by J F Straker
Long into that Saturday night Connor lay awake, considering how the day’s discoveries affected his position. Given luck, it should be possible to convince the authorities that Fitt had killed McGuppy. But how to convince them that he had also killed Becky? That was what mattered; and although in his own mind Connor was certain, he had nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of concrete proof. Even the diary was not proof; he had interpreted it one way, others might interpret it differently. Which meant that, despite his confident assertion to Vaisey that he intended to establish his innocence, in effect he was no closer to doing so than on the day he had started the investigation.
It was a disheartening thought. But if he were doomed for the rest of his life to carry the stigma of having killed a woman, at least he could ensure that his time in Felborough had not been wasted. He could still avenge himself on Brummit. The inference in Becky’s diary that Brummit had turned a blind eye to Ron Main’s presence in the town in return for his sister’s favours — if that didn’t nail him, then this latest development surely must. Bribery and corruption had culminated in murder — McGuppy’s murder — and Brummit had missed the lot. There would be excuses, of course. ‘Connor had access to the diary,’ Brummit would plead in his defence, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t even know the damned thing existed.’ ‘It was your job to know,’ his judges would accuse, ‘and, diary or no diary, if an amateur like Connor can solve in a week a murder you couldn’t solve in six years, then obviously you’re not the man for the job.’ And then what? Connor wondered drowsily. Out on his ear? Demoted? No matter. At least he’ll have good cause to regret that he and I ever met. And that goes for me too, damn him!
Connor’s most frequent dream was of being back in his cell. That night, for the first time in weeks, he dreamt of Anne.
Chapter 8
He rang Northropp the next morning. Northropp, he was sure, held the key to McGuppy’s death. If anyone had bribed George Fitt it had to be Northropp, the man with the big contracts, and when McGuppy had embarked on blackmail Fitt would almost certainly have gone to Northropp for advice, possibly even for help. Murder was another matter, something Fitt would feel bound to keep to himself; but a man of Northropp’s acumen should have put two and two together and come up with four. Unlikely, however, that he would have taxed Fitt with the crime; the less he knew, or appeared to know, the better. Nor would he have confided his suspicions to the police; a police investigation would have revealed his part in the corruption that had triggered off the murder. It was equally unlikely, Connor realised, that Northropp would admit to the corruption now if Connor were to tax him with it. Yet it was Northropp or nothing. And he was a man brimful of confidence, proud of his achievements to the point of boastfulness. With no George Fitt to point a finger, wasn’t it just possible that if no third person were present, and if he believed that time had effectively buried such evidence of corruption as might once have existed, he might find some satisfaction in revealing how successfully he had outwitted the law?
‘The industrial estate?’ Northropp sounded surprised. ‘You really want me to show you round?’
‘Of course,’ Connor said. ‘I said so, didn’t I?’
‘I thought you were being polite.’ Northropp paused to consider. ‘Okay. How about this afternoon?’
‘Not today, I’m afraid. I’m booked solid.’ He wasn’t. But today was Sunday and the shops were closed. ‘Could you manage tomorrow?’
‘It would have to be late,’ Northropp said. ‘After dinner. That suit?’
It suited Connor well. They arranged a time and place to meet, and as Connor replaced the receiver he realised that for the first time since he had come to Felborough he had a whole day ahead with nothing to do. Nothing planned, nothing to organise. The Woolmers were still on holiday, and there was no reply when he rang Alison Fitt’s number. Briefly he considered asking Charlotte Evans to lunch. But this was no time to become involved with an attractive widow, and he spent the day walking on the moors, his mind intent on the morrow’s confrontation with Northropp.
Bored with the cellar bar, he drank elsewhere that evening. He was in the saloon bar of the George, one of the smaller Felborough pubs, when Inspector Vaisey came in. Connor groaned. After a day on his own he would have welcomed congenial company. But Vaisey was not in that category.
