Mistress Murder

by Bernard Knight

  Only four or five seconds had gone by since the door had swung shut on the last customers. Now it burst open again and three roistering herrenvolk barged into the lavatory. Conrad had not yet reached the ground and Jacobs, whipping the sap back into his pocket, grabbed at his waist and stopped him from slumping right to the floor.

  ‘Give us a hand, boys!’ he called in his best local accent. ‘He can’t hold his drink, the fool – thought he came in to be sick but he’s passed out on me.’

  The slightly tipsy young men good-naturedly helped him to drag the comatose Draper outside and dump him on a chair in the courtyard.

  ‘He does this every time, always spoils the evening,’ grumbled Paul, ‘now I suppose I’ll have to get the bastard home to his wife.’

  One of the men helped him to drag the heavy body to the arch which led out into the street. The other patrons and the serving women hardly gave them a glance. Paralytic customers had been commonplace in the Hofbrauhaus for many centuries and the sight of another being helped home by his friends was no novelty.

  Paul waved to a taxi which was just unloading at the strip joint opposite. As he waited, a black uniformed policeman strolled past, a revolver belted over his long greatcoat. He looked idly at the two men supporting the ‘drunk’, but as there seemed to be no disturbance he passed them by.

  The Opel drove across the road and with an effort Paul and his genial helper managed to stuff the sixteen stone of dead weight into the back of the car. Paul followed it and leaned forward to the driver.

  ‘Take us to the Brudermühlbrücke, please. You know, down in Thalkirchen.’

  The taxi man let in his clutch, but threw a surprised glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Brudermühl bridge! This time of night? But the zoo is closed, heh!’ He guffawed at his joke.

  The area Jacobs had mentioned was a large tract of parkland on the banks of the River Isar. It was about two miles out of the city centre, in the southern suburbs. There were playing fields, a famous zoo, and natural woodland, but it seemed an unlikely place for a pair of drunks on a Sunday night.

  Paul leant further forward over the seat, giving a fine performance of inebriated intimacy.

  ‘See, I’ve got to sober this fool up before he gets home. His wife will kill him – and me – if he gets home dead drunk again tonight. He lives just over the bridge, in Geising; so if I can sit him in the fresh air for half an hour, then make him walk, he’ll come round – he always does.’

  The driver nodded understanding and sped off down the river embankment towards Thalkirchen. It was now well gone midnight and though the city centre was still lively, the residential areas were deserted. Apart from a few hurrying cars, there was little traffic along the Wittelsbacherstrasse and Paul could see that the journey was only going to take a few minutes.

  He had judged the blow he had given to Draper so that he should stay unconscious for twenty minutes to half-an-hour.

  The Opel sped along the river road, the Isar glinting in the moonlight on their left. They turned off amongst the trees and took a short cut to the Brudermühlbrücke, which formed one of the main river crossings in the south part of the city.

  The driver looked incredulous when Paul told him to pull up alongside a park bench just on the town side of the bridge.

  ‘You must be crazy to get him out here,’ he protested. ‘Geising is nearly a kilometre from here!’

  Paul ignored him and began lugging the limp form of Draper from the car towards the seat. The driver grudgingly helped him to lift the big man’s feet up so that Conrad lay flat on the wooden slats.’

  Paul followed the cabbie back to the car, deliberately weaving as he went.

  ‘S’all right, driver – he’ll be sick in a minute, then he’ll wake up and be as bright as a new mark. I’ve seen it all too often, I don’t know why I keep doing it for him.’

  He stuffed some notes into the man’s hand, giving him a generous tip. The car, with a last questioning look from the cabby, slid away and Paul stood until its tail lights had vanished down the long ramp of the bridge.

  He looked anxiously up and down the road. It was clear for the moment, so he darted back to the bench, dragged Draper off with a thump onto the ground and began rolling him towards the grass bank behind the seat.

