Final Witness

by J F Straker

  The editor took his time in answering, fingering the goitre as he considered this. ‘It’s not an uncommon name,’ he said eventually. ‘Maybe he just threw it at you as bait. He was not to know you would connect it with a particular individual.’

  ‘Well, I do. And if Lumsden turns out to be one of the missing witnesses we’ll know Winstone’s on the level. Fair enough?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Snowball admitted grudgingly. ‘But don’t ride your judgment too hard. It could come a cropper.’ Just like the old buzzard, thought David, to shove a sting into the tail when he’s beat. But Snowball had not finished. He brought his head down and his body forward, to rest his forearms on the desk. Spectacles in hand, he pointed them at David. ‘And go easy with Morgan. He may be your godfather, but don’t let that fool you. Morgan’s essentially a copper, and a zealous one. If he catches you trying any more fast ones...’ He broke off, lifted a skinny hand, and slapped it down hard. ‘Wham!’

  David jumped at the sound. He said cheekily, ‘I didn’t think you cared, sir.’

  Snowball grinned, showing the gaps in his gums.

  ‘You’re dead right I don’t. But if Morgan cracks down on you he may crack down on me, and that I do not want.’ The grin vanished. ‘You need to get smart, my lad. You don’t think fast enough, or you’d never have landed yourself in that fix this morning.’

  ‘You try thinking fast on three hours’ sleep,’ David told him. But he knew that the criticism was justified, and his tone was only a moderate grumble. ‘Did Oliver get anywhere with that list of names?’

  ‘Not far.’ Snowball replaced the spectacles on his nose and searched through a pile of papers until he found what he wanted. ‘Three of them — Willson, Cayley, Grant — admitted to knowing her. Very cagey with their answers, however; been out with her a few times, they said, but couldn’t supply any background. Didn’t know she was married. The rest —’ he flipped the paper with the back of his hand, ‘like your friend Lumsden, they’d never even heard of her.’

  David tugged at his tie with one hand. With the other he scratched his backside. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Why should strangers be listed in her diary?’

  ‘It doesn’t follow that they’re strangers. She could be the kind of woman a respectable man doesn’t admit to knowing.’

  ‘That isn’t true of Lumsden. I’ll swear the name Winstone meant nothing to him.’

  ‘You’re an expert on character, aren’t you?’ There was a sneer on the little man’s cracked lips. ‘Well, she could have other names. Her kind often do.’

  ‘What do you mean by ‘her kind’?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m not starting another argument.’ Snowball puffed furiously at his pipe until the bowl glowed, and reached for a pile of manuscript. ‘Now clear off down to Rotherhithe and get results. That’s what I pay you for, don’t I? I can get arguments for nothing.’

  * * *

  Bill Brandon was no more communicative on the second visit than on the first, but he appeared unresentful of David’s persistency. This time David got inside the house; it was raining heavily, and Mrs Brandon was out.

  ‘She don’t take to you chaps,’ the youth told him. He waved a grimy hand round the small, scantily furnished parlour. ‘Once she got a whole pile of stuff on the knocker, and then the firm come and took it back. The money weren’t coming in reg’lar enough, they said.’ He seated himself on a wooden chair. ‘A pity. Them armchairs was real comfortable.’

  He sounded cheerfully unconcerned at the family misfortune. David wondered how much he had contributed to it. He said, ‘I’m not on the knocker.’

  ‘I know. You’re on the telly. You told me.’

  ‘I’m not that either.’ David had thought about this. In his role of television investigator he could invent no excuse for this second visit, certainly none that would permit the questions he wished to put. So he had decided to abandon it. For Bill Brandon, at any rate, he would be himself. ‘I’m a journalist.’

  ‘You are?’ The youth’s vacant face became almost animated. ‘Then why all this guff about the telly?’

  ‘That’s what I’m here to explain.’

  But he did not explain. He spoke only the threshold of truth; of the theft from the warehouse, the shooting of Constable Dyerson, and the search for the men who had killed him. He said nothing of Nora or the missing couple. They could be introduced later if Bill’s reaction appeared to warrant it. ‘I adopted the guise of T.V. investigator because I wanted to meet the people. You know —the human touch.’

