Prisoner at the Bar Read online

  He walked briskly past the banks, solicitors’ offices, estate agents, accountants’ offices, and chambers, and reached Flecton Road where he’d parked his car. He drove to the end of the road, turned right because of the one-way system, and then right again and continued round to the High Street.

  When he reached his flat, it was to find that nothing had been cleared up since the morning so that obviously Mrs. Rawson had not been along. He dropped his red bag on to the floor and a little of the gaiety left him. It was difficult to remain gay on returning to an empty, untidy flat.

  He crossed to the telephone and dialled 0, then asked the operator for Tenlington 383. The line was engaged. He went through to the sitting room and poured himself out a strong gin and tonic. He sat down in one of the two armchairs, both of which were uncomfortable.

  He unfolded the paper. The world was in its usual mess. Man’s inhumanity to man was apparent in every corner of the globe. He drank and lit a cigarette. Life was incredibly perverse. Marriage was a hell of a lottery, but when there were two people who could be really happy together, life made certain they didn’t get the chance to be together.

  On the second page of the paper, he read the short account of the finding of the body of an as yet unidentified man on the Wayton Hills, immediately below a place known as Lovers’ Lane, just off the Brayford/Chetsy road. The police were investigating and preliminary reports suggested he had died the previous night between eight and eleven o’clock. Anyone who had been in the area between those times was asked by the police to get in touch with them.

  Chapter 5

  Detective Sergeant Eastbrook watched the P.C. fix the strip of polythene as a retaining wall around the footprint. “Mop out any water,” he said.

  “Yes, skipper,” replied the P.C. wearily. He was over fifty and had enough experience under his belt to know far more than any smart alec of a detective sergeant who hadn’t yet seen his thirty-fifth birthday.

  The wind, rising slightly, ruffled Eastbrook’s hair and he tried unavailingly to smooth it down: he was a man who took a pride in being smart. He looked out at the view, a sunlit, timeless mosaic of fields, hedgerows, woods, coppices, farms, villages, and towns, and knew only an angry uncertainty. His wife had gone to stay with her sister for three days, even though he had said she wasn’t to go. Why the hell had she done it: was there anything more to this than a desire on her part to assert her independence?

  “Is this dry enough for you?” asked the P.C.

  He looked down. The P.C. had soaked up the water with some blotting-paper — water that had lain there since the last rain and been unable to drain away because the heavy clay near the surface formed an impermeable layer. The footprint in the hollow was clear and the pattern had a distinctive fault. It lay two feet from the rhododendron bush on the leaves of which were bloodstains and eighteen inches from the bloodstain on the ground. The tyre-print was four feet three inches from the footprint, which was directed towards the bush, so that if a man stepped out of a car, parked with its bonnet facing the rock face, and hit a peeping Tom in the bushes, he would put a foot down approximately where this footprint occurred. A check on the dead man’s shoes had immediately shown they had not made the print. “You can make the cast now,” said Eastbrook.

  The P.C. stood up and dusted the knees of his uniform trousers. “I suppose you don’t do this sort of work in case you get your clothes dirty?”

  Eastbrook shrugged his shoulders. What the hell was the use of being a sergeant if one didn’t let someone else do the dirty work?

  The P.C. opened a battered suitcase. He took out a plastic bowl and half filled it with water from a container, added plaster of Paris until the cone of plaster emerged above the water. He used a spatula to mix the plaster and water until they formed a thin cream, then began to pour the mixture into the foot-print.

  “Use your hand to break the flow,” ordered Eastbrook.

  The P.C. said something, not loud enough for the other to hear. He poured the mixture on to his left hand so that it trickled from there on to the print. When the plaster was an inch thick he laid sacking on it, as a strengthening agent, before continuing to pour.

  At the end of five minutes, the case was hard enough for Eastbrook to engrave on it his initials, the time, the date, and the letter D which, in conjunction with the prepared plan, would show the exact position of the print. The cast could be lifted in a further twenty-five minutes.

  Eastbrook moved forward to the tyre-print. It was going to be less rewarding to obtain a cast of this print because although the section showed a very definite pattern and tread depth, there were no distinctive marks or faults.

  *

  Whicheck parked his battered Vauxhall in front of the village shop in Tenlington. He climbed out and Franklin, a P.C. attached to the C.I.D. as aide, followed him.

  Tenlington consisted of crossroads, the shop, a pub, a chicken farm, four ugly bungalows, two old cottages, and fields. A herd of Friesians were paddock-grazing the nearest fields and one of them began to bellow with the hideous love-sick call of an animal demanding a mate. Poor old cow, Whicheck thought: it needed a bull and all they’d give it would be a test tube.

  The shop sold everything from apples to wellingtons. Flies spent much of their time buzzing from the cheese to the bacon, a mangy cat lay curled up on a box containing bars of chocolate, and there was a vague smell of mice. A tall, angular woman came into the shop from the room beyond, pushing her way through the curtain of strung wooden beads. “Yes? What d’you want?” she asked.

