The Unkindest Cut

by Gerald Hammond

  So perhaps he had changed his mind in sudden fear of a robbery. Or perhaps the robbery had happened. She tried the shop door but the night latch was locked. Mr Golspie’s habit when closing for the night was to turn down the shop’s lights to the minimum required to intrigue potential customers and to expose any burglar to public view; and this was the routine when he left early. Of recent years he had taken to heading for his home whenever Helen Maple, his occasional assistant, was available in good time from her other and very varied commitments, but the same rule applied. Tonight the lights were at full strength although there was nobody to be seen behind the sparkling counter or at the little desk where watch batteries were changed.

  Jane had her mobile phone in her pocket. She keyed for emergency services, was connected to the police station only a few hundred yards away and reported that something seemed to be wrong at the jeweller’s shop. Back at her surgery, she got rid of her dummy package in a drawer, collected the knife that she used for opening envelopes and returned to Mr Golspie’s shop.

  There she waited and waited. The police, it seemed, did not attach much weight to her unease. The recessed doorway gave her some shelter from a cold breeze. After twenty minutes she took out her phone again and called Ian’s office number. The DI knew Jane’s character well and understood that she was not given to false alarms. Within three or four minutes she saw his sturdy form approaching.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ he said.

  Jane explained. ‘What’s more,’ she added, ‘you can see that only the Yale-type night latch is locked. The proper lock, mortise I think it’s called, hasn’t been turned. Mr Golspie is never so careless and nor is Helen Maple. I think we should go in.’ Ian nodded and began to feel in his pocket. Jane produced her letter knife. ‘This should do it,’ she said.

  Ian took the knife from her and with little difficulty slipped back the cylinder night latch. The door opened. There was no bell – the shop was a single room so no bell was necessary. A muffled sound fetched them both forward to look behind the counter. Helen Maple was lying there, hidden from the street. Jane’s heart was in her mouth but after a single second it was clear that she was not seriously hurt. There were traces of blood from several small stab wounds, little more than scratches, to her face and neck, but she was mainly incapacitated by what appeared to be a common clothes line. Her wrists and ankles were tied and linked together. A yellow duster was folded, slipped between her teeth and tied there with several turns of the same clothes line, pulled tight.

  Jane stooped. She was about to begin the process of untying Helen but Ian stopped her. ‘The knots can sometimes tell an expert a lot,’ he said. Jane twitched the other’s skirt down. It seemed to be the least that she could do. Ian produced his miniature camera from his pocket and took two or three shots. Then, with his own penknife, he cut the rope and removed the gag. He went to work on the other ropes.

  Helen’s first reaction on being freed was of furious anger. She sat up, rubbing her wrists where the skin was marked, and uttered several epithets which were evidently about her assailant. ‘He didn’t care if I was left there all night,’ she said. ‘And Mr Golspie opens late on a Saturday morning.’

  Ian and Jane helped her up and into the customers’ chair. ‘Tell me what happened,’ Ian said.

  Helen was bent forward to rub her ankles. Her voice seemed to be choked off by the cramped position. ‘The shops were shutting,’ she said at last. ‘I was just going to close up. The Square was deserted. Then this man came in. He had a black hood on. And a knife. He made me lie down on the floor and when I was too slow for him he jabbed me with the knife. Och, look at the state of me. There’s blood on the blouse my mam gave me for my birthday. She’ll be fizzing.’ There were tears on Helen’s face but whether these were for her blouse or arose out of sheer aggravation Jane could only guess.

  A uniformed constable arrived in the doorway. It was his bad luck that he was sent to respond to Jane’s phone call and so drew down on himself the full wrath of a detective inspector who was on the lookout for someone to bite. Ian’s expressions of contempt for the belated response were still at an early stage when Jane slipped out and collected some sticking plasters and lint from her surgery. Ian was still in good voice when she returned so she set about cleaning and patching Helen’s small wounds.

