Betrayed by Death Page 6

  “Meant to be cream. Half the time they stink like sour cream.”

  “Does your son own a dog?”

  He snorted. “He’s interested in bitches, right enough, but only the two-legged variety.”

  Bressett had been brought up never to refer to ladies as bitches. He was rather shocked.

  “What’s all this about, eh?”

  “Some hairs were found on the front passenger seat of your car, sir, and we want to discover whether they came from your dogs or someone else’s.”

  *

  Fusil hurried out of the neo-Georgian building that was County H.Q. The detective chief superintendent, Menton, might be a good administrator, but in practical terms he seldom got his priorities right. With every man in the force working flat out to uncover a lead on the identity of the murderer, what a criminal waste of time to call a meeting of D.I.s to discuss the compilation of crime statistics! Yet, even as he cursed Menton, he had to admit that if viewed from a different angle Menton’s action could be justified. The general public judged the efficiency of the police by what they read or heard: reporters needed something easily defined on which to hang their reports, and as a consequence the clear-up rate often — quite illogically — became of paramount importance: hence the need for the police to make their clear-up rate as high as was justifiably possible.

  He went round the buildings to where his car was parked, climbed in, and left to drive to Fortrow. He was a fast, inconsiderate driver, and he reached Divisional H.Q. in just under the half-hour.

  On his desk he found a report from Kerr. One type of crime had turned out to be common to all nine dates on which boys had disappeared — robbery, from a country house, of antique silver.

  Chapter Eight

  Fusil fidgeted with a pencil. Nine robberies of silver from country houses on the nine nights that boys had disappeared: a tenth, bumbled robbery on the night that an attempt to abduct had failed: this had to be a pattern, not a series of coincidence. Yet what was its significance?

  He telephoned Doctor Kirstan, a naturalized Austrian, who (at least in Fusil’s judgement) spoke more sense than any other six psychiatrists put together.

  Kirstan’s first point, in answer to Fusil’s questions, was brief. If one examined the history of mass murderers, and in particular sexually motivated murderers, one was forced to accept that usually the murderer had appeared to others to be perfectly normal: there was nothing to identify him as a man moved by an appalling compulsion.

  However, it was possible to make certain observations about his inward being. Homosexual relations with boys often denoted a disturbed childhood: something had happened to prevent the normal mental progression of maturity. A frequent cause was the break-up of the parents’ marriage under unusually traumatic circumstances. This could leave the child unable to make normal social contacts, bewildered, frightened, and desperately trying to return to the past when life had offered security.

  In this case, the motive for the murders might be sadism or fear. Sadism was self-explanatory, fear meant fear of punishment or of exposure. Although acting under an overwhelming compulsion, the murderer was fully aware of the consequences of his acts and therefore took all possible steps to avoid these: he was less likely to be indentified if the only eye-witness was dead. He might well be living an ordinary life with his family and therefore desperately want to maintain his position in the eyes of that family: he had attained status, and the loss of that could be very traumatic because status ‘proved’ he had finally escaped from the tragedies of his childhood. In some cases, this could be taken further. The subject saw himself as he wanted to be, not as he knew he really was. In popular parlance, this was sometimes known as double-think. The ability to recognize truth and yet to be ignorant of it. So that the subject feared not only exposure before his family, but also exposure before himself.

  Even Dr Kirstan, Fusil thought, sometimes launched off into space.

  He asked one final question. “What’s going to be the effect on the murderer of failing to get his hands on the last boy?”

  “Please don’t accuse me of trying to cover all the bets.” Dr Kirstan had a strong, if occasionally laboured, sense of humour. “But all I can tell you is that he will have been so scared he won’t try again, or the pressure of frustration will be so acute he will try again almost immediately, or he will initially be inactive because of fright and then will remain inactive until the degree of compulsion becomes greater than the degree of fright and he will once more seek a victim. And should you now insist on knowing which I consider to be the most likely, my answer has to be that it is one of the last two.”

  When the call was over, Fusil slumped back in his chair. What had he just learned? That they had to presume the worst, that sooner or later the murderer would be back on the streets. But beyond that? Perhaps only that once they had a suspect in their sights then if, for instance, he came from a marriage which had broken up in dramatic circumstances when he was young, then he was the more likely to be the man they were after.

  He yawned, and waves of tiredness washed through his mind. When he returned home, worn right out, he knew that Josephine would go for him for working himself to death. What made him think he was so much cleverer than anyone else, that nothing could be done without him? But she would know, even if she refused to acknowledge the fact (double-think?) that it wasn’t pride which drove him on, it was the terrible knowledge that out there, somewhere, was boy number eleven who was marked for an appalling death unless the murderer were caught.

  He looked at his watch, and stretched. He picked up Kerr’s report and read it again, then stood and crossed to the large, framed map of the county which hung on one of the walls. Using a soft leaded pencil, he plotted the ten places where boys had disappeared or, in the last case, had been accosted. He then plotted the ten houses which had been broken into on the same nights. One fact immediately became apparent. In each instance the house lay between where the boy had disappeared and Fortrow.

