The Weight of Evidence

by Roger Ormerod

  “I unloaded it,” said George pleasantly. “Oiled it, too.”

  And my shirt. “We’ve come to see what’s in the case,” I said, getting straight to the nub of it.

  Greenbaum was rushing around opening drawers. Lubin, in an easy chair by the window, binoculars on his lap, watched him with weary amusement.

  “They’re in the dressing-table drawer,” he told him. “Under your lace hankies.” He turned to us, smiling, waving his fat left hand. “Get a couple of chairs. The view’s splendid from here.”

  “It’s raining,” said George.

  “I like to watch the rain, when I’m indoors and dry.”

  “Of course you do,” agreed George. “The case — what about it? Show him your gun, Dave.”

  I didn’t do so. Mine wasn’t loaded, either. Greenbaum, who’d had time to load, came dashing in from the bedroom.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  George took his hand out of his jacket pocket — a dangerous gesture when an angry man holds a gun on you. “There’s this.” He was holding up a small piece of metal. “I took this out, too. It’s the hammer catch. It’s dangerous to try firing without it.”

  This fact, I knew, was not strictly true. But Greenbaum looked suitably impressed and frustrated, peering at the weapon for inspiration, as he would at the odd foot that appeared in front of his nose during a bout.

  “We could have a drink,” Lubin suggested.

  You wouldn’t have thought this was the same man who’d stared at me so murderously.

  “We’re in a hurry,” I said.

  “But there’s a story attached to it. I’m sure you’d be interested.”

  George was interested; I was impatient. Lubin was aching to tell it. As I’d said, he was proud of something.

  “All right,” George agreed. “The story first, the case afterwards. But no drinks.”

  Lubin shrugged. His eyes, I decided, were different colours. “Then sit, stand, do what you like. You know the background?”

  “You shot a bank manager.”

  “The man was a fool,” Lubin said dismissively. “You know they got me, anyway. Dutch’d gone one way, me another, and Marty went off with the bag. He’d be all right. I wasn’t worrying about Marty Coleman because he’d got this cellar in the empty house, ready to disappear into.”

  “I wonder you didn’t go with him,” I said.

  Lubin gave me a quick look. “You wouldn’t have got me down there. Marty showed it me a few days before. Gave me the creeps.”

  “So anyway,” George said, “you knew Marty would get along fine. Then they picked you up. That’d be when you started worrying about the money.”

  “Not a bit of it. Marty wasn’t going anywhere, and Dutch’d be in the clear. I was easy. Would’ve been, anyway, only they called the notes in, and before I’d done half my time I knew there wasn’t going to be anything to come out to.”

  “You’re not doing too badly, though,” I pointed out. “Nice flat — lovely, healthy minder.”

  Greenbaum prodded me in the ribs. He knew where to prod. Lubin smiled happily when I winced.

  “We get by,” he admitted. “Things would’ve been cosy and peaceful, then one night a white fiver got thrown into the pot round at Beefy’s place. Then one or two more. Set me worrying, it did. It got me thinking that maybe Dutch had got to that money. Maybe the bleeder had spent most of it. That got me mad.”

  “I don’t see that,” said George. “No skin off your nose. You’d lost it, anyway.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t understand our friend’s happy, friendly nature. You lose something — all right. It’s annoying. But to think that somebody else has got the benefit of it, when you’ve done the time, that’d be infuriating. For our friend here, anyway.”

  Lubin took it as a compliment. “You’re very understanding.”

  George asked: “Was he there, this Dutch Marks, at Beefy’s place?”

  “No. It didn’t signify. The lads said there’d been quite a few going around. They treat ‘em as a hundred lira. But they couldn’t remember who’d thrown ‘em in.”

  “So you went and asked him?”

  “No.” Lubin was gentle and dreamy. “I went and told him. I said: Dutch, lad, you prove to me you didn’t get that money, or I’ll have Greenbaum break all your bones. One a day.”

  “How could he prove a negative?” George asked.