  ‘You mean we’ll be in the papers?’

  It was not the reaction David had expected, but it had possibilities. It pointed a line for him to take.

  ‘Could be. Not all of you, of course. Just those with something to say. Preferably something dramatic.’

  But Bill Brandon had nothing dramatic to offer. At the time of the murder he had been ‘out with the lads’; it was not until the next day he had heard the news. ‘There was a chap said it was a woman what done it,’ he said. ‘A blonde. He seen her at the nick.’

  David offered him a cigarette. Casually he said, ‘A woman, eh? Sounds interesting. Did your pal recognize her?’

  ‘She used to live down Bermondsey way, he said. That’s where he come from. He didn’t know her name, he said; just seen her around. And he ain’t a pal of mine, mister. I just bumped into him in a caff.’

  That, David thought sadly, disposes of that. He did not even ask the name of the ‘caff.’ An unknown youth who lived down Bermondsey way and had seen a blonde in the nick was too slender a lead to follow.

  It was raining heavily as he walked down Rose End to Rotherhithe Street. He had his head down and his coat collar up, so that it was with something of a shock that he bumped into a man strolling slowly towards him. David muttered an apology and hurried on, his spirits as depressed as the weather. Clearly Bill Brandon was not the Bill of Nora’s diary; he had neither the guile nor the intelligence to play a part. Only Robert Lumsden remained. And if Lumsden failed him there was no lead left to follow.

  It was as he turned the corner into Cathay Street that he realized he was being followed. Previously he had heard the soft footfalls without their significance being apparent. Now they were. He looked quickly over his shoulder. Yes, the man was there, a discreet distance behind. David was almost certain it was the man he had bumped against in Rose End; a thin, insignificant little fellow in a long blue raincoat that almost swept the ground. The turned-down brim of his trilby obscured the upper part of his face; only the squashed nose and the pointed chin were visible. Morgan’s scraping the barrel, he thought grimly. Or was this an attempt to merge with the surroundings?

  He had intended to pay a call on Judy Garland; now he hurried past the house, all thought of social dalliance gone. The man would have gained nothing from his sleuthing so far; Morgan was welcome to Bill Brandon. But he was not welcome to Robert Lumsden. Not yet. Somehow the man must be lost before St James’s Road.

  A taxi came cruising down Jamaica Road. It was heading east, and without pausing to wonder at his good fortune David broke into a run, waving his arms and shouting. He reached the corner as the taxi skidded to a halt, and was about to instruct the driver to turn and make for St James’s Road when he changed his mind.

  ‘Just keep going,’ he said. Morgan’s watchdog might have a police car handy. ‘I’ll tell you where to turn off.’

  As the taxi moved away the man appeared at the street corner. The fact that his quarry had escaped him did not seem to disturb him; he stood irresolute for a few seconds, and then turned and walked back down Cathay Street. Delighted at his success, David turned from the window and relaxed, filled with an impish glee at having outwitted a professional. That luck had been with him did not dilute his pleasure.

  The driver took him round by Southwark Park and into St James’s Road from the southern end. David stopped him some distance short of the house, in case Morgan’s sleuth had managed to pick up the tra
il again. But the precaution was unnecessary. There was no sign of the little man in the blue raincoat.

  As usual, Robert Lumsden was out. Without disguising his chagrin, David asked the woman when she expected him to return.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said frigidly. ‘He comes and goes as he pleases. It’s none of my business. But if he’s home before midnight I’ll be surprised.’

  David wondered whether he should leave a message asking the man to ring him, but decided against it. It was not a matter one could discuss easily over the telephone, and there was always tomorrow. If tomorrow should also prove abortive he must think again.

  He was cooking a couple of chops for his supper when Morgan telephoned. As he recognized his godfather’s voice a little tingle of dread ran down David’s spine, and then dissolved.

  ‘David?’ The voice had lost its bite, the harmony was back. ‘Rees Morgan here. You told me that, according to Winstone, one of Bandy’s gang had the top of a finger missing. Did he say which hand or which finger?’

