One Fight at a Time

by Jeff Dowson

  “It went through on the nod,” Sam said.

  There was a mighty bellow down the line.

  “Fan… fucking… tastic.”

  Chapter Twelve

  At Wednesday morning breakfast, all present admitted to not sleeping well. Nerves were stretched. Conversation was minimal, difficult to sustain.

  Grover knew he could do nothing to improve the vibe, so he borrowed a Bristol Street map from Arthur and an AA road guide from Arthur’s next door neighbour, filled up Salome and spent the rest of the day on a recce. He worked in ever widening circles using Gladstone Street as the centre point, gradually mapping out the city and its boundaries in his head. He established all the main directions out of the city – east to the coast, north to the A38 and Gloucestershire, west to the A4 and Wiltshire, south on the A37, the A38 and the A39 into Somerset. He had done this sort of exercise more times than he could recall, as the allied advance pushed on through France, the Ardennes, the Rheinland and into eastern Germany. He had learned, wherever he was, to place himself into the centre of the map and set the map to the compass in his head.

  After nine hours of driving around, he could stop the Jeep anywhere, get his bearings and point north. He got back to the shop as dusk was seeping into the sky.

  The atmosphere was much as he had left it. Harry was in his room. Ray Noble and his Orchestra were on the radio. Ellie went to bed early. Arthur and Grover talked in the kitchen for a while, then agreed they were not really improving the shining hour. Arthur went to join Ellie.

  Grover sat in the kitchen, listening to The Very Thought of You, acknowledging the growing awareness that he had no idea what to do next.

  *

  At Trinity Road, Bob Bridge was attempting to enjoy his Wednesday.

  Rovers had lost the derby match 4-3, after giving away two penalties to City in the last fifteen minutes. No joy in that result. The fact he had not managed to get to Ashton Gate and experience the agony first hand, did nothing to alleviate his mood. He was still miserable at breakfast. He was contemplating a walk on the Downs with the next door neighbour and his collie, before getting on with the day, when the world outside grew dark and the rain started pelting down. So he listened to the BBC news summary on the Home Service, finished his scrambled eggs and went into work.

  He was at the Bridewell by half eight. He looked down at the two filing cabinet folders and the padded envelope which sat on his desk. Goole stepped into his office as Bridge sat down. He was carrying a small, brown leather suitcase with plastic reinforced corners, a foot wide and four inches deep.

  “Going away for a few days?” Bridge asked him.

  “Do you want the cheery news, or the not so cheery news?”

  “The latter. As long as it lives up to the billing.”

  Goole pointed at the slimmer of the two folders. Bridge opened it and stared at two pages of figures.

  “Crime scene hours overtime worked,” Goole explained. “You ordered them done, you have to agree them.”

  Bridge looked at the time sheets. Extra hours on Monday night and last night.

  “Christ what were they doing? Nine hours overtime.”

  “Only seven of them. They counted two hours as time in lieu.”

  “Of what for fuck’s sake?”

  “Just sign them Boss. And take your bollocking from the ACC later.”

  Bridge closed the folder and slid it away from him.

  “How cheery is cheery?”

  Goole pointed at the second folder. This one, much thicker.

  “The crime scene reports,” he said. “Essentially as the Prof said they would read. Blood sprays across the sofa cushions and the carpet. Bloody fingerprints on Nicholas Hope’s shirt. Some of them his, some belonging to a person unknown to us.”

  Bridge stared at the folder.

  “And there’s a shoe print, or maybe a boot. Just the tip of a sole, but it might help. The crime scene photographs are there, forensics report, fingerprint notes, search findings... All the usual stuff.”

  “This is the cheery news is it?”

  Goole pointed at the padded envelope.

  “No, that is.”

  Bridge up-ended the envelope and shook it. A set of door keys dropped on to the desk. And a flick knife, the blade locked inside the handle.

  “The murder weapon,” Goole said. “It’s been dusted for finger prints. The traces are smudged. Probably because the last person to use it wore gloves. But there is dried blood inside the handle. Along the groove that houses the blade. The same blood group as Hope.”

