Malice in London

by Graham Thomas

  It was in this pensive state of mind that he wandered into the Fitzrovia. Celia Cross was behind the bar.

  Powell looked around. “Jill not working tonight?”

  The publican looked worried. “She was supposed to start an hour ago,” she said as she filled Powell’s glass. “It’s not like Jill to be late, Mr. Powell. I rang ’er flat but ’er boyfriend said she wasn’t ’ome. I don’t know what to think.”

  “I shouldn’t worry too much. She’ll probably turn up in a few minutes.” He tried to sound reassuring.

  She brushed a strand of blonde hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Normally I’d agree with you, but what with Saturday night and all …”

  “Saturday night?”

  She looked at him with an odd expression on her face. “I don’t suppose you’ve ’eard, ’ave you?”

  “Heard what?”

  “ ’Ere, you’d better come round the back. Bring your pint with you, and I’ll pour meself a nip of gin.”

  Celia Cross had presided over the Fitzrovia Tavern since her husband died some twenty years ago. A large woman in her fifties who looked ten years younger, she possessed both boundless energy and a good-humored acceptance of the human condition and was quite capable, as she had proven on more than one occasion, of physically removing undesirables from her premises.

  That night, however, she looked her age as she sat in her cluttered office with Powell. Unpaid invoices, lists of reminders, and pay sheets papered the surface of her desk. A woman after my own heart, Powell thought.

  “Jill said she was going to ring you,” Celia said.

  Powell remembered the phone call yesterday morning. “I’ve been, er, busy,” he said guiltily.

  “It ’appened Saturday night,” she began. “Jill was looking poorly, so I sent her ’ome early. Somebody followed her and scared the poor girl half to death. A bleedin’ stalker! She ran back ’ere and I called the police, but by the time they got ’ere, the bloke was long gone.” She tossed him a disgusted look.

  “Any idea who it might have been?”

  “Jill thinks it might be an odd bird who comes in ’ere fairly regular—fancies ’imself a writer, apparently. ’E hasn’t been back since,” she added significantly. “The constable said to let ’im know if ’e shows ’is face in ’ere again.”

  “I take it this chap was here on Saturday night then.”

  She nodded.

  Powell had slipped unconsciously into the role of detective. “Did anything out of the ordinary take place between them?”

  “Not that I can remember, but …” She suddenly frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Mr. Powell, there was something, but it didn’t involve ’im.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “It was that bloke what got murdered last night. Clive Morton.”

  This caught Powell’s attention. “Really. What happened?”

  She screwed up her face as if she had just swallowed something nasty. “ ’E was bothering Jill and generally making a nuisance of ’imself. Not behaving like a gentleman, if you get my meaning.”

  “A shame about Morton,” Powell observed.

  “You won’t see me shedding any tears,” the publican pronounced emphatically.

  Powell thought for a moment. “If Jill doesn’t turn up in the next hour or so, you’d better inform the local police.”

  She nodded somberly.

  As Powell sat in the pub nursing his pint, he could not suppress a growing sense of unease.

  CHAPTER 6

  Powell sat in Merriman’s office the next day being subjected to the Assistant Commissioner’s “advice”—a dressing-down, in police parlance.

  Merriman’s face was red and his eyes bulging. “You must be a complete bloody idiot, Powell. The girl’s boyfriend reported her missing last night, and it comes to light that you stayed at her flat on Friday night!”

  “There is a perfectly reasonable explanation—” Powell began, sounding defensive in spite of himself.

  “Sleeping with a girl half your age is hardly a reasonable explanation.” Merriman was sneering now. “I know your type, Powell. You’re a bloody disgrace.”

  Powell had to resist the urge to leap over the desk and throttle his superior. “With the greatest respect, sir, I did not sleep with her, and, in any case, what I do on my own time is my own business,” he said in a carefully controlled voice.

  “Well, she’s gone missing now, hasn’t she?”

  “Apparently she was followed from the pub on Saturday night—”

  “What’s it got to do with you?” Merriman snapped. “Look, Powell, if there’s anything untoward going on here, I’ll have you on the dab so bloody fast your head will spin. In fact I’m going to make it my life’s work. Now get out.”

  Powell did not remember storming out of Merriman’s office nor slamming the door behind him. Eyes fixed straight ahead, he brushed past Detective-Sergeant Black, who wisely refrained from saying a word, and secluded himself in his office. He spent the next hour chain-smoking and considering his options. Then he made a decision and rang Tony Osborne.

  “Tony, this is strictly on the q.t., right?”

  “What’s up?”

  Powell explained about Jill Burroughs and Merriman.

  “That’s the trouble with living in commuterland,” Osborne said disapprovingly. “Whenever I have a snootful, I simply stagger home to my garret in Soho, easy as you please.”

  “The thing is, Tony, I know your lads are looking into the girl’s whereabouts, but I’d like to do a bit of poking around on my own. It’s something I feel I need to do.”

