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

  There could be a strange compelling, almost hypnotic tone to his voice. She had no hesitation in answering him, although she was a woman who normally never moaned about her troubles. “It’s nothing exciting — just another interminable family row.”

  “Your dear, beloved husband again? What a tiresome man he really is! Tell him to eat prunes every day. They’re excellent for constipation.”

  She smiled briefly at the thought of what Fred’s reaction would be to such a suggestion.

  “He’s such a suspicious chap, isn’t he? Must have a delightfully dirty mind. Does he really think I spend hours and hours knocking you? Much too exhausting. I’d far sooner listen to a Mozart concerto, especially in the hot weather. Really, can’t you persuade him to come along and watch and see for himself what goes on? I could do with a nice, hairy male model.”

  She laughed, because nothing could be more absurd than Fred working as a model.

  Raymond went on talking, asking questions, sometimes turning to watch her through partially closed eyelids with cat-like intensity.

  A quarter of an hour later, second drinks finished, they resumed work. Shortly afterwards, he was satisfied and began to shoot and when he’d finished he congratulated her and said that even the Germans would be satisfied.

  Chapter 4

  Rowan was in the C.I.D. general room, entering exact measurements on the plan of the scene of the murder, when Detective Sergeant Braddon came into the room. Braddon was a first class detective sergeant who had never had any hope of gaining further promotion because he lacked the necessary initiative and imagination to be a detective inspector.

  Braddon looked round the room. “Where’s Kerr?”

  “Last I saw of him, Sarge, he was running errands for the D.I.,” replied Rowan, lying with expert vagueness.

  “He’s always busy somewhere else,” observed Braddon, a trace of resignation in his voice. In fact, he was remembering when he’d been a young D.C., newly married, and he had spent more time at home than his D.I. had imagined he had. “We’ve had word through from Dabs: the dead man was Vincent Wraight, one conviction of note for armed robbery, present address unknown.” Braddon dropped a sheet of paper, with handwritten notes, on to Rowan’s desk. “Take it on from there.”

  “Are they sending his file down?”

  “It should be with us tonight at the latest — they’re pushing it along in a patrol car.”

  Rowan picked up the paper and read through the notes. “Did Dabs have a word with Records to see if they’d any suggestions?”

  “Yeah, but nothing useful. As far as Records know, Wraight reported like a good boy for his six months, after leaving the nick, then vanished. But as we found a couple of hundred quid in notes in his wallet, he wasn’t starving down here.”

  “O.K., Sarge. I’ll get cracking as soon as I’ve finished this plan. The Old Man is shouting for it.”

  “Sure. Don’t rush things,” said Braddon, with light irony, well aware that they all had twice as much work to do as time available in which to do it. He left the room.

  Rowan finished his work on the plan, checked it, then carried it through to the D.I.’s office which proved to be empty. He left the plan on the desk.

  He drove in his car — he’d get a mileage allowance since this was official work — to Ascrey Cross and parked by the side of the Five Feathers, a public house that had once been scruffy and delightfully old-fashioned, but had recently suffered a face-lift and modernisation.

  The landlord poured him out half a pint of bitter and refused the proffered payment. Some months ago, there’d been a vicious fight in the public bar and when the landlord had tried to stop it, he’d been knifed: if the police hadn’t arrived in time, he’d probably have been killed.

  Rowan sipped the beer and casually looked round the bar.

  “Anyway I can help,” asked the landlord, in a low voice.

  “Has Mick Grasby been in this evening?”

  “Not yet, but if he’s coming he won’t be long. Never very late, is Mick. Thirsty.” The landlord moved on to serve another customer.

  Rowan stared at the mirror behind the bar and saw a man and woman enter. She was wearing a miniskirt in shocking orange. He wondered what Heather was wearing at that precise moment and then quickly forced his mind away from such a question because the imagined answer might fill him with a wild, helpless anger that literally made him tremble.