  Bridge picked up the knife with his left hand.

  “Careful with it,” Goole said. “It’s not a stiletto. The blade flicks out to the left.”

  Bridge swapped hands. The casing was a little short of seven inches long, made of a light alloy sprayed dark blue. One inch and a bit wide, with the blade slot running the length of the spine. The blade release button was set into the head of the handle. Bridge balanced the knife in his hand, thumb on top of the handle, his fingers in a straight line down the underside. He pressed the button. The blade flicked out in a one hundred and eighty degree arc, in the time it took to blink.

  “Jesus,” Bridge said.

  He had played with flick knives before, but this one was impressive. The blade was six inches long and an inch deep. With one cutting edge, smooth all the way, until the blade curved to a point, where the steel was sculpted into a sequence of jags.

  “Made to cut rather than stab,” Bridge said. “Do we know who owns it?”

  “Not at the moment,” Goole said.

  “Where was it found?”

  “In the garden behind Hope’s flat. 5 Blenheim Villas has a back door. Behind the bottom of the stairwell on the ground floor. There’s a path across the garden to a gate in the shrubbery. And a lane behind the shrubbery, which leads to Albion Dock and the floating harbour.”

  “So our theory is what, precisely?” Bridge asked.

  “The killer left the building by the back door in something of a hurry and dropped the knife on the way.”

  “And for some reason didn’t stop and pick it up?”

  “Because, maybe, he didn’t have time,” Goole said. “Because, maybe, he thought someone had seen him. Maybe there was a flap on and he was in a hurry.”

  Bridge grunted. “Maybe.”

  “Take a look at the back garden photograph in the folder. The bed running along by the path is full of weeds and the lawn needs cutting.”

  Bridge looked down at the knife in his hand. He pressed his left palm on the flat side of the blade, pushed the steel back through the same one eighty degrees, let the blade click into place and put the knife back on the desk. Finally, he gestured at the suitcase.

  “So what’s that?”

  Goole placed it on the desk.

  “This was found under Hope’s bed. It’s a pretend suitcase. The kind of thing a kid uses. There are photographs in it. Mostly soldiers from Hope’s national service days. Pictures of boxers, some of them working out in what appears to be Roly Bevan’s gym. And half a dozen, stained with age, of a woman and a young kid. Hope and his mum, perhaps. And there are a couple of kid’s toys in there too. A yoyo and a small, battered, teddy bear. He’s lost a lot of his furry coat.”

  “Alright,” Bridge said. “Give me an hour or so to go through all this. Then we’ll have a council of war.”

  Goole headed for the office door. Bridge murmured a distracted thanks.

  *

  I need a fight,” Robbie McAllister said.

  “No. What you need to do,” Rodney Pride suggested, “is to pay me what you owe me.”

  McAllister went on as if he had not heard.

  “Licensed or unlicensed. Doesn’t matter.”

  Pride raised his empty beer glass. “Get another round in.”

  McAllister grimaced, got up from his seat and moved to the bar. Pride looked around him. At the heavy brown furniture, wooden benches and stools and the nicotine sta
ined ceiling. The Vaults had been his local once. Before the fucking war had interrupted things. Now, it was no place to spend lunchtime. Or any time come to think of it. Still, he needed to put one over on Roly Bevan and Robbie Mac was the bloke who could help. And no one, drunk or sober, would think of looking for him and McAllister in here.

  McAllister came back with the beers. He put the glasses on the table and sat down again.

  “Well?...”

  Pride stared into his beer. Enjoying McAllister’s growing irritation.

  “There’s three unlicensed bouts on a card tonight at the old Temperance Hall in Kingswood,” Pride said. “Supposed to be four. One of the fighters has pulled out. The foolish twat fell down the stairs at home and broke his wrist. I guess you could take his place. The purse will be thirty-five quid.”

  McAllister stared at him. “Is that all?”

  Pride made him wait again. He picked up his glass, took a sip of beer, put the glass down again and swivelled it round on his beer mat.

