Cart Before The Hearse (David Mallin Detective Book 14)

by Roger Ormerod

  “One thing more,” I said.

  Wally’s head come up. The smile again.

  “Whatever happened to the Merseyside mob?”

  It seemed I was leaving him with a happy memory. He twiddled his fingers with pleasure. “They had this minibus. Ten of them. So foolish to put all your eggs in one basket. It was found in the Mersey, with the eggs still inside. So unfortunate.”

  I turned to leave. Thought.

  “So that Flossie… one man… he wouldn’t stand much chance.”

  “Perhaps he knows that. But he can’t keep hiding, Mr. Mallin. Not for ever. Carl, show the gentlemen out. On your feet, man. Show them out!”

  Somehow Carl made it. He held the door for us. He closed it gently behind us. The corridor was empty, so we left.

  There was a baize door opening into the restaurant. We played it cool, staying for a couple of drinks, which I for one needed. On our way out, the expert missed both the pistols, which was just as well for him. We crossed to the paddock and slipped into the car.

  George’s voice was hoarse, though he hadn’t been doing the talking.

  “Flossie’s car, and we’ve been using it. What’s been the chances of a load of lead coming through the glass?

  What’s the chance, now, of the thing being booby-trapped, Dave?”

  I held up the ignition key and looked at it. “If Wally knows Flossie’s dead, then he’d do nothing. Would you say he knows, George?”

  George poked out his lower lip. “In his position, I reckon I’d make sure. Yes. Give it a try.”

  I stuck in the key. I turned it. Nothing happened. I don’t mean no bomb. I mean nothing. It was a dead car.

  We jacked open the bonnet. All round the car park there were floodlights on poles. The nearest showed us enough. Somebody had cut the main battery lead. It’s even better than pinching the distributor rotor, because it’s quicker. And you still have to find a replacement.

  We could have taken a taxi, of course. They were arriving at the footbridge all the time. But I was getting used to the car; it was part of the persona now. We needed tools, though, and there was no key to the boot. So we went looking.

  A maroon 4.2 Jag stood in isolation, his driver behind the wheel. Perhaps Wally intended going somewhere. Pity! George took one door and I the other. The poor devil didn’t know which way to look, and I got him behind the ear with the Walther when he wasn’t.

  We found his tools. We detached his battery lead, which turned out to be a little long. But who’s being fussy? We took back the tools and dropped the Jag’s keys on the chauffeur’s lap. There was a flat cap on the front passenger’s seat, and I recalled that Wally’s man hadn’t worn one. A briefcase on the rear seat had the initials B.F.T. on it. There was every likelihood that it was Colonel Toombs’ car. Ah well! You can’t always be right.

  We went back to the Flossie car. George said he’d go in the back, so I reckoned he didn’t want to talk He didn’t get in the back. I turned, and he still had the door open.

  Niki lay on the floor in front of the seat. Her tights were knotted terminally around her neck.

  They hadn’t given her much time for regret.

  George was growling, deep in his chest. I knew there would be no holding him, but to return now would be fatal. I stood back and produced Wally’s.32.

  “No, George. Later.” When he was more calm, that was the time to return.

  It was the first time I’d ever held a gun on George. He looked at me, looked at the gun. He’d only got to walk onto it, and I was beaten. He saw that. Gradually the tension ran from him.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Dave,” he said.

  I put away the gun.

  Chapter Seven

  As he was barely recovering, we assumed the chauffeur would be indifferent, so we slipped Niki on to the rear seat behind him. I thought I could rely on the Colonel to raise a few degrees of hell, which, it seemed to me, was the best we could do at the time. George was still for charging back inside and putting a clean hole to connect Wally’s ears. But we had a dozen shots between us, and as many doors. I manhandled him into the car. There had been blood on the tights.

  Fortunately, the car now started, and we drove away. A light rain began to obscure the windscreen. George fretted.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll be back. And Fyne can be told. It’s the best we can do.”

  He growled. I began to use all the potential of the Flossie car. Come to think of it, we’d have to come back to the motel for our things. But… Marcia Connolly first.

  After fifty miles, George seemed to relax. I heard him checking the mechanism of the Magnum. He’d been a weapons expert on the Force. Usually, he prefers his fists, though.

  “There’s a thread,” he said at last.

  “What?”

  “All down one seam. A thread. They actually pull it out when they undress, and sew it up when they dress again.” “She told you?” “She showed me.”

  I tutted.

  “Nothing serious, Dave. There wasn’t time. Besides, she was smiling.” I heard him spinning the cylinder. “She was smiling, Dave.”

  I concentrated on the road.

  What worried me a little was that he insisted on backing his Renault on to the road as soon as we arrived. There was a possibility he intended to make a quick getaway if I opposed his intentions. But I rolled the Flossie car into the drive and left it in neutral with the handbrake on. The rain was now heavy, and lifted by a strong wind. So far, George showed no inclination to let me face Marcia Connolly alone.

  There’d been the curtain-twitching bit again. Then she was at the door. I caught George’s arm, and felt his muscles tense.

  “Let me tell it, George.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “George?”

  “Then tell it true, Dave. I’m warning you…”

  We ran for the porch.

