A Traitor's Crime Read online

  A TRAITOR’S CRIME

  Roderic Jeffries

  © Roderick Jeffries 1968

  Roderick Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1968 by The Crime Club by Collins.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER I

  Flecton Cross General Hospital stood on top of North Hill, one of the four low hills on which the town of Flecton Cross had been built. (The Rome of the south-east, said the holiday brochures, with impudent disregard for facts or artistic possibilities). Built in the early 1930s, in a grave institutional style, the hospital had been doubled in size in 1953 and the additions had managed to make the place look far warmer in style: it was even possible to believe the patients would be held to be of some consequence. Ward C was on the fourth floor of the east wing. Through the large windows one could see two of the other three hills of the town — bloody bumps, one disgruntled mayor had called them after some of his property developed structural faults through movement of the underlying clay following a very dry summer. At the far end of the ward were two separate cubicles, cut off from the main ward by eight-foot high glass panels. For seriously ill patients, they were called ‘the mortuaries’ by the staff.

  In the nearer cubicle, a bearded man lay on the bed. Although young, the flesh of his face had coarsened as it drew inwards from emaciation: his chest was bared and his ribs were distressingly prominent. From time to time, muscles all over his body twitched and agonising cramps gripped the backs of his legs and his abdomen. He was weak from vomiting and purging.

  Two men walked between the beds to the nearer cubicle: one was a white-coated doctor, the other Detective Constable Elwick. Elwick was tall, broad shouldered, and his strongly featured face and unruly black hair gave him the appearance of a man for ever prepared to tussle with the world.

  ‘Can you say for certain yet?’ asked Elwick.

  ‘It’s what we said,’ replied the doctor, tired by the strain of overwork.

  They stopped outside the cubicle. The curtain had not been pulled across the door and Elwick watched the bearded man twist in agony, sweat standing out on his body. ‘Which drug?’

  ‘Heroin.’

  ‘He looks as if he’s going through it now.’

  ‘He’ll be doing that, all right, despite what we’ve been able to do for him. The withdrawal symptoms hit them really hard after about fourteen hours. Anyway, he’s a bad case. Two or three grains to you or me would see us six feet under, but he’s been tolerating ten grains a day.’

  ‘No wonder he was after money — must have been spending a fortune on the stuff.’

  They went inside the cubicle.

  As they stood by the bedside, Elwick saw for the first time the ulcers on the man’s arms. The sight of them made him feel slightly sick and he wondered contemptuously how any man could so degrade himself.

  ‘Give us a bit more, Doc,’ whimpered the man, with slavish servility.

  ‘Not just yet,’ replied the doctor, with professional briskness.

  ‘It’s killing me. You’ve got to … ’

  ‘Nothing for the moment.’

  ‘I’ll pay you good … ’

  ‘With what?’ cut in Elwick harshly. ‘The money you were too clumsy to pinch?’

  The man suddenly writhed violently, then groaned.

  ‘My name’s Detective Constable Elwick. Is yours Vincent Barnes?’

  ‘Be a pal and give us some more. I’ll pay. I swear I’ll pay … ’

  ‘Stow it.’

  The doctor looked quickly at Elwick. Quite clearly, Elwick had no feelings of compassion for this man and the agonies he was suffering as his body demanded more heroin. The doctor had no sympathy for drug takers but he had compassion for anyone who suffered.

  Elwick picked up the only chair, moved it closer to the bed, twisted it round with his large, heavy hands, and then sat down.

  The doctor said he was leaving. Barnes again pleaded for more heroin with a sickening servility that precluded the slightest sense of shame. The doctor ignored the pleas and left, closing the door behind him. Barnes shut his eyes and groaned as cramp racked his body.

  ‘Where are you from?’ demanded Elwick. ‘Where’s your home?’

  Barnes’ eyes suddenly began to run so heavily and continuously it was as if he had burst into tears.

