Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

  “I do what I have to,” said Mo Fenton. His churchwarden’s face was thoughtful. Sick fox had picked himself up. He said, “I could get into the garden behind him, Mo. We’d have the bastard fixed then.”

  Mo whistled, and the black snout of a car showed round the far corner. The driver and another man jumped out and came running.

  Mo said to the driver, “You help Sam back to the car. Take it easy. His knee’s busted. When you get him there, stay with him. Mick, you can lend a hand here.” He spoke in a level conversational tone.

  “A pleasure,” said Mick. He looked like a big schoolboy, ready to go in to bat at a crisis in the innings. “How do we get the bugger out?”

  “We don’t,” said Mo. “We invite him to step out.”

  “Do you think he’ll oblige?”

  “I think so,” said Mo. He opened the near-side door, and looked down at Venetia. She had managed to undo the seat belt, but seemed too paralysed to move further.

  Mo dipped his hand into his top pocket, took out an old-fashioned cut-throat razor with a black handle, and flicked the blade open. He said to Mercer, “Either you come out, or I start cutting bits off your girlfriend and throw them over to you.”

  “You’re dead wrong,” said Mercer. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a stupid little bint who insisted on coming for the ride. If she gets hurt, it’s her fault.”

  “I don’t think you can mean that,” said Mo. He was holding the door open with his left hand and looking down curiously at the girl. Venetia was leaning forward as far away from him as she could. His right hand moved. She gave a little scream. The razor had travelled down the sleeve of her coat, slicing it through, barely touching the skin.

  She threw herself sideways across the car, but her legs were blocked by the steering column and the gear lever. As the top part of her body shifted, the dashboard of the car came into sudden view.

  Mo said, “The bastard. He’s got a flasher going. All out, quick!”

  Mercer put his arm into the car and touched the horn. A lot of things started to happen at once.

  The front door of the house behind him flung open and a man came pounding down the path. He was out through the gate in time to collar Mick round the waist and the two men rolled across the road, and carried on with their fight in the gutter on the far side.

  There was a car coming fast down the main road, its lights full on, its police siren blaring. By this time the black car was moving. Mo Fenton and sick fox tumbled aboard.

  The police car swung round the corner, its headlights picking out the scene in sharp black and white. Mick and his opponent had rolled out of the gutter and onto the pavement. Mick was underneath. The police car was blocking the middle of the road. The driver of the black car had only one chance, and he took it. He drove onto the pavement. Mick’s opponent saw it coming and rolled into the open gateway. Mick had no time to move. He gave one scream as the car went over him. The rear wheels bumped over the body, the driver threw the car to the left, missed the lamp-post by inches, made a racing turn at the corner, and was gone.

  John Anderson, in the seat beside the driver of the police car was talking urgently into his wireless set.

  “Where the hell’s the second car got to?” said Mercer.

  “It’s behind us. I’ve sent it after them.”

  As he spoke a police car went past the end of the road.

  “He won’t catch them,” said Mercer. “That driver was Kowalski. He’s Grand Prix. If the two of you had got here together, ten seconds earlier, you could have blocked the entrance. That’s what I was holding them for.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Anderson. “How are you, Milner?”

  The newcomer had picked himself up out of the gateway. He said, “I’m all right, sir. Better than that poor bugger.”

  He was looking down at what had once been a man. The car had gone over Mick’s head. Anderson turned back and started talking into his wireless set again. He seemed to be setting up road-blocks.

  Mercer walked back to his own car. A tousle-haired figure in a raincoat was standing beside it. He recognised Father Walcot.

  He said, “I got her arm tied up. It’s not a deep gash. Then she passed out.”

  Mercer said, “Thank you, Father. As soon as they’ve cleared this shambles, I’ll drive her home.”

  He sounded deadly tired.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The meeting to which Bob Clark had been summoned after lunch that day took place in an office on the third floor of a building which seemed to be occupied by the Statistics Department of the Board of Trade. It had a fine view over the Thames, though it needed an effort of the imagination to identify this grey, swollen, dangerous stretch of water with the friendly river he had left behind him at Stoneferry.

