I was having thoughts about this ‘same gun’ idea, too, so I drove over to County HQ to try to get some positive information.
They’re not keen on strangers, but I’d been there before, as a sergeant, and I could remember where they kept the canteen. They’re all the same, these big places. If you walk in with enough confidence, you’re simply accepted. I stood there with my tray, wondering whether to risk the curried chicken, looking round to see if there was anybody I knew. I spotted one.
“Well hello, Frank. Mind if I sit...”
“Dave! It’s been years.”
We nattered. He thought I was still in the Force, so I led the subject on to ballistics. “Come to see the chap on the Wallach case,” I explained.
Frank looked round. “He’s over there. It’s Collison you want.”
Then, with a bit of crafty timing which involved passing up the fruit trifle, I strolled out with Collison.
“The chief was real pleased,” I said.
He blinked at me. “Which chief?”
“Meakin. Pleased you moved so fast with those two bullets of his.”
“Oh yes.” He led me into the lab. “But he was in a panic.”
“Randy was?”
“Is that what they call him?”
Were we talking about the same man? “Randy. Short for Randolph.”
He laughed, eyeing me with interest. “Not been with him for long, have you? All meek and mild so far. Makes you feel good, I bet. But you wait. Get on the wrong side of him... Haven’t got a woman, have you?”
“I’ve got a woman.”
“Then keep ‘em well apart.”
Oh, Elsa was far away and safe from Meakin. They hadn’t had a nickname for Ian Carefree. Too quiet and self-effacing, was Ian. The sort the women go for...
“He hoped you weren’t too quick with those bullets. It makes things awkward,” I admitted.
“Quick? It only takes a few minutes.”
“I mean, with one of them in the body so long...”
“Beautifully preserved. Nickel-jacketted, you know.”
“But still, it seemed it could have caught a rib. Otherwise, a thirty-two, it should’ve gone right on through. The range would have been close.”
“Did he send you to ask these things?” said Collison with interest. “Is it me you’re querying — or him?”
“You’re the expert.”
“Then I’d advise you not to query Meakin. You don’t seem to realise that a lot of illegal weapons are loaded with very old cartridges. The charge deteriorates, you know. No — it hadn’t touched any bone. Perfectly marked.”
The shot that killed Wallach had also failed to emerge. It was an uncomfortable similarity.
“The thing is,” I persisted. “Don’t want to be difficult, you understand. But if the charges can deteriorate, how about the gun itself?”
“If it’s well kept, I don’t see why...”
“A gun lying in a damp cellar for thirteen years?” I asked, feeling a fool. “Who’s said that?”
George had said it. My partner, who’d go to his death still maintaining it. That’s who’d said it. “The suggestion has been made.”
“Does Randy know?”
“It was he who suggested it.”
“Then he’s going senile. Can’t keep his mind off —”
“I’ll tell him what you said.”
“Edited, I hope.”
But Meakin had said it, kind of getting at me. Had he been stringing me along to that extent, pushing a stupid theory at me to see if I’d bite? I was annoyed at the condescension. And after all, they hadn’t held Dyke. Perhaps this ‘same gun’ business was worrying Meakin too.
I drove back, hoping George had discovered something, hoping he’d dismissed his bolted cellar idea. But he hadn’t got back, and I was left to prowl the hotel room, and later to go down to the site and prowl moodily around there too.
You couldn’t get away from it. If the cellar trapdoor had been bolted inside, then the murder gun would have been shut in there for thirteen years. So it was either accept the ‘same gun’ theory, and assume it hadn’t — more than a theory, a fact, if Collison was to be believed — or accept the ‘bolted cellar’ theory.
The trouble was, of course, that on the face of it George’s bolted cellar theory was all that Dyke had going for him. But I was convinced that this was only because the police were suspicious of accepting that the gun could have been snatched up and then fired. But it was something they might get round. Whereas my own thinking was that the gun, if used twice, must have been taken away the first time. This would rather more firmly eliminate Dyke, but it did mean that I had to destroy George’s line of thought.
