Final Witness

by J F Straker

  ‘Help yourself. There’s bacon and eggs. And coffee. I could do with a cup of coffee myself.’ He slammed the wardrobe door shut. ‘I’ll clear up some of this mess.’

  Ten minutes later he joined her in the small kitchen and plumped himself down on the solitary chair. ‘So far as I can see they’ve taken nothing,’ he said. ‘Or nothing of the slightest value. There may be the odd handkerchief missing; I wouldn’t know about that. They must have been loco.’

  Susan winced as drops of hot fat spluttered from the pan on to her hands. She had wrapped a towel round her waist. ‘Have you rung the police?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll do it later. How’s that coffee coming along?’

  ‘Nearly ready. Sure you don’t want anything to eat?’

  ‘I might manage an egg.’

  They ate their meal in near silence; Susan was too hungry to talk. When she had finished she gave a satisfied sigh, wiped her mouth and fingers (her fingers were short and stubby, and she wore her nails long and pointed to disguise the fact), and said casually, ‘Why were you so late coming home this evening? A girl?’

  As a rule they met once or twice a week, although it was Susan who usually arranged the meetings. More often than not it was also Susan who paid for their entertainment. But they had not seen each other since the week-end, and David realized that the girl knew nothing of the events of the past two days. So he told her. Susan could be trusted to keep her mouth shut. She had been his confidante before.

  She was both thrilled and horrified. ‘Things happen to you, don’t they, darling?’ she said. ‘First that dreadful business at Shere Island, and now this. Do you know Nora Winstone well?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Susan! Haven’t I just told you I don’t?’ As always, he resented the thinly veiled reproach that invariably crept into her voice when she asked about other women he had met. ‘I’ve danced with her a few times at the Centipede, and I took her home Tuesday night because it seemed the decent thing to do. I don’t know her at all.’

  Susan eyed him fondly. Despite the many years she had known him, it was only recently she had decided she was in love with him. That, of course, put no restraint on David; he was completely unaware of her love, and showed no sign of reciprocating it. Despite that (or perhaps because of it), she was always suspicious of, and uneasy about, the other women in his life; although few but herself would regard him as a good catch, she reflected, noting the stubble on his chin, the crumpled collar and the crooked tie, the way his dark hair flopped untidily over his eyes. But then his untidiness was an essential part of David. No, it was his selfishness and his obstinacy that might make other women reject him. And financially he was a complete loss. Even as a more or less unknown actress her earnings were greater than his.

  Susan smiled to herself. With so many short-comings, it was strange that she should want him for herself. Yet he had many endearing qualities. He was cheerful and amusing and very good company; he never bore resentment or shirked an issue; and when sympathy was really warranted he could be truly sympathetic. Above all, she found him exciting; and to Susan boredom was the cruellest enemy of all.

  ‘You don’t suppose the two events are connected?’ she asked. ‘The kidnapping, I mean, and this place being burgled.’

  ‘Broken into, not burgled. No, of course not. Why should they be?’

  ‘I don’t know, darling. But if this Bandy creature (do you think he’s a jockey?) decided you were one of Mrs Winstone’s boy-friends he might want to know more about you. You drove her home. And I bet you kissed her good-night.’

  ‘Only out of politeness. She’s not my type.’ David considered the suggestion. ‘Still, could be. I’ll ring Morgan in the morning.’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘At this hour? No, thank you. The old buzzard’s language would probably fuse the whole telephone system.’

  ‘You could leave a message for him at the police-station.’

  ‘That’s true. It would save time in the morning.’

  The desk sergeant at M Division headquarters suggested he should dial 999 and report the matter to the local police. David accepted this suggestion, although he had no intention of complying with it. ‘But it’s important that Superintendent Morgan should also be informed,’ he added.

  The sergeant was impressed. ‘I could get him at his home, sir, if it’s really urgent.’

  ‘No,’ David said hastily. ‘Just see that he gets the message first thing tomorrow.’

