Bottled Spider

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Bottled Spider Page 24

by John Gardner


  Instead he gave her a kindly little smile: not the full grin but nice. ‘As a matter of fact, it is. I have to go down and flog the peasants at Christmas. They’d feel neglected if I didn’t keep up the old traditions.’

  ‘Flogging the peasants; playing Father Christmas to the local children, and riding with hounds on Boxing Day?’

  ‘Something of the sort. Have a good time, heart. It’s nice to have you on the team. Oh, and ...’ beautifully timed, as though he really had just remembered it ‘... Suzie, not a word to any of the boys and girls in the Camford nick, okay?’

  And he left, his hand coming up to tip the Homberg to her. Real gent, she thought. He’s a real, proper twenty-four carat, gent of the first water, she thought, then went off and looked in every room to make sure the bogeyman hadn’t come down the non-existent chimney while she had been out.

  *

  She thought of Dandy Tom as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning blackness. Getting out of bed she felt the cold on her feet, so hurried through to the bathroom. She remembered it was Sunday 22 December 1940. Tomorrow she would be heading for Hampshire: first the Fighter Ace, then a blessed couple of days off over Christmas with Charlotte and the kids.

  It was raining and she heard the click of hail against the bathroom window. She thought of her mother. ‘Rain before seven, fine before eleven,’ she intoned as she performed her ablutions in the freezing cold of the six o’clock bathroom.

  On the Tube to Camford she thought about the time spent last night with Tommy Livermore. The Honourable Tommy Livermore, Crime Fighter Ace. The future Lord Livermore, Earl of Kingscote, she supposed.

  So there she was, on the Tube on a wet Sunday heading out to Camford nick, leafing through a copy of Picture Post that she had brought along for company. But she hardly saw the pictures and text about the Home Guard being trained at Osterley Park Training School. A photograph of men using a smoke canister purporting to hide them from their line of attack, but showing how incredibly inept it really was. What she saw was Dandy Tom, the lovely Detective Chief Superintendent.

  Oh, when will I be experienced? she wondered, her body screaming out for what she didn’t even know. Couldn’t really guess at. Dandy Tom, she thought again.

  She felt a touch feverish.

  *

  Pip Magnus sat at his desk with a huge automatic pistol stripped and laid out in pieces. Next to the pistol was a roll of cloth, about the width of a toilet roll, and divided up every two inches by red lines. Four-by-two. Sniggers because you get four-by-two from the armourer who has a hooked tool for getting broken pull-throughs out of the barrel. There was also a metal bottle of oil with a special applicator coming out of the screw top. Pip Magnus was cleaning the gun.

  ‘Firearms in the CID room. Pip? I don’t think so.’ Suzie paused in walking towards Big Toe’s office that she had purloined while he was away sick, wounded in the course of duty.

  ‘It’s evidence, Skip.’ He had a sly smile and didn’t look at her, just kept polishing away at the slide that he had pulled back, detached and taken apart, dropped the spring out, then removed the barrel and breech. ‘I saw Big Toe last night, Skip.’ Accusingly, as if she should either have been with him or visited Big Toe Harvey of her own volition instead of being wined and dined at the Ritz by Dandy Tom Livermore.

  ‘Oh, yes? And he told you to bring a damned great shooter into the CID Room, did he?’

  ‘More or less, Skip. I told you, it’s evidence.’

  It was a Colt.45 automatic pistol. She knew that from the firearms course they had sent her on immediately war was declared, where she had learned about four-by-two and the armourer’s hooked tool. More to the point, she’d learned to shoot. Found that she was a natural. Did Tommy Livermore arrange that as well? she wondered.

  ‘Evidence of what?’

  ‘It belongs to Charlie Balvak, Skip. Or maybe it belongs to Connie. One or the other.’

  ‘Well, you must know which one.’ At last, she thought. At last Big Toe’s got something on the Balvak brothers.

  ‘No, Skip. We haven’t found it on them yet. Big Toe said I had to get it ready for when he’s back in harness next week.’

  If she made a fuss he would deny saying it. If she didn’t do something now, straight away, this minute, the gun would not be around when she needed it. This was the lads versus the lasses. There are more of them than us. That’s what she’d told Tommy Livermore last night. ‘There are certain things no woman police officer can ever win,’ she’d told him as they drove back to St Martin’s Lane. ‘There’s a male esprit de corps,’ she’d said, ‘and when that’s in play no criminal can win and no woman police officer can win either. Black becomes white, Guv, and white becomes sky-blue-pink.’

