The Murder Line

Roderic Jeffries

© Roderic Jeffries 1974

Roderic Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 1974 by John Long Ltd.

This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

The bodega on Calle Juan de Moyá was unpretentious, though not without character, a place where few foreigners and certainly no casual tourist ever drank. It was larger inside than the exterior suggested and was cool in the heat of the day. Along one wall were the ends of four reinforced wine butts, eight feet in diameter, and one of these was still used to hold the vino corriente. There were curiously painted gourds along the shelf which ran the length of two walls, a stuffed wild cat, five corn dollies, and a battered straw hat on the other walls. The shelves behind the bar were packed with bottles, smuggled American cigarettes were kept in a locker below the bar, and the television set — reception was bad and ‘snow-storms’ were frequent — was switched on whenever there was transmission.

Longman entered and went up to the bar, after looking around and finding his contact was not there. “Gin and tonic,” he ordered. The middle-aged owner, with a tanned face heavily wrinkled, shook his head and said something in Spanish or Mallorquin, Longman didn’t know, or care, which. “A gin and tonic. Can’t you even understand that?” His voice was belligerent. He’d had several drinks already at his hotel and in any case, being English, he believed that the louder he spoke, the more likely it was that a dim-witted foreigner would understand him.

In the end Longman, his fair hair and un-bronzed skin identifying him as a newcomer to the island, went round the bar and pointed to a bottle of gin and then to a bottle of tonic, of which there were several in a crate on the floor. The owner grinned, finding a source of pleasant, naïve amusement in their inability to communicate except by sign language.

Bloody old fool, thought Longman. He passed a twenty-five peseta piece across and was given three fives and two ones in return. When he realised he’d only been charged eight for the drink when the hotel had charged him twenty-five, he cursed the natives for a bunch of thieves. He drank.

Two men came in, followed by another on his own, and each of them had a brandy. They knew each other and the conversation rattled away, so often sounding as if a furious argument was in progress. Time passed, drifting with the ease with which it did on this timeless island. In the next hour and a half, Longman had five more drinks and he smoked the best part of a pack of cigarettes. His orders had been clear. Wait for two hours, then leave if no contact had been made and go the next day to the bodega in Calle Santo Galdós. But why hadn’t his contact turned up? Had something gone wrong? They’d told him nothing could go wrong.

A cartoon was shown on the television. He’d seen it in England only recently and was contemptuously surprised anything could happen out here so up-to-date. Just as the mouse was slaughtering the cat, four men, in a tight bunch, came through the bead curtain over the doorway and crossed to the bar, shouting remarks to each other and to the owner. With typical politeness they stopped their conversation long enough to wish Longman a quick buenas, but he suspected there was some sort of mockery involved and didn’t even smile in return. They drank and their conversation became still livelier. Like a band of gibbering monkeys, he thought morosely.

As he ordered his last drink which would take him up to the two hours, a single man entered the bar and immediately there were roars of greeting from the four at the bar. The newcomer grinned, shouted back something which made the owner choke with laughter, then took up an exaggerated singer’s stance and sang not unmusically a song whose words were clearly obscene.

He reckoned he was a right comic, thought Longman, with a fogginess which made him suddenly realise he was more than a little cut. This irritated him. He was always able to hold his booze. It must be the Spanish gin.

The singer, in his thirties, squat, a prune of a face, began to stagger round the floor, dying from a certain type of exhaustion it appeared, cheered on by the others. He staggered a little far, tripped over Longman’s outstretched foot, cannoned into the seated Longman, and pitched on to the stone floor.

The laughter redoubled, as the man said something in a mournful voice, then he looked up at Longman and apologised in Spanish, getting the sense of his apology across by clever use of his hands.

“You bloody stupid dago,” said Longman furiously, “why the hell don’t you look where you’re going?”

The man’s laughter stopped and he scrambled to his feet. Someone asked him a quick question to which he replied and then everyone in the bar was staring at Longman with puzzled dislike, wondering how any man could be so crudely rude in another’s country.

The man spoke in stilted English. “I say, I sorry.”

Sober, Longman would have had the wit to realise that his only reasonable course of action was to recognise his own stupidity at believing none of them could possibly understand colloquial English and to assuage their collective pride, as quick on this island to die down as to rise, by apologising in turn for his gross rudeness, and to stand everyone a drink. But he wasn’t sober. “And I said you ought to look where you’re going, you stupid dago.”

The man walked over to the bar and now there was a dignity to all his actions. He picked up one of the glasses, half-filled with brandy, returned to Longman’s table, and said: “Please, Señor, permit a dago to offer drink.” He threw the brandy into Longman’s face.

The brandy stung his eyes like fire. Cursing, he knuckled them, trying to ease the pain, and after a while he succeeded, helped by his tears. The silence, which had followed the throwing of the brandy, was broken when the man said something and there was a roar of laughter. Wild with fury, Longman jumped off the chair and swung a haymaker of a right. The man swayed, the blow missed, and Longman only just maintained his balance. His right shoulder was gripped and he was spun round, to collapse over his own feet. The laughter redoubled.

Longman struggled to his feet, determined to smash his tormentor. He threw himself forward, grabbed thin air, and crashed painfully into a table. More laughter. There were shouts which told him he’d been cast as a bull and his opponent as a matador. The man held his arms to one side, waving an imaginary cape.

Longman acted as stupidly as any bull. He rushed forward, committed from the start, and failed to make contact by inches. He collapsed on to a chair, which fell over and shattered into several bits. One of the pieces, a leg with two inches of cross-piece, provided him with a weapon. He grabbed this as he stumbled to his feet and lashed out. The man, perhaps shocked by the sudden slide into viciousness, only just avoided the blow. But, prepared for the second one, he stepped neatly to one side and waved his imaginary cape in a chicuelina. Longman was by his table on which were three empty tonic bottles. He picked up one and threw it. It missed the man, scattered the bead curtain, and hit one of the two passing members of the Guardia Civil.

Members of the Policia Municipal, local islanders, very conscious of the need to encourage tourism, might have sorted out things discreetly. But the two Guardia Civil, both from the Peninsula and both homesick, disliking Mallorca, Mallorquins, and foreigners, with equal impartiality, came in with the express intention of sorting out the trouble in double quick time. The first thing they saw was Longman with a second bottle which he was about to throw. They ordered him to stop and give himself up to the law. He, reacting still more stupidly, desperate to escape this catastrophe of his own making, kicked the first one and tried to hit the second in the stomach.

An annoyed, homesick, slightly injured member of the Guardia Civil made an excellent trouble-stopper. Within fifteen seconds, Longman was on the floor, dazed, and bleeding at the scalp.

He spent that night in a prison cell which, contrary to popular belief, was clean and tidy. In the morning, despite a grandfather of a headache, he was made to clean the cell out, even to the extent of getting down on hands and knees to scrub the floor. He wished to God he’d never listened to the stories of how easy it was to make a thousand pounds and get a free holiday as well.

*

Vincent Wraight studied his reflection in the mirror.

He took a comb from his pocket and carefully ran that through his hair, patting into place the natural wave.

“Are you going out, then, Vince?” asked Violet.

“That’s right,” he answered curtly.

“When will you be back, love?”

“I can’t say.” He wasn’t going to tie himself down like that. Tell a dame exactly when you were returning and if you were a few minutes late she’d start bellyaching.

He turned away from the mirror. She sat on the bed, feet tucked under her, wearing a frock that did things even for her figure, in a thoroughly discreet fashion. She had class, which was why he bothered with her.

“How about us having some grub together tomorrow evening, Vince?” she asked, her voice pleading.

He considered the question. “Ain’t you working?”

“I feel like a night off. You don’t mind, do you, love?”

He looked annoyed, as if she’d no right to plan any such thing without his express permission.

She slipped off the bed, moving with the natural grace that was so essential a part of her. She was tall and ash blonde, a striking combination. Her eyes were deep blue, her nose had the hint of a snub tip, her teeth were regular and white, and her mouth had the lilting form of someone who often laughed. Her figure was full, but not directly voluptuous although no one could miss its essential sexiness. She looked twenty and she was twenty-five.

She put her arms round his neck and pressed her body against his and began to wriggle with expert skill. After a while she giggled, because she knew what she was doing to him.

“Lay off, will you,” he muttered, trying to sound angry and failing.

“Feeling strong?” she asked and kissed him with genuine passion.

He pushed her away, though he now longed to stay. Give in, he thought, and she’d start thinking she was really winning and once an attractive broad thought that…

He left the flat, slammed the door shut, and crossed the thickly carpeted square to the lift. He pressed the call button, then stepped back to inspect his reflection again in the two foot square mirror to the right of the lift doors. Suit fitting like it should, at a hundred and twenty quid. Tie in the latest style. Shoulders broad, stomach slim.

The lift arrived and the doors slid open with only a whisper of sound. The flats were new and expensive and everything was of luxurious quality. One of the clauses in the lease demanded that all tenants lead sober and virtuous lives. From the beginning, he’d paid the day and night porters a tenner a month each, to keep their mouths tight shut. That way, they’d been taking bribes before they knew the full score and therefore couldn’t shake down Violet and himself for really heavy money.

The ground floor lobby was octagonal in shape, with a central, octagonal raised bed in which grew tired looking indoor plants and, inset in one wall, three tanks of tropical fish.

The night porter, newly on duty and sitting behind his desk, wished him a good evening in neutral tones. He knew the porters despised him, but envied him his money. He was also certain they were scared of him because it was clear to anyone that he could be dangerous. Had been very dangerous, in the past.

His bright red Mustang was parked in its usual bay. It was big, fast and it unmistakably spelled out money in a country of smaller cars. He crossed to it and was about to open the driving door when the back doors of the saloon alongside opened and two men climbed out: the one on the far side came round quickly. At first he thought they were police, but a second and closer look told him they weren’t.

“Hullo, Vince,” said the first man: Large, tough, pockmarked face and curly black hair.

He tried to break away from the Mustang to give himself room, but the second man carefully crowded him.

“You’re coming with us to see the boss, Vince.”

“Get lost,” he said viciously.

“Now don’t start getting stupid.” The first man pulled a flick knife from his coat pocket and pressed the stud and the four inch blade shot out.

They weren’t from Fortrow, he thought, which meant they’d been pulled in for this one job: and they were real professionals. He knew a tension that wasn’t fear — he was not a man to be afraid of something as yet not defined — but was a sharp warning to himself to button down his temper and take things very, very smoothly. “Look, mate,” he said easily, “I’ve got an important date. You tell me who wants to see me and where I can meet him tomorrow and I’ll be there.”

The knife was pressed against his side with the point pricking his coat just beneath his lowest rib. One quick, twisting thrust and he would be dying, if not dead.

“Come on, Vince,” said the man with the curly black hair.

“O.K., O.K. So someone’s in a hurry.” He turned, moving slowly, looking for the chance to break free. But professionals of their calibre did not make elementary mistakes. They made him sit in the back of the Jaguar and all the time the knife continued just to prick his side.

“Hands on your knees, palm downwards and lean right back,” came the order.

The driver, whose face he hadn’t yet seen clearly, started the engine and backed out and around.

“Who’s sent out this pressing invitation?” Wraight asked, sounding only vaguely interested by all that had happened.

No one bothered to answer.

He looked past the man with curly black hair and through the window as the Jaguar passed the bed of carefully tended roses and out on to the road. People walked the pavement, not giving the Jaguar a second look. Neat, thought Wraight. He knew why they’d come for him. Someone big had moved into Fortrow and was trying to take over all the prostitutes. When he’d been approached for his cooperation, he’d told the man to take a big running jump. But this showed him it was a much bigger operation than he’d imagined and so, probably, he’d now have to be flexible enough in approach to cooperate.

They drove through the suburbs and out to the hills at the back of Fortrow. He noted that the driver was really good at his job, changing down for corners, holding the correct line, always ready to be able to blast off with a fierce burst of acceleration, even though the odds against any emergency were pretty well nil.

The Jaguar stopped at a lay-by, set amongst a small wood of mixed trees. The man with curly black hair said: The boss is waiting on the other side.”

One man got out, then Wraight. The second man slid out behind him. The driver stayed at the wheel.

A ride, not very wide, led roughly north and they walked along it, in Indian file, kicking up dust because it had not rained for a long time. After a hundred yards, there was a clatter of wings as half a dozen wood pigeons suddenly took to the air and momentarily startled them all.

Beyond the woods, which were no more than three hundred yards thick, the ride came to an end at the edge of a large wheat field. Wraight looked round for the man he had come to see and with whom he would have to bargain. “So where’s the…” he began.

They coshed him with skill. After the first blow, only semi-conscious, knees buckling, he tried to throw himself to one side, but they were waiting for such a move and the second man caught him across the back of his neck to fell him. They leaned over and hit him with short, savage blows and soon he died.

Chapter 2

In the Eastern Division C.I.D. general room, ill designed for any degree of warm weather so that it soon became airless and stuffy, Fred Rowan used the ancient, temperamental clattering typewriter to fill out the last of the T21 forms, listing previous convictions of persons on remand. He pulled out the foolscap size sheet of paper, checked the typing, and found a couple of literals which he neatly corrected in ink. Detective Inspector Fusil was a nut on accurate typing. Most police forces now had civilian secretaries so that at least some of the routine paperwork was done by them, but the Fortrow borough force never had enough money for its major needs, let alone its minor ones. Their sole civilian secretary, the middle-aged Miss Wagner, was a law unto herself and seldom did work for anyone but Fusil.

“Aren’t you ever going home?” asked Welland.

Rowan looked up and across at the desk where Welland, on night duty, was sprawled back in his chair. “I had a load of T twenty-ones,” he said.

“If you’re that keen to do ’em this late, would you care to do my shift for me?” Welland grinned. He was a large, amiable, boisterous man, troubled by little other than the slightest indisposition of his wife.

Rowan collected up the half dozen forms and fastened them together with a paperclip.

“I’m telling you, Fred, Molly’s getting browned off with me having to do night work. She can get real sharp when she wants!” Welland sounded delighted that this should be.

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?”

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 white 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.

Rowan sat down at his desk and stared at the small bundle of mail and the note from the D.I., detailing four witness statements which were to be taken immediately. The intercom buzzed. Fusil, sounding really sharp, reported the finding of the battered body of a man in a field near Awkstreet and ordered two of them to go with him immediately. Rowan carefully didn’t say that only he and Yarrow were present and that Kerr, as was customary, was late.

They left the station five minutes later, Fusil driving the C.I.D. Hillman. Rowan settled in the back seat and listened to Fusil’s curt recitation of the known facts as he tried not to pay too much attention to the driving, the standard of which varied from bad to dangerous. When Fusil stopped talking, Rowan’s mind flicked back to that morning. He and Heather had gone to bed late, too tired to go on arguing, yet they’d both woken up early and together, probably from some sudden noise outside in the road. He’d suddenly kissed her and she’d responded and before he’d had time to wonder about the possibility of any motive on her part, they’d been making love with a wild, exhilarating abandon. Then at breakfast, when life had been all warm colours, she’d told him she might be late again because there was a photographic session ahead of her that afternoon and that a friend of Mrs. Pritchard’s would be coming in to babysit. He’d asked her to cancel the session but she’d refused and all the old suspicions had flooded back into his mind and then he’d decided he knew her motive for their previous love making. He’d argued furiously with her. Tracy had looked at him in a way that had suddenly made him hate himself.

Up in the hills, on the north side of the woods, Fusil parked behind a police car, the driver of which came forward. “It’s the far side of this field, sir,” said the P.C. “The farmer says, would we be kind enough to walk round the corn and not through it.”

“What the hell does he think we are? Dead ignorant?… D’you know if the police surgeon and Dabs have been called out?”

“They haven’t been, sir. We’ve been waiting for you and we were…”

“Get on to H.Q. and ask them to get things moving. And tell ’em we’ll get back on to them if we want a pathologist sent out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Fusil ordered Yarrow to bring the scene-of-crime suitcase from the boot of the Hillman, then walked past the P.C., who wrinkled his nose at Rowan to express his annoyance at Fusil’s curtness. Rowan shrugged his shoulders and climbed over the padlocked five-bar gate, to follow round the uneven edge of the cornfield. Fusil would certainly never win any popularity contest in the force, yet he had to be respected because he was undeniably a first-class detective. His fault was his sharpness, the way in which he seemed to see crime detection as a direct contest between himself and the criminal rather than a contest between the state and the criminal and himself merely the agent of the state: at times, this confusion led him to go beyond the limits when trying to bring a crime home to the criminal who’d committed it.

Rowan stumbled over the end of an old furrow which had never been levelled down, instinctively grabbed for support and succeeded only in getting hold of a length of barbed wire which sliced the palm of his left hand. He swore.

Fusil stopped and turned. “You were never brought up in the country, were you, grabbing hold of barbed wire!”

Rowan sucked the superficial wound. Fusil said: “Don’t you start chucking blood around everywhere and confusing the issues.”

“Maybe I’d better hurry back and get the doc to give me an anti-tetanus injection, sir?”

“You can even report to hospital — provided you do so in your own time.”

Fusil turned back and continued to walk towards the end of the fence. Rowan followed, not for the first time surprised by the way in which Fusil would suddenly relax just for a while and become friendly and then as abruptly and unpredictably revert to his previous sharpness.

They could see the body, feet up on the rough verge, from the corner of the field. Around it the wheat was flattened in a rough circle. They approached, Yarrow now trailing them by fifteen feet, and stopped ten yards away.

The face was towards them, right profile showing, but because of the heavy damage to the skull the features were not immediately distinguishable. That the death was the murder it had been reported was clear, yet still the police surgeon must examine the body first to declare life to be extinct.

Fusil moved to the right, then said: “A smart dresser: maybe a couple of shades too smart?”

Rowan agreed. Even as a crumpled up, bloody corpse, it was clear that the dead man had dressed in a manner that, difficult to define yet apparent to sharp eyes, went beyond smartness into ostentatiousness. The check patterning of the suit was a shade too colourful, the shirt and the tie were in too much opposition, the suede shoes too stylish.

Yarrow, sweating slightly, put down the suitcase. He stared at the body. “A bit of a wide-boy treading too hard on someone else’s shoes?”

Fusil was satisfied his initial visual inspection was complete. “O.K., take a twenty-five foot circle around the body. Yarrow, get back to my car and call up the station for six P.C.s for the search: tell the patrol car to get on to H.Q. for the pathologist.” As Yarrow left, Fusil said to Rowan: “It’s odds on he reached here by that ride.” He pointed to the six foot gap between a gnarled oak tree and a clump of brambles. “We’ll search up the ride first.”

Yarrow left, looking annoyed at having to run errands. Fusil, who didn’t give a damn who felt what, took the right-hand side of the body and began to move very slowly towards the woods. Rowan took out a tape from the suitcase and laid this at the twenty-five foot distance Fusil had named, securing it with pegs. Then he followed Fusil, taking the other side of the ride. Could this man have been a seaman, he wondered, as he intently studied the ground. Seamen and trouble went together, like salt and pepper, and the incidence of crime around the docks was enough to give any detective chronic indigestion. Yet the dead man didn’t have the appearance of a seaman, unless he’d been a steward: stewards often dressed too slickly. Perhaps he was just some sort of villain. Dabs would take prints and answer that one.

The sun came out from behind a rolling cloud of cumulus and something glinted to the right of a large clump of stinging nettles just inside the woods. Rowan went over. An empty coke bottle. Hardly likely to have a bearing on the crime, yet it would have to be noted and checked.

He continued the close search. He was a good detective, interested in his work, of average, or above average, intelligence. But his domestic problems had come to bear so heavily on him that he often did not work to the best of his ability because he was pessimistically, morosely certain that nothing really mattered that much. He’d tried again and again to jerk himself out of an attitude that even he could recognise was stupid, but with his introspective nature he could never do this for long. He needed nothing so much as a dash of Kerr’s happy-go-lucky attitude towards life.

Yarrow appeared on the ride. “H.Q.’s acknowledged, sir, and said the surgeon will be here very soon. The duty sergeant’s detailing six men to come out right away.”

“Right.” Fusil stood upright. “You come in and take over the search this side of the ride. I’ll get back and wait for the doc.” He made certain Yarrow was picking up the search at the right spot, then left.

Yarrow began to talk as soon as Fusil was out of earshot. “I hope this doesn’t drag on too long. I’ve a date tonight with a real blitzer. Bags of the necessary in the family, a couple of pricy cars in the garage…”

Had Yarrow even demeaned himself, wondered Rowan, to go out with a girl whose parents weren’t one page from Debrett and so loaded that they thought inflation was something to do with ballooning?

