Blood and Judgement

by Michael Gilbert

  “You want to know about that print on the gun,” said the sergeant. “That’s not so easy. It’s a single print. Quite a good-looking one, as I said.” He pulled out a ten-magnification photograph and Petrella stared uncomprehendingly at the ridges and valleys, the watersheds and river junctions of the human tegument. It might have been a physical geography of the moon for all it said to him.

  “You’ve got six to eight possible points of identification. But nothing so absolutely out of the way that you can make a positive start from it.”

  “You mean that if it had a scar across it, or something like that, you could use that as a short cut?”

  “We’ll clear it in time,” said Blinder. “Don’t you worry. We can’t work miracles, that’s all. No matter who calls for ’em.”

  Petrella gathered that Kellaway had been exercising some more of his well-known drive on the Fingerprint Section.

  “I tell ’em all,” said Sergeant Blinder, “that fingerprints are a science. You can’t hustle science. Not if you want reliable results.”

  “Tell me something,” said Petrella. “Do you have all your prints in a single collection?”

  “That’s right. One main index of all recorded prints. Except, of course, there’s the Aged Collection.”

  “Aged Collection?”

  “Prints over a certain age. We don’t keep ’em in the main index forever.”

  “What’s the time limit?”

  “There’s no rule. But if a print hasn’t been turned up for thirty or forty years we take the view that the owner’s seen the light of reason and decided to behave himself. Have you got any reason to think–?”

  “No,” said Petrella. “There aren’t any old-age pensioners involved in this case. All the same – suppose a man did something silly when he was seventeen. Forty years later he’d be fifty-seven. Not too old to beat up some more trouble if he wanted to.”

  “All right,” said Blinder. “Better safe than sorry. When I’ve cleared the main index I’ll sort out the old-age pensioners for you as well.”

  That evening Petrella completed the first part of his programme by calling at No. 39 Corum Street. Mrs Fraser was in all right. He could hear her moving about. But there was a long interval after he knocked, and at first he wondered if she would answer at all.

  Eventually, when she had identified her caller, she slipped the catch and let him in.

  “You can’t stay long,” she said. “What is it you want?”

  “Can I sit down?”

  “Yes, of course.” She summoned up a smile for him. It was about as warm and heartfelt as a chairman’s annual vote of thanks to the staff.

  “I’ll try not to bother you. I expect you’ve been bothered enough in the past few days.”

  She looked up sharply at this.

  “Giving evidence in court.”

  “Oh, that. I didn’t mind that. I thought the magistrate was rather nice. Did you hear me?”

  “I was in the back row of the stalls,” said Petrella. “I thought you gave a most polished performance.”

  She smiled again, a little more happily.

  “What do you want to know now?”

  “It’s a matter of timing that’s been worrying me. You know Rosa’s husband, Monk Ritchie, got away from his prison escort on the Friday. It happened in the early afternoon.”

  “Did it? I don’t think that was in the papers.”

  “I’m telling you,” said Petrella. “And please get it out of your head that I’m trying to trap you or trip you up in some way. I’m telling you because I want your help.”

  “All right.”

  “What I was thinking was this. We’ve all been assuming that Monk lay up, that first night, with Howton and the other boys. And I expect he did. But it seems to me, don’t you think, that he would have tried to get hold of his wife first?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “That would be on Friday evening. He wouldn’t come here, of course. He’d know the place would be watched as soon as his escape was notified. It would have to be a telephone message. What arrangement have you got about those?”

  “There’s a telephone in the basement, where the woman who owns the house hangs out. She’s not keen on us bothering her, so we don’t encourage our friends to ring us up. In all the time I’ve been here, I doubt I’ve been rung up twice.”

  “In that case,” said Petrella, “it would be likely to stick in your mind if anyone telephoned Rosa that Friday evening.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Fraser. “It would stick in my memory.”

  “And did they?”