  ‘Is Shirley in yet?’

  She’ll be in later, Magnus thought aloud.

  ‘What’s she on?’

  ‘She’s feeling a few collars with the rest of the boys. Raiding party. Sherlock Mortimer’s leading them into battle.’

  ‘Whose collars?’

  ‘They think they’ve got a result on those street robberies. The old ladies divested of their jewels and stuff.’

  ‘Shirley Cox has been working with me. Not the street robberies.’

  ‘Mortimer thinks he’s struck lucky, and there’re a couple of girls involved so Shirl’s going along to see that nobody takes advantage.’

  ‘And Big Toe told you to get this weapon out?’

  ‘Yes. Wants to be sure it’s in working order for him coming back next week — well, first of the year.’

  ‘Next week.’ She looked at the Colt automatic lying on the desk. ‘Next week is an unexplored territory.’ She walked into her office — well, Big Toe’s office — and settled to typing up the reports she had drafted over the past few days. The interviews with the Grigson girl, Sally, Steven Fermin, Richard Webster, Josh Dance, Daniel Flint, Barry Forbes and Gerald Vine, which led her directly to the notes about Emily Baccus and what she had done about it. Too late.

  She typed the interview details in triplicate, using two carbons. One for the CID file, one for the nick and one to be sent over to the Yard — to DCS Tommy Livermore of the Reserve Squad — often confused with the Murder Squad which didn’t really exist. When a death was announced in the provinces, foul play suspected and the Yard had been called in, more often than not it was an officer from the Reserve Squad who went tooling off to an outstation, or to a provincial nick that needed assistance in a headline murder case.

  She also wrote a long note on Richard Webster about the need to question him again, quite closely and with some hostility. To Suzie’s mind, Mr Webster was a prime suspect being the repository of secrets, but a lot didn’t add up. She couldn’t understand why he didn’t know about the flat in Derbyshire Mansions. He knew every other damned thing about her, why not that? Or maybe he did know it, but was reluctant to share it with anyone. Especially the police — the Filth.

  Around ten thirty Pip Magnus came in with a cup of so-called coffee for her from the canteen.

  ‘Skip —’ he put the cup on her desk, holding another in his left hand — ‘Skip, look, the shooter. Well that was a kind of joke really.’ She was aware that he had spent some time on the telephone while she was working. ‘The Guv’nor said it’d be fun to see how you reacted to a shooter in the CID room. And you certainly reacted, Skip. I’ve locked it away again. You reacted though.’

  Toe, she reckoned, had given him a rocket.

  She rang Steve Fermin at his home number and had a long conversation. Asked him how he was doing? Was he coming to terms with the grief yet? No, it is a bit too soon, of course. He had a brother with him. Parents were coming down for the funeral, though they had not yet fixed the date because the police wouldn’t say when the body would be released. But he’d let her know as soon as they knew, though he would have thought she’d get the word before him. He sounded better, she felt. Hoped he was. Grief could be a killer. There’d be more than ever when he disco
vered Jo would never have been the virgin bride. A bit too late for that, seeing as how her hobby had been losing her virginity on a regular basis.

  Next she set about writing a short personal letter to DCS Tommy Livermore. It was marked private & personal. Mr Livermore’s eyes only.

  I know it will all disappear like ice in a heatwave, she wrote, but one of the DCs here has been handling what I think is a dodgy Colt.45. He said he had retrieved it from among other evidence and suggested it was going to be planted on one of the Balvak brothers after DI Harvey returns to duty. I was alone with this officer. Name Magnus P. Number 4587. I am putting this note in with other items to be sent over to the Yard by hand in case I am involved in an accident or go for a burton.

  The raiding party got back just before noon, making a row. They had brought prisoners and they whooped into CID like a clutch of schoolchildren who had just won the inter-house hockey trophy, or whatever, and Jimmy Mortimer came straight into Suzie’s appropriated office, followed by Shirley Cox.

  ‘Got ’em, Skip,’ he trumpeted. ‘Got the buggers. Laid ’em low. Picked ’em up and pulled ’em out. We’ve got a lot of the stuff back as well. Rings, bangles, watches, necklaces.’

  ‘Who and where?’

  ‘Three young men and two girls. We dragged them out of the Cut. Almost a dawn raid, wasn’t it Shirley?’