*

The organisation had two arms, independent of each other in structure yet at times locking together to function. Titch Jarrold ran the drugs side, Pete Faraday the women. They were in charge of general tactics. They gave orders to the mob or called in outside heavies when they wanted ordinary work done that couldn’t be traced back to the organisation. Murphy was the strategist, giving Jarrold and Faraday their orders, dealing personally with the Americans, proving his credit-worthiness and his ability to run a line through to England, bargaining with the Chinese suppliers in Hong Kong for shipment of good quality, uncut heroin.

In any port, prostitution was very paying, but Murphy was determined to make it pay far better than usual by organising it and largely usurping the pimps — though leaving most of the pimps with just enough income to keep them quiet — getting the women to push drugs, and arranging the blackmail of clients rich enough or in positions of authority sufficient to make their blackmail worthwhile.

Faraday was 35, sharp, ruthless when necessary but otherwise reasonably good humoured, convinced that before very long he would be capable of running his own organisation yet intelligent enough not to imagine there was the slightest chance of doing this by stepping into Murphy’s shoes. He was brashly confident, not yet having discovered that life usually had a cross-eyed joker up its sleeve.

He went about tracing out a bent, or potentially bendable copper — as he’d been ordered to do — in typical fashion. He visited June and made himself very comfortable in her room, lounging back on the bed and resting his shoes on the cover. “Listen, ducks, I want a lead in on a local copper and I want it fast.”

“Yeah? Then you ain’t asking for much!” June was considerably older than she admitted to or she looked. She was tough and self-reliant and had never allowed a pimp to control her, but she was also a realist and had quickly understood that when Faraday’s mob had moved in to Fortrow her days of total independence were over. She had agreed without argument to work for them. Faraday had liked her, accurately summed up her character, and now used her as liaison officer for all the other girls on the beats.

He checked his nails and found them perfectly manicured. He was tall, broad shouldered, and with a rugged handsomeness that the scar to the right of his mouth did nothing to lessen. Since working with Murphy, he’d learned to look after his appearance with taste. His suits were made in London and he commanded respect from doormen, waiters, and anyone else who judged a man by the amount of money he spent on his appearance. He lowered his hand and looked up. “One of the girls must have a copper on her books: the guys are part human.”

“Haven’t you heard that dogs never foul their own doorsteps, Pete?”

“Sure, but that’s the smart dogs. Coppers are dumb or they wouldn’t be coppers. So find one who visits a local broad.”

“And then?” she asked.

He grinned at her and the scar twisted the right-hand corner of his mouth. “Then we’ll arrange a nice little surprise.” He jerked his thumb towards the tray on the small sideboard. “Get us a drink.”

She carefully showed no resentment at the way he ordered her around, certain that to do so would merely be to give him a small measure of amusement and satisfaction. She crossed to the tray, poured out a whisky, and handed him the glass.

He drank. “Some of the coppers must shake a girl or two down each month,” he observed.

“I’ve never heard so, Pete.” She went back to her chair.

“There ain’t a police force in the country without someone in it on the make.”

“But this one’s only a small force and that makes a difference. The coppers all seem straight.”

“Then they’ve not been offered enough to bend ’em. I’m telling you, I want a bent copper and I want him quick. If it costs a brace of centuries to get him, I’m not shouting.”

“Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it?” she asked shrewdly.

His mouth tightened. “Nothing. D’you get it — bloody nothing?”

“I get it,” she answered.

He relaxed and grinned. “You’re smart, June.”

*

Heather sometimes wondered, fancifully, whether she and Rowan were two magnets who attracted each other but then when close one of them suddenly flipped poles so that they repelled each other with equal force. Looked at dispassionately, it was incredible they could remain in love with each other — which she had no doubts they were — yet have such bitter rows that for a time they hated each other. The big trouble was his jealousy. No woman could stand being constantly accused of being unfaithful. But why did she no longer bother to try to convince him that, no matter what he thought, she’d never been unfaithful to him? Was it because she was subconsciously trying to hurt him as much as his belief she could be unfaithful hurt her? A whacky possibility, yet their relationship was whacky.

She arrived at Raymond’s home — like Raymond, large, softly centred, too artistic for some tastes with the worst features deliberately picked out and exaggerated — at four-thirty. The three studios were on the ground floor and in the basement and they’d been converted at some vast sum of money which varied in scale every time Raymond gave the details. He was close to being a genius at his own particular speciality, which was endowing women, clothed or unclothed, with personalities which made them memorable. By modern standards his nudes were decorous, yet they were headily voluptuous: his clothed women promised so much, yet without showing an unnecessary square inch of flesh. His work was in great demand, for fashion magazines, for girlie magazines, and as a sophisticated portrait photographer.

Heather was not surprised to discover that although she was a quarter of an hour late, Raymond had not finished his previous assignment. He was a perfectionist. She sat down in the tiny lounge, artily decorated in vivid, contrasting colours, a painting on the wall that was either an amusing send-up of modern art or potentially valuable, and lit a cigarette. She thought about her first meeting with Raymond. He’d stopped her in the street and she’d thought he was on the prowl and treated him accordingly, even though her immediate reaction had been to label him queer, but he’d ignored her hostility and quickly persuaded her that when he said he wanted to take her photograph, that was what he really wanted to do. He’d taken several photos of her, one Tuesday afternoon, and she’d been astounded to discover how excitingly attractive she could be made to look. He’d offered her work, well paid — incredibly well paid, she’d thought at the time — and she’d agreed. In the intervening two years, she’d revised her opinion of him and now labelled him not queer, but neuter. Which was odd, considering the passion with which he invested his work.

She’d always liked the luxuries in life, in spite of, or because of, the fact that her parents had never been well off and she’d always had to make do with little. Early married life had been wonderful, but money had been really tight and every penny had had to be watched. Then she’d started earning. At first, Fred had been grateful but a little dubious, certain Raymond must make a pass at her. When her earnings had risen until they were considerably greater than his, gratitude had changed to resentment, and suspicion to certainty, based on nothing which lay outside his own mind. Perhaps after the first real row if she’d chucked the work everything would have been all right. But by then she couldn’t. She was hooked on enjoying the luxuries her money bought. And in any case, be damned to giving way to his absurd jealousy…

“O.K., darling, let’s get moving. Sorry to keep you waiting, but I’ve been up to my plucked eyebrows in work.” She’d been so deep in thought that he startled her. “In a brown study, are we? Lost to the world and dreaming of nirvana, or some state more earthy? Just go and change, will you, darling, and we’ll positively grind away at our work. Oh, dear, a very infelicitous way of putting things!” He giggled. He had two distinct ways of speaking: usually a flood of words, in deliberate and exaggerated pansy style or, occasionally when working, crisp brevity.

This was to be a nude session. She left the small sitting room and went into the cubicle in the first studio and there undressed. She walked out; her nudity no more than just another costume to her.

“I want a really lush one, darling, with your promising more than Helen of Troy even knew about on the day she died — which I hope didn’t happen in the arms of that boor of a husband of hers: such a waste. It’s for Germany and they’re so particular.” He giggled again. “So difficult to satisfy.” He was on his own, preferring not to have any assistants except when absolutely necessary.

Working for him was not easy. He made her hold pose after pose, was nit-pickingly sarcastic when she failed to give him exactly what he wanted, and was indifferent to her physical discomfort. Once, in cold weather and with inadequate heating for some unknown reason, she’d had to get under a shower from which only cold water came seventeen times before he’d finished.

“Come on, darling, that’s just not good enough. You’re not playing Boadicea, staring with sadistic pleasure at all the dead centurions you’ve just chopped up. You’re meant to be the girl we all dream about when no one’s looking. Try to smile… Darling, that’s not a smile, that’s a bloody grimace as the next head rolls down from the guillotine into the pannier. Now, smile, as if Peter Pan were tickling your lovely little backside…” He abruptly changed his manner of speech. “Heather, darling, you’re bloody awful today. What’s the trouble?”

She relaxed and rubbed her forehead. “I’ve got a bit of a head, Raymond.”

“Oh, yes.” He didn’t believe her.

“Look, I’ll be all right now.”

“We’ll take a break. Would you like something to eat?”

“No thanks, but I could manage a drink.”

She went into the cubicle and put on the towelling wrap that was hanging there. When she returned, he had poured her out a Campari, sweet Martini and soda. She clinked her glass with his.

He sat down, to the right of one of his cameras on leggy tripod, and lit a perfumed cigarette, not bothering to offer her one because he knew she disliked them. He looked at her over his glass. “Now come on, darling, tell uncle what the trouble really is and why you can’t smile as if it’s spring and the sap’s rising?”

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 the 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, tell 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?”

She shook her head.

“Who tried to persuade you to work for the new mob?”

“Two blokes. Neither Vince nor I ever saw ’em before or after. They weren’t local, for sure.”

Outsiders, brought in to do the groundwork so that if anything went wrong they could vanish. This mob really knew how to open up a territory, he thought.

Chapter 5

Jarrold arrived at Tranmere House at ten-thirty in the evening, parked his Ford Granada in the drive, and rang the front door bell. The door was opened by one of the Pakistanis after a check through the Judas hole.

Jarrold said hullo and stepped into the hall. The Pakistani answered the greeting by nodding, then shut the door and fixed the chain.

“Is Ed still up?” asked Jarrold.

“He is engaged at the moment. Perhaps you will wait in the sitting room?”

Not for the first time, Jarrold was intrigued by the musical English both Pakistanis spoke — when they bothered to speak. Their diction was accurate, their rhythm cultured.

In the sitting room, the Pakistani asked him what he’d like to drink, poured out a whisky on the rocks, switched on the television, and left. Jarrold settled back on the settee and watched an old movie, not really enjoying it yet certain he’d a long wait ahead of him. A hundred to one, Ed was with a broad. One of Pete Faraday’s jobs was to make certain Murphy had a woman — smart, classy — whenever he called for one: which was frequently. Jarrold, who even in the secrecy of his own mind seldom criticised Murphy, saw this overwhelming liking for women in a man of forty-two as an uncharacteristic weakness.

The film was over and the last programme of the night coming to an end when Murphy, wearing a Chinese embroidered dressing-gown over silk pyjamas, came downstairs. He looked tired and was, judging by the way he snapped off the television, in an irritable state. Yet when he spoke a brief greeting, his voice was as level as usual. He crossed to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself out a straight tonic to which he added a slice of lemon.

“I thought you’d want to know right now, Ed, we may have made a contact.”

Murphy sat down. “That’s great, Titch. I knew you’d come up with something.” He had the useful faculty of being able to make a little praise sound like a lot.

“It’s a bit thin, like, but maybe it’ll stretch. There’s a photographer buys H from us — not much, but regular. One of his models is the wife of a local split and they’re always rowing because she’s making more than him and he thinks she’s battering it away with someone else. Raymond — that’s what this bloke calls himself — says the split and his missus must still be sweet on each other or they’d’ve broken up.” Jarrold gestured with his huge, plump hands which had such strength in them. “Like I said, Ed, it’s thin… But you get ideas.”

It might not be all that thin, thought Murphy, his quick imagination seeing a possibility. “Do you know what kind of photos this Raymond takes of her?”

“Some of ’em are modelling clothes and some of ’em are skin. But it ain’t ever porn.”

Murphy gently massaged the lobe of his right ear. “How far will Raymond co-operate?”

“All the way you want, Ed. He’s buying H, like I said, and we only need to threaten to cut him off. Anyway, he’s no hero. Put a couple of heavies in front of him and he’d lick your shoes if that’s what you wanted.”

“I’ll think it out,” Murphy said.

*

Faraday had a very quick temper which when young he’d seldom bothered to check. But when he’d entered the world of villaining he’d quickly learned that he had to control it and now there was only one thing which normally set it alight — too much alcohol. It was his misfortune to have been drinking heavily — for the first time in two months — when Harps reported to him, late Thursday night. “Pete, we’ve a bit of trouble. One of the prossers is yelling for a larger share and some of the other blokes are startin’ to listen…”

“And you don’t know what to do to make the stupid git shut up? Give the bastard a right belting,” shouted Faraday. He poured himself out another whisky.

Harps was an ex-professional boxer who’d had too much courage and not enough sense to know when he was being out-boxed and therefore should hit the canvas. His face bore the scars of many fights and his intelligence suffered odd blocks, not always readily discernible. He didn’t try to discover what Faraday meant by a ‘right belting’, didn’t take into account the obvious degree of Faraday’s intoxication, but went out and down to the area round the old docks where he found Allen and beat the smaller man up with appalling thoroughness.

Allen was taken unconscious to hospital and there an emergency operation was performed on him. The police were informed of the nature of his injuries and a P.C. went along to the hospital, but an overworked, harassed houseman said it would be a long time before Allen would be fit enough to make any kind of a statement.

Harps reported to Faraday the next morning. “I done ’im, good and proper,” he said, with real pride.

Faraday stared at him with bloodshot eyes. “You’ve done who?”

“That bloke Steve Allen, what you ordered me to give a right belting to shut ’im up.”

Faraday finally did remember. “You didn’t do him too hard?”

Harps looked confused. “But, Pete, you said to give ’im a right belting.”

“So what’s happened to him?”

“I don’t know.”

Faraday swore. He lit a cigarette and then stubbed it out because it tasted like dirt. “Get out and find out how he is.” If Allen were too badly knocked around and Ed Murphy learned what had happened…

*

Fusil listened to Rowan’s report on his interview with Violet Carter. At the conclusion, he reached for his pipe and began to rub the bowl against the palm of his hand. It was, as Rowan said, more than ever evident that a big and skilful organisation had moved into Fortrow. “You think she’s telling the truth about not knowing who’s running the mob?” He tipped his chair back until it touched the wall and he rested his feet on the desk.

Rowan, who sat in front of the desk, said: “I’m certain of it, sir.”

Fusil picked up a battered tobacco pouch and began to pack his pipe. Organised crime on this scale was a fast growing octopus: let the tentacles get too big and tight a hold and there was no releasing them. So it had to be destroyed at the beginning. But how big had this organisation already grown? “Have you any ideas on the make-up of the mob?”

“None to date,” replied Rowan. “I’ve tried all my usual sources and questioned several Toms who must know something, but no one’s talking.”

It seemed the tentacles might already be getting too tight. Angrily, Fusil checked his thoughts. He’d tear the town apart, if necessary, to make certain they weren’t. He hated all criminals, but those who controlled big organisations he would have condemned even on suspicion because they were death to any community.

“Are we going to get any sort of a lead from the murder?” Rowan asked.

Fusil picked up a box of matches and struck one, sucked flame into his pipe. “It doesn’t look like it at the moment,” he said unwillingly. “We’ve interviewed dozens of people who live up in the hills, put out requests for motorists to contact us, and we’ve got nowhere. The lab’s come up with nothing fresh, the pathologist’s report remains negative…”

The telephone rang with a report of an attempted robbery at a supermarket out in Dritlington: Fusil ordered the call to be transferred to Braddon who was having to cope initially with all the ‘regular’ crime.

Fusil drew on his pipe and acrid smoke swirled upwards. “Sooner or later, someone will talk.” He tried to sound optimistic. “So you and Kerr get back out into the field and start asking questions again.”

Rowan said nothing.

“Lean on the prostitutes and shove their pimps around, stir things up by saying that when the town’s clear and we get back to the way things were, we’ll remember who helped us and who didn’t.”

“We’ll try it,” said Rowan. He’d already tried it, in slightly different form. The prostitutes and the pimps had contemptuously ignored his implied threat: they knew where their greater danger lay.

“There’s something fresh turned up, just to add to all our troubles.” Fusil searched amongst the papers on his desk and found the one he wanted. “It seems certain the organisation’s working drugs and pushing through the Toms. West division picked up a man high on heroin and he’d bought it from a Tom.”

“It could be a one-off job…” began Rowan.

“But it isn’t,” snapped Fusil. “It’s the natural sequence of events.” He jerked himself to his feet and walked over to the window and looked across the road towards the row of small Victorian houses. “I’ve asked for a man from county to come in undercover to buy some H. If we can get hold of some and have it analysed we’ll know the source and then we’ll at least know something for sure.” He shrugged his shoulders, in an unusual gesture of despondency. “Though God knows, with a port the size we’ve got and a growing airport, the source won’t take us very far.” He turned and his voice was now once more brisk. “O.K. You and Kerr get out and dig and don’t stop digging until you find something.”

Rowan stood up.

The telephone rang again and when Rowan left Fusil was talking to Detective Chief Inspector Kywood.

*

Raymond — christened John Frank Smith — was a man of very great imagination and this could quite easily make him a coward although he was not a coward by nature. He liked Heather and found her very rewarding to work with, but when he was harshly threatened into entrapping her, he agreed to do as the men ordered because his imagination terrified him.

He rang Heather up and said he had another assignment for her and would she be free on Saturday afternoon at three-thirty? Because the work was so urgent and notice so short, her fee would be twenty pounds more than usual. She agreed to come.

At three on Saturday afternoon, Bert arrived at Raymond’s house. He was young, good-looking, arrogant, and strong. He made it immediately clear that he thought Raymond was a shrieking poofter, mocked the framed photograph which had won Raymond his first international prize, and then checked the time and said, with a yawn, he’d start getting ready. But he couldn’t quite hide his lascivious expectations.

Raymond showed him where he was to wait, behind the opaque back-cloth, carefully prepared with a small eyehole cut out of it. Bert undressed, hiding his clothes where Raymond suggested, and went behind the back-cloth.

*

As Heather drove past the last row of shops before Raymond’s house, she wondered whether she’d been wise to accept this latest job? Already this month, she’d made a great deal of money: so much, in fact, that if Fred ever learned the figure he’d be filled with humiliated fury. If a wife was lucky enough to be able to earn money, why couldn’t her husband accept the fact with gratified pleasure? Most of this month’s money must go into her ‘secret’ bank account. Fred knew nothing about it. The money there was initially for emergencies. If Tracy fell desperately ill, if Fred was seriously injured, it could pay for the finest specialists in the country. If, pray God, no calamity took place, it could one day — when Fred could reconcile himself to its existence — be used to help buy them all the kind of house they really wanted.

She reached the house and continued on for fifty yards to find a parking place by the kerb. She locked up the Mini and walked back down the pavement and when a man stared at her with sharp appreciation, she accepted his judgement with pleasure because she was no hypocrite.

Raymond opened the door for her and when she entered he fussed nervously round her like a flustered mother hen. She thought little of this. His temperament was artistic and his manner varied illogically and rapidly.

“It’s a commercial for a new perfume, darling, so we want you in the skin: as the advertising manager said to me — a truly ghastly man, breath smells of garlic and he doesn’t shave properly — a neat little bum sells anything these days. He wanted to send a team along, of course, but I told him I always work on my own when I can. Other people inhibit me so. They freeze me. And how are you? Everything all right? I do wish the sun would come back. Clouds make me feel so self-destructive and my blood becomes sour.”

They walked down the corridor and turned right into what had originally been a very large kitchen. She saw the back-cloth and was vaguely surprised by it — normally, Raymond worked with light colours. He said they kept his soul from contemplating morbidity.

“All right, darling?” he asked. He nervously rubbed his chin, then fiddled with his thick-lobed ear. “Just pop inside and change and then I want you leaning on the back of the chair — we’ll have the fan on to waft your hair around and create the movement of unseen forces which positively crowd you with desire for this beautiful new perfume…”

She went into the cubicle and undressed, folding her underclothes on the chair and hanging up her dress. She left, wearing her shoes because she was uncertain whether, or not, he wanted her bare-footed. Two cameras were set on tripods and a third one was strung round his neck. He always had several cameras ready, although he might only use one of them.

“Lean on the back of the chair, darling, arms folded on top, chin resting on arms, eyes misty. I want you totally irresistible. Every woman who sees the advert must know that two dabs of this perfume and she’s Cleopatra. Without, of course, that terrible, terrible high-brow.”

She took up the pose.

“Lovely, darling, enough to make me buy a gallon of the filthy stuff. But get your two lovely little nubs more forward so that all the dirty old men who look at the magazine will buy the stuff for their tired old wives and hope…”

It was a strange pose, but then she didn’t question it on this account because in the past she had held poses she had considered strange, yet the resulting photographs had been strikingly original and eye-catching.

“I’ll start the fan up now, darling, and blow your hair around. Perhaps I’ll blur everything a fraction so it’s all very dreamy.”

He switched on the large pedestal fan and the blast of air riffled her auburn hair, making the ends snake across the tops of her shoulders.

“Legs a bit further apart, darling, to lower that delicious plump little bottom of yours. Think romantic. Inhale pure idyllic love. Tristan, without all that beastly passion… Or am I confusing the relationship? Head pitched forward, left elbow down…”

She was concentrating on holding the pose when, for no readily discernible reason, she was suddenly and overwhelmingly certain someone was behind her.

Instinctively she turned and what she saw so shocked her that for a brief second she was unable to move. Then she lunged sideways and screamed.