  Nothing I can get here, thought Whicheck, as he watched a fly move off the cat and cross to the cheese. “I’m from the Paraford Cross police. Detective Inspector Whicheck.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  He smiled. “I’m not suggesting you have.”

  She continued to look suspicious.

  “We’re making some enquiries and you may be able to help us. We’ve found a bill made out by this store and would like to know if you can identify the person it’s made out to. The name looks like Thompson, but there’s no address.” He handed her the grubby bill which listed half a dozen items.

  She looked quickly at it. “I’m not obliged to put the address on,” she said challengingly.

  “Of course not.”

  “Just so long as you know! It’s Thompson from one, Stone Cottages. Been in trouble, has he? I always said he would be.”

  “Oh! Why?”

  “He’s simple.” She sucked in her lower lip. “In a nasty way. I’m telling you, he made me feel unsafe.”

  He’d have to be simple to chase her, Whicheck thought. “Where is this place?”

  “Up the hill and turn first right. It’s on the right, past the Colt bungalow. His place is a pigsty: I had to go inside once.” She sniffed loudly.

  “Many thanks for your help. By the way, any idea what he does?”

  “He’s a gardener — to Mr. Curson at the big house.” She spoke grudgingly. “They do say he’s all right at growing flowers.”

  After retrieving the bill, the two detectives returned to the car.

  “She’s a ripe old battle-axe,” said Franklin. “Still, if she’s right and Thompson is a looney, that explains everything.”

  “Does it?” muttered Whicheck. Although he was of a reasonably easy disposition, Franklin irritated him. If Franklin was transferred to the C.I.D. at the end of his six-month period as aide, it wasn’t going to be J division he joined.

  Whicheck backed the car into the forecourt of the chicken farm, turned, halted at the crossroads, then turned left and drove up the hill, turning right immediately over the brow of the hill.

  The ragstone building containing the four cottages was twenty yards from the Colt bungalow and although it was little more than an oblong box, with no curves in windows or roof to soften the lines, the weathered ragstone and many-hued tiles gave it a certain charm.

  Both front and back doors of number one were locked, but by th
e back door was an upturned flowerpot. Whicheck looked under this and found a rusty key. He unlocked the door.

  “Strewth!” said Franklin, as he entered the kitchen, “that old bitch in the shop was right. This place isn’t fit for a pig to live in. Look at that sink — there’s not even any hot water.”

  “Most people lived like this forty years ago,” said Whicheck.

  “Maybe, but you wouldn’t get me living like it.”

  “Not at just a few bob a week rent?”

  “Not likely.”

  They went from the kitchen into the front room. Whicheck looked round, then opened the sideboard cupboard. Inside were some chipped plates and badly stained cutlery, a pair of glass vases of the kind offered as prizes at fun fairs, a plastic table-cloth, three pencils, one lead, one red, one blue, and an exercise book. He took out the exercise book and opened it. At first the lists, in a clumsy, sprawling handwriting, baffled him as being apparently senseless. There were dates, place names, occasionally initials, and symbols, in one of three colours. He turned over the page. The last entry was dated the 18th of September, the place was Rhodendram, there were the initials B and C, and the symbol was a circle drawn in lead. He leafed through the rest of the exercise book. It was empty.

  “This place sure stinks,” said Franklin.

  “Shut up.”

  “Sir.” Franklin looked sulky.

  Whicheck suddenly sneezed twice, as dust irritated his nose, and he tried to sneeze a third time but couldn’t manage to do so. His eyes watered as he longed for the relief of the sneeze that wouldn’t come.

  “Once a wish, twice a kiss, three times a damned bad cold,” said Franklin.

  Jeeze, thought Whicheck, what had he done to deserve such a cross? He blew his nose. “You’ve always lived locally, haven’t you?”

  “I was born in Brayford. My parents still live there even though it’s a one-eyed dump with nothing happening. D’you know…”

  “Where’s Rhodendram?”

  “Where, sir?”

  “Rhodendram.”

  “Never heard of a place like that. There’s Rottensey, over near Strayton and that town down by the river… What the hell’s that called?”

  “Rhodendram?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then forget it, along with all the other places in the British Isles beginning with R.”

  “Sir.” Franklin’s expression became sulky once more.

  “Rhodendram,” said Whicheck musingly. “It’s a hell of an awkward name.”

  “It’s what the old gaffers used to call rhododendrons: don’t suppose they could…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was only saying the old gaffers used to call rhododendrons ‘rhodendrams’.”

  “Of course,” muttered Whicheck. Why hadn’t it occurred to him? Lovers’ Lane — the one they were now concerned with — was thick with rhododendron bushes. The meaning of the entries suddenly became clear. Thompson had been a peeping Tom and here was the record of his successes. The initials must represent the names of people he had identified: the symbols recorded what he had seen or heard.

  Whicheck suddenly knew some pity for Thompson. The D.I. had at deep sympathy for humanity, along with a deep hatred for criminals because of the suffering they imposed on the innocent, and he was able to appreciate the tragic twist to a character which forced a man to descend to peeping for his pleasure.

