Blood and Judgement

by Michael Gilbert

  “Other what?”

  “Print,” said Cobbold, looking surprised. “Didn’t you know we found a set of prints in here? Very nice ones too.”

  He walked across to the window. “On the upright. The middle one, sort of embedded in the paintwork. That’s why they’re still there, I guess.”

  He directed the light of the torch that he held on to the spot and they saw, almost startling clear, the marks of four fingertips.

  “What happened,” said Cobbold happily, “is someone must have come in this window from the outside. That’s the way the fingertips are pointing, see. The window’s open, and he pulls on this upright to get himself through. Perhaps the paint isn’t quite dry, or perhaps it’s a very hot day, and the paint’s a bit soft.”

  “How long would a print like that last?” said Kellaway.

  “Oh, quite a long time. Six months – maybe a year.”

  “In that case, we’ll probably find it was the man who did the painting,” said Dodds.

  “Don’t believe it,” said Kellaway. He was riding high on his luck. That day, he knew, every jackpot would drop, every outsider would come romping home. “Photograph these as well. Then we’ll send both lots down to Central and see if we can get a quick identification. If they’re the same man – why, then, we’re going places.”

  An hour later Petrella was displaying the freshly dried positives to Sergeant Blinder.

  “Envelope A,” he said, “photograph of a single print, taken from the magazine of a P38 automatic pistol.”

  “Do you call that a photograph?” said Sergeant Blinder. “Who took it? Cobbold? You’d have thought, all the tips I’ve given him, he’d know how to highlight a photograph.”

  “The gun it came off had been under water for more than a month. You can’t expect too much.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the print,” said Sergeant Blinder. “A very nice print indeed. It’s the photograph I’m complaining about. These boys will use overhead lighting. I’ve told them time and again that a lateral beam–”

  “Here,” said Petrella hastily, “we have envelope B. A set of four fingerprints of the right hand found on the paintwork of a window jamb. We think it might be off the same man.”

  “That I can tell you right away they’re not,” said Sergeant Blinder.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Different altogether.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. If you can make us an identification – it really is rather urgent. Superintendent Kellaway–”

  Sergeant Blinder sniffed.

  “When did he want it?”

  “Just as soon as possible.”

  “Not yesterday? Or the day before yesterday?”

  Petrella was in no mood for defending Superintendent Kellaway.

  “No,” he said. “Just as quickly as you can, that’s all.”

  He had a lot to do himself. After a quick lunch in the canteen he took himself out to Hounds Green for another word with Lundgren. This proved to be a frustrating afternoon. Lundgren was engaged, when he arrived, but his secretary thought that he would be free at any minute. Petrella sat in the waiting-room and read through Some notes on Water Purification by the Heck-Mueller System of Disks and Meshes. When he had finished this, and Lundgren had still failed to appear, he went out for a cup of tea. By the time he had got back, Lundgren had appeared, looked for him, and got himself tied up again with another caller. Petrella settled down to study the Metropolitan Water Board. Annual Infall Statistics. At five o’clock Lundgren finally came in full of apologies.

  “I can find out when the cottage was painted last,” he said. “My impression is that it was certainly done when Ricketts went in, but there may have been minor maintenance jobs carried out since. As for getting the fingerprints of the painters who carried out the job – I shouldn’t think it’d be difficult to find them. Only they might object to having their fingerprints taken.”

  “We’ll need yours too,” said Petrella. “You’ve been over the house. And your cleaner’s. If you give me the names, I’ll have someone sent out.”

  “I’m trying hard not to be inquisitive,” said Lundgren, “but I take it – I take it this means you’ve found something.”

  “Yes,” said Petrella. “But for goodness’ sake keep it under your hat.”

  Lundgren followed his exposition with the keenest attention.

  “If they’re not the same man,” he said, “the one who came in the window, and the one who fired the gun, then it looks as if perhaps Ricketts didn’t–”

  “There are too many possibilities at the moment,” said Petrella. “Like in bridge. Whatever the experts pretend, you can’t really deduce what’s in all four hands just from the bidding alone. You’ve got to wait until a trick or two’s been played.”