Bert cursed because she had moved just too soon.

She ran into the cubicle, dragged her dress off the hanger, and pulled it on, careless about ripping off a button.

“Don’t get so fussed,” said a coarse, angry voice. “I ain’t going to use an old bag like you.”

She was trembling and her mind was so scrambled that all she could think was the ridiculous certainty that this had to be a wild, erotic nightmare. She heard a mumble of conversation, which was followed by the noise of a door’s slamming. The fan was switched off.

“He’s gone,” said Raymond. His voice was low, barely audible.

It belatedly began to dawn on her that the man had not been some wild, frantic sex maniac who’d broken into the house and crept up to rape her. Everything had been planned, right down to the electric fan, the noise of which had just been sufficient to mask the man’s approach.

“Heather, he’s gone. You can come out.”

She stood there, still trembling.

Raymond did what he had never done before, he pulled back one of the curtains of the cubicle and looked in. “He’s gone,” he said, yet again. He looked terrible, a man who despised himself.

“Why?” she demanded hoarsely.

He shook his head.

“Give me the film.”

“He’s taken the camera,” he answered dully.

She whispered: “What’s he going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

*

By a coincidence, at almost the same time a man was filming Brigadier Eric Row.

Row, once the youngest brigadier in the British Army, retired when his father died, had a wife who’d always believed nature was evil since it had arranged that babies could only be conceived in a most disgusting manner. Of course, married to the eldest son of a county family, she had done her duty and submitted to being mated, but once a son had been born she had thankfully said goodbye to sex.

The brigadier, a pleasant, cheerful, amusing man, thought sex was the best reason for living. He enjoyed it even more than shooting and after reading that game shooting was sexually orientated and motivated, his life was complete. He was good at sex, as befitted a man who took the trouble to study his subject exhaustively, and, being wealthy now the family estate was his, he bought his pleasures with care, appreciation, great frequency, and close attention to detail.

The photographer, shooting with superfast film through a one-way mirror — no problems about relative intensity of light between the two rooms, the brigadier liked to see what was going on — silently whistled in admiration. The old boy was closing up on sixty, yet his vitality wouldn’t have disgraced a twenty-year-old rutting student. Was this what an army life did for one?

*

Heather stared at the television, but did not watch the programme. She heard a hushed patter of feet overhead, as Tracy went along to the bathroom, but did not bother to go upstairs just to check all was well as she would normally have done.

She’d tried to persuade herself Raymond might have mixed up the filming, or that by some miracle the film would prove to be useless, or that in developing the shots would be ruined, but even as she’d conjured up these possibilities she’d known she was being stupid.

Why? Why? Raymond had sworn he didn’t know and she’d believed him. He’d almost wept when he’d told her that he’d have done anything — anything — rather than take those shots. He could have refused, she thought dully, if he hadn’t been so absolutely concerned for his own skin.

Was she to be blackmailed? But she hadn’t that sort of money. Yet if it wasn’t blackmail, what? Could she defeat the object by telling Fred, the moment he returned, what had happened? But he’d never believe her story. From the day she had begun working seriously, his jealousy had prompted him to believe she was having an affair. So what would his reactions be when he saw photos of a man apparently about to mount her? Could he think other than that she had posed for those photos, that they were part and parcel of some terrible perversion or commercial pornography?

She cursed her love for the extra things in life which had made her undertake this work and so had laid her open to this terrible dilemma: she cursed Raymond for being such a coward.

The front door banged shut and soon Rowan came into the room. He said something, which she failed to catch, looked at her as he patiently waited for an answer, and then suddenly became worried, with a screwed-up look on his long, narrow face. “What’s up with you, Heather?”

“Nothing,” she answered, trying to calm herself.

“But you look so…” He tried to find the right words. “You looked as if you’d just had some terrible news?”

“It was only someone walking over my grave.”

“Then tell them to get the hell off it.” He came across and put a hand on either side of her neck in a gesture of comfort. Why, she thought wildly, did there have to be disaster before he could bring himself to show the compassion and love that in the past would have broken down all her prideful resistance? Why couldn’t he have done it in time to prevent disaster? She gripped his hands with her own.

“Heather, something is wrong?”

She shook her head. “I tell you. I’m just feeling tired and depressed.”

“Then I prescribe a very strong drink.”

She watched him pour out a whisky and a gin and tonic and wondered how much sympathy he’d show should he ever learn the truth?

Chapter 6

Rowan’s attitude towards crime and criminals was typical of the middle-of-the-road policeman. Law was necessary in any stable society and lawbreakers must be captured and punished in order to protect society. He knew only perplexed contempt for those, way-out left wingers, publicity seeking radicals, committed soft-liners, knuckle-headed do-gooders, who mixed up cause and effect and tried to make a man’s past environment count for more than society’s future health. A man sinned, he had to be locked away: reformation must be of secondary consideration, leniency was stupid because the criminal treated this as weakness. In only three types of crime did Rowan experience the same sharp hatred of the criminal as Fusil so often knew: violence which hurt the innocent, child molestation, and drug pushing. Most of all, he loathed the drug pusher, the pedlar, the main supplier, because they blasted the lives of so many. Hard drugs reduced humans to animal level. He’d seen girls of sixteen selling their bodies to sailors, careless about anything but the need to make enough for the next shot: he’d seen the emaciated bodies of sixteen-year-olds who, in death, looked like eighty-year-olds.

He spoke roughly. “Come on, Liz, I’m not soft. You know what’s going on.”

Liz was thirty-nine and beginning to look much older. She sat on the bed and fidgeted with one of the buttons on her tight dress.

“It’s worth a couple of tenners for some solid info,” he said.

She spoke with angry sarcasm. “D’you think you’re talking about a fortune?”

“It will soon be beginning to look like one to you.”

She cursed him, but only out of habit. After a while, she said: “Twenty quid don’t do much good if you’ve got your throat cut.”

“So the pressure’s that bad, is it?”

She looked away. “Beat it, copper,” she said, suddenly and violently.

“Liz, how come they’ve got you so scared? You’re tough. You’re not just up from the country with the dew fresh behind your ears.”

She laughed bitterly. “The last time I saw the country, I didn’t know there were three sexes.”

“Then how come they’ve got you like this?”

“Look,” she said, “if there are more of them and they’re bigger, you’re scared or you’re dead.”

“So how many of them are there?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“And now they’re in drugs as well?”

“Are they?”

“If you’re caught pushing, Liz, you’ll be inside so long you won’t come out until you’re long past retiring age.”

Her mouth tightened.

“Give me the picture now, before you get drawn in so tight you haven’t room to wriggle.”

“And get meself measured for a coffin? Get moving.”

“You won’t get far if we have to keep a very close eye on you. They tell me it’s bad for trade to have coppers around all the time.”

She swore.

“I want information, Liz.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

He noticed the beads of sweat on her brow. “Who’s in the mob? Who laid the crutch-hold on you? Local lads?”

She suddenly showed some fighting spirit. “D’you think any of the locals’d make me lose sleep?”

“Then it’s an outside mob completely?”

She realised she’d said something of importance. Her mouth tilted into lines of stubborn fear.

“Where’s the heroin coming from?” he asked.

“What H?”

“That’s being pushed by all of you.”

“Not by me. Not by anyone I know. D’you hear that, copper. Not by anyone.”

He slowly stood up. This interview had been little different from all the others. The organisation had proved to have moved in too quickly and too efficiently: their use of force, threats, and bribery, had been sure.

She looked up and just for the moment there was an appeal on her face. “I wish to God…” She stopped.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“I wish to God you coppers’d leave us girls alone to make a living,” she said vehemently.

He left the ramshackle house and returned to the street. From the pavement, he was able to look down a crossroad to the Old Docks and through an open gateway he could see the bluff bows of an old tramp ship, patched with rust, foredeck seemingly a chaotic jumble of derricks, runners, guys, beams, and hatch boards, as a general cargo was loaded. By what route, or routes, was the heroin coming in? Who headed the organisation? Wasn’t there just one informer in Fortrow with the courage or the cupidity to give the police a lead?

*

Murphy parked near the market, now being prepared for the Saturday trade of bankrupt stock, fruit, and vegetables. He passed without a second glance. Although a highly intelligent man, he was interested in nothing which lay outside his immediate concerns.

He reached the main post office and crossed to the end counter where he booked an international call to Hong Kong: he tried always to make outgoing international calls from public telephones so that no one would ever wonder why he made so many calls to Hong Kong and New York, and this even though he’d a good cover story. He was told there would be half an hour’s delay. He left and walked briskly along the High Street. It amused him sometimes to walk with a stream of pedestrians, becoming for the moment apparently as anonymously grey and unimportant as they. Not that he knew any suggestion of humility when he did this: the only effect was to confirm him in the knowledge of his own superiority.

He returned to the post office promptly on the half hour and had a wait of only a further five minutes before his call was through. He spoke to Mr. Chu Fahsien and said that he was very sorry about the delay in accepting delivery of the plastic novelty goods, but that everything was being sorted out and it would be days only before he’d be able to make final acceptance. Mr. Chu said he was happy to hear that. Listening to his slightly sibilant voice, mispronouncing an occasional word, Murphy pictured the middle-aged man, fairly tall for a Chinese, with a broad face, cheerful smile, and vaguely almond black eyes which were seldom still. He’d tell New York the troubles in Fortrow were almost at an end, thought Murphy, so provided only that it could be confirmed Longman’s arrest had been an unfortunate coincidence — which was beginning to look likely — no lasting harm was done, although New York would be wary for a time. He said goodbye, rang off, paid for the call and left the post office.

*

Wearily, Rowan walked into Causeway Buildings. There was an old saying that you could tell how good a detective was from the blisters on his feet: by such standards, he was brilliant.

The porter recognised him and stared with hostility, but said nothing. He crossed to the lift, went up to the third floor, and rang the doorbell of apartment 3B. Soon, Violet Carter opened the door.

“May I come in?” he asked, “or are you busy?”

“Not right now.” She spoke with tired indifference. Once inside, he studied her face: there were lines about her mouth now that made her look older and tougher and the skilled observer could have judged her profession. “I’ve come back,” he said, “to ask if you’ve heard anything? Anything that’ll help us?”

She spoke harshly. “So you’re not getting anywhere looking for whoever did Vince in?”

“Not yet.”

Abruptly she turned and crossed the hall into the sitting room. He followed her. The room was slovenly untidy, with overflowing ashtrays, cushions on the floor, dirty plate, knife, and fork, on the coffee table, empty bottles in the fireplace. She slumped down in a chair. “I said you wouldn’t get nowhere.”

“We will… But it takes time.”

“Who are you conning? Give you splits the next century and you won’t get nowhere. They were professionals what did Vince in and it’s a professional mob running things and that’s why you won’t even reach the starting line.”

“We have our moments,” he said quietly. “Has anyone from the mob contacted you again?”

“No.”

He was not surprised. They were clever enough to know not to use her now even though she had great earning potential for them. They had foreseen that she might have been in love with Vincent Wraight. “Have you asked around at all?”

“I’ve asked, but no one’s talking. If they’d talked, d’you think I’d be sitting here and not getting the bastard what did Vince…”

“Leave it to us,” he cut in. “This mob’s too rough to tangle with.”

She looked at him with scorn.

He’d been hoping she would have learned something useful. But she hadn’t. So now he must continue bashing the pavements, developing still better blisters.

*

The telephone rang and immediately Heather knew an ugly, chest-thumping tension. She waited for several rings, stood up and crossed round the end of the settee to the phone. “Five seven three double two,” she said, her voice high.

“Is that Mrs. Rowan?”

The voice was so brisk and impersonal that initially she knew a relief believing this could not be the call she had been dreading. “Yes, it is.”

“You’ll be glad to hear the photos have come out well.”

She gripped the receiver with a hand that suddenly trembled. “What… what do you want?”

“Full cooperation. We’ve something we want collected from a ship. Carry out the job successfully and we’ll give you all the negatives and prints.”

“What d’you mean, collect something? Collect what?”

“Go to the tobacconist in Whitelaw Road and say your name’s Mrs. Rowan and he’ll give you a parcel. In it will be a brassière and girdle, your size, and a dock pass saying you’re working for a travel firm. Put the bra and girdle on and go into the docks and aboard the Southern Planet. On C deck, starboard side, there are women’s lavatories. Be in the right-hand cubicle at eleven-thirty. A woman will enter the next cubicle to it and will whistle a bit from ‘Tipperary’. You whistle a bit from ‘God Save the Queen’. She’ll pass over a bra and a girdle and you give her yours. Put on the one she gives you and return ashore. If anyone asks questions, you’re looking at things for your boss who’s fixing up package cruises. When you get home, put the bra and girdle in a brown paper parcel, seal the parcel with wax, address it to Smith, and leave it at the same tobacconist.”

“And the photos?”

“They’ll be posted to you in a blue envelope. So make certain it’s not your husband who opens the mail.” He cut the connection.

She replaced the receiver. She did not think about why she’d been ordered to do what she had, only that if she were successful she’d get the photos and could destroy them so that Fred would never know.

*

Brigadier Row, sitting very upright, cleared his throat. He fiddled with a coat button and stared quickly at the chief constable, at Detective Chief Inspector Kywood, and then at the far window. “I don’t normally interfere with matters than can be said to be wholly within your jurisdiction,” he said, his voice not as resolute as usual.

The chief constable, a retired colonel who’d been appointed years before when many chief constables of small police forces came from the armed forces, nodded: his expression, usually fairly easily interpreted, was enigmatic.

Brigadier Row could sense the antagonistic atmosphere. He spoke a shade louder, forcing more command into his voice. “But I am alarmed about the rising crime figures. I had a word with the chairman and he fully agreed to my discussing them with you.”

The chief constable, looking far more the typical retired army officer than Row, said: “Yes, sir?” He was an able man, despite his walrus-like appearance.

“The numbers of muggings have risen over ten per cent in the last six months.”

The chief constable looked at Kywood. Kywood said: “That’s unfortunately true, sir. But nationally they’ve gone up even more. It’s a case of crime imitating well publicised crime. Muggings have hit the headlines…”

“I’m well aware of that, Kywood.” Row succeeded only in sounding petulant. “But none of that excuses our failures.”

Kywood leaned back in his chair, on the far side of the oval table, his rather beady brown eyes fixed on Row.

“Housebreakings have risen by seven per cent in the last month.”

“It’s never very safe,” said the chief constable, “to quote figures over so short a space of time.”

“Are you denying the extra housebreakings?” demanded Row.

“No, sir. I’m merely saying…”

“And it’s the same with robberies. There is a sharply rising incidence of crime. You cannot get round that fact.”

Kywood rubbed his square chin, which offered so inaccurate a guide to his character.

“Yet despite these soaring crime figures, I’m told the entire Fortrow police force is spending its time doing no more than chase up the prostitutes.”

Kywood said: “Who told you that, sir?”

Row looked at Kywood with dislike. “Does it make any difference? Despite all this extra crime, the police are concerned only with the town’s prostitutes. Damn it, we’re all men of the world. Prostitutes are a way of life and nothing…”

“We are concerned with investigating the death of Wraight, sir,” said Kywood.

“A man living off the earnings of a prostitute.”

“Killed because an organisation is trying to move into town. It’s got to be crushed before it gets so tight a hold that in practical terms it can’t be.”

“Organisation. What in the hell are you talking about?”

“A new mob, sir, sharply organised, taking over the prostitutes and the drug traffic because that’s where the big money is. Using every possible means to make people cooperate with them: killing as an example, perhaps blackmailing…” Kywood’s tone of voice invested his last word with special significance.

Brigadier Row slowly flushed. He fiddled more quickly with the button of his coat. “I still think you’ve got your priorities very wrong,” he muttered. “You should be concentrating far more on the general crime, the kind that affects the ordinary law-abiding citizen and not immoral criminals.” He stood up. “The chairman fully agrees with me on that score.” He turned and strode out of the conference room.

The chief constable took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to Kywood. Kywood flicked open his lighter.

“Well?” said the chief constable.

Normally, Kywood never expressed an opinion that could put him out on a limb, yet now he said, his voice bitter: “They’ve got him. Blackmailed him into trying to get some of the heat lifted because we’re upsetting the trade of the Toms.”

The chief constable smoked, puffing furiously at his cigarette. “Yes… It’s bloody to see what can happen to a man… Especially a man like him. What d’you reckon they’ve got him on? It can’t be money because he’s wealthy. Drugs?”

“I very much doubt it. Women, more like. Probably he’s been hot after the Toms and someone’s got proof and has squeezed him hard enough to come here.”

“I’ve met Mrs. Row…” The chief constable smoked for a while. “You’ll do all you can to get proof of what’s undoubtedly happened and if you succeed he’ll be charged.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know, I know… It’s near impossible to get proof of blackmail and in a court of law his visit here would not be held to be an attempt to subvert justice. Nevertheless, you’ll try.” The chief constable stubbed out his cigarette. “Naturally, you’ll ignore everything he said… It’s a cancer. The town’s going to start to go rotten.”

“No, sir,” snapped Kywood. “They’ll never get that far. With our force, we’ll cut ’em out of it before they can cause too much damage.” There was a pride in his voice that many would have said so opportunist a man could not have possessed.

“I hope to God you’re right! …They’ll try to subvert one or more policemen.”

“They won’t succeed.”

The chief constable thought about Brigadier Row with compassion and contempt.

*

Fusil, smoking his pipe, sat in Kywood’s office and for once was not silently critical of the detective chief inspector. Indeed, there was even a sense of harmony between them, in no way spelled out yet each was conscious of it. However different they were in character, a threat to their town and their police brought out the same prideful anger in each of them.

“The chief reckons the town’s going to start going rotten,” said Kywood.

Fusil nodded. He held the pipe by the stem. “Big money is bound to start a rot. But we’ll stop it getting bad.”

“He also said they’re certain to try to land a copper.”

“No policeman in our force will turn rotten like that bloody civilian, Row,” said Fusil with sharp anger.

“Sure.” Kywood lit a cigarette. “But nevertheless, we must get a lead on them fast. Bob.”

“If the chief’s right and they try to bribe a copper, we’ll have them by their short hairs. The copper’ll tell us and we’ll land the bastard who’s on the bribe so fast he won’t know what’s hit him and then he’ll sing like a prize canary.”

Kywood drew on the cigarette. He frowned. “Any copper offered a real heavy sum… five thousand quid, say… is going to think twice…”

“Offer any of our coppers fifty thousand quid and the story’ll be the same,” cut in Fusil angrily. Concerning this possibility, he was totally narrow-minded.

Chapter 7

In her bedroom, Heather put on the brassière and girdle she had earlier collected from the tobacconist in Whitelaw Road, two miles away. Both fitted reasonably well, although the cups of the brassière were of too deep a shape and she normally did not wear a girdle. She put on petticoat, green-patterned cotton frock, and slid her feet into toeless shoes. Then she checked, for the umpteenth time, that she had put the dock pass into her handbag. Who to say was her boss, if they asked her at the dock gates? Smith — the name she had to write on the parcel? But didn’t everyone automatically distrust the name Smith? Orville-Smith? A hyphenated name sounded so much more authentic.

She checked the time and lit a cigarette. She felt weak in the stomach, as if she were going to have to dash for the bathroom. Suppose the other woman didn’t turn up, through some accident? They surely couldn’t blame her for a slip up like that and deliberately let Fred see those photos… In her mind, she saw the photos: the man almost on her, ready, face twisted by lust.

It was time to leave. Normally a good, considerate driver, she made her way through the back streets to the New Docks with a careless disregard for other road users that twice forced oncoming drivers to brake harshly and to blow the cars’ horns with impotent anger.

When she drew up at the gateway to number thirty-two dock, her mouth was dry, her tongue was over-large, and her heart was thudding. The dock policeman came out of the doorway of his wooden hut. “What ship, lady?”

“The Southern Planet,” she answered, as she struggled to open her handbag, suddenly recalcitrant, to produce the dock pass.

“Berth number thirty-two A. Follow those rails along to the second shed and you’ll see her: black hull and green funnel.”

She finally managed to open her handbag and from it she brought out the pass. But he had already turned away and was walking towards his hut.

She drove through and followed the railway tracks round until she reached a vast concrete and asbestos shed on which was painted in six foot high figures in green, 32A. She parked alongside a row of some dozen cars.

They were unloading frozen telescoped lamb carcasses from the three for’d holds of the vessel, a large cargo liner. As she walked to the gangway, made fast to the mid-ships accommodation, the stevedores stared at her with lustful eyes and made comments which lacked both subtlety and variety. She hardly heard them. She climbed the gangway and a seaman, in lightweight company’s jersey and jeans, put down the newspaper he’d been reading and stood up.

“I’ve come to meet…” Then she couldn’t remember the name she’d decided to use. In a panic, she said: “Mr. Fusil.” She fumbled in her bag and brought out a dock pass.