  Mick Grasby came into the bar twenty minutes later. He was a big, powerfully built man, whose head was one size too small for his body. Two years before he’d been involved in a serious car accident after a smash-and-grab raid and by the time he’d finally been discharged from hospital he’d become a different man. Now, he worked as a casual labourer on building sites. In some twisted way, he’d come to believe the other men in the raid were entirely responsible for his mental and physical injuries and in order to get his own back on them he had become an informer.

  He might now be soft in the head, but he hadn’t lost his cunning. He saw Rowan, yet gave no sign of recognition, knowing that hardened villains often used this pub and if any one of them suspected him of grassing, he’d be for it, whatever his state of intelligence.

  Rowan had another half pint of bitter, then left and walked to his car, carefully parked on the far side of the carpark and in the shadow of an old chestnut tree. He leaned against the bonnet of the Mini and waited, with a growing impatience.

  Eventually, Mick Grasby came out of the building and wandered across, reeling slightly as if from too much liquor. He stopped — collapsed was a more accurate description — against a Morris.

  “There’s something I want to know and you can maybe help me,” said Rowan. With Grasby, it was necessary to use the same kind of simplicity of expression as when talking to a child. “I’d like to hear all about a bloke called Vincent Wraight.”

  Grasby spoke. The accident had affected his speech and his voice was high and squeaky. “The bloke’s what’s been done?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They bashed ’is ’ead in, like it was putty?”

  “They did that.”

  Grasby sucked in his lower lip, then released it with a glopping sound. “’E was pimping.”

  “Who for?”

  Grasby sucked in his lower lip again, fidgeted with his right ear, suddenly stood up and shuffled off.

  Rowan silently swore as he watched the large man vanish round the side of the pub. What the hell had frightened him? There were some kids who had begun to play in a cleared site opposite, but no one and nothing obvious to alarm him. Rowan looked at his watch.

  After ten minutes, he decided Grasby had vanished for good. He climbed into the Mini, started the engine, and backed out into the centre of the carpark. At that moment, Grasby returned, head held to one side. He walked past the Mini, squeakily saying as he drew level: “Violet.” Then he lurched on, making no effort to claim money for the scant information he’d given.

  Rowan drove out on to the road. How many Violets were there in Fortrow?

  *

  Thursday saw a break in the fine, dry weather. Clouds rolled in before the south-westerly wind and a gentle rain started at nine-fifteen in the morning. It fell with a persistence which suggested it would continue all day.

  In the mortuary, a building near the docks that even the local council agreed needed to be pulled down and rebuilt, the pathologist, dressed in green overalls, green rubber gloves, and orange nylon boots, performed an autopsy on the dead Wraight. There were no injuries other than those to the head. These had been inflicted with the traditional blunt instrument, which had been about an inch in diameter, smooth, and possibly slightly flexible. Nothing else to report.

  *

  It was just after four in the afternoon when Murphy put down the phone, repeatedly brushed his moustache with crooked right finger, and seemed about to speak, but didn’t.

  “Was that the States?” said Faraday, who’d recently been shown into t
he room by one of the Pakistanis. Unlike Jarrold, he never hesitated to ask questions.

  Murphy, his eyes looking grey in the poor light, said: “Yes.” His telephone conversation had been mainly one-sided… His side. He’d been trying to explain why he couldn’t take delivery of the plastic novelty toys, paid for in advance, and about to be shipped by the manufacturers. He’d made the delay sound credible and of no significance, yet America had been suspicious, wondering if the line had run into trouble which wasn’t being admitted. Unless he accepted the delivery very soon, they’d said, he’d better fly to New York to discuss the contract… If it finally came to that, he thought, and they didn’t like what he told them, they might well close him up. His hundred thousand pounds deposit would be lost, along with the uncounted thousands he’d spent on setting up the line and the organisation

  “They’re always shouting,” said Faraday. “But they don’t know all the answers, any more than anyone else, so why don’t you tell ’em so straight out?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” replied Murphy.

