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  He returned to the case for a torch, a large magnifying glass, and two photographs of very enlarged prints. He began to compare the prints on the brush with those in the photographs.

  Fusil paced the floor, looking impatiently at Mc Bride each time he turned, which was frequently because the room was so small.

  After ten minutes, McBride said, in tones of satisfaction: “I’ve one that’s a perfect match. Twelve identical characteristics so far and by the time I’ve finished in the office you can have as many more as you like. I think I’ve a match with the second print, but it’ll need time to be certain.”

  “So there can be no doubts?”

  “Not a one. The same bloke made the prints on this hair-brush and the kid’s anorak.”

  “Good enough for a court of law?”

  “Good enough for ten courts of law.”

  “You’d better check the rest of the room to see if you can pick up any others.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered McBride, a shade wearily.

  Fusil and Kerr went down the stairs, and as they reached the foot Mrs Thompson came out of the front room. She stared at them, her expression strained. “Have you —” She swallowed heavily.

  “Let’s go in this room,” said Fusil, with deep, troubled sympathy. Very gently, he ushered her into the front room. Mitzy barked, as if this were the first time she had seen them, then she jumped off the chair and hurried over to be petted.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” said Fusil.

  She settled in an armchair: her fingers gripped the arms so tightly that her knuckles were white.

  Fusil stood in the centre of the room, facing her, Kerr stayed near the door. “Mrs Thompson,” said Fusil, “last night, following an anonymous telephone call, we went to some woods half a mile or so from the village of Stovenstreet. We excavated an area within the woods and found several bodies. They were the nine boys who’ve disappeared over the past two years.”

  She knew a growing terror.

  “From the clothes which one of the dead boys was wearing, we were able to get the impression of fingerprints which proved not to be his.”

  Tears formed in her eyes.

  “We’ve compared those prints with some we’ve found upstairs in your son’s bedroom and I am terribly afraid that they match.”

  “No,” she shouted, her voice shrill. “They’re not his. D’you hear, they’re not his.”

  “Who’s your doctor? I’m going to call him to come here and help you.”

  Tears coursed down her cheeks. “They’re not his.”

  Mitzy began to howl.

  *

  Fusil, mentally and emotionally exhausted, had only just returned to his office when the telephone rang.

  “Bressett here, sir. I’m out at Keighley-on-Sea. We’ve just pulled in Frank Shotover on a cast-iron charge. He’s tried to make things easier for himself and he’s pulled the plug out on the alibi.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Bressett’s surprise was obvious. “Sir, we’ve got Frank Shotover.”

  “Who the devil is he?”

  “You — you don’t remember, sir?”

  Fusil pulled himself together. By now he should have learned to leave his emotions at home. “I’m up to my eyebrows. Give me the facts in more detail.”

  “Sergeant Campson sent me out here, sir, and I had a bit of luck and was able to identify Shotover as the bloke who pulled the job. Me and one of the local P.C.s went along to his place and found him still in possession of some of the stuff he’d nicked. He’s enough form to line him up for a stiff sentence, so he’s started singing, hoping to make things easier for himself. He says that Moody paid him five centuries for the alibi. He’s still got some of the money and I’ve checked — two of the twenties match with the bank’s list.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fusil parked in the drive of Beech Tops, walked up to the front door, and rang the bell. The door was opened by the daily woman, as stout of body and loud of voice as ever. “Yeah, he’s in, all right.”

  She showed him into the sitting-room, chatting all the time, then left. Moody entered in less than a minute. “An unexpected pleasure,” he said mockingly.

  “Is it? I’ve two bits of news I thought you’d want to hear as soon as possible,” replied Fusil.

  “Good or bad?”

  “One of each.”

  “Can’t ever forget you’re meant to be impartial, can you?”

  “We’ll start with the good. We’ve identified the murderer. An anonymous telephone call tipped us off where the nine boys had been buried, and when we dug them up we found on the clothes of one of them dabs good enough for a positive identification.”