  If the location of the meeting was a surprise, even more surprising were the people assembled there. He had supposed that a disciplinary complaint would be dealt with at Division, by Chief Superintendent Watterson, or at District by Commander Blakemore, with the senior corresponding C.I.D. officer in attendance. And if the hearing had been at District headquarters, it would have been logical enough for Morrissey to be there, as indeed he was, ponderous and unsmiling on one side of the table. The man next to him he thought he recognised as Deputy Commander Laidlaw, founder and head of the Regional Crime Squads; and what he had to do with the matter was a mystery. But it was the sight of the third man which took the matter out of the realms of surprise and produced what was almost a shock. This was a man of oriental appearance, as feared for his tongue as he was respected for his ability. Deputy Commissioner Arthur Lovell, number two in the Metropolitan Police hierarchy, tipped for the top post when the present Commissioner retired.

  It was Lovell who opened the proceedings.

  He said, “Sit down, Superintendent. I never like taking a working policeman away from his manor, but your report on Detective Chief Inspector Mercer contained matters which we thought ought to be discussed at once, at the highest possible level. There are, I understand, four grounds of complaint against him.”

  He glanced down at the paper on the table, but it was no more than the gesture of a barrister who has already mastered his brief. “First that he has been receiving regular and unexplained payments into his account at the local bank. How did you find that out, by the way?”

  Clark explained how he had found out.

  Lovell said, “I suppose no system of security is proof against that sort of disloyalty. However, it’s not our business. Your second point also deals with money. You have discovered that additional payments, in cash, are reaching Mercer at an accommodation address?”

  “To be fair,” said Clark, “we only traced one lot of money, but we know he was making regular visits to this shop. And taking good care not to be followed.”

  “But you managed to follow him?”

  “We got a tip-off about it.”

  On the other side of the table, Morrissey showed his teeth in what might have been a grin. It was a momentary flicker of expression, then his heavy white face was impassive again.

  “The third ground of complaint is that he was too friendly with a local character called Bull, a garage owner. He had long evening sessions with him, I understand. Drank with him in pubs until all hours. Incidentally breaking licensing regulations.”

  Clark nodded.

  “And arising out of that, he got his subordinates to lay off what looked like a promising line of investigation which might have involved one of this man’s employees? And this seemed to you evidence that he was prepared to do favours for Bull.”

  Clark nodded again. The indictment had been fairly put. Taken together the four counts added up to something. He had been right to report it.

  “Wasn’t there a fifth item?” said Morrissey. His face was perfectly straight now. “Something about flogging natives.”

  Clark said, stiffly, “That was no part of my report. But it is true that it had become known in the area that he had
been dismissed from a previous post for brutality.”

  Morrissey started to say something, but a tiny movement of Lovell’s hand checked him. The Deputy Commissioner said, “I am going to ask Commander Laidlaw to put you in possession of certain facts, Superintendent, so that you can see both sides of the picture.”

  Laidlaw said, “I think a lot of things will fall into place if I tell you that Mercer is not on the regular establishment at all. He is a member of Number Three Regional Crime Squad. As you know, our squads have no exact territorial boundaries. We investigate groups of criminals, and areas of crime. One of our constant preoccupations is with wage snatching. It’s particularly serious because it’s organised, lucrative, and brutal. It was to counter it that the banks and the police evolved Dibox. It’s a very simple system. All new notes issued to a bank are marked with a symbol. It can only be read under oblique light. It indicates the date, the bank and the branch of origin. Here’s how it works. Suppose there was a big wage snatch on Monday. On Tuesday Mr. ‘A’ puts down a deposit on a new car. The money is paid into the bank in new notes. They check the Dibox mark, and are able to identify the notes as part of a batch paid out to the victim of the recent wage snatch. Then the finger is on Mr. ‘A’ for that job. Apart from this, the chances are he might never have been suspected. Now his head is on the block. He can be followed. His contacts noted. All other payments he makes in cash in the following weeks are checked. We pulled off one or two quite spectacular jobs by this method. Then, as was bound to happen sooner or later, the smart boys put two and two together. And they came to one obvious conclusion. That a fairly long period must be allowed to elapse before stolen notes were put back into circulation. You see the point? The Dibox system only works if it works quickly. After a few months there are too many notes in circulation, which were drawn from that particular branch on that particular day. Possession of one of them ceases to mean anything. But there was a drawback to that too. The boys involved in a job usually want their money on the nail. The answer, for the big organised outfits, was to set up ‘stockings’. The proceeds of today’s wage snatch were put into the top of the stocking, and the boys were paid out in notes which came from the bottom. Plain so far, Superintendent?”

