The Murder Line (C.I.D. Room Book 8) Read online

  All women could become as sharp as a packet of needles, thought Rowan — once they were married.

  “Well, if you won’t sacrifice yourself, at least have a couple of pints for me at the local.” Welland sighed. “Right now, there couldn’t be a more beautiful sight in the world than a pint mug with the froth just dribbling down the sides. I can feel the bitter flowing down my parched throat.”

  “That makes it a very cheap pint,” said Rowan, for once trying to speak lightly.

  “Talking about pints, I went into a pub…” The telephone on Rowan’s desk rang and Rowan made it clear that he wasn’t going to answer it. Welland reluctantly stood up and came across. “C.I.D. room… Yeah… All right, Sarge… Yeah, yeah, right away, just like you said.” He replaced the receiver, sat down on the edge of the desk. “They’ve brought in a bloke for questioning who they found nosing around the second-hand car lot at Pikestaff Road. Bloke must be simple. The cars there are all refugees from breakers’ yards. A chap I know was fool enough to buy a car there and within a week…”

  Rowan didn’t bother to listen and he finished tidying his desk, said good night, and left. Welland showed no intention of going down to the interview room where the suspect was being held.

  Rowan used the back stairs and went out into the courtyard where his blue Mini was parked. It was second-hand, but it had come with a three months’ guarantee. Heather had persuaded him to buy it and had given him two hundred pounds towards the price. He still seldom climbed into it without briefly and bitterly wondering at the exact source of those two hundred pounds and sometimes he cursed himself for having been so weak as to accept the money.

  He waited for a stream of traffic to pass and then pulled out on to the road. He accelerated, and just for a second or two he imagined himself in a Ferrari Dino, exhaust crackling, rev needle whipping round. Years ago, he’d had a vivid imagination which could lift him out of the world he lived in: but he’d learned to tame it as far as he could because it hurt too much when he thought about Heather… And now he seldom ‘drove’ a G.T. car or ‘won’ the pools and bought an enormous yacht and lived in the Mediterranean.

  Traffic was relatively thin and he soon reached home. Home was a police house, semi-detached, ugly but comfortable. Three years ago, in accordance with the new housing policy most police forces had adopted, he’d been given the chance to buy the place. He’d accepted and taken out a mortgage. In twenty-two years’ time it would be his. If by then he wanted it. There was no garage, so he parked against the kerb where there was plenty of room.

  He opened the front door with his key and went into the hall and as he shut the door Mrs. Pritchard came out of the sitting room. “’Evening, Mr. Rowan. Had a busy day, have you?” She was in her late fifties, a motherly woman, recently widowed. With only a small income to supplement her widow’s pension, she was only too happy to come in to babysit at night whenever Heather was out.

  “We’ve been busy enough,” he answered shortly. He tried, but seldom succeeded, to be friendly towards her. It wasn’t that he disliked her — she was not the kind of person anyone could dislike — but it was her being in the house that enabled Heather to be out of it.

  “As I always say, people get into trouble when they’ve little enough to do and too much time to do it in. My George used to say that the day they did away with hanging, they were asking for trouble. He was right, you know. They don’t worry about anything now. D’you know, an old lady who lives not far from us was mugged in the park the other evening and all they got was a pound. Hitting her about for a pound!”

  Some thugs, he thought, would do it merely for the thrill of inflicting injury. “It’s getting very rough… Is Tracy all right?”

  “Not too bad, Mr. Rowan, not too bad.”

  “How d’you mean?” he asked, his voice sharp from sudden worry.

  “Oh, she’s fit enough: bursting out with health.” Mrs. Pritchard hesitated, looked nervously at him through her brown-rimmed spectacles, then said: “She’s just a little disturbed, that’s all. But I read to her for quite a time and by the end she was all right.”

  Poor little kid, he thought, almost as if it were someone else’s child he was feeling sorry for. Tracy was five, climbing towards six, and becoming more and more affected by the relationship which now existed between her parents. Her recent pattern of behaviour had included sudden fits of temper, shrieking without cause, and bedwetting. Their doctor had made it very clear that in his judgement Tracy’s parents were directly to blame for her condition.

