The Murder Line (C.I.D. Room Book 8)

by Roderic Jeffries

  We both will have to, he thought.

  *

  He lay in bed. How many nights recently had he been unable to sleep because his mind was too frantically busy trying to solve the insoluble? Was there a limit to the desperation a mind could take?

  Should he have risked breaking into Tranmere House? Murphy might, after all, have believed Faraday, yet killed him as an insurance because he was now known and marked. But the boss of the organisation was clever and clever people did not usually overlook the obvious possibilities.

  His mind flicked back to one of the first lectures he had attended when taking his detective constable’s course. The art of interrogation. Comfort rather than threaten. Don’t try verbally to pile-drive a suspect into total submission, humour him, sympathise with him, make him confide in you because you’re obviously so decent a chap. Discover his strengths and his weaknesses and play on his weaknesses…

  Where was Murphy weak? His organisation? His setup was about near perfect, especially as he must by now have bought, or acquired by blackmail, a considerable degree of political protection. No small-time member of the mob would be able to incriminate him, because they wouldn’t hold the proof. The lieutenants wouldn’t incriminate him except under the extreme vicious physical pressure of the kind the police dare not use. Legally, then, he was about secure. A big, fat, poisonous spider who’d spun his web and could now sit back and live off his prey. Physically, he must be completely secure. From the moment he’d decided to kill Faraday, he would have recognised the need to protect himself and now he’d be beyond anything other than a major frontal assault. Then if he was legally and physically secure… And suddenly, Rowan remembered Faraday, frightened sick, telling him all about Murphy and he realised that Murphy had one weakness — which could perhaps be exploited by someone desperate enough to exploit it and ready even to risk precipitating the disclosure of the very thing that he was trying to keep hidden.

  *

  Rowan parked outside Causeway Buildings, alongside an enormous Buick. The fitful sun, its warmth largely countered by the rising east wind, came out from behind a black-bellied cloud which for a time had seemed to promise rain.

  He entered the building and the octagonal lobby and passed the octagonal bed of indoor plants, looking even dustier and more dormant than when he’d last seen them.

  “D’you want someone, then?” asked the porter — whom Rowan had not seen before — from behind the desk.

  “Borough C.I.D.,” replied Rowan shortly.

  The porter hesitated, wondering whether he should demand proof of that, then settled back in his chair and stared with open curiosity.

  Rowan entered the lift and pressed the third floor button and the lift took him up smoothly and silently. He left, crossed the thick carpet, and rang the bell of 3B. Violet Carter opened the door and recognised him immediately and her expression of professional welcome changed and hardened.

  He stepped inside and closed the door.

  “What d’you want now?” she asked.

  “I’ve been wondering how things are with you?”

  “All right.”

  “The new mob have continued to leave you alone, then?”

  Her mouth twisted. “They reckoned killing Vince was enough.”

  “You sound like you’re still missing him?”

  She cursed because his question suggested he thought a mere prostitute couldn’t know lasting grief when her man was killed.

  He began to jingle the coins in his trouser pocket. “I wondered if you’d heard a whisper yet about who’s the boss?”

  “D’you think I’d be standing here if I had?” Her face twisted into ugly lines.

  “Like I said last time, leave that alone.”

  “So what’ll that get me? How far have you lot got? Tell me. How bloody far have you lot got?”

  He said slowly, “I reckon to know his name and where he hangs out, but need confirmation.”

  She stared at him, a wild expression on her face. “You know?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Then why haven’t you nicked him?”

  “I’ve no proof: not the kind of proof the courts demand.”

  “Christ! Proof! He killed Vince, didn’t he?”

  “We can’t arrest him if we can’t prove the facts in court.”

  She spoke even more wildly. “So what’s his name?”

  “I said, leave it.”

  “You stick to your job and all your bloody proof. Just give me his name.”

  “You wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Unless…”

  She jumped on that. “Unless what?”

  “Unless he thought you were one of the women who’d been sent along to keep him company at night.”

  She began to understand the true purpose of his visit.

  *

  Rowan flicked down the blinker stalk and the darkened interior of the car pulsated to the flashing of the repeater.

  “Here?” she asked, breaking a silence that had lasted for over a couple of minutes.

  “That house beyond the ornamental gates.” He began to turn.

  “It’s big,” she said.

  The car’s headlights picked out the porch and the clematis which grew over it.

  “You know something?” She paused. She stubbed out the cigarette she’d only recently lit. “You’ve never explained your particular angle.”

  “That’s right. I haven’t.” He braked the car to a stop immediately in front of the porch. “Remember. Smash a window and shriek.”

  “I’ll shriek, mister, like I was thirteen again and a bloke was flashing his marbles at me.” She opened the door and climbed out. She stared at him, then she slammed the door shut. He watched her walk across to the porch and ring the bell. He drove quickly away.