‘Good evening, Mr. Connor.’ Vaisey grimaced. ‘Sorry. It’s Mallorie, isn’t it? Can I get you a drink?’
‘I’m in play, thanks.’
The barmaid was a tall blonde, her breasts unconfined beneath a flimsy blouse. Vaisey ordered a Guinness and bought the girl a whisky. For a few minutes he chatted her up, and from their conversation it was obvious that he was no stranger to the pub. Then he turned to Connor, raised his glass and drank.
‘Haven’t seen you in here before, have I?’ he said.
You know damned well you haven’t, Connor thought. ‘I haven’t been here before,’ he said.
‘No? I look in most evenings. It’s on my way home. How’s the quest progressing?’
‘It’s progressing.’
‘The end in sight?’
The bland smile on Vaisey’s face annoyed Connor. Five whiskies had heated his blood, and he said sharply, ‘Does the name Arnold McGuppy mean anything to you?’
There was a pause before Vaisey answered. ‘It does,’ he said. ‘He was murdered a few weeks prior to your — well, before —’
‘Before you and Brummit railroaded me into the nick,’ Connor said.
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Vaisey said. ‘What’s your interest in Arnold McGuppy?’
‘Whoever killed him also killed Becky Main.’
‘Really?’ The smile broadened. ‘You’re sure of that, are you?’
‘Ninety per cent sure, yes.’
‘H’m. Well, it won’t do you much good, I’m afraid. The McGuppy murder is still on the files, of course. And that’s where it’s likely to remain. I can’t see a solution to it now. Not after all these years.’
‘I can,’ Connor said. ‘In fact, I already have the answer.’
‘You do, do you?’ Vaisey’s tone suggested he was humouring a lunatic. ‘So who killed him? I’d like to meet him.’
‘He’s dead,’ Connor said. ‘Been dead for years.’
‘Very convenient.’ Vaisey sipped his Guinness and licked the froth from his lips. ‘Look, Mr. Connor. I don’t know what your angle is, but why don’t you stop bellyaching around and just go home? We both know you killed that woman. Not intentionally, perhaps, but you killed her. So how the hell can you prove that you didn’t?’
‘Because I didn’t,’ Connor said angrily. ‘And because I’m meeting a man tomorrow evening who probably knows I didn’t. He almost certainly knows who killed McGuppy.’
‘Then why didn’t he come forward at the time?’
‘Because he was implicated,’ Connor said. ‘Not in the actual murder, but in the events preceding it.’
‘Criminal events?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. And what makes you think he has suffered a change of heart and is now prepared to talk? A troubled conscience? After six years it must be practically moribund.’
‘Not conscience,’ Connor said. ‘Pride. No, not pride either — braggadocio. He may think that time has obscured any evidence of his culpability — which it probably has — and take pleasure in revealing how he fooled you lot. He’s that sort of man. Or I hope he is.’
‘Even though he knows you may pass the information to us?’
‘Why not? He could deny it. It would be my word against his.’
‘Exactly. And without wishing to be uncivil, Mr. Connor — and even though I’ve no knowledge of your phantom informant — I know whose word I’d believe.’
‘That’s because you’re biased,’ Connor said. ‘I’m trouble, and you know it.’
‘Don’t we all?’ Vaisey said. ‘But keep talking, Mr. C. I’m a sucker for fairy tales.’
‘So I’
ve noticed.’ Connor drained his glass. ‘But this isn’t a fairy tale, Inspector, it’s the truth. So I’ll bid you goodnight.’
He was waiting outside an electrical goods shop when it opened the next morning. The shopkeeper frowned at his request. ‘We don’t stock that sort of thing, sir,’ he said. ‘No call for it.’
‘Do you know anyone in Felborough who might?’
The man shook his head. ‘Anyway, I fancy you might need a licence.’
‘Stuff the licence!’ Connor said. ‘Look! This is urgent. I’m a private investigator working in collaboration with the police. So where do I look?’
