A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7)

by Ormerod, Roger

  “You’re thinking of charging me with something?”

  “Oh, get moving,” she said angrily. “You make me tired.”

  She watched as I got to my feet and reached for my stick.

  “What’s the matter with your leg?”

  “They tell me it’ll finish up half an inch shorter.”

  “You’ll still be bigger than most,” she said without sympathy. “Did they beat you about the head, too?”

  “It’s still on.”

  “But you don’t seem to have been too bright, George.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said with dignity, and I went out to find Peters.

  I slid in beside him, and he looked startled.

  “Madam says you’re to drive me to the station,” I told him. “And stay with me in case I make a break for it. You’re not to mark me in case I complain to the judge.”

  I put my hand inside my jacket. “Heh!” he said.

  “Relax.” I drew out the envelope that my fifty quid client had given me. It was postmarked London, two weeks previously, empty, and addressed to Henry Saturn Esq., 27 Lea Court.

  “We’ll call in at Lea Court on the way,” I said.

  He started the engine. “I don’t know so much about that.”

  “I need some information, and your DI will love to hear it,” I said. “Be a good lad, and make it Lea Court. Eh?”

  He shook his head worriedly, but didn’t argue. I was most anxious to meet Henry Saturn Esq. I’d have been willing to bet that he wasn’t even the same man that I’d met. Or if he was, that he was in no way connected to a young woman who was having it off with a chap called Larry right opposite to gate No. 3. Grace had been correct about the fact that I hadn’t been too bright, but I wasn’t completely addled. If my client had known his wife was meeting somebody called Larry, and where, then he’d already got it all. So — why me? Lord, I’d been stupid.

  “That’s Lea Court,” he said, and even before we noticed the activity, the blue winking light clued us in. “What the hell!”

  We drew up beside the patrol car, as a capped driver came down to speak to his mate. They turned to us.

  “You on this too?” one of them asked.

  “What is it?” I said, looking up towards the lighted flat.

  They glanced at Peters, who nodded. “Twenty-seven?” I asked, just to gain their confidence.

  “There’s been a shooting. The wife phoned in. It’s a chap called Henry Saturn. He’s dead.”

  I turned to Peters. “Better radio Inspector Sanders, son.”

  “She’s on the robbery…”

  “She’ll be pleased with you,” I assured him. “Tell her it’s the same case, because George Coe says so. Oh, and Peters. Don’t call her ma’am. Not if you ever want to see your promotion.”

  And see how you handle this, Grace Sanders, I thought.

  CHAPTER II

  Though in fact Detective Inspector Ferguson first, and it wasn’t until Grace arrived ten minutes later that I got a look at things.

  Lea Court was a newish block of four-storey flats set on the three sides of a courtyard that supplied useful parking space for visitors. There was a row of lock-ups at the far end for the residents, and a discreet lawn in front of the block, with a few immature trees.

  Parked the other side of the five police cars, which were now cluttering up the courtyard, was an elderly Morris Minor, and I was looking at this with interest — because its bonnet was still warm — when Grace arrived.

  She swept past me without a word, followed by the sergeant I’d already seen. I took it as an invitation to follow.

  The lobby was plain but stylish, some sort of sculpture standing in the middle of the terrazzo floor, with padded seats around the perimeter, and a row of post boxes along the wall behind the swing door.

  A uniformed constable stood on guard. “Mr Ferguson’s already here, Inspector. Second floor.”

  We climbed the wide, open staircase.

  Having already been surprised that Henry Saturn should actually live there — and of course it had to be my man, otherwise the coincidence would be too rare — I was not now surprised to discover that his wife was his wife. The door opened directly into the main living room, and she was sitting to one side of it on an upright chair, her head back against the wall, possibly in search of some sort of stability. The one I assumed to be Ferguson was on one knee beside the body of a man I at once recognised.

  They had not lived there long, because no hint of personality had been imposed on the interior. The furnishings were the cheap, modern rubbish they use to pad out a furnished apartment, and still stood in the formal uncertainty that indicated they’d been dumped there by the deliverers. The paintings were chic-sentimental, the ornaments pleading poverty of invention.