  In the sudden silence Petrella could pick up the sound of movement in the next room. Evidently the Polish lady was at home.

  “If you don’t remember, I could ask the lady in the basement.”

  “No. I’d rather you didn’t do that. She’s very touchy. I’m casting my mind back. There was a call.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. Fairly certain. It would be about nine o’clock that night.”

  “Was Mrs Ritchie away long?”

  “I don’t think so, or I should have remembered.”

  “And did you notice any difference in her manner when she came back?”

  Jean made a little gesture of impatience. “We weren’t sharing rooms,” she said. “She was living her life, I was living mine. I know she had this call, and I know when she went out and when she came back, because she had to come through my room. If she’d had a door of her own, I wouldn’t have known anything much about her at all.”

  “I quite see that,” said Petrella, “and I’m sorry to have bothered you. You’ve made the last question I wanted to ask you unnecessary as well.” He took up his hat.

  “That’s a neat way to tantalize a body. Now I shall lie awake all night wondering what it was.”

  “It was just a thought really,” said Petrella. “I wondered if Mrs Ritchie might have known Ricketts?”

  “Who was Ricketts?”

  “He was an intake attendant,” said Petrella. “It’s all right. I can let myself out. Good night.”

  He closed the door softly. Mrs Fraser stood still, her head bent, listening to his footsteps tip-tapping down the stairs, then across the bare linoleum of the hall. She heard the front door slam and still she made no move.

  10

  Progress of the Conspiracy

  “When you come to working out of doors, in weather like this,” said Bill Borden, “you’ll put on everything you’ve got. String vest, long pants, pullover, balaclava helmet, socks, mittens. Just for practising in a heated swimming bath, a pair of bathing trunks will do.”

  “What a lot of stuff,” said Petrella.

  “It’s all useful. Put on the bottom part of the suit first. You have to wriggle a bit to get your legs right down. OK? Now I’ll put on mine. Then we can help each other into our tops. This sort of thing’s always better done in pairs. I dived for years with a chap called Dickie Farragut.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got married, and went into breakfast food. Now for a bit of deflation.”

  As he spoke he was unrolling a length of tubing which was attached halfway down the front of the suit.

  “Just like an umbilical cord,” said Petrella.

  “Same thing, but in reverse,” said Borden. “This is used for extraction.” He put the end of the tube in his mouth and started to suck. Petrella followed suit. At once he could feel the rubber diving suit begin to tighten against his flesh. It was a not unpleasant sensation, like growing a new skin.

  “Most important part of the operation,” said Borden, between gasps. “Must empty all the air out of a suit before you start. If you don’t, as likely as not it goes down to your heels. Nothing makes you feel sillier than bumping round on your forehead. Now roll the tube up and tuck it in. Same principle as when you fasten up a football, only this time you’re inside the ball. Next the aqualung. Test it before you put it on.”

&nbs
p; “Test what?”

  “Just give it a couple of sucks to see the air’s coming through. If the intake valve sticks, you’ll have to surface in a hurry. Set the regulator at five. Now put her up on your back. Like a haversack. Gloves and flippers next, and you’re practically ready to go.”

  He examined the new recruit critically.

  “All you need’s your weight belt.”

  “I feel quite heavy enough already, thank you.”

  “If you went into the water like that, you’d float, not sink. The compressed air in that aqualung’s as good as a Mae West.” Borden extracted from the kit bag a broad webbing belt with slots in it and, after some thought, inserted eight flat leaden discs. “It’s a funny thing, but in the early days it always used to be assumed that you had to put the weights in the feet. Sort of hangover from the days of diving suits. Made swimming almost impossible. That’s right. The torch on your helmet may make a bit of difference. I’ll adjust you after the first dive if you feel at all sluggish.”

  “I don’t feel sluggish,” said Petrella. “I feel immobile.”

  “Just wait till you get in the water.”

  “Dive in?”

