Another Man's Poison

by J F Straker

  Why had she not seen it like that? she wondered. It was typical of Robin to be considerate. A wave of love for him, of gratitude, overcame her. She said brokenly, ‘Oh, Robin! Dear Robin! Don’t you know I want to be involved?’

  He bent and kissed her forehead. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘You have to be. All right, so you’re involved. Now, can we get back to the mail?’

  She picked up her pad and pencil. ‘What is Martin doing?’

  ‘Nothing, I hope.’ He explained why, to Martin’s disgust, he had again vetoed any action by the police. ‘Incidentally, Karen mustn’t know I’ve told you and Martin. That’s important, Polly. Can you cope, do you think?’

  ‘I’ll cope,’ she said. ‘But Simon knows too, don’t forget. What will you do about him?’

  ‘Yes, Simon’s certainly a problem.’ He frowned. ‘Will he talk?’

  ‘He might tell his family. He admires you, Robin, and he adores Karen. Or did. Now, of course, he believes she’s been going to bed with a black man. That disgusts him. He hates blacks, refers to them as wogs. I think he’d join the National Front if it were considered respectable. So he might want to dissuade his family from being friendly with her. And if Adele got hold of it —’ Polly shrugged. ‘Well, you know Adele.’

  ‘Yes.’ The frown deepened. ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘Well, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, isn’t it? Better he should know the truth — the whole truth, I mean — rather than his twisted version. It would restore his faith in Karen, and that’s important. He’d be as anxious as you to keep her secret.’

  ‘Learning, Polly, not knowledge, if you’re quoting Pope. But you’re right. I’ll talk to him.’

  To have asked Simon up to the Hall would have been to risk the cold shoulder for Karen should they meet, and he rang the young man and invited him to lunch the following day at a nearby country inn. Simon was surprised by the invitation, which had been given without explanation, and his manner when he arrived was respectful but guarded. Robin wasted no time in preliminaries. Over pints of real ale he related the full story of the kidnapping and the subsequent birth of the child, and why the truth on both events had been concealed to spare Karen pain and embarrassment. ‘I’m giving you the works now, Simon, because I understand from Polly that you’ve deduced part of the truth and twisted the rest to fit. That’s left you with a rather nasty view of my wife, hasn’t it?’ He put up a hand as Simon started to protest. ‘All right, all right! I’m not blaming you. I just wanted to put the record straight, for your sake as well as hers. Okay?’

  The look on Simon’s face was more expressive of his horror, both at what Karen had experienced and his misjudgment of her, than his rather halting words. ‘She’s always been my ideal, you see,’ he said. ‘That made my disgust the greater. But I should have known better than to doubt her. Will she ever forgive me, do you think?’

  ‘She mustn’t know there’s anything to forgive,’ Robin told him. ‘That’s important, Simon. If she thought you knew the truth she’d never feel at ease with you or your family again. So say nothing. Not to Karen, not to anyone. Understood?’

  ‘Of course. And thank you for telling me. At least I won’t continue to make a fool of myself.’

  They ordered a ploughman’s lunch. As they ate, Simon said, ‘Have the police any sort of a clue, do you know? I suppose Mr Beck is in charge of the investigation.’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Robin said. ‘The police haven’t been informed. Not officially, that is. Martin Beck knows, of course, but he’s agreed to take no action.’

  ‘No?’ Simon was aghast. ‘But why?’

  Robin told him why. ‘Anyway, it’s nearly ten months since it happened. The odds against catching them now must be astronomical.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to let the brutes get away with it?’ Simon said, incredulous. ‘You’re going to do nothing?’

  ‘It goes against the grain, I admit. But I’ve no alternative.’

  ‘But you have! You could mount a private investigation, employ detectives. I’d help, Mr Granger. Gladly.’

  ‘Thank you, Simon. And suppose — just suppose — we got lucky. What then? No police, remember.’