  Henry Saturn was lying on his side with his legs drawn up, the top half of his body twisted round so that he stared at the ceiling. He was wearing the dark brown slacks and the checked jacket I’d seen him wearing in the Potted Shrimp, but now he was also wearing a fawn waistcoat. I couldn’t see much of the waistcoat because each hand was gripping the front edge of his unbuttoned jacket, just below the lapels.

  He seemed to have died smiling.

  Inspector Ferguson looked round and got to his feet. “Grace?” he said, surprised. He was not pleased.

  She did not answer at once. Her eyes were quietly roaming the room, and rested briefly on the woman whom I’d last seen leaving the room of Larry something, then she finally turned to me.

  “And why should this interest me?” she asked coldly.

  “Why d’you think I came here? I came because this is the man who hired me to keep a lookout on a room opposite my gate.” I glanced towards the woman who was undoubtedly his wife. She was watching me with large, brown eyes, not a flicker of surprise or resentment in them. I drew out the envelope again. “He gave me this.” Grace didn’t pick me up on the fact that I hadn’t mentioned watching anything, but the quick glance she gave me was hurt and surprised. She took the envelope. “Reg,” she said, and Ferguson came over. “Take a look.” Ferguson looked. He raised his eyes to mine. Grace said:

  “You’re out of touch, George. Don’t you know who Henry Saturn was?”

  “My client.”

  “Oh, more than that. So much more. He was hit man for Emilio Sarturo.”

  I sighed. So now the connection was clear. The last I’d heard of Sarturo, he’d lost a consignment of heroin when Dave Mallin took over my case after my beating up. Sarturo was a drug pedlar. He would need a hit man to remove the odd elements of opposition. I’d seen it in Saturn’s eyes, and failed to recognise it.

  “If it’s drugs gone from the factory…” I said.

  “It’s drugs,” Grace agreed grimly.

  “And if Sarturo’s around…” I shrugged.

  Sarturo was not likely to have organised the robbery. It was not his style; he would have considered it beneath him. But if he had a local gang pulling the thing for him, he’d be close, if only so that his vicious reputation would encourage efficiency. And being Sarturo, he would be around openly. His presence in the district explained the robbery. His undisguised presence would declare his innocence in the actual undertaking.

  Ferguson drew back his lips. “Oh, he’s around right enough. We’ve had our eyes on him. The cheeky bastard’s giving a series of recitals on the organ at the Mason’s Hall.” It didn’t sound as though it was Ferguson’s favourite instrument.

  “Sarturo is?” I looked at him disbelievingly.

  “Why not?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Everybody’s got a side-line. Albert Schweitzer played the organ. Ted Heath — ”

  “For God’s sake!” I said angrily, trying to penetrate his smooth cynicism.

  “Perhaps,” said Grace soothingly, “Schweitzer also had drugs in mind. Reg, this looks like my case.”

  And it seemed that she must have been his senior. He smiled thinly. “I’ll hang on, though.” And she nodded, no
t caring one way or the other.

  “What’ve we got so far?” she asked.

  “The MO hasn’t got here yet, but I’d say he’s been dead an hour or two. Looks like a thirty-two…”

  “Thirty-two!” I said, surprised.

  He pierced me with a stare of the same calibre. “Looks like.”

  But when a hit man gets hit, it’s usually by another pro, and they don’t use anything as small as a thirty-two. A forty-five it’d more likely be, something to blast you to hell and way beyond. “You’re sure?”

  “Shut up, George,” said Grace. “And there’s this,” Ferguson went on, walking over to the body, “which is a little strange.”

  Saturn was clasping the jacket closely around him, and the strange thing was that there was no hole in the jacket — Ferguson reached down and moved the left arm back stiffly, rigor just beginning to set in, and revealed the bullet hole, clear in the fawn surface, the blood spreading into the waistcoat.