  *

  Bladen met Katherine in the municipal car park by the statue of Queen Mary the First.

  He offered her a cigarette, once they were seated in his car, and flicked open his lighter.

  “I nearly refused to come out,” she said, “even though Elmer isn’t coming home.”

  “I know.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “From your tone of voice.”

  “The telephone was crackling far too much for you to be able to tell.”

  He smiled. “All right. I’ll confess. I guessed that your desire to go out with me was bound to be doing battle with your puritanical desire to stay at home.”

  “You’re very certain of yourself…”

  “I’m certain you’d spend every second of every day with me if you possibly could — yes. I’m also certain that whenever you’re with me your conscience keeps shouting. You weren’t made for intrigue: you’re far too decently honest.”

  “But not quite honest enough or decent enough.” She spoke sadly. “I never knew I could be such a hypocrite. I spend endless hours trying to justify myself to myself when I know there just can’t be any justification for what I do.”

  He tried to speak lightly. “But you keep refusing to do anything that really needs justification.”

  “I won’t sleep with you. But I go out with you when I’m married to Elmer. Sometimes, I wish to God I’d the strength never to see you again, but…”

  They were silent for a while. “Katherine,” he finally said, “let’s forget everything and go out and celebrate.”

  “Celebrate?”

  He started the engine, checked in the rear-view mirror, and drew out into the road.

  “Bob, what on earth have we got to celebrate about?”

  “The fact that Robert Bladen has quite definitely arrived.”

  Her voice was suddenly warm. “You can be such an idiot sometimes — it’s such fun! If you don’t tell me what it’s all about, I’ll pinch you.”

  “Surrender. D’you know Jack Smeart?”

  “That man with a red face and lady-stripping eyes who drinks too much at cocktail parties and has a wife who’s always bitching?”

  “Not the description I’d have used. He is a solicitor. He is, therefore, a man of infinite charm and wisdom and his wife is a peerless beauty. He told me today that I’d really made good at the local Bar and I can rely on most of the local work coming my way instead of its going up to London.” He braked to a halt at lights.

  She half turned and studied his face. “Did you ever think for one second you wouldn’t be a success?” she asked softly. “I knew it from the moment I met you.”

  “I had some pretty dicey years when I started: when I made less than five hundred and I lost case after case I afterwards persuaded myself I should have won, nights when I used to lie sleepless in bed and wonder if I was being a fool to go on struggling.”

  “If you’d been married to me you wouldn’t have thought like that.”

  “But I hope quite a few of the nights would have been as sleepless?”

  The lights changed to green and he drove on. There was sweet agony in wondering what life would have been like had he been married to her and not Gwyneth. If he had received loving support instead of strident complaints, would he have succeeded sooner? Or, and life could be that ironic, was it the constant moaning which had driven him on?

  They left Paraford Cross on the Joumelle Point road, which took them through the poorer section of the town where rows of terraced houses bordered the road and looked as if they must surely saturate with their own drab greyness the lives of all those who lived in them.

  Four miles from Joumelle Point, they turned on to the main Patchington Road, one that was main only in name and was a notorious traffic bottleneck in mid-summer. Patchington, twenty-five miles along the coast, tried to cater both for the great mass of holidaymakers and for those who wanted quiet luxury. There were hundreds of boarding houses and two five-star hotels: there were stretches of beach which in summer became filled with deckchairs, sunbathers, sleepers, shouting children, ice-cream vendors, and noisy transistors, whilst there was a private beach, belonging to one of the luxury hotels, reserved to the guests.

  La Belle France was a restaurant with a far-reaching reputation. Owned and run by a Frenchman, most of the food served in it was flown over from France because the owner could find no one locally who would be bothered to sell him exactly what he wanted. Prices were necessarily high and a meal for two had to be somewhat Spartan to cost less than ten pounds.

&nbs
p; Bladen and Katherine had finished their meal and were enjoying coffee and cognac when Bladen said: “By the way, have you seen the evening papers?”

  “I’ve been much too busy,” she answered.

  He smiled. “Doing what? Trying to find something to do?”

  “It’s odd how you men can never begin to understand the effort it takes to run a house. Elmer likes everything to be exact and I’ll have you know that takes some doing.”

  “Let him be like everyone else and accept things as they come.”

  She shook her head. “It’s the least I owe him.”

  “You’re incredibly loyal.”

  “My parents taught me the value of loyalty. It made them happy through their lives.”

  “And has it done that for you?”

  “It gives me something to hold on to.”

  They were silent for a short while. “In the evening paper,” said Bladen finally, “there was a short account of the finding of a dead man. He fell over the rock face where we were parked last night.”

  “Good God!”

  “Katherine, that place is apparently known locally as Lovers’ Lane.”

  “Oh! How…” she didn’t finish.

  “How what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The police are asking anyone who was there last night between eight and eleven to get in touch with them. Of course, I’ll tell them we were there.”

  “You’ll what?” she asked.

  “Tell them we were there. What d’you reckon the time was when we arrived? Somewhere close to nine?”

  “Bob, you’re not serious about telling them?”

  “Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”