  Mrs. Pritchard hurriedly spoke, feeling her words might have been thought critical. “I went up a moment ago and she was asleep and looked just like a little angel with her lovely hair spread out all over the pillow. She’ll be a real beauty when she’s older: you’ll have a job keeping the men away, Mr. Rowan.” She chuckled. She had a pleasantly earthy humour.

  If Tracy took after her mother, he thought, she’d be pretty enough for two. And might she then bring the man she married less misery than Heather had brought him. If only Heather had been less strikingly attractive, with the kind of beauty that made a man straighten his shoulders as he dreamed, she wouldn’t have appeared in advertisements wearing little or nothing so that all over the country men looked and leched and she was possessed over and over again…

  “Well, good night, Mr. Rowan. I do hope it stays all nice and sunny. Babs is coming to fetch me tomorrow so I can stay with her for a little. I haven’t seen the twins for months and it’s exciting…”

  He murmured a few words to try to show an interest in her forthcoming visit to her daughter — who for some reason unknown saw her mother as seldom as possible — and then said good night.

  He went into the sitting room, crossed to the cocktail cabinet, and poured himself out a gin and tonic. The colour television was on and he switched it off. He hated all the obvious signs of Heather’s earning powers, yet he had not enough willpower — or whatever it was — not to enjoy them. Heather often called him a fool because of his attitude. If she was lucky enough to be able to make their lives luxurious when compared to the lives of other policemen, why couldn’t he just accept the fact? But he’d never been able to believe her denials when he’d accused her of having an affair. Now, she didn’t bother to deny it. He couldn’t decide whether that was because she realised she couldn’t make him believe the lie or had become sick of telling the truth only to be called a liar.

  He finished the first gin and poured himself a second. He was drinking more and more. Often he became just drunk enough to promise himself he’d had enough of being cuckolded and that he’d break up the marriage, once and for all. But he never actually carried out this muddled promise. The reason was, he was still so in love with her.

  She returned at half past nine. She was tall, slender, and had learned to move at all times with a grace which appeared to be completely natural. Her eyes were deep blue, her hair Titian. Her face was oval in shape, with a slightly irregular bone structure that responded to photography and gave her in photographic reproduction a wide-eyed, windy-moors look in which passion was beginning to battle with innocence.

  He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  She looked at her thin, gold wristwatch. “Not really.” She dropped her handbag on to the settee and ran her fingers through her richly coloured hair, then shook her head, as if rejoicing in sudden freedom.

  “It’s well after nine.”

  She sighed. “We had a long, tiring session in which things just wouldn’t go right… Pour me a whisky, will you?” She sat down on the settee and relaxed completely, even closing her eyes.

  His mind filled with questions. When had the ‘session’ started? Why had things gone wrong? Hadn’t she warned Mrs. Pritchard she might be pretty late — yet how could she have known beforehand, unless…?

  She opened her eyes, studied him, then said wearily: “Are you going to get me a drink, Fred, or shall I?”<
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  He went over to the cocktail cabinet. In just a few sentences they’d created sufficient ill will to make it certain that the rest of the evening would be spent in bitterness and resentment. He poured her out the whisky and then went into the kitchen for ice.

  He returned and handed her the glass. “Is Tracy all right?” she asked.

  “She is now, but Mrs. Pritchard said she seemed very disturbed earlier on.”

  Heather’s mouth tightened and there was suddenly a suggestion of strength and mulish obstinacy about her face. “If only you’d try not to row so much in front of her — you know what the doctor said.”

  “It takes two to make a row.”

  “Not in this house.” She drank. “Isn’t there anything on the box to look at?”

  “There wasn’t when I turned it off.”

  “You’re too fussy.” She got up off the settee and switched on the television. The programme was a travelogue which they’d seen before.