‘There’s a man in Leeds,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘Name of Jarvis. He imports stuff from the States. He might be able to help. I don’t say he will, mind you. But he might.’
Connor noted the address and drove over to Leeds. From the outside the shop looked to contain nothing more than junk. It looked much the same inside. As far as Connor could tell it contained no piece of equipment that was complete.
The man who appeared from the back room showed no surprise at his request. ‘Urgent, is it?’ he asked.
‘Very,’ Connor said. ‘Can you fix it?’
‘Sure,’ the man said. ‘But it’ll cost you.’
‘How much?’
‘Sixty quid.’
Connor grimaced. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘When do I collect?’
‘Come back at four,’ the man said. ‘I’ll have it ready.’
There was no reference to a licence, no query as to use. Jarvis was not a man to raise difficulties where a sale was involved.
Connor was early at the meeting place that evening. He parked the car on a newly laid macadam driveway and got out to inspect his surroundings. Northropp Way was a wide stretch of new road that climbed gently to vanish over a ridge some three hundred yards to the east. On the north side were new buildings of glass and steel and concrete, some apparently complete, others in various stages of construction. Stretches of green turf separated the buildings from each other and from the road, with young saplings fringing the pavement. The scene across the way was very different. Some distance back from the road a row of three-storeyed houses loomed high and gaunt against a greying sky, their windows shattered or boarded up, tiles missing from the roofs. Connor felt sad as he looked at them. Once they had been homes for people, treasured by their occupants. Now they stood empty and deserted, their gardens churned into a morass of mud and glass and brick, waiting to join the long line of rubble that marked the demolition of their neighbours higher up the hill.
He was trying to picture the scene in its heyday when Northropp arrived. Northropp parked his Rover beside the hired Cortina and joined Connor.
‘Sorry to be late,’ he said. ‘Got held up.’ He nodded towards the nearest building. ‘How does that strike you?’
‘There’s a lot of glass.’
‘Which makes for air and light. Pearsons, the plastics people, are taking it over. They expect to start plant installation next month. Want to look it over?’
‘Why not?’ Connor said.
Apart from its size and the liberal use of glass the building had not impressed from the outside. Inside it did. But as they traversed the vast open spaces of the various floors and climbed the wide flights of stairs — the lifts were installed but not yet in operation, Northropp said — Connor’s mind was more intent on the expected showdown than on what he saw or what Northropp had to say.
‘What did you think of the flooring?’ Northropp asked as they walked back to the cars. It’s a new process. Kind on the feet, eh?’
‘And colourful,’ Connor said. ‘Will it stand up to machinery?’
‘It will. We’re using it throughout the estate. It’s durable, and relatively cheap.’ Northropp looked at his watch. ‘You don’t want to go over the lot, do you? I’ve a baby wetting in an hour’s time.’
‘Baby wetting?’
‘Not literally. One of my chaps has just become a father. I promised to join him and his pals for a celebration drink. So let’s press on, eh? We’ll take my car.’
A light drizzle was falling. Connor fetched his raincoat from the Cortina, locked the car, and went to join Northropp in the Rover. As he walked round the rear of the car the number plate caught his eye, but it was not until he was being driven slowly up the rise, with Northropp expounding as they went, that its significance registered. He sat up sharply.
Northropp gave him a quick glance. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing,’ Connor said. ‘Just a touch of cramp.’
He felt stunned and bewildered. Confident of his facts, it had never occurred to him that he might have misinterpreted them. Now he saw that he had. Neatly as his original interpretation had seemed to fit, there was another that fitted even more neatly. It explained discrepancies that, because they had been alien to the first pattern, he had dismissed as inconsequent. Except that ...
He cleared his throat. ‘Your wife was telling me on Friday about her first husband,’ he said. ‘George Fitt.’
‘I know,’ Northropp said. ‘She told me.’
‘She must have been very young when she married him.’
‘She was. Just turned twenty.’
‘So you’re her second, eh? Is she your first?’
