‘It’s odd, Dad, but Mother said that’s how you’d act.’
‘But you plainly believed otherwise! What did you expect? An explosion, the raised arm, the steely command to leave the house you’d sullied and never more to darken its doors?’
She giggled. ‘You’re getting mixed-up. That’s when I turn up with a baby and no wedding-ring.’
The espresso machine hissed as the coffee made. Joanna got up — they were eating in the kitchen — and turned off the electricity. She carried the coffee over to the table and poured out two cups, passed one across. ‘Dad, you’re still not certain Bob’s innocent, are you? I mean, completely innocent.’
‘I don’t know who’s innocent and who’s guilty.’
‘You think it could be he?’
‘Let’s leave it.’
‘Suppose he were guilty and … and I still married him?’
He spoke slowly and carefully. ‘I don’t think you would because he wouldn’t be the man you believed him.’
She frowned. ‘I suppose you could be right. But I know he isn’t the traitor.’
‘You are being realistic about all this, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘How d’you mean, Dad?’
‘I’m talking about the practical and financial angles.’
‘Other women are married to detective constables.’
‘Usually they’re people of the same background.’
‘Now you’re being snobby … ’
‘I’m being practical. We all get used to a certain standard of living and children get used to that of their parents. I’ve never been wealthy, on the other hand, I’ve earned a good salary for a number of years now and, as you know, your mother has a private income. That’s the rate you’ve got used to living at. Your standards would have to take a tumble.’
‘I know that.’
‘But do you really appreciate the practical effects? Cheap cuts of meat, shopping in overcrowded supermarkets and not being able to buy something that takes your fancy, no car to borrow at a moment’s notice, no coming to me to say you’re overdrawn at the bank and will I put fifty pounds to your account to sweeten the smile of the manager.’
‘Bob’s going to make as good a success of life as you have. We can live with being hard-up until then.’
He thought how easy it was to talk glibly about putting up with financial hardships when one didn’t know what they really meant. Yet she had courage and character. He ate the last of the egg and bacon. He wondered, bitterly, just how hard hit she’d be if it were proved that Elwick was the traitor and had sold his honour in order to get the money to take her out?
‘I must fly,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Dad, for being so understanding.’ She hurried out of the kitchen.
He lit a cigarette. Like any parents, both Mary and he had hoped Joanna would marry someone she really loved. In so hoping he, at any rate, had most certainly presumed a man from the same circle as the majority of their friends came from. There was nothing snobbish about his presumption. He wanted to see Joanna get the best possible start in life. One could be as egalitarian as one liked, but money was money and the more one had the easier life became. He had seen enough of poverty to know that love on the dole was seldom a lasting love. Newly married who were really hard up and not used to being hard up needed a strong sense of humour to survive. Elwick wouldn’t have much of a sense of humour.
He looked at his watch and saw it was time to leave. He put on his uniform jacket — he had to attend an official luncheon — and went out.
It was another sunny, hot day, which made him think of the holiday in Madeira he and Mary were supposed to be taking next month. He needed that holiday, but he certainly wouldn’t be having it unless the drug ring had been smashed and the police traitor jailed.
He backed the Snipe out of the garage, closed the garage doors, and then drove off. As he passed the next house, he waved at the man in the garden, a retired bank manager, a great rose enthusiast, and a tremendous bore. Past the cross-roads, he began the shallow descent down East Hill. As he braked, to allow a car to infiltrate from the left, he wondered when the police were going to get the break in the drug case they so desperately needed? At the moment, all inquiries met dead-ends: witnesses wouldn’t talk, the pushers were scared to talk, there was no direct evidence.
When he reached his office, after twenty hot and frustrating minutes of driving in traffic-clogged roads, Miss Prester came into the room and said that the press were demanding to know whether there had, or had not, been a leakage of police information in a case. He told her to refer all such questions to the police officer in charge of the case. She said, in the tones of self-pity that so annoyed him, that she had done so but the reporters were getting quite rude and even demanding to speak to the chief constable himself.
Miss Prester left, with a last expressive sniff. He read through the mail and noticed, from a circular originating from county H.Q, that a demand had been put in for a rise in pay for all ranks below superintendent. Police pay ought to be much better than it was, of course, but where was the money to come from? Even he, with a finance committee as sympathetic as his, inevitably had the utmost difficulty in getting the members to understand why there should be an increase in wages.
The telephone rang. ‘Call for you, sir,’ said the switchboard operator.
He waited.
‘That you, Guv?’
It was Camps. ‘Yes.’
‘One of your lads was in the boozer with Stuttering Joe last night. Thought you might want to know, like.’
‘Any idea what was going on?’
‘Looked like a brown envelope got passed across.’
‘Which pub?’
‘The Mermaid.’
‘D’you know who the policeman was?’
‘ ’E was young, with wild black ’air and dirty big shoulders. Tough.’