  “Maybe,” said Ferguson, “he’d clasp his hands together as a reaction when he died. But it does look as though he was holding open his jacket for his murderer. Almost as though saying: There’s your target, get on with it.”

  I wasn’t giving it much thought. As far as I was concerned, this was a gang killing, and I wasn’t interested. They could go on eliminating each other for ever, and I wasn’t going to find any tears. But Ferguson had been right about that bullet wound. It had the neat and clean entry of a .32 or a 7.65mm, and where did that leave my gang killing?

  “Exit wound?” I asked.

  “No exit wound,” he said grudgingly.

  Which would make it a short, low-powered cartridge, probably in a blowback breech weapon. I began to feel uneasy.

  “Have you searched him?” said Grace.

  “A quick look. He’s carrying almost nothing. Loose change, a handkerchief, a comb, and a tape cassette.”

  “A cassette?” she asked.

  “In his side jacket pocket.”

  “But Reg,” she said, “I don’t see a tape recorder anywhere. Do you?”

  He looked round. “We haven’t searched.”

  “Then…shouldn’t we?”

  And, while Ferguson’s men searched and we waited for the doctor, Grace went to have a word with the wife. I hovered, aware that this was probably the last time she’d allow me to be in on anything.

  My contact with crooks had usually been on the borderline of violence, men questioned in the confines of an interrogation room, arrested perhaps in a public bar. I’d never seen much of their private lives. So maybe Sarturo was a respected organist in his own right, whilst in the background peddling drugs to the poor buggers who were hooked. I could just about make that mental adjustment, and having made it could imagine that this young woman had been married to a hired killer.

  I could imagine it; but what sort of woman did that make her?

  Her name was Berenice. She was twenty-two — to Henry’s thirty-five — and they’d been married four years. She was recovering from the shock, and her eyes were taking on some sort of bright anger. When she spoke she tossed her head, swirling the dark auburn hair, and gestured with growing emphasis and with an aggression that became more tense as she answered Grace’s questions. She would no doubt feel some antipathy for the law. She certainly had no confidence in it.

  “You found him when?” said Grace.

  “When I got in.”

  “Which was?”

  “Oh…I don’t know. Half an hour ago.”

  “Half an hour? You delayed…”

  “I…guess I passed out. I don’t know. Then I had to think what to do.”

  Those brown eyes moved past Grace’s shoulder and rested on me. They were flecked with gold, bold and challenging. She knew what I knew, and she was too proud to attempt to lie. Or too tired.

  “Why did you need to think?” Grace demanded.

  “I’m not deaf, you know. I’m not stupid. I heard what you were saying, and I knew what my husband was. So you’ll understand it wasn’t easy. There’s other people I could’ve phoned.” She shrugged. “Maybe I should have done.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No.” She looked away. “To hell with him.”

  “Sarturo?”

  “I didn’t phone anybody but you lot.”

  “Half an hour ago, you got in. It’s now nearly two. So you arrived here at one-thirty or so, having left Foster Rd. at…” And Grace waited.

  A small smile of contempt touched Berenice’s lips. She knew that she was facing a clever woman, who’d picked it all up from my one remark. Without hesitation she said: “About twelve-thirty.” Knowing I’d confirm it.

  “It took you an hour to cover three miles? Less than three.”

  “I went on a run. Out to an all-night caff I know. I wanted to think. It’s the Sunset, on the Nottingham road. They’ll remember me. You’ll see.”

  “What did you want to think about?”

  “Larry,” she said simply.

  I touched Grace’s arm and glanced at Berenice. “The Morris Minor?” Berenice nodded. “It checks, then,” I told Grace. “The bonnet was still warm, and it couldn’t have got very hot in under three miles.”

  Berenice inclined her head. “Thank you, kind sir.”

  “Did you,” Grace asked her, “know that you were being watched?”

  “It’s happened.”

  “There have been other gentleman friends?”

  “Well…” She gave a short, sharp laugh. “I’d hardly call ‘em that. But others, yes.”

