Despite the Evidence

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘But this bloke, Tarbard?’

  Riggs shook his head. ‘I’m not saying anything definite. I’ll tell you this, though, if I’d been knocked out by crashing into that tree, I’d have been a lot less chirpy.’

  Kerr took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it, but Riggs shook his head. ‘Was there anyone else around?’

  ‘Not when we arrived. The other bloke said three cars had been past and two had stopped to see if they could help, but he’d sent ’em on.’

  ‘And there wasn’t anyone else around who was injured?’

  Riggs showed his surprise at the question. ‘Somebody else?’ He shook his head.

  ‘If there’d been another injured man, d’you think you’d have seen him?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong if I say we’d have seen him if he’d been in view and wouldn’t if he hadn’t — like I mean, we didn’t look round the place.’

  ‘Suppose he’d been in the car?’

  ‘No, there wasn’t no one else in the car. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Did you happen to notice the branch that knocked me out?’

  ‘The other bloke pointed it out to me and my mate. He’d shoved it on one side of the road. Can’t say I took any special notice of it, except to think I didn’t want it dropping on my head.’

  Kerr finished the tea, almost cold by now, and stood up. ‘Thanks a lot, mate.’

  ‘You reckon there was another bloke in the crash, then?’

  Kerr shook his head. ‘Like I said at the beginning, we don’t think anything definite and are just checking.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing. If it comes to kicking that driver where it hurts, shove your boot in a bit harder for me. Never did like admirals!’

  Very shortly afterwards, Kerr left and returned to the car. He checked on the time and found it was half an hour to lunch. Did he eat at the canteen, where the food was cheap and tasted it, or did he go round the corner from the police station to the pub and have a half-pint and some sandwiches — remembering that supper was sure to be good?

  On his return to the station, there was time to telephone Records at county H.Q. He asked the sergeant if they’d anything on Gervaise Tarbard, aged mid-thirties, six feet tall or thereabouts, well built, long, thin face, wavy black hair, dark blue eyes, sharp nose, fair complexion, downward twisting lips, and no obvious distinguishing marks. The sergeant said he’d call back as soon as he’d checked. Kerr began to suggest that after lunch would do, but the sergeant cut the connection.

  Kerr shuffled through the crime reports on his desk and wondered why Braddon was bothering to follow up the stolen watering-can which had been taken from a pavement display outside an ironmonger’s. The chances of tracing the thief were virtually nil. Presumably, Braddon saw the investigation as a P.R. exercise.

  The telephone rang. The sergeant from Records said that Tarbard had form.

  Chapter Five

  Tarbard, working in his office at the White Angel, looked up as Paula came in. She took off her coat and he saw, without any surprise, that she was wearing a new dress. She stood in the centre of the room and turned slowly round. ‘D’you like it, Gerry?’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘I think it suits me.’ She spoke a trifle doubtfully as she slid her hands down her hips.

  It was a beautifully cut dress, its quality unmistakable. He guessed that his account at Newby, in the High Street, had been debited at least another sixty guineas. For a second he was angry that she should have bought it when uncertain whether or not she really liked it, but then his anger passed. When it came to spending money, she was like a child, knowing only an urge to buy something. Yet she always showed a natural taste in her purchases — which was strange, considering her background.

  ‘Can I have a drink, Gerry?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. What would you like? Gin and tonic?’

  She didn’t bother to answer, but wandered over to the far wall to stare at her reflection in the large gilt-edged mirror there.

  There was a knock on the door. Wojeck, the general manager, came in and asked if it would be in order to renew the contract with the French cheese wholesaler who for the past six months had been sending them cheeses each week by cross-Channel aircraft. ‘I told you this morning it was O.K.,’ said Tarbard irritably.

  ‘But I have checked their new prices and they are all up.’

  ‘Of course they are. What the hell isn’t getting more expensive?’

  Wojeck nodded nervously and hurried out.

  ‘What a funny little man he is,’ said Paula, with mild contempt.