  There was a public call box one road away and he drew up alongside this and checked to make certain it was still in working order. That done, he returned to the car and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Who’d opened the door to her? Had he been at all surprised? The most obvious dangers were that another woman had previously been sent along that night or that someone in the house recognised Violet. But there was danger to any gamble. Just don’t think about it too closely. Rely on her. She was a professional, presumably superb at her job. She’d sworn that if nothing went wrong early on, she’d give Murphy the most exciting time he’d ever known. Rowan believed her. Hatred was as good a spur, maybe better, than love. She’d lift him to the heights because then the descent to the depths would be that little more violent. God knows, she’d sounded slightly mad when she’d said what she was going to do to Murphy.

  It was time. He went into the call box, lifted the receiver, and dialled 999. He asked for the police and reported the noise of a fight and violent screaming which came from Tranmere House in Ashdowne Road. He returned to the car and drove back to the gateway and the wrought iron gates and there stopped the engine. He visualised the duty inspector in the operations room at county H.Q. ordering the nearest patrol car to Ashdowne Road, and the duty sergeant telephoning borough H.Q. so that the nearest Panda car and beat constable could be directed to the same address.

  Seconds lasted minutes as nothing happened and the possibility of failure grew. A bird briefly fluttered in a tree somewhere very close, there was a more distant and thrice repeated hoot of an owl. An un-laden lorry, bouncing noisily over a rough patch, went by. The moon became obscured by cloud.

  Then, as he finally became convinced he was faced by a failure and therefore total disaster, he heard the sounds of breaking glass. There was a scream, so piercingly high, so wild, he believed it genuine. And immediately afterwards, as he was climbing out of the Mini, a white patrol car drove up Ashdowne Road at speed and came to a tyre squealing stop.

  “Come on,” ordered Rowan, as he began to run up the drive.

  Responding automatically, naturally accepting Rowan was from the borough force, the driver left the car and followed. The observer pau
sed only to sign off over the radio, then he too pounded up the drive.

  Rowan hammered on the front door. When it was not immediately opened, he crossed to the nearest window and smashed that with a stake plucked from the flower bed underneath. He reached in, undid the window catch, and raised the lower sash window.

  As he clambered over the sill, the lights in the room were switched on. Parasad, in some form of night clothing which resembled a dhoti, rushed in, a six inch bladed knife in his right hand. When he saw the uniform constable behind Rowan, he dropped his hand to his side and stood there, uncertain.

  Rowan shouted to the constable: “Hold this bloke down here and find out what in the hell’s going on — I’ll check up top. Tell your mate to stand by to call H.Q.”

  The stairs were wide and he ran up them, three at a time. The landing was oblong, fifteen feet on its longest side, and hung with eight richly coloured porcelain plates. A corridor led off the landing and Verna was along this, standing by a door, left hand raised as if he’d been pounding on the door. He held something in his right hand.

  “Police,” shouted Rowan.

  Verna dropped into his pocket whatever had been in his hand and stepped back.

  “Who else is in the house?” demanded Rowan.

  Verna hesitated. “Just the two of us and… and him.” He pointed at the door. “And the woman,” he added.

  “Get downstairs, report to one of the constables, and wait.”

  “But if something is very wrong…” He pointed at the door again.

  “We’ll cope. Are there any back stairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “At the other end of this corridor.”

  “O.K. Now get below.”

  Slowly, with a reluctance he made no effort to hide, Verna did as ordered.

  As Verna disappeared from sight. Rowan hammered on the door. “Open up. It’s the police.”

  The door was unlocked and he went in. Murphy was dead and the place looked like a slaughter-house. By the side of his nude body was a pearl-handled knife with three inch blade. Violet Carter, wearing a kinky leather outfit, with gloves — Murphy wouldn’t have realised until the last agonising second the real reason why she’d worn gloves — was breathing heavily and there was a blank remote look on her face. She was stained with blood.

  “Did you find where the safe is?” he demanded urgently. When she made no answer, he took hold of her arm above the long-sleeved glove and shook her fiercely. He repeated the question.

  “It’s behind the painting on the wall, here,” she finally answered.

  “What kind of safe is it? Where’s the key?”

  She shook her head.

  It can’t fail now, he thought wildly: not after so appalling a climax. “Get dressed.” He raced over to the three Renoir reproductions which hung on the near wall and found the wall safe was behind the middle one. He swore with relief when he saw the lock was not a combination one. But the key? He whirled round. She had just pulled on her dress, hiding the leather garments except for the high lace-up, high-heeled boots. “What clothes was he wearing?” he asked.

  “A grey suit,” she muttered.

  “For God’s sake, pull yourself alive,” he demanded, as he ran to the built-in clothes cupboard and slid back the end door. There were three grey suits, of different shades and different conservative patterns. “Which one?”

  She at last regained a measure of composure and said: “That end one.”

  He searched the pockets of coat and trousers, but found no keys. Yet they must be close at hand, where no one else could easily and casually get at them… In one corner of the room, to the right of the open door beyond which was a tiled bathroom, was a small, beautifully inlaid, period desk with two full width drawers beneath a fold flat flap. There was a nest of drawers on either side of the three compartments, for writing-paper, etc., in the middle. The top right-hand drawer was the only one that was locked. Possibly the key for that was hidden in one of the unlocked drawers, but he’d no time left for a prolonged search. He smashed the drawer open with the polished brass poker from the fireplace, conscious even at such a moment of tension that this was an act of unforgivable vandalism. Two keys, one of intricate design, were in the drawer.

