Now I knew how things were.
All this useful information I had gathered from cocking an interested ear, and subsequently borrowing a book from the prison library. I slid the magazine back. Had Phil meant this for me? Surely not. But did the hint mean that I might well, in the future, be needing such a thing for self-protection? Was that what she was telling me? Or simply that I was into something that was beyond my ability—as would be using the blasted thing.
Yet all these hints could most easily have been committed to paper, to the other half of the sheet she’d so carefully left me.
I was so lost in these thoughts that it was Art’s hiss that brought me back to reality. I looked up.
Standing in the doorway with his hands thrust in the pockets of a short topcoat, flaring it like wings, his feet apart and a sour expression on his thin face, was Detective Inspector Filey, whom I’d last seen in the Sumbury office of Inspector Greaves.
“Well, well,” he said, teetering a fraction on his heels. “What’ve we got here, then!” His tone was of acid sarcasm, and there was a marked confidence in his casual control of the situation, remarkable in that the pistol in my hand happened to be pointing in his direction.
He glanced sideways at Art. “You!” he said. “Scat!”
And Art, after one quick and apologetic look at me, scatted. Filey was so complacent that he gave him not one more thought, though Art had slipped behind him with the crowbar still in his hand.
Filey was shaking his head in mock sorrow, the smile on his lips unpleasant. “Breaking and entering,” he commented. “Technically, burglary. And in unlawful possession of a firearm! Oh, dear me, what troubles we do get into, don’t we!”
I stared at him. He was holding out his hand. I placed in it the handgun, which hadn’t done me any good at all.
Eight
It was a little mortifying to realise, too late to take avoiding action, that I’d advertised my intended trip to Killingham and then ventured into Filey’s territory. He had been waiting for me, and it’d been unnecessary to have me watched from Sumbury. With reluctance I handed over the pistol. Filey checked it quickly, slid out the magazine, and distributed it into two different pockets. I remained seated. I felt this gave me an edge; I was interviewing him, not the other way round. This impression he soon dispelled.
“Explain your presence here,” he demanded, moving around the room and prodding his long nose into shady corners.
I dangled the keys from my fingers. “I have the keys.”
He shook his head, not impressed. “But all the same you had to break in at the rear. Not good, Manson. Not good. Try again.”
He walked past me and fingered aside the edge of the blind, as though there might be a stunning vista out there. There was something contemptuous in his attitude, implying he had no need to keep an eye on me in order to detect when I was lying. I felt that his general demeanour held a touch of theatricality.
“I’d got all the keys but one.” I tried, stalling for time.
“Still not good enough. It’s not your office, is it? Don’t trouble to answer, I know it’s not. So…why are you here?”
He went over to the filing cabinet and tried the drawers, which wouldn’t open.
“There’s nothing in there,” I told him.
He turned, shaking his head. “Naughty. You peeked.”
“Yes.”
“And in the desk drawers? What were you looking for?”
I tried to stare him out, but it didn’t work. His eyes seemed dead, with no expression. Is there expression in eyes? I’ve always felt not. It’s the surrounding landscape that reveals the character of the lake. His surrounds were smooth and placid.
“Whatever there was.” I shrugged. It was the best I could do, and I was still shaken by his sudden appearance.
“Well now. Let’s examine this a bit more deeply. You broke into an office in a building like this, scruffy and down-at-heel, hoping—just hoping—to find something? Is that correct?”
I didn’t want to bring Phil—Dorothy June Mann—into it, but I couldn’t think how to go on avoiding it. I was too long considering my options, though.
“Or I’ll have to assume,” he said evenly, “that you knew this was here”—he whisked out the pistol and showed it to me—”and came to get it.”
I shook my head.
“Then you brought it with you. It’s yours. This becomes very interesting. Don’t you think it’s interesting, Mr. Manson? Say something, so that I’ll know you’re still alive.”
“It was a question of identity.”
He cocked his head at me. “Which you have now solved, this question of yours, or you wouldn’t be so cagey. And as there’s nothing, you say, in the cabinet, it must be…”
He was very quick, brain and body. In a second he was round at my side of the desk, and was whipping open drawers. He did it like a burglar, for economy of movement, the bottom one first and moving upwards. It saves having to shut them, but the middle one was half open before his reactions took over. He slammed it shut and plunged down to the bottom one for the passport. I turned back to face the top of the desk. It was either that or his eyes, not pleasant to stare into. Closer to, I could see they were inflamed with strain.
He was making a mournful whistling sound through his teeth, sad but complacent.
“Dorothy June Mann,” he read out, strolling round to where he could face me again. He seemed to be spending a ridiculously long time staring at the photograph. Then, as though talking to himself, he said, “So this is where she got to. Ex-Detective Sergeant Mann. Dismissed from the force a couple of years ago.” He tossed it on to the desk. “So now you know.”
I knew, and it meant nothing. I didn’t comment.
“Dishonourable discharge,” he amplified, smacking his lips on it. “Now you’re happy. Go on, say you’re happy.”
I cleared my throat. “Dishonourable? It’s news to me.”