  “D’you want this?” he asked, in a tone of voice that said she couldn’t possibly ignore.

  “Why not?” She watched with an unusual degree of attention.

  After a while, he said: “Aren’t we having supper?”

  “D’you mean to say you haven’t eaten?”

  “I was naturally waiting for you.”

  “Then why not tell me so before now? We had a half-time snack so I don’t want anything more.”

  “Then the afternoon and evening weren’t all work?”

  She ignored the snide question. He finished his fourth drink of the evening. He desperately longed to find the words that would break down the barriers between them, yet even as he longed, knew that he wouldn’t. Bitterly he wondered if she’d lost all love and respect for him? It seemed she couldn’t have done or surely she’d leave, taking Tracy with her. Yet if she still loved him, why couldn’t she stop working, selling the image of her body?

  “Stop being a martyr,” she said. “You don’t have to die of starvation. I’ll get you something to eat when this programme’s over.”

  He could have told her that he’d been looking like that because he dreaded the thought of losing her, but he didn’t.

  *

  Ashdowne Road, in the suburb of Pendleton Bray, was to the north-west of Fortrow and a long way from the docks both in distance and character. Most of the houses had been built fifty to sixty years before, when domestic labour was cheap, and they had a great number of rooms and large gardens. The parish church was high church and the Easter collection always topped, by a large amount, the Easter collection of any two other churches in the town. The Conservative Association had a flourishing branch and the committee had considerable influence in local matters. There were few shops in the area because people shopped mainly either in central Fortrow or in London.

  Ed Murphy lived in Tranmere House, one of the largest of the houses and set in a one and a half acre garden. It was pretentious in style, a country seat unsuccessfully scaled down to stockbroker dimensions, yet age and weathering had given it a kind of recherché charm. He’d paid a very large sum of money for it, just before the latest explosion in house prices, and neighbours had said he must have more money than sense: after the rise in values, they’d agreed he must be a very keen businessman indeed. He gave generously to charities and would respond to genuine individual appeals for help. He seldom entertained but was infrequently seen in the grounds with women, always strikingly, if a shade blatantly, good looking. As a rich widower that was socially permissible even if it gave neighbouring husbands cause for jealousy. Those who had met him reported him to be pleasant, in no way boastful or pugnacious despite his evident great success. It was generally agreed that he typified the kind of person who ought to live in Ashdowne Road.

  Murphy was 52. He took a great deal of physical exercise, seldom drank very much, and his body was taut and well-muscled. He was of medium height, yet his neatness of dress, the nearest thing to an affectation about him, tended to make others think him short. He had greyish hair, always neatly trimmed, a round face which in repose looked a trifle sad, and a mouth that was voluptuous in line. Above it was a toothbrush moustache. His blue/grey eyes, they seemed to change colour according to the light, were sharp in expression and no one would ever mistake him for a fool.

  He looked across. “Don’t we know anything more?”

  Jarrold fiddled with his glass. “Not a thing, Ed. Not a bloody thing.”

  Murphy put a cigarette into the short ivory and gold-banded holder and lit the cigarette with the same precise movements with which he did everything. “It must be possible to find out more details,” he said, in his clipped voice.

  Jarrold scuffed his right shoe across the expensive carpet, which covered much of the parquet-floored sitting room. He stared out at the garden and saw the gardener begin to weed a rose-bed. “I’ve given it the works, Ed. I’ve been on the blower and talked and had a bloke go out there. But it ain’t all added up to a whisper. The bloke’s in the nick in Palma and that’s where he’s stopping and no one knows exactly what he’s inside for.”

  “Then no one’s asking the right questions in the right places.”

  Jarrold looked annoyed. He was a barrel of a man with a face in massive proportion. His strength could be terrifying. Once a professional wrestler, he could bear-hug a man to death and not sweat while he was doing it.

  “We must know,” said Murphy. He didn’t raise his voice, yet the words came through sharply. “If there’s been a leak, it’s got to be plugged.”

