A Traitor's Crime

by Roderic Jeffries

  ***

  Barnard called Detective Sergeant Simlex into his room immediately after lunch. He spoke with his usual belligerence. ‘I checked your bank account this morning.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Simlex easily.

  ‘You paid a hundred and forty-five pounds into your account on the twenty-first of July.’

  ‘That’s right, sir, although I can’t remember the exact date … ’

  Barnard cut short the other. ‘Where did that sort of money come from?’

  ‘An apostle spoon, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An apostle spoon. I’ve always collected antique silver, sir, in a small way. In the old days it was easier, of course, because silver wasn’t nearly so expensive then. But I still poke around in junk shops and the antique shops which aren’t too pricey. There are one or two places in this town … ’

  ‘Get to the point, man,’ muttered Barnard testily.

  ‘Well, sir, I was up in the north end of town, on a burglary, and when I’d finished work I popped into a junky shop nearby. There were five spoons on a tray, amongst a lot of other things, and these were apostle spoons. I liked the look of them and asked the bloke what he wanted for ’em and he said that as they was silver, he’d take a fiver. I got ’em for four pounds five. When I cleaned ’em up at home, I found they were really old. I don’t mind saying it was all a bit of a shock — I’d never discovered anything valuable before. I was going to keep all of ’em, but my wife is an invalid and we were hoping to get a bit of special treatment for her so I sold one of the spoons to get some money. The shop gave me a hundred and forty-five pounds for it.’

  ‘What shop?’

  ‘The Silver Galleries, sir, in Tyler Street. It’s just past the post office … ’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘The spoons were by different makers, of course. If I’d found a set of thirteen and they’d been just that bit older, they’d have been worth a fortune — maybe ten thousand pounds. There was a set up for sale back in … ’

  ‘If they’re apostle spoons, why are there thirteen in the set?’ demanded Barnard suspiciously.

  ‘Twelve apostles, sir, and Christ.’

  Barnard looked annoyed. ‘Where are the other four you got?’

  ‘They’re at home, sir. If we can find someone to help my wife I could sell … ’

  ‘All right. That’s all for the moment.’ Barnard was uninterested in the health of Simlex’s wife. As Simlex opened the door, he said: ‘What’s the name of the place where you bought the spoons?’

  ‘I don’t know the name, sir, but it’s right next door to The Cinema at Redlington. It’s owned by an old man who … ’

  ‘O.K.’

  Barnard watched the other leave. He lit another cigarette and smoked. Five times a hundred and forty-five was seven hundred and twenty-five quid, which was a hell of a return for four pounds five shillings. He wondered why nothing like that ever came his way.

  He picked up the telephone and spoke to P.C Donne, ordering the other to go out to the junk shop in Redlington and find out about the five apostle spoons. That done, he left and went down to the information room where he asked the duty sergeant the quickest way to the Silver Galleries. The sergeant suggested walking. Barnard turned away without any word of thanks: he detested walking.

  The Silver Galleries had a small frontage but considerable depth, so that gallery was not a bad description. It sold antique and modern silver and antique pewter and as he waited to speak to the manager, he stared at some silver coffee and tea pots and morosely wondered how many years’ salary they cost.

  He saw the manager in the latter’s office, down in the basement.

  ‘I want to know if you bought an apostle spoon round about the twenty-first of last month?’

  The manager, a small man who wore a very obvious toupee, immediately became nervous. ‘It wasn’t stolen? I dealt with the matter myself and the seller told me he’d found the spoon in an old junk shop in Redlington. I’m always careful and I … ’

  ‘It wasn’t stolen.’

  ‘Oh!’ The manager showed his relief. ‘That’s something!’

  ‘This is just a matter of routine inquiries. How much did you pay for the spoon?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be certain without looking it up.’

  ‘Would you do that?’