A right mess I was in, trying to save someone I felt to be guilty when it meant destroying my partner’s theory. And on our first case together, too.
Annoyed with Dyke, because his damned jealousy was presenting such an acceptable motive, I couldn’t help thinking of Elsa. Basically, that was my trouble; I couldn’t concentrate on the job.
And what was I doing, circling the roped-off area the copper was guarding, when I’d given her the hotel’s number.
They said at the desk that she hadn’t phoned. I went up to the room. It was empty and cheerless. I cursed myself for bringing this misery about. There was no denying that it was all in my own mind. But why didn’t she phone?
To fill in the time I phoned Ian Carefree’s own station, wondering if he was there and whether he’d be very nice to me, as people are when they’re after your wife. He was out. I got a sergeant who didn’t know me, but who knew the name.
“Mallin? Well yes, your wife’s over here...”
So he was being pleasant.
Anyway, we chatted, and I received background information on their case that was quite frightening. Elsa was in the middle of something nasty, and without my presence to support her. With only Ian’s.
She rang two minutes after I’d hung up. She sounded relaxed, and pleased with herself.
“I don’t know why you’re hanging on there,” I said sharply.
She missed the tone and answered lightly. “Because I feel I can help, David.”
Heaven help me, I descended to cheap innuendo. “Ian’s got it in hand.”
“He hasn’t told me to leave,” she replied, too quickly.
You bet he hadn’t. Even with all the murky background to his case, he hadn’t sent her away to safety. I didn’t want to frighten her... God help me, but I did. “Perhaps he hasn’t heard... Is he there, Elsa?”
He wasn’t. So I could go ahead, feeling lousy at what I was doing. I told her about the hired killer who had moved into Ian’s district. It slid from her. Her mind was on other things. I sank to pleading.
“I wish you’d come home, Elsa.”
Perhaps I had got through. She used that teasing tone she had for when I challenged her. “If you’re worried, David, then come and fetch me.”
“Oh... hell.”
“Really,” she said, curling me up with inference, “I’m being very well looked after.”
There wasn’t any more I could say. One wrong word, and all my fears would pour out, and I knew that then I’d do something very serious to our relationship.
We hung up. I’d gained nothing. And George, damn and blast him, still wasn’t back. Him and his theories. I was caught in this now, personally spiked on our client’s personality.
All I had to go on was a name Beefy Walters, who apparently hosted a poker school. I went straight to the most likely source, and when Ken Duxford answered the phone I was too impatient to mess about.
Walters? Yes, he knew him. A bit rough down there, though. Better leave the fancy car behind the Royal and walk from there.
I did. He’d said it to give himself time to beat me to it, though he was correct about the district. They’d have your shoes off if the laces were new.
“Nice car, that,” he said, coming rather abruptly out of an alley. “Pity if it got
harmed. Make a bit, you private chaps, I bet.”
I snapped at him. “Where’s this Walters character hang out?”
Beefy owned a fish and chip shop, but his woman ran it. You could see her serving, through the window. It was the only decent bit of light in the cramped, depressing street.
“Third floor,” said Duxford. “That lighted window. We go in by the door at the side of the shop.”
“We?”
“You don’t think I’m letting you in there on your own.”
“I’m a big boy...”
“Safe with me,” he said comfortingly.
This was, in practice, an incorrect statement. No doubt without him I’d have been asked to join the game. But the characters in there knew only one reaction to a copper. One thing, though. Duxford did tell me who they were. He just had time.
