A Man Condemned

by Roderic Jeffries

  Tompkins returned, puffing slightly because he had been hurrying. ‘Sorry to keep you, gentlemen, but it’s all taken time . . . Well, we’ve half a dozen bottles with the same numbers on ’em, part of a batch which came in on Saturday morning. Two were up on the bars, the other four down in the cellars. Luckily, they missed some of the spirits what was down below.’

  ‘Then now I’m going to have to ask for more help. We’ve fingerprints on our bottle and we need to check whether any of ’em belong to someone who works here. You won’t all mind being fingerprinted, will you?’ Fusil smiled. ‘You can tear ’em up afterwards to make certain they don’t get mixed up with the rogue’s gallery.’

  ‘To hear the missus talk sometimes, you’d reckon most of us was already there! . . . I can only speak for the missus and myself, mind, but we’ve certainly no objection. And I’d be right surprised if any of the staff was to fuss.’

  ‘Do you ever employ anyone who might handle the bottles but who isn’t here today?’

  ‘No, no one else. The fewer people handle ’em, the fewer get “accidently” broken so as the contents need drinking up smartly if they’re not to be wasted!’

  None of the staff, once the circumstances were explained to them, raised any objections to having their prints taken. Walsh compared these with those on the bottle and reported to Fusil. ‘Mrs Tompkins’s left thumb and forefinger are on it, as near perfect as you’ll get.’

  Fusil was unable to hide either his disappointment or his anger. He thought for a moment, then went over to the door and looked across the passage into the bar where Tompkins was now serving. He called Tompkins out. ‘Sorry to keep bothering you, but I need another word. Can they keep going for a bit without you?’

  ‘That they can. Give ’em something to do for a change,’ he said jovially.

  ‘I think you said that the bottles which had the numbers I gave you were delivered here on Saturday morning?’

  ‘That’s it. Mostly they deliver during the week, but there’s been strikes here and strikes there with pubs running short, so deliveries have been coming in at extra times.’

  ‘Since Saturday morning, have you sold or given a bottle of Haig to anyone?’

  ‘Given?’ Tompkins laughed boisterously. ‘There’s no free samples from this house. As I always say, I’ve got to live, just the same as the bloke on the other side of the counter.’

  ‘Have you sold any?’

  ‘I’d need to check on that. We sell across the counter, of course, but not much because it’s at bar prices. If we do sell a bottle it’s put down in the books, to give us a check. Like me to look and find out?’

  Tompkins was gone about four minutes. ‘No. Sold a bottle of gin to old Colonel Newcombe—there’ll be no need to embalm him—but no whisky.’

  ‘One other possibility. You didn’t give a bottle of whisky to PC O’Connell when he was here during the night? As a kind of thank you?’

  Tompkins didn’t immediately appreciate the real significance to this question, but Walsh did: as Walsh looked hard at Fusil, his expression became almost resentful.

  Tompkins said: ‘I offered him a drink, but he wouldn’t have one. Thinking maybe he didn’t touch the stuff at all, it never occurred to me to give him a bottle. I’d have been glad to do that, though: he’s a nice lad.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve had bad news about him. He had a nasty car accident early this morning and was killed in it.’

  ‘Eh, it’s a bloody life for some!’ He suddenly looked directly at Fusil. ‘That bottle of whisky you brought along . . .?’

  ‘It was found in his car.’

  ‘And it came from here?’

  ‘I think we now have to accept that as fact.’

  Tompkins coughed.

  ‘When O’Connell was here, was he at any time on his own in the cellars or the bars?’

  ‘Well, yes. He checked all round to see no one else was about and I didn’t go with him. I had me time cut out calming the missus down.’

  ‘Did he at any time ask you whether you’d worked out how much had been stolen?’

  Tompkins spoke reluctantly. ‘He did ask if I could say how many bottles had gone from the bars and I told him no, there was no way of making a quick check.’

  ‘So he was certain that you’d never know if one more bottle went missing?’

  ‘I . . . I suppose you could put it like that.’

  ‘And did he search, on his own, the premises after that?’

  Tompkins nodded.

  Fusil said, his tone crisp and commanding: ‘I’m going to ask you to do me one final favour. Just don’t tell anyone—not even your own staff—that one of the bottles from here was found in the PC’s crashed car. Will you do that for me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We don’t know all the facts, yet, and there could be a dozen different explanations for how this happened quite legally.’

  Ten minutes later, when they were driving along roads bordered by semi-detached houses, each with its own small front garden in some of which there was still plenty of colour, Walsh said: ‘When we started, I was wondering why a small case like this warranted a DI.’

  ‘You’ll keep your mouth shut,’ snapped Fusil.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘As I said to Tompkins, there are a dozen possible explanations other than the obvious one.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ But just name one of ’em, Walsh thought.

  Chapter Eight

  By ten-thirty, Monday morning, the pathologist had completed his examination of O’Connell’s body. He motioned to his assistant, who switched off all but one of the high-powered bulbs in the overhead pod, then said to Fusil: ‘I’ve had to deal with a few bodies as badly battered as this one, but I can’t remember worse.’

  ‘Were any of his injuries inconsistent with the car-crash?’