  A funny, nervous, easily rattled little man, born of Polish and French parents, who spoke five languages fluently and was a very good manager, thought Tarbard, but not up to dealing with awkward staff, suppliers, or customers. That didn’t matter. Tarbard could easily cope with any of them. The staff all jumped to his orders, or else, the few English suppliers he still dealt with had learned by experience to deliver only the finest quality food, and he left none of the customers in any doubt that his background was at the very least as good as theirs.

  ‘Can I have that drink?’ she asked, reminding him he’d forgotten to get it for her.

  He went across to the cocktail cabinet and poured out two drinks. He sipped his, she rushed hers.

  ‘I went past Jarrings this morning,’ she said, and looked quickly at him, then away.

  He knew roughly what was coming, but pretended not to. ‘Who?’

  ‘Jarrings, the jeweller’s.’ She waited. When he said nothing, she ran her tongue along her heavily made-up lips. His habit of staying silent when she wanted him to say something always disconcerted her.

  He opened the silver cigarette box on the desk and took out a cigarette, which he lit with a silver lighter. Both box and lighter bore the family crest and the motto sunt lacrimae rerum: as far as he was concerned, life was only full of sorrow for those who were fool enough to let it be.

  She drained the glass. When she spoke, her voice was wheedling. ‘Jarrings had a lovely little bracelet in the window and the man there has promised to keep it for a couple of days.’

  ‘I’m not buying it,’ he said flatly.

  ‘But, Gerry, it’s so lovely. It’s just what I’ve always wanted.’ She spoke despondently, realising there was no hope he would change his mind.

  He wondered where she hid some of her jewellery? She thought he didn’t notice, but he knew exactly what he’d bought her over the past year and which pieces she now never wore. They’d been tucked away for a rainy day. She might seem casually brainless, but underneath this pleasure-seeking exterior was a woman who was determined to make the world give her a good time, whilst ensuring it never gave her a bad one.

  ‘Can I have another drink, Gerry?’ she asked. She handed him her glass and then sat down in the nearer of the armchairs.

  He mixed her the drink, but did not give himself one.

  ‘Are you going to take me out this afternoon?’ she asked, as she took the glass.

  ‘I can’t. I’m busy.’

  ‘But surely you can take me somewhere?’

  He shook his head and noticed the sullen set to her mouth. He remembered the day she had come to the audition, held, of all places, in a church hall, a month before the White Angel opened. Thirty-five girls had stripped, in a draught and without any accompanying music, whilst the cabaret manager sorted out those who were too fat or too thin, too reluctant, or too tarty. Tarbard had been highly amused by the scene — could anything have been less sexy, in such surroundings — until he saw the red-head who’d stripped with art and pleasure. He’d had a quick word with the cabaret manager and one hour later Paula Stokes had come to his undecorated, unfurnished office. She hadn’t bothered to pretend she was in any doubt as to why she was there and after two minutes it was agreed she wouldn’t be appearing in the cabaret. The cabaret manager was furious because he’d reckoned to work up a nice, beautiful friendship with her: in the event,
he’d made friends with a brunette who nearly drove him crazy because she insisted on eating pickled onions before getting into or on to the bed.

  ‘Gerry, let’s take time off in the big smoke?’ said Paula suddenly.

  ‘Are you becoming bored?’

  She looked quickly at him, then away. ‘Of course not. It’s just like I want to go somewhere for a bit.’ She’d never been able to overcome her instinctive fear of him. He’d never hit her, nor ever threatened to, but underneath his arrogant manner she was certain there was a wide streak of brutality.

  ‘Would you like to go up in a day or two when I can get away?’

  ‘That would be great.’ She spoke with little enthusiasm, considering it had been she who made the request.

  ‘Or would you prefer a quick trip down to Cannes?’

  ‘D’you really mean that, Gerry?’ Now, her interest was really captured. ‘Would it be warm down there, so I could lie in the sun? I must buy some new clothes and . . .’

