An Ideal Crime Read online

  An Ideal Crime

  Roderic Jeffries

  © Roderic Jeffries 1986

  Roderic 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 1986 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 1

  Mrs Harbuckle put the two boiled eggs, one in an egg-cup, one in the saucer, on the table. “There was a talk on the wireless the other day and the doctor said more than three eggs a week are dangerous.”

  “According to the pessimists in the medical profession, everything’s potentially dangerous, even mothers’ milk,” Thorpe replied.

  She was not to be side-tracked so easily. “You eat a lot more than three each week.”

  “I’ll tell you when I start getting the shakes.”

  “You can laugh all right now; it’s when you get to my age — if you ever do — that you begin to think.” She checked that everything was on the table; wholemeal loaf, butter, homemade blackberry and apple jam (blackberries picked well away from any road for fear of lead poisoning), tomatoes and well-washed lettuce, and low calorie salad cream. “As I always said to Ron, you’ve got to do your thinking today for tomorrow.”

  Her husband, Thorpe thought, had not taken her advice to heart if local gossip was accurate; when he’d died suddenly, he’d left little but debts.

  She folded her arms across her ample bosom. “And another thing. It’s not right them making you always do nights.”

  “The job is for a night guard.”

  “Doesn’t make it any righter.” Her views were always sharply determined and immune to logic. “It’s not natural and what’s not natural is wrong.”

  He topped the first egg and helped himself to a slice of bread which he buttered, too generously for her approval.

  “Nights are meant for sleeping, that’s what.” In an absent-minded manner, she pulled out one of the chairs from under the oval dining table and sat. “If you don’t sleep when you should, things go wrong.”

  “But working nights when there’s really nothing for me to do means I’m getting paid while I study.”

  “Studying should be done during the day, when the brain’s in the right rhythm.” She was a great believer in rhythms. She leaned forward slightly and said pugnaciously: “Why don’t you get a grant like everyone else and then you could study during the day?”

  He’d told her several times before, but he still answered patiently. “It’s not all that simple when you’re my age.”

  “Other people get ’em easy enough. You know what you need to do? Go and see ’em and tell ’em you’ve got to have one. And don’t take no for an answer. That’s the only way these days with those kinds of people. Tell ’em, not ask ’em.”

  He made no comment. If he’d explained, she wouldn’t have understood. When he’d applied for a mature student’s grant, he’d been interviewed by a woman only slighter older than himself, attractive, very aware of the fact, and ever ready to fend off advances long before any was made. Her tone of superiority had become one of open antagonism when he’d mentioned the name of the minor public school to which he’d gone. She’d informed him that he couldn’t expect to go through the rest of his life privileged. He hadn’t bothered to argue the merits or demerits of private education, but had explained that after leaving school he’d decided to take a break before working for a degree and had joined a charitable organisation which sent volunteers out to some of the poorer parts of the world to help with community projects — he’d been sent to East Africa to help improve water supplies in far-flung villages… She’d lectured him on the presumption of people who worked among the disadvantaged solely in order to bolster their own egos. He’d cut the interview short and had left. He had not bothered to ask for a second interview with someone else.

  Why not? He wasn’t certain. Pride, stupidity…

  “The telly went all funny again last night.”

  Mrs Harbuckle’s words jerked his mind back to the present. He finished the first egg.

  “The picture kept jumping about, just like it did when I called ’em in to repair it last time. They swore it was all right. But it’s not. They’re all the same these days. Won’t do their jobs properly.”

  Her character was frequently contradictory, he thought. Always complaining, yet she had a good sense of humour and could laugh at herself; bitter about some things, yet generous about others; a sharp businesswoman who demanded her money be paid exactly when due each week and counted it very carefully before accepting it, yet she often gave him delicacies with his meals for which she didn’t charge.

  “As I always used to say to Ron, things don’t get better by talking.” She slid back the sleeve of her frock to look at the digital wristwatch of which she was very proud, having won it in a competition concerning the pleasures of eating baked beans. “Time keeps moving, so I’d better be off. I told Marge I’d drop in and see her this evening, if my feet weren’t too bad.”

  “How is she now?”

  “She says she’s better, but I don’t know. Her Tony’s worried and he’s every right to be. When you’re her colour…” She shook her head in an expression of dire foreboding. She buried her friends with profligate frequency. “You’ll remember to lock up, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “There was a break-in two roads away the other day. The wife came home to find all her clothes chucked anywhere and because she and the husband aren’t the people to leave much lying about, the thieves poured paraffin over the food and used a spray-can of paint to write filth on the living room walls… Hanging’s too good for the likes of them… I’ve put the stuff ready for you in the kitchen.”