  David smiled to himself in relief. Apparently his sins were forgiven, if not forgotten. And did the query indicate that Morgan was now less certain of Winstone’s duplicity?

  ‘The left hand,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he mentioned which finger. Why?’

  ‘Just trying to sort out the possibles.’ There was a pause while Morgan turned to talk to someone beside him. When he spoke to David again his voice was even more mellow. He said, ‘Been down by the river this afternoon?’

  ‘You should know,’ David said. The other’s unexpected affability encouraged him to ask, ‘Didn’t he tell you I gave him the slip?’

  ‘Didn’t who tell me?’ The bite was returning. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  David sensed the warning, but he could not stop now.

  ‘Your tail. Isn’t that the word? Little chap in a blue raincoat; not the one who was tailing me yesterday. He picked me up in Rose End, and followed me to Jamaica Road. That’s where I lost him. Managed to hail a cruising taxi.’ David grinned to himself at the memory. Emboldened by his godfather’s silence, he said, ‘Weedy little runt. He must lower the average height of the Force quite considerably.’

  Morgan said quietly, ‘I told you, David — no one tailed you yesterday. One of my chaps happened to recognize you while he was making inquiries in the district; he’d seen you with me Wednesday night.’ So that explains the familiar face, thought David. ‘But he wasn’t there to-day. None of my chaps was. If someone tailed you that someone wasn’t a policeman.’ There was a slight pause. ‘You can draw your own conclusion from that.’

  The conclusion David drew was not encouraging. ‘Bandy?’ he suggested.

  ‘I imagine so. You’re interfering, and he wants to know why. You’d better let me have a description of the man. Incidentally, there are no weedy little runts in the Force. You should know that.’

  The chops were overcooked by the time David returned to them, the potatoes a watery mess. But even had they been perfect he would not have enjoyed them. Morgan had taken away his appetite. It had been annoying to believe himself under police surveillance. To know that he was being shadowed by a ruthless gunman was unnerving.

  It was not, David decided, an evening on which to sit at home and brood; he would do better to go out. A few pints of beer might restore his ailing spirits. Yet to drink alone was not to be convivial. He needed a companion, and on impulse he rang up Paul, though with little hope of finding him at home. Paul, he knew, was accustomed to dining out. But luck was with him. Paul was not only at home, he was happily disposed to an evening’s drinking.

  They met at Finch’s in the Fulham Road. Finch’s had been David’s choice. He was in no mood for a quiet saloon bar and a table in the corner. He wanted life and bustle and noise and variety, and Finch’s could usually offer those.

  At first they talked in generalities, or discussed the drinkers around them. Hair was much in evidence. Worn long, it stood out like a fringe over the men’s collars or fell, undraped and apparently uncombed, around the women’s shoulders. There was a profusion of jeans and hairy-looking sweaters, a few beards. The more conventionally dressed customers, David and Paul among them, pointed the contrast without looking out of place.

  ‘How goes the Quest?’ asked Paul, as they started on their second pint. He spoke the word ‘quest’ with a capital Q, as though it were a crusade or a pilgrimage.

  ‘Not too well,’ David said. It was a topic he would have preferred to forget for the evening, but he could not avoid the direct question. ‘Still, I suppose I must be warm. Bandy wouldn’t bother to have me tailed otherwise.’

  ‘Tailed, eh!’ Paul gave a low, elegant whistle. ‘Does he look like taking the offensive?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But it’s unnerving, to say the least.’

  ‘You can say that again, dear boy.’ Paul drank deep, his prominent lower lip seeming to scoop up the beer. ‘Incidentally, I was in the Croc at lunch-time. So were most of the regulars. No bandy legs there, I’m afraid, and I don’t think I missed a pair. How is your revered godfather progressing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know for sure. Not too happily, I suspect.’

  ‘And Elsie’s friend? Mrs Winstone, isn’t it? Any news of her that I can pass on? As a friend of yours, Elsie expects me to be bursting with information.’