  Here the ground fell away sharply, having been built up about twenty feet to make the approach ramp to the bridge. There was a neat border of flowers and bushes at the edge of the steep slope, and right at the bottom a flat grassy area bordering on the edge of the river. As he got Draper’s inert body as far as the flowers, a sudden glare of headlights lit up the road behind him.

  Like a flash he dropped to the ground behind the seat and watched a black police BMW flash past, its blue light revolving on the roof as it raced to some emergency call. Even though Paul knew it could have no connection with him, the sight of it so soon after his attack on Draper made him nervous and less cautious than he should have been.

  As soon as the patrol car passed, he went back to the bookie and bent over him to give him the final push over the edge of the bank. As he did so, he collected a violent kick in the stomach which made him vomit instantly and stagger back to fall in agony on the ground.

  If Draper had been fit at that moment it would have been all over for Paul in a matter of seconds, as he was paralysed with pain. But Conrad had spent his energy in that one kick, and was still semi-conscious. He grunted and squirmed about trying to scrabble himself on to his knees. His head was a ball of agony from the blow in the Hofbrauhaus and he could hardly see for the watering of his eyes and the dizziness in his brain.

  For a full half minute the two men gasped and groped like two blind lunatics, unable to speak or get to their feet.

  Paul Jacobs began to recover first, spurred on by the wavering memory of the gun in the other man’s pocket. He hauled himself to a sitting position and fought down the waves of nausea from his bruised stomach. Desperately trying to hold on to consciousness, he saw that Conrad was trying to climb to his feet. He seemed in as much distress as Jacobs, grovelling along the ground, rubbing his head and eyes with one hand. As Paul cleared the fog in his head and began to take some proper breaths, he saw Draper reach a crouching position and fumble in his pocket for the pistol.

  With a tremendous spurt, Paul pulled himself up, staggered forwards and kicked Draper full in the face. He fell back with the effort and ended up squatting on the ground facing Conrad, both of them slumped in the earth of the ornamental border.

  In spite of the blow in the face, the bookie had got his automatic free and was pointing it waveringly at Jacobs, now only six feet away – even a battered hulk like Draper could hardly miss at that range.

  Conrad mumbled through bruised lips. ‘I’m going to kill you, Golding.’

  Chapter Eleven

  It was a week after the exhumation before Benbow had any glimmer of a breakthrough on the Rita Laskey case.

  He and Bray were lunching in the basement canteen at Scotland Yard. Over apple tart and coffee, the Admiral let drop a few ripe remarks on the reluctance of the residents of Soho to give him any help.

  ‘Bleeding lot of yobs,’ he crackled, stirring away angrily with his plastic spoon, ‘Once you get north of Coventry Street, you need thumbscrews to get them to give you so much as their ruddy name.’

  Turnbull was sitting with them, calm and serene as ever.

  ‘What have you got so far, Archie?’

  ‘Very little,’ grunted Benbow. ‘We’ve got the name of this boyfriend of Laskey’s from a garage chap a few streets away. He was called Golding and had a new Mark X Jag.’

  Can’t you trace him through that?’ asked the laboratory officer.

  Benbow shook his head. ‘Cunning so-and-so had registered it in the name of Paul Golding of the Newman Street address – insurance and all. We found it had been sold at a St. Alban’s car auction two days after the murder – again under a false name and address.’

  ‘That sure
ly marks him down as the guilty party,’ chipped in Bray, who had said this to Benbow at least three times already.

  ‘No, it doesn’t – it bloody well doesn’t!’ answered the chief inspector heatedly. ‘You try saying that in court and you’ll have defence counsel riding you like a donkey! He could have covered up his tracks like this just to protect his affair with the girl from getting back to his wife.’

  ‘Anything else?’ prompted Turnbull.

  ‘Damn all, this Golding has vanished off the face of the earth … though for all I know he might be sitting at the next table.’

  He scowled around the crowded canteen as if he hoped to catch the elusive Golding red-handed with egg and chips.

  ‘He’s just a name … a lousy false name,’ he muttered then glugged down his coffee.

  Turnbull began chipping away at his pipe bowl with some strange instrument. ‘So you’re up against it? Nothing in the flat?’