It was a vague enough description, thought Keelton, but could it refer to anyone but Elwick? ‘Thanks a lot. Anything you want?’
‘Don’t want nothing, Guv.’ The connexion was cut.
Keelton asked the switchboard operator to locate Barnard, who came into his room a few minutes later.
‘ ’Morning, sir,’ said Barnard. ‘I was just coming to report.’ After he had sat, he gave a concise report of his visits the previous day to Mrs Scott’s and Larksfray’s homes.
‘It doesn’t seem that Astey’s spending a fortune on this woman, then?’ said Keelton.
‘It could even be the other way round. I suppose though, it’s just possible Astey got her to give all the right answers.’
‘Your experience will tell you if that’s at all likely?’
‘Most unlikely.’
‘And Larksfray’s place showed no signs of heavy spending?’
‘Showed hardly any signs of any spending.’
Keelton leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve just had a telephone call. Did you tell the five members of C.I.D to report to you any attempted contact from the suspects in the drug case?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has Elwick made any such report?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Have you seen him yet this morning?’
‘Yes, sir. What’s all this about?’
‘He was in a pub called The Mermaid last night, talking and drinking with Stuttering Joe. An envelope was possibly passed across to him.’
‘Was it, by God! How d’you know that, sir?’
‘My contact.’
‘I’d like to have a nice long chat with your contact.’
Keelton made no answer.
Barnard put his hands on the arms of the chair, preparatory to getting up. ‘Anything more?’
‘That’s all I can tell you.’
‘Right, sir.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll see him.’
‘Of course, it’s not by any means conclusive.’ Only after speaking did Keel-ton realise that his words could — and by Barnard probably would — be taken as an attempted defence of Elwick.
/> Barnard left. Keelton stared at the far wall. He hoped to God they soon rooted out the traitor because, quite apart from all the obvious reasons, if Elwick were the guilty man then the sooner Joanna knew the truth for certain, the better.
Barnard, after returning to his room, walked past the chair and over to the window. Was the chief constable trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds? That last remark, for instance, had sounded very much like an attempt to whitewash the incident in the pub, yet it was he who had reported it in the first instance. It was strange how people ceased to be completely straight when their own interests became concerned. Or, he thought, with sudden charity, was it so strange?
He got through on the newly installed inter-com to the C.I.D general room and asked for Elwick. In the interim period, a uniformed constable reported and said that a search in connexion with the drug case had been made the previous midnight, in south-east Flecton Cross, following ‘information received.’ The search had proved negative. Knowing he would have been contacted at the time had the search been positive, Barnard listened with scant patience. After the other had gone, Barnard thought angrily that the police weren’t getting anywhere fast. Speed mattered most desperately since every day that passed could mean someone else hooked on the vicious, killing habit, but for all the success that the police were having they might have been standing still. Probably, he thought sourly and even while admitting this was by no means necessarily true, better results would be obtained if he could have more detectives and fewer uniformed men to carry out the investigation — but Keelton had laid down that everything possible was to be done to keep the matter quiet and the fewer strangers who were around, the more likely that was. Keelton didn’t want a stink before someone could be charged or the name of the force would be mud, the force might disappear through amalgamation, and his job would vanish.
Elwick knocked and then entered the room. Barnard studied him. He didn’t like the other and it suddenly came to him why — Elwick was a thruster, an ambitious man who was determined to get to the top, no matter who stood in the way. It was a case of Greek meeting Greek.
‘Sit down,’ ordered Barnard, pushing across a chair he had had brought into the room. He remained standing. ‘Anything to report?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then you bloody well ought to have, lad.’
Elwick stared up at him with angry resentment.
‘D’you know why?’
‘No.’
‘D’you remember my order that any approach from any of the drug villains was to be reported immediately?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Elwick showed his sudden uneasiness.
‘Have you had any contact with anyone?’
‘I ... ’
‘Have you?’
‘In … in a way, sir.’
‘Stop bloody prevaricating. Have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you carry out my orders?’
‘I thought I might get the chance to prove the truth.’
‘What truth?’
‘The truth that I’m not the traitor.’
‘How d’you think you were going to do that?’
‘The telephone call said to meet at The Mermaid. I reckoned it must be about the drugs.’
‘So why didn’t you report the call?’
‘I’m not a fool,’ said Elwick angrily. ‘If I told you, you could maybe have twisted things to suit yourself.’
‘Watch what you’re saying.’
‘You asked me.’
They stared at each other, not attempting to hide their dislike.
‘What happened?’ snapped Barnard.
‘I went to the pub. A bloke turned up.’
‘Who?’
‘Stuttering Joe.’
‘Then why not say so at the beginning?’
Elwick didn’t answer.
‘D’you drink with him?’
‘What if I did?’
‘Did you drink with him?’
‘I had a whisky.’
‘You’re on good terms, then?’
‘I had one whisky. That’s all.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To know what kind of progress the police were making.’
‘Anything else?’