  The Ford Granada had been stolen in Fortrow. There was the negative fact that none of the boys had disappeared from Fortrow. Didn’t the old lags say, never foul your own doorstep?

  Accept that the murderer was intelligent and feared exposure at least as much as imprisonment. Then he would clearly take unusual pains to make certain that no one ever had cause to wonder about him, not even those close enough to him to know that he had not been at home on each of the nights when a boy had disappeared. The theft of the Granada suggested he had some criminal training. Why shouldn’t he hide his actions behind the smoke-screen of ordinary theft? A wife could accept a thief as a husband where she could never accept a man who sexually assaulted and murdered children. Criminals would protect the identity of a fellow criminal (except when paid enough to betray him) where they would deliberately expose the identity of a child murderer because he was a pariah even to the meanest thief.

  Of course, Fusil told himself, he was supposing too much: of course, the rawest recruit could punch so many holes through such a theory that it would resemble a colander. But over the years a detective developed an instinct which could, and often did, defy logic. His instinct was telling him that he was right.

  *

  Informers had always played a large part in criminal detection. It was an informer who reported that Kiwi Blick had done business with Bill Moody, out by Ekstone Quarry, confirming what the number of the Remington had already suggested.

  Fusil asked for samples of earth to be taken from around the quarry for comparison purposes, and for these to be sent to the forensic laboratory. He then telephoned the laboratory and asked them to compare the incoming samples with the pellets of earth taken from the floor of the Rover used in the robbery at Barclays Bank.

  *

  Campson’s room was always so neat, his desk so bare, that it would have been easy when comparison was made with the rooms and desks of other members of C.I.D. to make the mistake of believing he did not work very hard. He worked
very hard, but the rules demanded tidiness. He was not a fool so he did not believe that to be seen to be tidy must inevitably lead to success, but he had observed that the higher up one rose in the police force the more one had to conform to the pattern as laid down. That was one of the reasons why he was quite certain Fusil would not gain further promotion: Fusil had never learned that there was more to being a senior detective than merely solving crimes.

  “It seems a bit far-fetched,” he said.

  Fusil was annoyed. He crossed to the window and looked out. Thick belts of dark-bellied clouds were being harried across the sky by a north-east wind. “Of course it’s far-fetched at the moment: there aren’t enough facts known for it to be anything else.”

  Campson had always considered it to be potentially more dangerous to speculate on insufficient data than to do nothing.

  Fusil turned round. “Is it pure coincidence that each time a boy disappeared there was a theft of antique silver from a country house?”

  “How many other similar crimes occurred on each of the nights?”

  “None.”

  “What about cars being nicked?”

  “No crimes of any importance,” amended Fusil.

  Campson said nothing: he had made his point.

  “I want a complete review of the silver robberies, with particular reference to whether any of the pieces have been recovered.”

  “Right, sir. Of course, that’s going to take blokes away from other cases.”

  “I am just about aware of that,” said Fusil, pettily sarcastic. He crossed to the door and left.

  *

  Over the years, rising standards of prosperity had resulted in the closing of three out of four pawnbrokers in Fortrow: then, just when it might have been expected that the fourth and last one must also close, stagflation arrived to provide fresh and lucrative trade, often from people who thirty years before had never been inside such a place.

  Jepson, the owner of the remaining pawnbroker, was a cheerful man with a quick smile, a sharp eye, a ready retort, and a brain like a pocket calculator. He led Kerr into his office at the back of the shop. “Before we go any further, how does a whisky sound?”

  “Like a thundering good idea,” replied Kerr.

  He brought bottle, glasses, and decanter of water from a cupboard and poured out two whiskies, adding water to both. He passed one glass across. “My uncle came from Elgin and was therefore always wrestling with sin. He claimed that to add soda to whisky was a mortal sin, while to add water was a venial one. But whisky was well under a pound a bottle in those days and that alters a man’s views considerably.” He drank.

  “I’m trying to find out if certain pieces of silver have been on the market,” Kerr said.

  “Very recently stolen, presumably?”

  “Some of it, yes, but some goes back for as much as a couple of years.”

  “Surely you’ve already circulated descriptions of the pieces stolen in the earlier thefts?”

  “Dead right. But you must know how it goes? Our lists come out as regular as clockwork so they tend to be treated as just routine bumf. It’s easy to miss something then, when you’ve no particular reason for looking for it.”

  “I can’t answer for anyone else, of course, but I go through the lists you send out as carefully as I can, however many come in. After all, if I’m caught holding stolen goods, you blokes would come down on me like a ton of bricks — probably even oppose the renewal of my licence.”

  “I’ll ask you to have a read through, all the same.”

  “Of course.”

  Kerr took from his coat pocket three folded sheets of paper which he handed over. “There’s a hell of a lot of silver been nicked, so what we’ve done is take expert advice on what pieces should be readily identifiable and only listed those.”

  Jepson put on a pair of spectacles and began to read. He looked up. “On thing’s obvious, the thief or thieves have excellent taste.”