  The constable was soon able to share Ian’s displeasure with his sergeant, who arrived to discover what was keeping his subordinate. (A trouble shared is a trouble doubled, Jane thought to herself.) It was some little time before Ian was satisfied that he had expressed himself adequately on the subject of a forty-minute delay in responding to an emergency call, especially after his own messages had demanded that he be informed immediately of any events possibly linked to Knifeman. He had not managed to extract any explanation for the delay and so he put it down to mere inertia. If he had been told the truth, which was that the uniformed branch had resented being told their jobs by a plain clothes inspector, he might have suffered a seizure.

  By this time Mr Golspie had been called back to his shop and was added to the audience while Helen repeated her story. He took the loss of the necklace philosophically being, as he said, fully insured.

  Ian Fellowes was at last able to demand Helen’s description of her assailant. Helen had now dried her eyes and pulled herself together. She had passed from the tongue-tied state to a garrulous one. Stripped of all repetitions, contradictions and complaints, she described her attacker as being a lot taller than herself (and Helen was taller than average for her age and sex), sturdily built and wearing the aforementioned hood, the customary blue jeans, a denim jacket and polished, black shoes. Ian managed to enquire, without putting words into her mouth, whether he had been wearing any sort of gloves and she said not. Ian, without missing a word of this diatribe, set about preserving any surfaces that the robber might have touched.

  Jane was by now late for her evening meal and had little hope that Roland would have begun preparations for it, and Helen, whose job description included making a start to preparing their dinner on the days when she gave domestic help at Whinmount, was fully engaged. But Helen had cast Jane in the role of rescuer and had a grip on her sleeve so that Jane was forced to linger. However, it turned out that Helen lived in digs and that her landlady would be expecting her; so Ian delegated the constable to escort her home while turning his own attention to a last few scathing remarks to the sergeant. Jane made her escape with a muttered promise to call at the incident room next morning.

  ‘Eight sharp,’ Ian said and continued in the same breath expressing his opinion of officers who paused for a cup of tea, a chat or even an afternoon nap before responding to an emergency call. The sergeant was sweating big drops and it was not a warm day.

  Jane, having little expectation of being given priority or consideration in the morning, paused at her surgery to postpone, by telephone, her first appointment with an ailing calf at a local smallholding. Behold, she told herself, the first shall be last. She had been at the sort of school where attendance at chapel is compulsory. She called at the local ‘takeaway’ for a supply of scampi and chips for two.

  Just as she had supposed, Jane rose early and arrived at the incident room on the dot of eight only to have to wait through Ian’s briefing of his growing team. Ian might be a friend and a police officer but he was also a public servant and Jane had no intention of being penalized by the delusion, common in certain professions, that other people’s time came free. The Knifeman situation seemed to have changed very little. She got to her feet and said that her second appointment was almost due but that she would contact him again later, when he was not so busy.

  There was no audible gasp at such lese-majesty but there was a stiffening to attention in the room as a lesson was absorbed by some and rejected by others.

  Ian had been preoccupied, caught up in his own ordered thoughts. He snapped back into reality and saw Jane as a person. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said with every sign of sincerity
. ‘Give me a quick outline of anything you can contribute and we’ll go into the details later.’

  Jane nodded slowly in what she hoped would be taken for a regal bow. ‘I was waiting for my last client of the day,’ she said, ‘a man with a spaniel due to have stitches removed. I postponed it again to be here this morning. While I waited – and then took the phone call putting the appointment off until this morning – I was looking out of the window. As soon as I had had that phone call I went out to the night safe and as I was coming back I noticed that all was not well.