  “Easy. The stuff was still there, down in that cellar, with Marty’s skeleton guarding it. All Dutch’d got to do was get it out and show me. Once I’d told him where the cellar was. Simple. Nothing to it, if they hadn’t started to knock down the place, then decide to sit a shed right on top of the cellar. It was a laugh, right enough. There was Dutch, bleating about how was he going to get at it, and the broken bones were still on the agenda. I said: Dutch, it’s your grief. You get that bag out — or else. So he got hold of that moron Wallach, got him in a pub or something, and as I’d given him a deadline...” He guffawed chokingly... “a breaking-point, you could say. As I’d told him that, he had to get moving. So he promised the stupid idiot something. Don’t know what — something, anyway — if he’d push the job on fast that day, the concreting and such, so that they could lift the whole lot when it got dark. Don’t know what he promised, but what he gave him was a thirty-two for his trouble.”

  I spoke thickly. “Promised him an old seventy-eight record of Dick Haymes. That’s why he was laughing all day.”

  George turned to me with interest. “And the shattering bit?”

  “He was going to break it. Probably hated Dick Haymes.”

  “What you on about?” said Lubin suspiciously.

  “Theories,” I explained. “Whatever it was, Wallach helped him with the shed, and got shot for his trouble. But Dutch got the bag, I take it?”

  Lubin nodded. “Oh, he did. But it was material stuff, and it was all falling to bits, so he put it in a suitcase he found in Wallach’s van. Otherwise, he said, he’d never have got it here. And just as he was putting the shed back —”

  “Putting it back?” I said sharply. “Did he need...”

  “Tidying up,” said Lubin severely. “Yes, putting it back — just then, along comes this character who works on the site, and would you believe it, he went and drove the van away, case and bag and all. And a right game it’s been, finding where he took it.”

  “So now we’re back to where we started,” said George. “Dutch brought you the overnight case, and you’re happy.”

  Lubin beamed. “Just knowing nobody spent it. Arnie, get ‘em the suitcase. You know, you idiot, the case.”

  While he was fetching it I asked: “Can you swear to this?”

  He looked shocked. “It was dark. You don’t think he’d work with lights. It’s what he told me. Go ask him yourself.”

  “I don’t know him.” It cleared our client, so I’d need to. “Where do we find him?”

  He laughed. “Put it down there, Arnie.”

  Arnie put the overnight case on a low coffee table. It had seen a lot of wear, a battered thing, bluish originally. It wasn’t locked. I bent over and clicked back the catches.

  There were clothes beneath it all — what looked like a grey suit, and a shirt poking out beneath. On top, Dutch Marks had laid the remains of an old Welsh tweed bag. It had the remnants of a feminine look about it, something to hold a large amount of knitting, but now it was about falling apart. Not simply rot, I felt, but certainly assisted by the attentions of the mice. It would have been nearly impossible to carry, even cradled in the arms. How it’d been kept together as far as the van I couldn’t guess. Through the gaps and the ragged holes in the texture were oozing all the scraps of white paper that had been fivers. You know what mice do to paper. There were bits everywhere inside that bag.

  The only part of the whole thing still intact was the handles, two horny-looking loops, again giving a feminine touch to it. Attached to one of the handles, allowing the other to flap loose, was the m
issing, withered hand. It hadn’t been gripping the gun. I could see no sign of a gun.

  I saw no more. Greenbaum reached past me and slammed down the lid. Perhaps he couldn’t stand the smell.

  “It satisfied you?” I asked.

  “The mice didn’t spend it, that’s for sure.”

  “So it’s no good to you now. All right if we take it, is it?”

  You realise that I was not being aggressive. It was a casual suggestion. But it broke the friendly atmosphere wide apart.

  “It’s mine,” said Lubin with grand possessiveness. “I did thirteen years for that. I’m keeping it.”

  And Greenbaum growled gently; a guard dog, and I’d trodden on his bone.

  “Why tell us all this, if we can’t use it?”

  “You seemed interested.” As though anybody would accept that!