The red-faced, bloated one was Beefy Walters himself. On his left was Lubin. I’d only had George’s description to go on; the reality was infinitely more vicious. Perhaps it was the hand he was holding. Greenbaum I had seen. At least, I’d seen his face. The rest of him swelled out over the table, and the cards were like postage stamps sticking to his fingers. And Fingal. Fingal was there because Vera had been upset, and somebody had to pay for it. Fingal was busy deciding who. Sitting next to him, like a whisp amongst all that unwholesome flesh, was Ron Taylor. I was surprised to see him there; not surprised to see that he was again holding a sandwich, as I’d first seen him at the site, in his free hand. The last one, the one with most of the money in front of him, was George.
The room exploded. Ron Taylor grinned and slid under the table, and from then on seemed to appear from time to time to stick his sandwich in somebody’s face or poke in a right when a belly was presented to him. He enjoyed it, but he had no noticeable effect. Duxford waded in happily, and George was being very effective with a chair. Fingal, perhaps recalling that he was on probation, was on our side. I say ‘our side’, but I took no part in it. I had come to rescue George. He didn’t need any rescuing.
In fact, he found time to gather up the fluttering notes as they fell to the floor, what he could put his hands on. They were possibly his own, but George isn’t fussy.
After a while matters became more quiet. Ron Taylor laughed at me as he slid past and through the door, and Fingal tapped Greenbaum’s head against the wall. Lubin was out of it. Judging by the look he gave George just before he finally passed out, it was George who had done it. Beefy Walters, realising he was fighting a copper, and in earnest, played safe and presented his chin, and that was that.
Outside, Ken Duxford touched his lip gingerly and said: “There. You see what I mean. You needed me.”
George was standing by the chip shop window, checking his winnings. It would have taken an accountant. These type of chaps come up with all sorts of currency: yen, lira, marks. Anything’s useful to chuck into the pot. Even ordinary pound notes.
“And this,” said George, picking it out.
It seemed they didn’t even insist that it had to be negotiable. What George was holding was one of those old, large and crisp white fivers.
Seven
Duxford reached over and took it from him. “Heh!” said George, but of course it could have been evidence.
“Who?” said the sergeant.
“It was on the floor.”
“Well then, it’s not yours, is it?”
The thing could have been circulating amongst the poker crowd for the past few sessions. It was no good George trying to link a name to it.
“And as far as I know,” said Duxford, “Ginger Dyke doesn’t play cards.”
I was too touchy about Dyke’s failings, and missed the gleam in his eye.
“You keep poking at him,” I said angrily. “All you’ve got is a motive. Don’t come this same gun business with me.”
He’d been about to leave. He would have gone, leaving a last pleasantry on the rancid smelling air. But I had annoyed him.
“All we’ve got! He was in a murderous mood that night, my friend. If he’d got to Wallach he’d have killed him. And he was the one who could have got to him.”
“Murderous mood?” I asked, feeling George’s interest.
“Look what he did to Clare Moss,” said Duxford, and after all managed to leave on a pleasantry.
“Where did you leave the car?” George asked, very quietly.
“Take it easy, George.”
“I said I’d kill him. The moment we drove on that site, it was on the cards.”
Strangely, I was not upset. There was even a quiet sort of satisfaction about it. He lied to himself, so he’d lie to others, and not even realise he was being false to himself. I saw it as a let-out. He could hardly be surprised if we walked off the case.
“What was Ron Taylor doing there?” I asked.
“I took him along. Saw him and he tagged on. I wanted to ask him something.” George was being short and brisk. He wanted to get at Dyke.
“What did you want to ask him?”
“The door’s locked,” he said, pained.
I opened up the Porsche. “What did you ask him?”
“If Wallach knew how to unscrew a metal-framed window from a wooden surround.”
“And did he?”
“Yes. So why didn’t he do it, Dave? Why’d he trouble to wait in there for mysteries to be made? If he wanted to get out, he could’ve smashed the glass and unscrewed the frame, and got out that way. Or he could have mangled the fence with that big spanner. Come to think of it, he probably had enough tools on him to unscrew the whole blasted shed from inside. But he didn’t do any of those things. He waited, because he knew the whole thing was going to be lifted, and he’d be able to get out then. Can’t you drive any faster?”