  Kerr grinned. “Been watching all those T.V. programmes on antiques.”

  After some ten minutes, Jepson said: “I’m quite certain none of this has passed through my hands. I’m a great admirer of English and some Continental silver and almost any of those pieces would have caught and held my attention.”

  “That’s that, then. You’re the last bloke to see on my list. Not a sign or sound of any of it.”

  “Sorry about that. Drink up and have the other half. As my Scottish uncle also used to say, whatever your trouble, if one dram won’t cure it, a second certainly will.”

  Chapter Nine

  By Monday morning reports were through from all other divisions in the county and most other forces in the country: not one of the pieces of antique silver had ever surfaced.

  “Where in the hell’s it all got to, then?” said Fusil.

  Campson irritably shrugged his shoulders. There were far more important things to worry about — over the week-end the rate of serious crime had risen steeply.

  “Would it all have been melted down?”

  “Could be,” said Campson carelessly.

  “Yet why melt down so that it’s worth only a tithe of what it was, when there are plenty of markets which offer so much better terms?”

  “Sir, about this break-in at Redwood Hall. The owner’s shouting hell, and by all accounts he can pull a lot of clout so we really ought to turn up and make a showing.”

  “Dammit, we ought to remember the dog!”

  “The dog,” repeated Campson, now bewildered as well as irritated.

  “It didn’t bark. Which was even more significant than if it had barked. What’s the significance in the fact that none of the silver has surfaced?”

  Campson didn’t bother to try to answer.

  “It means it’s gone to somewhere we haven’t yet made enquiries.” He crossed his room to the wall-map of Europe, in a very small scale compared to the county map. “Shipped out and sold somewhere on the Continent, where the odds of our tracing it have to be so much lower. A crew member on one of the cross-Channel ferries, a reliable agent over there, and you’re in business.”

  Campson stared at the map. A lot of stolen goods, including cars, were shipped over to the Continent, and for most practical purposes that was that — a clever ringer could take a Jaguar and within twenty-four hours its owner wouldn’t recognize it, far less be able positively to identify it. Pieces of antique silver were surely different, though? They were marked and the marks could not be altered or erased without greatly depreciating the value.

  “I want the list we’ve just circulated taken to an expert and I want the expert to pick out the pieces most likely to appeal to a Continental buyer. We’ll send a full description of those to the various police forces and ask them to make immediate and extensive enquiries.”

  “That’s going to take quite a bit of time our end, sir.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s been a hell of a week-end for crime and Pascoe’s starting his holiday, so we’re short-handed. There’s no way we can cope if I have to take blokes off what they’re doing.”

  It was Campson’s job to see that the priorities of the various investigations were observed and to point out to his D.I. if they were not. But Fusil judged, he’d made his objection for the added reason that he didn’t believe the thefts of silver could hold any significance for the murder cases and therefore all available manpower should be used where it could be seen to be most effective. If there were trouble because it had not been so used, he wanted to be certain he was covered. Fusil spoke with dry sarcasm: “Then some things will have to go uncoped with, won’t they?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Campson tightly. He left.

  Some men never stopped looking over their shoulders, Fusil thought scornfully. The telephone rang.

  “Forensic here. Reference Barclays Bank, fourteenth of January. We’ve done what we can with the various samples of earth you sent us. Both control and comparison consist of what we loosely call Barstone clay — that
’s a belt of clay which runs through the county from north-east to south-west. Because of the extent and nature of this belt, it’s impossible positively to identify examples of it in most cases.

  “All the control samples contained very small flecks of rock as did one of the comparison samples. The rock is shot with red veining — pink, really, but it’s called red — a well-known characteristic of certain types of ragstone. We’ve tried to get a definite match, but I’m afraid we’ve failed: the most we can say is that it’s very likely, but not certain, that control and one comparison sample came from the same place. The sample in question was numbered seventeen.”

  Fusil thanked the other, unable to hide his disappointment that he could not have been given more definite evidence, and replaced the receiver. Police work was sometimes compared to a jig-saw puzzle: if that were a valid comparison, then it was a puzzle without a crib in which no one knew for certain whether all the pieces belonged or where the boundaries lay until the last piece had been fitted.

  He reached across the desk for the folder marked J 731 (Miss Wagner had evolved a perfect system of filing which confused everyone else) and opened this, bringing out the sketch-plan which Bressett had made when he had taken the samples of soils from around Ekstone quarry. Point seventeen was close by the main gates, and the dirt track which led up to them. Two men could meet there without becoming tangled up in the bracken, brambles, and weeds, which grew elsewhere around the perimeter fence and, more important, without being seen from the road.

  He used the internal telephone to call the general room, but there was no answer. He switched the call to the front room. “D.I. here. I want a P.C. to accompany me on an interview.”

  “Sorry, sir,” said the desk sergeant, “but we’re short-handed and —”

  “Take all the problems as read and get someone up here, p.d.q.”

  “There’s no one available, sir. Perhaps you’d like to confirm that with the duty inspector?”

  “Who is it?”