  “I’m very fond of bridge myself,” said Lundgren. “We must see if we can’t arrange a rubber when this unhappy business is settled–”

  It was after six before Petrella got back to Crown Road, guiltily conscious that he had more or less wasted the afternoon. As soon as he got into the corridor he could tell that something had happened.

  Dodds shot out of the CID room, caught sight of him, and said, “There you are, Patrick. Come on, quick!” and whisked him into Haxtell’s room.

  The nominal owner of the room was sitting quietly in one corner, and Chief Superintendent Barstow was installed behind his desk. Kellaway was standing in front of the fire and a bulky man with crinkly grey hair, whom Petrella knew by sight as Chief Superintendent Burrell, father of the fingerprint section at Scotland Yard, was overflowing the only other chair.

  “Now we are all here,” said Barstow, looking sourly at Petrella. “I’ll recapitulate. First we have evidence that this was a gang killing.” Kellaway nodded. “Second, we find a gun which is believed to belong to Howton. He’s got a record of violence and has been taken once with a gun on him.”

  “Twice – unlawful possession of firearms – 1946 in Liverpool and 1951 in London.”

  “Third, he was friendly with Rosa Ritchie. It’s reasonable to suppose that her husband getting out of jail precipitated some sort of crisis – and there’s evidence that the killing did in fact take place on the day after he got out.

  “Fourth, and last, Howton has certainly been in that cottage sometime. It looks from the position of his fingerprints as if he climbed in at an open window.”

  “He wouldn’t have any reason that we know of for being there legitimately.”

  Chief Superintendent Barstow considered the matter. To the professionals gathered in the room the trend of his thoughts was as evident as if he had spoken them aloud. He was not an entirely likeable character, not a glad sufferer of fools, not beloved of his subordinates, but he had, as Petrella had observed, one admirable characteristic; he was capable of making up his mind, and he made it up quickly.

  “Not good enough,” he said. “Very, very nearly, but not quite. If the print on the gun had been Howton’s–”

  Petrella looked up quickly.

  “–By the way, have you identified that print yet?”

  “No, sir,” said Kellaway. “I expect we shall, but it’s a rather faint, single print, and that’s bound to take longer. Of course, it could turn out to be one of Howton’s boys.”

  “If it turns out to be one of Howton’s boys, then he’s the one we ought to charge with the murder,” said Barstow reasonably. “No. The evidence so far is simply that Howton was in the cottage. His fingerprints on the window prove that. We don’t know when he was there. But it seems highly likely that it was on the night Mrs Ritchie got killed. However, that’s conjecture. What we want is positive evidence, either Howton was seen near the reservoir that night or, perhaps, something to tie him up to the shooting. What about motive?”

  “As you said yourself, sir, there must have been some sort of crisis.” Kellaway tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Monk Ritchie had got out of prison the day before. He’d go straight to
the boys. They’d hide him up for the first night. Next day they’d arrange for a meeting with Rosa. She was banker to the outfit. When we put Monk away, you remember, we got very little of the stuff. It now seems clear that Rosa had got it stowed away somewhere. I’d suggest that she and Howton had been quietly turning it into cash. And maybe quietly spending it on themselves.”

  “If that was right, Monk would have shot Howton, not his wife.”

  “I should have thought,” said Kellaway, managing to instil just enough deference into his voice, “that the only way to find out the truth was to pull in Howton. We’ll get evidence quick enough then. His friends’ll all talk, once he’s inside.”

  “No,” said Barstow. “It won’t do. Get something to tie him to the reservoir. Get something to tie him to the jewels. Then we’ll take a chance and charge him.”

  Superintendent Haxtell spoke for the first time. He had been sitting so quietly on his bed in the corner that they had all forgotten he was there.

  “Corinne Hart,” he said, “was killed three streets away from the reservoir.”