  “It could’ve been coincidence, Ed. Maybe Longman just got tight and the coppers banged him into the nick. They don’t hang around in Spain. It’s the nick first, questions after.”

  “Of course.” The patient tone of voice made it a quiet reprimand for wasting his time with something he knew perfectly well. “But it could be a break in the line, Titch. The splits may have thought the switch had been made and they’d pick Longman up hot. We’ve got to know which way it went, so find out.”

  Jarrold finished his whisky. He crossed his legs and there was a drawn-out creak from the leather covered settee as he altered his weight. “It’s not going to be easy, Ed.”

  “Nothing is, except moaning. You’ll succeed, Titch, and quickly.”

  Was that, wondered Jarrold, a threat or a quick vote of confidence? He looked down at his empty glass, but knew he wouldn’t be offered the refill he wanted.

  “Who chose Longman?” asked Murphy, after a while.

  Jarrold tried to prevaricate. “He was checked out all right…”

  “Of course, or he wouldn’t have been recruited. But who checked him out and still made the mistake?”

  “Bill,” admitted Jarrold. “Ed, it ain’t possible to be right every time. Bill did everything straight.”

  “But not straight enough.” Murphy tapped ash from his cigarette into a small silver ashtray. “Watch him, Titch. We can’t stick with guys who make mistakes.”

  He put the holder to his mouth and drew on the cigarette, then slowly exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. “We daren’t risk using the line again until we can be sure about Longman.”

  “But even suppose he did squeal: he couldn’t have told the splits anything about the line.”

  “He’d have told them one was operating.” Murphy thought about the capital which had been invested and he knew an anger, quickly suppressed, that just one man’s stupidity, betrayal, or double-cross, might have jeopardised it all. If the line had to be closed, the heroin wholesalers in Hong Kong would be very reluctant to deal with him again and the least that could happen would be a savage increase in their price for the pure, uncut heroin. Then the Americans, who controlled the industry from afar with ruthless efficiency, would wonder whether he should be allowed to continue or whether he should be closed down.

  “Just telling the splits there’s a line operating won’t ruin anything,” persisted Jarrold. “There’s lines operating all the time.” He took a large whi
te handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his pouched cheeks and double-chin.

  Murphy didn’t bother to explain the different degree of danger between general and specific knowledge. Jarrold was good at his job, but always needed someone to give him orders. It wasn’t that he was stupid, but he had the fatal flaw of willing himself to believe what he would like to be true. Murphy smoked in silence, staring at, yet not seeing, the large fireplace with ornate marble mantelpiece. “We need a lead through to the police to find out how much they know,” he finally said.

  Jarrold looked dubiously at him.

  “Work on it. And I’ll have a word with Pete for his suggestions. In the meantime, I’ll have to kill the next consignment. I’ll tell New York it’s because we’re reorganising and aren’t quite finished: I’ll shoot the same story to Hong Kong.”

  Jarrold spoke with some diffidence. “You don’t think New York by now could have heard about Longman?”

  “Why should they? The other courier had enough sense to return to Hong Kong and contact our man for instructions… O.K., Titch.”

  Jarrold rose, moving with surprising ease considering his huge bulk.

  “Don’t let another mistake like Longman happen again,” said Murphy.

  Jarrold left. As if summoned by telepathy, one of the two Pakistanis was waiting in the hall, ready to open the door and see him off with a grave smile but no words unless directly addressed. He, and his compatriot, looked like brothers, but Jarrold had been told by someone — he couldn’t remember who — that they were no relation to each other. They were quiet, pleasant, respectful, simple little men. Yet Jarrold knew that they’d killed at least two men whom Murphy had wanted out of the way.

  Chapter 3

  Rowan drove into the courtyard of Eastern Division H.Q. at eight twenty-five. He parked the Mini and went up the back stairs to the general room. Yarrow was already there and wished him a brief good morning, before launching into a detailed description of his latest conquest, a snappy brunette. Yarrow was irresistible, thought Rowan — according to Yarrow.