  “Who was the bastard?”

  “Miles Thompson.”

  “So now you’ve locked him up and we can stop worrying ourselves sick about our kids?”

  “He’s not inside.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t know where he is.”

  “When you said bad news, you weren’t joking, were you?”

  “That’s not the bad news.”

  “I wouldn’t call it good news that he’s still loose.”

  “I didn’t say he was loose. I said, we don’t know where he is. But I can guess. He was tortured to make him confess where he’d buried the boys and then he was killed.”

  “Are you telling me that you coppers have at last learned some practical sense?”

  “We didn’t touch him.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Seems like there’s a lot you don’t know.”

  “But once again, it’s not hard to guess.”

  “Guesses come cheap. Let’s drink to your success. There’s beer or sherry. Or anything else you want.” He laughed jeeringly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to hear what the bad news is before you start drinking?”

  “I’m easy,” he answered, not quite so carelessly.

  “Remember the bank job in Wallace Street?”

  “Still wasting your time on that?” Moody turned and crossed to the elaborately inlaid cocktail cabinet. “Forget it. What are you drinking? Anything you like.”

  “Pink champagne.”

  “Sometimes I get the feeling you keep trying very hard to be smart.”

  “It sounds as if there’s no pink champagne. Like there was no Loch Mean water before. Lousy hotel.”

  Moody could not quiet conceal the fact that Fusil’s manner had begun to worry him. He brought a bottle of whisky and two green glasses from the cocktail cabinet. He poured out the drinks, added water, handed one glass to Fusil.

  Fusil drank, then said: “D’you remember Frank Shotover?”

  “What if I do?”

  “He backed up your alibi for the Tuesday of the bank job: said you were in Cairns’s house.”

  “So?”

  “He got things all wrong. You weren’t at the house when he first got there: didn’t arrive until twelve-fifty.”

  Moody laughed. “You splits think we’re all mugs. Come here, giving me that crap and expecting me to believe it.”

  “We picked Frank up this morning for another job. He realized that with his form he was in trouble, so to try to make things easier for himself he started singing like a prize canary.

  “He gave us the names of the three villains who did the job with you — seems like you talked too much when you first arrived. Excitement. Ditton and Sporter were in the bank, Weeks was driving the car.”

  Moody struggled to maintain a mocking attitude. “He’s either been hitting the bottle too hard or gone round the twist.”

  “Could be both, but the jury’s going to reckon he’s telling the truth.”

  “You must be going as soft as him. With his record, any decent mouthpiece’ll mash up his evidence.”

  “You’re forgetting something.”

  Moody tried hard not to ask the obvious question, but as the silence continued he fin
ally had to say: “What’s that?”

  “You paid him five hundred for the alibi. Where did that money come from?”

  Moody’s expression became blank. He finished his drink, then walked over to the cocktail cabinet to refill his glass.

  “I wouldn’t believe it at first — couldn’t.”

  “What wouldn’t you believe?” demanded Moody, his voice thick with anger because now Fusil was mocking him.

  “That you could pay him off with money you’d just nicked. That’s the kind of mistake I’d look for from a bloke on his first job. Frank’s still some of the money left and we’ve checked two of the twenties back to the bank.”

  Moody poured himself out a second, and larger, whisky. He turned. “You’re not proving anything about that job. And d’you know why?”

  “Tell me.”

  His tone was now one of ugly confidence. He returned to the centre of the room and faced Fusil. “Try to take me in and I’ll shout how you asked me to push that spoon through to Jones so as you could put the screws on him. What would your seniors say to that? A detective inspector working with a ripe villain like me!”

  “You’re behind the times. They already have the idea.”

  “But they can’t prove it, or you wouldn’t be talking like you have been: you’d be suspended. If I tell ’em, they can prove it.”

  Fusil stared curiously at him. “You disappoint me.”

  “I’ll do a bloody sight more if you don’t grow wise.”