  “Dear, dear,” she said. “Do watch where you’re dripping.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said George. I didn’t care for his tone. “Has he told you?” I asked her.

  Her negative was more a lift of the head than a shake. “But he’s said something.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been talking to him. Oh… for hours. Trying to get through. I told him, amongst other things, that our daughter is dead.”

  “I think he knew that. Shall we move out of the hall, Mrs. Connolly?”

  “A minute. I told him there were two men trying to find out who killed her.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He said you were fools.”

  “That’s true enough. The kitchen, Mrs. Connolly. Please.”

  She led the way. Again, there was one chair at the table. Again, we stood. This time the window was not steamed. Rain lashed it.

  “Did you know,” I asked, “that your husband has been visiting Mia for a couple of years?”

  The lips clamped shut. She prised them open. “No!” not that she did not know; no, she did not accept it.

  “There’s ample evidence. Why do you think he bought a car and suddenly discovered work away from home?”

  “He would not…”

  “As you did, he set about tracing her. Only sooner.”

  “He would not be so disloyal.”

  George blinked. I said: “To whom?”

  “Me. His wife. He’d never sneak off and find her, and see her, and not even tell me. He’d be… ashamed.”

  “Of admitting he’d seen her?”

  “Of seeing her. It would be a weakness. As I said, she died, for him, when she left home.”

  She was fighting for it, her head nodding to emphasise her words. Violently, she clung to the implacability of her husband, as though it were a life-raft. As, perhaps, it was.

  “But it seems that for him she didn’t die. He’s seen her many times.”

  Her fingers rattled the table top. “I will not accept such a thing.”

  “But you did it yourself, Mrs. Connolly.
You hired Caldicott.”

  She dismissed it with contempt. “That was different.”

  “Oh?” I glanced at George, but he was calm. “In what way?”

  “I thought it was time that Ernest made a proper will. Naturally, it was necessary to know the situation.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do, young man.” She glanced at George. He was perhaps a bit older than she was, but younger in spirit. He gave her a thin, encouraging smile. “The world’s a very unstable place, these days. You two live on that, so you welcome it. Crime and drugs and gun fights on the streets. I like pattern, tradition — stability. Now do I make myself clear?”

  She did. Now I was afraid to tell her the truth about the real world out there.

  I said: “It’s rather a long story,” meaning, why don’t we go where we can sit down?

  “And it will clear things in Ernest’s mind?”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “Then why don’t we go in to him, and you can tell him yourself?”

  “Yes,” said George. “Let’s get on with it.”

  I didn’t think it would help Connolly. The full story could drive him completely mad.

  “No,” I said emphatically.

  She smiled introspectively at the difference in opinion between us. “Then you may tell me.”

  So I told her, linking the accounts of Fyne, Poole and Wally, explaining how Flossie had used the character of each to play ball between them, Mia being the ball. She watched me, at first, with steady black eyes, the wrinkles around them close to humour as she challenged me to shock her. So I didn’t smooth it over for her. Every detail. I painted it in broad slashes of colour. She flinched. Her hands began to move. She searched for a handkerchief in her sleeves. It went first to her lips, then to her forehead, patting it. It did not go to her eyes.

  I told her how her daughter, Mia, had died in the loneliness of that foul flat, where the smell of scorched brickwork had been subjugated to the smell of her terror. And, in the telling of it, I determined that soon, very soon, I’d return there and bum that flat to the ground.

  Towards the end, I wasn’t sure it was getting through. She was sitting with a dazed passivity that was close to complete rejection.

  “And that,” I finished, “was how your daughter died.” I was proud that I had not raised my voice. Not once.

  “I don’t… understand.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” It was not in her world.

  “Perhaps you will, when you’ve thought about it. We’ll send you a bill, with a full statement of expenses.”

  “But you haven’t said who killed Mia.”

  “It’s mainly mileage, really.”

  “Who?” she whispered, and I wanted to leave.

  “Tell her who, Dave, and let’s get going.”

  I sighed. “Your husband did, Mrs. Connolly.”

  “I don’t believe that!”

  “All the same…”

  “Tell me!”

  “Oh, come on, Dave.”

  “Tell me!” she screamed suddenly, her face disintegrating.

  I told her, my face close to hers, to hold her together. “Your husband knows he did.” And then, on her indrawn breath, I took it on the flood of my anger.

  “Your husband — the hard man, the inflexible! Godfearing? Oh no, not this Ernest Connolly, the real one. He’s the eternal sentimentalist, the soft, flexible romantic, ashamed of that perhaps, because of his wife. Don’t explain, please. Let me finish. I know you’ll say it was for the best. He’s always been weak. You had to be strong enough for both, and establish the firm foundation of this home of yours. He went along. He was your man, not swaying the boat. If you wanted it, that was what he did. Including asking his own daughter to leave home. I think he loved her, but he wouldn’t have shown that around here. That’d be too sentimental and demonstrative. So, suffering, he showed her the door, so that no disgrace would come to your home. I wonder if it’s ever been his. But certainly he went hunting for the affection he rejected.”

  “I shall not let you say this,” she managed to get out.