  “You realise that this case would clear our client? It’s all we need. The case. They’re basing their charge on the fact that Dyke’s supposed to have found that tweed thing in the cellar, realised what he’d got, and took it away. It’s hardly feasible, now.”

  “Can’t say he interests me. Show them the door, Arnie.”

  “We’ve seen it,” said George. “How would a thump in the face suit you?”

  It was not the correct approach. I would have preferred gentle persuasion. Arnie threw the gun at him, and when George ducked he locked his head under one arm, and threw him across the room.

  The fact that anybody could actually throw George through the air was fascinating. I watched to see if he’d do it again, but instead Greenbaum turned to me.

  “Throw them out, Arnie.”

  It was then that I encountered this lock George had mentioned. He got my arm in such a way that I couldn’t have coughed without it dropping off. If he’d thrown me then, I’d have left the arm behind. You can stand so much pain, and then you start passing out. I was vaguely aware of George towering above us, chopping away like a demented karate black belt, and then the grip weakened and the bloated, vicious face so close to mine took on an expression of surprise and concern. He turned to deal with George.

  I managed to stand. It had been my left arm. There didn’t seem to be an arm there anymore, so even when I managed to get the Sauer out of my pocket, there was no chance of loading it with a dead arm. No point, either, in asking Lubin to do it for me.

  And then I realised that Lubin thought it was loaded. You can’t tell, with automatics. I stuck it under his nose and gave my most polished snarl, and said: “Call him off.”

  Actually, I was a bit too late. Greenbaum had opened the door and was slinging George into the corridor. Then he turned, and, gun or no gun, he went for me.

  Clearly it was no time to argue about that overnight case. I scattered, round the furniture and out of the door. And Greenbaum, instinct seizing him, stopped in the doorway as though he’d run into the ropes. He stood and stared. I stared back. It was about all I could do to him, my nastiest stare.

  Then I attended to George. He was sitting up, back against the wail, manipulating his neck.

  “I’ll kill him, Dave,” he croaked, but there was no conviction in it.

  I got him down into their splendid lobby, where pain was an alien.

  George said: “So now will you accept it?”

  “What?”

  “That our man’s innocent.”

  “I never said otherwise.”

  “Oh, come on Dave. It’s been nagging at you all along. You’ve got to consider it unemotionally.”

  I looked sideways at him suspiciously, but his face was bland. “I’ve got to clear it in my own mind.” I was kneading my arm.

  “Righty then. So you do that — go and get it clear, Dave. Me, I’m off on a few visits.”

  “What... now? Don’t you think we ought to go and tell Meakin?”

  He laughed. “Let him tackle Greenbaum himself. Somebody’s got to know Dutch Marks, Dave. He’s our man — you can bet on that.”

  He just hadn’t listened to Lubin, not visualising it. There was something not right.

  “And me, George, well I’m going to have another look at that site.”

  “In the dark?”

  “I wouldn’t expect to find anything, anyway.”

  Eleven

  I looked, without enthusiasm and with the batteries failing in my torch. The site was a sodden, deserted area, completely desolate. It matched my mood, but I went on with it. One scrap, and I could have jettisoned the idea. But the most likely place for mouse-nibbled bits of white fiver would have been inside the cellar. Yet we would have seen them, one of us. George was particularly observant. There had been none.

  And no cartridge case to link with the first shot, either.

  In the lobby of the hotel they had a small bookstand and cigarette kiosk. I bought a paperback and took it up to my room. George wasn’t back.

  Then I sat down to replay it all for myself. Get it right this time; there had to be a snag.

  The hardback book was to be the frame. The paperback, being smaller, I placed on top of it. The trapdoor, this was. The trapdoor book had its front cover on top. I put the spines together — that was to represent the hinges. Right.

  I now had the paperback ready to lift. One spine was beneath the other. I lifted. Easy, that bit. Then, keeping the front cover on top, I tried to put it down beside the other book so that the spines were still together. It couldn’t be done.