  “I thought that despite your record you were different from most other villains.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like a man who wears his collar round the wrong way.”

  “I reckoned that we were both motivated by the same reason, a sense of moral necessity, which made the case unique and entirely separate from anything else that had happened or would happen. Didn’t you keep telling me that you were the same as me, a father worried sick about his son?”

  “I’m telling you now that you’ll keep your trap tight shut about the money.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You’ll find a way.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Don’t give me that. Any split can lose evidence if he wants to.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Moody’s voice became even harsher. “Are you so thick you still don’t see?”

  “And are you so blind that you still can’t understand that it’s my job to nail villains like you?”

  “Are you trying to say you’d land yourself in dead trouble to fix me? Just because it’s your job? You’re a bleeding hypocrite. If you’re that Persil clean, why d’you ever get me to work with you?”

  “I’ve just tried to explain. That case was unique, and morally it had to be right to work with anyone who could help.”

  He shook his head, still unable to appreciate Fusil’s reasoning. He looked round at the luxurious furnishings in the room. He thought about his family. “If I go, I’ll take you all the way,” he said violently.

  “It’s up to you what you do. But since we did work together when it was so important, and since we succeeded in preventing any further tragedies, I’ll do you a favour.”

  “I knew you’d see sense —” began Moody jeeringly.

  “I’ll point out something. Because we don’t know where the body of Thompson has been hidden, we’ve practically no evidence to work on to prove who killed him. But it’s obvious that his death followed his identification as the man who had sold the silver plaque, so if we can find out who had learned about the identification we’ll know who the murderer is — once we know that, we’ll be a hundred times more likely to be able to find the evidence to charge him with the murder. There doesn’t have to be a body for a murder charge to succeed if the surrounding circumstances point unmistakably to a person’s death.

  “I didn’t tell anyone outside the force who Jones had identified from the mug shots. If Jones is persuaded to say who put the pressure on him to name the man and if that someone has a record for violence — then we’ll know the identity of the murderer. You’ll collect something like six to eight years for the armed robbery. You’d collect a lifer for murder, even the murder of a murderer.”

  Moody said, in tones of wild disbelief: “You’re — you’re trying to blackmail me.”

  *

  It was the last day of February, and it might have been the first day of April: two weeks of unusually fine weather had sent the bleak greyness of winter into retreat.

  The assistant chief constable (east) was a grizzled man in his late fifties with the look of a prize-fighter and an abrupt manner which could easily give offence. He stared across his large desk at Fusil, his expression pensive. He said, quite slowly: “I have little doubt that Mr Menton is correct in his first allegation. You used that apostle spoon in order, with the help of some criminal, to entrap Jones. I say this despite D.C. Kerr’s and Jones’s evidence. In Kerr’s case I am quite certain that the bonds of loyalty have proved stronger than the demands of truth, in Jones’s case it is a much more mundane matter of self-preservation.

  “I do not accept Mr Menton’s second allegation — that you passed on the identity of Thompson to whoever carried out his presumed abduction, torture, and murder. I cannot believe that, knowing the likely consequences, you would ever have done such a thing.”

  “Sir —” began Menton hotly.

  The A.C.C. interrupted him. “However, it is to a large degree immaterial what I do, or don’t accept. As you earlier pointed out with some force, Fusil, there is insufficient evidence against you concerning either allegation and therefore no official action can be taken in respect of them.” His voice quickened and hardened. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t say here and now that you’ve been a damned fool and a traitor. You’ve risked your entire career and you’ve betrayed the oath you gave when you joined the force — your oath to honour the law and uphold justice.”

  Fusil was silent for a while, then he said: “Betray is one of those words, isn’t it, which is inherently ambiguous? Its meaning depends on which side of the ‘betrayal’ you stand. Could my oath be more sacred than the lives of the tenth, eleventh, twelfth boys?”

  The A.C.C. shook his head. Unlike Menton, it was not a question to which he was able to give an answer.

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