  ‘D’you want to hear this or not?’ asked Horsfall, getting more rattled by the minute. Despite his solicitor’s confident assurances that any help he gave the police would be taken into account at his trial, Horsfall knew the police and he knew Tommy Fox. And it would only need the head of the Flying Squad to tell the Crown’s solicitor that the information was useless and Horsfall would be back where he had started. It was a gamble, but then Horsfall had been gambling all his life.

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Fox, gazing round the room with apparent disinterest.

  ‘Well, this statement had got a load of stuff about what I was supposed to be doing. All lies, of course.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But the trouble is that when people start telling wicked lies like that, other people start believing them. And after all, no one wants to be investigated, do they? I mean, even the best in the City would be a bit nervous if the Fraud Squad started poking about. It’s only natural, like.’

  ‘If it was all lies why didn’t you come to see us, Danny? You are making an allegation of blackmail, after all, aren’t you?’

  Horsfall scoffed. ‘You must be bloody joking. Trot down the nick with that. No way. Anyhow, like I said, he bunged me this shooter and told me he’d topped Davie. And then he said I had to think of a way of getting him off the hook, or he’d blow the gaff. And with that he pisses off.’

  Fox chuckled. ‘Very enterprising that, Danny. Sort of hoist with your own petard, to coin a phrase. So what did you do?’ Fox knew the answer to that, but as Horsfall was doing a bit of confessing, he thought it might as well go down on the tape recorder.

  ‘Got Feather to bung it on Conway, just to teach him a lesson.’

  ‘Teach him a lesson for what?’

  ‘For letting his bird pull a shooter on Lenny when he went round there to give Conway a bit of helpful advice. It’d make me look a right prat if stories like that got about. I don’t like that sort of thing, see.’

  Fox nodded sagely. ‘Nor do I, Danny, nor do I. But you obviously forgot about fingerprints. Wonderful science, that.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I made sure that mine weren’t on it, nor the bloke you’ve just nicked.’

  ‘But Lenny Feather’s were.’

  Horsfall shrugged. ‘That’s his hard luck. Should be more careful.’

  Fox shook his head and tutted. ‘You just
don’t think ahead, Danny, do you?’

  *

  ‘Was the information given you by Horsfall of any value, in your enquiries, Mr Fox?’ asked the CPS solicitor.

  ‘Absolutely bloody useless,’ said Fox.

  *

  Fox looked sternly at the crumpled figure of Ralph Davenport sitting in the interview room. ‘I am about to charge you with the murder of one David Pogson on or about the first of June. If you wish to make a statement about this matter, I have to warn you that anything you say will be recorded and may be put in evidence.’

  Fox sat down and hoped. Hoped that Davenport would tell him everything he needed to know. If he did not, the case against him was non-existent. He knew perfectly well that Danny Horsfall could make a statement the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and swear it on a stack of bibles as high as Nelson’s Column, but at the end of it all, Davenport’s counsel would destroy it. Destroy it because Horsfall would be shown to be a person whose word could not be relied upon. And there was no corroborative evidence.

  ‘It’s all a terrible mess,’ said Davenport. ‘That man’s destroyed me.’

  ‘That’s fair comment,’ said Fox. And that was all he said. He knew that he had to be careful not to say anything which might invalidate what looked like being Davenport’s confession.

  ‘Pogson got that painting from Horsfall, although I didn’t know that at the time. But I did know that it had never been on the market. At least, not within living memory. I was asked to authenticate it because David had a potential buyer in Amsterdam. Although I say it myself, I am regarded as quite an expert on French impressionists.’ Davenport gave a modest smile and absently brushed at a crumb on the table. ‘I was in no doubt that this was Cezanne’s work and I was prepared to stand by my view. But as I told you before, the purchaser in Holland didn’t get the painting I had appraised.’ Despite sounding tired, he was speaking more lucidly than at any previous time Fox had spoken to him. ‘The art world is a very close-knit one,’ he went on, ‘and spiteful, too. You can imagine what that affair did to my reputation. Once word got around ...’ He completed the sentence with an eloquent shrug. ‘Despite my protestations, when I went to Amsterdam, that the painting I saw then was not the one I had seen originally, the Dutch dealer just wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that my own partner would have double-crossed me in that way. He thought that it was a huge conspiracy and that I was a part of it.’

  ‘And then?’ Fox moved back from the table to light a cigarette. He knew that Davenport didn’t smoke and didn’t want to upset him.

  ‘When I got back, I tackled David about it. He denied all knowledge. But then I started to make my own enquiries. In the trade. It was then I learned that The Orange Grove had been stolen from a country house about four years ago, although no one was really prepared to come out and say so. Well, that alerted me and it started to fall into place. That David had had something to do with that, and had used my authentication to palm off a fake on the Dutchman.’ Davenport shook his head wearily. ‘I really don’t know how he thought he would get away with it.’

  ‘So what did you do next?’

  ‘After you came to see me the first time, I started to check. Then you came back again and told me that I only owned five per cent of my own gallery and that the rest was owned by a company headed by Horsfall. It was at that point that I decided to go after Horsfall. Soho is a village, you know ...’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox, ‘I know.’

