by J F Straker
“Don’t jump to too hasty conclusions, Nicodemus.” While secretly enjoying the nickname Johnny had bestowed on his fellow sergeant — bestowed, he suspected, in an attempt to shatter the latter’s inclination to pomposity — the superintendent considered it unwise to use it himself. “Local connection, yes. But not necessarily a guilty one. Propped on a mantelpiece, that notice could have been read by any casual visitor.”
Johnny said he thought the connection was stronger than that. The thieves had not attacked the second safe, which held only documents and bonds. Didn’t that hint at inside knowledge? Sherrey thought not. The odds had been even, and they had had the luck of the toss. “And it is significant that they chose to burn rather than blow,” he said. “Blowing is easier, and doesn’t entail a lot of bulky equipment. Quicker, too; and to men working to a time limit that’s important. But it has one big disadvantage: most modern safes are designed so that the lock jams when blown. I think that’s why they elected to burn. They didn’t know what they might have to tackle, so they played safe.” They turned in at the hotel entrance. “No, this wasn’t a local job. And I’m not jumping to conclusions, Nicodemus. I’m relying on evidence.”
“Such as?”
“Whisper.”
Johnny whistled. “Whisper Pratt?”
“The same. Given a choice, Whisper will always burn; and if ever a job bore his signature this one does. That neat oval hole: pure, authentic Whisper. Look him up this afternoon, Inch. See what he has to say.”
“I know what he’ll have to say.” Johnny sounded despondent. “He’ll have a real, cast-iron alibi. He always has.”
“So? Hit it hard, and cast iron cracks.”
There had been an attractive brunette behind the reception desk when they had booked in at the hotel that morning. Johnny had made a mental note to cultivate her acquaintance. But now the desk was unoccupied, and after a quick look round the ground floor he joined Nicodemus in the bar.
The girl was there, mixing a pink gin for Nicodemus. Johnny gave her his best smile and ordered a beer. He said, “I’ve looked forward to this moment for —” A pause while he consulted his watch. “Jerusalem! It’s nearly three hours.”
“You must have worked up quite a thirst,” she said.
“Not thirst, love. Blood pressure. Ever since you booked us in this morning the old jam tart’s been working overtime.”
She smiled, and looked at them more closely.
“Oh, yes. You’re the detectives, aren’t you? I didn’t think you fellows went in for sex.”
“This one does.”
“You’ll grow out of it. Give it time.”
She gave the counter a rub, smiled, and moved to the other end of the bar.
Johnny sighed. “How about that, eh? What does she do for you, Knickers?”
“Well, she mixes a reasonable pink gin.”
“Man, you’re sub-human! She’s a perfect flower, every gorgeous petal of her.”
A large, flabby-looking man stood a few feet away from them. Now he slid his glass along the counter and moved closer.
“Mind if I join you? I couldn’t help overhearing what Karen said. So you’re detectives, eh? Down here on the bank job, I suppose.”
Nicodemus frowned. He was proud of his status, but he did not believe in advertising it.
Johnny was less inhibited. “Could be,” he said cheerfully.
“Interesting job, yours,” the other continued. He had unruly hair and polished cheeks. “Plenty of movement, plenty of change. Excitement, too. Mind you, I get around a bit myself. I’m a reporter on the local daily, and there’s always something doing. Dull stuff, mostly, but plenty of it. Now take last week —”
Since he had little option, Johnny took it. While the man talked he watched the girl. She was leaning on the counter, laughing and talking with a tall, foreign-looking man in a yellow polo-necked sweater. Her face was turned away, and he saw only the sheen of her dark brown hair and an occasional glimpse of her profile. A wide gold band encircled the left wrist on which her head was propped, the blue jersey suit hugged her trim figure the way Johnny would have delighted to hug it. He felt an unreasonable pang of envy at the tall man’s luck.
“What name did you say?” he asked, still staring.
“Cooper,” the reporter told him. “Dennis Cooper.”
“Eh? Oh, sorry. I meant the girl.”
