The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that it was a local job from beginning to end. So? So he must question Sharman and Findren — remembering Kerr’s assessment of Sharman and, perhaps, Kywood’s comments regarding Findren.
*
Fusil parked his car outside Sharman’s warehouse and he and Kerr went into the office. Mrs. Sharman was working in the reception area. She recognised Kerr. “Still in trouble?”
“Still in trouble,” he answered. She was as immaculately turned out as before, with make-up that suited her to a T, not a hair on her head out of place, and a dress that hugged her body even more closely than had the previous one. She wore a beautiful pearl necklace that would have been worth a small fortune if real. Perhaps the only hint of a fault was the suggestion of a certain toughness of character — yet wasn’t it a well-known fact that toughness in a woman could turn into flaming, lyrical passion if the right man… Kerr sighed.
“Can I help you,” she asked, “or is it my husband you want to see?”
“We’d like a word with Mr. Sharman, please,” said Fusil.
She stared at him for a moment, her face almost expressionless, then she said: “Can I give him your name?”
“Detective Inspector Fusil.”
“I shan’t be long.” She left.
Kerr went to speak, but Fusil turned away and began to pace the floor. Mrs. Sharman returned in under the half minute. “He’s in the warehouse. You know the way, don’t you?” she said to Kerr.
“I always know the way to the nearest drink,” replied Kerr cheerfully. She smiled at him as he followed Fusil out. Quite definitely, he thought, she was one very hot potato.
Sharman was loading wooden cases on to one of two electrically driven fork-trucks and was sweating freely. “Still got your problems, the wife says, and some of the big brass come along? Still — gives me a chance for a break.” He sat down on a wooden case. “I’ve been humping bottles since eight-thirty this morning and they’re beginning to become very heavy.”
“Not got any help then?” asked Fusil.
“I employ one bloke, who drives the van around on deliveries to the shops as well as giving a hand in here. We started small, Inspector, and here at the warehouse we’ve remained small. That’s the secret of success today. If you employ too many people, you find you’re paying a full week’s wage for half a week’s work.” He laughed. “Private business isn’t like one financed by the rates — got to make it pay, we have.”
“We reckon to earn our salaries,” said Fusil tightly, quickly angered by the other’s tone of voice and words. He looked round the warehouse. “You’ve a fair-sized stock.”
“Something over thirty thousand quid’s worth.”
Kerr whistled.
“I’ll tell you both something. When we started business, the wife and me, we didn’t know the meaning of a thousand quid. Now I’ve got so that it doesn’t mean anything more than a fiver did at the beginning.” He brought his cigar case from his pocket, pointed to a large notice which said ‘No Smoking’, winked, and proffered the case. Fusil refused, Kerr accepted.
“Ours is a funny business, you know,” Sharman continued. “Teaches you something about human psychology, just like yours must do?” He looked across at Fusil, but received no acknowledgement of his words. “I could knock another bob off some bottles, but don’t. That would be too much. The public, bless ’em, likes a good bargain but gets mighty suspicious of a very good one. The man or woman says: ‘How can they sell a bottle of gin for all that much less than the other bloke? I’ll lay they water it down.’ So we keep just below everyone else, make a bit more profit because the public’s suspicious, and everybody’s happy.” He chuckled loudly, then lit his cigar. “S P Q R, as my dad always said.”
“S P Q R?” queried Fusil.
“Small profits, quick returns.”
Fusil showed his annoyance at having asked so obvious a question.
“We started with one shop,” said Sharman, with relish, “tucked away out of sight in Portman Street. Everyone said we were proper daft. Now we’ve four shops in this town, three in others, and we’re due to open an eighth pretty soon. Trade’s increasing so fast I’m running out of graph paper!” He laughed again.
“Very interesting,” said Fusil. “Do you sell much MacLaren whisky?”
“Aye, we do that, mon,” replied Sharman, in a travesty of a Scottish accent.
Kerr looked at Fusil and was not surprised to see the expression of dislike on the D.I.’s face.
“How much do you sell a month?” asked Fusil.
“I wouldna ken precisely, mon.” He suddenly reverted to his normal voice, which had a faint trace of a Cockney accent. “I’d guess around three thousand, except at Christmas time when it’s a lot more before and a lot less after.” He jabbed the air with his cigar. “That pile over there is MacLaren whisky. That’ll tell you how popular it is.”
Fusil and Kerr looked across the warehouse. At the far end was a pile of cardboard cases which had been stacked in a rough rectangle, four feet high.
“The public really goes for MacLaren these days,” said Sharman, “which only goes to show what publicity can do. You know the slogan — ‘every man a connoisseur’. What a thought!” He laughed scornfully. “Still, it suits us as we deal direct with the distillery and thereby get a better discount.”
“How many bottles have you in store now?” demanded Fusil.