  Elwick searched his pockets and found a battered packet of cigarettes. He lit one. As far as he was concerned, Barnes had brought about his own suffering and that was that. By nature a thrusting extrovert, Elwick could find some measure of sympathy for those who were hurt through no fault of their own, but none for those who brought such suffering entirely on their own heads.

  ‘I’m dying,’ shrieked Barnes.

  ‘No such luck, mate. Where’s your home town?’ Elwick took a notebook out of his coat pocket. ‘How long have you been hooked?’

  Barnes once more writhed in the agony of cramp, then, as the cramp left him, lay back with his eyes shut.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I … I don’t live anywhere much now.’

  ‘How long have you been hooked?’

  ‘A couple of years.’

  ‘Where have you been getting your supplies?’

  ‘A pusher.’

  ‘I wasn’t reckoning you queued up at the local pub. Who’s the pusher? Where d’you contact him?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘What’s the pusher’s name?’

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s his pitch?’

  ‘Around the town.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  Elwick spoke roughly. ‘Listen, mate, no co-operation from you, no needle. You’ll be left here to sweat it out on your own.’

  Barnes began to sob.

  ‘Where’s his pitch?’

  ‘Castle Street,’ whispered Barnes.

  ‘What’s the rest of Harry’s name?’

  ‘But he’s … he’s just Harry. I’ve never heard anything more.’

  ‘What’s he look like? Big, small, fat, thin?’

  ‘Mister, I’ve got to have another needle … ’

  ‘Then keep talking.’

  ‘He’s a little bloke. Got a squint. Talks cockney.’

  ‘Round face, square face, big ears? What colour hair?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Bad luck for you, isn’t it?’

  Barnes groaned.

  ‘When d’you get your fixes?’ asked Elwick.

  ‘In … in the evenings.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifteen bob a needle.’ Barnes’ voice rose. ‘I paid and paid him, every penny my old man left me, but he wouldn’t give me another fix — not after all he’d had from me.’

  ‘And how much did your old man leave you?’

  ‘A thousand quid.’

  A thousand pounds, thought Elwick with contempt. Barnes, from the way he spoke, came from a solid, middle-class background. Somewhere along the lines he had left the tracks and now he had degenerated into something very much less than a man. In
contrast to Barnes, he, Elwick, had had no start in life and everything from the word go had been one long battle: yet he had fought.

  Barnes was again seized by cramp and he cried aloud. He suddenly vomited. The acrid stench sickened Elwick, who hastily got up and left.

  He walked between the two rows of beds, hurrying his pace because sickness was one of the two things in life he feared. At the far end of the ward was a nurse, a redhead. He had a chat with her before leaving. If he had to return to the hospital it might, he thought vaguely, be worth while trying to date her.

  The C.I.D Hillman, showing its years and rusting, was in the front car-park. He climbed in and drove out.

  The traffic was heavy especially along Tyler Street, the main shopping road, and it took him over a quarter of an hour to reach the traffic lights where he turned right. A further five minutes brought him to the squat, ugly, rambling police station which adjoined the magistrates’ court. He parked in the courtyard at the rear, had a few words with the civilian fitter who was changing a fan-belt on a dog handler’s van, and then went inside the building.

  The detective inspector’s room was on the first floor, at the rear of the building and overlooking the courtyard. Astey, the D.I, was a man of forty-two who took a great deal of care over his appearance. He shaved twice a day, used a lot of hair cream, and favoured male talc. When he had come to the borough police force to take charge of the divisional C.I.D, both his own men and the villains placed him as soft. They soon discovered their mistake. Astey was smooth, but far from soft. He was hard, ambitious, and clever, clever enough to hide his hardness until it suited him to do otherwise.

  Astey, who’d been reading through a crime report, looked up. ‘Well?’

  ‘He was on heroin, sir, and his name is Barnes. He’s been hooked for a couple of years, buys his shots from a pusher — used up all his cash his old man left him and needed more money so thought he’d try stealing it.’