  It was infuriating. I tried it over and over, walked the floor a while, went back to it, stared out of the window, then had another go. But whatever I did, as soon as I lifted that paperback from on top of the hardback and put it down again beside it, the spines became separated.

  What George had said was the only possibility, that the bolt had been inside, and because the bolt-hole had been broken away, the trapdoor must have been fastened inside.

  I refused to accept that. I had to refuse, because it made a nonsense of it. The gun would then have rusted for thirteen years. Oh yes, it was all right for George. He’d got that cosy self-confidence urging him on, along with the conviction that Dyke had not killed Wallach. So George knew that the gun could not have fired again. But I have great faith in science, and I was willing to accept that both bullets had come from the same gun. What I hadn’t got faith in was expert witnesses. Make no mistake about it, somewhere in the background there’d be a whole gang of them ready to give evidence that in their opinion that rusty gun would have fired. There’d be specious and complex explanations about metal oxidation, and the protection it could have received from the elements if it had been lying under the tweed bag. Something like that. But they’d say it. For a fee, of course. And Dyke would be sunk.

  But did I care about that? George cared, as a kind of ethical duty. I could only feel in my guts the strength of Dyke’s motivation to murder. There was even, though I fought it, a feeling that perhaps Clare, with her sensuousness, had given him more reason than she had admitted.

  This was ridiculous, I thought. Even as a policeman I’d never let it get that far; I’d always tried to be objective. So be objective, Dave. Have another go with the books. There had to be a way.

  There was a way. You simply lifted the paperback, front cover, and therefore the bolt, on top, and you turned it through half a circle.

  It’s easy with a book. You simply turn it. But just imagine what that would mean with the trapdoor. You’re on your knees, there in the dark and the rain, and you’ve got a tyre lever or the like levering up the trapdoor. All right, the bolt’s on top. So why do you have to break it open? Another point to cover, somehow. But forget that for the moment. Assume it’s rusted solid or something. So you lever away, and when the trapdoor comes free the bolt’s pulled out of the wood and the hinges are busted too.

  So what do you do? The natural thing is to throw it up and over, as George said you would. But you don’t do that. You lift it, keeping the bolt on top. It takes two hands. You’re on your knees. So you put it down to one side.
You don’t turn it round, not right round through half a circle. Damn it, you couldn’t, not without twisting your arms off. You can only turn it round by standing up, turning, then putting it down by the hole, hinge line to hinge line. It’d have to be a deliberate act.

  I threw the paperback across the room in a fury. To turn the trapdoor round would be an illogical, unreasonable action. There would be no point to it.

  All right, Dave, start again. Relax a bit. Have a smoke. You’ve got to find some logical sequence of circumstance to explain how it was turned. Then you’re home. Nothing to it. But you must not accept that the trapdoor was bolted inside.

  And why not, pray? Simply because I was aching to accept Lubin’s story, but with amendments which were now becoming very obvious. No bits of white fiver, so the bolt had to be outside. Had to be. Blast George!

  In remorse, I rescued the paperback, saw it was an Ed McBain, and decided to keep it. One thing for sure, he’d have known.

  I went down for a drink.

  Clare was sitting in the lobby, looking forlorn. “I hoped I’d see you,” she said.

  “If you were intending to come back, I could’ve given you a lift.”

  “I had to think it through.”

  “And you’ve decided to take him back?”

  “There isn’t anything else, is there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We stood, embarrassed. She’d just wished to see me and speak to me. “Come in for a drink?” I asked.

  “I don’t usually.”

  “We can talk. There’s always orange juice.”

  She smiled, and we headed for the bar. Cosy it was. As I walked back to our corner table with the drinks I couldn’t help but realise that she was stunning, even when drawn and worried.

  She sipped her orange. “They’ve arrested him.”

  “I know.” I tried reassurance. “I don’t think their case is too good.” And I wasn’t doing anything to make it worse.

  “He could have done it, in one of his blind furies.”

  “This wasn’t a fury job. You say he hit you with it?” Her face remained blank. “The case he brought.”