  Benbow shook his head.

  ‘Clean as a whistle. We’ve been over it a couple of times. Your boys have had dust and God knows what from there, but the answer’s a lemon.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  Benbow’s bright eyes flashed. ‘Work, boy – work! I reckon we haven’t heard the last of this fellow Golding. Something will crop up. And we’ve got four other jobs on the go. Our office looks like a wastepaper depot. This Golding lark will have to take a back seat until something breaks. I’ve sent the ACC my report on it this morning – if he doesn’t like it, he can stuff it!’ he ended pugnaciously.

  As if to give his pessimism the lie, things began to happen during the next twenty-four hours. Soon after lunch, when he had started to attack the mountain of paperwork in his office, one of the Drug Squad sergeants rang through.

  ‘Roberts here, sir … may be nothing in it, but we picked up a chap over the weekend who might be of interest to you. He’s charged with unlawful possession … a dozen decks of heroin on him. He’s in a bad way, been on the hard stuff for a long time. Remanded for a week, in Brixton but he’s starting to twitch already.’

  Benbow conjured up a nauseating picture of the man in the hell of a drugless existence in prison. He frowned.

  ‘OK, but how’s that going to help me?’

  ‘You sent Bray over the other day to ask if we had any angles on the injection marks on that Laskey woman. He mentioned that one of her calling places was the Nineties Club. We’ve never had a squeak about that place till now –as far as peddling goes – but this junkie we picked up in Leicester Square has started to talk … and he mentioned that place.’

  Benbow began to see the light.

  ‘Ah, this sounds more like it. We’ve been up a gum tree with this one, about time we had a lead from somewhere. Is he ready to blow the gaff?’

  ‘I think so. The doc here says that he’ll have to give him a bit of the dope to keep him sane but I think he’ll hold off long enough for us to work on him – within Judge’s Rules, of course.’

  Benbow ignored the sarcasm in Roberts’ voice.

  ‘When can we see this bird?’ he asked.

  ‘This afternoon would be best. He’ll go off the boil once he gets a shot from the M.O.’

  Later that afternoon, Benbow and Bray stepped through the barred inner gate of Brixton Prison into the bleak courtyard. There were formal flower beds set out in grim regularity but nothing could detract from the harsh surroundings of the ugly building. Men in drab overalls slouched around with brooms and buckets and trusties moved around with something approaching jauntiness in their step, their armbands worn with the pride of the V.C.

  A warder led them to the remand block. After a ritual of opening and closing knobless doors, they found the man they wanted shut up in a small room with the sergeant from the Drug Squad.

  Bray had not seen an addict in the withdrawal state before and he came away from Brixton with no desire to see another. The man, an emaciated skeleton with septic sores on his face, sat shaking on a chair in the middle of the small room in which he was being interviewed. His eyes were staring and his jaw chattered so much that he could hardly answer. A coarse prison blanket was draped around his shoulders but he seemed to rattle with cold, in spite of the oppressive central heating.

  Sergeant Roberts straightened up when they came in and gave them a summary of his results so far.

  ‘Our friend here, name of Jack Feiner, sir – he’s being very sensible. The doctor will be along soon – if he helps us all he can, I think we can recommend that he gets some medical attention.’

  He winked at Benbow and the haggard wreck, now two days without an injection, raised a gaunt face in supplication. Bray felt sick.

  ‘Better come outside, Roberts,’ suggested Benbow.

  They went into the corridor and Bray shut the door. A warder was left standing impassively over the pathetic figure.

  ‘What’s he said?’ asked the Admiral.

  ‘Told us about two people who are flogging decks of heroin. One is a barrow boy we’ve had our eye on for some time. The other is Ray Silver, the owner of the Nineties Club.’

  Benbow considered this. ‘Doesn’t get us any further on the Golding angle. Let’s have another word with him.’

  They went back into the room and Benbow stood over the trembling figure in the chair.

  ‘You used to get your heroin from Ray Silver, that right?’

  The man stuttered something and nodded his head.

