Farewell Gesture

by Roger Ormerod

  “Why do you ask? Have you been mounting up a collection? All I know about is Philomena, and Douglas French.” Her voice changed gear and became a crawl up a slippery slope. “Are there any more?”

  I opened my door an inch to put on the interior light. Now I could see her more plainly. She’d thrown back the hood and shaken out her hair, as much as it would shake. Her expression was her usual one of solemnity, but I thought I could detect the control this involved. Her eyes danced, with the devil behind them.

  “I’ve lost count,” I said, shaking my head at this weakness.

  She looked down at her hands, counting her fingers, then her eyes darted back at me. “There’s nothing to be flippant about,” she told me severely, though the devil was still there.

  “Of course not. I sit corrected. And what makes Greaves think he’s got enough on me?”

  “Two things.” She patted my knee. Twice. “One: Filey’s been back to Killingham and he’s phoned in.” She waited for my nod, which I did. I waited for her to mention the Wisemann Agency. Which she didn’t. “He’s been making enquiries about your so-called alibi. He’d managed to trace the flat you stayed at, apparently. You were not seen by anybody during the whole of last week.”

  “That’s exactly as I said it would be. Anything else?”

  “Inspector Greaves, who’s brighter than he likes people to think he is, had to guess where you would want to go yesterday that was so urgent. He worked out that you would probably go to Gartree to report to Carl Packer—assuming, of course, that you’d strangled Philomena as Packer’s agent. So he phoned there. And you did visit Packer.”

  I could appreciate that she would be a good police officer. Her reports would be succinct and precise. She had left me in no doubt that I was in difficulties. Yet in the back of my mind was the fact that I’d already been mistaken in my assessment of one woman. I was not yet certain whether Lucy Rice was a police officer or a friend, and which one I was listening to. When in doubt, ask. So I did.

  “Why’ve you told me this, Officer?” Making it formal.

  “I didn’t want you dashing in unprepared.” She was challenging me to assume what I liked from that.

  “That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it. This…waiting here and warning me…surely it could get you into difficulties. You’ve got no reason to trust me. I could now turn around and drive away, and nobody would ever know I’ve been here.”

  “Except me.”

  “If I drove away and left you to explain to Greaves—”

  “But you’re not going to do that,” she said with confidence. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be concerned about me. And you’ve come back, anyway. No, you’re not going running now, Paul.”

  “But how can you be so sure of that?”

  “Something you said.” Then, as I didn’t ask, she told me. “About your father. If you’d had time to think, you said.”

  “So?”

  “You’ve had time, and you’re still here.”

  “Ah…yes.”

  “You’re impulsive, Paul Manson. Act first, think later.”

  “Too true.”

  “I’m impulsive myself.”

  I allowed that to mature for a few seconds. “Trapped me, haven’t you!”

  “Only if my reckoning is correct.”

  The thrum of the rain on the roof, the interior light, the surrounding darkness, all these conspired to give an impression that we were the only two persons still existing.

  I took a deep breath. “If you know I’ve seen Packer—”

  “More important, I’ve seen your file. I know what you did. You wouldn’t do it again, certainly not for money.”

  I stifled a laugh of delight; it would’ve come out shaky. “What a pity you’re not in charge of this case, Lucy. You’ll never make inspector, you know, if you let your personal feelings control your judgement.”

  “They’re not my personal feelings,” she told me severely. “They’re the result of cold reason.”

  “Then I thank you for your crystal-clear mind, Lucy, and your lack of warmth. Now—forewarned and forearmed—I’ll get along to The George.”

  I reached over and kissed her on the cheek. For a second she glanced at me with mischief in her eyes, then she was remote again. “Never kiss a police officer,” she advised, nodding severely.

  “Somehow I got the impression I wasn’t talking to one. Lucy Rice, not Detective Sergeant Rice.”

  “Even off-duty, I’m still a policewoman.”

  “Then, ma’am, I apologise for the kiss. It wasn’t one of my better efforts, anyway.”

