When they needed someone to escort Reuben Ackley to the morgue, Joe Keedy was pressed into service. Because of his experience with the family undertaking business, he was accustomed to the sight and smell of death. Chatfield felt that the task was beneath him and, since his press photograph had been described as making him look like a funeral director, Marmion was keen to keep well away. The murder victim’s father was therefore conducted by Keedy to the room where David Ackley was stretched out under a shroud. It was an ordeal for his father and, as he felt a strong upsurge of conflicting emotions, he needed a couple of minutes to prepare himself. When he was ready, he nodded to Keedy who, in turn, gave a signal to the pathologist’s assistant. The shroud was drawn back to expose the face and upper body. Though he’d seen the police photographs, Ackley was overwhelmed by the reality. The sight of his son’s ghastly white face and of the vivid memento around his neck was too much for him. He closed his eyes, rocked and began to retch.
Keedy caught him as he fell.
‘Where are they?’ said Alice, impatiently.
‘They’ll come when they can.’
‘Daddy will certainly come. I just hope that he brings Joe.’
‘Joe Keedy is a good detective,’ said Ellen. ‘It won’t take him long to realise that you’ll spend the night here at a time like this.’
‘You’re right, Mummy.’
‘Get used to it, Alice. This is what marriage to a policeman means – late nights and lots of anxiety.’
‘Don’t forget that Joe will be married to someone in the police force as well.’
‘That’s true.’
After drinking endless cups of tea and speculating on where Paul could possibly be, they’d ended up in the living room. Since her mother was close to despair, Alice had to take on the role of the comforter.
‘There’s no point in fearing the worst, Mummy.’
‘It’s that note he left.’
‘I wish you’d never found it.’
‘Paul intended me to find it,’ said Ellen. ‘He knew that I’d lift that lid before too long. That’s how we’d discover the truth.’
‘It’s only part of the truth. We don’t know the full story.’
‘We know enough, Alice. He’s walked out of here for good. There’s no escaping that. And the reason he did it is that he sets no value on his life. We failed him. More especially, I failed him,’ she went on, wringing her hands. ‘I should have seen that Paul was in such pain.’
‘It wasn’t pain, Mummy, it was confusion. He doesn’t know what he wants.’
‘Yes, he does. He wants to get away from here and it’s my fault.’
‘You did everything humanly possible.’
‘Yet I simply couldn’t get through to my own son.’
Ellen was about to start crying again when they heard the sound of a car approaching then slowing down. Both of them got up and hurried to the front door. When it was opened, they saw Marmion and Keedy getting out and waving the driver off. Before they could enter the house, the men were each locked in a warm embrace. Marmion eased his wife indoors and Keedy did the same with Alice. All four of them went into the kitchen and the men saw the message left by Paul.
‘Where did that come from?’ asked Marmion.
‘It was in the rubbish bin,’ replied Ellen in dismay. ‘Our son walks out of our lives and all we have to remember him by is that.’
‘It’s horribly final,’ said Keedy.
‘He scribbled it on impulse,’ argued Alice.
‘I’m not so sure. Paul must have planned his disappearance in advance. It’s not the kind of thing you do on a whim, Alice.’
‘He’s been very unsettled lately, Joe. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
‘I wonder.’
‘What do you think, Daddy?’
Alice turned to her father who’d been looking at the blunt message as if trying to decipher it. Averting his gaze, he became practical.
‘Joe and I have had a long and difficult day,’ he said, abruptly. ‘We’d love a cup of tea and something to eat.’
The women responded at once. While Alice made the tea, Ellen produced some bread, cheese and pickled onions. Having moved the scrap of paper with Paul’s message on it off the table, they sat around it in a brooding silence. It was Alice who remembered there were crises other than the disappearance of her brother.
‘Have you made any progress?’ she asked.
