Murder is Suspected (C.I.D. Room Book 10)

by Roderic Jeffries

  “I know the politics of the situation.”

  “But you’re going to ignore them?”

  “I think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that my resignation will have any direct influence on the future of the borough force.”

  “Direct and immediate influence, probably not. But a resignation which to a suspicious mind seems to hint at something nasty in the woodshed must have indirect influence. I’m not asking you for a full explanation of your reasons, but…”

  “Medical,” interrupted Grant.

  Middleton spoke with sudden coolness. “I was going to ask if you’d reconsider and withdraw your resignation for the moment, so that we could prepare for the event. But it seems obvious I would be wasting my time.” He finished his drink, put down the glass, stood up. “I’m sorry, Tom, to discover that in the final event you don’t have the same fierce pride in the force as the rest of us.”

  Grant, who usually faced the person to whom he spoke, looked away from Middleton as he said: “I want my resignation to be effective immediately.”

  *

  Fusil read the note Kerr had left. Records listed only two drug pushers with crescent-shaped scars on their cheeks: one was now in Barstone Prison, the other was sixty-two years old and almost bald. Streeter’s description ruled out this second man.

  He lit his pipe. There might or there might not be a pusher who worked the discothèque, the pusher might or he might not have been there on the twelfth of May when Duncan Grant might or might not also have been there. One way of sorting out the might from the might-nots would be to keep the disco under close surveillance for a lengthy time. But there weren’t the men available to carry out any prolonged surveillance, especially when it was questionable whether there was even a need for it.

  He swore. Day after day, he found himself unable to fight crime as effectively as it needed to be fought. Other men, facing a similar situation, shrugged their shoulders because the problem was beyond their correcting, but he could not reconcile himself to such impotence and he went on and on trying to do more than was possible.

  His angry, resentful thoughts were interrupted when Kywood rushed into his room. “Thank God you’re still here, Bob!” He came to a stop by the desk and took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat from his brow. “You wouldn’t guess in a lifetime what’s happened. He’s resigned. Resigned!”

  “The chief constable?”

  Kywood hooked along a chair with his right foot and sat down. He was panting slightly and his face was flushed. “He called me into his office and told me, just like that.” He stared suspiciously at Fusil. “You’re not looking surprised. Did you know what was happening?”

  “No. But I’ve been expecting this.”

  “Why?”

  “Knowing the kind of man he is, he had to resign after what’s happened.”

  “Goddamn it, there’s never been any proof it was his wife’s car. And in any case, there’s no question he was driving it.”

  “But he knows who was, so he can’t stay on as chief constable and live with his own conscience.”

  “A conscience can be a bloody expensive luxury.”

  “For him, I suppose it will be.”

  “I was thinking about the good name of the force.”

  Of course, thought Fusil sardonically.

  “If the word gets out about him being linked to a hit-and-run case, this force could be torpedoed. Have you leaked anything?”

  “I’ve handled the whole matter personally, as you ordered me to.”

  “And you dropped it when I said?”

  Fusil hesitated.

  “You didn’t? Why the hell not?”

  “Because something fresh turned up.” Fusil gave a résumé of the evidence concerning the discothèque.

  “Maybe, could have been, perhaps,” muttered Kywood. “For God’s sake, Bob, what the hell is this? There isn’t enough hard fact in all that to fill up one line in an official report.”

  “I know. But I’m convinced a pusher is working that disco.”

  “Name me one where there isn’t at least one pusher working it… I’ll tell you something. You’re not primarily concerned about any pusher, you’re still trying to land Duncan Grant. Can’t bear to be beaten.”

  There was just sufficient truth in that to prevent Fusil making an angry denial.

  “I told you to drop the case. Now bloody drop it. You keep on and people’ll begin to connect up the hit-and-run with the chief constable’s resignation and when that happens you’ll be out of a job.”

  *

  The news of the chief constable’s resignation became generally known on the following Monday when the Fortrow Gazette published it. Colonel Thomas Bodmin Grant, D.S.O., had been forced to resign as chief constable on account of ill health. Mr James Middleton, chairman of the watch committee, said that it was a very sad day for the borough force which had been so ably led by Mr Grant over the past years.

  *

  “You had absolutely no need to resign,” said Diana Grant.

  Grant wondered how many times she had said that in the past two days? She was furious. They’d have to leave the house and move into a far, far more modest one and she’d no longer enjoy the social prestige of being the chief constable’s wife.

  “How soon do we have to move out of this house?” She looked round the sitting room and had she been another woman it would have been possible to believe there were tears in her eyes.

  “I told you, Diana, they’re going to name George Kywood as temporary chief constable and then take their time about choosing my successor. James said he reckoned it would be several months before they made the appointment because they want to be absolutely certain they choose the right man. I’d say we’ve six months, at least.”

  “And you think that’s enough time to find another house?”

  Had he said a year, she would still have complained. Yet in her eyes it was entirely his fault that they had to move. Parents were no longer held to be vicariously responsible for their adult children’s problems. He could have swallowed his suspicions. Duncan’s trial…

  “What happens about your pension?”