  ‘There’s news,’ David said, ‘but I wouldn’t pass it on.’ He told Paul of the bloodstained car. ‘Elsie would almost certainly jump to the same conclusion as Morgan.’

  ‘She would indeed.’ Paul bent to peer at him over the rim of his glass. ‘But not you, eh? Does that mean you have inside information, or are you naturally optimistic?’

  ‘A little of each,’ David told him, and was glad that his friend did not press for further detail.

  It was ten o’clock when they finished their fourth pint and decided they had had enough beer for one evening. They were both in a quietly convivial mood. The prefect/middle-school relationship which had marked their first meeting had gone, and it seemed to David that he and Paul had been buddies for years. Certainly he could not have chosen a more suitable companion for that particular evening. Paul’s stories, his dry comments and biting wit, had been just what he needed.

  Out in the Fulham Road David said, ‘Care to come back to my place for a quick one? It’s not far.’

  ‘I don’t think so, dear boy.’ Paul smiled toothily, a trifle unsteady on his large feet. ‘Unaccustomed to quantities of beer as I am, I feel that a quick one might be disastrous. Let us leave well alone. But I’ll walk you back with pleasure. Exercise is what I need.’

  David welcomed his company. As they turned from the lights of the Fulham Road into the street in which he lived, his troubles seemed to come crowding back on him. Between the pools of light thrown by the street lamps there was only the red glow from behind curtained windows to relieve the darkness, and in every doorway, behind each area wall or parked car, he half expected to see a little man in a trilby hat and a long blue raincoat. The expectation did not frighten him, but he found it disconcerting.

  Outside the flat stood the Alvis. It needed only a slight show of interest from Paul for David to unhook and draw back the cover. ‘Nineteen twenty-five,’ he said proudly, patting the bonnet. ‘Not bad, eh?’

  Without any great show of enthusiasm Paul agreed that it was not bad at all. Dutifully he listened to technical detail and further praise, and admired what the night permitted him to see. But as David replaced the cover he drawled, ‘Not for me, dear boy. One has to drive to enjoy a car like that. As the perennial passenger I’d loathe it.’

  From the foot of the steps David watched his friend’s progress up the street. Silhouetted against the lights of the Fulham Road, Paul walked slowly, the fingers of his right hand drumming idly against the low area walls as he went. David had always understood that the loss of an arm could upset a man’s balance, but it did not seem to have affected Paul. His movements were as assured as his manne
r. He had learned to live with his disability.

  Or had he? David wondered, climbing the steps. Maybe he had adjusted himself physically. But as a boy Paul had not been noted for his tolerance; beneath the suave exterior of the man did bitterness still rankle? One could not blame him if it did. Despite his wealth, Paul must be missing much in life that was good.

  David paused to look back at the night and fumble for his key. Then something solid descended on the base of his neck, and abruptly he lost consciousness.

  9

  He struggled back to reality with the sensation that his head was held firmly in a vice; his ears were being squeezed together, and he felt that at any moment the pressure would become so great that his head would explode. The total darkness became a semi-darkness, a nebulous expanse out of which form and structure gradually emerged, unstable and vacillating as reflections in a ruffled pool. It took time for them to harden. When they did he became aware that he was still on the steps of his flat; the rough edges were biting into flank and neck, forcing his head sideways at a painful angle. There was a drumming in his ears, and he sat up slowly and put a hand to his head to contain the pressure. Only when the drumming had subsided did he venture to turn his neck.

  His first fully conscious sensation other than pain was of surprise that this could happen to him on the threshold of his own home, little more than a hundred yards from a main London thoroughfare. Then he remembered Constable Dyerson, and surprise turned to thankfulness. At least he was still alive. One hand pressed to the nape of his neck, from whence most of the pain seemed to emanate, he gripped the stone balustrade with the other and pulled himself up.

  It took him some time to find the key and fumble it into the lock; but already his brain was clearing, and once in his room he went directly to stare at himself in the mirror. There was no blood, no visible bruise. The back of his head was sore under his gently probing fingers, but it seemed that he had suffered no serious injury.