  He laughed.

  Just as his silences disturbed her, so sometimes did his laughter because of its jeering quality. Afraid of where the conversation might be leading, she told him about some people she’d met who’d praised the White Angel as offering the best food they’d had in years.

  For a while, he listened to her. He enjoyed praise as much as anyone. But then his mind changed tracks. He remembered the way in which, at the very last moment, the detective’s attention had been caught by his right hand. He silently cursed, because that was when the detective had known he hadn’t been the unconscious man in the Jensen. What had the odds been against a detective, a man trained to observe even at times of stress, arriving at the scene of the crash?

  Tarbard was not a man to waste much time in bemoaning what had happened. Nothing could alter that. He stubbed out one cigarette and lit another, then finished his drink. The situation had some affinity to a game of chess in that he had had to work out, from the moment he had opened the detective’s wallet and realised who he was, his opponents’ probable moves and what must be his counters to them. His advantages were twofold: the initiative was his now and must remain his, and the average detective in comparison to him was neither of much education nor intelligence. . . . Detectives worked to logical conclusions and therefore he was ready, if it became necessary, to present them with a logical impossibility which they, logically, must accept as impossible.

  *

  After lunch Kerr took a bus out to Ribstowe where he interviewed the owner of the ironmonger’s from whom the watering can had been stolen. It should have been obvious there was no chance of catching the thief, but the owner seemed to think nothing should be easier and became indignant at Kerr’s explanations. After an exhausting half-hour, Kerr left and caught a second bus to Flecton, where he checked up on one of the alibis. The man in a shoe shop refused to confirm his friend’s evidence, in such a manner that it was clear he had originally agreed to lie to help, but when faced with the necessity of doing so had quickly decided that his own skin was of more consequence than any friendship.

  On his return to the station, Kerr reported to Fusil. Fusil swore when told about the watering can, but he could not have been expecting anything else. Unfortunately, there would now be one more unsolved crime to go down in the statistics and members of the watch committee still insisted on judging the efficiency of the force by the clear-up rate.

  Kerr also told him about the visit to the ambulance station. ‘I saw Riggs there, sir.’

  ‘Well?’ Fusil’s tone of voice made it clear he did not consider the matter of any real importance.

  ‘Riggs said that it did seem as if Tarbard hadn’t been at all smashed up in the accident. Unfortunately, though, he wouldn’t be definite about any judgement.’

  ‘That doesn’t get anyone anywhere.’

  ‘I also heard from Records. Tarbard has form.’

  Fusil’s surprise was obvious. He leaned back in his chair and for a few seconds drummed on the desk with his fingers. As with any good detective, he had an instinct for crime and the news made him much more ready to give credence to Kerr’s story. ‘What’s the history?’

  ‘He was sent down for a year for manslaughter by driving: killed a woman and a kid in a country lane. The experts estimated he was going ninety in an Aston Martin. He said the mother and kid ran into the centre of the road, but an independent witness testified the car skidded into them. Since then he got mixed up with a property swindle that took thousands from newly married couples, but at the trial counsel got him off on a technicality.’

  Fusil stared at Kerr, a slight frown on his high forehead. ‘What’s his background?’

  ‘He’s the traditional black sheep of a big family who live near Glintonhurst. Public school, where he got expelled, and shipped abroad with an allowance. It’s all a bit like Victorian times. The sergeant in Records told me he’d been born near the family home and he says the rest of them are absolutely typical of the type that’s supposed to be extinct but isn’t: big landowners, efficient farmers, lots of good works with a touch of condescension, and hunting, shooting, and fishing.’

  ‘The other one per cent,’ muttered Fusil, with slightly bitter sarcasm. His politics were vaguely left wing because he knew very well what poverty did to a man and he saw little excuse or good reason for concentration of wealth, The other side of the coin, the fact that with such a family there was a valuable continuity of the countryside and its life, was something beyond his understanding or sympathy. ‘Are Records sending the file down?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So how do you see things?’