  ‘No. But we could beat them up, tear the living daylights out of them. That wog who — who — Christ! I could just about kill the swine!’

  ‘So could I.’ Robin’s voice took on a harsher note. ‘I lie awake at night imagining how I’d break every bone in his filthy body.’ He wrenched a bread roll in two. ‘Other times I get nightmares about what happened. Believe me, Simon, if I thought there was the slightest chance of finding them I’d have explored it ages ago. You talk about employing detectives. Fair enough. But without some sort of a lead, what could they do?’

  ‘Couldn’t Karen tell you anything?’ Simon asked gloomily.

  ‘Nothing that leads anywhere.’ Robin repeated the little Karen had been able to remember. ‘A big strong woman with a harsh voice who smelled of cheap scent — what use is that? As for the man — the negro, presumably — she didn’t even hear his voice, let alone see him. And they aren’t necessarily local villains, remember. As for where she was held — well, that could be anywhere.’

  ‘Anywhere on a radius of six miles,’ Simon said. ‘That narrows it a bit. And almost certainly in the town, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Probably.’ Robin paused. ‘Why the six-mile radius?’

  Simon explained. When he brought Karen home from shopping on the day she was kidnapped, he said, the Porsche was in the drive, where the mechanic had left it after its service, and he had checked its mileage because he thought Karen was exaggerating when she said it had done around six thousand miles. In fact the mileometer showed 4,551, a number he recognised as a combination of his mother’s and father’s ages. ‘I can’t remember why I checked again when I called the next morning, but I did,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it was because I’d seen the car pass our place the previous evening and wondered where she’d been. Not that it matters. The point is, there was another twelve miles on the clock.’ The look he gave Robin was almost triumphant. ‘Six miles there and six miles back, Mr Granger.’

  ‘I can count,’ Robin said. ‘And can we stop this ‘Mr Granger’ lark? The rest of your family use my Christian name. Why not you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘I’d prefer it.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’ Simon finished the last of his bread and cheese. ‘But about this six-mile limit. If I had to make a guess I’d plump for the Radcliffe Park area.’

  ‘Oh?’ It was a part of the town Robin did not know. ‘Why?’

  Apart from the cemetery, Simon said, Radcliffe Park had little to do with open green spaces. Before the last war it had been mainly commercial, small independent businesses and factories with warehouses flanking the canal. The residential part had been a near slum: narrow streets, many of them cobbled, with back-to-back houses and small corner street stores. A stick of German bombs during the war, and a progressive council, had done something to change that. The bombs had landed north of the canal, and the destruction of a large number of slum dwellings had inspired the council to demolish others, erecting in their stead a new housing estate. ‘But there are still plenty of the old houses left,’ Simon said. ‘Fish Street and Butchers Row and the Gullet are still a slum area. Most of the businesses that flourished along Canal Street — well, perhaps not flourished — struggled would be a better word — have moved away or gone bust, but the buildings — factories, stores, warehouses — are still there, empty and boarded up, some of them near ruins. And there’s no traffic now on the canal. It never was important as a waterway, although some of the smaller concerns used it. Now it’s become a receptacle for rubbish.’

  ‘You seem to know the area well,’ Robin said.

  ‘I should. My grandfather started in Canal Street, and my father and Uncle Daniel worked there until they moved to our present premises. The building has been taken over by the Salvation
Army.’

  ‘And that’s where you think Karen might have been held?’

  ‘Why not? It’s the right distance from the Hall, and it would be easy to break into one of those empty warehouses. Besides, Radcliffe Park has a large black population, even on the new estate. I believe the police still patrol the area in pairs at night. It’s got a reputation, you see. Ask Mr Beck. And not only because of the wogs.’

  Robin frowned. ‘We’ll leave Martin Beck out of this. And do you mind if we stick to ‘blacks’, not ‘wogs’?’

  The young man flushed. ‘Sorry, Mr — er — Robin. It’s just that — well, anyway, I’m sorry. But don’t you agree about Radcliffe Park?’