  ‘Almost.’ Shirley sounded subdued. ‘Eight o’clock in the morning is, I suppose, the dawn chorus for some people.’

  ‘Five of them? From the Cut?’

  ‘It’s alright, Skip. We got permission and all. Went without a hitch. I suppose we’d better go and have a heart to heart with them. They wouldn’t own to it, none of them. But I’m sure we’ll persuade them. Got to get a coffee, Skip. You come down while we’re talking. Give them the evil eye or something, eh?’ And he was off, leaving Shirley looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  Had she heard correctly? Suzie asked, ‘Did I hear that, Shirl, and does it mean what I think it means? We got permission?’

  Shirley Cox nodded. ‘Big Toe says that it’s safer. If he’d been here he’d have marched us all down there. He isn’t here, so Jimmy Mortimer and Pip Magnus took a walk down the Duke last night and had a word in Charlie’s ear. Well, Charlie and Connie both.’

  Suzie realized that she was shaking with anger. ‘And you think it’s right? Going into a part of the manor we know’s controlled by the Balvaks and speaking to them first. Asking their permission to pull felons out of their patch, Shirl, it’s disgraceful. Disgusting.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds, Skip. Big Toe always said there was a demarcation line — Revellers Park. The other side of the park was always the Balvak territory. He always said it didn’t hurt. That we’d put them away in the end.’

  In her anger Suzie could only see the seeds of corruption sown by Harvey and gobbled up by his disciples in the CID room. She didn’t trust Big Toe an inch and certainly didn’t purchase his feeble concept that you could reach the heart of lawless evil by cuddling in to parts of it.

  She wondered what the business with the Colt.45 was all about. She looked hard into Shirley’s face and saw more troubles in her eyes.

  ‘There’s something else worrying you.’ It was part statement and part question.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to go on, Skip. The lads handled it all.’

  ‘Confide in me.’

  ‘Well, I have no idea if Pip and Jimmy gave any names to the Balvaks. But the lad we had sussed as the ringleader wasn’t there when we called on him this morning: Freddie Kemp. And guess what? Charlie and Connie are his uncles. The father said he’d gone to join up — they’re all around the right age and the three we’ve got already have their papers. The girls’re a bit younger, and they worry me a lot.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re good actors. They deny everything, they seemed genuinely shocked when we rumbled the goods hidden in their bedrooms, and they’re cousins — cousins to the girl Watts, Cathy Watts, the one you saw in hospital the day you arrived. Remember? What I think is that we’ve pulled these two as a kind of reprisal for Cathy Watts and Beryl Pegler.’

  To the buggers who did all that it was merely a spanking, Suzie remembered. The broken bones, the beaten-up eyes, split lips, the arms in plaster casts, the broken ribs. And, These people have memories like the Bible, unto the third and fourth generation, and once you’ve crossed them you can never climb back.

  ‘You’d better go and help with the inquisition,’ she told Shirley. She, DS Mountford, didn’t want any part of this business. The more she could keep herself occupied the better it would be.

  ‘How was last night?’ Shirley asked. ‘How was it with that lovely detective chief superintendent? The one with the stylish tailoring?’

  ‘One hundred per cent business.’ Suzie told her flatly.

  ‘No larks?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘How bloody dull,’ Shirley said as she got to the door.

  Suzie sorted the typewritten interview forms, her notes on the whole business, the evidence — Josephine Benton’s address books and things — slipped her private & personal envelope under the last pile, scooped it up and dropped it in to a thick manila quarto envelope. She ran her tongue along the gummed flap and pushed her balled right hand across the flap, pressing it down on to the desk. As she wrote DCS Livermore’s address at the Yard, she thought how much nicer it would be to run her tongue over Dandy Tom than over the thick envelope flap. She tingled at the prospect, and didn’t know if it would be right, was not certain which part of him she should run her tongue over, his lips or his cheeks? In her secret life, the one that went on all day in her head, she was totally obsessed. Will someone eventually teach me? And when they do, will it plunge me from a state of grace into a state of darkest sin?

  She took her package up to Loamy Lomax at the front desk.

  ‘We got a courier going to the Yard, Loamy?’

  ‘Next one’s two thirty.’

  ‘I want him down here, I’ve got highly confidential stuff for the Reserve Squad. If I’m not in CID I’ll be in the canteen, with the lads doing the interviewing or with Superintendent Sanders.’