  He’d answered that question endless times. “My full pension is reduced by one-fifteenth for every year I don’t serve of the contractual period.”

  “You’re going to lose over a quarter just because of your so-called principles?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You quixotic fool,” she said bitterly.

  *

  A woman, her voice strangely more resentful than panicky, spoke over the phone to the duty sergeant at eastern division H.Q. “Andy ain’t come back home.”

  “Come back from where?”

  “He went out fishing this morning and said he was coming home for lunch. But he ain’t back.”

  The sergeant looked up at the clock. It was now eight-thirty in the evening. “Have you any idea whereabouts he was going fishing?”

  “I don’t know that. He just said he was going out in his boat.”

  The sergeant wrote rapidly, logging the time and the gist of the call. Experience suggested that this was the beginning of a personal tragedy, though to judge from the woman’s tone of voice perhaps not as tragic as it might have been expected to be. Experience, however, did not go on to suggest that here was a case which would affect every man serving in the borough force.

  Chapter 10

  The boat was sighted on Tuesday morning at first light by fishermen who were returning to harbour with a poor catch. She was seventeen feet long, had a glass-fibre hull, sharply raked windscreen, four seats in back-to-back pairs, a 120 h.p. Mercury outboard which made her stern heavy, and was painted red with white superstructure.

  The beamy fishing boat closed on the speedboat and the man for’d stretched up on tiptoe in order to look inboard. “She’s empty, all right,” he shouted at the helmsman in the tiny cabin.

  The helmsman put their thumping diesel into neutral. Th
e deckhand picked up a rope, filthy with oil and fish scales, and as he waited he visually searched the sea, in case there was a body nearby.

  The man at the wheel used engine and helm to bring the fishing boat gently alongside. The deckhand climbed over the bulwarks and dropped down into the speedboat and made the rope fast. That done, he looked around the cockpit. There was a fishing rod with hooks ready baited with lug worm on a long trace, a plastic-lined bag with more fishing tackle in it, a bowl of bait, a knife which lay in the bilge, two empty and two full cans of beer, a bag of sandwiches, and an orange-coloured lifejacket.

  *

  A P.C. walked along to the wharf where the fishing boat had towed the speedboat and — after a resentful look at the filthy state of the ladder — climbed down and boarded the boat; He took his notebook from his pocket and wrote down in this an identifying description of the boat. He listed the contents, noting that one set of the lifejacket’s tapes had been tied and then torn away at the base of one of them so that they remained knotted.

  He slipped the notebook into his right-hand tunic pocket. Mrs Finch hadn’t been able to describe her husband’s boat at all, but he’d little doubt that this was it. So it was ten to one that her husband was dead. Poor sod, he thought. Out for a morning’s fishing, perhaps stretching out an inch too far, and that was that. Police work had taught him that life was all too often totally unexpected. It made one a lot more careful about rowing with the wife — at least over inconsequential matters.

  *

  Rigor mortis in a body immersed in water is variable in onset and duration (as it is on land) and often of fairly long duration — up to four days. Putrefaction sets in, generally at the root of the neck, between the third and fourth days. The body floats between the fifth and eighth days. These times are approximate and hot weather may accelerate their processes and cold weather may delay them. Andy Finch floated to the surface on the fourth day.

  The face — bloated — had begun to discolour and the clothes, a light blue T-shirt and tightly cut pink slacks, accentuated its mottled appearance. The small waves sometimes swept over the face, sometimes broke against it. Fish approached the body and stayed with it for a time before darting away, seagulls frequently swooped down to examine it.

  The tide took the body out to sea, then turned and brought it back in, gaining a little landwards, always making slight easting. On Sunday, it crossed the main shipping lane and on Monday, with the spring tide making hard, it approached within three hundred yards of Tawsey Head.

  Tawsey Head was a summer resort and during the three months of the season its hotels were full, its beach huts all in use, and its sand and shingle beach crowded. But it was a man on the cliffs above the beach who first noticed the body. He had been bird-watching, using a pair of powerful binoculars to look for the pair of black redstarts which had been reported in the area. He failed to see them and was sitting down near the edge of the cliff when he noticed something floating out to sea. Intrigued to identify what it was, he focussed the binoculars.

  He walked back along the cliff top, threading his way between clumps of gorse and tough weed grass, and reached the large carpark in the far corner of which was a callbox. He dialled 999 and reported what he had seen.

  The police had two launches which were used to patrol the dock areas and one of these was always on duty. This was called up over the radio and ordered to go round to Tawsey Head and investigate.

  The sergeant and two P.C.s sailed downriver past the Shallows and turned to starboard at the black and red spherical buoy, to cut across the bay to Tawsey Head. They began the search five hundred yards offshore because now the tide was ebbing.

  The elder P.C. who had been standing on the foredeck first sighted the body. He shouted and pointed two points to starboard. In the wheelhouse the sergeant throttled back both engines until they were just ticking over and put on five degrees of helm.

  A little later the P.C. called out: “It’s a floater, all right.”

