A Traitor's Crime

by Roderic Jeffries

  He drove up the east side of East Hill and the constable on point duty at the cross-roads beyond the brow of the hill saluted him as he went past. Using back roads, he avoided the shopping areas and reached the station without too much trouble.

  Astey reported to him just after nine o’clock.

  ‘Sit down, Percy,’ he said. He had an easy relationship, but a well defined one, with those who served under him. Like the army, he sometimes thought with an inward chuckle as he remembered his nickname.

  Astey sat down. He resented having each morning to report on the previous day’s crime details. He was more than capable of dealing with all routine matters and it should only have been necessary to report crimes of a serious nature or events of unusual significance.

  ‘How are things?’

  ‘The usual report is on your desk, sir.’

  Keelton did not bother to look down at the typed report. ‘Anything outstanding?’

  ‘We picked up a man called Vincent Barnes who made a mess of robbing a greengrocer. He’s been on drugs and it seems he’s been buying the stuff locally.’

  ‘Here, in Flecton Cross?’

  ‘Seems that way, sir.’

  Keelton’s mouth tightened and quite suddenly his face looked hard and harsh. ‘But you aren’t certain yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There hasn’t been time to check up. Barnes was suffering from withdrawal symptoms and wasn’t completely coherent. He claims the pusher was working Castle Street.’

  ‘What are you doing, then?’

  ‘The pusher could be Harry Snaith from the vague description. We’ll pick him up.’

  ‘Smash this before it begins to grow.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Keelton was about to say something more, when he checked himself. He stared unseeingly at the top of his desk. He’d always hated drug peddlers because they dealt in other people’s degradation: after Richard’s death, he loathed them with a sense of violence. Richard had been up at Cambridge, reading law. Handsome, cheerful, intelligent, hard working, it had seemed his future was assured. No one knew when that future was first destroyed, or why. Why had he, someone with everything before him, taken drugs? After his battered, crushed body had been discovered on the flagstones, his room had been searched. A phial of L.S.D and the accompanying sugar cubes had been discovered. It seemed possible that Richard had suddenly been seized by the hallucination that he could fly.

  Astey coughed.

  Keelton took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Get the bastards,’ he said, his voice tight.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He proffered the cigarettes and Astey had one.

  CHAPTER II

  Elwick jumped on to the bus, paid the fare, and sat down. He stared through the window at the pavement crowded with people returning home from work and cursed Simlex who had taken the C.I.D Hillman, leaving him to use public transport. He also cursed Astey for suddenly giving him this evening duty. He had arranged to take Joanna out to dinner tonight and when he’d rung to say he couldn’t make it, her tone of voice told him what she thought of that.

  Thinking of Joanna reminded him of when he had first met her. It had been the night of the annual police ball. He’d been half cut when he’d asked Joanna for a dance, else he’d have stayed his side of the fence. The chief constable and his family always made an appearance at the ball, just as the village squire used to make a brief appearance at the village hop. Presumably, it was a way of showing the peasants that the aristocracy were really democratic at heart — the kind of democracy that did not allow a presumption of equality. Except that he had presumed. Osric Larksfray had bet him half a dollar he wouldn’t ask Joanna Keelton for a dance. She was very attractive, in a kind of sulky way. She was a blonde, with all the right curves and a pair of eyes and a mouth that said she could, if she wanted, stop being an iceberg. When he’d asked her for the dance, he’d stumbled over the words as the beer scrambled his mind slightly. She’d been about to refuse him — with open contempt, of course — when she’d seen the look on her father’s face.

  He’d seen her again, almost uncertain why. She might be attractive and potentially bedable, but not only was her father the chief constable, she was as spoilt as one could get. Her life had always been easy, she’d never had to fight for anything. She’d treated him with off-hand superiority and he’d retaliated by becoming far coarser then he really was. They’d been like two antagonists who met only in order to sharpen their mutual antagonism. She never actually called him a peasant, but he’d known the word was never far away. He’d cursed himself for being fool enough to see her, giving her the opportunity to be superior, and had sworn he wouldn’t see her again. But he had seen her again and before long he’d become too fond of her.

  The bus jerked to sudden braking and he returned to the present, to discover he was almost at his destination. He got off at the end of Castle Street. Legend had it that the Normans had built a castle in Flecton Cross and the local archaeological society had tried to raise the funds to start a dig to see if the castle had been situated roughly where the bus terminal now was. He’d been asked to buy a flag by a woman who’d been collecting near the police station. He’d refused, since he didn’t give a damn about the past, except to hate all the rich bastards who’d lorded it over the rest of the world. His father had had many stories about The Depression that made a man see red. His father had been out of work from 1930. Years of inactivity had broken his spirit and left him a huge husk of a man, content to let his wife struggle to support him and his family. Elwick recalled his mother who’d died after a painful illness, borne with the same uncomplaining fortitude with which she’d borne the rest of her hard and bitter fate.