“You’re not happy? Oh, dear! Ask me why.”
“Why was she discharged?” I stared at my clenched fist on the desk surface, and deliberately, with force, unclenched it. No anger, I told myself. It blunts the mind.
“For striking a senior officer.”
“Any chance that was you?” I asked hopefully.
“I was deaf for three days, and she dislodged a tooth.”
“Then it should’ve been an honourable discharge. Perhaps a medal or something.”
“A comedian!” he cried. “We have a comedian in our midst.” But the line of his mouth was hard, and his tone implemented it. “Any more of that, my friend, and you’ll lose more than a tooth.”
I sighed, sensing that most of his attitude was forced. I probed, risking it. “You should’ve brought a back-up.” I was wondering why he hadn’t. Did he want this interview to be unofficial? His ready release of Art indicated something like that.
He seemed to realise what I was thinking, and put both hands on the desk in order to lean forward, his face much too close for my liking. He smelt of a rather piercing aftershave. “I want you alone, Manson. Anybody with me and I’d have to take you in. Now…wouldn’t that be a treat for all of us! Wasting time on a paltry break-in and a possession of firearms! That’s not for me. Not for you, either. No. I’ve got better things lined up for you. Much more tasty. Have a guess. Drugs? No. Pimping? No. I’ll be taking you in for murder, Paul Manson. Back to Gartree for you. Ain’t it a pity we haven’t got the death sentence any more? It’d save all this trouble, in prison, out of prison, back in. But this time. Mr. Manson sir, it’ll be for good and you won’t see daylight again.”
At the end of this, he was spitting the words in my face. He was making it personal. He was enjoying the stalking, the hunt, the eventual kill, and he was playing with me, I felt. His contempt riled me, which was probably what he intended. But he was pushing too hard, overacting like a rotten juvenile lead.
Gartree training came to my rescue. You traded in your anger for a measure of composur
e, thus giving yourself a minimal advantage. I managed to answer him calmly. “I’d have to commit a murder before you could achieve your ambition, Mr. Filey. You’d need a case to throw at me.” And too late I realised that by now he must have heard about Frenchie’s death.
He thrust himself back from the desk, plunged his hands again into the pockets of his coat, and grinned at me. This uncovered one unpleasant canine, the left one, the other presumably being the one that’d been dislodged. Taking his attitude as a clue, I sat back in the chair, almost resigned to his attack.
“Does it disturb you,” he asked, “if we discuss Philomena Wise?” It didn’t disturb me, but it certainly surprised me. I couldn’t help smiling; it was the relief. “There’s nothing for you there.”
“She was strangled. You’re a strangler. It’s on record.”
“She was strangled with a silk scarf. I’m a bare-hands man, myself. Fingers Manson, they called me in Gartree.”
He cocked his head sideways. “So you think it’s funny!”
I sometimes found that by treating it flippantly I could possibly live with it. But that wasn’t what he’d meant. “I’m tired of having it thrown at me, that’s all. What else have you got?”
“No alibi for the Friday she died. Talk your way out of that.”
“I was here in Killingham all the week.”
“Witnesses? Go on, tell me you’ve got no witnesses. I can’t wait.”
“I was staying in a flat, and hardly went out all the week.”
“What a pity. Would you like to whisper its location.”
“I don’t see why.”
“But you must’ve gone out some time, and these things can be checked. If you could persuade me the effort’s worth it,” he suggested invitingly, dragging a lure. “One sighting, and you’re in the clear.”
“I’m in the clear now. Convince me I’m guilty. Go on. Give it a try.” I was feeling more buoyant, relieved that he didn’t seem to want to talk about Frenchie. I was trying him at his own game. His eyes sparked and his lips drew back.
“Motive,” he snapped, trying to regain the initiative.
“That’s just what I haven’t got.”
“Oh, you’re a corker,” he said with acid admiration. “Staring you in the face, it is, and you can’t see it. Go on, be a devil, risk it. What motive do you see?”
And there he had me. Everybody seemed to assume that Frenchie’s motive had to apply to myself. It must have shown in my face. He removed his hands from his pockets, flapped them in the air as though calling on somebody to be his witness, then came and perched himself on the edge of the desk and leaned towards me. This was all confidential now, though there was nobody within a quarter of a mile.
“You were in Gartree. You came out about two months ago. While inside you had the chance to speak to Carl Packer. Deny it? You can’t. What he asked you to do for him, for cash, was kill Philomena Wise. Miss Wise is now dead. Right. I’ve finished. You have permission to speak.”
I seized the chance. I’d been almost choking to interrupt him. But all the same, I managed to keep my voice level. “One thing. One small thing. Tell me…why did Carl Packer want Philomena dead?”
“You know that. You must. You’d have asked him that.”
“Assume I didn’t.”
He shrugged. “You wouldn’t need to know, I suppose. All right. It was because she shopped him. It was her evidence that put him inside.”
That fitted neatly with what Art had told me. She’d been on the periphery of a crime. She had been arrested, and released the next morning. She had been in an ideal position to see what had happened. So they’d needed her as a witness.