“Karen Moore. She’s the landlord’s sister. Quite a dish, wouldn’t you say?”
Johnny nodded absently. But the sight of Nicodemus pointedly twiddling his empty glass recalled him to his obligations, and he hastily sank the rest of his beer and rattled the tankard on the counter.
The girl looked round and nodded. The foreign-looking man patted her hand and walked away. At the door he turned and blew her a kiss.
“Let me do these,” Cooper said, delving in his pocket.
They let him. As the drinks were placed in front of them he looked at his watch.
“Hell! I’ll have to run. Got a lunch date with a woman who claims to be a descendant of Henry the Eighth. Could be something in it, I suppose. He certainly spread his favours around.” He downed his whisky. “See you this evening, maybe. I usually finish up here.”
Nicodemus said he was hungry, and that the Boozer would already have started lunch. After he had gone Johnny lingered over his beer, chatting up the girl. They were alone in the bar.
“He’s good-looking, don’t you think?” the girl said, polishing a glass. “Your friend, I mean.”
“Not my type.” She had large, expressive grey eyes and a generous mouth. “I prefer girls.”
“That’s healthy, anyway.”
“That foreign-looking guy you were gassing with. Is he your boyfriend?”
“Jess Wheeler? Heavens, no! He’s married, with two kids. Twins.”
“Bully for him. But he seemed to like you a lot.”
“He just goes for girls, same as you. And he’s not foreign.”
Relieved, Johnny downed the rest of his beer. “Will you be around this evening?” he asked.
“Depends on what time I get back. I’m off to London this afternoon.”
“You are?” He beat a two-fisted tattoo on the counter. “Heaven works in a mysterious way. How about me giving you a lift? I might even stand you dinner, chores permitting.”
She considered him thoughtfully. He had sandy-coloured hair with a quiff at the peak; his freckled face, snub-nosed and blue-eyed, smiled at her engagingly. He looked honest and young and wholesome.
“I might take you up on that,” she said.
Nicodemus and the Boozer had finished their soup by the time Johnny joined them. The superintendent made no comment on his lateness. During the two years they had worked together he had come to know Johnny fairly well. Johnny was impulsive, unpunctual, and impatient of restrictions: he was often too talkative and too trusting, and he fell in and out of love with the fluidity of a synchromesh gear. But to Sherrey’s mind his assets outweighed his faults. He was keen, he was brave, he was tenacious and apparently tireless. Above all, he had what the superintendent described as a ‘nose’ for crime, even if he did occasionally allow intuition to outrun fact.
Karen was waiting in the foyer when they left the dining-room. Johnny waited until the Boozer had gone upstairs, and then joined her. She was hatless, with a white coat over the jersey suit. In her high-heeled shoes she topped him by a couple of inches.
As they made for the exit Nicodemus called sharply, “Hang on a minute,” and hurried to grab Johnny by the arm. “You’re not taking her to London with you?”
“I am that.”
“In a squad car? You must be crazy. The Boozer’ll eat you.”
“Kind of you to care,” Johnny said. “But no — not a squad car. I’m taking the Mule.”
“Oh!” Nicodemus saw the look of amusement on the girl’s face, and flushed. “All the same, you’re on duty. He won’t like it.”
“He doesn’t have to kno
w, does he? Or were you thinking of informing?” Johnny prodded him low in the stomach. “You do that, and I’ll have your knackers, Knickers!”
2
Monday was wash-day to Judith Wheeler, with cold meat and left-overs for lunch and the ironing to do in the evening.
It was always a harassing day, and that Monday was more harassing than most: the twins were in a particularly fractious mood, she had quarrelled with Jess, and the spin drier had fused when she switched it on. It was not a day on which she would welcome visitors. But she was a mild-tempered woman, and when the doorbell rang as she was washing up the dishes she did not swear or panic. She called to her husband to answer the door. Then, remembering that Jess had gone out (she suspected he disliked Mondays as much as she did), she dried her hands, prodded her hair into a semblance of tidiness, separated the twins from a desperate clinch as she went through the dining-room, and opened the front door herself.