  ‘Yes. You could be right. However, even if we discovered the actual room in which Karen was held — though it beats me how we’d be able to recognise it — where would that get us?’

  ‘There could be fingerprints.’

  ‘After ten months? Anyway, that’s police work, and the police are out.’

  Simon was still urging a private investigation when they parted, and his enthusiasm was such that Robin promised to consider it. Not that he hadn’t considered it before. What Karen had had to suffer was something he could never forgive, something that demanded to be avenged. It might be unchristian, it could not erase the past and was unlikely to alter the future; but the desire for vengeance was there and he knew that until it was satisfied it would persist. Had reason not told him, as he had explained to Simon, that the possibility of success was so remote as to be almost nil, he would long since have attempted to pick up the villains’ trail. But had reason been too pessimistic? he wondered now. Simon had hinted at a likely starting-point, something he had not had before. If they had that, was it not possible that other points on the trail might follow?

  He tried to analyse again the little Karen had been able to tell. She had described the room as small and sparsely furnished, with windows boarded and a washbasin the only fixture. No heat, no light, no plumbing. Not a room in an inhabited building, then, which added credence to Simon’s guess at Radcliffe Park. Her descriptions, such as they were, of the man and woman who had attended her could be of use only if they had suspects in mind. But what of the third man? There had to be another, for the man’s voice on the telephone had certainly been English. Robin tried to recall it, to picture the speaker. The high pitch could have been a disguise but — well, in his fifties, perhaps, and not a cultured voice. But authoritative. Most probably he had been the brains behind the crime.

  Then there was the car with the blown silencer that Arthur Huntsman had heard. If it had been driven through the town in as noisy a condition as Mrs Huntsman had intimated it might well have been stopped by the police and its number taken. It was tempting to consider asking Martin to check, for the break-through could be there. But Martin was present when Polly had told them what Mrs Huntsman had said and would recognise the connection; and although Martin would undoubtedly welcome the prospect of an investigation, even at this late date, he would insist on its being official. He would have no choice, for if it were successful he could not allow it to end as Robin and Simon had in mind to end it. He would be forced to make an arrest, resulting in the publicity Robin was determined to avoid. So Martin must be out.

  A puzzling aspect on which Robin had never ceased to ponder was the kidnappers’ knowledge of his customary signal with the headlights to alert Karen to his return. How had they come by it? By keeping tabs on his movements? Unlikely, for he seldom left the house at night without Karen. Even more unlikely was the possibility that a friend or acquaintance was involved with the kidnappers. It was possible, of course, that one of them had unwittingly mentioned the signal within earshot of a member of the gang. Yet that too was hard to credit. Who would consider it of sufficient interest for comment?

  Reluctantly he put the problem aside. But not the quest of which it was a part. It took him two days to reach a decision. Then he rang Simon and arranged a meeting.

  Thirteen

  ‘I’m meeting Simon Mallett this afternoon,’ he told Karen at lunch. ‘He’s showing me his firm’s old premises in Radcliffe Park.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘I suppose he thought I might be interested.’

  ‘I had the impression you weren’t particularly keen on him.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not a bad lad. All right in small doses. And it shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘Well, rather you than me,’ she said. ‘Radcliffe Park stinks.’

  During the short time he had lived at the Hall Robin had had no occasion to visit the Radcliffe Park district, which lay north-east of the town centre and north of the main road to the east. Henry Mallett had described it as an enclave of the bad old days into which people ventured only if they had business there, and as they left the town centre and drove along Canal Street in Simon’s MG (Simon had vetoed the Porsche and the Rolls as too conspicuous) Robin decided that Henry could well be right. So too could Karen, literally as well as figuratively. On the northern side of the street were rows of small terraced houses, their front doors opening directly on to the pavement, interspersed with seedy little shops and a couple of pubs. Here and there a house had been freshly painted, but many of them looked to be in need of attention, the paintwork peeling and slates missing from the roofs. Yet there was no overall air of poverty. Television aerials sprouted from most chimneys, cars stood bumper to bumper against the kerb, the children looked well fed. Narrow streets, some cobbled, led upward, to end in the post-war council estate. On a corner site a church, gaunt and grey, stood surrounded by spiked railings, the chain and padlock on the gate symbolic of the reputation of the district.