  Faraday was annoyed, but he managed to grin. “You’re the boss.”

  Murphy crossed the sitting room and rang a bell and within seconds one of the Pakistanis appeared. Faraday stared at the man with dislike. Neither of them showed him the respect he rated as number two in the organisation. One of these days, he’d teach ’em both to get their black noses down to the ground when he was around. Murphy asked for two cognacs and these were brought in flute shaped glasses.

  Murphy warmed the glass in his hand and savoured the aroma. “Don’t rush this, Pete. It’s one of the great ones. If you had a dozen magnums of this in your cellar, you’d be on your way to being a rich man.”

  Faraday sipped the cognac and thought that there were better things to spend money on.

  Murphy sipped the cognac, said: “How are things going your side, Pete?”

  “The pimps are all falling into line, Ed, like a row of canned beans. Word about Wraight has gone round town and now there isn’t one of ’em ready to hold out. You remember I told you about that little punk, Zappas, or some such Greek name, who threatened the boys? Two of ’em went back this morning and he couldn’t sign up quickly enough.”

  Murphy showed no surprise that things should be working out so smoothly.

  Faraday spoke eagerly. “We cleared just short of ten thousand quid last week, Ed.”

  Murphy wondered if Faraday had ever stopped to realise how much was needed to keep the organisation running? Uncharacteristically, Murphy suddenly knew doubts about Faraday, wondering whether his over-cocky confidence could be a cover-up for a degree of really smart thinking previously unsuspected? “What about finding a copper who’s had dealings with one of the broads?”

  Faraday pursed his thick lips. “We’re trying, but it don’t look promising, Ed. The best so far is a contact a year old and the bloke’s since moved up north…”

  “Then what’s the point in mentioning it?” said Murphy sharply, prodding Faraday to see how ready he was to show resentment.

  Faraday wasn’t and just shrugged his shoulders. “But we have got a bloke called Armstrong who visits regular and is on the watch committee.”

  “Try him for what he’s worth.”

  Faraday nodded.

  Murphy returned to what they’d previously been discussing. “Are you trying to say, Pete, there isn’t a single copper on the make in this town?”

  “It could be. Seems like they’re all a bit scared of the C.I.D.”

  In time, decided Murphy, he’d buy them, just as he’d buy other authority. The town wasn’t going to remain Persil white much longer.

  *

  Rowan entered Causeway Buildings and crossed the lobby, passed the octagonal bed of flowers, to the porter’s desk. The seated porter studied him and yawned: there was no missing the shabbiness of the off-the-peg suit and the frayed shirt from Marks and Sparks.

  Rowan had a sense of humour, though it was often hidden by his personal worries, and he was amused rather than annoyed by this insolent welcome. He showed his warrant card. “A bloke was murdered out in the hills.” He stared at the porter with exaggerated severity. “What do you know about it?”

  The porter’s superiority crumpled. He looked shocked. “Good God, mate, I don’t know nothing about that. Here, you ask anyone. I’ve never been mixed up in anything like that…”

  “Then keep your hair on.” A tactless suggestion, since the porter was virtually bald. “Which flat’s Miss Violet Carter live in?”

  “Three B.” The Porter’s expression changed from frightened consternation to angry resentment as he realised he’d had his leg pulled.

  Rowan went up in the lift and rang the bell of 3B. Not for the first time in his career, he thought about the irony of a life in which dishonesty and immorality so often paid far more handsome rewards than honesty and righteousness.

  When Violet Carter opened the door, he immediately knew his information had been correct. Her eyes were puffy and reddened and her face had the slack look of someone experiencing great grief. It was not an emotion he had really expected to discover. “Miss Carter?” he said, with sympathetic formality. “I’m Detective Constable Rowan of the local C.I.D. If it’s convenient, I’d like to have a word with you.”

  She just stood there, tears beginning to spill out of her eyes.