“There’s no hurry if you just want to break an arm or two.”
From the corner of my eye I saw him glance at me. “What’s up with you, Dave?”
“He told us lies.”
“So now he’ll tell the truth. He didn’t do it, Dave. I know that. Because Wallach waited to be lifted out. And there’s one thing certain — he didn’t wait if he was expecting Ginger Dyke.”
“Perhaps he got him, expecting or not.”
“And obediently went down into the cellar, and got himself shot with the gun Dyke conveniently found there, which very conveniently was still operating perfectly?”
I waited a bit. I didn’t want this. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
I was beginning to detest our client.
There’s something about beating up a woman that I can’t stomach, and damn the chap, he admitted it.
He was in his room at the George. The way we put it to him, he had no alternative but to admit it.
“So all right,” he shouted. “So I roughed her up a bit. But who gave her that pendant, eh? She said she bought it herself. That’s a laugh. It was gold. She don’t get that sort of money from me.”
“From you?” I asked.
He’d been sitting on the bed. He went to look out of the window.
“She’s my wife,” he mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“She’s my wife!” he shouted, turning. “It gives me the right, don’t it! She’s mine. My wife.”
Suddenly I felt ill. I had equated his emotions with mine, my relationship with Elsa being vaguely linked with his own and Clare Moss. But now the link was positive. The thought that this, if I let it all run away with me, could happen between Elsa and me was nauseating.
“Her name’s Moss,” said George, because I couldn’t say anything.
“Calls herself that, since we broke up.”
“What do you call breaking up?”
“All right then. Since she chucked me out.”
“She couldn’t stand you?”
“I’ve got some rights, ain’t I? And it’s not my fault I’m away from home so much.”
It wasn’t mine, either, but I hadn’t before been tortured by doubts. Maybe Clare had given
him cause, with her bright eyes and her interest in men. But Elsa... good Lord, she’d leave Clare standing — she turned every man’s eye. And I’d been proud; I’d seen it and been proud to be with her, and not for one moment suspected that she’d react...
George said: “She’s using her maiden name?”
Dyke sneered. “Thinks it leaves her free to go out and pick the winners.”
“But it doesn’t?”
“She’s married to me! And that Wallach knew it. How he found out I don’t know, but I bet it was the reason he hunted her out. The bastard.”
“Funny,” said George. “One minute you blame Clare, and the next it’s Wallach.”
“Two for a pair,” said Dyke with contempt. “So you know now why I was so mad when he chucked that case of his in the van. I watched him all day. Oh, he knew it. Every time he looked round, I’d got my eye on him. Made him nervous, maybe. Anyways up, he put that shed together backwards. I could see it coming off. Everybody could, ‘cause it was a right laugh. But me — I wasn’t laughin’. Just let me drop that thing over him, I thought, and he could get himself out. Mind you, I reckoned he’d spot it at the last moment, but no. He let me lower it over him, meek as you like — and I’d got him. Like that. A rat in a trap.”
“Did you put it like that to the police?”
“Kind of toned it down. But he’d been askin’ for it, and when I went back for his van — good and late so’s it’d be quiet — I gave him the old one-two on the horn, and hoped he was dyin’ of cold. So there I was, with all Wallach’s stuff, his case, his duffle coat, his deer-stalker, and so I tried it. I put the lot on and went to the flat. She’d spotted the van through the window and I’d seen the light go on.”
He stopped, restless, his eyes darting at the memory. George glanced at me, then said: “Go on.” All quiet and gentle, like a big sleepy bear.
“She was in a bloody nylon nightie,” Dyke burst out violently. “Who’d give her a thing like that! Might as well’ve been naked, the bitch. It was his. She’d got it on for him. She thought I was him, and she’d got this high-powered welcome in her eyes. Before she realised she said: ‘I didn’t expect you, Wal...’ A bloody pet name for him. I threw the bag at her.”
The Weight of Evidence Page 7