  They stared at him.

  “You’re not suggesting,” said Barstow, at last, “that there’s any connection between the two cases?”

  “No, sir. But in the course of that investigation we’ve taken statements from more than a thousand people, including every soul living in Ogilvie Street and Mearns Street – those are the streets that run to the south and southwest of the reservoir, between it and the filter beds. And, you’ll remember, we didn’t just ask them about the night Corinne disappeared. We went back weeks, sometimes months. We wanted to find out if any strange man had been pestering the kids in the neighborhood.”

  “That’s a damned good idea,” said Barstow. “And it’ll save a lot of time. Get a man going through those reports now, to see if he can pick up anything that’ll help us in this case.”

  When the conference broke up, Petrella had a quick word with Dodds.

  “Are you sure they haven’t got these prints mixed up?” he said.

  “It’s an idea,” said Dodds, “but I’m afraid it won’t wash. The four prints off the window are a set. They belong to Howton. No doubt at all. Burrell doesn’t make mistakes about fingerprints. The one on the gun’s a single print. They don’t even know which hand. It’s going to take a lot longer to get anything out of that.”

  “But whoever it was, it wasn’t Howton. At least, that’s what Blinder told me.”

  “Burrell says that, too.”

  “But it certainly belonged to the man who loaded the gun.”

  “It isn’t always the person who loads a gun that fires it,” said Dodds.

  Petrella digested this in silence.

  “What’s Kellaway going to do now?”

  “If I know our Chris, he’s kicking his desk and wishing it was Barstow’s bottom. Hullo, there’s the bell. We’d better go and see what he wants.”

  Whatever may have been his private feelings, Kellaway had them well under control.

  “I’d like you,” he said to Petrella, “to see if you can get a line on that jewellery. You know all your local jewellers and pawnbrokers. And I suggest you get a bit of co-operation from Luard in S. Between the two of you you might be able to turn something up. I’ve had Records make me some copies of Howton’s photograph. Take one with you. It might help to stir people’s memories.”

  Which brought Petrella back again to where it had all started: to the back room of Mr Robins, Pawnbroker, Jeweller and Silversmith, with its built-in safe and its mighty, brass-bound ledger. When he saw Petrella, Mr Robins groaned.

  “I knew it,” he said.

  “You knew what?”

  “That you’d be back. I suppose they told you.”

  “No one’s told me anything,” said Petrella. “What have you been up to? Receiving stolen goods?”

  Mr Robins smiled faintly. “Really, it almost looks like it,” he said. “After you’d gone I took a copy of that list, the one that had all the Colegrave stuff in it, and went carefully through my deposits. I’ve identified six different pieces, besides the clasp you were asking me about. None of them are very large – here’s the list I sent to the station. I’d have thought they’d have passed it on to you.”

  “I’ve been a bit elusive these last two days,” said Petrella. He cast his eye down the list. The money given by Mr Robins for the six items totalled just over a hundred pounds, which meant that they were probably worth from twice to three times as much.

  “Were they all deposited by the same person?”

  “That’s what’s so difficult. I deal with – thirty, forty people every day.”

  “Does this do anything to your memory?”

  Petrella took out the photograph of Howton. It was a good photograph. Not one of those close-up profiles taken in a strong light which would make the Archbishop of Canterbury look like an axe murderer, but an informal snapshot of Howton stepping off the pavement, taken, Petrella guessed, with a candid camera, buttonhole attachment, and enlarged.

  “Why, yes,” said Mr Robins at last. “I’d say I’d seen him in here. It’s not a common sort of face, is it?”

  “But do you associate it with these particular pieces of jewellery?”

  “All those pieces were deposited here in the last two months. I know that’s right, because my book says so. And it’s in the last two months that I’ve seen – what’s his name?–”

  “Howton.”

  “–I’ve seen Howton about. The last time was about a week ago, and that reminds me. Dicky!”

  A thin, white-faced, gristly boy put his head round the door and said, “Wassup?”