‘She is,’ Northropp said. ‘I was a confirmed bachelor until I met Susan.’
The line of rubble south of the road dwindled and gave way to the foundations of yet more factories, and these in turn were replaced by an expanse of open ground on which were stacks of building materials and an impressive array of machinery and equipment. Light shone from a watchman’s hut. The road deteriorated into a series of rutted tracks, and Northropp turned and drove slowly back. Opposite the first of the houses still standing he stopped the car.
‘The last survivors of what was once a desirable residential area,’ he said, pointing. ‘They come down tomorrow. The conservationists call it vandalism; they say that some of those houses are nearly two hundred years old. But one can’t stop progress. Or one shouldn’t.’ He opened the off side door. ‘Like to look inside?’
‘All right,’ Connor said.
As they picked their way across the rutted ground Northropp said casually, ‘How’s your investigation going? Any nearer a solution?’
Connor welcomed the opening. ‘It’s finished,’ he said. ‘All over bar the shouting.’
‘Really? You know who killed Becky?’
‘I know who killed Arnold McGuppy. As I think I told you, I’m pretty sure the same person also killed Becky.’
‘Yes. Yes, you did.’ Glass crackled under Northropp’s feet. ‘Well, congratulations. A pity you can’t use it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s only theory. You’ve no proof.’
‘But I have.’
‘You mean — Becky’s diary?’
‘That’s part of it, yes.’
Northropp pushed open the door of the house. The hall was large and high ceilinged, with paper peeling from the walls and lumps of plaster on the floor.
‘All right,’ Northropp said. ‘I’ll buy it. Who was it?’
Connor took a deep breath. Had he known beforehand what he knew now he would have arranged the confrontation differently. Northropp was burly and looked tough, and although Connor was no weakling his damaged side put him at a disadvantage. But he had to go on. He could not back out now.
‘Isn’t that a rather unnecessary question?’ he said.
Northropp eyed him thoughtfully. Then he forced a grin. ‘Not to me it isn’t,’ he said. ‘I’m no mind reader. However, if you prefer to play it close, fair enough.’ He opened the door of a cupboard under the stairs and peered inside. It was dark, and he took a torch from his pocket and flashed the beam. After a pause he said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
‘What is it?’ Connor said, disconcerted by the other’s apparent urbanity.
‘Know anything about pictures?’
‘Not really.
’
‘Nor me. All the same, there are a couple of paintings in here that look as if they might be worth something.’ He backed out. ‘You’d be surprised what we find in these old places. There was an ivory chess set further up the road. Quite valuable.’ He handed Connor the torch. ‘Have a look.’
Connor peered into the cupboard. It was long and narrow, and he stepped forward to shine the beam at the far end. There were no pictures, and anger possessed him as he realised how easily he had been fooled. But he was given no chance to retreat. A foot landed violently against his back and he went sprawling on the dust-laden floor, the torch flying from his grasp. The door slammed behind him.
‘You’re a fool, Connor.’ Northropp’s voice sounded muffled. ‘Fancy falling for a trick like that!’
In the pitch darkness Connor groped for the torch. His head sang from a bump against the cupboard wall, the fall had jarred his side. When eventually he located the torch it was to discover that the bulb had broken.
He got to his feet and ran his hand down the jamb of the door, seeking the handle. There wasn’t one. ‘What’s the big idea?’ he called angrily. ‘Stop this bloody nonsense. Let me out, damn you!’
Northropp laughed. ‘Come off it, man. You know I can’t do that. You don’t think this is a spur-of-the-moment thing, do you? Because it isn’t. Somehow I just couldn’t believe that your sole purpose in arranging this meeting was to gratify a burning interest in industrial architecture. So I took precautions. And your attitude this evening showed me they were justified.’ Connor lunged heavily against the door. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The door is solid enough — that’s why I chose it — but the walls were weakened when the adjoining house was demolished. You could bring the whole place down.’