  He offered to run Susan home in the Alvis, and was relieved when she refused. But he walked with her to the Fulham Road.

  ‘Ring me this evening, darling,’ she said, as she climbed into the taxi he found for her. ‘Before, if there’s any news.’

  He promised to do that.

  Walking slowly back to the flat, he pondered Susan’s suggestion that Bandy might be curious about him. It was an unnerving thought; from what he knew of that gentleman his curiosity could be dangerous. David preferred his own interpretation; that a couple of casual crooks had believed the flat to be unoccupied, had found the door unlocked, and had walked in on the off-chance of picking up something of value. It was a decent neighbourhood, and the houses looked prosperous. And yet — well, why had they taken absolutely nothing? The electric razor, for instance, or his new suit. They were worth a few quid, surely. And there was a pair of gold cuff-links in the stud-box.

  Footsteps behind him caused him to stop and turn; thinking of the gunman had made him jumpy. But the footsteps had stopped too. A shadow — was it a shadow? — moved, and he called out, ‘Anyone there?’

  He was unhappy about his voice. It sounded creaky. Then the shadow came forward and became a man; a slim man in a light-blue suit of exaggerated cut, and wearing pointed shoes. Under the turned-down brim of the hat his face was dark, there was the greater darkness of a small moustache.

  ‘You David Wight?’ the man said.

  The words were slurred, as though painful to utter. Yet the voice struck a chord in David’s memory, and he moved closer. As the man looked up David saw the jagged scar that split his forehead.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You were at the Centipede on Tuesday night. With Nora Winstone.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the man said. ‘I’m her husband.’

  6

  This just isn’t my night, David decided wearily as he led the way back into the flat and switched on the light. First Susan, and now this chap. But although his body was tired his mind was alert. Winstone might be the link he had been seeking. If anyone could provide information about Nora’s family it must be her husband.

  ‘Take a pew,’ he said. And then, ‘Hey! Been in the wars, haven’t you? Who did that?’

  ‘That’ was a heavily damaged face. Winstone’s right eye was half closed, the skin around it bloated and discoloured. His full lips were split and swollen and twisted, his cheek bruised and cut. With that jagged scar across his forehead he was not a pretty sight.

  ‘Bandy done it,’ he said, his good eye narrowed in a scowl.

  ‘Bandy!’ This was better than David had expected. ‘You know him? You’ve actually met him?’

  Winstone shrugged his narrow shoulders. He did not look comfortable on the chair, and it occurred to David that the man might have suffered other, unseen injuries. But he was too impatient for news to worry about his visitor’s state of health.

  ‘I met him,’ Winstone said. ‘Man, I sure met him. But I won’t say I know him.’ He fingered his bruised cheek, and winced. ‘He don’t do this while I’m looking at him.’

  To David, all West Indians were alike. He could have passed this man in the street unrecognizing were it not for the scarred forehead and the odd little chevron of a moustache. Yet now as he looked at him he saw in him an individual, not a race; and Winstone, he suspected, was not a happy individual. Whatever life had been for him before, of late it had not been kind. True, he looked prosperous enough, with his light-weight suit and his expensive shoes, his silk shirt a
nd his gaudy tie. But there had been that business at the club, and now this...

  ‘You look as though you could do with a beer,’ he said. ‘Hang on a minute.’

  The beer and the glasses were in the kitchen; he had no fridge, and in the summer the beer was usually warm. But the May night was cool, and so was the beer. Winstone drank it painfully, displaying a gap in his teeth that had not been there before. There was still a plentiful supply of gold.

  He said, ‘You want to know about Nora?’

  David nodded. ‘I certainly do. How did you come to tangle with this Bandy?’

  It was not a pretty story. They had picked him up in the small hours of Wednesday morning, Winstone said, while he was walking home from the club where he worked; three men in a car, and all masked. ‘Picked him up’ was a literal description of what happened, for previously they had jumped him from behind and knocked him out. He recovered his senses in the car, but not for long; the men saw to that. He had no idea where they took him. He had a vague memory of being dragged up some stairs, and then he was in a small room with several other men, also masked. They poured spirits down his throat, sat him on a chair, and slapped his face until he seemed reasonably alert. After that they started to question him.