  The manager opened the unlocked door of the old-fashioned safe and brought out a ledger. He ran his fore-finger down a column of entries. ‘Here we are. The spoon was bought on the twentieth, from a Mr Simlex, who gave an address in Gorisham. We paid a hundred and forty-five pounds, which was a very fair price considering one doesn’t sell this sort of thing to every customer … ’

  ‘Sounds a hell of a lot for just a spoon,’ muttered Barnard.

  ‘No, no, certainly not. The scarcity value is considerable.’ He went back to the safe and bought out the spoon which he handed to Barnard.

  Barnard saw only a crudely made spoon, with unusable bowl that bore the marks of manufacture, a badly shaped stem, a figure at the end which, as far as he could see, might just as easily have been of some fat old monk as one of the apostles. Anyone who paid more than a few bob for that wanted his head examined, he thought.

  ‘You’re quite certain there’s no chance of it being stolen?’ asked the manager.

  ‘None that I know of,’ replied Barnard.

  ***

  Joanna and Elwick sat on opposite sides of the alcove in the expresso bar. On the wall beside them was a mural depicting some palm-studded, halcyon tropical island.

  She lit her third cigarette of the evening. ‘You’re not exactly bubbling over with joy, Bob.’

  ‘If you wanted a night of joy you should have gone out with one of your little curly-headed pimps from school.’

  ‘There’s no need to make quite so much effort to be rude … ’ She stopped and forced herself to calm down. ‘Bob, if something’s troubling you … ’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Then where are we going this evening?’

  He shrugged his broad shoulders.

  She once more had consciously to damp down her sharp temper. ‘Mother lent me her car so shall we go for a drive to the coast? We could carry on to Folkestone and have a meal at that new place which has just opened: the article in the Messenger said the food was jolly good value for money?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Bob, let me treat you … ’

  ‘And neither am I broke. When I need a woman to pay for me, I’ll stay at home.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in a thin voice, ‘but I can feel a headache coming on very fast. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just leave and drive home.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  She stood up. ‘Good night.’

  He didn’t bother to answer.

  She left. She reflected that she had never bothered hard to please anyone and she was a fool to start with trying to please him. He was in a black mood and wanted to make everyone else suffer: she was damned if she was going to collaborate. George had asked her out and if she’d gone with him they’d have had a whale of an evening and enjoyed the bubbles of life. As she walked into the car-park, she called herself all sorts of fool for having become friendly with Bob. Probably, he’d just been laughing at her, jeering at her, telling all his friends he’d got himself a ripe number in the chief constable’s daughter and would she make a good roll in the hay.

  ‘Jo.’

  She had not heard him approach and his voice startled her.

  The Mini was only fifty yards away and she increased her rate of walking.

  He came alongside her. ‘Jo, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry.’

  ‘And does that immediately make everything right? The great man has spoken.’

  ‘But I’m desperately worried.’

  ‘And I’ve got a headache.’ She came up to the Mini and took the key out
of her handbag.

  ‘You must understand.’

  She turned the key in the lock and went to open the door, but he suddenly leaned against it. ‘Will you let me get into my car?’ she said furiously.

  ‘Jo, they think I’m the traitor. They think it was me told the villains the raids were on.’

  She stopped pulling at the door. ‘What raids? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Hasn’t your father told you?’

  ‘He never talks work at home — not to me.’

  ‘A mob’s set up a drug distribution centre in Flecton Cross. We’ve laid on two raids to catch ’em, but each time the raid’s failed, apparently because there’s a police traitor who told the mob the raids were going to be made.’

  She spoke slowly. ‘No wonder Daddy’s been going round looking as if he’d died some time ago.’

  ‘They think it’s me told the villains.’

  ‘You? They couldn’t really think that. You’re pig-headed, God knows, and you’ve a foul temper, but you couldn’t do anything like that. You’re much too proud of being in the police force.’

  ‘They’ve brought down a D.C.I from county H.Q who’s a bastard. He says an ordinary D.C like me can’t afford to take anyone to the motel for a meal so where did I get the money from?’