  “Which are you apologising for, the fact or its performance?”

  I reached back and shut the door again. It went dark inside the car, but I had no difficulty in locating her face, which was still wet and caught reflections on her cheeks wickedly. It still wasn’t one of my better ones—you can’t do much in a Fiesta. She drew away. My shirt was soaked from her slicker.

  “I’ll repeat,” she whispered, “never kiss a police officer. It could get you into all sorts of trouble.”

  “I’m in that now.”

  “It could get worse,” she warned. She opened her door. The light went on again. “Never kiss any other police officer. With either sex there’d be a ready charge.”

  “I’ll remember that. Greaves wouldn’t like it—you think?”

  She slid out of the car and slammed the door. It cut off what she said, so that I only got, “Idi…”

  I allowed her to get well clear, not wishing the headlights to slide over her. Then I drove to The George.

  There was no alternative. My only chance of remaining free was to face Greaves and hope I could argue him into a certain amount of freedom. Besides, I could never face Lucy again if I turned and ran. If I did that, I might not even see her again. I had no choice.

  I drove into the tiny cobbled yard beside the pub, allowing the lights to sweep across the windows, and even gave a short peep of the horn to indicate I was back. I tried the front door, and it was unlocked. I went in and slammed it behind me.

  “We’re in here.” George shouted from the snug.

  I went on through.

  George, I could see, was keeping to traditional standards. He was feeding free beer to the police after hours, on the principle that it was illegal to sell it. The table bore empty and full tankards. Greaves looked pink and warm, but George knew how far he himself could go with his own beer, and was well in control.

  “Had a good trip?” he asked.

  “Profitable.”

  Greaves thrust back his chair and got to his feet. His features chased around until he found the face for officialdom. “Paul Manson,” he said, “I am charging—”

  “Heh, heh!” I interrupted. “Don’t you take that as far as a warning. How does it go? Anything I say may be taken down, et cetera. Because then I wouldn’t be able to say one word, which would include what I’ve found out.”

  “Found out?” said Greaves, slowly lowering himself into his seat.

  I pulled over a chair and sat facing him. “You’ll never guess where I’ve been,” I said confidently. “George, is one of these for me?”

  “No. But I could find you a pint. Bitter is it?”

  “Please.”

  “Ada’s gone to bed, but I could get you a sandwich.”

  “No, it’s all right. Just the beer. And make it a half.”

  George had been very quick to pick up my lead. Bland confidence, that was what I had to feed Greaves, because one glance had told me that he was suffering from a struggle against outside influences. Not only had he to deal with a couple of murders, when his worst crimes had been no more than indecent exposure, but he had also become involved in a partnership with a much more forceful character than himself. Filey. He was being hustled and outmanoeuvred. On top of that there would be the thought that if he didn’t clear it all up quickly his chief constable would ask the top county brass to take over.

  Greaves, therefor
e, was in urgent need of an arrest, and at the moment I was this week’s bargain offer. He clung desperately to my last interesting remark.

  “And where have you been?” he asked grumpily, because he’d wanted to throw it at me.

  “Go on. Guess.”

  His tankard banged on the table surface. “Where?”

  “Gartree prison, to look up my old mates.”

  He stared at me above the rim of his tankard. His jowls wobbled, his nose twitched. “Such as who?” Then he plunged his lips for the rim, his mouth forming the correctly shaped spout before it reached it.

  “Carl Packer.”

  “Well, now,” said George at my shoulder, putting a brimming glass in front of me. “Fancy that. Who’d have thought it!”

  “What did he have to say?” asked Greaves, his voice now far from slurring. There was a moustache of froth on his upper lip.

  “You’ll never guess—”

  “A straight answer, Manson,” he snapped, “or I take you in.”

  I caught George’s eye. He shook his head gently, and his expression told me I’d already gone far enough.