  He stepped inside, closed the door, and in one quick glance catalogued the furnishings: expensive carpeting, an elegant inlaid antique table which surely couldn’t be quite as good as it looked, a clothes stand with nothing on it, two gilt framed etchings of busy street scenes in London three centuries before.

  She led the way into the sitting room. Elegant, modern leather furniture, an attractive painting of swans, a cocktail cabinet, a book case half filled with books, cut flowers on a small coffee table. Very different surroundings from those in which most of the town’s prostitutes lived and worked. No wonder Wraight had tried not to lose her. “You knew Vincent?” he said, making it a statement of fact.

  She nodded, her expression of grief slowly easing away as she gained control of herself. She ceased to cry. “We made a team.” She spoke defiantly. To the rest of the world he might have been just her ponce, to her he’d been half of the team.

  “I’m very sorry about what’s happened, Miss Carter. I hate bothering you at such a time, but if you could tell me a little about him…?”

  She was surprised because his manner was that of a friend, not an investigating detective. Speaking slowly at first, then in a rush as if she found some sort of release in talking, she told Rowan about Wraight. They’d met three years before and he’d changed her life. He’d loved her, protected her, and given her everything she wanted from life. “I’m on the game.” Her voice became high. “But that didn’t make any difference. We were… were…”

  “A couple?” he suggested.

  “That’s right.”

  Neither of them found the comparison absurd. She knew no conventional morality, he had learned from work that conventional morality was a luxury which not everyone could afford.

  “D’you know why he was killed?” he asked.

  “The new mob wanted me to work for ’em. They offered him some money to stay quiet, but I wouldn’t let him listen. I said it was him and me and no one else. I didn’t… I didn’t know what was going to happen because of what I said.” For the moment, she lost her self-control again and her lips trembled.

  He imagined her and Wraight as they scornfully told the men from the mob to get the hell out of it… not realising the vicious force they were defying.

  She looked up, her face twisted, and spoke with passion and he saw another side of her character. “Who smashed him up, like he was some poor bloody dog? Who gave the orders?”

  “As yet we don’t know.”

  Her mouth had become ugly. “I’ll kill him,” she said wildly.

  “Forget that sort of talk,” he advised. “If you learn anything important, t
ell us and leave us to deal with the man or men.”

  “You? The splits? You think you’ll get the man at the top? The bloke who gave the orders for my Vince to be smashed?”

  He couldn’t meet her contemptuous questions. The police would try, but they always needed more than mere skill to land the men in organised crime. The big men had the money to employ top lawyers who’d twist the law by its tail, to bribe witnesses, to threaten other witnesses into silence. It was the little men who went to jail: the big men, the men who’d learned how to run their businesses, stayed out and made money despite everything the police could do.

  She suddenly stood up and walked over to the large picture window and stared down at the gardens. When she next spoke, her voice was almost calm. “Know something? You understand.” She turned and stared at him. “Most coppers would laugh at a Tom like me being soft over her bloke getting his. But you understand? Why?”

  He tried to answer in a way that would make sense to her, yet wouldn’t sound patronising. “Maybe it’s because I’ve had to learn that life can clobber anyone, right up to the bloke who goes to church every Sunday and prays until his knees are raw.”

  She returned to her chair and slumped down on to it.

  “Can you tell me what happened the night he was killed?” he asked.

  Once again, her expression became twisted by grief and hatred. She remembered. He’d said he was going out and she’d laughingly teased his body with hers, to make him change his mind. She’d almost succeeded. If only she’d teased him a little more, perhaps he wouldn’t have gone out… But they’d have been waiting for him another time. “He left,” she said, in a dull voice, “and that’s all I know. If I’d seen anyone, heard anything, learned anything, I’d tell you: I’d give everything to see the bastards getting theirs. But all I did was to stay here and watch the telly and when it got late I thought he must have gone on the whisky… Then he never came back and I got to worrying and I heard on the local programme on the radio…”

  He waited. Finally, he said: “Did you ever see anyone hanging round these flats?”