  The sergeant steered the launch round in a wide arc, to bring her to the east, or leeward, of the body — if the body bore down on the hull there would be little damage to it, but if the hull bore down on the body that damage might be extensive. The second P.C. who’d been keeping watch aft opened one of the lockers and brought out the ‘floater’s cape’, an eight-foot-long, six-foot-wide rubber and canvas sheet with ropes at each corner and drainage holes throughout its length. He laid this along the thwart, careful to keep the ropes free.

  Exercising a skill which spoke of years of working with small craft, the sergeant brought the launch to within feet of the body. He waited until the two P.C.s were in position, holding the floater’s cape between them, and then he closed the final short distance to the body. The P.C.s cast out the cape to a point beyond the body, then by careful manipulation of the ropes they were able to ease it underneath. They took the strain and hauled. The cape pressed around the body, like a hammock, and as it rose up the water drained out. They held the body until satisfied all the water was away, lifted it up and over the bulwarks and laid it down on the deck.

  The sergeant pulled back a corner of the cape and stared at the dead man’s face. “It could be the bloke who went fishing,” he said, remembering the description. But there was little certainty in his voice. Experience had taught him that the face of a drowned man often bore little resemblance to what it had looked like when he’d been alive.

  *

  The pathologist bent down and again inspected the air passages, which he had cut open for their whole length. He stared at something through the lower halves of his bifocals.

  He was a pedantic man, both in speech and manner: everything had to be done in order. So he said nothing of consequence until he had gone over to the hand basin, stripped off gloves, removed the green gown, and carefully washed his hands with medical soap. Then, and only then, did he say to the P.C.: “Cause of death is asphyxiation by drowning. There’s a froth in the terminal air passages, silt in the mouth, nostrils, throat, and principal air passages, and the lungs are ballooned.”

  He took off his spectacles and polished them on a handkerchief. “There are two bruises on the right arm. The fingers of both hands show contusions. The bruising could be consistent with hitting that arm as the deceased fell overboard and the injuries to the fingers could be consistent with a subsequent wild and panicky attempt to board the boat. However, both bruising and contusions are to some degree more extensive in character than I would have expected if they were suffered solely in the circumstances I have suggested. The silt in the air passages is fully consistent with drowning in salt water, but tests should be made to determine the chloride content of the heart.”

  He turned. “You can start tidying everything up,” he said to his assistant.

  *

  The P.C. who was coroner’s officer had a small office which fronted the handkerchief-sized patch of grass to the side of the morgue. Because it faced south this grass received any sunshine and it could become the one cheerful place in an otherwise gloomy complex.

  Kerr, his curly brown hair in more than usual disarray because of the fresh breeze which blew in from the sea, said, “But what does he really think?”

  “Know that and you’d be a bloomin’ genius,” said the P.C. “I tell you, he’s so careful he won’t certify a man’s really dead until he’s opened him up and checked that the heart’s stopped.”

  “Does he think the bloke just fell over the side and was drowned, or does he think that he was pushed?”

  “It’s even Steven on the evidence, as far as he’s concerned.”

  “But I need to know, one way or the other.”

  “You’ll get his report and then you will know. Or maybe you won’t!”

  Kerr sighed. “O.K …I suppose I’d better have a butchers at the bloke.”

  They went into the morgue, newly scrubbed down and smelling strongly of disinfectant, and through to the cabinet room. The P.C. slid out one of the cabinets and c
old air swirled round their feet. The P.C. pulled back the sheet.

  “What a sight!” said Kerr. “Doesn’t do one any good to see what can happen.”

  “What have you got to worry about? Get to his state and you won’t feel a thing.”

  Kerr noticed the small crescent-shaped scar on the man’s right cheek, but for the moment he failed to appreciate the possible significance of this. “D’you know anything about him?”

  “Not a thing, except he wasn’t a very good swimmer.”

  If he worked in the morgue, wondered Kerr, would he become quite so complacently irreverent in the face of death? “I’ll be on my way, then. We’ll let you know when he can be released to the relatives.”

  He left the building and returned to his car, where he lit a cigarette. That evening, he thought, he’d take Helen out to a meal at the nearby Chinese restaurant. After staring at that bloated, eye-bulging face he needed to do something to prove to the world that he was alive and healthy.

  He drove along Dock Road until he came to number 4 gate, there turned in. The dock policeman came up to the window. “Hullo, what’s brought you in here?”

  “I want to have a butchers at the motor boat they picked up at sea.”

  “It’s tied up in the last dock to your right.”

  Kerr drove on. He passed vast cargo sheds behind which were a coaster discharging and a rusty tramp whose derricks were rigged yet which was not being worked. Where had the tramp last been? Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, Madras? Names to spell romance and the mystery of the East, which not even the television could betray if a man had real imagination.

  The dock was small and, to judge from the state of the dockside, no longer used. He stopped the car, climbed out, crossed to the edge of the dock and stared down at the motor boat which floated amidst dunnage and oil-slick rainbows.

  The outboard was one of the really expensive ones. He wondered what speed she’d do and had the brief mental picture of himself on water skis, skimming across the water. Then he turned and went back to his car.