  ‘Anything on the pusher?’

  ‘Not much. He’s called Harry, small, squints, and talks cockney.’

  Astey thought for a short while. ‘Sounds as if it could be Harry Snaith. Find out if it is. And show some discretion for a change.’

  Elwick looked as if he were going to make some retort, then didn’t. He left. Astey lit a cigarette. Elwick was twenty-six, getting on for twenty-seven, yet the chip on his shoulder was not becoming any less. If he didn’t learn to throw it off, he wasn’t going to make the kind of policeman that his qualifications suggested he should. The drug addict, sweating it out in hospital, wasn’t any more of a criminal simply because he’d wasted all the money his father had left him.

  Astey looked at his watch. It was almost six o’clock so that the chief constable would have gone home. How was he going to react to a drugs case?

  ***

  John Keelton lathered his face and then shaved. He washed his face, dried it, and dressed. His suit was pressed, his shirt was freshly ironed, his detached collar was semi-stiff. Behind his back, the men called him The General and he had a sufficient sense of humour to wonder whether that was a compliment or an insult. He had been in the army during the war, brigade major of an Indian infantry brigade, but had always hoped he didn’t too closely resemble the music-hall Indian army colonel.

  He dressed neatly because that was how he liked to be, not because it was a fetish with him. He had a lean, tanned face, a neat toothbrush moustache, and his hair was iron-grey, although he was only fifty-two. He had a natural ability to command and believed in discipline for the sake of efficiency, not for its own sake: when necessary, he was readier than the next man to forget the rules and slash through red tape. He had a pride in the force he commanded and he always set out to keep it the most efficient in the country. The Home Secretary was working hard to reduce by amalgamation the number of separate police forces in the country, but the one excuse he would never be able to quote in favour of amalgamating Flecton Cross borough police with the county police would be the excuse of inefficiency.

  Keelton went downstairs and into the dining-room, where his breakfast was already on the table. He sat down, spread out the Daily Telegraph and began to read.

  The door banged open and Joanna hurried in. ‘Good morning, Dad.’

  ‘ ’Morning.’

  She sat down. ‘Could I have the car this afternoon?’

  ‘Not this afternoon, I’m afraid. I’m playing truant from work and your mother and I … ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  He quickly looked at his daughter.

  Joanna was nineteen and often in conflict with him — a conflict that Mary assured him was nothing more than the eternal one which raged between different generations. As Mary had once said, a chuckle in her voice, Joanna knew that the youth of the country had broken up the bigoted, stuffy stupidity of the older people and he knew that wisdom and experience came from age.

  Joanna sat down and buttered a piece of Vita-Weat, scraping off some of the butter afterward. She was dieting, even though it was quite obvious there was absolutely no need for her to diet.

  ‘I’m going out tonight,’ she said suddenly, in a challenging tone of voice. He did not answer.

  ‘I’m going out with Robert.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I don’t care how much you moan.’

  ‘As far as I know, I haven’t moaned at all.’

  ‘But I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘That’s clever of you.’

  ‘You’re thinking I ought to have more taste than to go out with a peasant.’

  He smiled. ‘I hope I wouldn’t be that stupid.’

  ‘Because he comes from a different background, you think he’s impossibly primitive.’

  ‘His background doesn’t concern me. I’m only interested in the questions of authority and rank.’

  ‘Rank is primitive.’

  ‘Maybe, but even the Russians discovered in Finland that sometimes one has to return to a state of primitiveness.’

  ‘Finland!’

  He wondered if she realised that Russia had invaded Finland during the second World War? She’d marched with the C.N.D and waved a banner demanding abolition of The Bomb: she’d marched to the town hall and waved a banner demanding the Americans get out of Vietnam: yet as far as he had ever been able to discover, she had no conception of the strategy of the balance of power, the value of deterrents, or the need to be ready to fight if fighting was to be avoided.

