Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

  “I took it off ages ago.”

  When Mercer got home, he found Father Philip Walcot waiting for him, curled up in one of his armchairs and smoking a pipe.

  The priest said, “I’m sorry to disturb you out of hours. You must be a very busy man.”

  “You’re welcome at any time,” said Mercer.

  It was nine o’clock. He was wondering what excuses Venetia had dreamed up for missing supper.

  “When you came to see me, you asked me about Sweetie Hedges. I told you all I could about her. At the time.”

  “You’ve remembered something more?”

  “It’s not a question of remembering. I had this in my mind. But I hadn’t decided, then, to pass it on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it came to me under the seal of the confessional.”

  “But you’re prepared to tell me now?”

  “I’ve never held it to be a seal which is unbreakable. For instance, if I could save life by telling some secret which had been entrusted to me, I should not hesitate to do so. More particularly if the revelation could no longer hurt the man who made it.” He smiled disarmingly. “After this prologue of trumpets you are going to find the main theme rather tame, I fear. The man who made his confession to me was Detective Sergeant Rollo. He later took his own life. Incidentally, that doesn’t speak well for whatever comfort I was able to give him.” Father Philip paused.

  “Perhaps I can save you some embarrassment,” said Mercer. “Did he, by any chance, confess to you that he had told a lie, in the course of duty, and at the instance of a man to whom he was under some sort of financial obligation?”

  “Exactly correct.”

  Mercer leaned forward and added, “I suppose he didn’t, by any chance, happen to mention just who he was obliging?”

  “No.”

  “Or what the nature of his obligation was?”

  “He was scrupulous in avoiding implicating anyone else.”

  “Understandable, but unfortunate.”

  “He did, however, say that although the lie was originally innocent, he now realised that it was connected with the death of a girl. That is why I thought it right to tell you. Sergeant Rollo is dead. My breach of confidence can do no harm to him. And it might, I thought, help you. But I see that you knew of it already.”

  “I didn’t know it. I suspected it. There’s a difference. To have positive confirmation is extremely useful, and I’m obliged to you. Tell me, Father, speaking theologically rather than legally, if ‘A’ deliberately gets ‘B’ into his debt, and if he then uses his power to force ‘B’ to tell a lie, and if consciousness of the lie is one of many reasons which causes ‘B’ to kill himself, would you call ‘A’ a murderer?”

  “I expect the Jesuits could give you a convincing answer to that. It’s beyond me. It’s certainly not legal murder. A lot of the worst sorts of killings aren’t.” Father Walcot uncoiled himself, and got up to go. He had reached the door before he said, “I nearly forgot. Dolly Grey says you’re to watch out.”

  “Dolly Grey?”

  “She’s one of the oldest members of my congregation. A dear old soul, who lives across the road from you. She makes a sort of living by letting out rooms. She says that, about a fortnight ago, a very sinister man took on her front room.”

  “Did she say in what particular way he was sinister?”

  “According to Dolly, he was very large.”

  “That can’t have been all.”

  “And very rough.”

  “You mean he didn’t shave.”

  “I think by rough she meant the opposite of smooth in appearance and manner.”

  “I see.”

  “But her chief criticism was that he didn’t seem to have anything to do. He seems to spend most of his time sitting near the window, watching this house. That’s why she thought I ought to warn you.”

  Mercer considered the matter. Then he said, “Tell Dolly that I am very grateful for her information. It’s co-operation of this sort, between members of the public and the Police Force which makes our job the pleasure it is.”

  “If I say it in that tone of voice she’ll think you’re laughing at her.”

  “No, no. I really am very grateful.”

  Evan Pugh was known to his friends as ‘Dutch’ Pugh, not from any connection with Holland, but because he preferred to pay for his own drinks, and to let his friends pay for theirs. In the company in which he moved this was considered anti-social, and he was not a popular character, though respected for his handling of the short length of rubber tubing loaded with lead, which he carried in a special pocket on the left-hand side inside his coat. The last person on whom he had used it was still in hospital, unable to speak or see.

  As he came out of the saloon bar of the Duke of Cumberland public house, and stood for the moment to accustom his eyes to the dark, someone cannoned into him, nearly knocking him off balance. Pugh swung round, with a selection of obscenity and advised the man who had bumped into him to watch his step, to mind where he was going, and generally to behave himself.

  “Take it easy, cock,” said the man. “The pavement doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t, doesn’t it?” said Pugh. A couple of shuffling steps brought him within hitting distance. He could see the man more clearly now. He was big, but Pugh had cut down bigger men than him. The fingers of his right hand closed round the rubber grip of his favourite weapon. At this moment something hit him on the back of the neck. It hit him so hard that he had no clear impression of what happened next, but when the inside of his head stopped swinging round inside his skull and he had blinked his eyes open, he realised that he was sitting in the front seat of an old saloon car, beside the driver.

  As he shifted in his seat, a bland voice from the back of the car said, “I shouldn’t do anything you’d regret, Dutchy.”

  Pugh twisted his head. As the car passed under a streetlamp he could see that there were two men in the back. They were both large, and were both smiling. The man who had spoken said, “He’s in a delicate state. Shook up. I wouldn’t advise him to do anything violent. Would you, Charlie?”