  ‘I’d need to be God to answer that.’

  ‘But you can’t say there weren’t any?’

  The pathologist looked at Fusil over the top of his bifocals. ‘That’s right.’ He waited, but when Fusil made no further comment he turned and said: ‘You can take the samples now.’

  His assistant limped up to the table and raised the corpse’s right hand and began to massage the arm to move the blood down. The exhibits officer held a bottle in the chest cavity under a vein to collect a sample of blood.

  *

  Campson looked at the calendar which was topped by a blonde who was proving she had all the right curves and he realized that it was the first of October. Yet his pal at HQ had promised to get him out of K division by the end of September at the latest. So much for pals.

  He tried to think of other strings he could pull and failed. He swore. His wife would be sorry to leave Fortrow, but he couldn’t get away quickly enough. He liked to know where he was, but Fusil was one of those men who delighted in tearing up the book and writing his own programme so that sooner or later he must meet disaster. When that happened Campson wanted to be a long, long way away so that he remained unscathed.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Ballistics here. Re the National Westminster Bank and Badger, deceased. We’ve checked all our immediate sources of information, but we’ve been unable to determine the origin of the nine-millimetre ammunition.’

  ‘Can you suggest the nationality?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Frankly, the marks have everyone guessing. We’ll keep trying, of course, and may get some late information in from abroad . . . We’ll be in touch the moment there’s anything to report.’

  Campson made a note of the call for Fusil. That was that, he thought. Ballistics might go on checking, but the degree of resolution with which they checked had to fall back simply because of the pressure of work, not to mention the effect of continuing failure. He accepted that they would not identify the origin of the ammunition without any of the sense of resentful impatience which Fusil would later experience.

  *

  Welland was one of those lucky men for
whom the world was all honey. He was very happily married (to the sweetest woman in the world), he had a lovely home he was buying on a mortgage, he could afford a couple of pints at the local every now and then and he was still fit enough to enjoy a rugged game of rugger. Millionaires didn’t have what he had.

  He went into the call-box at the end of Martha’s Lane, but did not lift the receiver and as he waited he hummed one of the more popular songs of the divisional rugger team. The phone rang. He identified himself and as he listened he pictured Naylor, a well-built man with the voice of a boy, who was possibly not the raving queer everyone said he was.

  ‘That bank job, guv, what’s offering over thirteen grand. I’ve been keeping me ears open and I’ve ’eard something what’s interesting. D’you know Roy Yates?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘’E bought his alibi for that Friday.’

  ‘That sounds promising.’

  ‘If it leads to something, you’ll remember it was me what told you?’

  ‘You can count on that.’

  The line went dead. Welland resumed singing the rugger song aloud as he left: two miles away, Naylor hurried out of another call-box and into the night.

  *

  ‘Look,’ said Kerr easily, ‘I’m only doing my job.’ Keep turning ’em over, Fusil had ordered: keep turning ’em over, figuratively speaking, was what he was doing.

  She was a blonde, perhaps originally natural, now certainly bottled, whose once attractive face had become marked with lines which spoke of hard and bitter experience. ‘For God’s sake, leave me alone,’ she whined.

  She walked past the unmade bed to the battered chest-of-drawers on which stood a tray with bottles and a couple of glasses. She poured herself out a gin and drank it neat. She had on a beautifully embroidered housecoat and when she moved it sometimes became obvious that that was all she wore. The room smelled of stale scent and cigarette-smoke.

  ‘I keep telling you, I ain’t heard nothing,’ she said. ‘And I keep reminding you that your punters won’t have been talking about anything else.’

  ‘My clients,’ she said, with some dignity, ‘ain’t that kind of person.’ She poured herself another drink, looked at the imitation carriage clock on the mantelpiece over the blocked-up fireplace.

  ‘Not keeping you, am I?’

  ‘You know bloody well you are!’ she shouted. ‘Why? I never cause no trouble. Yet you’ve been persecuting me. I’ve a mind to . . .’ She stopped, all too aware that she dare not complain too much.

  ‘When three villains have nicked a hundred and twenty-five thousand quid and croaked one of the guards, someone will have talked.’

  ‘Not in here, they won’t. I give ’em what they pay for and they ain’t interested in anything else.’

  He stretched out in the battered old armchair and relaxed.

  She looked at the clock again. ‘Please, mister, give us a break. If I learn something I swear I’ll phone you, straight I will.’

  ‘I need something now, not next month, Maggie. I’ve got to keep my boss happy.’

  She told him how she’d like to keep Fusil.

  He smiled. ‘There are times when I feel exactly the same way about him.’

  There was a quick, high-pitched buzz and she hurried over to the speaking grille by the side of the door. A man identified himself as Marvin. She said to wait a few minutes.

  She spoke to Kerr in her most humble tones. ‘Mister, you see how it is. I’ve got to live, so give me a break, huh? Just leave me alone?’

  ‘Go right ahead, as if I weren’t here. I’m broadminded.’

  She swore.

  ‘You know, Maggie, you’re being very silly: you must have heard something.’

