Field of Fire Read online

  The hands, feet and head of the murdered man were wrapped up in large plastic bags and then the whole body was encased in the plastic sheet it had been lying on. It was carried to the roadside to await the arrival of the undertaker’s van.

  The P.C.s relaxed, expecting their work to be over since nothing more could be done before daylight. They were disappointed. Fusil ordered a third and wider search. The drizzle turned into rain.

  “Stupid bastard,” muttered one of the P.C.s

  “What’s that?” demanded Fusil, who was just too far away to pick up the exact words spoken.

  The P.C. concentrated on his searching.

  Chapter Nine

  On Saturday morning Kerr drove the C.I.D. Hillman up to lights, set at red, and braked to a halt. He stared at the crossing traffic and cursed the dead man in the woods who’d got himself killed just before his week-end off.

  An exotic, mid-engined car growled past. The driver was a weed, but his passenger was the kind of blonde who’d raise the blood pressure of any man not actually at the point of death. What a life for some! thought Kerr. Every single week-end off. And no doubt when the weed became bored with the blonde, he exchanged her for a red-head . . . ‘Sir, Miss Diane is on the telephone?’ ‘Who?’ ‘Miss Diane Thomas. The young lady who stayed here last week. She sounds very distressed, if you’ll excuse my saying so, and beseeches you to allow her to come and see you.’ ‘Tell her I’m too busy.’ ‘Very good, sir.’ Exit Basil. Mélisande: ‘John — do all the girls chase you that hard?’ ‘Naturally.’ ‘You really are a bit of a bastard, you know. So kiss me, violently. Ravage me!’ . . . A car horn jerked Kerr back to reality and he saw the lights were now at green. He drove on.

  He parked near St. Luke’s Church, Oxover’s parish church and badly in need of repair, and walked back a hundred yards to seventy-five, Grindly Street. Daphne was in and although she didn’t pretend she was glad to see him, she was ready to co-operate. She was a hard, tough prostitute who knew only too well that she was nearing the end of her career because it was becoming more and more difficult to hide her age.

  He passed her the photograph. “D’you know him?” He offered her a cigarette and struck a match for both of them. When she inhaled, she coughed harshly. The relationship between police and prostitutes was usually one of tolerance because the prostitutes were able to give the police a lot of useful information: in return, a blind eye was turned to their activities, provided these remained discreet.

  “Maybe I’ve seen him,” she said. She crossed the very sparsely furnished room to a small table on which stood a half-bottle of gin and two glasses. “Drink?”

  “Not right now, thanks.” He watched her pour out a large gin to which she added little water.

  She drank, put the glass down and again stared at the photograph which she held in her left hand. “He looks dead.”

  “They took that in the morgue.”

  She showed no surprise. “What’s his story?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  She finished her drink. “He came asking if I knew anyone what worked at the town hall. There were five centuries for the contact.” She spoke petulantly. “I didn’t know no one.”

  “Any idea what his name is?”

  “Never seen him before. But five centuries . . .” She went back to the table and poured herself a second drink.

  Kerr left. There was now a definite tie-up between the murder and the man who’d wanted a contact with the town hall, which must surely confirm the fact that an assassination was being planned. He became gloomy. The pressures would really be on to discover who were the villains and time-off would be something to remember with nostalgia.

  The drive back to the station took him through Dritlington and by chance he passed the top of Fairfield Close and, after slowing down, as he wondered whether it was worth while calling on Mrs. Swaithe again, he stopped, reversed, and turned into the close. No one, he told himself as he parked in front of number twenty-three, no matter how drunk, would have driven around on that night with both windows down.

  Mrs. Swaithe had the lethargic manner of someone still heavily shocked and she kept hesitating before she spoke, as if she found it difficult. “There’s nothing else to tell you,” she said, in answer to his question. “What more could there be?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Swaithe,” he replied frankly. “It’s just that we want to make certain.”

  She looked blankly at him, then offered a cup of tea. She was obviously pleased when he accepted and led the way through to the kitchen where she switched on the electric kettle. He sat down at the small table set against the wall.

  “It’s odd, you know, I keep expecting Ted to come back into the house.” She rinsed out the teapot. “Last night, I even began to get supper ready for him, before I remembered. Isn’t that strange?”

  He mumbled something, made uncomfortable by the quiet intensity of her grief.

  “Sometimes when he drank too much I used to go on and on at him . . . He could drink himself silly now.”

  The kettle boiled and she made tea. She poured some milk into a jug and put that and a bowl of sugar on the table. “A letter came from his brother, Reg, yesterday. D’you know, I put it on the mantelpiece where I always used to put his mail so he’d see it when he got back from work.”

  “Where does his brother live?” asked Kerr, hoping to divert the conversation.

  “Out in West Africa. He’s a doctor and won’t leave the place even though they hardly pay him. A real idealist. Couldn’t care less about all the sick people back here.” Her lips tightened. “I said to him, when we’re so short of doctors in this country, why don’t you come back. You’d never have thought Ted and he were brothers. Ted enjoyed life, but he doesn’t. No smoking, no drinking, not married, never talking about anything but all the horrid diseases they have out there. As if we’re interested in that sort of thing.” She spoke with sudden anger.