  The second man agreed. He said he wouldn’t advise it, either. They were like two Harley Street surgeons discussing a difficult case.

  Pugh sat still. A purveyor of force, he respected superior force when he ran into it.

  After about ten minutes the car swung into the courtyard of a big, undistinguished office block and drew up opposite the back entrance. A voice from the rear invited Pugh to dismount. He opened the side door of the car, and slid out. For a moment, there was no one near him, and he contemplated the possibility of making a bolt for it. As his feet touched the ground, the firm earth rolled under him. He realised that he was in no condition to fight or fly and followed the men into the building. They went up two flights of uncarpeted stairs, along a corridor, past a few thousand similar doors, and then through a pair of swing doors which shut off the end of the passage.

  The words painted in black on the glass of the left-hand door said, ‘Ministry of Agriculture’ and on the right-hand door, ‘Soft Fruit Division’. In the room at the end were two men. The one who was sitting on the edge of the table, swinging a leg, he recognised as Chief Superintendent Morrissey, C.I.D., head of No. 1 District. The other, seated behind the desk, was a stranger. He looked young enough to be Morrissey’s son. He had blue eyes, light hair, and a complexion so delicate that one imagined he would blush very easily. His name was John Anderson and when Vidall died and Morrissey was promoted he was destined to become one of the most feared gang-breakers in England.

  Morrissey said, “Sit down, Pugh.”

  Pugh said, “You’ve got no right to do this to me. That man hit me. It’s unlawful. What am I supposed to have done? I haven’t heard no charge yet.”

  “No difficulty about a charge, if you insist. Carrying an offensive weapon.”

  Pugh’s hand went to his coat. The cosh was no longer the
re. One of the men who had brought him in laid the length of rubber tubing gently on the table beside Morrissey. “That’s right, sir. In his inside pocket.”

  “Resisting arrest?”

  “That’s true too, sir. Took a definite swing at me, didn’t he Charlie?”

  “He certainly did.”

  “Driving a stolen car, too.”

  “That’s a lie. I never had no stolen car. I never had no car at all. What are you talking about?”

  “The car you came here in. Stolen twenty-four hours ago. Covered with your finger-prints.”

  Pugh started to say something, and stopped. The floor had started rocking again. Morrissey said, “Sit down, Pugh. All right, you two, I’ll deal with this. Now you listen to me, Pugh; or Taylor, or whatever you call yourself. We’ve been watching you. You’ve been working at the Hexagon Garage, haven’t you?”

  “So what? It’s a job isn’t it?”

  “How much do they pay you?”

  “That’s my business.”

  Morrissey lumbered to his feet, came across until he was standing over Pugh, and said, “I’m not a very patient man. If I have any more lip from you, you’re going to be in dead trouble.”

  “Twenty pounds a week.”

  “All right. And how much do the Crows pay you on the side? How much did they pay you for that job you did down in Stoneferry?”

  Nearly three hours later, Morrissey said, “All right, you can go now,” and Pugh clambered to his feet. He was a badly puzzled man. He had been questioned by the police before, but never quite in that way. He had told them very little. But they seemed to have told him quite a lot. If they knew about Stoneferry, it was a fair bet they knew about other things. That was important. It would have to be passed on at once. When he reached the ground floor, there was no one about. The back door was open. The car had gone. The streets round the office were quiet and empty under their neon lights. He had no idea where he was, except that his instinct told him he was still south of the river. He padded off down the street.

  From their second-storey window the two policemen watched him go.

  “Do you think he’ll fall for it?” said Anderson. “I thought you laid it on a bit thick.”

  “He’s got a thick head,” said Morrissey.

  “He has that,” agreed Anderson. “I’d say he was still concussed too.”

  “If you want my guess, he’ll go into the first telephone booth he finds, and ring Paul Crow.”

  When the telephone rang, the man rolled over in bed, cursed, turned on the bedside light, and sat up. He was middle-aged, thick but not fat, and had a white face and black hair streaked at the edges with grey. The girl in bed beside him muttered something and he said, “Shut up, and go to sleep.” And into the telephone, “Yes, what is it?” As the thick voice at the other end rumbled on, the man’s face remained impassive. A very close observer might have noticed a slight tightening of the mouth, a wariness in the eyes. He said, “What was that name again? The new man at Stoneferry. Mercer! All right. Go on.” Later he said, “Just where are you? A telephone box in Paxton Street, S.E. Right. Stay where you are. I’m sending a car for you.” He rang off, dialled a number, and spoke to someone he called Mo. His instructions were clear and categorical. As he rang off the girl said, “Do you have to do business in the middle of the night?”

  “I do business when I like, sweetness. And I make love when I like.”

  He pulled her towards him. The girl said, “For God’s sake! You’re insatiable.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  On the following morning, too, a lot of things happened.

  A photograph of a man coming out of a garage was sent by tele-copier to the Isle of Wight. A police officer took it to a terrace of small houses overlooking the sea, near Ryde, and showed it to a man who was spending a fortnight in one of them with his aunt. The man’s left arm was in a sling, and there was a heavy plaster round his wrist.