  “I could get that up as far as fifty...”

  McAllister cheered up a bit.

  “But I’ll expect something in return.”

  There was another beat’s pause.

  “What?” McAllister asked.

  Pride took another drink. McAllister sighed and waited.

  “In time,” Pride said. “How are you getting on with Roly?”

  “I’m not. That’s why I’m here.”

  Pride grinned at him. “Okay...”

  *

  Bridge swallowed the last piece of pork pie on his plate and stared across the office. Means, motive and opportunity. The undisputed tenets of all crime investigation. Opportunity was clear – Hope’s flat. Means hardly open to conjecture either – the knife. Motive? – that was the problem. Two out of three wasn’t enough.

  He stared at the photograph of Nicholas Hope. Whey faced and all bled out, on a sofa in a crappy bed-sit. His life taken away from him at how old? Twenty-one, twenty-two? He searched through the folder for a biography of some sort. There was not much information, beyond his name and address. No police record. No links to anyone else. No father. Mother killed in a road accident in December 1938. Until five years ago, a resident of St Christopher’s Children’s Home in Cotham. Might get something from there. No known associates. Except for his landlord, Roly Bevan, who was listed as a person of potential interest to the investigation.

  He opened the suitcase. Photos of squaddies training and marching and drinking, and boxers working out. And a woman, in her mid-20s at a guess, smiling at the camera, in a garden and on a beach. And one picture of her with a toddler on the pier at Weston Super Mare, the child clutching a teddy bear and smiling up at her.

  Bridge picked up the bear and looked again at the photograph. The bear in his left hand was the same shape and had the same kind of ears. There was a magnifying glass somewhere. He searched the drawers in his desk, found the glass and picked up the photograph again. The bear in the picture was the bear in the suitcase. Presumably, the child was Hope himself. On a day trip to Weston, safe and happy and unaware of the perils that lay ahead.

  Bridge put the bear and the photograph back in the suitcase, feeling like an intruder. He closed the case and stared across the office.

  Somebody knew a lot about this. Somebody had to be made to talk. If Roly Bevan was not in the mood to help, then Harry Morrison had to be found and given the opportunity to do so. He got out of his chair, moved to the office door and called across the squad room.

  “Tom...”

  He turned back into the office and lifted his hat and coat from the bentwood coat stand by the door. Goole stepped into the open doorway.

  “Two things. Put out an all car alert for Harry Morrison and – ”

  The telephone on his desk rang. Coat over his left arm, left hand holding his hat, Bridge picked up the receiver.

  “Bridge...”

  Goole waited.

  “Oh yes,” said Bridge.

  Goole leaned to his right and let the door post take his weight.

  “Has he?” Bridge went on.

  Goole rubbed the end of his nose.

  “Oh does he?”

  Bridge dropped his hat onto his desk and draped his coat over the back of the desk chair. Goole turned to leave the office. Bridge raised his left arm and waved at Goole to stay.

  “Put him on,” he said.

  Bridge pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Goole stepped forwards and sat down in it. Bridge perched on the edge of his desk.

  “Mr Morrison...” he said into the phone receiver. “How are you today?... You do? Well that’s excellent... So I hear... No please, don’t put yourself out, we’ll come to you...” Bridge twisted his left wrist and looked at his watch. “In a couple of hours... Thank you.”

  He put the receiver back in its cradle. He looked at Goole, who waited for the revelation.

  “Harry Morrison has been away for a few days. Has only just heard that we would like to talk with him. Consequently, he is more than pleased to make himself available.”

  He stood up again, picked up his hat and coat.

  “What’s the second thing?” Goole asked.

  Bridge stared at him.

  “Two things, you said, just before the phone rang.”

  “Yes. Find us a car and a driver. I’ll meet you at the front door.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the communications room, Goole cancelled the all car alert. And from the canteen he gathered a driver who had lingered to take a second cup of coffee after his lunch. They picked up a Wolseley from the car park. Ten minutes later, the car pulled up outside number 5 Blenheim Villas. The two detectives climbed out, into some late April sunshine.