  Clark said, “Yes, sir. But I don’t see—”

  “You will,” said Morrissey.

  “Now it’s easy enough to talk about setting up a stocking. But it’s not so easy in practice. It had to be somewhere completely safe, and reasonably large. It also had to be accessible. No one wants to hang on to hot cash a moment longer than he need. The Crows found the perfect answer. Paul Crow, who became boss when his cousin Abel stopped two barrels of a shot-gun with his stomach last year, had an old friend of Para-Corps days. Jack Bull. Incidentally, Mercer stumbled on the connection at one of those late-night Bull-sessions you were talking about, Superintendent.”

  Clark said, “I see.”

  “Bull was the ideal man for the job. He had a garage within easy driving distance of the West End, which stayed open late. As soon as the money got there, the pump attendant, Johnno, motored it over to Slough and cached it in the safe deposit. Nothing suspicious about it. They might have been banking their own money. I believe one of your men watched him doing it.”

  “I believe he did,” said Clark.

  “The only drawback, from Paul Crow’s point of view, was that the system entailed trusting Bull. And Paul isn’t a man who trusts anybody. An old friendship from army days was fine and the ten per cent of the take he was paying Bull was fine, too. But it didn’t go far enough. Fortunately fate dealt him a couple of aces. When Bull set up in Stoneferry he wanted to get rid of his two main rivals. You know how he did it?”

  Clark said, “Mercer told me what he suspected.”

  “Well, it was Paul Crow who worked the oracle for him. He supplied the hot cars which the police found at one of the garages, and the mechanic who wrecked the other one. After that he reckoned he had Bull where he wanted him.”

  “How did you get on to Bull?”

  “As soon as the boys knew we were hunting for stockings we got dozens of tip-offs. One of them happened to be Bull. We had no particular reason to concentrate on him until we got a cross-bearing. Sergeant Rollo—”

  (Sergeant Rollo. It was something Mercer had said to him. The one death which was important, because it was the one which was unforgivable.)

  “—we were very unhappy about that. He’d already put in a number of adverse reports on Bull, suggesting that he was swindling his customers. But without any definite proof. Then this happened. It looked to us like a put-up job. But not a simple job. An elaborate, professional job. From which we deduced that Bull had a big-time backer. So that was when we decided to investigate him a bit further. About six months ago we put in two of our people. Mrs. Hall, who’s an Inspector in the Women’s Police, and Vikki Severn, who was an assistant in the Fraud Squad before she joined us. They’re both trained accountants. We had no difficulty in placing them where we wanted them. People with good qualifications who only ask for a modest wage don’t get turned down. They confirmed our view that Bull was crooked. He was swindling his customers and defrauding the Revenue. Quite systematically, with the help of his solicitor. That’s when we decided to send Mercer in. We took a few precautions. We put a bodyguard in with him. He lodged in the house opposite. And we made special arrangements about his pay. We’ve had too many cases where a man has been put on the spot by having money paid into his bank account. Easy to do, difficult to refute. So we opened a very special account at the local bank for him.”

  “A lobster pot,” said Morrissey. “Easy to get into, impossible to get out of.”

  “In this particular account, money could be paid in. But the only person who had authority to draw on it was the Receiver of Metropolitan Police.”