  ‘But … but how did he know where you’d taken me?’

  ‘I didn’t say. Must have been your father.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ she said, in a voice that trembled slightly. ‘That makes me feel sick.’ She spoke wildly. ‘It’s just because he doesn’t like me going out with you.’ She took hold of his hand in hers. ‘What did you say about the money?’

  ‘I told ’em the truth — that I’d saved it.’

  ‘Didn’t that settle the matter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Jo … I’m scared.’

  ‘Bob — you don’t get scared.’

  ‘I tell you, I’m scared.’ He spoke in a rush. ‘I’ve a souvenir that means a lot to me. I lost in some time ago and hunted high and low, but couldn’t find it. The D.C.I produced it and said it’d been found in a bedroom of the second house we searched.’

  ‘Why should that scare you?’

  ‘Because I never went upstairs in that house and the D.C.I knows that. It makes it seem I must’ve been in that house before the raid and that makes me the traitor. Someone pinched that souvenir and planted it. Jo, someone’s trying to pin being the traitor on me.’

  ‘You’ve got to explain all this.’

  ‘D’you think I didn’t try?’

  ‘But wouldn’t they … Wouldn’t they believe you?’

  He did not answer.

  She stared up at him. ‘What else is there. Bob?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  ‘There’s nothing. Now let’s get down to the sea.’

  She looked at him, wondering if he were now telling the truth, wondering whether he had been swept by embarrassment because he had shown so much emotion?

  She drove out of the car-park and turned right at the traffic lights and into Station Road. From there, she cut through the back roads to the edge of the town and the B road which, after twelve meandering miles, linked up with the A20.

  As they passed an attractive farmhouse, in black and white clapboard, with a nearby oast house whose roundel had been newly repaired and painted, he said: ‘It’s a funny thing about the countryside. When I first moved down to Flecton Cross, I hated all the empty fields, the stupid cows, the miles of nothing. But now I’ve grown to like the peace of it and the feeling that it proves the continuity of things.’

  ‘It’s wonderful to hear you speak like that,’ she said softly.

  They went over cross-roads. In the field on their left, a tractor and baler were baling a late crop of hay and taking advantage of every moment before the dew became too heavy. A second tractor was pulling a trailer that was being loaded with the hay bales.

  She braked the car to a halt just before a gateway into the field. ‘Bob,’ she said, ‘I want to know what else is wrong?’ She turned and saw the expression of angry stubbornness on his face. ‘Please.’

  ‘There’s nothing. Let’s move, or it’ll be dark before we get near the sea.’

  ‘It won’t be dark for a couple of hours and we’re not moving until you tell me.’

  ‘Stop poking your nose in where it’s not bloody wanted,’ he said crudely.

  She put her hand on his broad shoulder and rested her finger-tips on the side of his neck. ‘Bob, can’t you see why I’m asking?’

  ‘Because like any other woman you’re … ’

  ‘It’s because I really care.’

  There could be no mistaking, or escaping, the sincerity with which she spoke. He drew in his breath sharply, but did not speak.

  She waited.

  He stared through the windscreen. It was always the same, he thought bitterly. Sooner or later, it mattered what your background was. You might tell yourself that in the age of proclaimed equality it didn’t matter, but then you found you were a liar. ‘I was born close by Clapham Common,’ he said, in a low, harsh voice. ‘It’s a part of London that’s more like a jungle than a so-called civilised city. My father got laid off work during the Depression and when work came back he was too far gone to care. He drew the dole from nineteen-thirty until he died. My mother took in washing to make enough to feed me and my three sisters. One of my sisters left home when she was sixteen and the last we heard, she was … She was on the game. It’s impossible to make you understand what the place was like. You’ve always known a world where at the first sign of trouble you shout for help and help comes running: you’ve always known streets where you can walk at night without worrying. It didn’t begin to be like that for us.