The seaman surveyed her body. “That’s a pity, lady. I thought maybe you was coming aboard to see me.”

She managed to smile briefly at him. “He’s going to be down on C deck. Where is C deck?”

“I’d give you a conducted tour of the whole ship, only the old man is due ashore soon and he’d have my guts for garters if I wasn’t here. Look. D’you see the ladder, there? Go in the doorway by it, turn for’d, and then down the companionway and that’ll bring you to C deck. Now if you’d like to have a longer look round later…?”

She hurried across the deck and into the accommodation. The alleyway held the indefinable smell of a big ship. She went down the companionway, came to a cross alley and for one wild and frantic moment couldn’t remember which side of the ship was the lavatory. Then the man’s words came back to her and she turned into the starboard alleyway. Halfway aft was a notice Ladies in blue on white background. She went in. There were four cubicles, without ceilings, and three hand-basins with mirrors above them: the bulkheads were tiled up to four feet and then covered with a lumpy insulation which had been sprayed with white paint. All four cubicles were empty and she went into the right-hand one and locked the door. She checked the time and saw there were ten minutes to go. She took off the frock, petticoat, brassière, pants and girdle, hung the brassière and girdle on the door, hesitated, then put on her dress. She sat down, fidgeted with the straps of her handbag, lit a cigarette. The outside door hissed open and high heels clacked across the deck. The woman went into the far compartment for only a short time, then left.

Another woman entered and chose the next compartment. There was the sound of clothing being undone, a quick oath, something which brushed against the dividing bulkhead was hung up, and then came the opening bars of ‘Tipperary’, whistled badly out of tune. Heather’s mouth was dry, but she managed a recognisable ‘God Save the Queen’.

“Let’s have them, then,” said a deep-toned voice.

Heather lifted the brassière and girdle over the top of the dividing bulkhead which was some six feet high and two feet below the deck-head. The two garments were taken. After a brief pause, two exactly similar garments appeared over the top and she caught hold of them.

She put on the brassière and girdle with an acute sense of distaste, because imagination suggested the other woman was unpleasant. As she drew the dress down over her head, she heard the door of the next closet open. Steps crossed the deck and then the pneumatic stop hissed as the outside door was opened and left to swing shut.

Heather went out and checked her image in one of the mirrors, stepped out into the alleyway which was empty. The seaman on gangway duty said: “Will you be returning later on for a look round the fo’c’s’le?” He grinned in friendly fashion as she just hurried past and down the gangway.

Back in the car she smoked and gradually the numbness wore off because everything had gone smoothly despite all her fears and imaginings of disaster. Then she remembered she still had to get out of the docks. Her nervousness returned and she became very conscious of the brassière and girdle.

The same dock policeman was still on duty. He bent down and looked into the car. “Nothing, eh? No kegs of over-proof brandy?” He stood upright.

She drove out on to the road. Could anything have been simpler? Whatever she had been doing — not being a fool, she could be reasonably certain she had been smuggling — the arrangements had been fool proof. She began to hum as she drove along the straight New Dock Road, past berths which had been expensively altered to take container traffic, but which now lay idle from continuing stevedores’ strikes.

There was no chance of Fred’s returning home for lunch so she went up to their bedroom and changed out of brassière and girdle. She folded these carefully, wrapped them up in brown paper and string, sealed the knots with red sealing wax, and wrote on the front and back, ‘Mr. Smith, to be called for’.

She returned to her car and drove past the small common with its horse-chestnut trees which attracted hordes of youngsters in the conker season and then cut through a shopping centre to Whitelaw Road. There was room to park close by the tobacconist.

She carried the parcel inside. “May I leave this with you to be called for?” she asked.

The elderly man reached across the counter of chocolate, took the parcel and peered at it over the tops of his spectacles. He looked back at her. “That’ll be five pence.” He had a croaky voice, as if recovering from a fierce cough.

She handed him a five-pence piece. “Goodbye,” she said blithely and left, feeling light-headed as if she’d just enjoyed some wonderful stroke of luck.

*

The telephone rang when Rowan, tired, hungry, and thirsty, had been home for half an hour. Heather stopped his getting up and said she’d take the call and say he was out if it was for him and he gratefully remained seated, a glass of gin and tonic in his hand.

“Hullo, Mrs. Rowan,” said the caller. “We’ve collected the parcel and I’m glad you’ve done exactly as we told you.” She turned her back on her husband and tried to find the words to ask the one all important question. “Have you…” She stopped.

“Have we put the prints and the negatives in the post? No, we haven’t. And frankly we aren’t going to, just yet.”

Absurdly, she thought, the caller was trying to sound nice. “But you said…”

“We will, but only after you’ve done one thing more for us. Tell your husband to find out why Harry Longman was arrested in Palma, Majorca, on the fifteenth of last month.”

“I don’t understand…”

“But he will. Especially if you add that if he doesn’t get us the information, that parcel will be handed over to the police. Know what’s inside the bra and the girdle? Two ounces of uncut heroin, sewn into the seams. And your prints’ll be all over the glossy surfaces, the parcel’s sealed, and it’s your writing on the outside. He’ll add things up. Don’t forget — Harry Longman, Palma, the fifteenth of last month. He’s got forty-eight hours, that’s all.”

“I don’t…” she began frantically, but the dialling note began.

She slowly replaced the receiver, her mind desperate. Rowan said: “That was a one-way conversation and no mistake! Who was doing all the talking?”

“Raymond,” she said, automatically choosing a name she thought would cut him short.

“That creep,” he muttered.

She stared at the patterned curtains. It was all too fresh for her to understand the full implications of what had been said, but she did know that now she was in a corner from which there was no chance of escaping without hurt. “I’ll… I’ll get you your supper,” she said, her voice uneven.

He stared curiously at her. “So what did he want?”

“Only to tell me not to bother to go there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he pointed out.

She struggled to cover herself. “It was supposed to be a very important assignment and we were going to work tomorrow.” She hurried out of the room.

The kitchen was small, but luxuriously equipped with a number of labour-saving devices. In the self-cleaning oven was a deep frozen steak and kidney pie, now about ten minutes short of being cooked, the potatoes were boiling gently, and the water for the beans was ready. She tipped a packet of frozen beans into the boiling water.

How? she wondered desperately. How to escape a dilemma from which there was no escaping? Could she find out the information about Longman? It was too obviously an absurd question. Could she get Fred to find it out without telling him why she had to know? As soon try to move a mountain as get Fred to betray the force. Yet he was going to have to betray it unless she accepted all the consequences of her own appalling, stupid mistakes. Then, of necessity, he would learn everything…

He came into the kitchen. “Is grub about ready? I’m starving…” He stopped suddenly when he saw her face. “Heather,” he said slowly, his face registering shock and fear, “something terrible has happened.”

“No,” she muttered.

“Is it Tracy?”

“It’s nothing, I tell you. I’m just not feeling very fit… Fred, let’s have a bottle of wine to buck me up?”

He stood immediately in front of her, hands on his hips. “You’re lying,” he said.

“I swear…”

“Swear all you like, but tell me what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Jealousy made him suspect the worst. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

She gasped as he’d used more force than he’d intended and his fingers dug into her flesh. Hearing her, he released her, but there was still an air of savage tenderness about him which suggested that in his unthinking jealousy he could easily again offer her physical violence.

She began to cry, certain she’d reached the end of the road. Her body shook as tears coursed down her cheeks.

“For Christ’s sake,” he said, shocked by such helpless agony. “What’s happened to do this to you?”

She shook her head.

He moved forward and raised his hands and she flinched. He wrapped his arms round her and held her tightly. “Don’t,” he murmured. “Don’t cry like that. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. We’ll beat it.”

She buried her face against him. He smelled of stale tobacco and perspiration, but she found these infinitely comforting smells.

“Is it… Is the trouble a man?”

She felt his arms tighten. He’d asked her that, in a different form, many times before, but always his face had been ugly with hatred and his voice rough. She could not now see his face, but his voice was tender and compassionate.

Still holding her, though of necessity more loosely, he sat and brought her down on to his lap. “Listen,” he said, “we’ve had rows, God knows we have, and I’ve said things to you I’d give a fortune not to have said. But when the chips are really down, you’re the only person who counts. It doesn’t matter what, I’m on your side.”

“You’ll… you’ll…”

“I swear that whatever you tell me I’ll do nothing but help. If… if it’s another man and that’s the way you want it…”

“No!” she exclaimed violently. “It isn’t. I’ve never had another man. D’you understand, never. But…”

“But what?” he demanded thickly.

She told him about the photographs.

In his mind, he saw her naked. The man approached, manhood erect, ready to mount her. Imagination made Raymond tell the man to position himself closer, so that the photographs would be… And then he remembered the way in which she said she’d never had another man and despite his jealous imagination he believed her. There was cause for soaring relief here, even at such a moment. “What do they want?” he asked. “Money?”

She told him about her trip to the ship that afternoon, the exchange of foundation garments, the sealed parcel she had handed in to the tobacconist. He finally understood that what the mob had wanted from the beginning had been himself and that they had spun their web with infinite care.

Chapter 8

Had he been asked if he felt the same sense of loyalty towards the police force as a soldier felt for his regiment, Rowan would have answered with derisive profanity. He was not a man to wear his emotions on a sleeve. Yet, in fact, he did know the same part mystical, part prideful love and belief in the force he served. Therefore, to betray the slightest part of the trust placed in him was to become a traitor.

Kerr was in the C.I.D. general room. Rowan had often envied Kerr his ability to get every possible ounce of fun out of life and this envy had indirectly at times led to a strained relationship, but Kerr was too ebullient a character, too concerned with living today and not yesterday, ever to know any continuing resentment at Rowan’s moody behaviour. Typically, as Rowan walked in, he looked up and said: “What the hell are you doing here on a Sunday morning? Don’t say the old bastard is turning everyone out?”

“No.”

“That’s a pity.” Kerr grinned cheerfully. “There’s nothing eases my misery so quickly as having other people made to share it.”

Rowan walked over to his desk and sat down. “I just wanted to clear up some outstanding work.”

“You’re not saying you’ve come in voluntarily?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“Then you must be going soft.”

“Very likely.” Rowan looked at his watch. “I reckon I’ll be around for at least an hour. D’you feel like a break?”

No one ever had to make that sort of proposition twice to Kerr. He said he’d be down in the canteen and left.

Rowan stared at the telephone on his desk. He had just two possible courses of action. He could turn traitor, or retain his honour and defy the mob. If he defied them, he could be certain they would carry out their threats to make public the evidence that Heather had smuggled drugs. She would be tried and would plead guilty, giving in mitigation of sentence the fact she had been blackmailed into acting by the threat of publishing some pornographic photos of her. By strict interpretation of the law, the fact she had been blackmailed could not alter her guilt, although it must surely lessen sentence. But all the evidence would have to be given in open court and the world would learn how she had been photographed nude with a man. The world was always bitchy when given even half a chance to be… Her story about being tricked must be old cod’s wallop — she’d surely been working out variations on the seventieth position… People would gloat wondering how he must feel, knowing his wife had… Old men, and men not so old, would read all about it in the Sunday papers and lasciviously picture what went on…

If he went to Fusil and detailed what had happened, could a court case be avoided? No. The smuggling of heroin couldn’t be, daren’t be, suppressed by the police… The law must take its course. All too easy to imagine the malicious comments of his colleagues… He couldn’t subject Heather to such humiliation…

If he did as they demanded and discovered the information they sought, would he have done any real permanent harm? No one could seriously argue that giving information on why a man was in jail could hurt justice. His action would be a betrayal, of course, but unimportant in practical terms. He blanked his mind to what could lie beyond this one act of betrayal because at any cost, at all costs, he could not suffer Heather to be publicly humiliated… especially since he had previously privately humiliated her with his own jealous disbelief in her.

He picked up the receiver, asked for an outside line, and dialled New Scotland Yard. The county liaison officer, now Inspector Fryberg, was not in but his assistant, Sergeant Teesdale, was.

Teesdale came on the line and Rowan asked him to get through to Interpol to ask the Spanish authorities what they had on the Englishman, Harry Longman, arrested in Palma on the fifteenth of the previous month. Teesdale said he’d do what he could, but officialdom in Spain often took its time. Rowan said it was priority and that he’d ring back the next day.

He leaned back in his chair and became aware of the fact that he’d been sweating quite heavily: his shirt was damp under the armpits and down the back.

The telephone rang and the desk sergeant said that a hit-and-run had been reported from Ascrey Cross, just inside eastern division’s territory, Rowan made a note for Kerr.

He stood up, walked over to the window, lit a cigarette. He’d done what he had to. His first priority had to be to defend Heather. By comparison, nothing else mattered.

*

When Rowan telephoned London at six in the evening on Monday, Sergeant Teesdale told him that the police in Palma had, surprisingly, already come up with the required information. Longman was held on a charge of drunkenness and assault on two police officers.

Rowan returned home at eight-thirty. Heather and Tracy were watching the television. He nodded, when Tracy wasn’t looking. Heather said to Tracy: “You’d better go up to bed now.”

“Not until this programme’s finished…”

“Now.”

Tracy hesitated.

“I’ll come up and read to you,” said Rowan.

Tracy determined to make the best of an unusual offer. “Ten pages,” she demanded. “Or eleven, if any of them aren’t properly filled.”

He agreed and she left, cheerful and relaxed because she knew her parents had come closer together than she could ever remember.

As soon as Tracy had shut the door behind her, Heather said: “You’ve got the information?”

“Yes,” he answered.

She came round the settee and pressed against him. “Oh, God, if… if only…”

He interrupted her. “Forget the if onlys, darling. I’ve heard too many people use them when it’s too late. What’s done is done.”

“But… but at least it’s all over now.” She rested her cheek against his. “It makes me feel sick knowing what it’ll have meant to you to have to do it. I was such a coward, hoping you wouldn’t refuse so that everyone would learn what had happened and would think…”

“I couldn’t,” he interrupted quietly.

He went upstairs and read ten pages to Tracy from her book, allowed himself into being wheedled into reading another three because her eager demands held something very precious for him, then read one more because thirteen would have been unlucky. He tucked her up, switched off the light, and left the bedroom.

He walked along the very short passage to the small landing. The carpet here was deep pile and expensive. The three prints hanging on the walls, of ancient Fortrow, were quite valuable. The stair carpet had cost even more than the one on the landing. In turn a source of pride and resentment, these things could now be seen to have been bought at appalling cost.

He returned to the sitting room and said Tracy was tucked up for the night, then poured out a drink for each of them. They drank in silence, each deep in thought, and when the telephone rang both were visibly startled.

“Have you got the info, copper?”

He noted, without surprise, that the man spoke with vindictive pleasure. Nothing gave a villain so much pleasure as making a split dance to his tune. “Longman got tight in a bar, insulted some of the locals, threw bottles around, and tried to belt a couple of policemen who went into the bar to see what all the trouble was about.”

“And that’s the full story?”

“Yes. He wasn’t nicked for H-running.”

There was a pause, then a harsh curse. “Listen, copper, don’t get clever.”

Rowan said: “Will you send the package along with the photos?”

There was a coarse laugh. “Are you round the twist? You’re swimming with us. I’ve a message for you. You and us are working together now so if we stay healthy, you stay healthy, we get trouble, you get trouble. And there ain’t anything gets the courts so fiery as a bent copper, is there? So you learn something we’d like to hear, you telephone the number two one two, three six four. And, copper, it won’t do no good trying to trace that number. It’s a Tom what won’t even tell you the time of the day.” The man rang off.

Rowan replaced the receiver. He walked back to his chair, picked up the glass, and finished the drink.

Heather was white-faced. “Were they… Were they refusing to send the photos and the other things?”

He nodded, then saw she was beginning to cry. He moved to where she sat and rested his left hand on her shoulder. “They’re keeping their claws in me, Heather, as an insurance.”

She put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of shocked helplessness. There can be no end other than ruin, thought Rowan, with strange detachment.

*

Murphy listened to Jarrold’s report.

“Longman got picked up for playing dumb, Ed, getting tight, belting the local coppers. No one suspects nothing about him going there to meet the other courier. The Spanish coppers aren’t even guessing.” Murphy stared at Jarrold’s pumpkin of a face, beady with sweat because the night was warm and Jarrold perspired very freely, then looked away. It had been a near thing. “Would he talk, Titch, if someone had ideas and started questioning him?”

Jarrold shook his head and two drops of perspiration slithered down his flushed cheeks. “He ain’t dumb: he’s got a missus.”

Murphy nodded. They always tried to employ couriers with families because then they had a ready means of ensuring loyalty… So now the line could be re-opened and fresh heroin hurried in. Not before time. Stocks were very low, because demand had been built right up. Two consignments must come through by air and a third, and larger one, by sea.

*

Steve Allen was discharged from hospital six weeks after his admission, exactly five weeks after being moved off the critically ill list.

During his six weeks in hospital, no one had come to visit him. He was bad news, a fact which had become painfully clear to him during the last two weeks when he was able to think with reasonable clarity. He decided that if he had a future, it wasn’t in Fortrow. The mob had taken over everything and they’d never forget that he’d tried to take them for a bigger cut than he’d originally agreed.

Outside the hospital, his first problem was money. His wife earned a fair wage, working in a small factory in London, but she’d washed her hands of him years ago. Yet, he thought, and although he could reason some things out he found he couldn’t plan in any great detail because his mind went fuzzy, he had to have money to take him to wherever he was going, to do whatever he was going to do. Margot, for whom he’d pimped, was the only person he could think of to look to for help.

He arrived at her house at four in the afternoon. He was a tall man but he seemed to have shrunk and his face would never look as it had: the hospital had warned him there was fear of permanent damage to his kidneys. The maid — who worked for the three women who used this house — was too stupid or too careless to show any emotion on seeing him. He climbed the stairs, puffing slightly from shortage of breath, and crossed to the right-hand door.

Margot, unlike the maid, was clearly uneasily surprised to see him. He smiled at her, his badly fitting new teeth, replacing those which had been knocked out, making the smile more of a grimace. “’Ullo, Margot. I’ve just been let out of the ’ospital.”

She realised that he had become a different man, that he was finished, and that as far as she was concerned he was no longer a threat. “What d’you want?” She looked at her wristwatch. “I’m busy again soon, Steve.”

He sat down on the chair by the side of the bed.

“You can’t wait around,” she said sharply, gaining confidence with every second. “Like I said, I’m busy. So what d’you want?”

He’d been hoping for a sympathetic reception and he was shocked — and frightened — to discover that she was rejecting him so completely. “I… I reckon on leaving Fortrow, Margot.”

She did not try to hide her relief at the news.

“I’m going back to the Smoke.”

“Best place for you. You’ll be much better off there. It’ll be safer.”

“Yeah, but I ain’t got… I ain’t got much folding.” For a moment, they both remembered the days when his wallet had been thick with notes and he’d spent money as if it was going out of fashion.

“Well, I ain’t anything to give,” she said hurriedly.

“But you said you was busy, so you must’ve made…”

“It costs me plenty to operate.”

“I looked after you well.” He fumbled for words. “All the time you and me was together…”

She abruptly decided that it might be very much cheaper for her to give him something now if that meant he’d leave Fortrow. “I could let you have ten, but that’ll clean me out.”

“Ten? Just ten quid?” Momentarily, he spoke with some of his old belligerence.

Her expression became sullen. “Take it or leave it.”

His belligerence vanished. He pleaded: “I need more than that, straight. To get up to the Smoke. You’ve been doing good…”

“And like I told you, it costs me. And I ain’t making any extra recent on account of H being short.” She realised from his expression that he knew nothing of the heroin trade and that it had been a mistake to mention it. Hurriedly, she added: “And there ain’t going to be any around until after the twentieth, so I ain’t going to get anything extra.”

He tried to threaten her as he would have done in the past, but the words refused to come. He thought of cursing her, but then was afraid she might give him nothing. “Let’s ’ave the ten quid,” he said finally. She went to the cupboard, made certain he couldn’t watch, and took two five-pound notes out of the toe of a shoe.

“Now get,” she said.

When he left the house, he walked on the right-hand side of the road in the warm sunshine. Ten quid. Ten lousy quid. In the old days, ten quid was for a morning. He knew a renewed hatred for the man who’d beaten him up and for the men who’d given the order. If only he could shop ’em. But he didn’t know who was at the top and although he could shop Harps they’d know it must have been he who’d done it and they’d get him. Like they got Vince Wraight. Then he thought — with a sudden surge of cunning — that if he passed word on there was a consignment of heroin due in on the twentieth, no one could possibly suspect the information had come from him — Margot wouldn’t remember what she’d said to him, but even if she did she’d keep her mouth tight shut for her own safety. On such information, the coppers would go to town searching for the consignment. That would teach the mob they couldn’t push him around and get away with it.