  ‘And what I heard about Horsfall was not pleasant. I started to put together everything I had learned and I wrote it all down. That’s the statement you found. But before that, I went to David’s flat. It was the afternoon of your second visit. He’d not been into the gallery since the business with the Cézanne. I confronted him with everything I had found out. About him, and about Horsfall. He’d been careless enough to leave one or two incriminating papers in his desk at the gallery. That’s what gave me a start. I’d found a gun, too.’ Davenport spoke lightly, a throwaway line almost.

  ‘In Pogson’s desk at the gallery?’

  ‘Yes. So I took it with me, and told him that he was going to have to do something about this terrible mess he’d got me into, to help me redress my tarnished reputation. After all, it was all his fault.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He laughed. He said that we were sitting on a gold mine, that he could produce fakes and that all I needed to do was to provide authentication. I couldn’t believe that he could be so stupid. I told him that that sort of thing would only work once and that in any case it was illegal. He said he’d been doing it for ages, and it was easy money. I said I’d have nothing to do with it. Then I told him that I was going to the police. He didn’t know that I’d done so already. But he laughed again and said I might just as well commit suicide. That Horsfall would kill me. It was then that I pulled out the gun.’ Davenport smiled, again the same diffident smile. ‘Actually, I had it in my brief-case. David just laughed and said that I wouldn’t have the courage to use it.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I sat considering him for a few moments. Then I shot him. Four times. The noise was deafening. I’m surprised that no one heard it.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Fox mildly. But he wasn’t. He knew that these days no one wanted to get involved. Particularly in murder.

  ‘David’s flat was on the ground floor,’ said Davenport. ‘I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. It was difficult enough anyway, but if it had been an upstairs flat, I would have had to leave him there. Anyway, I waited until it was dark and got my car round to the back of the flats. Fortunately there was a service road leading to the garages. I bundled him out of the window and somehow got him into the boot. It was exhausting, I can tell you.’ He interrupted himself. ‘I’m turned sixty, you know.’ Fox nodded. ‘I drove down to Chelsea and dumped him in the river.’

  Fox was amazed. Amazed at the matter-of-fact way in which Davenport was relating his crime; amazed also that so amateurish the disposal of a body in the heart of London should have succeeded. It spoke volumes for having more constables on the beat. But, above all, Fox couldn’t understand why Davenport had troubled to move the body at all, with its inherent risk of discovery. The thought of this naive and ageing art dealer driving through London with a body in the boot of his car came into the realms of black humour.

  But the irony of it all was that without Davenport’s confession, his crime may well have gone undetected. ‘What did you do then?’ asked Fox.

  ‘I went home and had a large brandy.’ Davenport looked surprised at the question, as though there was no alternative.

  ‘I see.’ Fox nodded. This man certainly had style.

  ‘A day or two later, I took a safe deposit box in an assumed name, left my statement there and went to see Horsfall.’ Davenport continued without prompting, as though relishing his moment of notoriety. ‘It was the first time I’d met him. He’s a very unsavoury sort of man, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘I’ve met him, too.’

  ‘Anyway, I told him what had happened and I told him where I’d left the statement. Then I gave him the gun and said that as he was a criminal, he would be able to sort things out. The statement was my insurance, you see. I told him that if I was arrested, or if anything else happened to me, my solicitor would take the statement to the police. I must say he didn’t seem very keen on the idea.’

  ‘I imagine not,’ said Fox, making a determined effort not to smile. It was the dry way in which Davenport was recounting these events rather than what he was actually saying that Fox found amusing.

  ‘What I didn’t realise, of course, was that Horsfall would try to get hold of the statement. Once I read in the paper about the raid on the safe depository, I guessed that he was behind it. Then when I heard about his arrest, I realised that my insurance had come to nothing. That’s why I went to Brighton. But it was no good. If you hadn’t arrived, I would have given myself up. Horsfall
and Pogson, between them, have ruined me. Everything I ever worked for, the reputation I built up, the gallery. All gone.’ He shrugged yet again, lifting his shoulders as though a great weight had been removed from them by his confession.

  ‘One question, Mr Davenport. Did you intend to kill David Pogson?’

  ‘Yes, Chief Superintendent, I did. And if I had the chance I would not only do it again, but I would kill Horsfall, too.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t when I had the chance.’

  Fox thought that if he had, he would have saved the taxpayer a considerable amount of money.

  *

  The trial at Number Four Court at the Old Bailey went the way of most such trials. There were only a few highlights.

  One of the lesser villains in the dock had attacked DS Fletcher with an iron bar during the attempted raid on the safe deposit. At one point, this villain’s defence counsel, a young, white-wigged barrister, rose importantly to cross-examine.

  ‘You are aware, are you not, officer, that my client suffered concussion?’ he asked, gathering his gown around himself. ‘And still has severe headaches.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘As a result of your striking him with a truncheon?’

  ‘I believe so, sir,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘Is it not a fact, officer,’ continued counsel, gazing at the high, lofted ceiling of the courtroom, ‘that police regulations require that you should only aim for the arms and legs?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘Am I to take it then that your striking him on the head was accidental?’ Defence counsel adjusted his wig slightly.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘Oh!’ Counsel paused to stare meaningfully at the jury. ‘Are you saying that you deliberately struck my client on the head, then?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fletcher. ‘I just continued to strike him until he fell senseless to the floor.’

  ‘Oh!’ said counsel, and closely examined his brief.