The C.I.D Room

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘It happens to be true.’

  ‘You’re lying. Heywood-Smith’s confessed.’

  ‘Really? Or are you lying to try to make me think he has?’

  Kerr spoke angrily. ‘Sir.’

  Fusil turned round. ‘What the hell d’you want?’ he shouted, venting some of his sense of humiliated failure.

  “Can I have a word with you?’

  ‘Why can’t…’

  ‘It’s important.’

  Fusil hesitated. With a gesture of tiredness, he massaged his forehead with the knuckles of his forefinger. ‘All right,’ he said finally. He led the way out into the cold, draughty corridor. Kerr shut the door.

  ‘Why d’you interrupt me?’ demanded Fusil.

  ‘It may be important.’

  ‘Your job’s to keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘You’re forgetting something, sir.’

  ‘Any more of this bloody impertinence…’

  ‘You’re forgetting how much I’ve got at stake. And maybe you’ve got more than you thought. I was told Choppy Walker really was ready to clear me, but you turned it down.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘It’s my neck.’

  They stared at each other, not trying to hide their tired hate.

  Kerr spoke first. ‘I searched Captain Leery, like you ordered.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I didn’t find anything definite.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be news?’

  ‘But there was a photograph of a woman in his wallet.’

  ‘He’s married.’

  ‘It’s not his wife.’

  ‘His daughter, then.’

  ‘Not with those looks. All through the case we’ve been searching for a woman because that’s maybe how the money’s being spent. Suppose this is the woman?’

  Fusil’s mind began to work once more as a detective’s. ‘All right, suppose she is. He’s not going to sign an affidavit to that effect. So how do we find her?’

  ‘I was up in the Crossford Hills not so long ago with a woman.’

  ‘What now? A run-down on your sex life?’

  ‘There wasn’t any that night which was why I was finding life glum when we drove back through Crossford. There was a bit of a hold-up by the bridge and coming in the opposite direction was Leery in a car. When he first saw me, he was startled, scared, or something like that, but he was on his own. Suppose he was on his way to meet his woman and seeing me shook him just for a bit because his conscience suddenly started up?’

  Fusil leaned against the wall and yawned. ‘God knows, it’s thin.’

  ‘There’s nothing fatter anywhere else.’

  Fusil jerked himself upright. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll try it. You’re right. There’s nothing else.’

  The detectives returned to the interview-room and sat down. Fusil, once more in command of himself and the interview, remained silent for a long time. Then he spoke abruptly. ‘How’s your wife?’

  Leery started. ‘My…my wife?’

  ‘That’s what I asked.’

  ‘What’s it matter how she is?’

  ‘I gather she’s unfortunately a cripple. So seriously crippled she maybe doesn’t keep your bed warm for you?’

  Leery spoke with violent anger. ‘Nothing’s sacred to you.’

  ‘Not when we’re trying to break a case.’ Fusil went on, speaking slowly. ‘A man likes a warm bed. If he can’t get it at home, he often gets it somewhere else. How did you spend your share of the gold money — on a woman?’

  ‘No,’ said Leery. For the first time, he was clearly on the defensive. ‘I know nothing about —’

  Fusil interrupted him. ‘You’re carrying a photograph round with you. Who’s the woman?’

  Leery instinctively touched the breast of his coat. When he realised this, he snapped his hand down.

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your daughter?’

  There was a pause. ‘No.’

  ‘But someone you know very well — well enough to carry her photo around rather than your wife’s or your daughter’s?’

  ‘It’s…she’s a friend.’

  ‘Where’s she live?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘D’you expect me to swallow that?’

  ‘She…she’s gone abroad. Emigrated.’

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She doesn’t live anywhere near Crossford, then?’

  Leery started heavily.

  ‘You know where Crossford is, don’t you? Remember seeing Detective Constable Kerr there? Not so long before you framed him?’ Fusil sat back in his chair. He no longer sounded or acted tired. ‘Captain, I’ll give it to you straight. I’m going to solve this case whatever happens to anyone else. I know you’ve got a woman, been keeping her, spending on her all the money you made from the gold thefts. Shall I tell you what I’m going to do? I’m going to hold you here tonight, then tomorrow I’ll send every man in the borough and county forces to Crossford and the surrounding district and they’ll go from house to house with a copy of that photo until they find the woman.’

  Leery’s face was white and the dark stubble on his chin stood out in very sharp contrast. ‘A hell of a lot of men have mistresses,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Yeah. But not many of them steal gold to pay for their women.’

  ‘You…you can’t prove anything.’

  ‘That’s right. We can’t prove anything. But I’m wondering how your poor crippled wife is going to feel when our investigations make it quite clear to her how you’ve been enjoying yourself?’

  Leery closed his eyes. ‘Oh, God!’ he muttered. ‘You dirty bastard.’

  ‘I’m a right dirty bastard, but that’s the way life goes. Detective Constable Kerr was falsely charged with blackmail: that’s how life went for him, because you thought more of your woman than an innocent man’s freedom. You set about sending an innocent man to prison because you’d do anything rather than give up your woman. Your wife won’t have much chance to shut her eyes to the facts, will she?’