Chapter 9

Fusil doodled on the sheet of foolscap paper, drawing a series of stick men and women who held hands. He looked up at the calendar on the wall and checked for perhaps the sixth time since the information had come in that the date was the twelfth. Eight days before the twentieth.

Anonymous tip-offs were a large part of police intelligence and all too often an infuriating part. It was so difficult to separate the genuine from the spurious or the attempt to create a smoke-screen. Every policeman worth his salt developed an instinct concerning which tip-offs were genuine and which weren’t, but only a fool would claim to be right most of the time.

He thought this tip-off concerning a coming consignment of heroin was probably genuine. In its favour was its most annoying characteristic, its vagueness: how, from where, morning, noon, or night? How many ways of bringing heroin into Fortrow were there? Road, sea, or air. As Fortrow was a thriving port and had an airport, it was surely more likely that the heroin was due to come in directly from abroad rather than entering elsewhere and being trans-shipped by road? Every trans-shipment meant extra danger and very great extra expense. Air offered much the quicker form of shipment, sea the safer, because the drop could be made at sea, especially if there was an alarm.

How many planes would arrive on the twentieth, how many ships would dock? Last ports of call would help. Mostly, heroin came from Hong Kong or Marseilles, where there were men with the skills and equipment to make it from the morphine base. But when planes or ships arrived from those two places, they were automatically suspect and subject to extensive searches, so that the line was seldom so direct. Heroin might go from Hong Kong to Cape Town, before reaching England, or from Marseilles to the Azores, before turning north and east. What, however, was virtually impossible was that it would be shipped to the Americas and then back across the Atlantic. So any ship from America, north or south, could be eliminated, and any plane or ship from Marseilles or Hong Kong likewise although, paradoxically, such plane or ship would be subject automatically to a heavy search. Any plane or ship on an unscheduled flight or voyage, so that the route would not have been known days beforehand…

Fusil drew a line through the stick men and women, consigning them to an untimely end. He couldn’t know for certain until he’d checked, but he was prepared to bet his pension that even after all possible eliminations there would still be so many planes and ships whose passengers and crews would have to be searched that the operation would be daunting in prospect, let alone in execution.

*

It was the policy both in the borough and county forces not to give the rank and file details of any major operation until the last possible moment, not for fear of deliberate leaks but for fear of unintentional ones. The men’s honesty wasn’t doubted, only that they would be tight-mouthed. The police learned too much from casual information let slip by villains ever to ignore the dangers of the reverse happening.

Fusil, Braddon, Inspector Harris and Sergeant Pierce of the uniformed branch, and Inspector Plumrose of the county force who was acting as liaison officer since the county force was being called upon to provide a contingent of fifty men and two dogs, spent hours discussing the evidence, sorting out flight and ship arrivals and deciding which could be safely eliminated, arranging for reliefs, for mobile canteens, for communications… They completed their work on the Wednesday at nine-fifteen in the evening and made for the nearest pub. There, over the second pint, Fusil suggested that the men be briefed on the Thursday at sixteen hundred hours. This was agreed. There would then be only nine hours twenty-five minutes before the arrival of the first plane which would have to be checked.

The local senior water-guard officer was contacted on Thursday. He tried to raise hell. Why the secrecy? Why hadn’t he been told before? Were the police suggesting his men couldn’t be trusted? It was his men who were trained to pick out the drug smuggler — what did any policeman know about the special techniques involved? Braddon was detailed to explain to the water-guard section that they were being treated no differently from the way in which the police were being treated. Braddon was rather good at this sort of a job, perhaps because he looked so much like a bloodhound people automatically believed him implicitly.

*

Kywood, who’d been pacing Fusil’s room, suddenly stopped and leaned on the desk with his clenched fists. “Is everything lined up, Bob?”

“Yes, sir.” Kywood had come up trumps, thought Fusil. There’d been none of his usual nit-picking over details, questioning things merely to remind everyone he was the big white chief. He’d let Fusil organise and had merely backed him up to the hilt whenever necessary. He’d grown in stature to meet a threat potentially larger than any he’d met before.

Kywood stood upright and jammed his hands in his pockets. “I wonder what the odds are against us picking up a real lead?”

Fusil shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t go nap on it, that’s for sure. The whisper may have been wrong, the courier may slip through our hands despite everything, we may catch him but learn virtually nothing because their organisation’s too good.”

“But catch the courier and get him to sing loudly enough, quickly enough, and maybe you could follow up the change-over?”

“I doubt it. A mob as organised as this one will learn something’s up and melt away.”

Kywood took his hands from his pockets. Probably, he’d been unrealistic. “There mustn’t be any leak our end.”

“Not a chance,” said Fusil belligerently.

Kywood slowly shook his head, to show a certain degree of doubt. He shared Fusil’s absolute belief in the force, yet a small corner of his mind insisted that if a man like Brigadier Row could be subverted, then it could not be beyond the realms of possibility that a serving police officer might also be.

*

At four o’clock, Thursday afternoon, Fusil addressed the men in the parade room which, despite all the windows being wide open, soon smelled heavily of humans. He gave them a full briefing, having always believed that men who knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it would do the job that little bit better. Afterwards, Sergeant Braddon read out the rota lists. A few men applied for various reasons to be released from the extra work and Inspector Harris, a dour Scot, refused all requests but one, made by a man whose wife was seriously ill.

They were dismissed at sixteen forty-five.

Rowan walked slowly along the narrow, dark corridor, and out to the courtyard. He stood, just in the sunlight, and tried to think clearly, but his mind would gallop off in a panic. The police had received a tip-off and as a result a major operation was underway. If they were successful and uncovered a courier he would either be an amateur, fool enough to have tried to smuggle because he’d been offered so much money, or a professional who would be known: the amateur might willingly, the professional unwillingly, pass on some small clue that would eventually lead to the principals being identified. But if this happened, they’d sworn they’d take him down with them… He reshaped his thoughts. A courier, amateur or professional, would know nothing of significance because of the risk of his being caught. Therefore his evidence couldn’t help the police trace out the principals… But just suppose he’d learned something and in return for the unspoken promise of a light sentence, he…

When there was the possibility of a calamity, Rowan had the kind of mind which could not easily move away from the near certainty of such calamity taking place. He could recognise the logical unlikelihood of the courier’s knowing anything incriminating, yet be emotionally certain that by bad luck the courier would and that this would lead to the unmasking of the men at the top of the organisation and therefore to his own and Heather’s destruction.

He had to warn them, he decided, because he dare not risk the consequences of not doing so.

Somehow, this coming act of treachery seemed much more direct, much more inescapable, than his previous one. He left the courtyard and walked along the pavement towards a row of lock-up shops and two public call boxes that were a quarter of a mile away. Two one two three six four was the telephone number they’d given him: he repeated it over and over again as he walked.

*

Fusil swore and pushed the bundle of papers, held together by a paperclip, to one side. Miss Wagner was too perfect a secretary. He’d told her to chuck this load of bumf into the wastepaper basket because county H.Q. would never remember they’d sent it out, but she’d ignored his orders, returned the forms, and added a short typewritten note — very genteel in tone — to remind him to fill them in, whereupon she’d send them off. He looked up at the electric clock on the wall. Josephine, his wife, would slaughter him when he returned home. It was already eight-thirty and it would be another hour before he’d have cleared this load of paperwork… And when he did get back he’d have to tell her that he’d be leaving the house again at around midnight and would not be returning for at least twenty-four hours. One of these days she really would get hold of the chief constable and tell him exactly what she thought of him for allowing her husband to work himself into an early grave.

He picked up the next sheet of paper — a letter. Commissaire Quijano of the Cuerpo General de Policia, stationed in Palma de Mallorca, had very great pleasure in confirming certain facts to his very distinguished colleagues in England. Harry Longman, an Englishman with passport number 693249, issued in London, was now in jail and awaiting interrogation. He was being charged with assaulting two police officers and of drunken rioting in the Bodega Tomir in Calle Juan de Moyá. It was greatly to be regretted that an Englishman should have had to be imprisoned, since the English were known to behave so beautifully and there had always been great sympathy between Mallorquins and the English (There were, unfortunately, one or two periods in history when this was not quite so, but such periods were brief. And one must blame the British Government for Gibraltar, not the ordinary citizen) but the degree of assault and drunkenness was too severe to admit of its being overlooked. The writer had made extensive enquiries and regretfully had nothing further to add to his previous report, other than that Harry Longman had been on holiday in Palma for five days prior to this unfortunate event. The British Consulate had been informed, but they had naturally restricted themselves to what was right and honourable in such a case as this. The writer hoped this answered or confirmed all that his esteemed colleagues in England wished to know, but should there be other questions they wished answered they had only to ask them…

“What the bloody hell,” said Fusil, and crumpled up the letter. If the police in Palma had nothing better to do than write ten words where one would suffice, they ought to try working in Fortrow for a change.

Chapter 10

The T.S.S. Western Sand was a twenty-two thousand ton passenger ship, now in her last years of service and profitably only because of an advantageous mail contract the Sand Steamship Company had negotiated five years previously. She had had one major refit in her thirty years’ service and the most obvious result of this was that now she had a raked bow, single raked funnel, and raked fore and mainmast, instead of up-and-down bow and masts and twin upright Woodbine funnels. She had an air of grace she had not possessed when new and because of her traditional build she possessed great beauty in the eyes of those who loved ships before the competition of planes had dramatically altered their raison d’être and therefore their basic construction.

Pilgrim was no lover of the sea or of ships, traditional or modern. In anything stronger than a very light swell he felt queasy and in the heavy storm three days before — the ship’s log merely recorded a moderate sea and swell — he’d all but died.

He sat at the bar and ordered another whisky on the rocks and the bartender poured it out for him. It was just possible to hear the noise from the discothèque, one deck below. He’d tried to run a course with the blonde who did a creditable D.J. job, but she’d made it all too clear that she preferred lamb to mutton. Hell, he thought a shade drunkenly, he might never see thirty-five again, but experience was worth something.

The tannoy system came alive. “Hullo, hullo. Calling Mr. Pilgrim. There is a message for Mr. Pilgrim at the purser’s office on C deck. Thank you.”

Knowing an unwelcome tension, he finished the whisky. Then he left the bar and walked through to the square beyond and the ancient, rattling lift which always made him wonder if it had any form of fail-safe system.

The purser’s office was in the square of C deck. There was an open working area, twenty feet long and ten deep, with a counter and to port of this was an enclosed office in which the chief purser was reputed to drink two bottles of whisky a day. Behind the counter was a young, smooth, male purser with two rings on his arms and a snappy brunette with one ring. He told the brunette he was Pilgrim and how come he hadn’t seen her before on this trip. With a weary smile she said she’d been very busy otherwise she was sure they’d have met. She handed him a ship’s telegram.

He opened and read it. ‘Regret Abbot died last night Stop Drop everything on return and come home immediately.’ It was signed Anne.

He crumpled up the cable and dropped it into his pocket. He was vaguely aware that the one-ringed purser was looking at him, her attention caught by something about his expression, but he ignored her. He crossed the square to the lift and returned to the bar, where he ordered another whisky on the rocks. Two men saw him and suggested a game of poker, but he shook his head and said he wasn’t feeling too bright. They laughed and suggested that in future he stick to dry land, then left. He drank. Something had gone wrong and this knowledge made him shake all the way down to the soles of his shoes. A thousand quid for the trip, he’d been promised, and no chance of trouble: like presents from Father Christmas. No chance of trouble? That thousand quid was beginning to look hard earned.

The whisky steadied him, instead of making his mind more muzzy. He began to regain confidence. There might be trouble ashore, but it wouldn’t affect him because full contingency plans had been made. Get a cable telling him to drop everything, they’d said, and carry out the alternative plan. Drop the consignment over the side when abeam of the first flashing buoy — three flashes every ten seconds — that marked The Shallows outside the mouth of the River Fort.

He thought about ordering another whisky, but finally decided not to. He stood up, left the bar, and took the lift down to B deck where he walked for’d along the alleyway to his cabin.

His suitcases were stowed in the special compartment against the after bulkhead, at the side of the washbasin. He unlocked the blue one and took out the neatly packed parcel which would have been dumped at sea after the contents had been rendered sinkable had he not received that cable.

Inside the parcel was a deflated rubber container, a small canister of gas, a line, and a floating electric light with sealed battery and a time switch that would turn the light on fifteen minutes after being activated.

He repacked the parcel and returned it to the blue suitcase. Also in that and the brown suitcase were — together with his other clothes — three coats, bearing the names of different multiple English tailors — which had a quantity of pure heroin packed into each shoulder and down some of the seams. Under normal conditions, no one would ever have suspected there was anything unusual about them.

*

The police and the customs searches caused considerable inconvenience, aroused a great deal of expressed annoyance, and were responsible for a lot of embarrassment. On a plane from Copenhagen nine men were found to be in possession of hard-core pornographic magazines. A blonde woman, on a plane from Istanbul, turned out to be a man and immigration officials were faced with the problems of his/her passport. Two stowaways, would-be illegal immigrants from India, were found in the cargo hold of a freighter, surrounded by all the detritus of their long, hidden voyage. Seventeen men and thirty-seven women on a mail ship were caught with far more than their rations of duty-free goods. A woman on a plane from Nice was discovered trying to smuggle in a Chihuahua and she had hysterics. Four students in a jalopy, returning from the Continent, seemed uneasy and as a consequence fifty-four pounds of first quality hashish, in half kilo cakes, were found hidden about their vehicle. A man sweated as his small suitcase was being examined and this led to his identification as someone who’d skipped the country ten months before, just ahead of the police. A married couple were extremely nervous, but their problem was that they were not married to each other.

Fusil and Kywood returned to Eastern Division H.Q. at seven-thirty in the evening, just as a light drizzle started. They slumped down in chairs, both men physically and mentally exhausted. After a while, Fusil mustered up sufficient energy to use the internal telephone to speak to the desk sergeant to ask him to detail someone to bring up two snack meals from the canteen. The desk sergeant’s answer made Fusil swear.

“Shut down?” said Kywood.

“The day staff left at six, the two on the evening shift have both reported through as ill, there were some stale sandwiches but they’ve all been eaten, and the coffee machine’s on the blink.”

“It’s a great life,” muttered Kywood. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit a cigarette. “Just under four and a half hours left,” he observed.

Fusil began to tap with his fingers on the desk. At an educated guess, they’d a couple more ships and half a dozen aircraft to come in before midnight.

“We’d no option,” said Kywood suddenly. “We had to lay on the full operation.”

Fusil was mildly astonished. Normally, Kywood by now would have been manoeuvring himself into a position where none of the responsibility for the results of failure or of a negative operation — in this case mainly financial: overtime pay, payment to county for the ‘hire’ of each of their men — rested on his shoulders. But it seemed clear that he had no intention of disassociating himself from events. He wasn’t so bad a D.C.I., thought Fusil: no man could be really bad who was ready to fight hard for the force he served.

*

Pilgrim stared through the porthole of his cabin into the night and waited for the quick sequence of flashes. One, two, three. He counted the seconds with the help of his wristwatch and the three flashes were repeated in ten seconds. This was the first buoy marking The Shallows. The ship began to alter course to port to head for the dredged channel.

He turned away. On the settee was the heroin, wrapped in small parcels, each of which had been coated with a waterproof sealing agent. He picked them up and carefully worked them into the deflated rubber container, made certain the line to the light was fast, checked the setting of the time switch, coupled up the gas canister and released the gas. The container inflated immediately, but into a cylindrical shape, not a spherical one. At the pre-determined pressure, a valve in the container shut: should there be any leakage of gas, the valve would allow a compensating amount of gas through.

He carried the container over to the porthole. It was just one inch less in diameter than the port, proving the extent of their planning. He pressed down the time switch on the light, to activate it, then threw the battery case away from the hull: the weight ensured it held a trajectory which took the inflated container well clear.

He used a penknife to slit up the three coats. He threw the pieces out of the port.

*

On the wing of the bridge, the third officer stared aft. The captain hurried out of the wheelhouse. “When was the last plot, Third?”

“Two minutes ago, sir. We’re dead on course and making seven knots.”

“Who altered the radar?”

“I did, to check more accurately our distance off number three buoy.”

“Humph!” muttered the captain, who always fussed when coming into port.

The cadet on watch reported from the wheelhouse that Wheelon Point was abeam, five miles, by radar.

Ahead, a small vessel altered course and her green starboard steaming light became cut off. They passed the two white anchor lights of a ship awaiting a berth or the tide.

“Funny thing, sir,” said the third officer. “When I was looking aft just now, someone was throwing what looked like a load of clothing out of one of the ports.”

“What’s the point of looking aft? Concentrate on keeping an efficient watch for’d. How long before we pick up the pilot?”

“Twenty minutes, sir, at our present speed.”

“Humph!” muttered the captain, who had not expected the third to be able to give him the information.

Chapter 11

It was well after midnight, but because the T.S.S. Western Sand had docked late, the police and customs’ search was still continuing.

Passengers had had the option of spending the night on the ship: Pilgrim was one of about thirty who’d elected to disembark as soon as possible. He carried his own suitcases over to the bench for customs inspection — all ‘Nothing to declare’ exits had been closed — and waited. A single ring customs officer came across and, despite everything, Pilgrim felt nervous. Not knowing that the tip-off had been in very general terms, he believed that the Western Sand had been pinpointed and he was becoming more and more scared that some trace of the drugs he had carried would he evident to nail him as having been the courier.

The customs officer showed him the usual printed notice to travellers. He reported only the legitimate amount of cigarettes and drink, together with a few presents bought for his niece. The customs officer nodded, asked how long he’d been out of the country, asked to see his passport, in itself sufficiently unusual to increase Pilgrim’s unease, and then called for the two suitcases to be opened.

The customs officer expertly searched the suitcases. “Did you fly out of Athens?”

“Yes, I did.”

“D’you like the country?”

“Very much.” Pilgrim went to close the suitcases since the other seemed to have finished.

“Just wait a moment. Is this all your baggage?”

“Yes, it is. Why?”

“You seem to have made do with very few clothes for a three weeks’ stay in Greece and a week on the boat, Mr. Pilgrim?”

Pilgrim stared at the suitcases, shocked to discover the organisation had made a mistake. Because he’d had to jettison the three coats, and the trousers belonging to the two suits, he was patently under-clothed for his time abroad.

The customs officer remained polite, but called across an older and senior man. After a murmured conversation, the suitcases were searched for the second time. As they tapped the linings, checked thicknesses with a special gauge, and examined every article at length, Pilgrim began to sweat.

Yarrow, seeing what was happening, walked over. Pilgrim was asked if he minded being personally searched and he hesitated because he couldn’t decide whether innocence was better simulated by ready acceptance or indignant initial refusal. In the end, he agreed and was searched in a nearby office. When he returned, he saw his now emptied suitcases were being given to a black Labrador to smell and for a few seconds was completely panic-stricken as he credited the dog with miraculous powers of being able to pick up the scent of the heroin even though this had been in sealed bags in the now missing coats.

His passport was examined again and its details taken. He was asked for his home address and he gave one.

They finally let him go, obviously puzzled, wondering what racket he was in, yet satisfied he was not smuggling heroin.

A car was waiting for him. The driver asked him what had happened, then refused to talk again for the whole of the journey up to London. When he was dropped outside his semi-detached house in Ealing, just beyond the common, he was handed a small parcel. He unwrapped this in the house and found it contained the promised thousand pounds, in five-pound notes. Never again, he swore, still feeling sick at the thought of what he’d gone through in the customs shed.

*

Yarrow, who was almost as intelligent as he believed himself to be, accepted a drink from the third officer and amusedly wondered if this was contraband. He yawned and thought about his coming date with a blonde who’d real potential.

“You and the customs have certainly gone over the ship with a fine tooth-comb,” said the third officer — in his early twenties and with a look of tired decadence which suggested the stories of a wife in every port weren’t always myths. “What were you after?”

“Contraband,” answered Yarrow, giving nothing away even though the operation was now over.

“Sure. But what kind? Hell, there’s always contraband on a ship. Extra cartons of fags, extra bottles of plonk. But this was like you were searching for the Crown Jewels.”

“Maybe we were.” Despite himself, Yarrow had been impressed by the way the operation had been organised: annoying, since he didn’t like to think a small borough force like Fortrow’s could do anything really efficiently.

“But you didn’t find whatever it was you were after?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

The third officer drank. “You’ll probably think I’m soft, but I’ve been wondering whether what you were after could have had anything to do with something I saw. I still think it was bloody odd.”

“What was it?”

The third described what he’d seen from the wing of the bridge as they passed The Shallows.