“I’ll have to check up on that.” Sharman wriggled his way off the trailer and walked across to a small glassed-in office area which was to the right of the warehouse doors. He went in and they saw him looking through some books and making notes on a pad. He returned a few minutes later. “As of this morning, one thousand nine hundred and forty-three bottles. And if I’m more than a hundred out, they’ll sack me.” He laughed again, with a boisterous self-satisfaction.
“Have you any objection to my looking at your books?” asked Fusil.
“Objection? None whatsoever, old man. Still trying to trace the stolen whisky? You can search my figures until the moon turns blue and you won’t find any and that’s straight.” He chuckled. “Not that I wouldn’t mind a few — they’d offer an O P Q R and no mistake.”
Fusil made a point of not asking what these initials stood for.
Kerr watched Fusil and Sharman go into the glass-enclosed office. Sharman opened up some books and began to talk. Kerr couldn’t hear what was being said, but from Fusil’s expression and from the way Sharman was laughing more and more broadly, things weren’t going as Fusil liked them to.
Fusil led the way back into the warehouse. “I want to check the numbers,” he said belligerently.
“You do whatever you like, Inspector. Count everything ten times over and divide by the number you first thought of!” Sharman winked at Kerr, an action that did not go unremarked by Fusil.
“Come on,” snapped Fusil at Kerr, and he marched across the centre of the warehouse rather as if about to engage in battle. He crossed to some metal racks and pulled out bottles from them, looking briefly at the labels before pushing them back in.
“Those are the ones I paid two bob cash for,” said Sharman. “A three-legged man sold ’em to me.”
Fusil’s expression darkened. “Kerr,” he snapped, “don’t just stand there. Get on and count.”
Kerr began to count bottles of whisky of brands other than MacLaren. Before long, he’d made a mistake and had to go back to the beginning. Fusil spoke sarcastically and Sharman began the childish trick of counting aloud to confuse. Kerr took out his notebook and jotted down the numbers in tens. When he came to the bottles of MacLaren whisky in the racks, he counted them twice to make certain he got the number right.
Fusil went over to the pile of cardboard cases of MacLaren whisky. He picked up one, turned, and stumbled slightly.
Sharman spoke loudly. “Like a hand, Inspector maybe it’s too heavy for you?”
Kerr grinned and then hastily assume
d a blank expression when he saw the D.I. was glaring at him.
Fusil put the case down on the concrete floor. “I’d like to open this.”
“Sure. Use this knife.” Sharman took a penknife from his overalls and offered it.
Fusil used the knife to slit through the brown paper taping to free the lid of the box. He pulled out a bottle of whisky and examined the label. It was not an export one. He dropped the bottle back into its compartment.
“Would you like to keep that as a memento of your visit, Inspector?” asked Sharman.
“No,” said Fusil.
“Go on, be a devil! No one’s watching you.”
Fusil seemed to be about to speak, but at the last moment he managed to control himself.
Sharman stepped forward to the opened case and pulled out a bottle. He spoke to Kerr with undiminished good humour. “What about you, then? You don’t look T.T. to me. Drink this on the firm.” He lobbed the bottle across to Kerr, who caught it and then suffered some difficulty in knowing what to do with it.
“Have you counted these boxes?” demanded Fusil, in a voice thick with rage.
“No, sir,” replied Kerr. “I was just…”
“Goddamn it, can’t you do anything without being told?”
Kerr put down the bottle and began to count the boxes. Fusil moved round the warehouse, pulling bottles out of racks at random and frequently demanding to open up other cases in other piles — requests which Sharman met without a second’s hesitation. Fusil found no more MacLaren whisky. Satisfied there was nothing more he could do, he stalked over to the doors and called Kerr across.
“Have you finished?” asked Sharman.
“Yes,” snapped Fusil.
“I don’t think you had a look at those bottles over there…”
“Thank you for your help,” muttered Fusil, as if the words hurt to speak. He left.
As Kerr came alongside Sharman, Sharman said: “Don’t ever give him vinegar to drink — might turn the vinegar sour!”
He roared with laughter.
When in a bad temper, Fusil’s driving became even worse than usual. He backed into a stanchion without doing too much damage. Then, when they were driving out from the estate on to the ordinary road, he came out slap in front of a lorry which had to brake very sharply. The lorry driver leaned out of his cab and shouted obscenities. Fusil threatened to arrest him.
Kerr was just beginning to relax when Fusil said: “Well?”
“Well what, sir?”
“What the hell did you mean by accepting that bottle of whisky?”
Kerr looked down at the bottle in his lap. “It was just that he seemed to want to give it to one of us, sir. I didn’t like to offend him.”
“You know the rules.”
“Surely one bottle…”
“It’s the principle, not the quantity, as you ought to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a silence. Fusil drove past a wobbling cyclist and somehow managed to miss him. “How many bottles of whisky were there?” he snapped.
Kerr took his notebook from his pocket. “I made it four hundred and forty bottles in the racks and a hundred and twenty-five cases.”
“I’m not a travelling computer. How many bottles in the cases?”