  Leery spoke frantically. ‘You can’t tell her. Please, please don’t. You’ve got to understand. It’ll kill her because she’s only me to live for.’

  There was a long silence. Leery looked at Fusil, then at Kerr. He rested his head in his hands, closed his eyes. After a while, he opened his eyes and raised his head. ‘What d’you want?’ he asked, in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

  ‘The truth about the gold.’

  ‘I…I can’t.’

  Fusil made no answer.

  ‘If…if I tell you, will you keep quiet about Prudence to Gladys…to my wife?’

  ‘If that’s possible.’

  ‘D’you swear that?’

  ‘You’ve got my word.’

  ‘D’you swear it, though?’

  Fusil shrugged his shoulders. ‘You don’t seem really to care whether your wife knows, or not,’ he said contemptuously.

  Leery closed his eyes again. ‘I…I began to steal because I couldn’t give her…Prudence…what she wanted and she left me.’ He opened his eyes and stared across at the far wall. His expression was that of a man who could see all too clearly the extent of his own degradation. ‘When I gave her presents, she came back to me. After a while I met Gregory and told him about the gold. I said two of the ships had through upper ’tween decks which meant one could get from the locker to the steering flat without going on deck. Down in the steering flat were oil-tanks and a small man can just crawl through the tanks when they’re empty. I had spare seals and sealers at the office. I always knew when gold would be shipped, what the marks on the crates would be, when the other cargo would fill the square of the hatch. I could tell the engineers to move the oil about to alter the trim of the ship for loading or unloading.

  ‘Because I was always in and out of the docks,
I could go anywhere with anyone and no one would notice. I took a man aboard and he hid aft. During the night, he went through to the upper ’tween from the steering flat and along to number five, opened the locker doors, and got the gold out of the crate. He took it back to the steering flat, crawled down into the double bottoms, and hid the gold well away from the inspection covers. I picked him up next morning and we went ashore together.

  ‘The gold was covered by the oil for the whole trip and it wasn’t unloaded in this country until the very last moment because Heywood-Smith said that by then the police would believe it must have long since gone ashore. I took it ashore in a brief-case, spoke to the man in the van which was having the hawsers unloaded on to it and he took the gold out of the brief-case and hid it in the van. There was a special hiding-place somewhere in the cab so that even though the vehicle was searched when it went out of the docks, the gold wasn’t ever found — too many cars and lorries went through for the police to give enough time to each one, especially when everyone was convinced it was all over.’

  ‘Did you ever have direct contact with Heywood-Smith whilst this was actually going on?’

  ‘No:

  ‘Can you prove that he organised everything? Can you even prove he had anything at all to do with the gold thefts?’

  Leery stared at Fusil. Slowly, a look of baffled incredulity crossed his face.

  Fusil cursed violently. Even when they’d broken Leery, they still hadn’t got near to landing Heywood-Smith. If there was not the proof — and what legal proof could there be? — then Leery could testify all he wanted and yet not be able legally to inculpate Heywood-Smith. ‘Where were you going tonight?’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. He telephoned and said I’d got to sail his boat out into the Channel. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Did he have the gold aboard?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must know.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You never contacted another boat?’

  ‘There wasn’t time. I told him you were following us before he’d said anything about where we were heading for or what we were going to do.’

  ‘Could he have thrown the gold over the side when he knew we were closing up on you?’

  ‘I…I suppose he could. He was so sick and scared he hardly knew what he was doing, yet he went outside on deck.’

  ‘He threw the gold over the side,’ said Fusil, with savage certainty.

  Leery’s expression became one of hate. ‘Can you get him without the gold?’

  ‘No,’ said Fusil, with unusual honesty.

  ‘But you could get him if you found the gold?’

  ‘Yes. But what’s the use of that? The stuff’s at the bottom of the bloody sea.’

  ‘It’s lying off the Verton wreck buoy. We were on a course of one nine two degrees, true, and the buoy was exactly half a mile distant by radar when he was outside. The water there isn’t very deep as it’s still the Fortrow Shelf. You could send divers down. They might find it. The bottom’s rocky.’

  Fusil spoke slowly. ‘Of course. You were the amateur until you were at sea, then you became very much the professional.’

  *

  Heywood-Smith’s lawyer was fat, greasy, and very self-assured. His voice was deep and resonant. ‘You have acted, Inspector, in a manner I can only call totally unwarranted and quite unjustifiable. You had no right whatsoever to drag my client to this police station following the iniquitous manner in which you stopped him at sea, and he will very naturally set the due processes of law in operation in order fully to compensate himself for these indignities.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Fusil.

  The solicitor was by no means the fool his manner tended to suggest. The tone of the detective inspector’s voice worried him. ‘Have you anything more to say before we both leave? Any excuse to offer in some slight exoneration of your conduct?’

  ‘No excuses. But there’s just one point that’s worth making.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Fusil addressed Heywood-Smith. ‘Ashore, you were the professional and Captain Leery was the amateur. But you overlooked one vital fact. The moment you set foot aboard your boat, you and he swapped characters.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Heywood-Smith.