  “Carl Packer told me he had sent somebody to Philomena Wise,” I said seriously. “Not me—he’d approached me before, but I’d backed off. No, it was Douglas French he hired. Frenchie. But the contract wasn’t to kill her. Packer told me he didn’t shoot that policeman. His name’s Ted Adamson, by the way. He said that Miss Wise had lied at his trial.”

  “This is nonsense.” Greaves spoke with complete conviction.

  “Then why was he shocked when I told him she’s dead? He was relying on her to get him his freedom. And he was shocked. The chief warder was there, and he can tell you. Phone the prison. His name’s Pierce. He’ll confirm that Packer was shocked.”

  George nodded solemnly and spoke to his beer. “It’s a point.”

  “Never mind the points,” Greaves grumbled. “What if he was shocked? Tell me that.”

  I knew then that I’d made a breakthrough. “It was Frenchie he sent, but it was only to offer her money for her to change her story and tell the truth. So why should he also send me along to kill her? It’s contradictory. And it’s no good falling back on Frenchie as a suspect because he couldn’t have done it. Not like that. Not Frenchie.”

  “Another point,” said George lugubriously, not looking at Greaves.

  “So,” I went on with growing confidence, “what we need to know is whether—”

  “We?” barked Greaves. “We! When were you taken into the force, Manson?”

  “I, then.”

  “Who cares what you need to know! It’s what I need to know that matters.” And his face set into an aggrieved expression of stern and craggy resolution.

  “What you need to know,” I went on, picking my way tenderly through the undergrowth so as not to trip over daisies, “is whether Frenchie did or did not make the offer to Philomena, and if she’d decided to accept it if he did do so.”

  Greaves waved his mug and spoke grandly, trying another tack in order to control the situation. “I feel no compunction to discover that.”

  “No,” I agreed. Then I held my silence.

  George stirred in his seat. He was embarrassed for Greaves, who had apparently drunk enough to muddle his thinking. Perhaps George blamed himself for that, though it would’ve been difficult to refuse a pint to somebody who wasn’t paying. Cautiously, he assisted him.

  “Manson is playing it cute, Inspector. He’s got sources of information you can’t reach. That’s obvious.” He looked at me from beneath lowered eyebrows. Suddenly his grey eyes were as expressive as Lucy’s. “Isn’t that so, Manson?”

  “I find I’ve picked up quite a number of weird acquaintances,” I admitted, thinking of Art. “And it does mean—subject to contradiction from you, Mr. Greaves—that the whole thing has come from that earlier case, when Packer was tried and convicted for a murder he says he didn’t do.”

  “Tcha!” snapped Greaves. I was on his wavelength again. “They all say that.”

  “But if, in Packer’s case, it was a true verdict, and he really did do it, why should he be upset when he heard of the death of the one person who knew the truth?”

  Several pints separated the clarity of our respective thinking. But mine was blurred by the throb in my head from Felton’s blow, and though Greaves was having to struggle with it we were on about level terms.

  Abruptly placid, he thought about it, assisting the process by producing a scarred black pipe, which might have been a light cream colour before he introduced it to the black plug he now rubbed between his beefy palms. When he lit it I realised it was probably his principal interrogation weapon. One blast of that smoke in your face and you’d confess to anything. Even to smoking cigarettes.

  “Interesting,” he observed, sucking in six inches of flame from his lighter. “Interesting but iffy. If Packer didn’t shoot the policeman. If Douglas French came here to make an offer to Miss Wise. If he made it. If she’d made a decision on it. Isn’t it interesting that all these ifs disguise the fact that you’re my prime suspect!”

  He stabbed the pipe stem in my direction. “But you don’t convince me, Manson. Oh no. Why the hell’ve you introduced this diversion? What the devil has the murder of a policeman in Killingham, two years ago, got to do with the strangling with a scarf of a young woman in Sumbury?”

  Once again his ogre had raised its head. It was Filey who’d introduced the warehouse murder into the local investigation. Greaves resented that, but wherever he looked it leered at him.

  I shrugged.

  “Nothing!” he cried. “Strangling is a domestic crime. Who better to know that than you, Manson?”