  There was only a moment’s hesitation. “Be my guest, mate, only you didn’t hear that from me. And you’re on your own hook, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “By the way, Erskine, I’m off to Spain for a fortnight starting Sunday. Why don’t you stay in my flat—look after things while I’m away. You might find it, er, a little more convenient as a base of operations.”

  Powell didn’t know what to say. “Let me think about it and get back to you. And thanks, Tony, you’re a prince among men.”

  “Right. Cheerio then, mate.”

  Powell leaned back in his chair and contemplated the benefits of taking his friend up on his offer. A hiatus in Tony Osborne’s flat in Lexington Street might be just what the doctor ordered: a change of scene, a sort of mental holiday. And no bloody weeds to worry about. By way of rationalization, he reckoned that with the time he saved by not having to commute, he could devote another couple of hours to the job each day. Whistling tunelessly, he began sorting through the notes that Detective-Sergeant Black had left on his desk.

  Tony Osborne called back later that morning. “I hear through the grapevine that you’re working on the Brighton case.” He paused. “I see. Then you’d better get your arse down here toot sweet, mate.”

  A half hour later, Powell was sitting in Osborne’s Savile Row office. Superintendent Tony Osborne was a big man with very little hair, a flamboyant handlebar mustache, and a mind as sharp as a razor. He had started out as a constable in Soho, eventually graduating to the Drug Squad where he quickly earned a reputation as an eccentric. A common method of passing drugs from buyer to seller on the street is by mouth. Money changes hands, then an intermediary of the opposite sex transfers the drugs to the buyer by means of a rather involved and sloppy bout of tongue wrestling. Not surprisingly, few undercover police officers are keen to take possession of the essential evidence in this manner. Osborne, however, played the game with enthusiasm, to the point of being accused in court by one unfortunate victim of trying to shove the stuff down her throat with his tongue, causing her to cough up the goods as it were.

  “I won’t beat about the bush, Erskine,” Osborne began. “We searched Morton’s flat and found this in his safe.” He tossed over a brown envelope. “I thought you might be interested.”

  Powell extracted the contents of the envelope
—four or five pages stapled together and several loose sheets—and looked through them. There was a contract of some sort between Morton and an entity called the Dockside Development Corporation, represented by someone named Paul Atherton, plus several architectural views of a building complex, a block of flats with a restaurant below. He looked more closely. The restaurant was called Chez Clive. Morton’s revenge, he thought.

  “Interesting, don’t you think?” Osborne observed neutrally.

  “The fact that Morton had delusions of culinary grandeur, you mean?”

  Osborne cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll make allowances for the fact that you’ve only just started working on the Brighton case—but doesn’t the name Dockside Development Company cause a bubble to come off the old think-tank?”

  Powell sighed. “Get to the point, Tony.”

  “You could show a little more gratitude, mate. Dockside is the development scheme in Rotherhithe that Richard Brighton was trying to shove down the throats of the good citizens of Southwark.”

  This caught Powell’s attention. “You don’t say?”

  “Which brings me to my point in asking you to come here. I’d like to bring you in on this one. It’s probably a long shot, but there may be a connection to the Brighton murder, which is out of my jurisdiction. At the very least, someone is going to have to look into the possibility, and you are the logical candidate.” He paused to give Powell the opportunity to consider his request.

  If nothing else, Powell mused, Osborne was a breath of fresh air. Divisional Superintendents were generally reluctant to ask for outside assistance, jealously guarding their egos and territories. Osborne, however, possessed sufficient confidence in his own abilities that he took the view that his job was to marshal whatever resources were necessary to get the job done. End of story.

  For the first time in a long while, Powell experienced that familiar rush of energy signifying that a case had begun to take hold of him like a drug. There was, however, one cloud on the horizon. Powell looked at Osborne with a straight face. “My fee will be the use of your flat while you’re away.”

  Osborne grinned. “Well, that’s it then. Do you want me to fix it with Merriman?”

  Powell pulled a face. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep it unofficial for a few days.”

  Osborne scrutinized his colleague closely. “All right. As long as it gets sorted out before I leave on Sunday.”

  “Right,” Powell concluded with an air of confidence he didn’t feel.

  The morning mist was beginning to burn off and a pale smudge of sun overhead presaged a fine day ahead. Powell decided to walk to Leicester Square, where, before leaving the West End Central Police Station, he had arranged to meet the fruit-and-veg merchant who had discovered Clive Morton’s body. As he walked along the gray curve of Regent Street, filled with shoppers and shop assistants on their breaks, he realized that he rarely took the opportunity to appreciate the fact that he worked in one of the world’s great cities. It was always easy to complain about the traffic, the train service, the latest tasteless redevelopment scheme, the tourists, and of course Lord Archer, but he knew he couldn’t live anywhere else. From time to time, he and Marion had toyed with the idea of moving to the country, where he could no doubt find a job with a provincial constabulary and she at a local college. He had to admit that the thought of a small holding somewhere in the country, living the life of a country squire shooting pheasants and thrashing poachers, did have its appeal. But when he really thought about it, it all pointed to more gardening. And he had little enough time now outside of his job.

