“Len Hodge,” said George Mellot miserably.
“Them as asks no questions isn’t told a lie,” said Len Hodge fiercely.
He was standing by the red fire-engine which had come back to its home station in Great Rooden High Street, and was sweating profusely in his thick black uniform. The yellow oilskin trousers of the firemen must have added considerably to their discomfort on a hot day such as this and the other men were changing back into their working clothes as quickly as they could.
Leading fireman Hodge, though, was responsible for seeing that the fire-engine was left ready for its next turn-out.
“Fuel all right, Fred?” he called out over the heads of the two policemen.
“Check,” came the muffled reply.
“Hoses?”
“All present and correct.”
Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby had come back into the centre of the village to await the return of the fire-engine. The unmarked police car which had been shadowing the fireman all morning was parked inconspicuously down the road. The two detectives had got a warm reception from Len Hodge.
“Nevertheless,” insisted Sloan firmly, “I have a few questions to put to you.” He was conscious that he should have made the effort to see Len Hodge last night—except that last night he hadn’t suspected that Wendy Lamport was going to come to grief. Last night, too, there had seemed to be plenty of time in which to consider at leisure the implications of a decaying skeleton on a barn roof. Today there hadn’t been any time at all.
“And I’ve got a report to turn in to brigade headquarters,” countered the farmworker truculently. The perspiration was streaming down his face. It might have been due to the heavy serge uniform and the increasing heat of the day. On the other hand it might not. “For all that it was a false alarm,” he added.
“So have I,” responded Sloan with deceptive mildness.
“You haven’t got anything on me,” said Hodge, tilting his fireman’s helmet upwards from his forehead.
“And I,” said Sloan evenly, “am not dealing with a false alarm.”
Hodge carried on as if the policeman had not spoken. “I’m not having you pinning anything on me neither.” He thrust his jaw forward. “I’m not saying nothing, see?”
“What we want to know,” continued Sloan in the same low-key tones, “is whether just anyone could have operated that fork-lift tractor at Pencombe.”
“Course not,” said Len Hodge at once. “Not without knowing how.”
“Ah,” said Sloan. It was the oldest trick in the book: starting a difficult interview by asking an easy question that anyone could answer.
“It takes time to know how to handle one of them,” sniffed Hodge. “I will say that.”
“And a bit of teaching, I daresay,” murmured Sloan cunningly. Almost nobody could resist an empathetic opening gambit.
“Just like it does one of these.” Len Hodge patted the majestic Dennis fire-engine. “But when you’ve learnt how it’ll do anything for you.”
“Such as lift a headless body up onto a roof,” said Sloan sedulously.
Hodge’s face darkened again. “If you say so.”
“Not me,” said Sloan blandly. “It’s the forensic scientists at the Home Office laboratory who say so.”
“Same thing,” said Hodge immediately.
At the right time and in the right place Sloan would have advanced the cause of impartial scientific investigation being available to defence and prosecution alike. This, however, was neither.
“If,” remarked Sloan in a detached way instead, “it had been my tractor—”
“Well?”
“And someone else had used it—”
“What about it?”
“Even if they had tried to put it back exactly where I had left it—”
Hodge scowled but said nothing intelligible.
“—then,” said Sloan, “I think I would have been able to tell.”
“You would, would you?” snarled Hodge. “Well, let me tell you—”
“If it hadn’t been me that moved it, that is.”
“It wasn’t me that—” Hodge stopped and stared at Sloan.
“No?” said Sloan pleasantly. “I rather thought it wasn’t, actually.”
“Tricked me, you did, you devil,” spluttered Hodge. “I said I wasn’t going to say nothing.”
“Truth will out,” said Crosby sententiously from the sidelines.
“But someone had moved it,” said Sloan, undeflected.
“What if they had?” demanded Hodge aggressively. “It weren’t nothing to do with me. It isn’t my tractor.”
“When?” asked Sloan relentlessly.
“’Bout a month ago,” admitted Hodge reluctantly, his eyes down.
“Isn’t it kept locked?”
“Not at Pencombe.” He shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nobody about much as a rule. Besides, it’s always on the go.”
“This time—”
“I park it in the barn,” explained Hodge. “It just fits into a space there if you’re careful. Between an old harrow and the grain-drier. There’s exactly enough room for it.”
Sloan nodded encouragingly. Verisimilitude was the name of what he was looking for.
“Whoever put it back wasn’t careful, that’s all,” said Hodge flatly. “They caught the harrow with one of the forks. It wasn’t me. I’ve never done that.”
“When?” Sloan would send someone to check on the harrow as soon as he could. “Night-time or day-time?”
“Search me.” He turned back to the fire-engine. “It was an afternoon when I noticed it, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Did you mention it to anyone else at the time?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “It’s not my place to mention it. It’s none of my business if my governor bashes a bit of his own property.”
“Which governor, Hodge?” asked Sloan softly.
All the bounce left the man. He went down like a pricked balloon, his shoulders sagging suddenly. “You know about Tom, then, do you?”
“We do,” said Sloan. He had been reared in the good old professional school of interrogation where there was no nonsense about not hitting a man when he was down. It was easier, for one thing. He didn’t hesitate to press home his advantage, either, by adding ominously, “All about him.”