  He tried the intricate key in the lock of the wall safe and it worked the tumblers. He pulled open the heavy door. Inside were a large number of bank notes, carefully sorted into bundles of similar denominations, a battered leather jewel case, a large, unsealed brown envelope, and a brown paper package on which was Heather’s writing. He opened the envelope, saw inside a number of negatives and prints, and slipped it into his inside pocket.

  From outside the house there came the sound of a vehicle’s stopping and this was followed by the slamming of doors. There was little time left. Not rushing his movements — how many villains made their mistakes when under the pressure of too much haste — he took from the safe three bundles of the highest denomination notes, stuffed these into his coat pockets, closed the safe door, relocked it, swung the picture back against the wall, and carried the key, which he wiped clear of his prints and then impressed with the dead man’s prints, over to the grey suit in the cupboard. He picked up the package with Heather’s writing. Violet Carter watched his every movement, yet it was impossible to judge from her expression whether she understood the logic of what he was doing.

  “Come on,” he said. Obediently, she followed him.

  He opened the bedroom door. Voices came from below and abruptly they began to increase in strength: the speakers were climbing the stairs. He took hold of her right hand and pulled her along the thickly carpeted corridor.

  At first he could see no back stairs and he thought the Pakistani had lied and delivered them into a trap but then, as the voices clearly neared the head of the stairs, he tried the end door and it proved to give access to what was the servants’ quarters and the stairs. They passed through just in time.

  He left her at the head of the stairs and descended. All was quiet below. He called her down. The stairs had been lit, but the ground floor was in darkness and so with his free hand he took a small pencil torch from his breast pocket and switched this on. They passed the kitchen and a store room to reach the back door, which was bolted and locked. “Open the door,” he said, “as quietly as you can.” He watched her pull back the bolts and slide the chain free and noted that in places the metal was smudged with blood from her glove.

  The back garden, screened by trees, was only softly illuminated by the street lighting. No one was visible and all the noise of investigation lay back in the house or round at the front. Together, they skirted the gravel path and crossed a lawn to the back gates. He handed her the money. “Use this to get yourself settled somewhere. Have you got the car keys?” She took them from a pocket of her dress, but said nothing. He pushed her and she opened the gate, which squealed gently, and went out.

  As soon as he heard the car, carefully parked there earlier, drive off, he hid the parcel in the centre of one of the many bushes, then ran back to the house along the gravel path, shouting for assistance as he did so.

  *

  Heather, in bed, watched him enter the room. Her eyes were filled with desperate worry. “Fred…” she whispered.

  He dropped the parcel on to the bed. “It’s all over, love, and you can stop worrying.”

  She stared at the parcel as if not trusting her sight, unable to appreciate immediately the full relief of knowing that he had succeeded. He took the brown envelope from the inside coat pocket and handed it to her.

  She opened it, hesitated, looked up at him, then used forefinger and middle finger to pull out one of the prints. As she looked at the print, her lips trembled. “Fred, did… did you look at them?”

  “No.”

  “It wasn’t like this, I swear it wasn’t. I didn’t know the bloke was there. Raymond just said to…”

  “Forget it,” he said harshly. He kissed her, said with sudden
softness: “D’you think I’d’ve risked everything if I hadn’t believed in you completely?”

  She dropped the print into the envelope, crumpled up the envelope, then flung back the bedclothes. “I’m going to take this down now and burn it,” she said.

  Chapter 18

  Fusil sat immediately behind his desk, Detective Chief Inspector Weir to the right of it. Rowan was left to stand.

  Weir, his expression severe, spoke slowly, choosing his words with very great care. “Don’t you understand? I’ve personally interviewed a number of people, including Mabel Harkness, the woman your wife exchanged foundation garments with aboard the Southern Planet. We know what happened.”

  “My wife has never been aboard that ship,” said Rowan.

  Weir sighed. “Longman was arrested in Palma and the organisation didn’t know whether that meant the line had been broken. But they had to know, so they sought a policeman they could blackmail into finding out the facts. You were that policeman. They had compromising photos taken of your wife and used these to pressure her into smuggling heroin into the country. From that moment on, they’d got you.

  “You were ordered to discover why Longman had been arrested and you put the enquiry through Interpol. When you told the organisation that Longman’s arrest had nothing to do with drug smuggling, they were able to reopen the line.

  “You’d successfully done what they’d ordered, but the hooks were still in and when you learned about the tip-off concerning the consignment of heroin coming in on the twentieth, you warned them…”

  “The whole thing’s a load of old cobblers,” said Rowan.

  “Why deny the obvious? I have Raymond’s statement concerning the photos he took of your wife…”

  “And my wife flatly denies that anything of the sort happened. So what proof have you? Where’s the evidence of the man who’s supposed to have been in the photos? Where are the photos?”