  ‘The same as I did at the beginning. Tarbard was not driving that car when it crashed. He must have been a passenger.’

  ‘In a crash it’s the front-seat passenger who inevitably comes off worse.’

  ‘He could either have been wearing a safety belt and the driver wasn’t, or he might have been in the back.’

  ‘A check on the car might show if the seat belt had been under strain,’ said Fusil slowly. He looked keenly at Kerr. ‘And you still reckon you were laid out by someone and not by a falling branch?’

  Kerr hesitated. ‘I thought I heard a noise immediately behind me, sir, and I thought it was someone as opposed to something. But I can’t be certain.’

  ‘Let’s get one thing settled. Strictly off the record, just how tight were you?’

  Kerr knew that Fusil really meant his answer would be off the record. If he confessed to being so drunk he had seen a whole herd of pink elephants, there would be no disciplinary action and the confession would not be held against him in the future. ‘I’d had enough to affect me, sir, but I knew this and drove carefully: it would have taken another couple of pints, at least, to have had me driving stupidly. When I saw the man in the car I was seeing exactly what was there. The tip of the middle finger of his right hand was missing, there was a heavy gold signet ring on his little finger, and what I could see of his face in profile through the mess was squarish, with a broad nose, and very thick lips.

  ‘When I saw Tarbard at his club he was wearing a ring that looked exactly similar. But the tip of the middle finger of his right hand isn’t missing, his face is long and thin, his nose is sharp, and his lips are firm but certainly not thick.’

  Fusil abruptly made up his mind. ‘We’ll go and have a look at the scene of the crash.’

  Instinctively, knowing how close to knocking-off time it was, Kerr looked up at the clock on the wall.

  ‘When you stop worrying so much about the time,’ snapped Fusil, ‘you may just begin to show the glimmerings of becoming a detective.’

  ‘I was thinking . . .’ he began.

  ‘About food, or women, or both.’ Fusil came round his desk and put on his overcoat. ‘When I was a D.C. we were goddamn lucky to stop work before midnight any night of the week.’

  When you were a D.C., thought Kerr, the Bow Street Runners had only just been invented. He followed the other down to th
e car.

  Fusil was a bad driver, being both impatient and too ready mentally to concentrate on all the problems in hand instead of the problems of the road. In their drive through north Fortrow they had a near collision with a car and they missed a pedestrian crossing the road only because the pedestrian took fright just in time and leapt to the safety of the pavement.

  They left Pendleton Bray — many of the more wealthy now lived there because suburbs nearer the centre of the town were rapidly deteriorating in standards — and reached the countryside. The fields and leafless trees and hedgerows looked bleak in the car’s headlights. Soon they reached the public house where Kerr and Templeton had spent the evening and they continued along the narrow, twisting lanes until they came to the sharp corner at which the crash had occurred.

  Fusil braked too sharply and the car skidded slightly. He seemed unaware of the fact. After switching off the headlights, he pulled a torch out of the glove locker and climbed out. There was no need for him to ask where exactly the crash had occurred because glass from the windscreen was scattered over the rough grass verge and the trunk of the tree bore, a splintered scar. When by the base of the tree, Fusil shone the torch upwards. Immediately, he picked out the white gash on the trunk. ‘That’s where the branch was torn off. Which way was the wind blowing?’

  Kerr tried to remember, but failed.

  Fusil swept the beam of the torch across the grass verge and picked out the ten-foot-long branch, quite five inches thick, with numerous side branches, which had been dumped close to the thorn hedge. ‘We’ll see if there’s anything on that branch. Get the other torch out of the car,’ he ordered.

  They began to search the branch, starting from opposite ends. Fusil found the hairs. Several were caught under the lip of a rough piece of bark and their white tips showed they had been torn out by the roots. Very carefully, Fusil eased them free and held them in the palm of his hand. They were brown and slightly curly and obviously closely matched Kerr’s hairs.