  When Peter and David were younger, he had tried to find time for the important things: teaching them to sail and climb, taking them fishing or on family outings, but the pressures of being a policeman had often intruded. Increasingly in recent years, as his sons had grown up and Marion and he had drifted apart, he wondered if he had been much of a father or husband when it really counted. It is interesting, he thought as he crossed Piccadilly Circus past the motley crowd of Euro-kids congregating around Eros, how one’s priorities in life only become clear when it is too late to do much about them.

  When he arrived in Cranbourn Street, a white lorry marked HUSSEY AND CROWE, FRUITERERS TO LONDON FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS was parked as arranged in front of an Italian cafe on the corner of Charing Cross Road. A young man was leaning against it having a smoke. Powell walked over and introduced himself.

  The man grinned, cocky but slightly nervous. “Morning, guv. Michael Hussey at your service.”

  Powell smiled to put him at ease. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, Michael. I know you’ve already spoken to someone about this.”

  “Think nuffing of it, guv. Always happy to help a copper.”

  “Right then, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”

  Hussey scratched his head. “Tuesday morning it was, going on five o’clock. I’d just made a delivery to the restaurant ’ere. I stopped to ’ave a smoke. For some reason—I can’t explain it really—I decided to stretch me legs up Leicester Court there.” He pointed to a side street.

  “Right. Lead the way.”

  Hussey led him to a narrow alley lined with refuse bins. “In ’ere. Over there behind that first bin. I saw a pair of legs sticking out, so I went over to ’ave a closer look. He was sitting down, sort of slumped over, like. At first I thought ’e was drunk, but then I saw all the blood.” He gulped, eyes wide. “It was ’orrible, guv. Stuck like a pig, ’e was. Wif a friggin’ apple stuffed in ’is mouth!”

  CHAPTER 7

  A young man opened the door to the flat above the garage in Bloomsbury. “Yes?”

  “I’m Chief Superintendent Powell. I called earlier about Jill.”

  “You’d better come in then,” the young man said in an unwelcoming tone. “Sit down—you should know your way around by now.”

  “Mr. Potter, I—”

  “Please get to the point, Chief Superintendent. I have a class in twenty minutes.” His voice had a slightly nasal quality, and his manner suggested he was used to giving orders.

  Powell couldn’t imagine what Jill saw in him. “Look, Stephen, I’m here because I’m concerned about Jill and want to do whatever I can to help find her.”

  “Guilty conscience, Chief Superintendent?”

  Powell fixed him with a penetrating stare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The young man fidgeted uneasily. “Well, I mean, it’s a bit irregular, you staying here and—”

  “I am only going to explain this to you once,” Powell said coldly, “so I suggest you pay attention. I am a regular patron of the pub where Jill works. Last Friday, I missed my train and she kindly offered to put me up for the night. End of story. The fact that Jill told you about it makes my point.”

  Powell paused to give Potter the opportunity to respond. There was only a strained silence. “The only thing that’s irregular about all this, Stephen—that’s the word you used, isn’t it?—is the fact that your girlfriend is missing, and you don’t seem the least bit concerned about it.”

  “Of course I’m concerned,” he protested. “I’m worried sick.”

  “Then you’d better cooperate, hadn’t you?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “Yes, yes, of course.” He looked nervous.

  “You were away for the weekend, I understand.”

  “Yes. I was visiting my parents near Shrewsbury.”

  “Why didn’t Jill go with you?”

  A guilty look flickered across his face. “She—she had to work.”

  “Mummy and Daddy have met Jill before, have they?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. But I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  Powell smiled his blandest smile. “Just asking. When did you get back to London?”

  “Sunday night, around eight o’clock.”

  “Jill was here at the time?”

  Potter nodded.

  “Did she seem all right?” />
  Defensively: “What do you mean?”

  Powell sighed. “I mean, what kind of mood was she in? Was she overjoyed to see you? Did she seem worried about anything? Is that clear enough?”

  Potter’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I care for your tone, Chief Superintendent. And now that I think of it, Jill said you worked for Scotland Yard—I was under the impression that the local police were handling this.”

  Better not push too hard, Powell thought. All he needed was for Potter to make a complaint and for Merriman to get wind of it. “Look, Stephen, this can be easy or difficult—it’s up to you. Jill has disappeared, and I’m trying to help.”

  Potter seemed to consider this carefully. “All right, I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m a bit stressed out. The fact is Jill and I had a hell of a row when I got home. She told me about you staying here, and I reacted like a jealous fool. Then she accused me of not …” He smiled weakly. “Let’s just say that things went downhill from there. I ended up sleeping on the sofa. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. I didn’t think anything of it at first. She often went for an early morning walk and a coffee. I had classes all day and didn’t get home until quite late—”

  “What time was that?” Powell interjected.

  “Sixish, I think. I assumed Jill was at work. She didn’t come home that night, and I won’t say I wasn’t worried, but I assumed that she’d just gone off somewhere to think things through after our fight. The first indication I had that anything was wrong was when her boss called from the pub yesterday. She’s been gone two days now—it’s not like Jill to do something like this, Chief Superintendent.”