  ‘About your wife?’ asked David.

  Winstone nodded. ‘They seem to think I know about Nora, but I don’t. I don’t read no papers, you see. So then they tell me. They say they got Nora in the house, and that we both getting the treatment if we don’t play ball. It don’t take no guessing to figure what they mean by that. Man, them are real mean guys!’

  David believed him. ‘What did playing ball include?’

  They had asked him first about the two other witnesses to the shooting; who were they, what were they doing in Rotherhithe Street? ‘I tell them I don’t know nothing about no shooting, that this is the first I hear. So then they rough me up a little and ask me again.’ Winstone fingered his jaw and took another sip at the beer. ‘What can I do, man? Like I said, I don’t know nothing. They rough me up some more, and say to go in and knock some sense into Nora. She being stubborn, they say; she won’t talk. And if she don’t talk soon, they say, there’s going to be trouble for both of we. Real trouble.’

  ‘Did you see Nora?’

  Yes, he had seen her. She was in an adjoining room, with a mattress on the floor and a chair and a table, and the windows boarded up. They had handled her roughly, but they had not yet beaten her up the way they had him; her face was grey and lined without its make-up, but it was not bruised or marked. She was still in the black velvet dress she had worn at the Centipede, although now it looked bedraggled and creased, and was torn at one shoulder. She wore no shoes, there were more ladders than thread in her stockings; her blonde hair was no longer piled high on her head, it had fallen raggedly about her shoulders. She had shown no emotion at seeing him, Winstone said. Perhaps what she had been through had drained her of emotion.

  ‘What did she say?’

  Winstone shrugged. With him it was an habitual gesture. It seemed that his mobile shoulders could not be still for long.

  ‘Nothing. She talks, but she don’t say nothing them guys wants to hear.’

  ‘Did you try to persuade her?’

  Yes, he had tried. He was frank about that. He had tried because he was scared, because he valued his life more than justice or the lives of two unknown people. He had tried to make Nora see it the same way. But Nora was stubborn; his pleading had been unavailing. On one point, however, she had seemed to make sense. Her one chance of survival, she said, was to deny them the information they needed. The treatment might get rougher, but only she could tell them the names of the other witnesses, and they would keep her alive until she did. Then they would kill her, as they would kill the others when they found them. She must hope that the police would find her before that happened.

  ‘She’s brave,’ Winstone said, with a sad little shake of the head. ‘Real brave. And hard. Man, I never see a woman so hard. I reckon nothing won’t make her talk if she don’t want.’

  ‘But didn’t she tell them about losing her spectacles?’ David protested. ‘Didn’t she explain that she was no danger to them because she couldn’t identify the murderer?’

  ‘She tell them. They just don’t believe her. They think she lying to save her skin.’

  David shuddered. Nora Winstone meant nothing to him personally, but it was horrible to think of any woman, and particularly a woman he knew, in the clutches of men like Bandy and his gang. They had not needed to kill Constable Dyerson. They had killed because it had been the easiest, not the only, solution to their dilemma. Or perhaps it was simply that men like Bandy preferred to kill.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘They let me go,’ Winstone said. ‘They put me in the car with a sack over my head, and dump me on Wimbledon Common. By the time I get the sack off they gone.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Man, am I glad!’

  David stared at him. ‘They let you go?’

  ‘Sure. I’m here, ain’t I?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ It had been a stupid question. ‘Have you been to the police?’

  The vestige of a grin showed on the twisted lips. Light glinted on the gold teeth. ‘Me and the police, man, ain’t exactly like that.’ He held up two fingers, one crossed over the other.

  ‘What has that to do with it?’ David was angry now. He banged the glass down on the floor and pushed nicotine-stained fingers through his unruly hair. ‘It’s your wife we have to think of. Are you going to leave her with those brutes just because you’re scared of the police?’