  ‘What’s up with you, Cock?’

  Elwick turned round to face Detective Sergeant Simlex. Simlex was a well rounded man, whose cheerful expression suggested all was well with his life. Elwick never knew how he managed to look like that when his wife was a permanent invalid who moaned and groaned and nagged him almost silly.

  ‘You look as if you were about to do your nut,’ continued Simlex.

  ‘I was thinking of The Depression and the bastards who’d enough money to be able to sit back and forget all the suffering.’

  ‘It’s history now. Anyway, if you’d been rich then, you’d have forgotten all you could.’

  ‘Like hell.’

  ‘It’s human nature. Give me animals.’ Simlex chuckled. ‘O.K, let’s get wandering. You take the other side of the road and I’ll take this one. You’ve seen the photos of Harry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The detectives parted. Elwick crossed the road when it was temporarily clear — now one-way under a traffic experiment — and strolled along the south side, past the shops, the supermarket, and the offices. Since he’d stood Joanna up this time, even though no fault of his, it was a hundred quid to a penny she’d return the compliment at the first opportunity. Why the hell didn’t he forget her and find someone from his side of the tracks?

  Castle Street gradually became mean in character, with shops where everything was a little cheaper and a lot shoddier, and the public houses were dingy with a clientele who got boisterously drunk and enjoyed rousing sing-songs. He looked into the bars of each pub he passed, once stopping for half a pint of bitter which he paid for with a little of the money he’d saved up to take Joanna out that evening. The beer tasted flat.

  The traffic was rapidly becoming relatively light as the last of the businessmen and workers returned home. There wouldn’t be very many people around for the rest of the evening. Flecton Cross was a provincial town of thirty-two thousand inhabitants and near the coast, but the only entertainments it normally offered were the cinema, bingo, a few lacklustre coffee bars, a few depressingly respectable clubs, and the weekly dance at the com exchange to the local band. This lack of variety of entertainment was probably largely responsible for the high incidence of hooliganism in the
town.

  He lit a cigarette. He’d been a hooligan in his time, and then a tearaway. His family lived in a part of London, near Clapham Common, where one had to be tough to survive. Little Lord Fauntleroy would have been kicked to death at birth. He’d joined a gang, a really tough gang, and inevitably had come into conflict with the police. Normally, this would have been the start of a criminal career, a career followed by so many others — approved school, Borstal, prison. But the court had been sympathetic despite all the highly publicised trouble from gang warfare and he had been placed on probation in the care of a probation officer who was uniquely good. The probation officer was also tough, tough enough to talk at times like a Holy Joe and yet get away with it. He’d once knocked Snout Venables into the gutter and Snout was an Anglo-Irishman who’d terrorised the district. Toughness had been the only thing that Elwick had been prepared to recognise. He had become a friend of the probation officer and had discovered that he wanted to keep the other’s friendship and respect — which he could only do by cutting himself off from the life he had led. That was when he had first decided he wanted to join the police. At the time he could not make out why he should want to join one of the authorities he had been so busy fighting, but later he decided it was because the force gave him a chance of belonging. The police, of course, had not exactly looked on him as an ideal recruit, but the probation officer had fought for him with so much determination that in the end the police assented.

  Elwick went on down the road and into a pub which served both the semi-respectable people who lived to the north of Castle Road and the petty criminals and people of the half-world who lived to the south. There, he saw Snaith. Snaith was sitting at one of the tables, staring at an empty whisky glass.

  Elwick went up to the table. ‘Evening.’

  Snaith looked up. He was a small, stunted man with a thin, twisted face and a nose that looked as if it were set in the wrong position. ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘A chat.’

  ‘You ain’t nothing on me,’ he said automatically, in his high-pitched cockney voice that offered such a sharp contrast to the soft Kentish accents of the local inhabitants.

  Elwick didn’t bother to reply. Snaith was a rat of a man, the kind of rat more usually found in large towns.

  After a while, Snaith stood up. ‘You ain’t nothing on me,’ he said, for the second time.

  Elwick led the way out of the bar and across the road. As they walked westwards, Snaith became more and more nervous and it was almost with relief that he met a face he knew, Simlex’s, outside a dirty looking butcher’s shop.

  ‘Still alive, then,’ said Simlex cheerfully.

  ‘ ’Ullo, Mr Simlex. Fancy meeting you.’

  ‘Fancy!’

  ‘Lookin’ for something, Mr Simlex?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Are you takin’ me in?’

  ‘Taking you in? Why should we do that? Been up to something?’

  Snaith scratched his twisted nose. Then he followed the two detectives along the length of Castle Street to the council carpark, now almost empty, where Simlex had parked the C.I.D Hillman. The three men got into the car, Simlex and Snaith in the front, Elwick in the back.

  Snaith was the first to speak. ‘What is it, then?’ he blurted out.

  Simlex leaned against the door pillar and half turned so that he could look straight at Snaith. ‘What d’you know about the factory job?’