Kerr worked it out. “Fifteen hundred, sir. So it’s nineteen hundred and forty all told.”
“Have you taken off the one you pinched?”
“I… No, sir.”
Fusil braked and then blew the horn at the car in front. “The figures agree,” he muttered.
*
Welland hardly ever worried about promotion: the future seldom concerned him. Life was good, life was for enjoying, and the future could look after itself. Ironically, this carefree attitude to the world and his work had allowed him to build up a better chain of informers than if he had been a man more seriously dedicated to his work: the informers seemed to trust him more for being unambitious.
He met Fitch in Durall Park. Fitch was tall and thin and he had a long scar on his cheek which came from the time he’d been chivved in prison with a sharpened watch spring.
Welland passed over a pack of cigarettes and then sat back on the painted wooden seat in the warm sunshine. “We’re interested in whisky,” he said.
“The load what was nicked on Monday?” Fitch’s eyes were never still: he was always looking round, checking on everyone in sight. “Ain’t ’eard a whisper.”
“The whisky must be on offer?”
“I’m tellin’ you straight, Mister, I ain’t ’eard nothing.”
Welland lit a cigarette. “D’you know Finnigan?”
“Ed Finnigan? Yeah.”
“Have you seen him around recently with anyone?”
“I could’ve.”
Welland passed across two one-pound notes.
“’E’s been with Ginger Playford and Abe Stretley.”
“Who are they?”
“Ginger’s a tearaway. Abe’s got brains.”
“When did you last see them together?”
“Can’t rightly remember.”
Welland produced his wallet and pulled out of it a one-pound note. “That’s got me real skint.” He passed the note across.
“It were Monday. They was all in a boozer at lunchtime.”
“Which boozer?”
“The Jolly Admiral, down by the docks.”
“Have you any idea when they left there?”
“Don’t know nothing more than that, Mister.” Fitch suddenly stood up and hurried away.
Welland vaguely wondered if something had alarmed the other, then sat back to enjoy the sunshine. Who could complain that coppering wasn’t a good job?
*
Pills, the manager, escorted Fusil and Kerr along the dark passage and to the door marked ‘Chairman’, on which he knocked. He opened the door and stepped inside. “The police, sir,” he said, in deferential tones. He waited until the detectives were inside, then left.
Shades of the nineteen hundreds, thought Kerr. The room was gloomy because the windows were small and the dark wooden panelling absorbed much of what light did enter. On the walls hung a number of paintings of men, most of whom looked smugly self-satisfied. A framed royal warrant was above the heavy marble fireplace. The desk was made of ancient mahogany and it could easily have accommodated not only the chairman of the firm, but also his board of directors.
Findren was a small turkey-cock of a man, with bristling white moustache, a regimental tie, and a country check suit. His tone of voice was antagonistic, as if perpetually ready to have an argument. “I fail utterly to understand the purpose of your visit,” he said, not bothering with any form of greeting.
“We’re checking on the load of…” began Fusil.
“I’m well aware of the work in which you’re engaged. What I said was, I fail to understand the purpose of your visit here.”
Kerr stared at him with a dislike that was immediate and automatic. Did the little bastard think he was colonel-in-chief, addressing the licentious soldiery?
Findren’s voice became still more challenging. “Are you accusing either myself or my firm of engaging in the trade of stolen whisky?”
“I’m accusing no one of anything, sir.”
“Then will you please explain why you’re here?”
“Our job calls on us to establish the innocence of some people, however certain we may think them innocent, just as we have to prove the guilt of others, however certain we may be of their guilt.”
“You distinguish between establish and prove. Are you here to establish or to prove?”
“I’m here to do my duty, sir.”
Findren brushed his forefinger along the right-hand side of his moustache, then the left-hand. “Enquiries have already been made here by your staff.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“Then either the previous enquiry was incompetently handled or your presence here today is an impertinence and you are deliberately cast
ing a slur on the name of my firm.”
“I’m casting no slur.”
“Inspector, at least do me the honour of not treating me as a fool. You would not come here unless you thought your visit necessary, and you would not consider your visit necessary unless you mistakenly believed my firm could be engaged in trading in stolen whisky.”
There was a pause.
Findren again brushed his moustache with crooked finger. “You are presumably not unaware of the position I hold on the watch committee?”
Fusil’s temper momentarily overflowed. “There’s only one position of authority in this country which lifts a person above a police investigation and that’s the reigning monarch.”
Findren flushed. “I do not need you to teach me constitutional history,” he snapped.
There was another and longer pause.
“What do you want here?” demanded Findren curtly.
“I wish to examine your stocks of wine and whisky, sir,” said Fusil.
“My staff has previously made it abundantly clear that there is no point to any such examination.”
“I’d still like to make it.”
“Inspector,” said Findren, “I shall make a very full report of your attitude.”
Guilt Without Proof (C.I.D. Room Book 4) Page 7