  “Highly satisfactory,” said Morrissey. “Any unclaimed money goes to the Police Orphanage.”

  “If he couldn’t draw money from his own bank account—” said Clark. Then he stopped, and said, “Oh, yes. I see. That was the reason for Moxon’s shop.”

  “Moxon was his paymaster, and his line of communication.”

  “If you had told me some of this before,” said Clark, and he found it difficult to keep the stiffness out of his voice, “wouldn’t it have saved a lot of misunderstanding?”

  “That’s a legitimate comment,” said Lovell. “And every time we send a man in we have to make the same decision. Maximum co-operation, or maximum security. It isn’t an easy decision. If it’s a short assignment, we usually say nothing. The man’s in and out again, and no harm done. If it’s likely to last longer – and we’d no idea this one would come to a head so quickly – then there’s more reason for letting the local man know, but more chance of it slipping out. In this case, we left the decision to Mercer.”

  “I see,” said Clark. “And he decided that I wasn’t to be told.”

  “He decided to test the security-mindedness of the person chiefly concerned,” said Morrissey with a grin.

  “Need we go into this?” said Lovell.

  Clark stared at him, his face going red.

  “I’m not certain what that last remark meant,” he said, “but if it concerns me, I think I ought to hear it.”

  “You’re not going to like it,” said Morrissey. “What he did was, he had us put a paragraph in his confidential report. The one that went to you. About flogging natives. It was a load of rubbish.”

  Lovell said, smoothly, “The object of this discussion was to put Superintendent Clark in the picture. I think we’ve done that?”

  The other two men nodded. Clark was beyond speech.

  “What we are going to have to think about is the future. The immediate future. As I said, this matter has come to a head more quickly than we had expected. Commander Laidlaw will explain what we are planning to do, and the sort of co-operation he’s going to need.”

  “We’re going to need all we can get,” said Laidlaw. He wa
s smiling, and the atmosphere seemed to have become easier. “I believe it was President Kruger who said that the only easy way of killing a turtle was to get it to stick its head out. That’s what we’re planning to do. We think that a minor attack will go in on Mercer personally this evening. We’ve let them know that he’s closing in on Bull, and their natural reaction will be to put him out. We’re ready for that, and they’ll get more than they bargained for. But it’s not the main effort. It’s what you might call, in military parlance, a platoon attack. We’re going to offer them a bait which will bring the whole lot out, fighting.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, the opening rounds of the barrage will be going down in about an hour’s time.”

  It was exactly half-past three when the routine of Mr. Justice Arbuthnot’s court was disturbed. The case was a complex one, concerning the rights of neighbouring buildings to mutual support, and counsel for the defendant had concluded the examination of the principal expert witness. The judge ruled a neat line under his notes and turned to the plaintiff ’s counsel, inviting him to open his cross-examination.

  Counsel said, “I have been asked to give way, my lord. And I think I must do so.”

  Two new figures had entered the courtroom. Mr. Justice Arbuthnot recognised, with some surprise, the Attorney General and his leading Treasury Junior.

  The Attorney General said, “My learned friend, Mr. Lavery, has very kindly agreed, if your lordship consents, to defer the opening of his cross-examination, which will, I understand, be a lengthy one, until tomorrow. This would enable me to make a short, but extremely urgent, ex parte application on behalf of the Crown.”

  Mr. Lavery bowed. The judge said, “Very well.” There was a bustling of silk gowns as counsel left the court, followed by solicitors and underlings. The few spectators at the back sat tight. An urgent application by the Crown sounded more exciting than rights of mutual support.

  “I have been instructed in this matter by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. They have raised a provisional assessment of a very substantial amount – eighteen thousand pounds in the first assessment, but the figure may, in the event, prove to be considerably greater. The tax payer, a garage owner of Stoneferry-on-Thames, Mr. Bull, is apparently resisting the assessment. I need not repeat the precise terms of his refusal, which he made verbally and of which I have a note. It is remarkably offensive. But I can assure you that he has denied liability in categorical terms.