  ‘When, just before we caught up with your boat, you went outside the wheelhouse to throw the gold over the side, Captain Leery knew exactly where he was.’

  Heywood-Smith laughed. ‘What utter nonsense! My dear Inspector, surely you might give me credit for more intelligence than that. Had I had any gold which I wished to throw over the side — a proposition I reject in its totality — this would have been done in the middle of the Channel. It’s ridiculous, patently ridiculous, to say that Captain Leery could pin-point his position.’

  ‘Even when he knew the true course of the boat and radar gave him the bearing and distance of the Verton wreck buoy? But perhaps you never noticed the wreck buoy?’

  Heywood-Smith suddenly remembered with a frightening shock those green flashes out on the port beam.

  ‘We’re going to send divers down,’ continued Fusil. ‘They’ll find the gold.’ He gained a deep and obvious enjoyment from Heywood-Smith’s angry apprehension.

  *

  The telephone in Fusil’s office rang on Monday morning at 11.14. He lifted the receiver, listened, said very little, finally thanked the caller and replaced the receiver. He stared at the far wall. It was odd, he thought, that he could accept the news so very calmly. Had he so resigned himself to failure that success came as an unrecognisable stranger? He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly.

  When he’d stubbed the cigarette out, he went through to the general room. Kerr was sitting at the table that was his desk. ‘They’ve found the gold,’ said Fusil abruptly. ‘It was within forty yards of where Leery said it would be.’

  ‘Does that mean…’

  ‘It means Heywood-Smith was either too clever or just not quite clever enough. It means I’ve cracked the gold case and you’re in the clear over blacking Choppy Walker.’

  ‘That’s good news, sir.’ As had Fusil, so Kerr was unable immediately to appreciate the full meaning of what he’d just been told. But he was able to wonder what would have happened to him over Fusil’s gamble if that gold had not been found.

  *

  It was a Thursday. As Leery entered the house, Gladys hobbled into the hall. Her eyes were red from weeping, as they had been for so many days.

  ‘They’ve given me bail,’ he said.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. She gripped his right hand. ‘George, George, George,’ she murmured, as if praying.

  He tried to free himself, but she would not let him go. She limped into the sitting-room with him.

  Once inside, she sat down on the settee and he went over to the cocktail cabinet where he poured himself out a drink. He was haunted by the look in her soft, brown eyes. He’d once shot a hare in the back legs and it had screamed as it dragged itself across the stubble field, its back legs stretched out behind it. When he’d picked that hare up to kill it, the look in its eyes had been like the look now in her eyes.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she whispered.

  He drank the whisky.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she repeated.

  He thought of Prudence. She’d left the flat and he’d no idea where she’d gone. With her had disappeared the car, the pearls, the diamond ring, the platinum wristwatch, the mink stole…

  He answered Gladys’ question. ‘I wanted enough money for you to be all right if anything happened to me.’ He went over to one of the arm-chairs and sat down.

  ‘Will… What will happen, George?’

  ‘My lawyer says I may get as much as five years,’ he answered brutally.

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  He finished his drink.

  ‘Mightn’t they just put you on probation?’

  ‘For something as serious as this?’


  Her voice rose. ‘I still can’t believe it. You couldn’t do such a thing.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘George… George, you do know I’ll always stand by you, don’t you? I’ll never desert you, never. Never. Even if…if it’s longer than you said. I’ll keep this house just as it is so that when you come back nothing will have changed.’

  Where was Prudence now? Couldn’t she have at least said good-bye?

  ‘Nothing will change, George. I swear I won’t let it.’

  ‘Everything has changed,’ he answered harshly. He stood up and returned to the cocktail cabinet.

  ‘Can’t you understand, George, that nothing will change if we don’t let it?’

  ‘I’ve been sacked from my job.’ He poured himself out a second whisky.

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter? I’ve no salary, I’ve lost my pension, and we’ve precious few savings. We’ll have to sell this house and hope there’s enough money for you to live on.’

  ‘But there’s my accident money that I’ve been keeping for an emergency. Can’t you see, that’ll help us keep everything as it is?’

  He drank the whisky. Now she had the emergency for which she’d been waiting: now she could make use of the money which was hers because her body had been wrecked: now she was strong and he was weak. Oh, God! he thought, he should be weeping, not she.

  *

  The C.I.D. Hillman was parked in one of the natural lay-bys up in the Crossford Hills. Kerr put his arm round Helen’s shoulders and she snuggled up against him. ‘D’you know something?’ he said softly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I might be in jail now.’

  ‘I didn’t really do anything, John, though I tried.’

  ‘You had faith in me, faith enough to go and face the D.I. and show him just how much you had got. That got him thinking a lot more.’ He kissed her. ‘It was very wonderful of you,’ he said softly.

  ‘He seemed rather nice under that harsh exterior.’

  ‘Nice has a lot of different meanings.’ Strangely, although his dislike for the man was no less, he had come to admire him. How many would have dared so much? How many would have had the guts to risk the freedom of another? How many… He was a bastard, but a successful bastard. ‘He’s all right. When I’m here and he’s there.’ He kissed her again.