  “And your husband had you watched?”

  “I suppose. Now listen — you expect me to get neurotic about it? You expect I’d sneak around, dodging and pretending, making up a parcel of lies? No. If he wanted to know, then let him get on with it. That’s what I always said.”

  “And when he found out?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “There’d be trouble? Violence?”

  “He wouldn’t have dared to touch me.”

  I listened in silent awe. This eight stone of slim young woman was claiming to have bullied Henry Saturn, the hit man. She’d said it, too, with disdain.

  “I didn’t mean you,” said Grace.

  “Sometimes we’d move.” That was her idea of trouble.

  “But there could have been a different reason for that.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Another job,” Grace suggested. “Another area of operations for Emilio Sarturo.”

  “We moved around. I wouldn’t know.”

  “But now Sarturo’s in my area,” said Grace gently. “And there’s been a robbery.”

  “Keep you busy, don’t they?” Berenice was recovering fast. She was adopting a flip attitude to go with the character she assumed we’d expect from her.

  “A coincidence,” said Grace equably. “Would anybody else know, d’you think?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you were down at Foster Rd. with this Larry person.”

  “Maybe. I should worry.”

  “Because if they did, they could well have chosen a time you were out.”

  The brown eyes flickered. For the first time a tiny fault showed in Berenice’s armour of indifference. “D’you think they’d care?” she demanded, just a hint of hysteria in her voice. “If I’d been here, it’d only have taken one more shot.”

  “Grace,” said Ferguson softly, at her shoulder.

  “I’ll want to speak to you again,” said Grace to Berenice. She flashed me an empty smile. “See if you can find her a drink, George.”

  “I don’t think she needs it.”

  “There’s brandy in the cupboard,” Berenice told me, her mouth abruptly hard.

  While I was getting the brandy I listened to Ferguson in the background. I had concentrated so much on Berenice, unwillingly intrigued by her, that I hadn’t noticed that the doctor had arrived. So several things were going on at the same time, me pouring brandy, Ferg
uson reporting, the doctor doing his prelim, and sundry officers dusting, photographing, searching.

  “There’s no-cassette player,” said Ferguson. “A TV set, but no radio. We found his car keys on the dressing table, with his wallet, and his gun in the bottom drawer, wrapped up in a chamois leather. It’s a forty-five Colt automatic, and beautifully kept.” He said it with reverence.

  It would take a certain lack of feeling and coldness to make a good hit man. The idea that he could have been jealous of Berenice appeared to contradict that, though he had seemed to bear some distorted sense of tenderness for her. But that could have been no more than possessiveness, in the same way as he would treasure his Colt. No one would dare touch that, either. Yet the tenderness he would lavish on his gun would probably have been more intimate and seductive than what he could spare for his wife.

  I gave her the glass of brandy. Our eyes met, and hers smiled. She seemed to understand my thoughts.

  “An unexpected visitor?” Grace wondered.

  “Perhaps not unexpected,” Ferguson said. “Such a man as Saturn wouldn’t answer the door to a stranger at midnight, without his gun in his hand.”

  “Midnight?” said Grace. “Any ideas on that, Frank?”

  The doctor lifted his head. “Strictly off the record, Reg couldn’t be far out,” he agreed. “Slight rigor, and allowing for the temperature…But not later than midnight, I’d say.”

  “Before midnight,” put in the sergeant, and he waved the Radio Times he’d rescued from a low, glass-topped table. “The TV set was switched on. BBC 2. There was a film on, but shut-down was midnight, near as no matter. He was watching a film — and now he’ll never know how it ended.”

  “But not much before,” said the doctor firmly.

  “And that’s all?” I asked, having waited a few seconds in the satisfied silence. It was pleasant to have tied it down so neatly: a little before twelve. But somebody had missed something. They stared at me. “Is that all that was found?” I amplified.

  “Clothes, personal belongings. The usual,” said the sergeant. He wasn’t pleased that I seemed to be questioning his squad’s competence.