  ‘The shops were shutting and everyone had headed home for their evening meal. There was no foot traffic except for three people who passed my window on foot. I kept looking out of the window because whenever I heard footsteps I expected it to be the owner of the spaniel. But two of those were women, hurrying home to dish up high tea – Mrs Murtry and Mrs Haven. They both live in flats in what you might call the blind corner of the Square, by which I mean the corner that has no entry into it, not even a footpath. Between them the ladies have two cats, three hamsters and a Belgian hare, which is how I come to know them. The third was a young man, although this person was crossing the Square so he didn’t walk directly past my window. And, to be honest, I didn’t pay him much attention because I was more interested in when I might be able to get home for my own dinner – which, thankfully, would have been a quickie, being fish. As it worked out, I had to get a takeaway of scampi and chips from Spiretti’s. Also, he could have been fairly typical of the young men of the town that I hardly noticed him at all. He was coming from the direction of Mr Golspie’s shop and from what little I noticed of him he had the sort of build and head shape of the man who robbed me and he was dressed much the same, but that may be partly hindsight.’

  One of the plain-clothes constables raised a hand. ‘It was a very dark afternoon. Did you have your surgery lights on?’

  ‘I see what you’re getting at,’ Jane said. ‘No, I’d just put them out, ready to walk along to the night safe. He wouldn’t have known that I was there. And now I must go. If there are any more questions let me know and I’ll come back at a better time. But the significant thing that I wanted to draw to your attention is that my initial thoughts are that he was rather unlike Helen Maple’s description of her attacker, so might not have had anything to do with it at all. Good afternoon.’

  Ian glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘Afternoon is still several hours away,’ he said. Jane only smiled. She had made her point.

  FOURTEEN

  When Ian visited Jane’s surgery on the Monday afternoon he found her alone, waiting for that bane of her life – a client who was late for an appointment. In this one instance there was some excuse for the tardiness. The client had no car and her dog had had a leg amputated. The dog, a collie/Labrador cross, still enjoyed life and was a keen and willing walker but he was inevitably slowed.

  Ian’s immediate question was: ‘Are you sure that the young man you saw pass your window had to be Helen Maple’s attacker?’

  Jane glanced around the comfortable familiarity of her surgery while she thought about it. ‘Well, as I said yesterday, on first thoughts, no. But having dwelt on it overnight, I’m now not so sure …’ Jane mulled over the question once again before continuing. ‘According to what Helen Maple said, it’s the only way the times could fit. She said that he was gone not more than ten minutes before I rattled at the door. Then she heard me go away and she thought that she was going to be there all night. When she heard me come back again she wept tears of relief. What does she say?’

  Ian sighed. ‘I haven’t taxed her with it yet. I just wanted to be quite sure about your evidence.’

  ‘I hope I’m wrong,’ Jane said. ‘Helen’s polite and well behaved and I think she may be good-hearted, though I’ve sometimes suspected her of being a little bit sly, but who isn’t? In a stressful situation one tends to remember things as being larger than life.’ Jane lost eye contact with Ian and looked over his shoulder while she thought. ‘I was called in once to dart and tranquillize a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo. It was a female, quite young and small. And she genuinely liked people and was quite hurt when they all screamed and ran away. She stood about four and a half feet maximum but every witness put her at well over six feet tall. Helen could be making an honest mistake. I can’t go further than to say that the man who passed near my window was of ordinary height. I see people passing every day and on average their heads just come up to the dormer windows on the other side of the Square. I’d have noticed anything different.’

  ‘I’ll tread carefully,’ Ian said.

  ‘Do that. What’s been annoying me is that his general outline looked familiar without having an identity, if you know what I mean. I have a feeling that if I’d actually looked at his face I’d have known him and I might have solved the whole case for you. If his face was uncovered; but I didn’t even notice that. Maybe I’m kidding myself.’

  ‘It does happen,’ Ian said. Jane could see that his mind was working furiously.

  The next few days passed in a routine fashion for Jane, hers and Roland’s life now back to normal after their wedding and honeymoon. Jane’s waistline was slowly expanding, as it tends to do when a baby is thriving inside, and thankfully she wasn’t feeling too exhausted yet with her busy veterinary practice and looking after a grateful yet not wholly house-trained husband.