Yarrow left the cabin ten minutes and two drinks later. He walked out on to the starboard side of the boat deck and stared over the rails. What had the third officer seen? Viewing conditions had been fitful, with shafts of bright light from the ports and dark in between, but the third seemed pretty certain a load of clothing had been thrown overboard from one of the passengers’ cabins. Assuming he was right, why should anyone be slinging clothes over the side? Worn out, unwanted? But people didn’t set off on a sea trip with worn out clothes. Then why suddenly unwanted?

Clothes, he knew, provided one of the more favoured covers for heroin smuggling because they were an essential part of anyone’s baggage and they offered very good hiding places for small parcels of the drug: pure heroin was so valuable that even a small parcel was worth a mint. But if heroin had been hidden in clothing, what had then caused the clothing to be discarded? Obviously, the only reasonable answer to that was that a warning of the massive police operation had reached the courier.

He dropped the cigarette over the side and watched it spiral down to the water, then went back to the third officer’s cabin and found the latter in his bunk, reading. He asked where the chief wireless officer slept and was told on the port side of that deck, in the last cabin immediately for’d of the rails and gate which separated the officers’ from the passengers’ accommodation.

The chief wireless officer, a man unfortunate enough to have virtually no jaw so his face just melted away below his lips, had not been asleep for long and for a while he was solely concerned with peevishly demanding to know why any enquiries couldn’t have waited until the morning. Finally, however, he climbed out of his bunk, put on a dressing-gown, and led the way aft — his moans now reduced to a mumble — to the wireless cabin which was beyond the main passenger square.

He sat, unlocked a drawer beneath one of the receivers, and brought out a log book. He ran his finger down the last page of entries and finally said: “We received two cables. One to Mrs. Wheeler, telling her that her daughter had had a baby. The other to Mr. Pilgrim, telling him someone had died and he was to drop everything and return home at once. That was received at nineteen hundred and thirty-three hours.”

Drop everything, thought Yarrow. What could be clearer than that? It was not every detective, he decided with complacent pride, who would have appreciated the significance of the third officer’s casual remarks, and out of those, few would have had the intelligence to trace back the cable which had raised the alarm.

*

Rowan sat at his desk and tried to make out he was working at some papers.

Yarrow said: “So I reckoned there must have been something to trigger off this throwing away of clothes and I pulled the radio bloke out of his bed and he told me about the cable.” He paused and looked round.

Welland went on idly staring at a shoe-box filled with wristwatches taken from a youngster of fifteen and not yet sorted out, Rowan went on apparently reading. Yarrow felt annoyed. The trouble with country hicks was that they weren’t capable of appreciating real detective work when they met it. “The cable was supposed to tell of a bloke’s death. It said to drop everything. It was really telling Pilgrim to ditch the heroin.”

Welland wondered why his wife, Molly, had been a little short tempered that morning.

“So we’ve got a real lead. You realise that?”

“What d’you say?” asked Welland.

Yarrow, who’d been standing by one of the filing cabinets, went over to his desk and sat down. If an atomic bomb went off under them, they’d hardly notice.

How strong a lead? wondered Rowan. Surely not as strong as Yarrow believed. Pilgrim could only have been a courier and they never knew much because they were expendable. But just suppose this case was the exception, just suppose Yarrow was right… Then he was for the high jump. He stared across at Yarrow and hated the other because he had so endangered Heather and Tracy.

*

Six men sat round the circular table in the conference room at borough H.Q. The chief constable was in the only chair with arms — these marked his authority since a round table had no head — the two uniformed superintendents of the two divisions were on either side of him, Kywood was next to Superintendent Passmore, and the two D.I.s were on the far sides of the other superintendent and Kywood.

“It’s a bugger,” said the chief constable abruptly.

That summed up their feelings exactly.

“But it’s got to be sorted out, and quickly. If there is some dirty washing around, then it must be seen to be washed in public.”

It was interesting how the chief constable and Kywood had both apparently altered in character during this case. No longer did either have one eye permanently fixed on self-interest, playing politics because that was how to survive in his present rank until retirement and so draw a higher pension than if he lost rank through the borough’s being finally amalgamated into the county force. Now, both of them were concerned solely with the possibility of police corruption and if it were found the need to stamp it out. They had rediscovered ideals that each had secretly thought had been burned out by the dull fires of experience.

The chief constable looked across at Fusil. “Are we absolutely certain there was a tip-off?”

“No, sir.” Fusil spoke with unusual care. “All we can say for sure at the moment is that it appears very likely. The cable was received about three hours after the briefing at Eastern H.Q. was over and that obviously fits in with the necessary time scale. The cable was handed in at a main post office in Highgate and we’ll have the original form as soon as possible, but we’ll have to be real optimists to think it’ll help. As far as we can work out, from the evidence of the officer aboard the ship who saw the clothes — if they were clothes — being thrown out of a porthole, it was about ten on the Thursday night when they were jettisoned, which again fits in time-wise. He fixed the position of the porthole as well as he could and this proved to be within four portholes of Pilgrim’s cabin.

“The address Pilgrim gave to the shipping company and to the customs has been checked out and it’s false. I’ve been on to the passport office and they came back just before I came here to say that no passport has been issued to a J. T. Pilgrim of his description. The passport number is one of forty-two unissued passports which were stolen from a consulate in France six months ago.

“An extensive search of the waters by The Shallows has been carried out by police and coastguards, and one part of what was almost certainly a jacket, in a lightweight tweed, has been discovered. A preliminary — and this must be underlined — scientific report suggests it hadn’t been in the water for more than twenty-four hours. The portion of cloth, virtually new, shows no signs of having been in contact with heroin. A coastguard has worked out time and tides and the place of finding is consistent with its having been thrown from the Western Sand.

“Enquiries have been made among fishermen and small-boat owners and we have one report of a floating light off The Shallows at around ten, Thursday night. A boat was seen to approach the light and pick it out of the water. Our informant has no idea who or what.”

There was a short silence.

“Then have you any doubts that the heroin was dumped to a prearranged emergency plan?” asked the chief constable.

Fusil hesitated, finally answered reluctantly: “Not really, sir, nor that we’re dealing with a tip-off.” His voice became harsh. “One of the coppers who was at the briefing was bent.”

“Or one of the blokes from C.I.D.,” said the uniformed superintendent from Western Division.

“Impossible,” snapped Fusil.

“And just what’s so impossible…”

“Gentlemen,” cut in the chief constable sharply, “inter-departmental squabbling isn’t going to help us one little bit.”

Fusil took his pipe from his pocket and rubbed the bowl against the palm of his left hand. How bloody typical of the uniformed branch to imagine a member of the C.I.D. could turn crook. Kywood shook his head, as if in friendly warning, and Superintendent Passmore wondered, sadly, what would happen if such belligerent faith should prove unfounded?

The chief constable thumped the table with clenched fist — an appropriate gesture, despite its air of theatricality. “In a case like this there is nobody, and I repeat, nobody, above suspicion. The traitor can have come from any department.”

They seemed to agree, albeit reluctantly, yet each man was certain that if there was a traitor he must be from someone else’s department.

The chief constable looked round the table. “All right. What’s our next move?”

Fusil answered him. “Failing evidence definite enough to make or even suggest an identification, I suppose we ought to ask our men for any information they may have.”

“Thereby openly publicising the fact that we believe we have a traitor?”

“We can’t avoid that for much longer, sir, whatever we do.”

“And how will they respond to being asked to inform on their own companions?”

“They’ll hate it, but for the good of the force they’ll do it.”

The chief constable spoke in a low voice. “It’s a very sad, painful time for all of us.”

His manner and speech were old-fashioned, yet both perfectly suited the occasion and the emotions of those present.

*

For longer than either cared to remember, Heather and Rowan had spent their evenings together mainly in silence because to speak at any length was to risk provoking yet another bitter argument. Now, they sat in silence because to speak might be to remind the other of the danger in which they had both been and could so easily be again.

The telephone rang. Rowan stood up, turned down the sound of the television, crossed to the telephone, and answered the call.

“It was lucky you got word to us, copper,” said a voice he had not heard before.

He knew both rage and fear.

They were waiting, like a swarm of bleeding locusts.

But unlike a swarm of locusts, they’d found nothing.

“So now we want to know who did the squealing, and we want to know real fast. Got that?” The connection was cut.

Heather said, her voice little more than a whisper: “That was them again?”

He turned. Her face was white and strained and it hurt with bitter poignancy to look at her.

“What did they want this time, Fred?” she asked.

He shook his head.

She spoke urgently. “You’ve got to tell me and you mustn’t try to shield me — then I only think the very worst. Please, Fred.”

He went over and stood by her chair and stroked her neck with his thumb. A feeling of overwhelming love and possession swept over him and he felt choked because they were threatening to take her away from him.

“What do they want this time?” she asked, in a muffled voice because she’d turned her head to rest it against him.

He said: The name of the grasser who told us a load of heroin was coming into the country.”

“Do you know it?”

“No.”

“Does anyone know it?”

“Someone might, but we don’t trade news on informers.”

“So how will you find out?”

He didn’t answer.

“What will they do to the man if you tell them who he is?”

“Kill him,” he answered harshly.

She finally understood. If he refused to tell them the name of the informer — because he wouldn’t, or couldn’t — they would give the police proof of his betrayal. If he did tell them, they’d kill the man and he would be indirectly responsible for the murder.

Chapter 12

It was first a secret shared by only a few, then it became the subject of hurried, embarrassed conversations by many. One of the policemen at the briefing was bent and had informed the mob that a police operation was on so that the search had failed. Inevitably, partisanship, evident even at the chief constable’s conference, became very strong. Men from Eastern Division were certain the bent copper could only come from Western Division or the county force: men from the county force knew the bent copper came from the borough force: men from Western Division knew the bent copper had to be from Eastern Division or the county force: the uniformed branch knew he had to come from C.I.D.: C.I.D. knew he had to come from the uniformed branch. Rumours multiplied. Harsh words were spoken. There was fight at Western Division H.Q. and a P.C. and a D.C. were both severely reprimanded, although each man’s superiors later made it clear that his offence was more to be lauded than condemned. The chief constable demanded that Kywood and the uniformed superintendents stem this tide of bitterness and hate, but not only were they virtually powerless to do this, they now viewed each other with unspoken hostility and suspicion.

Fusil was dealing with the previous night’s crime reports on Tuesday morning — crime, like Old Father Thames, went on no matter what else happened — when there was a knock on his door and a uniformed constable’s head and shoulders appeared.

“Well?” snapped Fusil.

The constable entered and shut the door. He stood to attention, helmet in his right hand, as if on a parade ground. “P.C. forty-one, sir.”

Fusil picked up his pipe and tried to light it, but it refused to draw properly. He separated the stem and blew, to expel a wad of goo. Contemptuous that he should do anything so childish as play for time, nevertheless he continued to do so because the P.C.’s manner told him that he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.

The constable coughed.

“Spit it out, man,” snapped Fusil.

“I’ve something to report, sir.” The constable smartly took two steps forward. “I’ve mentioned the matter to Sergeant Green and he said I must report direct to you.”

He’d had a run-in with Sergeant Green only a few weeks ago, thought Fusil: evidently the sergeant hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. “Then suppose you start reporting.”

“The trouble is, I’m not certain how important it is, or even whether I should mention it at all when I can’t be certain…”

“Stop spending so much time trying to salve your own conscience.”

The P.C. flushed and his expression became one of resentment. “I was at the briefing you gave.”

Fusil struck a match and sucked flame into the bowl and now the tobacco burned briskly: the smoke was more acrid than ever because he hadn’t scraped out the bowl for a long time.

“When the briefing was over, sir, I left to go home because my spell of duty was over, me being on the revised duty roster that Sergeant Braddon gave us. So I walked down Tidemouth Road towards the shops and I happened to notice a bloke in front.”

Fusil clamped his teeth down on the stem of the pipe.

“He went up to one of the call boxes that are by the shops and made a call. And that seemed odd because he was from the station so why didn’t he use one of the phones in the station?”

“Obviously, because it was a personal call,” snapped Fusil.

The P.C. shrugged his shoulders in a meaningful manner.

“His name?” demanded Fusil.

“D.C. Rowan, sir.”

“And is that all?”

“Yes, sir. But we’ve been asked to report anything that could be of the slightest significance and I thought how it was odd he didn’t make the call from here… Blokes usually make personal calls from the station, sir, even if the regs say they shouldn’t.”

“Thank you for reporting the matter. You will discuss it with no one else. Is that quite clear?”

“Yes, sir.” The P.C. stared at Fusil, resentful that he’d been treated like some schoolboy sneak, then he turned, clumping his feet, marched out, and slammed the door shut behind himself.

Good God! thought Fusil bitterly, couldn’t a bloke even make a private call without drawing suspicion onto himself? D.C. Rowan was moody and unpredictable — a fact which prevented his becoming a really good detective, since his work suffered accordingly — but he couldn’t become bent. Any more than Braddon, Kerr, Welland, or Yarrow, could become bent.

Fusil returned to his work, checking which crimes Braddon was handling and which he’d passed on to the uniformed branch, altering one transfer because the victim was a local councillor with a loud mouth who’d need to feel he was getting V.I.P. treatment.

Fusil put down his pen, worried by some dusty half-memory. He tried to pin it down, failed, and resumed work, only to remember what it was almost immediately. There’d been a letter through from the Spanish police regarding an enquiry, placed through Interpol, concerning a man who’d been arrested in Palma. The enquiry hadn’t meant a thing to him — he’d known for a fact that it didn’t concern a current case — and at the time he’d done no more than throw the report away, thinking it had been sent to the wrong force. But suppose it hadn’t? Suppose Rowan had been the originator and the enquiry had been made because…

He cursed. He was as bad as anyone, seeing shadows that weren’t there. Yet, his conscience nagged, surely he ought to check up and find out what the enquiry had been about?

He buzzed for Miss Wagner and she came into his room, looking so prim and proper it was difficult to realise that in her work she had to deal with matters that would have shocked many modern girls who reckoned to know all the answers.

“Miss Wagner,” he said, “some time ago we had a report through from Palma concerning an Englishman who’d been in trouble. I don’t know what happened to that report…”

“You threw it into the wastepaper basket,” she said, and looked reproachfully at him. She worshipped him in a completely sexless manner.

“Did I. Hell! I wanted…”

“But naturally I rescued and filed it. If only you’d be a little less impetuous…”

“Whatever would we do without you?” he said hastily.

She blushed.

*

Fusil had to report every morning to Superintendent Passmore and give details of the crime over the past twenty-four hours and this tended to irk him since he was, in his own estimation, more than capable of running C.I.D. without supervision. But there were also occasions when he voluntarily went down to the other’s office and talked over problems. Passmore was well into his middle age and close to retirement and therefore without professional ambition or any axe to grind. He had a keen analytical mind which was rounded off by a great fund of common sense and this enabled him to see all sides of a problem. His advice was usually valuable.

He listened to what Fusil had to say, then leaned back in his chair and for once his round face looked solemn. He joined forefinger and thumb of each hand together to make a triangle. “It’s thin,” he said, looking at Fusil through the triangle.

“I know,” replied Fusil, eager to accept the unlikelihood of what he’d been saying.

“A telephone call from a call box immediately after the briefing could so easily just be his telling his wife he’d be late.”

“But whatever the regulations, that sort of call is certainly usually made on one of the telephones here.”

Passmore shook his head. It was not a denial of what Fusil had said, merely a reminder that a personal call could be too personal to be made in the hearing of fellow policemen.

Fusil, in the unhappy position of arguing against his own wishes, and instincts, took from the pocket of his coat the letter from Palma, now smoothed out. “This is what came from the Spanish police. I’ve checked with London. The originator was Rowan.” He passed the letter across.

Passmore skimmed through it. “You’re quite certain C.I.D. haven’t at any time been interested in this man, Longman?”

“Quite certain. I’ve checked myself.”

Passmore lit a cigarette with careful movements. “There’s surely nothing to say his name didn’t officially appear in any case, but Rowan had cause to check him out, found he wasn’t of interest, then let the matter slide?”

“Of course,” said Fusil sharply, hating the discussion. “But the regulations are definite. No request for information may be put through Interpol without authority from a D.I., or higher. Sergeant Teesdale should never have passed it, but he obviously presumed Rowan had cleared everything with me. If this was a straightforward, routine enquiry, why didn’t Rowan refer it to me? And how can Longman have been concerned in any case that was on our books without my knowing a thing about him?”

“I’ll repeat what I said earlier, Bob, it’s very thin.” Passmore tapped the ash from his cigarette. “But obviously you’ve got to check the matter out, and quickly, because this station is going to explode with rumours.”

“I ordered P.C forty-one to keep his trap shut.”

“D’you still believe in miracles, then?”

Fusil swore.

*

Originally the jail had been small because Mallorquins are by nature honest — their only real defect in character, an explosive temper — and in any case crime is usually limited in a small island. But when the tourist invasion started, the jail had had to be extended. Visitors unfortunately brought with them their own low standards of honesty and they committed crimes too serious to be overlooked or to be dealt with by unhurried deportation.

The governor of the jail was small, nearly bald, with finely chiselled features, and a pair of very sharp blue eyes. He strongly believed in international cooperation and when he received the request for information on Longman he was upset to discover how little anyone knew about the Englishman. He decided to find out what he could about the man.

First off, Longman was held in what was virtually solitary confinement, since he only left the cell for meals and two periods of half an hour for exercise: at such times, he was carefully kept away from anyone who could speak English. He became wretchedly miserable, distressed, and even outraged, to discover that in Mallorca imprisonment was still punitive in nature.

When he was feeling at his lowest, a second prisoner, Suarez, was put into his cell and to his joy he discovered Suarez spoke English so that now he had someone to moan to. He moaned. The police had had no right to arrest him, the law should have discharged him, the English consul should have had him released, the prison routine was vicious, the food was greasy, and if he’d known what was going to happen to him just for agreeing to carry a briefcase into England, he’d have refused to do it for ten times the thousand pounds he had been offered.

Suarez, in for theft — he was from the Peninsula where, as every Mallorquin knew, standards of honesty were much lower — had a word with a warder and next morning his name was called after breakfast and he was ordered to report to the governor’s office.

“Señor Governor,” said Suarez, standing smartly to attention in front of the desk, “I have done exactly and precisely as you asked of me.”

“I am most grateful,” replied the governor, a man of great courtesy. The chief warder stood on his right.

“I have listened and listened to a great deal of troubles. He thinks all we Spaniards are barbarians.”

The governor shrugged his shoulders. His expression did not change, although he objected to the implication that he was a Spaniard. He was a Mallorquin.

“Once or twice, Señor Governor, I was very tempted to belt him in his over-large and very busy cake-hole.”

“It is fortunate for everyone that you were able to control your instincts.”

Suarez saw the chief warder’s expression and realised that it would be better if he stuck to the facts. “He says that what he’d been going to do was pick up a case from a man he should have met in the bar and take this case to England. And for that he was to be paid…” Suarez paused for effect. “A thousand pounds.”

The governor made a note on a sheet of paper. “Has he said what he expected to be in this case?”

“No, Señor Governor. Naturally I tried to find out, but he’d no idea.” Suarez spoke ingratiatingly. “Señor Governor, maybe it is permitted for me to guess?”

“It will not be necessary. You are to be thanked for your cooperation.”

“Perhaps I might now be permitted to return to my own cell?”

“I think that in order to give this Englishman the opportunity to learn that a Spaniard is truly not a barbarian, you should return to occupy the cell with him,” replied the governor. He did not like informers and he had a strong sense of humour.

*

Fusil read the letter from Mallorca. The authorities begged to inform their illustrious colleagues in England that certain information had come to hand which was being passed on immediately in view of the previous enquiries. Longman, regrettably held on the charges previously mentioned, had said that he’d been waiting in the bodega in order to take delivery of a briefcase which he was to carry back to England. In payment for this, he had been promised one thousand pounds. Their esteemed colleagues in England would be able to judge whether this information was of any significance, but they would like to say that in any case it was of the greatest pleasure to have been in communication with the members of so widely acclaimed a police force.

Fusil stared down at the carefully typed letter in an English which retained a little of the grace there would have been in the original Spanish. A thousand pounds for carrying a briefcase into England. Only one racket paid that sort of money — heroin smuggling. Longman had been part of the line. He’d got drunk, assaulted two coppers, been hauled off to jail, and the line had been broken. The organisation had had to discover whether his arrest had been fortuitous or whether the police had thought the switch had been made and had picked up Longman hoping he could be pressured into giving them vital information. So the organisation had subverted a policeman who’d been on to the Spanish authorities, via Interpol, to discover the truth about Longman’s arrest.

Fusil’s expression became vicious.