  ‘When was the last time?’

  Feiner murmured something unintelligible and the chief inspector lowered his head to listen. He eventually gathered that the man never dealt directly with Silver, but knew that his waiter did the distributing.

  ‘But do you definitely say that Ray Silver is behind it?’ persisted Benbow.

  Feiner’s head trembled on his emaciated shoulders. ‘No, I only think so,’ he mumbled. ‘I only worked with Albert, the waiter’

  He had been going to the Nineties until a month before. He maintained, as firmly as he was able, that he had never heard of anyone called Rita Laskey or Paul Golding. Benbow spent a few more minutes snapping questions, bending low over the man to speak sharply into his ear and try to pick up the garbled replies from the pathetic remnant of what once had been a man.

  Feiner explained that he got the drugs from the waiter in an envelope which was put under the bill when the man brought it for drinks purchased in the club. Feiner would put the money for it on the tray and get only nominal change for the sake of appearances.

  He had no proof, direct proof, much to Benbow’s chagrin. Roberts was even more annoyed, as he was more directly concerned in the drug trade. Feiner could not say that Silver was in on the racket and it was only his word that Albert was dealing in heroin. The evidence would not be good enough to take to court unless they could get some corroboration from another witness or find drugs on the premises.

  ‘We’ve got enough to get a warrant for this club, though,’ said Benbow. ‘We’d better make arrangements to turn it over pretty soon.’

  The addict’s mind began to wander after a time and his wits seemed shattered. The detectives left the cell and walked back to the great steel grid that closed the inner side of the entrance arch.

  ‘I’m sure he’s speaking the truth,’ said Roberts seriously. ‘Under all that shaking, he’s still ticking over mentally. I’ve seen ’em ten times worse than that and they get better in a week – until they get their hands on the next lot of junk.’

  They were checked out of the prison and continued their talk on the way back to the Yard in the car.

  ‘We can’t really expect any tie-up between this chap and the Laskey affair,’ said Benbow. ‘The only link is drugs and that’s getting so common around the town these days that it needn’t be a common denominator at all … so go ahead and knock off this Silver character if you can, we’ll come along for the laughs if you don’t mind … we’re due for a bloody miracle and we may pick up something useful.’

  R
oberts looked worried. ‘We can’t touch Silver unless he’s got dope on his premises. I think I could risk knocking off this waiter but, if he doesn’t admit anything and we don’t get any confirmation, I’ll never get a charge to stick.’

  At seven o’clock that night, armed with a search warrant, they arrived in Gerrard Street. Benbow, Bray, and Roberts, together with a detective constable and two uniformed PCs, pushed past the doorman with a brief flourish of the warrant and descended into the club.

  At that early hour, there were only a couple of hard drinking types at the bar. The band had not yet arrived and all the tables were empty. The detectives, looking more like Yard men than anything television had ever dreamed up, marched past Snigger on their way to the office. If they hoped to catch Silver red-handed with a sack of morphine over his shoulder, they were out of luck. He was sitting behind his desk, fast asleep.

  He woke with a start and stared owlishly at the intruders. For a moment he thought it was a return of Conrad’s hooligans and fear leapt into his eyes.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’

  ‘Police officers – are you Ray Silver?’ asked Roberts brusquely.

  Silver paled slightly but kept his face well under control.

  ‘That’s me. What d’you want?’

  ‘We have reason to suspect that you may be in unlawful possession of narcotics in contravention of the Dangerous Drugs Act … in other words, chum, we want to see if you’ve got any stuff stacked away here.’

  Bray, watching Silver’s face, could have sworn that he saw relief cross it. He seemed to become unconcerned, almost bouncy, waving his hand around the room.

  ‘You must be off your chump, boy – but help yourself. I suppose you’ve got a warrant.’

  ‘Here it is.’ Roberts half-pulled a form from his pocket but made no attempt to show it to Silver.

  ‘Carry on, then … what bum has been trying to make trouble for me?’

  Benbow ignored him.

  ‘Where’s your waiter?’