A Traitor's Crime

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Only very roughly. Mrs Timmins can’t really place it within half an hour.’

  Barnard, for a couple of seconds, flicked his thick lips with his right forefinger. ‘Have you questioned the people from C.I.D about where they were half an hour on either side of the time she gives?’

  ‘I’ve left everything to you — but I think you’ll find you can eliminate no one that way.’

  I’m glad you’ve done that.’ Barnard was apparently unaware that this reply could be taken in an unflattering light by Keelton. ‘Anything more, sir?’

  Keelton drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘Elwick has been spending money freely,’ he finally said.

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘He’s been spending it on my daughter.’

  ‘Your daughter!’

  ‘Taking her out to dinner,’ said Keelton sharply. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Quite an unusual situation.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well aware of what it is.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right. I’ll see each man in turn, both here and at his home, check on bank accounts … All the usual. I suppose someone’s fixed up a hotel for me, sir?’

  ‘My secretary did.’ Keelton vainly wished that he had been sent someone less pugnacious.

  ***

  Barnard demanded a room to work in and was given one at the head of the stairs. It was small, stuffy, and normally a store room where old files were kept and unclaimed stolen property held for the requisite time. Two constables moved out some of the files, stacked the stolen property against the far wall, managed to open the window after a long struggle, and finally brought in a table and chair.

  Barnard had only been in there for ten minutes when there was a knock on the door and a constable entered. ‘Well?’ he snapped.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  ‘Excuse you for what? What d’you want?’

  The constable was young and flustered by the other’s bellicose manner. ‘I couldn’t … I didn’t know, sir, whether I ought to report to you or Mr Astey?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About what happened during the raid.’

  ‘You report to me. Which raid?’

  ‘The one last Friday, at Jamaica Road.’

  ‘All right, what happened?’

  ‘I was there, sir. I found this in one of the bedrooms. I put it in my pocket and then I’m afraid I forgot it until this morning.’ He put the souvenir of the Old Bailey on the table.

  Barnard looked at the rough representation of Justice with her scales. ‘So?’

  ‘Well, it’s just … I picked it up because I thought I knew who it belonged to, sir.’

  ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘I thought it was Elwick’s, sir. Detective Constable Elwick.’

  ‘What’s so significant about all this? If it’s his, it dropped out of his pocket during the search.’

  ‘But … but I happen to know, sir, he never went upstairs.’

  Barnard was silent for a while. ‘I see,’ he said finally. ‘Thank you for coming here.’

  ‘Did I … did I do right, sir? I mean, I don’t know for absolute certain … ’

  Barnard spoke in a strangely soft voice. ‘The facts, Constable, have to be ascertained.’

  Barnard watched the other leave. The constable, he thought, couldn’t convince himself, as yet, that he had done right in ‘informing’ on his colleague.

  ***

  Keelton presented a long service award to a uniformed constable at a small ceremony in the parade room. The constable was embarrassed and the photographer from the local newspaper had difficulty in getting him to pose in anything approaching a natural manner.

  Keelton was about to leave, after having had a few words with the constable’s wife who had been invited to attend, when a reporter left the photographer’s side and crossed the room.

  ‘Mind if I ask a question, Chief Constable?’

  Looking at the man, young and brash, with a mop of hair that needed cutting, Keelton guessed what that question would be. ‘I’m afraid I’m in a hurry … ’

  ‘They say there’s a spot of trouble in the force. Is that so?’

  ‘Who says?’

  The reporter grinned. ‘We get a lot of our information like you do — under the counter.’

  ‘There’s been no trouble.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to make a statement that gets the facts across before rumours start whizzing round?’

  ‘There aren’t any facts to get across.’

  ‘Oh, well! Keep on digging, as the worm said to the bird that wasn’t quite early enough.’

  ‘If you print any scandal … ’ Keelton checked his angry words. The press could be a useful ally or a deadly foe. It would be ridiculous to antagonise them. If pressure had to be brought to bear in the right quarters to keep a story out of print, then Frederick Turnbell could do it most effectively since he was a close friend of the proprietor of the Flecton Cross Gazette.

  Keelton turned, left the room, and went out through the general information room to the courtyard and his parked car. He sat down behind the wheel and lit a cigarette. He wondered bitterly how far the word had spread that something was rotten in the state of the police?

  CHAPTER VI

  Midday Monday, Elwick returned to the police station from a case concerning a tobacconist shop which had been broken into over the weekend. The owner claimed over five hundred pounds’ worth of stock had been stolen. Elwick, remembering what a hole-in-the-wall shop it was, thought a hundred pounds’ worth was probably an over-generous estimate — always assuming anything at all had been stolen and this wasn’t an insurance swindle.

  He went up to the general room. Larksfray was sitting at his desk. ‘Wotcher, Cock!’ said Elwick boisterously.

  Larksfray turned, but said nothing.

  ‘So what’s up with you? Marriage proving a tough nut?’

  ‘The bastard’s been asking questions.’