Chapter 13

Although he’d tried to assure himself it was purely imagination, caused by a guilty conscience, Rowan had been unable to ignore the small, but significant, signs of hostility shown by many of the uniform men. It had frightened him because he knew of no reason why they should have picked on him. Then he was called to Fusil’s office and when he entered and saw the expression on both Fusil’s and Braddon’s faces, he realised something catastrophic had happened.

“Sit down.” Fusil pointed at a chair set squarely in front of the desk.

Rowan sat down. With a quiet desperation, he thought of Heather and Tracy.

“You know why I’ve called you here?” demanded Fusil harshly.

“No, sir.” Rowan noticed Braddon was taking notes.

This made him certain that Fusil wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of the facts and therefore was allowing only the more senior members of the C.I.D. to hear the evidence at this stage.

Fusil picked up his pipe from the desk and fiddled with it. For once, he couldn’t decide how best to interrogate a witness, mainly because his instinct — or his wishful thinking — still was to refuse to believe in the possibility of Rowan’s guilt. “Does the name of Longman mean anything to you?” he finally said.

It was obvious that they had found out about his enquiry through Interpol. “Yes, sir. Harry Longman. I’m afraid I forgot to report that I sidestepped the proper procedure and personally put forward the request to our liaison officer to contact the Spanish authorities.”

“Why were you interested in Longman?”

“I heard a whisper he was connected with the mob that’s moved into town, sir.”

“In what way connected?”

“The whisper didn’t say so I hoped to learn something from the details of his arrest. In the event I didn’t, so I forgot him.”

If you’re going to lie successfully, thought Fusil, make use of the facts which must be known, admit to any obvious mistakes you’ve made, and leave things vague. If you spent much of your working life interrogating villains, you learned many of the rules of successful villaining. “Why was he arrested?”

“He got drunk in a small bar and assaulted two policemen. It was just a common-or-garden drunk and disorderly.”

Fusil lit his pipe and puffed out thick streams of acrid smoke. “Where was this bar?”

“I don’t remember, sir.”

“Where was he staying on the island?”

“I never knew.”

“But that would have been very important if you were investigating a possible tie-in with the mob.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Come on, you’re not stupid. If the bar was a long way from his hotel, why was he at that bar? Was the bar near an area in which sightseers would naturally go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yet you were investigating him?”

“Only up to the point where I discovered it was a case of drunk and disorderly.”

“The most superficial investigation would have turned up the fact that the Calle Juan de Moyá is on the outskirts of Palma, in a dreary, working class suburb, and nowhere near any place a casual sightseer is ever likely to visit.”

Rowan made no comment.

“Do you know the real reason why he went to that bar?” asked Fusil.

“I know nothing more than I’ve told you, sir.”

“It was to make contact with a man who was to hand him a briefcase he was to fly to England, for which service he was to be paid a thousand pounds. So what does that tell you?”

Rowan had to answer. “Drugs.”

“Heroin,” amended Fusil. “So your original information was quite right and Longman was connected with the new mob. But you knew that a long time ago, before Longman himself divulged the fact in jail. So how did you know?”

“Like I told you, I heard this whisper.”

“From whom?”

“You know we never name our informants, sir,” said Rowan, certain what must now follow.

“Normally, no. In this case, it is essential. Who passed you the whisper?”

Name a man and that man would be questioned by the police, to give the lie to the story. “It was a telephone call that came in one morning. I don’t know who the caller was.”

“You’d have recognised the voice of one of your own grassers.”

“He wasn’t a regular.”

“Why should a new grasser call you up and spill you the story?”

“I don’t know. But that’s the way it happened.”

“How much did you pay him?”

“I didn’t, as I wasn’t called on to pay him. I never heard from him again.”

Fusil clamped the pipe between his even, white teeth and he knew a hatred for Rowan that he had consciously to control. Rowan was the traitor. When a man grassed he either demanded money, thereby implicitly admitting to the sordidness of his betrayal, or he made his reasons, such as jealousy, very clear in order not to be classified with the ordinary informer. But Rowan had been clever in that there was, and probably could not be, real proof that his story had to be a lie. “How could you have decided the lead on Longman was useless without checking all the facts?”

“We’d so much else on our hands at the time that I accepted the report of a bar brawl at its face value.”

Fusil’s eyes were narrowed, as they so often were when he was really angry. “You were at the briefing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you do when that briefing finished?” Rowan could not yet see from which direction the danger was really coming. “I left the station to make some enquiries.”

“In connection with what case?”

“The muggings in East Bratby Cross.”

“Where did you make these enquiries?”

“Out and about. I was hoping to get a lead, but didn’t.”

“Were you officially on duty?”

“Not by then, no.”

“So you didn’t log your enquiries?”

“No, I didn’t. They were totally inconclusive.”

“How did you get to Bratby Cross?”

“I caught a bus.”

“From the stop down the road?”

“Yes.”

“Then why were you telephoning from the call box up the road?”

If he’d been hoping to throw Rowan by that sudden question, apparently out of context, he failed. Rowan had been present at any number of interrogations conducted by Fusil and knew very well the other’s habit of seemingly being intent on one line of enquiry when in fact he was only trying to lull the witness into complacency before snapping in a question based on information not previously disclosed. Rowan had realised a trap was being set and when time became important guessed Fusil knew he had made that telephone call. He was, therefore, ready with his answers. “I was telephoning my wife, sir, to say I’d be late home and that was the nearest phone — since we’re not allowed to use the ones in the station for personal calls.”

Fusil remembered Superintendent Passmore’s words. He put his pipe down on the desk, squarely faced Rowan and said, his voice hard: “You’re lying and from the moment you came in here you’ve been lying.”

“No,” said Rowan. “I’ve no reason to lie.”

“You’ve every reason. You were telephoning someone in the mob to warn them about the search operation.”

Rowan was shocked to hear the words spoken aloud, even though he had been expecting them. “That’s ridiculous.”

“In the same fashion, your enquiries to Palma were for the mob, not the police. That’s why there’s no record of it and I wouldn’t have known about it but for the Spanish authorities.”

“You’ve no right…”

“You’re a traitor. You! One of my detective constables.” Fusil finally allowed his hatred and scorn to ride high. “You’ve betrayed the force and you’ve betrayed us. What were your thirty pieces of silver? A thousand quid? Or did you play for just a few hundred, like a punk?”

“You’ve no proof.”

“We’ll get it, don’t prop up your snivelling little soul on that score…” He stopped, picked up his pipe and re-lit it, forcing himself to calm down and become, as near as he ever could, the impartial interrogator he was supposed to be. “I shall make a report to the chief constable. He will certainly detail a senior detective from another force to carry out a full investigation. You will hold yourself ready to answer all questions he, or anyone else, may put to you and to help in every possible way. Is that clear?”

Rowan didn’t answer. Braddon looked across and his bloodhound’s face was filled with contempt, but also with a questioning uncertainty.

*

Tracy had gone to bed, laughing, playing the fool, so obviously on top of the world. It was one of the many ironies of the situation that she had found the happiness she had so desperately needed for so long only after her parents had been overwhelmed by trouble.

Heather said, her voice little more than a whisper: “What will they do, Fred?”

He nursed the glass in his hand. “Turn every stone over twice, searching for the evidence they know must be lying around somewhere.”

“But what will it mean to us?”

“They’ll check our standard of living, our bank accounts, our bills, our receipts, looking for signs of all the extra money they’re so certain was used to bribe me.”

She began to sound panicky. “But we’ve got the colour T.V. and things like the cocktail cabinet and all the carpets and curtains. And what about the two cars…”

“We can easily prove they all came from your earnings.” He no longer was bitter when he spoke of her modelling, even though all his troubles stemmed from her work.

“Then they won’t find anything that matters?”

“Not immediately. But Fusil’s too smart to leave it there. If they don’t find money, they’ll reckon it was something else and they’ll start looking elsewhere. They’ll get hold of Raymond and chat him. How long could he hold them off?” He stared questioningly at her.

She wanted to lie, but couldn’t. Raymond would deny them only until they put real pressure on to him and then he would crumple.

He nodded, as if she’d answered him in words. “They’re going to smell out the truth.”

“But… When they know you were being blackmailed, they’ll realise you couldn’t help doing what you did?”

“I told you, that won’t be any defence in this case.”

“But it’s got to be,” she said wildly.

He got up from his chair, went over to the settee, sat down, and held her close to himself.

“Perhaps it’ll take them too long,” she said. “Perhaps they’ll never find sufficient proof, even if they know exactly what happened. You’ve told me that can happen.”

“Yes, it does, quite often.”

Her voice quickened. “Then maybe we’ll be lucky. We’re due for some good luck, God knows!”

He spoke very quietly, hating to destroy her hope yet knowing it was the kinder thing to do. “We haven’t any spare time, Heather. The mob ordered me to find out the name of the squealer. If I don’t tell them, they’re going to shop me.”

Her mouth trembled because she suddenly acknowledged that there could be no real hope.

He stared at the fireplace, in which was a pyramid of painted fir cones, and dully wondered what he’d get. Five years? The judge might let him get off that lightly because he’d been blackmailed. Or maybe the mob, when finally they fixed him, would set out to prove the motive was money because that way there’d be no mercy shown and a real long stretch would give them even more pleasure.

She said, her voice thick: “Whatever happens, Fred, I know the truth and that you did it for me and Tracy. And that’s why I’ll always love you. Remember that if… if things get tough.”

“I’ll remember,” he promised. He wondered if she’d the slightest idea of just how tough things would become for him?. The three most hated men in any nick were the grasser, the sex pervert who’d harmed children, and the bent copper.

*

He’d no idea what the time was as he lay on his back in bed and stared up at the ceiling and he didn’t bother to bring out his left arm to look at the luminous hands of his watch. A car went by, growling a little because it was in an intermediate gear after having just turned the corner: but that was really no guide to time as cars used the road throughout the night.

He wondered if in the past criminals had been mesmerised by him as he had been mesmerised by Fusil into believing that it was all over and done with bar the shouting and arrest was just around the corner? Why in the hell had it taken him until now to think in terms of fighting, of not meekly surrendering? Fusil could have all the suspicions in the world, but it was going to take time to turn these into proof. The mob wouldn’t shop him too soon, because he was potentially far too useful to them and to begin with they’d merely increase the violence of the threats to try to force him to trace out the name of the grasser. So he’d time and therefore a chance of fighting his way out of an impossible position — impossible only while he remained passive, merely struggling to keep disaster at arm’s length, and didn’t realise the truth that he could save himself by finding and destroying the photographs and the parcel of foundation garments. He’d been thinking like a policeman when he should have been thinking like a thief.

But was it so simple? The police had been trying to identify the men at the top of the mob for a long time and had failed, the whole trained team of them. And even if he identified someone near the top, then what? Hours of questioning, at the hands of really sharp detectives, seldom broke down a sharp villain who enjoyed the backing of a mob. The mob employed top lawyers to twist the law, money to bribe, heavy men to intimidate. So the sharp villain could keep silent, confident it would pay off…

But he was thinking like a policeman again. Beyond the rules, there were always ways and means. And when a man was in danger of losing his family, rules became meaningless.

The thought of being able to fight back filled him with such hope that all things suddenly became possible.

Chapter 14

The chief constable brushed each end of his moustache with right forefinger. He spoke uncertainly. “Are you sure?”

Fusil looked quickly across at Kywood on the other side of the round table in the conference room. Kywood nodded. “Sure that Rowan is the traitor?” said Fusil slowly. “Only as sure as I can be at this stage from basically weak evidence and from the impression gained through questioning him. Sure that we must ask for an official investigation? Yes, sir.”

The chief constable fidgeted with his nose.

“Who do we go to, sir?” asked Kywood. “County or London?” A man who usually pushed unpalatable facts as far out of sight as possible, he was now facing them fairly and squarely.

“Not London,” said the chief constable. “They seldom have much sympathy for a small borough force.”

This case was going to stink, but sympathetic handling, using a great deal of discretion whilst not whitewashing anything, could make that stink a lot less offensive in the noses of the public. Yet, each of them thought, might not county deliberately show lack of sympathy because the worse light in which the borough force was shown, the more clearly obvious it would be to some that here was a small force that had become rotten and needed taking over by county as soon as this was possible…

The chief constable spoke curtly. “Very well, gentlemen. I’ll get on to the county chief constable and ask for his help in this matter.” He tapped on the table. “In the meantime, what about Detective Constable Rowan?”

“I recommend his suspension on full pay, pending an investigation,” said Kywood.

Fusil nodded.

*

Murphy brushed his toothbrush moustache upwards at each end, a mannerism that in execution was unknowingly similar to that of the chief constable. “D’you say, no one’s any idea who grassed?”

“Nobody, Ed. I’ve contacts out all over town and they’ve come up with nothing.” Pete Faraday had an idea who might have talked, but he was keeping that idea strictly to himself: he’d no intention of bringing to light the beating-up of Steve Allen, for which he’d been drunkenly responsible.

Murphy fiddled with the knot of his tie. “We’re not safe until we know.”

“Aren’t we?” said Faraday, in his breezy, know-all manner. “Nothing else’s been blown, so the grasser didn’t know much.”

This point worried Murphy. Why had only the news of the one consignment been leaked to the splits? A man in whom boldness of design was always conditioned by carefulness of execution, he mistrusted situations he couldn’t understand. “Isn’t there any result from the split yet?”

“Nope. He said he’s been trying all he can, but so far there’s not even a whisper around.”

“Lean on him.”

“He’s being leaned on, Ed.”

There was a knock on the door and one of the Pakistanis came in. “Ten o’clock, Mr. Murphy,” he said. No traditional English butler could have managed it better.

“All right. I’m off into town, Pete. See to that last item.”

“Sure.”

“And send someone up for tonight.”

“I’ll lay it on.”

Murphy left. Faraday stood in the centre of the room and watched through one of the windows. Murphy walked across to the Rover and the other Pakistani — contemptuously, Faraday never tried to separate and identify them — opened the rear door for him and he climbed in. The Pakistani sat behind the wheel and drove off. He was like some bloody high executive from the City, thought Faraday. Then he realised that Murphy was the high executive of a vast business organisation, if one measured the size of the business by its net profit. Now the line was working smoothly, the Toms were quiet, and any surplus of heroin was being sold in other towns where there was no proper organisation, the profits were becoming breath-taking. Faraday didn’t know precisely how high they’d flown, Murphy was the only man who did that, but he could make an educated guess. And already some of the money was being siphoned off into legitimate businesses. Give them five years, perhaps only three, and they’d be running the place. Then, nothing could touch them. He corrected his thoughts again. Nothing could touch them now. They’d become too strong and too rich for the police, who had to play everything by the rules.

The door opened and a Pakistani entered. “You are leaving, sir?”

Was it a question or an order? One of these days, Faraday thought, he’d teach both the black bastards some genuine manners. He walked across to the door and deliberately bumped the Pakistani, who was thrown back against the wall.

Faraday went out to his car. He must remember to get Babs up here on time tonight, he thought.

*

Fusil, standing behind his desk with Detective Sergeant Braddon to his right, said: “You’re suspended on full pay, pending an investigation. In the interests of yourself and of this force, you’ll cooperate fully with whoever is placed in charge of the investigations.”

“In other words,” said Rowan bitterly, “will I please stick my head in the noose to save you all the trouble of lifting it over my head?”

Fusil looked more contemptuously angry than before. No one could reasonably have suggested that in the circumstances he was in any way responsible for what had happened, yet he felt responsible.

Braddon, his clothes sitting on him more awkwardly than usual because he stood in a hunched attitude, was still perplexed. He’d been in the force for twenty-three years and in that time had inevitably seen a man or two go crook, but he couldn’t understand why Rowan had done so. Unlike Fusil, whose judgement had been clouded by anger and hate, he was almost certain the motive could not be money.

“That’s all,” said Fusil.

Rowan left and went along to the general room, determined to face the other three although he could easily have escaped any such meeting.

Yarrow was openly curious, in the condescending manner of one who knew he was being very gracious. “Hullo, old man. How’s it going?”

“As you’d expect,” replied Rowan. He walked over to his desk and pulled out the top right-hand drawer, ready to empty out a few personal belongings which included a small leather folder in which were photographs of Heather and Tracy. “I’ve been suspended, pending an investigation.”

“By whom?” asked Yarrow.

“County.”

“Really! I wonder who’ll come down? It could easily be my uncle and…”

“Why don’t you belt up?” interrupted Kerr.

“What d’you mean?” blustered Yarrow.

“If you don’t know that, you’re even stupider than you sound.”

“You want to watch it, chum, or I’ll…” began Yarrow angrily.

“You won’t do a bloody thing,” cut in Welland.

A physical argument between Welland and Yarrow could have only one ending. Yarrow, trying to show an amused contempt for such rustic behaviour, shuffled through the papers on his desk.

Welland, surprisingly finding exactly the right words for the occasion, said: “We’ll keep your desk warm for you, Fred.”

“That’s dead right,” agreed Kerr.

He thanked them, in a voice that showed a little of the warm emotion he felt. He knew he’d been a difficult bloke to get on with in the past, that they had reason to shrug their shoulders and watch him leave without any deep regret, yet they were going out of their way to show him sympathy and to express a belief in his innocence.

He left, carrying the few articles he was taking with him in a brown paper bag. Because he’d come in by bus, he went down the front stairs and out past the front desk. The duty sergeant stared at him with a sharp dislike he made no effort to conceal.

It was sunny once more and Rowan walked down the south side of Tideworth Road, the sun warming him. During the night, as he’d lain on his back beside Heather, he’d resolved to fight: to do something positive. But in the light of day, inevitably, nothing was that simple. Fight? How? Who? Where? How to begin to identify the men that mattered in the mob when the whole force had tried and failed?

He turned right, and right again, and came to a small public garden. He went in, past the ornamental wrought iron gates, and sat down on one of the wooden benches. On the next bench, a woman watched her small child feeding bread to a flock of non-feral pigeons. A couple walked slowly by, an arm round each other’s waist, deep in silent conversation.

The police had done all they could to get a line on the mob. They’d questioned men and women by the score, they’d offered heavy money for real information… and they’d come up with nothing. Those who knew were very scared and nothing the police could say or do would make them talk. The police had no way of exerting greater pressure than was already being exerted on them. Even the meanest punk knew that any action a policeman could take was restricted by rules and regulations that had been designed to protect the innocent but which were now used to protect the guilty. No one would talk unless real pressure, illegal pressure, was applied… Hadn’t he, he thought, told himself before that he must stop thinking like a policeman?

Where was the best lead in? Surely through Steve Allen, the ponce who’d been so brutally beaten up? It was odds on that it had been he who’d grassed on the consignment of heroin which had been coming into Fortrow on the Western Sand. Allen would have learned about that consignment from someone and because he’d been a pimp that someone was likely to be his Tom. No matter that she’d been questioned previously, without result.

Her name was… He remembered. Margot. Then how to make her talk? As he’d just correctly assured himself, it would take real heavy pressure… He remembered that the Toms were now pushing heroin.

He got up from the bench and left the park, to walk briskly up the road to a branch of his bank where, with the authority of a cheque card, he cashed a cheque for thirty pounds. Then he caught a single-decker bus down to the Old Docks. In a terraced back-to-back house, condemned years before, lived Compton. He’d once helped Compton and although the other was no grasser, he had a debt to repay.

Compton was tall and thin and there was a gauntness about his face which suggested some basically serious medical condition. By contrast, his wife was really fat, an enormous jelly of a woman. In the neighbourhood, they were the butt of many cruel jokes.

Compton opened two bottles of beer, letting the caps fall on to the floor, and passed one across the front room, over-filled with heavy furniture and smelling slightly of rot although scrupulously clean. His expression was wary. From the moment Rowan had walked into the house, he had sensed he was to be asked for something.

“Cheers,” said Rowan, “the first today and all the better for it.”

Compton nodded. He was a man of few words.

At a sign from Compton, which Rowan missed, his enormous wife said she must do some cooking and left. Rowan took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it: Compton took one and struck a match for both of them.

With a man of Compton’s character, it was much the best thing to come immediately to the point. “I need a bit of help,” Rowan said.

Compton lifted his bottle and drank from it.

“I want some H.”

Compton was plainly shocked.

“Most of the pushers know me and those who don’t won’t need time to guess who I am. I’ve as much chance of buying some as of floating an iceberg through hell. But you could buy me a few shots.”

Compton cleared his throat. “You ain’t on it, surely, mister?”

Rowan shook his head.

“Then what’s the score?”

“As far as you’re concerned, there isn’t one. No one will ever have the slightest cause to trace the sale back through you.”

“I don’t like it.”

Rowan spoke urgently. “I’m in trouble and it’s kicking me where it really hurts. I’ve one chance of getting out of trouble and that’s why I need the stuff.”

“But H…” Compton drank and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “You ain’t thinking of using me, mister? Nicking the fixer because he sells to me?”