  Bitter, thought Kerr, because Reg was alive and Ted wasn’t.

  “You read his letter and you’ll see what I mean.” She left the kitchen, returning soon with the letter.

  The envelope had three Dejain stamps, each of fifty cents and depicting the national flag. “Where is this place?” asked Kerr. “I’m dead ignorant on geography.”

  “Next to Mali, Niger, and Dahomey. Reg used to go into Mali and Niger because they’ve got a lot of bilharzia, but until recently all the border disputes made it too dangerous for him to go near Dahomey.”

  “What was that you were talking about?”

  “Bilharzia? It’s one of those foul diseases which starts off with some sort of worms crawling into your body. I wouldn’t live out there for a fortune. All those terrible diseases and revolutions. Reg was beaten up during a revolution a couple of years back. Even that didn’t make him leave.”

  Kerr read the letter, written in a thin spidery hand that made it difficult to decipher. The government was being more difficult than usual and refusing to import sufficient supplies of the new drug, D.G.H., which must prove really effective in fighting bilharzia even though field trials were disappointing after the initial claims — after all, it combined the better toleration of synthetic antimonials and the greater cure rate of tartar emetic. Would Ted write the moment he heard from Sydmonds? There was a strong rumour of another devaluation, that might well affect how much D.G.H. could be imported. It was iniquitous that tens of thousands of people should be condemned to a debilitating and painful bladder bilharzias because of sordid finance. Finally — and quite obviously as an afterthought — was Glady’s keeping well?

  Kerr passed the letter back.

  “You can tell exactly what kind of a man he is from that, can’t you?” she asked.

  He nodded. The style of writing did conjure up the picture of a thin, brusque, dedicated man, not really able to make emotional contact with others.

  After finishing the tea he said goodbye and left, despite her obvious eagerness for him to stay. He f
elt dissatisfied because he had not learned anything new, yet he was quite uncertain what it was he had expected to find.

  Fusil was in his room at the station.

  “We’ve a positive link-up, sir,” Kerr reported. “It was the dead man who was making enquiries among the Toms.”

  Fusil leaned back in his chair. “County Dabs have just identified him as Alfred Parsons, or Chokey Parsons. When his file comes through from C.R.O. I want it checked for every known contact. Also, get on to the county and metropolitan collators and see if they can add anything.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kerr did not move.

  “What are you waiting for, then?”

  “On my way back from Oxover, I passed Fairfield Close. So I called in on Mrs. Swaithe.”

  “Why?”

  Kerr spoke defensively. “I still can’t forget those two open car windows.”

  “But I seem to remember I told you to return here the moment you learned anything positive from one of the women?”

  “Yes, sir, but . . .”

  “But my orders mean nothing?” Fusil became sarcastic. “Or do you imagine justice can’t possibly be done without your investigating out every little question mark even in a case that’s ready for filing?”

  “You’ve always told us to use our initiative.”

  “And your initiative has a habit of keeping you well away from the hard work.” He relaxed slightly. “Well? Did you learn anything fresh from your visit to Mrs. Swaithe?”

  Kerr hesitated, then said: “Just one small point, sir. Swaithe’s brother works in Dejai as a doctor.”

  “Is that especially significant?”

  “Well — we’ve got this state visit from the Dejain president next month.”

  “And you think the coincidence must mean something?” Fusil’s voice suggested a tired, slightly amused amazement. “If a Czechoslovakian tennis player breaks his ankle tomorrow in Scotland, are you going to say that’s of significance to the forthcoming Czech visit?”

  Kerr went to speak, then stopped.

  “I wonder,” said Fusil, once more sarcastic, “if you could now restrain your very active imagination sufficiently to do just a little of the work I’ve asked you to do?”

  “Sir,” said Kerr stolidly. He left, and as he walked down the corridor he wondered why he bothered? From now on, Fusil could have all the ideas.

  The general room was in its usual state of disorderliness. Desks were overflowing with papers and files, recovered stolen property littered the floor, the notice-board was chock-a-block with past and present photos, Identikit portraits, memos, lists of persons in custody, and night-duty rotas, drawers of filing cabinets lay open and on their tops were insecure piles of more files, on a table were prisoners’ antecedents books, duty books, portrait collections of local villains, and old Police Gazettes.

  Welland, an amiable, friendly man who thought life had little more to offer than a good beery sing-song after a stiff game of rugger, looked up. “Hullo, stranger! Hadn’t seen you around for so long, I thought you must have won the pools and gone to live in the Bahamas.”

  “That’s right. Only I got bored and came back.”

  Welland grinned. “You sound like life was heavy?”

  “I’ve just been with the old man. I tell you, Perry, he’s got so sharp it hurts even to get near him.” He sat down on the edge of his table. “Has the C.R.O. file on Parsons come down from H.Q. yet?”

  “Nothing’s arrived up here.”

  He looked at his watch. “Well, I can’t do anything else before it arrives, so I might as well get some grub.”

  “If you’ve nothing else to do, you can help me for a bit.”

  “And deprive you of all the pleasure of struggling hard on your own success?” He slid off the desk.