  On the Thursday evening of that week there was yet another visit from Ian. He arrived at the door of Whinmount and asked for a private word with Jane. Roland, visibly offended, took Sheba for a walk. Jane took Ian into the sitting room and offered him a drink but he shook his head, thanking her politely. ‘I feel I have to keep a clear mind. I seem to be tiptoeing over a tightrope, quite a long way above the ground. I spoke to young Helen.’ He ground to a halt.

  ‘And?’ Jane prompted.

  ‘And at first she was indignant. I didn’t mention your name—’

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘You’d asked me not to. I just said that a witness had seen a man arriving at the shop and that he had to be the attacker because of the times, but that he did not resemble the description she had given us. I’ve had quite a lot of practice in dealing with witnesses who try to tell fibs and I could see that she was lying. She tried to bluster and she tried tears and I told her that she could have a solicitor present if she so wished, or it needn’t be a solicitor, she could have a friend or relation with her. She brightened up at that and asked if she could have you.’

  ‘Me?’ Jane squeaked. ‘Why me, for God’s sake? I hardly know the girl except to employ her occasionally.’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t have any relatives here and she knows you and it was quite obvious yesterday that she looked on you as her rescuer. After all, you did see the signs and figure out that something was wrong and then you stuck to your guns, saving her from a night of great discomfort if nothing worse.’

  Jane laughed. ‘But I’ll tell you in advance and for nothing that I’m not going to worm my way into her confidence and then come running to you with her story.’

  Ian laughed aloud. ‘This is why I decided to approach you myself instead of sending Bright. You’ve been watching too much television. If you agree to be her moral support it would be in absolute confidence unless she said otherwise. If you think that she would be better to tell the truth, try to convince her that, that’s all I ask.’

  Jane thought it over for a full minute and then nodded. ‘All right.’

  ‘You’ll do it? Good! What time are you free tomorrow?’

  ‘I always try to keep the last hour of the morning free in case of emergencies.’

  Ian raised one eyebrow. ‘Emergencies always happen just before lunch?’

  ‘Don’t be more of an ass than nature intended,’ Jane said severely. ‘If I’ve had a morning emergency I can catch up during that hour. If one happens in the afternoon I can stay a little late. And if we have a day without emergencies, or occurrences th
at owners think are emergencies, which are all too rare – a day without them, I mean – I use the time to make doubly sure that everything’s clean and tidy and sterile. I take it that bang goes my clean-and-boil period tomorrow?’

  ‘Would you please come up to the nick at twelve tomorrow?’

  ‘Had you not better see if Helen’s free then?’

  ‘She’ll be free if I have to free her.’ Ian’s tone suggested that his patience was running out and that it was time for the public to learn that criminal investigations took precedence over personal concerns.

  The next morning, Jane was putting on her wax-proofed Barbour coat (another legacy from GG) and was almost out the door when Ian caught her on the phone. ‘I’m just coming,’ she said irritably. ‘I do not forget appointments. I may be slightly late if the patient bleeds or bites me—’

  ‘You are reliability personified,’ Ian said. ‘You are well known for it. I wish others were the same. Helen Maple has done a runner.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  It was Ian’s turn to be irritable. ‘Nobody has seen her all morning. She didn’t turn up at the job she was booked for. What else?’

  ‘She could have been kidnapped. Or murdered. Or have fallen into the canal.’

  ‘God forbid. You could be right, but why would anybody wish to kill or kidnap the victim of a Knifeman robbery?’

  A huge articulated vehicle ground its way through the Square. Discussion had to be suspended, which did at least give Jane time to think. While she was thinking she filled the kettle and set it to boil. She might have time for lunch after all. ‘Conversely,’ she said when the rumble had faded into the distance, ‘why would the victim of a Knifeman robbery feel the need to do a runner? I think that both questions may deserve the same answer.’