  Mary came into the room, carrying the coffee and milk on a tray which she put down on the sideboard. ‘It’s going to be a lovely day.’ She was a warm woman, generous in love and affection, and she was the anchor of the family, smoothing the paths between her husband and Joanna. When Richard, their only son, had died, she had perhaps been hurt more tragically than anyone, but it had been she who’d been the first to push the tragedy to one side and get on with the task of living. ‘We’re going to have tea with the Abbots this afternoon, Joanna, and Father’s even taking the afternoon off. How about coming along?’

  ‘There’s a class on.’

  ‘I expect you could skip it just for once?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’

  Mary sighed. Quite obviously, Joanna and her father had been rubbing each other up the wrong way.

  ‘I’m going out this evening,’ said Joanna, with unnecessary force.

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘With Robert.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Robert,’ said Joanna belligerently. ‘Just because his table manners aren’t perfect, that doesn’t mean he’s beyond the pale.’

  ‘What’s wrong with his table manners?’ Keelton asked.

  ‘You just wouldn’t know, since you’ve never asked him here.’

  ‘Then his table manners can’t really be of any significance, can they?’ he pointed out.

  ‘It would be a little difficult for him to come here, dear,’ said Mary pacifically.

  ‘O
nly because you’re so determined to make it so.’

  He turned over the page of the newspaper. Robert Elwick was a good detective and could become a very good one if he ever stopped being his own worst enemy. Joanna had met him at a police dance and it was impossible — to him, at any rate — to make out whether Joanna saw Elwick because she really liked him or because she thought she knew her father did not approve of such a friendship.

  Mary poured out the coffee. In the interests of diet, Joanna had hers without sugar, although she hated the taste, and then she left, muttering a hasty good-bye to her mother as she went out of the room.

  Keelton buttered his third piece of toast. ‘Sometimes I think she needs a damned good bottom-spanking.’

  ‘Spoken like a stern, but of course just, parent!’ Mary stretched her hand across the corner of the table and put it on his. ‘She’s growing up, John, that’s all it is.’

  ‘Does it have to be so painful for everyone else?’

  ‘Is she really making things difficult for you by going out with a detective constable?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not difficult, but it’s not a situation I welcome.’

  ‘You don’t think that perhaps you might be being a little old-fashioned?’

  He looked at her and suddenly grinned. ‘What’s this — two against one?’

  ‘But if their friendship doesn’t undermine your authority?’

  ‘I’ve no intention of letting it do that,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Then does it really and honestly matter?’

  ‘Depends on your definitions, I suppose.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must get moving. I’ve a conference at nine-thirty.’

  ‘I’m expecting you back for lunch.’

  Some five minutes later, he left the house. He went round to the double garage, set away from the house, and backed the Humber Snipe out on to the road. The Snipe was provided by the police, as was the very pleasant house in the eastern suburbs of Catchley, a mile beyond East Hill. Earlier in his career, he had hoped to become chief constable of a county force and had applied for several such posts as they became vacant. He failed each time, despite his very high qualifications, and he had been hurt and perplexed by his failure until it had quietly been explained to him that there was considerable irrational discrimination against him because he had not been in the police all his working life, but had started his career as a solicitor. It had been useless to rail against such stupidity and he had begun to apply for posts in the much smaller local forces. He had gained the appointment of chief constable of Flecton Cross borough police force. His job was really more that of a chief superintendent’s except that there was a considerably greater social prestige attached to it and in consequence many social obligations. His salary was only two thousand three hundred pounds a year, but the fringe benefits included car, house, and generous entertainments allowance. He was a man who always worked to the best of his abilities, no matter what the disappointments, and he put all his energies into his new position. He found many sources of reward. The watch committee always supported him and, as important, the finance committee were sympathetic. It had not taken him long to work up the force from a low standard of efficiency to its present high one.