The man who stood there was a stranger. A rather non-descript-looking man, she thought, in the middle thirties: of medium height, and with dull brown hair receding sharply at the peak.
“Mrs Wheeler?” She nodded. “We haven’t met, but I’m a friend of your husband. May I have a word with him?”
“He’s out,” she told him. “Went about ten minutes ago.”
“Oh!” He hesitated. “Well, perhaps you can help me. I was wondering why he didn’t turn up at the party last night.”
“I don’t know anything about a party,” she said. The twins were quarrelling again, and she shouted at them to be quiet. “My husband was away over the weekend — got back this morning — but he didn’t mention any party.”
“Really? That’s odd. When I saw him Saturday he was sure he’d be there. What’s more, he promised to bring you with him. You were both going to stay the night.” He saw her bewilderment, and smiled. “Sorry. I should have introduced myself. I’m Hugh Charlton. Maybe you’ve heard Jess speak of me.” He put out his hand. “You’ll be Beryl, eh?”
A sudden chill gripped her thin body, she felt sick at the stomach. Mechanically she took his outstretched hand, her fingers limp.
“My name is Judith,” she said. There was a singing in her ears, her voice sounded as from a long way off. “Judith Wheeler.”
“Oh!” He looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I must have got it wrong. Where did Jess get to over the weekend?”
“It was business,” she said flatly. “I don’t know where.”
He apologized for troubling her, and went. She watched him walk down the long, unweeded path to the lane, watched him go through the gate, watched the dark roof of his car slide along the top of the hedge and vanish among the trees. Then she went back into the house and sat down and buried her head in her hands, heedless of the quarrelling children and the loud barking from the kennels down the garden. Her whole body was trembling, her thighs and her knees seemed suddenly to be out of control. A pulse started to hammer in her forehead.
She sat there for a full ten minutes. The dogs continued to bark, but the twins had ceased quarrelling and were still, watching her. They had sensed that something was wrong; the fear that possessed her had infected them. She was not aware of them until they came to stand beside her. Then she pulled herself together, dragged herself to her feet, tousled their hair affectionately, and went back to the kitchen to finish the washing-up, pressing her body against the sink to tighten the muscles in her still wobbly legs.
Beryl, she thought. Beryl Sinclair. So it was true: Jess and that blonde Amazon were having an affair. For some weeks now she had suspected it. His coldness towards her, his irritability, had told her that something was wrong, and with Jess it was always another woman. She remembered how a week ago the Sinclairs had come to dinner, and how afterwards he had taken Beryl down the garden to look at the dogs. “Don’t bother, old man,” he had said, when Mark Sinclair had risen to go with them. “Stay and talk to Judith. You’re no animal lover, I know that.” And Mark had stayed. But neither Mark nor she had found much to talk about, and after a while they had ceased to try; she had switched on the television to avoid the necessity for conversation. Twenty minutes later, when the pair returned, Jess had had a self-satisfied smirk on his thin lips, and Beryl the air of a cat with a bellyful of stolen cream.
There had been no scene, either then or later. She knew Jess. He was a sucker for any pretty woman who showed an interest in him, but hitherto she had refused to believe that his affairs progressed much beyond some mild petting, a furtive fumbling in the dark. Despite his obsession with women, Jess was not a virile man; he was more interested in the preliminaries of sex than in its consummation. Or so she had thought. Now she was less sure. Beryl Sinclair had lasted longer than most, and he had named her as his wife to a friend, had arranged to take her to a party and stay the night. That he had not fulfilled the arrangement made little difference; he had gone somewhere for the weekend, and as likely as not with Beryl. Business, he had said; and she had not questioned him. She had long since ceased to question him, preferring the peace of acceptance to the friction of argument. But what business could have kept him from home on a Sunday?