  He left the general room and had almost reached the rear staircase when there was a shout. He turned to face Fusil, wondering what diabolical intuition enabled the D.I. to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  “Get out to Brackenbank Farm, Tawsey Head. There’s a report of a plane landing and it could be illegal immigrants. But return here as soon as you can. Have you made out that list of Parsons’ known associates?”

  “No, sir,” replied Kerr. “The C.R.O. file hasn’t arrived.”

  “Then why in the hell aren’t you doing something about that?”

  Kerr went down the stairs. There was one small consolation — there were several pubs out at Tawsey Head and one of them must serve a good cold meal.

  *

  Napier fitted a scented cigarette into the long ivory holder and lit it. He drank the gin-and-tonic, replaced the glass on the small table, and used a lace-edged handkerchief to wipe his lips.

  He was still slightly perturbed that the killing of Parsons might prove to have been a slight tactical mistake, even though convinced that strategically it had been necessary. One thing was now for sure. No informer in Fortrow would willingly open his mouth to a split.

  He replayed the memory of the last few moments of Parsons’ life as he held the holder away from his mouth and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. Then his mind switched. What was his next move? How to ensure a successful assassination when the police were alerted that an attempt was under way?

  He put the holder in his mouth and smoked.

  Joyce came into the room. He was wearing a knitted woollen jacket, tightly cut trousers, and a highly-patterned shirt, all in the latest style: being so inharmoniously built, they looked not smart but faintly ridiculous on him. “I’ve been thinking, Titch,” he said.

  An unlikely story, thought Napier sarcastically.

  “I saw Jo the other day, Jo Dzur — you know, the Czech what came over when they had all that trouble in ’is country. ’E’s real sharp with a gun, so why don’t we try ’im, seein’ you ain’t got one yet?”

  Napier saw Joyce was staring intently at him, waiting in some trepidation to discover how his suggestion was received. He was like a very large, shaggy, over-friendly dog, decided Napier, trying desperately hard to please and yet so very clumsy. “Stick, Jo’s known from here to Scotland as a shooter. Take him down to Fortrow and the dumbest cop in town will know . . .” He stopped.

  “Yeah, Titch?”

  Napier did not reply.

  “It’s like this, Titch. ’E can shoot cleaner than anyone else I know. Look at the Brighton job when . . .”

  “Stick,” said Napier softly, “You’ve got something.”

  “You mean . . . You mean it is a good idea?”

  “It’s a stroke of genius.”

  Joyce began to worry he was now being mocked.

  “An idea that good makes you another grand.”

  Joyce’s lopsided, craggy, ill-constructed, pock-marked face grinned with embarrassed pleasure as he became convinced the praise was genuine.

  Chapter Ten

  The river Fort ran down to the sea in an easterly loop, widening rapidly at the mouth where the central shallows were a well-charted hazard to shipping. To the west, the coast ran in a shallow curve to Tawsey Head, a summer resort, providing a number of safe sandy beaches. Inland, the soil was rich loam, worth half as much again as the farming land behind Fortrow, flat, virtually treeless, and now almost hedgeless because hedges by the mile had been ripped up to make large fields which were agriculturally more economically viable.

  Brackenbank Farm lay back half a mile from Tawsey Head. The farmhouse was small and in obvious need of exterior decoration, but any suggestion that the owner was not very prosperous was dispelled by the size of the new outbuildings, the three combines under cover, the two tower silos, and the Rover 3500 in the drive.

  Fegan was a small, ruddy-faced excitable man. “I’m telling you, I looked out of the window and there was this plane, just taking off from Wiltdown Field.”

  “And you say that that’s the field over there?” Kerr pointed to the right at a field several hundreds of yards away. “But when you saw the plane it was off the ground, so you ca
n’t swear it had actually landed?”

  “I’m not daft man. I can tell when a plane’s been on the ground.”

  “This was just after six o’clock this morning?”

  “Just turned light, it had.”

  “Yet you didn’t report the incident until much later?”

  “I’d the cows to milk, hadn’t I? A hundred and twenty and they don’t wait for nothing. Report to you blokes and I’d have been half an hour late. Half an hour and I lose milk. You know that, don’t you? A cow has to be dead on time.”

  “Really?” replied Kerr, with little interest. Some people had odd priorities. And come to that, cows must be odd animals if half an hour’s difference affected their milk. “Can you describe the plane?”

  Fegan screwed up his eyes as if staring into the far distance. “It weren’t very big, was red, had a couple of engines, and large windows behind the pilot’s place.”

  “Was there anything on the wings?”

  “What d’you mean? D’you expect to find a couple of grazing bullocks?”

  Kerr began to dislike this belligerent little man. “Had it any fuel tanks on the wings?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “But you’re quite a way away, here, to be absolutely certain?”

  “I know what I see, and that’s fact.”

  “Which way did it fly off?”

  “It turned when it got up and went out to sea.”

  “Do any of the local farmers have aeroplanes?”

  “What d’you think we grow around here — gold dust?”

  Kerr stared at his notebook and then asked one last question: “Could you read the identification letters?”

  “The first one was F, but I couldn’t make out no more.”