  ‘Right, Suzie. Camford to Reserve. I heard you’d been dallying with the great Tommy Livermore.’

  ‘And who did you hear that from. Loamy?’

  ‘Your DC Cox. Said it was an education. I saw him once. That murder in Hounslow a couple of years ago. Like a dose of salts he was, went through everything in twenty-four hours flat.’

  ‘Good. About half two then. Loamy.’

  Back in CID she wrote up the murder book, filed the papers and took the duplicate file up to the admin office, where a uniformed woman police officer took it and signed for it. As she was heading down to CID again Sanders came out of his office in his best uniform with his cap and the leather-covered swagger stick he now affected.

  ‘Oh, Susannah!’ he called and she expected him to add, ‘Don’t you cry for me.’ But he managed to control the vocal urges. ‘I see from the duty log that you’re off early today, heading out of town and then off on Christmas leave.’ He pronounced it ‘leaf’ like naval petty officers, and she thought to herself someone ought to tell him about that, and knew it wouldn’t be her.

  He came over and stood very close to her. ‘I hear your people’ve pulled in some hobbledehoys for these street robberies. Good show, that.’

  ‘If they can prove it, sir.’

  ‘Gather they’ve got some of the stuff back. Bang to rights, I’m told.’

  ‘I’ll drop in and have a word with them later, sir.’

  ‘Well, you have a really good Christmas, Susannah, and don’t forget our night out in the New Year. I’m told the Silver Fox is good value.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve been told that as well. Look forward to it, sir.’ she lied in her teeth as she nipped downstairs and slipped into one of the rooms they were using for interviews. Pip Magnus and Pete Pinchbeck were b
elabouring a pale acne-covered youth with questions, misusing the rapid technique, their questions overlapping each other, not giving the lad a chance to even answer. In the books on interview techniques they called it establishing a rhythm, and something similar in the handbooks on interrogation. Either Magnus and Pinchbeck had read none of the books, or they just weren’t trying.

  She got tired of it and asked the one uniform present where Shirley was.

  ‘Next room. Dealing with one of the girls, Fat Paula.’

  So she went through and Shirley was with Mortimer and a tear-stained plump girl — Paula Potter, undeniably fat with lank ginger hair and oily skin. They were just about finished — ‘I believe you, Paula, thousands wouldn’t,’ the woman detective constable said, and Mortimer scowled black anger.

  Suzie pulled Shirley out. Took her into the corridor with its gleaming linoleum on the floor, brown and polished almost to a mirror: you could smell the wax they used on it every day. Fracture Lane they called it down here because if a prisoner was on remand they’d get him to do the corridor every day. It was slippery as ice and the story was that the floor had claimed one solicitor, compound fracture, and two police constables, tibia and fibula, plus a visiting newspaper man who did for his right wrist. ‘Clutching at straws as he went down,’ Sergeant Lomax reckoned.

  ‘I’m not getting mixed up in this, Shirl,’ Suzie told her. ‘I’ve enough on my plate, and I’ve a favour to ask.’ She spelled it out in about seven ways that she did not want Shirley gossiping to everyone in the nick about Dandy Tom. ‘Just drop it all down a well, Shirl. Wrap it up and lock it away. At the end of the day I’ll see you’re okay. Yes?’

  Shirley nodded. Agreed completely. Did everything except sign a confession. Admitted to talking to Lomax, who everybody knew was more loose-lipped than a chimpanzee.

  ‘Okay, Shirl. Give me my moves tomorrow.’

  Shirley couldn’t remember all the instructions for tomorrow’s journey, so came back to CID and read from her notes. ‘Eight thirty, Waterloo Station. See the RTO and he’ll make sure you get on the first train going direct to Andover. He’ll also ring RAF Middle Wallop and they’ll send a car to pick you up at the station on arrival. You’re expected by Squadron Leader O’Dell. You can either have lunch in the sergeants’ mess or fudge your rank and eat with the toffs in the officers’ mess. If you play your cards right, they’ll drive you to Overchurch.’ The RTO was the Railway Transport Officer. Every junction and central railway station had an RTO and they all performed a thankless job with reasonable efficiency, assisted by enthusiastic teams of both sexes. ‘RTOs are the unsung heroes,’ the Galloping Major used to proclaim. ‘Victoria Cross should come up regularly with the rations.’ Charlotte always maintained that the Major himself had spent the Great War as RTO at King’s Cross fighting the WVS.

 

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