“And whose case was it?” I asked. “Can I have three guesses?”
One corner of his lip lifted. “It was mine.” There was no pretence in this; his pride was genuine.
“Good for you.”
“But bad for you, Manson. It all begins to fit together.”
“Conjecture,” I said. Then I recalled what Lucy had told me. “You’ve got nothing that’d stand a chance in court.”
“I’m willing to give it a fling.”
“It’s got one basic snag, though. It wasn’t me who got the contract with Carl Packer, it was Frenchie. Dougie French. D’you know him?”
“I know him.”
“All right. Pick him up, he’s probably in the Stormy Petrel every evening. That’s at Port Sumbury.” No harm in a bit of background bluff, I thought.
“I know that.”
“Take a squad of men and winkle him out. Stick one of his knives up his nose, and he’ll tell you he got the contract.”
“I might’ve done that,” he mused, “but there’s a bit of a snag. Unfortunately, he’s dead. What a pity, Mr. Manson. That’s life for you, always kicking you in the face.”
I felt it had done just that. He’d known all along, and had been leading me around with a ring through my nose.
“When?” I asked, still desperately trying. “Where? How?”
“You’re throwing around a lot of questions. More than your quota.” He lifted his sharp chin in challenge. “And you know all the answers before I say a word.”
“When did he get himself killed?”
“I notice you’re assuming it wasn’t natural.”
“People like Frenchie don’t live long enough to die a natural death. Are you going to tell me? Why else did you follow me here?”
“Well now…” He went behind me to the window again, and once more peered past the edge of the blind. “Your mate’s down there, thinking he’s invisible. We don’t want him bored…” He turned abruptly. “Frenchie died last night. In the car-park at Port Sumbury.” I felt his hand on my shoulder and glanced sideways at it. His fingers were slim, his nails carefully manicured. On his little finger there was a signet ring, with a garnet. A snappy dresser was Inspector Filey. He bent his head close so that he could speak quietly, for greater emphasis. “The car-park, Manson, where you disappeared when he and his two heavies chased you there. They say they drove off in the car, looking for you, and Frenchie was left in the car-park. I suppose he reckoned you were hiding there. And of course you were. I wonder who spotted who first. Give me only one guess.”
This didn’t make any sense to me. Another of his traps? I was now looking directly forward, and when I spoke it was into the air. “I didn’t hang around.” My voice sounded empty to me. Whatever I said wasn’t going to make an impression.
The pressure went from my shoulder. He moved sideways, and stood where he could intercept my words and consider my face when I said them.
“Remember the car-park?” he asked in a coldly reminiscent voice. “It’s got a storm wall along the seaward side. Made of rocks from the shore. A lot of ’em loose. Lying there, just waiting to cause trouble. Can you see it?”
“I see it.” And something else, lying beneath the wall.
“I’m sure you can. One of those rocks, heavy enough to need two hands to lift it, was used to bash in the top of Frenchie’s head. It made quite a mess. Crushed a couple of vertebrae in the neck. Nasty.”
I couldn’t say anything. My mind was racing to accept the proposition, and elation was surging through me. “Certainly sounds it,” I managed to whisper.
“You wouldn’t have liked to see it. Oh—silly me—you did see it. You did it, Manson, with that chunk of rock. And where d’you think we found his body this morning?”
He stopped abruptly. The draught from the open door gently moved the single light bulb, and his shadow moved backwards and forwards across the wall. It was difficult to tell whether he was standing still, and the effort to do so was hypnotic. He shook his head, his long face gloomy. I said nothing, waiting, though I thought I knew the answer.
“You disappoint me, Manson,” he went on after a few moments. “Anybody else would say they didn’t know. Where we found the body, seeing you’re so interested, was lying behind the car-park attendant’s shed. It was on top of an old bic
ycle.”
I breathed in deeply, ashamed that it made a shuddering sound.
“This bike belongs to George Rice,” he said, his voice almost a purr, as though I might be tickling him behind the ear. “A good man. Knows where his duty lies. He says he lent it to you, so that you could get to Port Sumbury.”
I hastened to confirm this. “I put it behind the shed for safety.”
“And who,” he asked, “returned late to The George, saying he’d lost the bike? Why…you did. Surprise, surprise. But of course, you hadn’t lost it. You dumped the body, and then you couldn’t get the bike out. Tricky. And who walked in, looking exhausted and without a mark on him, carrying Frenchie’s knife in his hand?”
He waited. Damn him, I wasn’t going to feed him, like a comedian’s mate. I stared at him silently, until he shrugged and went on.
“It was you, my friend. His throwing knife, this was, and you’d managed to take it earlier from a man like Frenchie, and without suffering a scratch. So you’d be aware he was without his full armoury, and you could risk tackling him. In the dark. And you’ve got the utter gall to sit there and tell me you didn’t kill him.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Then say it, damn you.”
“I didn’t kill him.” The impulse was to shout it out in glorious relief, but I managed to hold it to a flat statement.
“There we are then.”
Farewell Gesture Page 10