“Well, then …” Hodge turned away.
“Except where he is at the moment,” said Sloan truthfully. That, he reminded himself, went for the man in the wood, too, and for Martin Ritchie. They hadn’t exactly made a lot of progress to date in police terms.
“Not a man to stand still is Tom,” observed Hodge, clambering up into the driver’s seat of the fire-engine. “I’ve got to put this away now. Mind your backs.…”
Sloan stepped aside. Minding your back was an old army saying. It was easier said than done in the police force. So was standing still. They had another saying in the army that didn’t do for the police at all. “Right or wrong, stand still.” What went down well in the parade-ground—make a mistake there and ten to one it wouldn’t be noticed if you stood still: move and it would—wouldn’t do you any good at all in the constabulary. Standing still would be viewed by the director of public prosecutions as culpable and mistakes had very little chance of not being noticed in the sort of scrutiny applied by the likes of Superintendent Leeyes.
“Wendy Lamport’s pretty bad,” said Sloan, raising his voice as the engine was started up by Hodge. Even thinking about Superintendent Leeyes en passant kept a man’s mind on the job.
If Hodge made a reply to this it was drowned by the noise of the powerful Dennis engine. Sloan waited until it had been driven out of the fire station and positioned ready for its next call-out. Hodge climbed down again and carefully placed the door in an open position. Seconds could count at a fire.
“I said Wendy Lamport’s pretty bad,” repeated Sloan firmly. He knew exactly where Wendy Lamport was at this moment
and it didn’t help one little bit.
“I heard you.” Hodge jerked his head. “I didn’t hit her, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
“But do you know who did?” asked Sloan directly.
“No, I don’t.”
“The man in Dresham Wood?” hazarded Sloan.
The farmworker’s response to this was completely unexpected. To Sloan’s utter surprise Len Hodge’s face split into a broad grin that extended from ear to ear. “Him?” he laughed. “That’s good, that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Him?” he said richly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Hodge started to walk towards his own car and then paused and said over his shoulder, “That’s his whole trouble.”
“Just a minute, Hodge—”
It was no good. Len Hodge had driven off.
The unmarked police car which had been shadowing him all morning waited a few moments and then drove off unobtrusively after him.
The radio of their police car was chattering away as Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby got back to it. Crosby fiddled with the direction tuner and then bent forward attentively, listening hard.
“Ted Mason’s found something that might have been used to take the head off, sir,” he announced, straightening up again.
Sloan nodded morosely. “It had to be around somewhere.”
“In the barn at Lowercombe,” said Crosby.
“I heard,” growled Sloan. He had just had a major suspect laughed out of court and wasn’t very pleased about it.
“A sugar-beet cutter.”
“I see.” He wondered what Dr. Buck Ruxton had used to cut up his wife.
“It’s gone to Forensic.”
“What we want now,” declared Sloan with feeling, “is a Peter-kin.”
“Pardon, sir?”
“He found something large and smooth and round.”
“Did he, sir?”
“And showed it to little Wilhelmine.”
“Well, I never.”
“They both took it to Old Kaspar.”
Crosby kept a prudent silence at this.
“At Blenheim.”
Crosby looked distinctly uneasy now.
“’Twas a famous victory,” said Sloan sourly.
“Was it, sir?”
“This isn’t going to be, Crosby.”
“No, sir.” Crosby switched off the engine.
“This is going to be a disaster,” forecast Sloan. He had never thought for one moment that the notion that the man in the wood might be a murderer would be something that Len Hodge would find risible. The funny thing was the fact that it exonerated him more quickly than any amount of explanation.
“Where to, sir?” enquired the constable practically.
“I don’t think it really matters.”
“Pencombe?”
“Cold Comfort Farm, more like.”
“Headquarters?”
“Perish the thought, Crosby.” There would be scant comfort at Berebury Police Station, either. And at the very least the press would be there, clamouring for tidbits that he couldn’t—wouldn’t, anyway—give them. To say nothing of Superintendent Leeyes wanting to know why he hadn’t made an arrest—any arrest—yet.
The detective constable pointed along the High Street to the village inn. “The Lamb and Flag?”
Sloan regarded the public house with disfavour. There was something seriously wrong with the anatomy of the lamb on the signboard but he hadn’t time to examine it more closely. “Nobody knows anything there and if they do, they aren’t going to tell us.” To the best of Sloan’s knowledge and belief the Lamb and Flag had been wrung dry of facts as soon as Wendy Lamport had been found. He turned his gaze back to the fire station. Did Len Hodge’s laughter really let out the man in the wood? On the whole Sloan thought so. It had been so spontaneous.
“Sir,” said Crosby, “have you heard the one about the skeleton?”
“What’s that?” He brought his mind back to the police car with an effort.
“The one about why the skeleton didn’t go to the ball.”
“No,” responded Sloan heatedly, “and I—”
“Because he had nobody to go with. Get it?” asked Crosby. “No body.”