By nature timorous, Judith had married Jess Wheeler in a desperate bid for the security she doubted she could achieve on her own. She had never been a fighter. Now, with the prospect of security being taken from her, she knew she had to fight. She had never been in love with Jess, but her marriage, her home, her children’s future, were suddenly in jeopardy. Fear, not anger, steeled her, and as the afternoon passed determination grew with her fear. Yet her legs were like jelly and her heart beat unnaturally fast when she heard the front door slam and his footsteps in the hall, and knew that this was the moment of truth.
“Hugh Charlton?” He stared at her, frowning. “Never heard of him.”
“He said he’s a friend of yours. He said you’d promised to go to some party last night.”
“Then he’s bloody lying.”
He pushed past her into the sitting-room, sat down, and began to fill his pipe. She hesitated, mustering fresh courage. Then she went to stand in front of him.
“He also said you told him your wife’s name was Beryl, and that you would be taking her to the party and staying the night.”
Her voice had been shrill. Now she held her breath, waiting fearfully for his reply, praying that he would deny the accusation even if the denial were a lie. It would show that at least he did not intend to let his fancy woman wreck their marriage, that nothing was final.
He neither confirmed nor denied. Eyes narrowed, thin lips compressed, he stared at her without reply. Then the flame of the lighted match reached his fingers, and he flung it from him with an oath and sucked vigorously.
“What did this Charlton look like?” he demanded.
She described the man as best she could, watching his face as she talked. It was not an expressive face, and well as she knew it she could not tell what he was thinking.
“It rings no bells for me,” he said, striking another match. “And you believed all this guff about a party and — and Beryl?”
“Why not? I know you’ve been seeing her.” Again she waited for him to say something. He shrugged and lit his pipe. “Where were you this weekend, anyway?”
“That’s my business.”
They were back in the familiar groove. That was how he had always dismissed his occasional absences. But before she could press him further the telephone rang in the hall, and he left the room to answer it.
“Jess Wheeler here.” He spoke genially, welcoming the opportune interruption.
“Beryl Sinclair asked me to ring you,” a man’s voice said. “She wants you to meet her. She says it’s urgent.”
He was immediately suspicious. The visitor that afternoon — and now this. He glanced back into the sitting-room. Judith was by the window, gazing out at the gathering dusk. The curtains were still undrawn.
He lowered his voice. “Why didn’t she ring herself?” he demanded.
�
��She was afraid your wife might answer. She said to tell you she’s leaving now, before Mark returns from the pub.”
It was a credible explanation. “All right,” he said. “Where?”
Judith had been trying to listen without Jess being aware that she was listening. The few words she had managed to hear had conveyed little; but the guilty expression on his face when he turned to look at her, the way his voice had dropped when the caller answered, told her that this was to do with Beryl.
She moved closer to the door.
“All right, all right,” she heard him say. He sounded impatient. After a pause he muttered something she did not catch. Then — “Parrot’s okay. Yes, I’ll make it,” he said. And put down the receiver.
She was back by the window when he turned.
“Got to go out,” he said.
She did not answer. Cold and trembling, she stayed by the window until she heard the car start up and drive away. Then she collapsed on to a chair and burst into a paroxysm of tears.
3
During the time Johnny had been a member of SIN Whisper Pratt had been suspected of safe-breaking on several occasions, and always he had blandly produced an impregnable alibi. The impregnability shrieked of pre-knowledge, and the police were convinced that if he had not in fact been present when the crimes were committed he had certainly been concerned with their planning. Yet nothing had been proved against him.
Mounting the stairs to the Peterman’s flat in Islington, Johnny suspected that his present visit would be no more successful than the others.
Whisper Pratt was fifty-two, and looked a decade younger; the early years spent in prison had apparently rejuvenated rather than aged him. He seemed surprised to see Johnny. But he was a friendly, hospitable man, and his hesitation was brief.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr Inch! Come in, sir, come in!” He had a harsh, grating voice, as though his throat were permanently infected. “Must be over six months since you was here last. How’ve you been keeping? Well?”