‘We’ve made very little with regard to Wally Hubbard,’ said Keedy, ‘but there’s been real progress in the murder investigation. We know who the victim was now.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘His father turned up and asked to view the body,’ explained Marmion. ‘When the superintendent showed him the briefcase belonging to the victim, Mr Ackley said that his son had stolen it from him.’
He went on to describe Ackley and what the man had said about his son. As he talked about David Ackley’s plight, they were painfully aware of the parallels with Paul who – having turned his back on his family – had gone off alone. Keedy took over to tell them what had happened to Reuben Ackley at the morgue.
‘I think he was overcome by guilt as much as by anything else,’ he said. ‘Because he detested his son’s political activities, he drove him away. We may have been right all along. We had the feeling that the murder might be connected to a foreign spy. Instead of involving a German agent, however, this case may be about someone who got entangled with Russian intelligence.’
‘That’s pure guesswork at this stage, Joe,’ said Marmion.
‘Mr Ackley did say that his son taught himself Russian at university.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily make him a spy.’
‘When the war started,’ recalled Alice, ‘the newspapers were telling us that spies were hiding around every corner. They kept on and on about the “enemy within”.’
‘In a sense,’ said Keedy, bluntly, ‘that’s what Paul was.’
‘Joe!’ she exclaimed in horror.
‘How can you say that?’ demanded Ellen.
‘I don’t mean that he’s a foreign agent or anything like that,’ said Keedy. ‘He was just unable to fit back into the family. Whatever he did was designed to hurt other people. It wasn’t just that girl, Sally Somebody. He treated all of us with a kind of veiled contempt. Look at the vile things he said about me, for instance.’
Ellen was deeply upset. ‘You’re the one saying vile things now.’
‘I think that you should apologise, Joe,’ said Alice.
‘I’m only telling you how it looked to me,’ he said.
‘You didn’t know Paul.’
‘I knew that he was causing upheaval in the whole family. That makes him an enemy, surely? He was doing it deliberately. You offered him love and friendship and he threw it back in your faces. Your brother was certainly your enemy, Alice.’
‘No, he wasn’t!’
‘We’re the ones at fault,’ insisted Ellen. ‘We let him down.’
There was a long, resentful silence. Marmion eventually broke it.
‘There’s an element of truth in what Joe says,’ he acknowledged.
‘Thank you, Harv,’ said Keedy. ‘I’m glad that someone recognises that.’
‘I just think you could have expressed yourself more diplomatically.’
Alice was roused. ‘I wish that he hadn’t said anything at all.’
‘So do I,’ added Ellen.
‘What on earth got into you, Joe?’
‘I’m entitled to my opinion,’ he said, reasonably.
‘Not when it’s so hurtful.’
‘All I want,’ said Ellen, mournfully, ‘is to know where Paul is.’
‘He doesn’t know himself, love,’ Marmion told her. ‘In my view, that’s what’s happening. Paul doesn’t fit in any more. He can’t work out who he is and what he’s supposed to do with his life. Look at that message he left. He’s telling us that there’s no place for him here now.’ He put
an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘He’s gone to find himself. Paul went off to discover who he really is.’
Huddled in the corner of a bus shelter, Paul Marmion cursed when the wind shifted and the rain was blown into his temporary refuge. On the first night of a new life, he was cold, wet and alone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The day got off to a bad start for Claude Chatfield. He’d hardly sat down behind his desk when he got a telephone call from Geoffrey Wilson-Smith. The Governor of Pentonville prison dispensed with pleasantries and issued a demand.
‘We want Hubbard back behind bars and we want him now.’
‘That’s something we all want, Governor.’
‘Then why is he still at liberty?’
‘It’s not for want of effort on our part, I promise you.’
‘I’ve rather lost faith in your promises, Superintendent. Hubbard has been on the loose for a week now. You promised he’d be recaptured very soon.’
‘We’d not expected him to be so elusive.’
‘Do you have any hopes of doing your job and actually finding him?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Chatfield, insulted by his tone.