“I get it.” Sloan’s ire subsided as quickly as it had risen. If soldiers sought reputation in the cannon’s mouth there was no reason why detective constables shouldn’t crack a bad joke or two in a murder enquiry when there wasn’t anything more constructive to do.
The trouble with this case was that all they had was the ingredients without knowing what the recipe was for. At hand, so to speak, were a naked headless corpse, a weapon and an injured girl. Missing with varying degrees of relevance—but undoubtedly germane—were a defaulting financier, an absconding husband and—
The police radio came to life again.
Crosby answered with their call sign and then listened with his notepad at the ready. “The fingerprints on the bottles in the wood—”
“Yes?” At this moment Sloan didn’t have a harsh word to say about computers or the Criminal Record Office.
“Known.”
Sloan perked up. They weren’t totally in Indian country, then.
“Luke Michael Bailey,” repeated Crosby aloud, writing fast. “Numerous convictions all over the country for offences associated with alcohol abuse.”
“Ah …” Sloan sank back in the passenger seat.
“Last known address—”
“Yes?” said Sloan.
“A drying-out centre for alcoholics in Luston.”
EIGHTEEN
Depart in peace
The engine of the police car was still running.
“Back to Lowercombe, then, sir?” asked Crosby.
“Back to the drawing-board, if you ask me,” responded Sloan mordantly. In his experience alcoholics didn’t as a rule commit murder except by accident in a drunken brawl. And every alcoholic he had ever known lacked the resolution to conceal dead and dismembered bodies in carefully thought-out hiding places.
“It’s Sam Bailey’s son for sure,” pronounced Crosby. He wrinkled his brow. “Now I come to think about it, Mrs. Ritchie did mention that Sam had a son.”
Sloan nodded. “And he called his wife ‘Mother,’ didn’t he?” There had been a prodigal son in the offing in Great Rooden all right but it had been somewhere else. It wasn’t at Pencombe Farm with the Mellots, then, where there had been a definite return of the native but at Lowercombe with the Baileys.…
“His mother will have been feeding him, won’t she?” said Crosby. “With what was left over from the table, I expect.”
“Better than the husks that the swine did eat,” said Sloan biblically. “Fed, forgiven and known again” was how Kipling had put it.
“Except that alcoholics don’t get hungry anyway,” offered Crosby out of his own experience on the beat. The railway arches at Berebury provided shelter of a sort for them and had to be visited by foot constables on night duty.
“Sam Bailey won’t have known about him—Luke, did you say the name was?—being there in the wood,” said Sloan confidently. Sanctuary Wood—no, that had been somewhere else. “He’s not the sort of man to kill a fatted calf is Sam Bailey.”
“At least,” said Crosby, “we know now how Mrs. Bailey got the leaf-mould on her shoes. That’s something.”
“Len Hodge knew about him being there in the wood,” said Sloan thoughtfully. “That’s why the first thing he did when he heard about the finger was to go over there. Do you remember?”
“To check.”
“And Mrs. Bailey was pretty agitated, too, at first,” recollected Sloan. “Until we told her it was an old finger, and then she calmed down. I reckon she took off with Luke until the search of the wood was over.”
“If,” said Crosby, his face contorted with thought, “Len Hodge needed to check that the body wasn’t Luke Bailey’s, doesn’t that mean that he didn’t know whose it really was?”
“Well done,” applauded Sloan softly. “Go on.”
The constable continued much more tentatively. “The body could still have been Ivor Harbeton’s and Len Hodge not have known about it, I suppose?”
“At first,” said Sloan.
“Put there by one Mellot—”
“Or the other.”
“Or both.”
“It could,” agreed Sloan.
“But Hodge did know about the fork-lift tractor having been moved while he wasn’t there, didn’t he? All along.”
“He will have known,” said Sloan patiently, “but I daresay the fact only became really significant after the body was found and Hodge put two and two together.” The assistant chief constable, who was a great man for Latin tags, had a favourite one for events that followed on: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
“That’s when Hodge realised it could have been one of the Mellots who had done the dastardly deed,” deduced Crosby, “and clammed up.”
“I think so,” said Sloan slowly. As well as having the wrong Prodigal Son in mind he’d probably got the wrong school tie, too. Tom and George Mellot and Len Hodge would have known each other all their early lives—as well as Luke Bailey. You didn’t shop your childhood companions. Nor your employer if it came to that—not if you were old-fashioned, that is.
“Finding out it was Luke Bailey in the wood then,” concluded Crosby with rustic simplicity, “is a snake and not a ladder.”
“A snare and a delusion,” agreed Sloan gravely.
Superintendent Leeyes wouldn’t have chosen either metaphor but his sentiment would have been the same.
“So we’ve got to begin at the beginning again.” Crosby leant forward and switched off the engine.
“Except,” said Sloan appositely, “that we don’t even know when that was.” In this game you actually had to find square one first before you could get back to it.…
“A finger on a footpath,” said Crosby.
Sloan shook his head. “That came later. The finger being found on the footpath was just bad luck on the murderer’s part.”
“You can’t win them all,” said Crosby ambiguously.
“The finger was just where we came in,” said Sloan. Fate had thrown a six for them to start.
Harm’s Way Page 19