  “Nothing so dashing. Lower yourself in sedately, bottom first. If you dived, as like as not you’d tear the mask right off your face. All set?”

  Petrella lowered himself obediently into the water, clung onto the rail for a moment, and then let go. His trim had been so accurately adjusted that he felt neither weight nor buoyancy. It was only when his world showed suddenly green that he realized he was under the surface. He turned over, steadied himself, and then shot across the floor of the bath, with such speed that he nearly crashed head-on into the wall opposite. He saved himself with his hands, and came more sedately back again. Nothing to it, really.

  After five minutes he surfaced, and found Borden sitting on the edge of the pool smoking a cigarette.

  “Is that all?”

  “In six foot of water in a warmed and lighted swimming pool, yes,” said Borden. “The next thing you’ve got to practise is just getting the stuff off and on, until you can do it blindfolded. Remember, next time you put it on will be in the dark, in the open. And it’ll probably be raining. When you can get properly rigged up inside ten minutes in conditions like that you’ll be fit for fieldwork. Now, let’s start from the beginning again–”

  That evening, after dark, they made a reconnaissance of the reservoir. Borden parked his car in a cul-de-sac south of the Binford Park Sports Ground. He had the diving gear in two large duffel bags. They found, without much difficulty, a place where they could climb the railings, and started up. By keeping the embanked running track on their left and working along the inner fence which separated it from the reservoir, they had no difficulty in locating the gate, now embellished with a shiny new padlock.

  “Lucky I kept a spare key,” said Petrella, with a grin. The old iron gate squeaked in protest as they opened it,

  “Needs a spot of oil,” said Borden. “I’ll remember to bring some next time. This is only a dry run. Just to see what the snags are. What we want now’s a changing room. We can do it in the open, but we may have to use torches, and we don’t want someone spotting us and dialling 999.”

  “What about the cottage? Then we could go in from the landing stage.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Borden. “Really, quite a good idea. Do you think we can get in without busting anything?”

  “I noticed the window in the scullery had a fairly simple slip catch.”

  It proved easier even than that. The kitchen door was unlocked.

  “Would there be any risk, do you think,” said Borden, “if we actually keep our stuff here? It would save us humping it up each night.”

  It was a novel idea, but its attractions were obvious.

  “How long do you reckon this is going to take us?”

  “Five or six nights to do the thing properly. An aqualung lasts about two hours. I don’t reckon we could do much more than an hour a night. Apart from anything else, the cold gets you down in the end.”

  “Then we’ve got to take a chance on no one having occasion to search this place for a week.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think it’s a fair bet. The only people likely to be nosing about are the Water Board. Suppose they find our suits. Ten to one old Lundgren will assume it’s something official, to do with the police, and he’ll contact me.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s get going.”

  As they left the cottage the moon came out from behind a slow-moving cloud and silvered the picture for them. A light mist was lying on the surface of the reservoir. The water looked black and cold and as tenacious in its mystery as the grave itself.

  “Do you mean to say,” said Petrella in a whisper, “that we have got to look inside that?”

  “Cold feet?”

  “Cold all over.”

  It took half an hour to shift the gear. They found a big cupboard in the kitchen, wide enough to store the kit bags, end to end, on the floor. As Petrella was fitting them into place, something drove painfully into the index finger of his right hand.

  “Ouch,” he said.

  Borden turned the torch on. “You been bitten by a rat?”

  “No. It feels like the broken end of a nail.”

  “Better get that cleaned up,” said Borden. Blood was beginning to ooze. “A friend of mine lost his right hand just that way. A rusty nail–”

  “You and your friends,” said Petrella. “Don’t worry about my hand. Shine the torch on the floor. I want to see what did it.”

  It was the broken end of a brass screw; possibly the shaft of a cup hook which had been driven in too hard and snapped off.

  “Funny place to hang a cup,” said Borden.

  “Have you a screwdriver?”

