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

by Roderic Jeffries

  Weir continued to speak calmly, ignoring the questions. “I’ve interviewed Mabel Harkness at great length.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A stewardess on the Southern Planet. Her orders were to exchange foundation garments in one of the lavatories with a woman who’d board the ship in Fortrow.”

  “Did this stewardess see the other woman?”

  “No.”

  “Then she cannot identify her.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Does she admit she was smuggling heroin?”

  Weir answered reluctantly. “She admits to nothing beyond exchanging foundation garments.”

  “Then as far as she knows, or anyone else knows, she was not smuggling heroin.”

  “There’s room for nothing else in such garments.”

  “Have you seen these particular ones to be quite sure of that? In any case, my wife has never been aboard the Southern Planet.”

  “A seaman identifies her as having boarded the vessel on the day in question.”

  “How identified her? From photographs?”

  “Yes.”

  “What use is that sort of identification? My wife appears in scores of photos in scores of magazines, modelling: of course he thought he recognised her face when one of your blokes showed him half a dozen photos of different women. But she’s never been aboard that ship.”

  Fusil took over the questioning. “Why were you outside Murphy’s house at the time when he was murdered?”

  “I’d been given a tip-off he was the head of the organisation. I was trying to check out the information.”

  “But you’d been suspended from duty.”

  “I was still a policeman.”

  “As a suspended policeman, your duty was to pass on the tip-off to me and leave me to investigate it out.”

  “I was more interested in proving my suspension was totally unjustified than in worrying about what I ought to do according to the book.”

  “Who gave you this tip-off?”

  “A source of information. I’m not saying more than that.”

  “Was Faraday the source?”

  “Who?”

  “Spare us the hypocrisy. You know as well as me who Faraday was?”

  “The name does seem vaguely familiar…”

  Fusil’s expression darkened, but he continued to speak evenly. “A post-mortem on his body disclosed that he’d received cuts on his scrotum a short time before his death. The only logical explanation of the cuts is that he was tortured into naming Murphy. You tortured Faraday into giving you Murphy’s name.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Fusil spoke with heavy irony. “Tell me, will you go so far as admit to knowing Violet Carter?”

  “Of course. I met her in the course of investigations into the death of Wraight.”

  “And you visited her flat the day before Murphy’s murder.”

  “Did I?”

  “One of the porters testifies to that. Why did you go to see her?”

  “To check if she had heard anything more that might confirm that Murphy was the head of the organisation.”

  “And you gave her his name, knowing that she was so mentally disturbed over the murder of her pimp that given the opportunity she’d murder Murphy in revenge.”

  “It makes for a plausible theory, I suppose, if you don’t know it’s ridiculous.”

  “She was the woman you found in Murphy’s bedroom.”

  “There was a woman there, yes, but she wasn’t Violet Carter. I’ve never seen that woman before and can’t begin to identify her. She certainly wasn’t local.”

  “Why did you let her escape?”

  “I made a bad mistake. She appeared so shocked that I thought she wouldn’t try to run for it, so I went over to check whether Murphy was still alive.”

  “The forensic evidence is that he died almost instantly. It would have been obvious to you he was dead.”

  “Our training manual says death must never be assumed to be fact, no matter how obvious it appears. Only a doctor can certify death.”

  Weir spoke. “With injuries like those, what could you have hoped to do even had he, by a miracle, been alive?”

  “I’m afraid I hadn’t worked it all out like that. I was just acting on humanitarian principles.”

  Fusil swore.

  “Who broke open the drawer in the desk in the bedroom?” asked Weir.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Your prints were on the poker that had been used to break it open.”

  “The poker was lying very close to the dead man. I moved it out of the way.”

  “Contrary to all the rules of scene-of-the-crime investigations.”

  “The state of the injured person takes priority over everything else.”

  “What was in the drawer? The key of the safe?”

  “I’ve no idea. Didn’t you find that key somewhere else?”

  “Yes. Where you’d put it.”

  “With the dead man’s prints on it?”

  “Which you’d imprinted.”

  Rowan shrugged his shoulders. “I saw no key.”

  “When the woman ran, why didn’t you shout for help right away?”

  “Look, sir, I did my best, but it just wasn’t good enough. I thought I’d catch her easily and there wasn’t any need for help. But I fell over and damn near broke a leg and she got away.”

  “With your connivance.”

  “I connived at nothing.”

  “That woman was Violet Carter.”

  “You keep saying that, but who has identified her beyond question? The Pakistanis? I gathered they’d refused to talk at all and there’s no hard evidence to get them for anything, even knowledge of what Murphy was up to.”

  “Rowan, you’re as guilty of Murphy’s murder as Violet Carter.”

  “I had nothing to do with his death… But if I had, d’you think I’d lose any sleep over that fact? He was wrecking this town. How many people in Fortrow are hooked on heroin now because of him? How many lives have been blasted? And the law couldn’t do a thing about it but sit back and wait and hope he’d eventually make a mistake. He hadn’t even been identified as the boss before his murder.”

  “Your job as a policeman,” said Weir flatly, “whether suspended or not, was to uphold the law of the land. It was, and is, no concern of yours if the law fails in certain cases to operate rapidly enough to prevent crimes.”

  “So Mr. Big can pimp, bribe, blackmail, poison, and murder, wreck a whole town, but I’m not supposed to concern myself?”

  Weir tapped the desk with his long, bony fingers. He stared straight at Rowan. “You’ve betrayed the force and committed half the crimes in the book.”

  “Prove any of your accusations.”

  Weir stood up. “When there is evidence sufficient for a court of law, you’ll be charged with the crimes you’ve committed.”

  “But in the meantime you can’t do anything because of the laws of evidence which you daren’t break.”

  “Your career…”

  “I’m resigning,” cut in Rowan, “in protest against the holding of an investigation which has failed to come up with proof of even one of the allegations levelled against me.”

  “Let me have your resignation in writing.” Weir, very abruptly, left the room.

  Fusil spoke cruelly. “We’ll get you. You may laugh at us now because we need proof of what we know, but we’ll find it in the end and nail you traitor.”

  “I deny…”

  “Save your breath. There’s just you and me in this room. So I’ll tell you what you are. A split who grassed to try and save his own rotten skin…”

  Rowan, emotion shattering his previous disciplined calm, said: “For you, it’s just been one more case, another set of facts to be investigated. In your logical mind I grassed so I’m lower than a snake’s belly. You haven’t the imagination to see how things were. Grass or see my family broken, burgle a house, torture a man, set up the knifing of
another, to keep my wife and daughter. Hasn’t it ever once occurred to you that there are times when rules, honesty, decency, don’t count? Suppose it had been your wife and your son? Would you have seen them knocked flat just so as you could always console yourself with the thought you’d never broken the law?”

  Fusil picked up his pipe and slowly filled it with tobacco from his battered pouch. If Josephine and Timothy were ever threatened, he’d fight back, with whatever weapons he could grab. In the final event, family was all important. But even while he acknowledged that fact, he hated Rowan for having been a traitor.

  Rowan waited, then left the room, head held high.

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