  ‘Which bastard? The place is full of ’em.’ Elwick momentarily wondered what had changed Larksfray from his usual brash, ebullient self.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Barnard.’

  ‘Him! Stuff him!’ Elwick sat down on the corner of his desk. ‘Osy, d’you find life a bit tough?’

  ‘Tough?’

  ‘I mean financially. What’s it like being married and having to cope on a D.C’s pay? It’s not too bad, is it, seeing you get the house laid on free and now our pay’s going up a bit?’

  Larksfray looked straight at him for several seconds, an angry expression on his face. ‘Mind your own bloody business,’ he muttered.

  Elwick’s mind had been so filled with the financial problems of getting married that it was only now that it occurred to him the other might think there was some ulterior reason for the questions. ‘Here — d’you think I’m trying to find out if you tipped off the villains and got paid a packet?’

  ‘Maybe. That’s what Barnard’s interested in.’

  ‘Well I’m not.’

  ‘Someone tipped off the villains: telephoned ’em from this room.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So Barnard’s interested in money.’

  Why the hell should that bother Larksfray so much, wondered Elwick. The other’s character wasn’t one to worry about anything — unless … unless he had some particular reason for some particular worry? Elwick checked his thoughts, guiltily realising suddenly that suspicion had laid its first poison in his own mind.

  The door opened and Detective Chief Inspector Barnard looked inside. ‘Elwick — want a word with you.’ He left and slammed the door shut behind him.

  ‘Polite bastard,’ said Elwick.

  Larksfray was silent.

  Elwick shrugged his shoulders, left, and went along to the room at the head of the stairs. There was no chair for him and he stood in front of the desk.

  Barnard, a cigarette in his left hand, opened one of the fil
es on the table. He read for several seconds, then looked up. ‘What’s your pay?’

  ‘Getting close to twenty pounds a week, sir,’ said Elwick.

  ‘What’s the tax?’

  ‘Usually three pounds fifteen, within a few bob.’ Why the hell didn’t he just look at the records?

  ‘Tax, pension fund, and stamp, take something over five quid a week?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What’s the hostel charge?’

  ‘Seven quid.’

  ‘D’you lunch at the canteen?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s another quid a week. Smoke? Drink?’

  ‘I smoke and have a pint now and then.’

  ‘Skirt?’

  ‘I go out with women,’ said Elwick stiffly.

  ‘There’s not much change but brass left from your pay, then?’

  ‘My name won’t become Getty overnight.’

  ‘Don’t be insolent,’ snapped Barnard. ‘You don’t have anything but small change left, yet you take women to the motel at Dredington Park. Right?’

  ‘That’s my business, sir.’

  ‘It’s bloody well my business now. Go there often?’

  ‘I’ve been once.’

  ‘What did it cost you?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  Elwick was silent.

  ‘You didn’t escape under ten quid unless you kept to bread and water. Where d’you get the money? No straight D.C goes to places like that. What was up? Wanted to impress a bit of skirt? Wanted to make her?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘True love, eh? D.C’s in love don’t go to places like the motel.’

  ‘I saved enough money.’

  ‘Now that was clever of you, seein’ as we’d agreed you’d nothing but small change left each week.’

  ‘You needn’t believe me.’

  ‘That’s being bloody stupid, lad.’

  ‘All right. I saved. I went without my beers, I smoked rollings and not many of them. I cut out dances and the flics, I left the other skirt alone. That’s how I saved my money. How I spend it is my business.’

  Barnard turned over one of the pages in the folder. ‘You’ve an odd history — for a policeman.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Not many policemen have form behind ’em.

  ‘I wasn’t sent to prison,’ said Elwick with bitter anger.

  ‘Ever see any of your old mates from the Common?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t exchange Christmas cards with those right tearaways?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Though, of course, they’d’ve graduated from being tearaways by now. Might even be big time villains. Might be in the drug racket.’

  ‘I don’t see them.’

  ‘Someone gave the drug boys the tip-off.’

  ‘I’m a policeman, not a bloody grasser.’

  ‘Someone grassed, lad, like as not for money. Now if you’d known ’em from way back … ’

  ‘You’ve no right … ’

  ‘It’s you, lad, who’s no rights, any more than the rest of your mates until we find the guilty man.’

  Elwick clenched his huge fists and for a brief moment the wild anger in his mind made him want to smash the jeering, accusatory detective chief inspector.

  There was a long pause. Elwick, his anger controlled, said: ‘Is that all, sir?’

  Barnard looked up. ‘No.’ He took something from his pocket and dropped it on the table. ‘Is this yours?’

  Elwick stared down at the souvenir figure of Justice. To others, it might appear cheap and tawdry — to him, it was something almost sacred. The probation officer had given it to him and he could still remember what the other had said: ‘Take this, Bob, and any time you feel like back-sliding just have a look at it. D’you know who she is? She’s Justice. Justice is often a blindfolded figure, but over the Old Bailey she’s got both eyes uncovered. You’ve been given a chance to go straight. Keep both your eyes open.’