  “It was you took in the eardrops a week ago yesterday.”

  “’Sright.”

  “Can you remember what the customer looked like?”

  “Man with a limp, would it be?”

  The evening suddenly seemed brighter to Petrella; a lot brighter and a lot warmer.

  “Yes,” he said. “It could have been a man with a limp. Was he anything like this, Dicky?”

  The boy held the photograph carefully up to the light and looked at it inscrutably. Then he put it down again, and said, “Do you mind my asking my dad something?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Alone.”

  “We’ll leave you here,” said Mr Robins, and went out of the door, taking the boy with him.

  The minutes dragged by. Then Mr Robins reappeared.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “He identified him. The eardrops, and a lady’s watch the week before. He’s a sharp boy, Dicky. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “What was he worried about?”

  “He didn’t quite know who you were or what you were after. Don’t you worry, he’ll make a good witness for you.”

  “Yes. I rather imagine he will,” said Petrella slowly.

  Back at Crown Road we went straight in to report to Dodds. He found the sergeant in high good humour.

  “That’s the stuff, boy,” he said. “We’re getting our feet on the ground in all directions now. Just listen to this. Here’s Rebecca Gurney. She lives – I beg your pardon, resides – at 17A Ogilvie Street, occupying the ground floor, and has a bow window overlooking the gates of the reservoir, and very little to do in life except look out of it. She deposes: ‘On the evening of Saturday, September 22nd, which I remember because it was my elder sister’s birthday, or would have been if she had been alive, she died twenty-five years ago and never have I allowed September 22nd to go by without thinking of her, and how I remember it was a Saturday, because the reservoir gates were shut when the men go after lunch. It was about eight in the evening but still light enough to see. I saw two men get out of a car which drove off to the top of the road and turned round and waited. The men walked up the road on the opposite pavement and disappeared. An hour later, they came back. It was dark by then but they were on my pavement this time and I saw them both clearly. One of them seemed to be keeping watch. The other c
limbed over the gate into the reservoir.’ Question, ‘Why did you not report this?’ Answer, ‘I was alone in the house and have no telephone. I was afraid to go outside. I did not like the look of the men.’ Question, ‘Do you recognize this photograph?’ Answer, ‘I do. That was one of the men. I have never forgotten his face. I considered it to be an evil face. I was unable to sleep that night. I have often thought of it since.’”

  “Excellent,” said Petrella, who recognized hard evidence when he heard it.

  “It’s a great thought,” said Dodds, “that in almost every street in London an old observant girl is sitting in a chair, in a bay window, noticing everything that goes on. All you’ve got to do is to find her.”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “We’re waiting for a telephone call. As soon as it comes, we’re going to start the ball rolling. I don’t suppose we shall any of us get a lot of sleep tonight.”

  The call came at half past eight, and it was evidently satisfactory, for Kellaway appeared for a moment in the CID room to confer with Dodds.

  “I’d better wait by the telephone,” he said. “Then anyone who has got anything can reach me. Take Patrick with you. The exercise will do him good.” He disappeared back into his room with a flash of his great white teeth.

  Petrella could not afterwards have mapped out or set down the course they took that evening. It remained in his mind as a succession of sights and sounds and smells as they went from café to café and later, when the cafés were closed, from club to club. From private clubs to members’ clubs, and finally to clubs so exclusive that they masqueraded as flats and apartments. The smells, particularly. The back alleys in which most of the clubs stood smelled of cats; and the clubs themselves of gin.

  Their mission in these places, a mission which could sometimes be accomplished without actual eating or drinking, was to talk. Dodds did the talking. It was mostly in undertones, but in the end Petrella understood what was being said. The word was out against Howton. Information as to where he was lying would be paid for, in hard cash. And immunity from reprisals was absolutely guaranteed.

  They visited Pino’s and found Luard already busy. Evidently there were many workers in the field that night. Luard grinned at Petrella, and they plunged straight out again into the darkness. There was no time to waste on a place that was already covered.