  The grin vanished. Winstone said earnestly, ‘I ain’t scared of them, Mr Wight. I don’t like them, but I ain’t scared of them. I just want to do best for Nora. That’s why I’m coming here.’

  ‘Oh!’ David was slightly mollified. ‘But why me? Why not the police?’

  Winstone took the cigarette he proffered, lit it and gave a few abortive puffs, then put it down carefully in the ashtray.

  With a mouth like his smoking was little pleasure.

  ‘Because Bandy says not. He says if the cops starting to interfere Nora going to get killed.’ David gave an impatient click of the tongue. With or without Winstone’s help, the police would interfere should the opportunity occur. ‘And why you want me to go to the police? I don’t know where Nora is, and I don’t know what they guys look like. So what I tell the cops? That Nora still alive? Man, I can do that on the telephone.’

  David frowned. The argument was reasonable, but was it based on truth? Could Winstone really give no more information than that? He said, ‘Are you sure that’s all? You may not have seen the men’s faces, but how about their voices, their physical appearance?’

  ‘They all sound the same under masks,’ Winstone said. He took another painful puff at the cigarette, and eased his body in the chair. ‘Look the same, too. Some shorter than others, but so’s most guys, ain’t they?’ He frowned. ‘They was young, mostly.’

  ‘Well, that’s something. Anything more?’

  ‘One of them have the top of a finger missing.’ Winstone held up both hands, flexing the long brown fingers before his eyes. After a pause he said, ‘On the left hand.’

  He put his hands back in his lap. David saw that there were little flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth, and wondered if the man were nervous. He said again, ‘But why me? What am I supposed to do?’

  Nora had mentioned his name, Winstone said, and that he was a journalist, and the name of his paper. She had told him this when he had asked her about the kidnapping, and to Winstone it had seemed to offer a forlorn chance of saving her. Newspapers were powerful. If the editor were to offer a reward...

  ‘It’s not that kind of a paper,’ David said sadly. ‘Not that kind of an editor either, unfortunately.’

  Winstone looked dispirited. To cheer him David outlined briefly the task that Topical Truths had undertaken — to find the missing witnesses and put them under police protection.
He said nothing of Snowball’s professed intention to hold them until it suited him to produce them; it was an intention of which David had disapproved at the time, and which now seemed to him both dangerous and immoral. It was imperative that once they were found they should be adequately protected. To David it also seemed important that their safety should be made public. ‘It will show the brutes that killing your wife will solve nothing. They’ll probably release her and try to skip the country.’

  He spoke with assurance, although he was not himself assured. But the West Indian nodded eagerly. He said, ‘Man, that makes sense. You let me help you? I like to make trouble for they guys.’ He fingered his cheek and lip. ‘Like hell I do!’

  The man’s eagerness carried conviction, yet David hesitated to accept his offer. Was that because of colour prejudice? he wondered guiltily. Winstone’s face bore eloquent testimony to the treatment meted out to him by Bandy and his gang; he had every cause to wish to get even with them. There was no reason to doubt that he was Nora’s husband, or his desire to rescue her. Even if they had not been living together they were certainly on friendly terms, or Nora would not have invited him to the Centipede.

  Yet caution persisted. ‘I’ll be glad of your help when things start moving,’ he said, standing up and flexing his muscles. ‘How do I contact you?’

  Winstone stood up too. ‘You know the Seventy-Seven Club?’ David nodded. ‘I play with the band.’ Then he grinned. ‘Man, maybe I better contact you. With a face like this I can’t do no trumpet-playing. And maybe I change my digs, in case Bandy decide he want to see me again.’

  David gave the man his telephone number, watched him write it down. The West Indian’s fingers were long and supple, but he wrote laboriously. David wondered what sort of an education he had received; the bare minimum, he suspected. He wondered, too, why Nora had married him and why they had separated, and the reason for his mistrust of the police. Had Winstone a criminal record? But even had he felt justified in putting all these questions, this was no time for them. It was three-thirty in the morning.