  He examined the photograph carefully and said, “Yes, that’s Taylor all right. He looks a bit older, but I’d recognise him anywhere. Do I have to make a statement about it, or something? Because I’m not keen on getting involved.”

  The policeman said he didn’t know anything about that. All he’d been told to do was to get a positive identification.

  Other photographs were being examined that morning.

  A middle-aged man, who was wearing a blue suit and a bowler hat but still carried the stamp of past military service about him, was shown into the new Defence Ministry building in Whitehall and taken, after a minimum of delay, to a big room, with a skylight, on the sixth floor.

  Here he met a corporal from the Records Section of the 1939-45 War, who had laid out a number of photographs on a table. He said, “Would you start on these, Mr. Syke? If you don’t have any luck we’ve got a lot more, but these are the most likely ones.”

  Some of the photographs were formal groups. Some were informal snapshots. Each of them had a reference number and a letter on them.

  “I didn’t know you went in for this sort of thing,” said Sykes.

  “Very useful, sir. You’d be surprised how many men we’ve traced through them. Men who served under another name. Or changed their names when they left the army. They couldn’t change their faces.”

  “That’s me!” said Sykes. “I wish I was as thin as that now.”

  A few minutes later he said, “I think this is the one you want.”

  It was a group of men dressed in service overalls, with the light blue insignia of the Para-Corps sewn over the breast pocket. Some of them were squatting on the ground, others were standing behind them. Their faces were upturned and serious. It looked as though they were listening to a briefing.

  “That one must have been taken when we were at Lakenheath, getting ready for operations at Arnhem. That’s Jack Bull, all right. One of the best. He collected a Spandau burst in his arm, and it had to be taken off.”

  There was another man in the room in plain clothes, young and fresh-faced, who spoke with a Scots accent. He said, “Can you put a name to any of the others, Major?”

  “At one time I could have done you the lot,” said Sykes. “But a quarter of a century is a hell of a long time.”

  “We could let you have a nominal roll of the unit if it would help,” said the corporal.

  The Scotsman said, “It’d be better if he made the identification himself. We can check up on the roll later.”

  “Is there anyone you’re particularly interested in?”

  “Yes. The man on Bull’s right.”

  “Oh well, no difficulty about that. He really was a character. I often wondered what had become of him in peacetime—”

  Mercer dialled a number, and breathed a sigh of relief when it was a woman’s voice that answered.

  He said, “Is that you, Mrs. Prior? Mercer here.”

  “Mercer?”

  “Detective Inspector Mercer.”

  “Oh.”

  The drop in temperature was perceptible even over the telephone line.

  “Something has come up. I wanted a word with you about it.”

  “You promised me you’d leave us alone.”

  “I know I did. I’m not trying to involve you in anything. But there’s just one piece of information I must have. It’s not really something I could discuss on the telephone.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “You remember that tea shop. The room at the back is perfectly private.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I could come out to your house, but the trouble is my car would certainly be recognised.”

  “No—no. Don’t come out here.”

  A voice in the background said, “Who is it, dear. Who’s that on the telephone?”

  “It’s the laundry. There’s been some muddle over the sheets. I’ll have to go and sort it out.” And to Mercer, “Very well.”

  “As quick as you can.”

  Twenty minutes later, he was stirring a cup of c
offee and pacifying an angry Mrs. Prior.

  “We’re getting near the end of the track now,” he said. “And if everything goes as I hope it will, two of the people who’ll get what’s coming to them are the men who assaulted your husband.”

  “I hope so,” said Mrs. Prior, through thin lips. “I do most certainly hope so.”

  Looking at her, it occurred to Mercer that, if they had consulted Mrs. Prior, the theorists who maintained that punishment should be reformative and not retributive might have been shaken in their views.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Nothing,” said Mercer. “Just a thought. Look, what I wanted to know was this. When you had that lawsuit brought against you by the motorist whose car Taylor – his real name’s Pugh, by the way – was supposed to have repaired, what exactly happened?”

  “How do you mean, what happened?”

  “Let’s take it in steps. First a writ was served, right? Then you must have had a number of conferences with Weatherman.”

  “We saw him the first time. After that it was mostly dealt with by his litigation department.”

  “Meaning who?”

  “There was an elderly man, rather deaf. I think his name was Pollock. But most of the work was done by a young woman. She seemed to know her stuff all right. I didn’t like her much.”

  “Would her name have been Maureen Dyson?”

  “Yes. That’s right. I remember the reference on all the letters was M.D. I’d nothing against her. I think she worked very hard. It was just her manner. I don’t think Mr. Weatherman liked her much either. I remember at the last conference we had before the case was due to come to court she actually suggested that the whole thing might have been a put-up job, and Mr. Weatherman shut her up pretty sharply.”

  “Now why would he do that?”

  “He said it was pointless bringing vague accusations like that if we couldn’t support them. He said it would put the court against us, and drag out the proceedings and make them much more expensive. Actually, it was after that conference we decided to settle.”

  Mercer leaned forward, his elbows on the table. He said, “This is vitally important. I want you to tell me everything you can remember about that last conference. Who said what to who, and why.”