  It was a low blow. Greaves could inflict more discomfort with his voice than most coppers with a truncheon. Deliberately and carefully I answered him.

  “But your case against me, Mr. Greaves, exists only on the assumption that I came here as a professional to commit a professional killing. In no way can you fit me in with a domestic killing involving Miss Wise.”

  George buried his mouth in his beer. I’d caught Greaves in mid-suck, and he coughed hackingly.

  “Isn’t that so?” I asked.

  He rallied. “But you have a personal and perhaps emotional contact with Miss Philomena Wise.” He managed that much before the cough got him again.

  “Not the same one.”

  “They were both at Aubrey Wise’s house that night,” he said briskly.

  “So you’re arguing that I might have made a mistake in identity?”

  “That’s my argument.”

  “I made this mistake face to face?”

  “It need not have been.” There was no force to it. He was merely leading me on.

  “The scarf was double-knotted,” I said, displaying a knowledge I should not have possessed. “It would have been possible to have approached from behind, thrown the scarf over her head, and pulled it tight. And then held on until she was silent.” I had to gulp there. It was not a pleasant thought. “But this was done from the front, and we know that because it would’ve been almost impossible to tie a double knot under her chin from behind. Agreed? Go on, agree to something.”

  He nodded, his eyes bright. “From the front.”

  “Then I could not have failed to recognise who I was killing. Oh, come on, Inspector, it would’ve been impossible. And double-knotted, as though there was a panic to get it done and be away from there.”

  He lifted his head. “I don’t get that.”

  “Double-knotted to make sure it wouldn’t work loose. Why? So that I’d be free to turn and run and leave her? Why would I need to run? I’d have had all the time in the world.”

  He cleared his throat, stared with disgust at his pipe, and looked back at me. “You make a point. I wonder, though, where you get all your information, if you weren’t there, on the spot.”

  This was soggy ground. I didn’t want to tell him too much about Art, and I wondered how much he knew abo
ut Lucy’s activities. I trod carefully round the issue. “So if you’ve made up your mind…”

  “Mind? What about?”

  “I’d like to know where I’m going to sleep, because I need it, believe me. Here or at the station? If you could make up your mind…”

  I heard the front door slam, then a voice. “Where are you? Ah, there you are, all matey and sloshed.”

  Filey strode into the snug. There was a briskness about him, preceding him like wind ahead of a thunderstorm. Not one of us uttered a word of welcome, but Filey was quite capable of ignoring such things. He wouldn’t have acknowledged a direct snub if he’d tripped over it.

  He walked over to the table, missing nothing. A finger jerked out, nearly prodding my forehead.

  “He’s been fighting again. Left any more bodies hanging around, Manson?”

  I stared at him, not amiably. He grinned lopsidedly, the corner of his mouth twitching. Then he forgot me and turned to Greaves.

  “You charged him yet?”

  Greaves took his pipe out of his mouth to say, “No.”

  “Just as well. He’s rubbish. It’s no good wasting words on him.”

  He was on an emotional high. This was not the attacking, sneering approach he’d previously used on me, but a jaunty confidence designed to carry everything before him. Only the dark patches beneath his eyes betrayed his intense weariness. He was pushing himself to the limit.

  Greaves lifted his eyebrows. He had no words to waste on Filey, either.

  Filey allowed his hand to float above the empties on the table. “Any going spare?”

  “Afraid not, Inspector,” George said, also expressionless. “It’s way after closing time.”

  “By heaven, so it is. Will you look at the time! We’d better get moving, Greaves.”

  But Greaves looked as immovable as he could, like a plaster cast of himself. He allowed himself a few dry words. “Where do you suggest?”

  “I know who killed your Miss Wise. Let’s go and pick him up. It’s time to put an end to it.”

  “Pick who up?” Greaves poked at the dottle in his pipe with the sharp end of his reamer.

  “Arthur Torrance.”

  “There’s a difficulty in that. The scarf…” He blew through the stem.