‘Then why have you made no progress?’
‘It’s unfair to say that, Governor. We’ve deployed a large team of detectives. We’ve had two of Hubbard’s close friends under surveillance and there have been sightings of him.’
‘There was no mention of that in the newspapers.’
‘We don’t tell the press everything. It’s not always politic to do so.’
‘What’s this about sightings of him?’ asked Wilson-Smith, suspiciously.
‘Hubbard approached two women for information about Ben Croft, the man he’s sworn to kill. One was Croft’s wife and the other was a close friend of his. My officers have interviewed both women.’
‘Did either of them know where he’s hiding?’
‘They didn’t, alas. A third sighting took place outside a public house. A witness reported seeing Hubbard talking to one of the barmaids there.’
The governor was tetchy. ‘Why didn’t he summon the police immediately?’
‘Hubbard was walking away at the time,’ said Chatfield, defensively. ‘That’s how he was recognised. Hubbard was disguised as a blind man, it seems. The witness noticed his familiar gait.’
‘This is absurd. In spite of your efforts to catch him, Hubbard is able to wander at will around London, talking to women whenever he wishes and having no fear of discovery. It seems to me,’ said Wilson-Smith, over-enunciating his words, ‘that the Metropolitan Police are behaving like blind men as well. You haven’t so much as caught a glimpse of him yourselves.’
Chatfield smouldered. ‘I take exception to that remark, Governor.’
‘It was justified.’
‘As it happens, one of my detectives did more than just see Hubbard.’
‘Oh?’
‘Sergeant Keedy knew that his closest associate was an estate agent and reasoned that Hubbard might be hiding in one of the man’s empty properties. He not only tracked him down,’ stressed Chatfield, ‘he chased him out of the house and almost caught him. So I’ll ask you to stop casting aspersions on our efficiency. If your safety procedures had been good enough,’ he said, acidly, ‘then Hubbard wouldn’t have escaped in the first place. There’s enough crime for us to solve in London without having to waste time wiping up a mess that you and your staff made. Good day to you, Governor. When we have more news, I’ll be in touch.’
Before the other man could speak, he slammed the receiver back down.
Chatfield was still pulsing with fury when Marmion knocked and entered.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.
‘You’re late.’
‘Are you all right, sir? You look flushed.’
‘The surprise is that I’m not foaming at the mouth,’ said Chatfield. ‘I’ve just had the Governor of Pentonville harassing me on the phone because we haven’t delivered Hubbard to him in a big box with a red ribbon around it. Is there any word from the men watching Maisie Rogers?’
‘They saw nothing untoward, sir,’ reported Marmion. ‘She finished her shift at the Dun Cow and was followed home to her flat. The detective who stayed outside all night was soaked to the skin.’
‘That’s irrelevant.’
‘He didn’t think so.’
‘Is there any chance that Hubbard was actually inside her flat?’
‘I know he’s as bold as brass, sir, but even he wouldn’t be that daring. He must know that we’d keep an eye on Miss Rogers at some point and wouldn’t want to incriminate her by moving into her flat.’
‘We already have enough to arrest her.’
‘What use is that? Left free, she might lead us to him. Locked up, she’s no use at all.’ He glanced at the newspapers on the desk. ‘I thought you did a masterly job at the press conference yesterday, sir. Now that you’ve named the murder victim, we should have people coming forward.’
‘I’m not sanguine about that.’
‘Why not, sir?’
‘You heard what the father said. David Ackley was very secretive by nature. He belonged to some sort of Communist cell.’
‘We’ve come across hotheads like that before,’ said Marmion. ‘They believe in Revolution by Friday though they never tell you which Friday it is. And yes, they do like to hide in the woodwork for the most part but Ackley’s death might bring one or two of them out.’
‘Don’t hold your breath, Inspector.’ Remembering something, he adopted a quieter tone. ‘Has there been any …?’