  She went over to the chest of drawers and poured herself a third gin. ‘All right, there’s been a bit of talk, but nothing definite.’ She emptied the glass, coughed raspingly and momentarily looked to be in pain. ‘Just that Chuck’s been passing the cabbage round very freely.’

  ‘Chuck who?’

  ‘Chuck Templeton . . . Now will you clear out?’

  ‘How long’s this been going on?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’

  He came to his feet. ‘Thanks a lot, Maggie. Remind me to do you a favour in return sometime.’

  ‘Drop dead.’

  He went down three flights of stairs, past rooms in which the tenants lived happy, solitary, sordid or hopeless lives, and reached the long, narrow hall just as the front door opened and a middle-aged man entered. Kerr wished him a pleasant morning and he stared back with suspicious, frightened eyes.

  Outside, Kerr gratefully breathed in the cool, damping air. Helen sometimes complained that he never talked much about his work, but there were sides to it which he was thankful she really knew nothing about.

  *

  In the courtyard behind divisional HQ, Fusil stood by his car, one hand on the door-catch. ‘Chuck Templeton?’

  ‘I’ve checked up,’ said Kerr. ‘He’s plenty of form, but none of it’s for violence and there’s nothing on carrying shooters. But he’s come into money and, although the Tom wouldn’t say when he started spending, it’s obviously recently.’

  ‘Find out what more you can about him.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Fusil pulled open the car door and climbed in behind the wheel. He drove out on to the road, turned left and continued to the traffic lights, where he turned right on to the broad and busy road which would take him straight through to the suburb of Dritlington. O’Connell, he thought, when in CID had suffered under the disadvantages of being naively honest: required to ferret out the worst in every man, as often as not he had identified only the best. Could his character have basically changed? Or was it being naively out-of-date to suppose that an honest man would not take one bottle of whisky from a pub when so much had already been stolen from it and the total loss must be covered by insurance? Standards of honesty were forever changing—and slipping . . . Yet, if he were called to a pub which had suffered a robbery and there were bottles lying about the place, he’d never help himself to one because to him that would be theft. And he believed that O’Connell would have seen things in exactly the same light. Yet all the surmising in the world couldn’t alter the fact that that bottle of whisky had been stolen from the pub . . .

  Chapter Nine

  Number thirty-five, Aaron Road, was the right-hand half of a semi-detached. To buy it, Fusil judged, O’Connell must have had to take out a mortgage which would have stretched his resources about as far as they would go. He would then not have been able to afford any luxuries, however small. And sometimes when almost every shop-window offered luxuries for sale, a man suffered a sudden, bitter resentment that he couldn’t buy what other people freely bought . . .

  He walked up the crazy-paving, past a tiny lawn and rose-beds, and rang the bell. The front door had been rubbed down and prepared for painting—how many other jobs about the house had O’Connell started but now would never finish?

  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman who stared challengingly at him. He introduced himself and explained the reason for his visit.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘She’s most terribly shocked.’

  ‘I realize that. If I could have avoided worrying her now, I would have.’

  She hesitated, then stepped aside and he entered the hall.

  ‘She’s in that room,’ the woman said, pointing.

  He went into a small, sparsely furnished room. If grief had not stretched Vera O’Connell’s face, she would have had the kind of fresh but unremarkable attractiveness which middle-age would slowly turn into homely ordinariness. She was wearing a black dress, obviously borrowed, which didn’t fit.’

  ‘Mrs O’Connell, I’m Detective Inspector Fusil. Reg worked with me a little time back. He was a fine policeman. I’m desperately sorry about what’s happened.’

  She stared at him, not yet truly
understanding that never again would her husband come back from his spell of duty and kiss her and make her laugh by telling her some of the things which had happened during his turn of duty.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you some questions.’

  The middle-aged woman who had remained by the door said loudly: ‘I told him he ought to wait. If you ask me, it’s all very wrong, bothering you now, even if it is the police . . . I’ll be in the kitchen, love, if you want me, getting something for lunch.’ She left and shut the door behind herself.

  Fusil, as he sat on one of the armchairs, summed Vera up as not overbright, but a wife who had provided a happy home for her husband. ‘Have you been told the circumstances of your husband’s death?’ The curtness of the question might have been called brutal, but experience had taught him that there were times when the kindest thing was to be as direct and brief as possible.

  She shook her head. Her lips began to tremble.

  ‘He was driving down from the Cleeton Hills on the Otley Road when the car crashed through the rails and went over the edge. Mercifully, he died instantly.’ Fusil paused, then said: ‘He’d just finished the night turn and handed over to the next beat, so I’m wondering why he drove up into the hills instead of coming directly back here—can you help me on that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t mention that he might be going there?’

  She shook her head. She remembered how she’d handed him his sandwiches and kissed him goodbye, but had not watched him drive away because there had been a programme on the television she hadn’t wanted to miss. So now she must always live with the knowlege that when he was leaving for the last time she had found the television more important than him . . . Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘Did he know someone who lives in the hills?’

  She shook her head, causing a few tears to fall.

  ‘Mrs O’Connell, had your husband been drinking heavily recently?’

  She looked up, surprised, rather shocked. ‘He liked a beer now and then: but that was all.’

  ‘Did he drink whisky very often?’