  After she’d gone, he finished his supper and then carried everything through to the kitchen where he washed up. He then made himself sandwiches and coffee, which he poured into the vacuum flask. He went up to his bedroom. Which subject did he study tonight? Roman law, criminal law, contract, tort, real property… He went over to the small, battered desk — it had been Mrs Harbuckle’s husband’s and she had insisted on his using it as soon as she learned he was a student — and picked up the folder on torts, crossed to the small bookcase and chose the text book and questions-and-answers paperback on the same subject; he put everything on the foot of the bed.

  Wondering what kind of a night it would turn out to be, he crossed to the window and looked out. It was not yet dark and he could see the chubby clouds drifting in front of a gentle easterly wind. Perhaps the forecast was going to prove right for once and the weather was settled at fine. One of the clouds moved on to reveal an early star. It reminded him of the stars on those tangy, imagination-provoking, African nights when they’d often seemed so close one could all but reach up and touch them. From the village would come the sounds of an old man hawking, a couple suddenly having a blazing row, a woman shouting to her children, from beyond the village the sounds of insects and animals, hunted and hunters. In the middle of such ancient vastness, man could only feel insignificant. He knew a sha
rp nostalgia, knowing even then that he was remembering the good and forgetting the bad… One night, in the bar of a ramshackle, tin-roofed building which had called itself Hotel Ngavasho, a drunken Greek had said to him that every man arrived in Africa as an idealist, every man left it as a realist. His upbringing had made certain he had been an idealist. Was he now a realist?

  He changed into a thick shirt and polo-neck sweater since the vaults were cold whatever the temperature outside and Fifield made certain that the available heating was inadequate as heating cost money, and the pair of soft leather boots which a pock-marked Arab had made for him in Nairobi. (The Arab had quoted a price which he’d been ready to pay. But he’d been with an old African hand who’d called the Arab a swindling rogue and had claimed they were worth only a fraction of their quoted price. In the end, after considerable haggling, a reasonable price had been fixed and the Arab had called for three cups of over-sweet coffee with which to cement the transaction. Once outside, his companion had told him he’d been a fool to be prepared to pay what had first been asked. His reply that the original sum had been less than he’d have paid for them back home had been met with quizzical amusement.)

  He went downstairs and set the video, which he rented, to begin recording at six the next morning when there would be one hour of law lectures delivered on behalf of the Open University, then left the house after locking up. He walked down Ponds End Road, past a dozen houses which differed from the one he’d just left only in minor details, turned right, and right again. This brought him to Ealing Broadway station where a Central Line train was standing at the platform, ready to start its run. He sat, briefcase on his lap, and as the doors slid shut and the train started, he stared at the advertisement immediately above a peroxide blonde. The advertisement for Sunlast Holidays said that travel broadened the mind. A graffiti writer had added the comment that Sunlast holidays minded the broads who travelled. He wondered when he’d have the chance to travel again. Certainly not until he’d obtained a degree and passed the bar exams. By then, he’d be thirty-three or thirty-four. Years ago, an elderly friend had said that it was ridiculous to think of doing voluntary work in Africa immediately after finishing school since this would delay his obtaining professional qualifications. His parents had quietly replied that to serve others was the highest qualification any man could wish to strive towards. A comment which had made their friend swear with all the fluency of a man who’d been at sea for several years…

  At Oxford Circus, the blonde left after looking at him with a quick dislike which gave him the impression that she had been expecting him to sound her out. He must look more affluent than he was, he thought with brief amusement. The doors shut, the train started, and they pounded their way through the tunnel to Tottenham Court Road.

  “’Evening, mate,” said the ticket-collector, not bothering to look down at his monthly season ticket. “So how d’you fancy Real Joy in the three o’clock at Folkestone tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know the horse,” he answered.

  “You don’t? You don’t know Real Joy?”

  “Sorry. But if I dream about it I’ll let you know.” He passed through the barrier. Maybe that would convince the ticket-collector that he wasn’t after all a punter’s patron saint — a status he’d accidentally acquired when he’d agreed that Merry Widow was bound to walk the two-fifteen at somewhere or other and Merry Widow had come home first at twelve to one and the ticket collector had had a fiver on it because of his commendation…

  It was a ten-minute walk through streets that had begun to quieten and just before reaching the beginning of Devreux Road he came to a stop in front of a large, tall building under construction. He wasn’t certain, but it seemed as if another floor had been added since he’d last taken a close interest in the place. Fifield claimed that the building was going up so quickly the workmanship must be completely slipshod and it would collapse within the first couple of years, but that was wishful thinking. Ever since he’d heard that there were to be new vaults opened there, he’d been hoping for some dire catastrophe up to, and including, a highly localised earthquake.

  Thorpe continued on into Devreux Road. It was a road of nondescript buildings which housed offices and a few businesses, mainly dealing with clothing in the wholesale markets; it was a road of monotony and stifled ambition.