‘No, sir, we’ve had no contact from our son.’
‘It must be a frightful ordeal for your wife.’
‘It’s put the whole family under intense pressure,’ admitted Marmion, ‘but, when I stepped into this building, I left that problem at the door. I’m giving the murder investigation my full attention.’
‘What about Sergeant Keedy?’
‘He’s following up some leads about Hubbard, sir. When she came to see us yesterday evening, Mrs Croft told us that he’d cornered her again and demanded a list of his favourite haunts along with details of relatives with whom Croft might be staying. Armed with the same list, the sergeant is checking to see if Hubbard has been paying any visits we should know about.’
‘If he has, people will report it, surely.’
‘I’d like to think so,’ said Marmion, ‘but they’ll no doubt be warned by Hubbard to keep their mouths shut. He can be very intimidating. When a self-appointed killer issues a threat, people take it seriously. Also, of course, there’s another reason why so many of them hold back.’
‘Yes,’ said Chatfield, peevishly. ‘They don’t want to be involved.’
‘It’s the bane of our profession, sir.’
‘So what will you be doing, Inspector?’
‘My first task is to call on my brother and tell him what we learnt from Mr Ackley yesterday. I’d also like to question the people who were in the same dormitory as his son. When they gave their initial statements to Sergeant Keedy, they were upset and confused. Now that they’ve had time for reflection, they may recall something else.’
‘See if any of them know what was in that briefcase of his.’
‘I think we know the answer to that, sir,’ joked Marmion.
‘Do we?’
‘It was a signed copy of Das Kapital.’
Impervious to humour, Chatfield just glared.
Alice Marmion was unusually subdued that morning, allowing Iris Goodliffe to fill the void with one of her rambling narratives. As they walked along, her companion heard very little of what she said. All that Alice could think about was Keedy’s suggestion that her brother was the ‘enemy within’ the family. His comment had rocked her at the time and she still felt shaken. Was that how Paul appeared to the person she was going to marry? Had her brother set out to undermine the family on purpose? Or was Paul just flailing around in desperation because they didn�
�t understand his needs?
‘You’re very quiet today,’ said Iris as if noticing at last.
‘Am I?’
‘Did you sleep at home last night?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘How was your mother?’
‘She’s as shocked and mystified as the rest of us.’
‘What about Joe? Have you seen him at all?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice, voice hardening a little. ‘He came back with Daddy.’
‘What did he feel about your brother?’
‘Oh, he was … Joe simply offered support.’
‘I thought it was so considerate of him, snatching a moment to see you yesterday when we were on duty. Not many men would do that sort of thing. He obviously loves you.’
Alice was about to say that she didn’t feel very loved when Keedy had made unkind remarks about Paul but she held her tongue. Once again, she was unwilling to let Iris get any closer to her and her private life. Her friend continued to pepper her with questions that were politely deflected. Ahead of them was a minor crisis. A horse was being driven around a corner so fast that the heavily laden cart it was pulling slid out of control, struck the kerb and lost most of the wooden crates it was carrying. The pavement was covered with the debris. Alice was delighted by the interruption.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘it’s time for our first good deed of the day.’
Joe Keedy had the thankless task of going to a series of pubs and restaurants favoured at one time by Ben Croft. Wherever he went, he discovered that Wally Hubbard had been there before him, asking if anyone had seen Croft recently or if they had any idea where he might be. Most people didn’t realise that they’d been talking to an escaped prisoner with murder on his mind. The few that did were simply glad when he moved on. Having exhausted London venues, he had to look further afield. He also had to take time and money into consideration. Marmion wouldn’t thank him for disappearing to distant places like Scarborough or Carlisle and being out of action for a lengthy time, even though Croft had relatives in both places. Chatfield would howl at him for putting a strain on the budget by making excessive car journeys. In the end, Keedy opted for a compromise and asked his driver to head for Brighton.
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