  ‘Is this yours?’ demanded Barnard roughly.

  ‘It looks like mine.’

  ‘Lost yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. I looked for it the other day and couldn’t find it.’

  ‘D’you go around asking people if they’d seen it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t bother.’ That was a lie. The truth was that he’d been too embarrassed to ask, imagining the others might jeer at him for putting such value to this cheap memento.

  ‘Pick it up,’ ordered Barnard.

  He picked it up.

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘I … think so, sir.’

  ‘Right. Give it back.’

  ‘I said it was mine, sir.’

  ‘And I said, give it back.’

  Slowly, Elwick put it down on the table.

  ‘Know where it was found, lad?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘At number seven, Jamaica Road. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms.’

  Elwick’s face showed the shock the words caused him.

  Barnard spoke softly. ‘You never went upstairs during that raid, did you?’

  ‘But I … It couldn’t have been upstairs.’

  ‘It was upstairs, in one of the bedrooms.’

  ‘Someone’s trying … ’ began Elwick hoarsely.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have been going to suggest someone was trying to frame you?’

  Elwick did not reply.

  ‘All right, you can go.’ Barnard wrote in pencil in the margin of the top paper in the folder.

  ***

  Other crimes within the borough boundaries continued and had to be investigated. The borough C.I.D investigated such crimes. The drug racket was investigated by the uniformed men and two C.I.D officers from the county force, under Barnard’s command, because the borough C.I.D could not be trusted until the traitor was uncovered.

  It was one thing to know drugs were being distributed and Brierley almost certainly led the gang which distributed them, but it was quite another to uncover sufficient evidence of this. Addicts might, if desperate enough for another shot, disclose who the pusher had been, but the pushers naturally denied everything and to date not one of them had been caught with drugs on his person. In any case, if so caught, the pusher was highly unlikely to admit to where he obtained his supplies. Brierley led a tough mob and anyone who grassed on him was cutting down on his life expectancy.

  ***

  Keelton returned from county H.Q at twelve-fifteen, after attending the monthly conference on county crime figures: a conference to which all chief constables of separate forces and all county officers above the rank of detective chief inspector or superintendent attended.

  He entered the station by the back entrance and walked along to the information room. ‘Any messages?’ he asked the duty sergeant.

  ‘No, sir.’

  He went up to his room. It could be imagination, but he gained the impression that suspicion was poisoning the force. The duty sergeant, normally a cheerful man with a slyly humorous way of addressing senior officers, had been almost morose.

  He paced up and down between the window and his desk. There was an old, but true, saying that if the troops fought badly it was the officers’ fault and if the officers were at fault the commander needed sacking. But what more could he do? What more could anyone do until the traitor was uncovered?

  Some five minutes later, Barnard came into his room. As a man, he did not like the other, but as a detective Barnard was second to none. The present situation called for a detective, not a diplomat. ‘Sit down. Have a fag?’

  ‘Thanks.’ After accepting a cigarette, Barnard said: ‘I’ve seen Elwick.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He got hot under the collar, especially when I tackled him
about his record.’

  It took a man like Barnard, thought Keelton, to refer to Elwick’s past as his ‘record.’

  ‘I’ve had Records at the Yard do a bit of checking. Brierley started villaining with the Mortuary Boys. They were a gang of tearaways going strong round Clapham Common in the middle of the fifties. That’s the time when Elwick was running wild.’

  Keelton made no comment.

  ‘He says he saved the money for the motel.’

  ‘Could he have done?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. That souvenir was his.’

  ‘What’s he got to say about it?’

  ‘Can’t begin to account for it being up in the bedroom. Reckons it must have been planted in order to put the finger on him.’

  ‘That would be a natural move if the traitor is someone else.’

  ‘If.’

  ‘Elwick would be the man to choose because of his past history.’

  ‘It was strange — taking him on in the police.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘In the circumstances, yes, sir.’

  ‘You don’t believe in giving a man a chance when life has been all against him?’

  ‘You’ve got to keep an eye on the future, sir. Sentiment can be an expensive hobby.’

  Keelton sighed. He felt mentally worn out. ‘Has anything else turned up?’

  ‘I’ve finished checking all bank accounts, saving accounts, and so on. Detective Sergeant Simlex has got more explaining to do, but he’s the only one.’

  ‘Over what?’

  ‘He paid a hundred and forty-five pounds into his bank towards the end of July. That’s a lot of money — for a copper.’

  A short time later, Barnard left. Keelton stubbed out his cigarette. When he had taken command of the borough force, it had not been in good shape. The previous chief constable, appointed at a time when men from outside the police force were often chosen as chief constables, had been a man unwilling to take unpopular measures. In seven years, he, Keelton, had transformed the force into a highly efficient one, thereby spiking the guns of those who demanded amalgamation on the grounds of efficiency: now, because one man turned crook, seven years’ work was going down the drain.