  One of the keys from the padded envelope fitted the front door. In the flat, Bridge laid the crime scene pictures on the threadbare carpet to the right of the sofa and stood back to take in the whole room. The blood spray patterns across the floor were clearer in the photographs, taken with a flash. Two parallel curves of dots, not easy to see in the dirty brown and red herringbone pattern of the carpet itself. Bridge knelt down and took a closer look, following the blood trail back to the sofa. The spots became larger, then morphed into ugly blobs. Until they were absorbed by the pool of blood, which had formed around Hope’s neck, as the force of the pressure had slowed. Bridge looked at the pictures of the body again. Then at the photos of Hope’s shirt. Drenched in blood around the collar. Lines sprayed down the front of it, like strings of red pearls.

  Goole moved to Bridge’s shoulder. He bent down and picked up one of the photographs of the body.

  “Do we assume he was killed in that position?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Sliced by a left hander, as the Prof suggested?”

  “Sitting astride him possibly,” Bridge said.

  The two detectives stared at the sofa.

  “Which leads us to what conclusion?” asked Bridge.

  “The Prof is cleverer than we are,” Goole said.

  “That too,” Bridge said. “But what I meant was, if the killer was sitting astride Hope and able to slit his throat so comprehensively, then like the Prof suggested, he had to be unconscious at the time. And in the process, the killer must have been showered with blood. Before leaving the flat in a hurry. So, we have panic, a killer in a bit of a rush, and blood all over the place. Surely somebody, somewhere, must have seen something. Go and talk to the girl downstairs again. Wotshername... Rachel.”

  Goole left the flat. Bridge stared at the sofa again. He walked around it. Pushed it back across the room a couple of feet and looked down at the section of carpet revealed. No different from the rest of it. Maybe a bit dustier. Goole came back into the flat.

  “She’s gone out.”

  “Right. Let’s go and take a look in the garden.”

  It was unmistakably short of a little care and attention. There was a lawn, growing wild and spiky, struggling up through the moss a
nd the weeds. It sorely needed scarifying, treating with something and then mowing. Some of the long grass and weeds had been flattened by the boots of the crime scene team. Goole stood on the path, studied one of the photographs, then scanned the lawn in front of him.

  “About here,” he said. Then he crabbed a couple of feet to his right, checked the picture again, examined the edge of the lawn. “To be exact, right here,” he said, pointing at the grass about a foot in front of him.

  “Who’s responsible for keeping this in order?” Bridge asked.

  Goole looked up and pointed to a shed which backed into the shrubbery in the extreme left hand corner of the garden.

  A voice behind them said, “There’s a mower in there. And some tools. But we’re supposed to have the services of a gardener.”

  The detectives turned round. The information just offered had come from a silver haired lady, probably in her seventies. She was small, an inch over five feet at the most. With grey eyes, a long straight nose and a matching pointed chin. She was holding a plastic basket, piled with washing.

  “Mr Bevan seems be ignoring that part of the contract. Are you the police?”

  Goole made the introductions.

  “I’m Maddie Rawlins,” she offered. “I live on the ground floor. I’ve been away since last Friday. Are we safe? I mean, will the person who did this come back?”

  She looked from one policemen to the other.

  “No,” Bridge said. “This business was to do with Mr Hope. There is no reason to suspect that whoever killed him will return.”

  Mrs Rawlins looked down at the basket.

  “Wednesday is washing day this week,” she said. “Do you mind helping me with the line?”

  “Sergeant Goole would be delighted Mrs Rawlins,” Bridge said.

  The line stretched from a hook at the corner of the house, screwed into the wall outside the lady’s kitchen window, to a pole planted to the right of the garden shed. Bridge took a look in the shed as Goole rigged the line. He discovered four wooden garden chairs painted white, one small spade, one larger spade, a fork, a hoe, a range of trowels and a green Atco mower. It was a recent model with a steel plate chassis powered by a two stoke motor and considerably under-used, as the state of the garden bore witness. There was no can of petrol in the shed. Perhaps that was the problem.