  There was one in the frogman’s kit. Petrella wrapped a handkerchief round his hand to staunch the blood, which was now flowing freely from the gash in his finger, put the end of the screwdriver into the join in the floor a few inches from the broken shank of the hook, and levered. A piece of floorboard came up.

  Borden was breathing down his neck.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a cache. Something someone used to keep things in. He’s sawed off one end of the board. See? Not very long ago. Then, as it was a tight fit, he used to drive a cup hook in to lift it out with. Then the hook broke. And now I cut my finger on it.”

  It was a space perhaps three feet long, and nine inches wide, blocked off on two sides by the brick wall and on the other two by joists. And it was empty.

  Petrella put the board back and stood up. In the moment of silence which followed they both heard the slither and bump. There was some kind of furtive animal life under the floorboards and behind the wainscoting.

  “Do you know,” said Borden, “there’s something I don’t quite like about this place. Difficult to say what. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  Petrella said. “It’s the damp. You can smell it.”

  “It smells worse than damp to me,” said Borden. “Let’s get back to the car before we start imagining things.”

  On the following evening Petrella came off duty at seven o’clock. His plans were to have an early evening meal, and then to relax until it was time to meet Borden, which he was due to do at eleven o’clock in the cul-de-sac where the car was parked.

  As he turned into Foljamb Road, a figure drifted up out of the shadows between two street lamps. It was a girl. Petrella had never seen her before. She looked, in the dim light, to be about seventeen. She had a sick, white face and she spoke with the husky voice of a heavy smoker.

  “Your name Pirelli?”

  “Petrella.”

  “That’s it. You’re a bogey.”

  “I’m a bogey,” agreed Petrella gravely, as one might say to a little girl, “I’m Father Christmas.”

  “Got a message from Jean. She wants to see you.”

  “Now?”


  “No. And you’re not to come to her place. That’s important. Not to come to her place, nor where she works.”

  “Then how?”

  “You know Collins’ shop?”

  Petrella reflected. “Yes,” he said at last. “A little newsagent and tobacconist in Canal Street.”

  “’Sright. She’ll put a card in the window when she can see you. You watch out for it.”

  “What’s your name?” said Petrella. But he found he was talking to himself and the lamp-post. The girl had gone.

  Petrella went home. Mrs Catt was an excellent cook and understood the appetite of a young man who spent most of a long working day on his feet in the open air. After dinner he settled down with Reese on Play, to study the tactics of the throw-in.

  It was a little difficult, at first, until you grasped the underlying principle. Once you had that firmly in your mind, it was simple. You were sitting South. North, you were not surprised to find, was Superintendent Kellaway. Dodds was East and Gover, looking a little pale after his stay in hospital, was West. Now, then, play out all the clubs. Then all the diamonds except one. What would you have left? Petrella was disconcerted to find that there was nothing at all in his hands except photographs of fingerprints, and from somewhere behind him Sergeant Blinder was saying, “Take a central pocket loop whorl with an inner tracing”, when his head fell forward, sharply, making him bite his tongue. He came slowly back to the present and examined the clock. It was a quarter past ten, and time to think about getting ready if he wasn’t to be late at the rendezvous.

  At eleven o’clock exactly, Borden’s car turned the corner, cut its engine, and drifted to a stop. Petrella was waiting. There was no need for talk. It took ten minutes to reach the cottage. The threads that Petrella had stretched across the back door and the cupboard were unbroken. Their base was secure.

  Borden had brought blankets with him, and these they nailed across the single small window. A candle was brought, and by its dancing light the ceremony of dressing began. It was a rite they were to carry out six times in all, and the memory of it remained in Petrella’s mind when a lot else had faded. If some passer-by, attracted by a chink of light at the window, had crept up and peered in, what would he have seen? What would he have done? Run screaming, doubtless, at the sight of the great, black, contorted shapes of men from outer space, glass-masked, hunchbacked, web-footed, their black hands performing strange rituals.