  Half way along on the left-hand side a square sign flush with the wall directed customers of Fifield Vaults down a flight of eight steps into a basement area. Originally, Fifield had asked for permission to hang the sign at right-angles to the wall so that it was far more obvious, but the local council had refused his application on some specious ground. He now claimed that his bad luck had started from that moment, as if the new vaults would never have been built had that sign been at right-angles.

  Thorpe went down the steps to the door on which were painted the words, ‘Please Ring’; an arrow indicated the bell-push. He rang. The television camera focused on him and he thought of giving the old two-finger salute, but remembered that for some time now Fifield had been lacking a sense of humour. After a moment, the door slid sideways and he entered. The door slid shut behind him.

  The reception area was nine feet square. Overhead was a pod in which were three two-hundred-watt bulbs which gave a light bright enough to distress some people; but the brighter the light, the greater the detail recorded by the video camera to the right of the lights and set in a slight recess in the ceiling. The inner walls were of reinforced concrete with trembler alarms set in them and there were three steel doors, one in each of the walls. In an effort to make the scene slightly less stark and cell-like, Fifield had hung some of his paintings on the wall; those clients who were knowledgeable in art, Thorpe sometimes thought, would probably have preferred bare walls.

  A voice, pitch raised and thinned, said through a speaker: “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s smooth,” Thorpe answered, using words that showed he was not under any sort of a threat.

  The door on his left slid open, to the accompaniment of several low grunts of sound. He stepped into the office. It was a small room, made smaller by the amount of equipment which had been shoehorned into it; two desks, one larger than the other, three metal filing cabinets, a free-standing safe, a battered wooden cupboard, a working surface on which was a kettle and toaster, neither of which worked very often, a sink, and a very small refrigerator. To the right of the sink was a door which gave access to a lavatory. On the wall opposite the larger desk were three TV screens; these showed the street, the reception area, and the actual vault which housed the strongboxes. The only touch of levity was more paintings.

  Fifield, seated behind the larger desk, was brooding over a mass of papers and a desk-top calculator. He nodded a good-evening as he reached out to the control panel and pushed the button to shut the steel door.

  “You look busy,” said Thorpe.

  “Bloody figures… I pay an accountant a fortune and then have to do half his work for him.”

  “Halve his fees.”

  “And listen to him screaming?”

  “Then console yourself with the thought that the only time you’re really content is when you have no worldly goods.”

  “When you’re skint, you’re in the shit.”

  “Less philosophical, but probably more accurate… Can I do anything to help? Maths was never my strong subject, but I can just about work a calculator.”

  “I’ll have another go at ’em tomorrow.”

  Thorpe had not expected his offer to be accepted. Fifield was obsessively secretive about the finances of the business; Trudy Johansen had once been quite hurt by the fact that he wouldn’t trust her with certain details, on the grounds of general security.

  Fifield gathered the papers together. “Brought some work with you, then?” he said as he looked across briefly. “What’s it tonight?”

  “It ought to be real property again to see if I can begin to grasp the subject, but I dec
ided to relax, so it’s torts.”

  “As I remember them, they’re wrongs which don’t add up to crimes. I’ll tell you something you won’t find in any of your text books. When you’re poor, there aren’t many torts, but there are one hell of a lot of crimes; when you’re rich, there aren’t many crimes, but there are one hell of a lot of torts.”

  Thorpe chuckled.

  “You think I’m joking? Come back five years after you’ve started practising and see if you can still claim there isn’t one law for the rich and one for the poor.” Fifield put the papers into a folder and closed it.

  “Being a policeman’s given you a biased judgement. One great thing about our law is that it’s the same for everyone. Be a man ever so high, the law stands higher.”

  “And be you ever so low, the law sinks lower.”

  “Come off it, Paul…”

  “You’re like some starry-eyed youngster discovering love. Don’t you have any idea what life’s really like out there? D’you really think there’s equality in anything?”

  “There is in British law.”

  “God help your clients!” He pulled open the top right-hand drawer of the desk and put the folder into this, shut the drawer and locked it. “I spent nearly thirty years seeing guilty men escaping justice because of their social or financial positions, guilty men going free because they could afford a smart-arsed lawyer who turned up some technical point of law and the judge in his infinite wisdom decided that that was more important than the crime.”

  “You’re always going to have trouble with technicalities in any system of law. You must have definitions, but the moment you’ve got them you’ve trouble in interpreting them…”

  “I’ll tell you one thing. You’re already talking like a lawyer.”

  Thorpe framed a further comment, but did not deliver it.

  There was some subjects on which Fifield refused to reason logically.

  Fifield pushed back his chair, stood, yawned. When he spoke, his voice had lost all its previous belligerence. “What’s the weather like outside?”