Elwick momentarily hesitated. ‘No, sir.’
‘Did he give you anything?’
‘No.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m not. He tried to bribe me with what he said was five hundred quid, but I told him where to put it.’
‘He showed you the money?’
‘He pushed an envelope across the table and said that’s what was in it.’
‘What happened to that envelope?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘Then you didn’t pocket it?’
‘Goddamn it, no.’
Barnard moved round the table and sat down. ‘You’re lying, lad.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re lying, like you first lied to me about not being offered a bribe.’
‘I didn’t tell you because I knew the way your mind would work. I didn’t touch that bribe.’
‘Why didn’t you report the first contact, like I told you to. That way, we could’ve had a charge of attempted bribery.’
‘If anyone else’d been around, he wouldn’t have come near me.’
‘But there’s no proof now, is there? All we can be certain is that you met Stuttering Joe in the pub and he passed you an envelope which you admit contained money.’
‘I don’t admit it. I’m telling you what he told me. If there was money in it, I didn’t touch it. You’d like to be able to prove I did — you’ve had your knife in me from the beginning. But I didn’t.’
Barnard smiled sarcastically.
Elwick gripped his huge fists. The worst construction was being put on all that had happened. He’d been a goddamn fool to go to the pub, yet at the time it had been a visit which promised so much.
‘That’s all, then,’ said Barnard, meaning that in reality it was only the beginning.
‘I swear I didn’t touch the money,’ said Elwick fiercely.
Barnard made no answer.
Elwick left the room and went along the corridor. He stopped when he came to a window and stared out over the tops of houses at the distant crown of West Hill, shimmering from the heat and fumes of the many factories that were concentrated just below it.
He didn’t have to be a genius to envisage Barnard’s next move. A search of all his possessions and savings accounts, a check on everywhere and anywhere the five hundred pounds could have been hidden. He, Elwick, had not touched that money last night, but surely it was now obvious that the mob had gone one stage further in trying to frame him? Suppose the real traitor in C.I.D had decided it was time Elwick was locked up and so ease the pressure on himself? Suppose this was the pay-off and it was all now plain sailing for the traitor because D.C Elwick had been such a bloody fool as to allow himself to be set up as fall-guy the previous night?
Where could money be hidden so that he could not normally be expected to find it yet a search would uncover it and definitely identify it as his? His room at the hostel? Too dangerous for anyone else to be seen there. Would the money have been paid into his bank without his knowledge? A telephone call to the bank would make certain. But wasn’t it more likely that the real point of danger was somewhere in the police station … somewhere to where all the detectives had access? He immediately remembered the lockers. There was a cloakroom for the C.I.D and on the far side of the wash basins were half a dozen rusting lockers, officially for hanging spare clothes, in fact never used. He hadn’t looked inside the locker that was his for six months, or more.
He went along to the cloakroom. No one else was there. He went to the fifth locker from the door end, and opened the rusting door. In the top compartment was a pile of old newspapers. He was about to search behind them when he thought he heard the cloakroom door being o
pened. He dropped his hand away and made out he was searching for something in the bottom part. No one entered. He straightened up and his throat was dry and a pulse in his neck was hammering. He pulled out the newspapers. The shelf was empty. He searched through the papers and almost immediately found a brown envelope. He shoved the envelope into his inside coat pocket, the newspapers back in the top compartment, and shut the locker door.
He went into one of the closets and locked the door, then took the brown envelope from his pocket and opened it. There was a great deal of money inside. He counted it — five hundred pounds.
He fought down the rising tide of panic. If he were to escape the trap, he had to keep a clear head and do something now, before Barnard moved.
CHAPTER X
Joanna ran down the steps outside the main entrance of the art college and across the forecourt to Elwick. ‘Bob … Bob, what’s up?’
‘Come on,’ he said abruptly.
He turned and walked away and she had almost to run to keep up with him. They crossed the road and made their way to the public gardens, where they sat down in one of the retreats. The foot high fountain of water tumbled endlessly into the shallow pool in which the goldfish were lazily swimming.
She gripped his arm. ‘Bob, something terrible has happened — what?’
He turned and faced her. ‘D’you believe in me?’
‘You know you don’t have to ask.’
‘If I swear something’s the truth, will you believe me no matter what the circumstances?’
‘I’ll believe you even if the rest of the world proves you a liar, Bob.’
Slowly, at times almost haltingly, he told her all that had happened.
‘But why you?’ she cried. ‘Why has the traitor tried to frame you?’
‘It’ll leave him in the clear and I’m the natural for being the sucker. I was in trouble once upon a time. That sort of thing sticks.’
‘You’ve got to fight back and tell them what’s happened.’
‘If they find this money I could preach them The Sermon On The Mount and they’d laugh themselves sick. Can’t you see it, Jo? If one of us has to be the traitor, I start off as firm favourite. Now they know I was with Stuttering Joe last night. Let ’em find this money and I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.’
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