  The south side of the street was as Simon had described it: a succession of factories and workshops and warehouses, a few still in use, some more derelict than others. Crude slogans adorned the walls, few of the windows were unbroken. Simon parked the car in an open space where the rubble had been removed from a collapsed building and led the way on to the towpath that ran alongside the canal.

  ‘Jesus!’ Robin exclaimed. ‘What a gong! Like a mixture of cabbage water and stale beer and urine.’

  Simon laughed. ‘They probably all contribute. I once took our dog for a walk along here. He loved it.’

  ‘I bet he did.’

  The day was cold and bleak, with a chill wind from the east, and they walked briskly along the south pavement, examining the buildings that fronted it but with no firm idea of what they were looking for. The few pedestrians they met were mainly black and — not surprisingly, for unemployment in the district was high — with as many men as women among them. Both Robin and Simon were casually dressed, but even so they attracted attention. People turned to stare at them, and a group of young blacks lolling in a sheltered doorway eyed them with unconcealed malevolence. No place for an evening stroll, Robin thought. Even in daylight it has a certain menace.

  They reached the end of the street and started back. ‘We don’t seem to be getting much out of this,’ he said ‘Any suggestions?’

  ‘Cherwells the printers are along here,’ Simon said. ‘Been here since the year dot. They did all our printing, such as it was, in grandfather’s day, and we still use them occasionally. Let’s see if anyone there can come up with some answers.’

  ‘Answers to what?’ Robin said. ‘We need to settle the questions first.’

  They had decided on at least some of the questions by the time they reached Cherwells’ workshop. From the outside the building looked as neglected as its neighbours; inside they were met by the hum and clatter of machinery and the smell of printers’ ink and cigarette smoke. On the far side of the wooden flap that served as a counter a man with his back to them stood watching an old Heidelberg machine deposit printed sheets of paper in a neat pile. Beyond the Heidelberg two smaller machines were busy, and away to the right a coloured youth was using a guillotine, emitting a low grunt each time he brought the handle down. A bald-headed typesetter, older th
an his workmates, peered at the newcomers over the top of his spectacles and slid off his high stool to join them.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Simon introduced himself and Robin. ‘We’ve been taking a look at some of the buildings along here,’ he said. ‘They’re a pretty decrepit lot, aren’t they?’

  The man nodded. ‘Interested in one of them, are you?’

  ‘Not personally,’ Robin said. ‘But we know some people who are. They were down here around the end of January. I gather they saw one that might suit, but the time wasn’t right. Now it is, and they’ve asked us to investigate.’

  ‘Well, there’s plenty of choice,’ the man said. ‘Which building were they thinking of?’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ Robin said. ‘We don’t know. Their directions were too vague. But as I said, they were here in January, and we were hoping someone here might have seen them.’

  The man shook his head. ‘Not me. Not as I remember.’

  ‘They had a Porsche,’ Simon said. ‘A red one.’

  ‘And another car with a blown exhaust,’ Robin added. ‘You’d have heard that even if you didn’t see it.’

  There was another and more prolonged shake of the head. ‘Sorry. But I’ll ask the others.’

  They watched him circle the room. ‘We’re wasting our time,’ Robin said, ‘If Karen was here she was brought here at night, when these chaps would have been at home. If anyone saw anything helpful it would be the people living across the street.’

  ‘You think we should check? It’s a long street.’

  ‘Hell, no! A house-to-house enquiry would arouse curiosity. Start people talking. We don’t want that. It might get to the ears of the police.’

  It might also create hostility, he thought.