  “I’m going to finish.”

  “Then I shan’t lsten.”

  “In which case you’ll never get to know him. Do you understand?”

  Her eyes were wide. There was no movement. I assumed she did. I went on.

  “But what did he do when he found Mia? Did he tell her how much he loved her? No, he did not, because it was no longer in him. Your character was in him, mixing him up and trampling down his own. So he found her, and he couldn’t offer what she wanted. He couldn’t tell her to come home, because she was on hard drugs by then. There wasn’t any home to take her to. And she… she waited for any sign at all, and he was in dread, torn apart, and dared not make one. Because she was on drugs, and he couldn’t bring her home and say ‘Our daughter’s on drugs, and this is the only place she can go to and expect to be cured.’ He couldn’t say that. Not promise to bring her here, he couldn’t. And the longer he waited, the more impossible it became, and the worse she became, so that he was caught in it, between you. Like a trap.”

  “But he could have told me!” she whispered.

  “Like hell he could!” said George.

  “Be quiet, George. Could he have told you, Mrs. Connolly, what I’ve just told you? Could he have taken you there to show you? Ask yourself. So when it came to Saturday, he was faced with the fact that it had gone beyond any point of decision. He blamed himself…”

  “There was no need!”

  “Blamed himself because he had let it come to that, and knew, if she lived, it could only go on and on, and he couldn’t stand the thought of that, tom between the two of you. And so…

  “He came back to me.”

  “And so… Wally got it wrong. Your husband wasn’t trying to prevent him getting at the gun, he was trying to stop him getting at the phone. He wanted her to die and finish it. He was committing suicide by God, in his heart. When he fell down unconscious, it was the phone he clasped to his chest.”

  Her hand hovered towards me. There was a wild hope in her eyes. “But the phone wasn’t working. You told me that. So, by doing that, he didn’t kill her.”

  I was tired of it. George was moving towards the door. I took that hovering hand.

  “Do you really believe that will make any difference to him? Do you?”

  We left her. She sat at the table, and it could be a long while before she decided how much she dared to tell him.

  George was half-way down the drive. “You bring the other car,” he flung over his shoulder as he headed for the Renault.

  “No… wait, George.”

  I ran after him, crowding him, and got into the passenger seat before he’d found his keys. “What’re you thinking of doing?”

  “That Wally — ”

  “On your own?”

  “If it has to be.”

  “He was under pressure, George. Flossie’d got him in a stranglehold.”

  He took out his keys and looked at them. “There was no pressure when he dealt with Niki.”

  “It’s a police matter.”

  “Christ, Dave, what’s the matter with you! Can’t you see what’s coming? First Niki… so what about Pat?”

  But I hadn’t missed the possibility. I’d given it some thought. She could well persuade Wally that I’d had her under duress. She was his leading hostess, and he couldn’t afford to lose her. Things like that. Which didn’t fool me one little bit, only left me feeling empty.

  “You finished?” he said.

  I hadn’t finished. Carefully, I went over things in detail. I like to take a reasonable view. He listened. Give him that. I took my time, but in the end I ran out of reason, and was silent.

  “If that’s all,” he said heavily, “let’s go.”

  “Start the car, you great oaf.”

  Then the front door of the house crashed open, and through the slanting rain I dimly saw the scuttling fig
ure heading for the Flossie car. I hadn’t realised we’d been arguing for so long. But there had been time for Marcia to put it to Ernest. Straight. In such a way that his culpability was in no way softened, as of course she would have to put it, otherwise some remnant of blame might rest on her conscience. Which would never do.

  The car door slammed, and immediately the engine fired. George was leaning forward, his wipers going because the screen was completely obscured. There was a grating of gears, and Flossie’s car jerked forward into the garage door. More grating, and the car shot back, too fast, scraped along the gatepost, and reversed into the road. He was facing away from us. George revved the Renault’s starter and the engine caught. Connolly, I could see against a street lamp, was fighting the gearbox, his head down. It gave George that small, half second of advantage, and he pulled out to swing ahead, and cut him off. But Connolly got reverse again, and backed smartly into the Renault’s nearside wing.

  George cursed. There was a crunch and a whine, and the Renault came to a halt. Its engine stalled.

  And finally, frantically, Connolly fought his car into first and accelerated away, the tail weaving.

  We got out. The collision had buckled the wing just behind the wheel, so that the tyre had caught it up and wound it in. Now there was a crumpled mass of metal digging into the tyre.

  I realised that Marcia Connolly had been screaming, simply because the silence was so intense when the closing door shut it off. It was too late at night for screams.

  Chapter Eight

  You reverse your car, and the rotating wheel disentangles the metal. That’s the theory. It didn’t work for us. George tried it three times, me standing out there getting soaked and waving frantically, until in the end a jagged point of naked metal pierced the tyre, and it made nasty hissing noises.

  The jack lifted the buckled steel free of the tyre, and we were able to get the wheel off. The night was thick with George’s comments, and even the rain flinched. He said there was a rag under the front seat, so I fetched it for him. He used it to protect his palms, and hooked his hands under the worst part of the buckle. Then he lifted, and something groaned.