  ‘I was always big and strong and that was the only thing that mattered — to be bigger and stronger than the next bloke. Me and my pals joined gangs because in them we belonged. The gangs fought each other over territory, girls, or to see who was the toughest.

  ‘The rest of the gang stole and I stole. I got caught and hauled up into court. I reckoned to cop a stiff dose of Borstal or approved school, but the probation officer spoke up for me and the magistrate put me on probation. The probation officer was the kind of bloke you’re lucky to meet once in a lifetime. He was completely good, but he wasn’t soft — it made one want to be good just to be like him. I quit the gang and he got me into the police. God knows how he talked ’em into it — they usually only touch someone with a clean sheet.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me,’ she murmured.

  For the first time, he turned and looked at her. ‘I suppose it makes you … ’

  ‘It makes me respect you because of the courage and guts you’ve got.’

  ‘I … I didn’t think you’d take it like that.’

  ‘What did you expect? That I’d recoil from you, shout unclean and rush off home?’

  They were silent. She removed her hand and gripped the steering-wheel. ‘Bob — do they think you’re the informer just because you had this trouble when you were young?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied harshly.

  ‘They don’t begin to understand what courage means,’ she said bitterly.

  CHAPTER VII

  Barnard drove slowly along Elmers Crescent, a road of small, detached houses, and found a parking space close to number twenty-four. He crossed the pavement and knocked on the front door of Astey’s house. In an automatic manner, he noted the house was ill-proportioned, ugly, and probably built in the nineteen thirties for what had then been called the lower middle classes.

  As he waited, he mentally checked on Astey’s record. The minimum time as P.C, six months as C.I.D aide, posting to the C.I.D, three times awarded the chief constable’s commendation, rapid promotion. He was smooth, successful, and ambitious. Ambitious men sometimes became too ambitious and dissatisfied with the income of a police officer.

  A woman open
ed the door. She was in the middle period of middle age, perfectly made-up, and she wore a dress that was simple but which didn’t have a crease in it and looked as if it had only just been pressed.

  ‘My name’s Detective Chief Inspector Barnard,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for the D.I.’

  ‘For Percy? I’m afraid he’s not here, but do come in, Mr Barnard.’

  He stepped into the hall and shut the door. She led the way into the sitting-room. This was in apple-pie order: no papers were lying around, none of the cushions was ruffled, no piece of furniture was out of position.

  ‘Percy’s been held up at the station.’ She looked at the electric clock, exactly in the centre of the mock marble mantelpiece. ‘He telephoned just before six to say a case had turned up and he wouldn’t be back until late.’

  ‘I must’ve just missed him, then.’

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Not really.’ Barnard, not usually susceptible to atmosphere, suffered a feeling of oppressiveness: it was as though his shoes were caked in mud and he had blundered into a show house at some exhibition. He even found himself looking down to see what the state of his shoes was.

  ‘From the way Percy spoke, I’m pretty certain he won’t be back much before ten. He said not to worry about dinner and he’d get a meal at the canteen.’

  Of course she’d call the meal dinner, not supper, he thought. Did she lay out finger-bowls and double-damask dinner napkins?

  ‘May I offer you something to drink?’ she asked, in her cool, measured, accented voice.

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll be getting on.’

  ‘Can I give Percy a message?’

  ‘If you’ll just tell him I called, Mrs Astey.’

  As she said good-bye to him, just before closing the front door, she smiled in a mechanical and meaningless way.

  He climbed into his car. If she stood too close to a glass of water, the water would freeze solid. He thought of his own house, never a hundred per cent tidy, and of his wife, Doris, who sometimes forgot to make up her face because there was too much else to do, but who was a warm-hearted woman who had made him happy for a hell of a lot of years. He also thought that he had driven straight from the central police station and the last thing he’d done, at a quarter to seven, was to look into Astey’s room: Astey had not been there and an inquiry below had shown that the D.I had left the station just after five-thirty.