  ‘What factory job, Mr Simlex?’

  ‘Someone hoisted a safe from the paint factory over at Bradstead.’

  ‘Get away with you!’

  ‘Which mob did the job?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Mister, straight.’ Snaith settled back in his seat and relaxed.

  ‘Come on, now.’

  ‘If I knew something, I’d tell. Like a bleeding shot. You know me. I … ’

  ‘Got much folding money on you?’ Instinctively, Snaith put his right hand to the breast pocket of his coat.

  Simlex reached across and tapped the coat. ‘Quite a bulge, isn’t there? Let’s have a butchers.’

  ‘I … I ain’t forced to.’

  ‘That’s dead right.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Let’s be seeing it,’ said Simlex.

  With extreme reluctance, Snaith took a battered leather wallet from his pocket.

  Simlex opened the wallet. He whistled. ‘You’ve struck it rich! Got more money than I’ve seen for many a day. Part of the factory job, eh?’

  ‘No, it ain’t.’

  ‘What’s your fairy story, then?’

  ‘I swear it ain’t from the factory job.’

  ‘What job is it from, then?’

  Snaith twisted uncomfortably in his seat and looked longingly through the near-side door window.

  ‘Been selling things?’ asked Simplex.

  ‘Sellin’?’ said Snaith, as if not certain of the meaning of the word.

  ‘Selling something that makes big money?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Mr Simlex.’

  Simlex turned and spoke to Elwick. ‘He doesn’t know!’

  ‘I’ll teach him,’ muttered Elwick.

  Snaith grabbed hold of the door handle, then let go of it. He didn’t stand a chance.

  ***

  Joanna stood up. ‘I’m off to bed. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, dear,’ said her mother.

  ‘Sleep well,’ said her father.

  She left the sitting room and crossed the hall to the stairs, went upstairs to the bathroom and from there to her bedroom. The bedroom was the one place in the world that was exclusively hers. There were photographs of the latest pop groups around the edge of the large mirror, the C.N.D banner on the near wall which she had carried in the march, a collection of buttons telling the Yanks to go home, praising free love, and calling for government by the youth, and several coloured reproductions of the latest examples of pop art. Her father, firmly rooted in the past, called the pop group members long-haired simians, the C.N.D the campaign by national deserters, the buttons an open declaration of immorality, and the examples of pop art the biggest swindle since the South Sea Bubble. She held no particular brief for any of these things, but she pursued them because he was so openly scornful of them: it was a simple, almost automatic reaction. They were a protest. She sat down on her bed and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Why did she protest so furiously at all her father’s beliefs? Why did she leap to defend anything he attacked, even when she all but agreed with him? As parents went, he was more than reasonable. Sometimes, she wondered if her antagonism had something to do with Richard’s death? She and Richard had been very close: they’d liked the same people and the same things, they’d laughed together, and had always turned to the other first for consolation. Richard’s death had shocked her most terribly. Two days after first learning about it, she had shouted at her father that since the police were meant to stop drug taking what had he been doing? She’d never forget the look on his face.

  She stood up and undressed, then studied her body in the mirror. It was slim: her breasts were shapely, well rounded, definitely not droopers. One of the art teachers, a man of forty or so, kept telling her that with her shape and contemporary looks she could make a great success modelling and he knew a contact. She wasn’t certain whether the art teacher was genuine or was attempting a clumsy technique.

  She thought of Bob’s technique, or lack of any subtle technique, and suddenly swore. She’d been looking forward to going out with him. He made her feel really alive. He was a hundred per cent masculine and there was a suggestion of primitiveness about him that was in a way attractive — if only he could discard the chip on his shoulder that sometimes seemed to be about the size of an oak tree. What did it matter if he’d spent his youth in a flea-ridden slum? Thirty years ago that might have mattered. Today, it was only the person himself who mattered. At least that was how she felt. Then she thought, ironically, that perhaps it was a good thing h
e could not forget the differences between his background and hers: it kept him busy when he might otherwise be concentrating on attacking her defences.

  She put on her pyjamas, in dazzling squares of black and white, and climbed into bed. As she lay back, she remembered their first meeting at the dance. He had obviously been drinking heavily and she had been about to turn down his offer of a dance when she’d seen the look on her father’s face. Her acceptance of the dance had been just one more protest, a protest at having to attend a dance where her family turned up for a short time, like grands seigneurs, to the embarrassment of all present.

  She thought of the men she knew. They were the sons of professional fathers, educated at public schools, from homes where there was comfort and complete absence of want. They laughed at her for joining the C.N.D march, for her professed left-wing political views, for her vehement denial that they were entitled, merely by accident of birth, to the same life of material comfort that their fathers had known. She didn’t know why she wasn’t one of them, thinking as they did, but she wasn’t and she didn’t, even if her rebellious thoughts weren’t, in fact, of any deep consequence. Richard had thought as she did — much to the annoyance of their father.