“I’ve promised you no one will ever know you and me are tied up. I’ll stay here, with your wife. That way, I can’t ever know who you buy from.”

Compton finished his beer. He rubbed his lined forehead, fidgeted with his high cheekbone, and finally nodded. Rowan gave him the thirty pounds. He counted them out and looked even more uneasy. “You’re wanting a fair bit?”

“That’s right.”

He held the money in his hand, as if weighing it, looked quickly at Rowan, then pocketed it. He hurried out of the room and Rowan heard him call to his wife.

As Compton left the house, his wife came into the front room. Rowan had never said more than a few words to her before and he was now astonished to discover that she might look grotesque but she had a mind that was sharp and, although not formally educated, she had a natural appreciation of the more beautiful things in life. By the time Compton returned, Rowan was feeling almost piqued because they had discussed so many subjects about which he was woefully ignorant.

Compton handed Rowan a medicine bottle in which were a number of medicinal capsules, yellow coloured, filled with powder. “It’s good,” he said, “not the Chinese muck. There’s two and an ’alf to return.” He passed over two one-pound notes and five ten pence pieces, carefully counting them out.

Rowan left and walked the three-quarters of a mile to Flinders Lane. None of the houses here was good, but they were far better than those in Naples Road where he’d just come from: yet, ironically, most of the people who lived here were basically dishonest while those in Naples Road were honest.

There was a notice on the door of number fourteen which said that Margot ‘gave French lessons’. He rang the bell and the maid let him in. When he said he wanted to see Margot, she just jerked her head towards the stairs.

There were four doors around the square landing upstairs and on three of these were the names of women. He knocked on the door labelled “Margot”.

She opened the door and said automatically: “Hullo, love. Come on in.” Then she studied him, summing him up professionally, and instantly became wary. “I don’t think…”

“C.I.D.,” he said shortly. He entered and went over to the only chair and sat down.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” she protested. “I’ve a friend coming soon and I don’t want you around, lumbering things up.”

“Tell your friend to come back later,” he answered. “If he’s eager, he’ll keep.” He studied her.

She thumped down on the corner of the bed. She decided she daren’t protest too hard at his behaviour or he’d pass the word round to have her place watched really hard. “What d’you want?” she demanded.

“Information,” he answered briefly.

“You won’t get nothing from me. As I’ve told all them other splits, I don’t know nothing and if I did, I wouldn’t say.”

“You and Steve Allen worked together.”

She reached over to the bedside table, careless that her short skirt rode up over her thighs, and picked up a pack of cigarettes. She lit a cigarette.

“They took Steve apart, didn’t they? Beat him up close to croaking. Why?”

“How would I know?”

“What was it? Didn’t he like the mob taking over from him?”

“If you know all the answers,” she sneered, “quit asking the questions.”

“They made a right and permanent mess of him. How’d you find him mentally when he came out of hospital?”

“I didn’t. I never saw him.”

“Come off it. He visited you.”

Her voice rose. “Who’s telling them bleeding lies?”

“He wanted some folding stuff to help him along.” She drew heavily on the cigarette and stared fixedly at the door.

“And while he was here, he learned something, didn’t he? Something you told him?”

“I didn’t tell him nothing.”

“You told him the day the next consignment of heroin was due in.”

She was very frightened now and she exploded into a torrent of words. “You’re crazy, mister, I didn’t tell him nothing. I don’t know nothing about H. He wanted some money and I gave him a tenner and that was the end. He left and I ain’t seen him since.”

“How did you learn about the heroin?”

“I just told you…”

“So now try again.”

She got up and crossed to the bedside table to stub out the cigarette. “Get out,” she said.

“Like a shot. Once you’ve given me the news.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

“Why not make it easy for yourself?”

“Make it easy?” she sneered. “That’s all you splits can say. But what kind of easy? Easy to get my throat slit? D’you think I’m tired of life? I don’t like it much, but I ain’t that tired of it. So I don’t know nothing. Plain bloody nothing. And you can’t prove anything else.”

He was sorry for her because she was so scared, but he had to break her down. “Have you been peddling heroin as well as entertaining?”

“No.”

“A lot of the girls have been. The courts are getting sharp these days with anyone who peddles. The last bloke I heard about drew a ten-spot from the judge.”

“So?”

“I’d say if you were lucky, you’d get three, unless the judge had a bad do of rumble-guts. Wouldn’t be much help being a woman because we’d have to tell the court you’re a Tom and that gets everyone very sanctimonious.”

She told him to leave the house in terms that came straight from the gutter.

He slowly stood up. “I’m going to search this room.”

“Like muck you are! D’you think I started yesterday? If you ain’t got a search warrant, you’re not searching anything.”

He walked across to the wardrobe and she stepped close to her panic button. “Don’t play it rough,” he said casually. That way, you’ll be in the deep end and there won’t be anything I can do to help you out.”

She hesitated, her finger on the button, trying to evaluate his threat. He opened the cupboard door, reached in amongst the clothing, and after a short while he brought out the medicine bottle with the yellow capsules. He handed it to her and unthinkingly she took hold of it. When she realised what she’d done, she dropped the bottle, but he was ready for this and he caught it. He then held it by the plastic lid so that her fingerprints shouldn’t be disturbed. “These days they’re selling H in capsules,” he said

“You… you planted it!” Fortrow had for so long had a police force free of venality that she was truly shocked by this open show of crookedness. “You’re a split yet you planted it.” She cursed him, again using gutter language only this time her voice expressed fright.

He wrapped the bottle in a handkerchief and dropped this in his coat pocket.

“I’ll tell the court you planted it…” she began wildly.

“I’m a split, ducks. Courts believe me, if they can. Anyway, the Toms of this town are pushing heroin so we’ll find someone who bought heroin from you — or if we can’t, we’ll chat up someone who owes us a strong favour.”

She became more wildly bewildered. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for this naked use of planted evidence and false testimony. Her mind pictured a judge sentencing her to long imprisonment and she began to panic.

He spoke quietly and with persuasive smoothness. “Tell me who you heard the info from and I’ll forget everything. Even leave you the bottle with the heroin.”

She moistened her lips with her tongue. If they ever discovered she’d grassed… Yet if she didn’t grass… Like anybody else threatened by two opposed dangers, she chose to avert the more immediate one in the blind hope that the other would just fade away. “Pete Faraday,” she whispered, as if to speak loudly was to betray herself.

Chapter 15

Detective Chief Inspector Weir was the kind of man Fusil would become if only he could learn to compromise when this was obviously advantageous, to accept that political pressures while unwelcome were inevitable, to keep one eye cocked towards public relations, and to understand that there was more to running a successful police force in a democracy than catching crooks.

He shook hands with Fusil in the latter’s office. “Hullo, Bob. How long is it since we last met? Three, four years?” He had a pleasant easy manner, but his authority always stayed with him.

Fusil offered a chair and they sat down. For a while they reminisced about the time when they served in the same division of another county force, then Weir brought their conversation round to the present case after saying that a detective sergeant from county would be joining him later that day and could he have some sort of office for the two of them.

Weir smoked herbal cigarettes and one of his failings was an urge to convert other smokers to the same habit. He offered a pack to Fusil and looked upset when Fusil bluntly refused. “D’you still stink the world out with that filthy pipe of yours? If you saw what it did to your lungs and mouth, you wouldn’t. At your age, you ought to start thinking of your health more.”

“At my age,” retorted Fusil, “I’ve precious little health left to think about.”

Weir lit a herbal cigarette. “There’s no convincing some people until they drop down dead… All right, let’s have the facts in this case, including all those that won’t appear in any official report.”

Fusil gave a résumé of the facts.

Weir leaned back in his chair and smoked with great care, exhaling in measured puffs. “You’ve painted the picture of a bloke who’s good but moody, usually efficient but can be unreliable, high on intelligence and low on personal relations. So what’s biting him? Trouble at home?” he asked shrewdly.

“I’ve heard a rumour or two to that effect.”

“What about money problems?”

“I doubt in those simple terms. His wife models and she’s supposed to do fairly well and so she’ll be bringing a fair amount into the house. But when a man gets offered a real greasing… thousands of quid…”

Weir waited, but Fusil didn’t finish. “A wife earning more than the man can cause a lot of trouble. It must have occurred to you, Bob, that the motive for Rowan’s betrayal, if he did betray, can easily lie outside the usual one of money?”

Fusil nodded, not willing to admit that he still knew too much bitter anger at the thought of Rowan’s turning traitor to have worried deeply about motive.

“You’ve no ideas?”

“None, sir, of any value at this stage.”

Weir had to relight his cigarette. “We’ll start off with all the usual checks — bank accounts, savings accounts, unusually high standard of living… But I’d say we’re going to have to use our imagination. What are the chances we find it’s something to do with his wife?” Fusil didn’t try to answer.

*

Rowan pressed home the coins into the coin-box and the line was clear. He spoke to Records at New Scotland Yard. “Fortrow Borough Police here: Detective Constable Rowan.”

“Yeah? Well, we can’t all live in decent, respectable towns, so don’t apologise. What’s the latest trouble?” asked a cheerful voice.

“I need all the gen you’ve got on Pete Faraday.”

“Let’s have some more details, then, to narrow the field.”

“There’s nothing more, except he’s working for a top mob and they are specialising in Toms and heroin.”

“One thing you aren’t aiming to do, is to make life easy. What’s wrong with making your own county records sweat this one out?”

“They’ve nothing on him.”

“O.K. I’m kind-hearted to a degree, so I’ll see what we’ve got. You can ring back later in case I’ve got some news. You’re sending in a PX form, of course?”

“It’ll be in the post in the next couple of hours.”

“Don’t forget to get your D.I. to sign it: the last one we had through that wasn’t countersigned nearly drove us crazy.”

Rowan thanked the other man and rang off. County Records might well have a file on Faraday, but they would know that D.C. Rowan had been suspended.

He had coffee at a downbeat cafe, walked back into the centre of town and spent an hour or so in a couple of bookshops, then rang London again. After asking if he was always this eager and if so how come he wasn’t detective superintendent, the other man told him that Pete Faraday was thirty-five, six feet tall, well-built, dark haired, small scar at right hand corner of the mouth, and a snappy dresser. Graduated through Approved School and Borstal to one term in prison for armed robbery: other convictions escaped through the machinations of clever lawyers. Tough, sharp, clever. Worked for one of the South London mobs before that was forcibly dissolved. Suspected of organising prostitutes in Birmingham three years back. Present address and associates not known. Did Rowan want the file sent on down and, if so, would he add a T supplement to the PX form.

It took Rowan the rest of the day and up until eight that night before he finally learned where Faraday was living.

*

“What are you doing?” asked Heather, as she opened the oven door.

“As little as possible and that as seldom as possible,” Rowan answered. He perched himself on the edge of the kitchen table.

She checked that the steak and kidney pies were almost ready, closed the oven door, and stood up, a few beads of sweat on her brow. She crossed to where he sat and put her hands on his shoulders. “Fred, I asked you a question. Please answer me: dead straight.”

He debated what to say, then told her the truth. “I’m doing all I can to identify the man at the top of the mob.”

“Why?”

“When I know who he is, I can do something about getting hold of the photos and the parcel.”

She drew in her breath sharply. “But… but how?”

“Once I’ve identified him, I’ll think of a way.”

She visually searched his face. “Fred, you suddenly looked… Cruel. I’m scared. I’m scared for you and about you. You’re changing.”

“You’re imagining things,” he said, almost roughly.

“You’re becoming hard. Yet you’ve always been so kind and gentle.”

He wondered how she could have forgotten all the terrible things he had said in the past to her and he marvelled at the power of the love she knew for him.

Her grip on his shoulders tightened. “What exactly are you doing? What have you done today?”

He reached up and caressed her hands with his thumbs. His voice, though he tried to speak quietly, became harsh. “I blackmailed a woman into giving me information I had to have.”

“You… you blackmailed someone? You’ve got to be making a bad joke, Fred. You’ve always said what a horrible crime blackmail is.”

“They blackmailed you. There’s a saying, you can only fight fire with fire.”

She spoke fiercely. “And there’s another saying, you can’t play with fire without being burned: and also you can’t touch pitch without being dirtied.”

“If I’ve got to be dirtied, then that’s the way it is.” His voice rose. “God Almighty! d’you think I care what happens to me, only so long as I can free you?”

“I… I don’t know that it would be worth it: not if you were so terribly changed.”

“Not even for Tracy’s sake?”

She was silent.

He lowered his hands and put them round her waist and gently pulled her even closer to himself. “Heather, my darling, when it’s your family or them, it can’t matter what weapons are used: all that matters is that no harm comes to the family.”

“But haven’t people been using that sort of argument for centuries to justify the most beastly things?”

Right then, he didn’t know, or care. History was the dead past. All he knew was that there was no act so appalling that he could not commit it if by committing it he might save his family.

*

From the driving seat of his car, Rowan watched the constable walk down the well-lit pavement at regulation pace and he was sardonically astonished to discover that he experienced a sudden tension. The constable drew abreast of the Mini, on the far side of the road, and did not look across but walked on, towards the shops which offered so much more obviously attractive targets for criminals than the houses he was passing.

Rowan settled back in the seat. He longed for a cigarette, but could remember at least two villains who’d been identified because injudiciously lit cigarettes had momentarily illuminated their faces when they were casing prospective marks. There was irony in the fact that he was putting all his police knowledge into service in the cause of villaining. Villaining? he suddenly thought. He was nothing but a rank, raw amateur about to gamble at odds no level-headed punter would look at.

The house down the road in which Faraday lived was in darkness, but the street lighting enabled him to make out its general outline. It was detached, not large, with two upstairs windows and downstairs one bay window and one door. To the side was a wooden door, giving access to the back garden, and six feet of wooden fencing. His information had been solely that Faraday was living here: with whom, under what conditions, he didn’t know.

He was wearing new plimsolls, one size too large, with two pairs of thick woollen socks to take up the slack space: if he left a footprint, it would be of a brand of plimsoll sold in tens of thousands and of a foot which took a larger size shoe than he did. He had on new blue overalls, bought at another multiple store, with the name tab cut out: afterwards — assuming there was to be an afterwards — they would be burned. He had two pairs of thin plastic gloves in his pockets and a new beret, name tab removed, to put on his head so that no incriminating traces should settle in his hair. In a small bag was a hammer, a tin of strong adhesive, mutton cloth, a flick knife, a flexible strip of plastic, a cosh, a torch, a ball of string, an unworn nylon, and some crude skeleton keys made by himself.

It was nearly one o’clock. He’d thought a lot about Faraday, trying to fill in from the sparse details Records had given him what kind of a man he would be faced by. Faraday surely wasn’t the boss — he hadn’t the experience, the age, or probably the ability, to create so successful an organisation. He was smart, sharp, tough, and it was no good planting heroin in his place and threatening him with imprisonment if he didn’t talk: he’d laugh at that sort of gambit. A bribe wouldn’t work. He’d be making so much in the organisation that a real fortune would be needed even to tempt him. Violence…?

Clouds drifted across the sky to cut off the moon, now in its first quarter, and the leaves of the trees began to rustle as a breeze started. A motorbike went up the road, with a woman on the pillion seat: two cars, one going very slowly and the other overtaking it as they drew level with the Mini, went down the road, heading towards the centre of the town.

He heard a distant clock strike once: a quarter past one. Time to move. He suddenly knew a reluctance so great that it took all his willpower to force himself to leave the car. Fear or foresight? he wondered, as he put on a pair of gloves.

He crossed the road and walked along the pavement, moving without hesitation because should anyone be watching — no one was in sight, but in any suburban road there was always the possibility someone was awake — it was hesitation, the suggestion that the person was not entitled to be doing what he was doing, that would attract attention. He opened the three foot high gate, which squealed faintly, and walked along the fake crazy-paving to the wooden side door. He tried the handle to make certain it was locked — two years before they’d arrested burglars who’d spent much of the night trying to cut through the back of a safe when in fact it had inadvertently been left unlocked — and it was. He took from the bag the half dozen, double ended, skeleton keys and the second one forced the lock.

The garden was untended, a chaos of overgrown lawn and weed-infested beds. At the back of the house there were three windows upstairs, two windows and a half-glass door downstairs, and a flat roofed eight foot extension built out. One of the upstairs windows was open.

He pulled the nylon stocking over his head. The back door was locked, the key was in the lock inside, and his skeleton keys would not move it. He switched on the torch — most of the bowl was covered with sticking plaster to cut down the size of the beam — and checked the catches of the windows, but he could reach none of them with the long strip of plastic. He crossed the flagstones to the extension which was, he guessed, a larder and perhaps a store room. On the side facing inwards there was a window, three feet by two, shut but offering a convenient point of entry. Again, he tried to work the plastic between window and frame to release the catch, again he failed. Only brute force remained. He coated the glass with adhesive, pressed the mutton cloth on to the adhesive and then, with a silent prayer, hit the glass hard with the hammer.

The glass broke, but did not shatter because it was held by adhesive and cloth. He worked the cloth loose, which pulled free much of the glass, and then levered out the remaining slithers.

Using the torch, he was able to confirm he’d broken into the larder: the top shelf, just below the window, was empty except for two piles of plates on the far side. He passed his bag through, reached up and took a grip on the flat roof, then hauled himself up and pushed his legs through the window. From there, it was a case of wriggle like hell while discovering a whole new set of muscles before finally getting through and safely down on to the floor.

The kitchen was in a mess, which suggested no women were in the house. There were dirty cutlery and china on the single wooden draining board, together with three bottles of ketchup, one of chutney, and one of mustard, all with filthy necks, and half a dozen empty beer bottles.

He walked through the kitchen into the hall. An old lag, an ancient and rather unsuccessful burglar, whom he’d arrested twice had on the second occasion become very talkative. “When you’re in an ’ouse, guv, walk like you was going through a bleeding minefield. Never move your weight forward until you knows what’s goin’ to ’appen: down on the ’eel and then slowly lower your foot.”

The stairs were to the right of the oblong hall and there were two rooms to the left. The rooms, dining room and lounge, were empty. He climbed the stairs, very slowly, and was shocked when halfway up to hear a noise that he first identified as someone rushing out to meet him. During the next few seconds, he realised he’d heard only a mouse scampering around somewhere above.

The landing was L-shaped. The first door was open and one quick check showed this was a bathroom. He moved along the carpeted floor, thankful for the thick pile of the carpet. His old burglar had also said: “Sleeping people makes a lot of noise, guv. You’d never credit it, not unless you’ve stood outside and listened. Like an ’erd of bleeding elephants. I listens at every door for a real good time and if I don’t ’ears nothing I opens it a little — turn the ’andle to full tension, push a bit, wait, push a bit more. I listens again. And if I still don’t ’ear nothing, then that room’s empty. And if the door creaks, guv, I just takes things a bit slower. There ain’t a creak you can’t win by going slowly.”

He listened at the second door for a long time, heard nothing, turned the handle to full tension and pushed very slowly until it was fractionally open. After a while, he heard the rustle of sheets and a quick, smothered snort.

He moved on to the second door to the right. All was quiet, all remained quiet, and the room proved to be empty. The only room to the left was clearly occupied.

Which of the two sleepers was the more likely to be Faraday? The odds must surely be that he considered himself to be the more important of the two men in the house and therefore would have appropriated the better bedroom. The bedroom facing the road, being the larger, was probably the better of the two occupied ones.

He returned to the first bedroom, fully opened the door, held the cosh in his right hand and the torch in his left. He approached the bed and when his left leg brushed into it he transferred his torch to the right hand and felt round the bed in order to be able to position himself.

Returning the torch to his left hand, he switched it on. The man, eyes closed but beginning to flicker, was in his middle twenties, sleek, and hard. Rowan shone the torch directly at his right eye and as the man awakened, but while his mind was still misty from sleep, whispered in urgent tones: “Sit up. Quick.”

The man, reacting automatically to the order, sat up. Rowan slammed down the cosh, on the back of the head and just above the beginning of the neck. With a small grunt and a whoosh of expelled breath, the man collapsed.

Rowan switched on the bedside lamp. He gagged the man, rolled him over, tied his two wrists together behind his back with string, and his two ankles to his wrists so that he was doubled up in reverse.

Rowan left that room and went into the other occupied bedroom. Either Faraday, identified by the scar to the side of his mouth, had been about to wake or Rowan had inadvertently awakened him a little earlier because when the torch was switched on he took alarm immediately. He rolled to one side, trying to free himself from the bedclothes as he did so, and shouted: “Jim… Jim.”

Rowan waited until Faraday was just making the floor and then he slammed down the cosh. His aim was not perfect, striking the head too far up, but Faraday lost all momentum and sagged back on to the bed. Rowan hit him a second time and he was knocked unconscious.

Working quickly, Rowan spread-eagled Faraday across the bed in X formation, using string to secure a limb to each corner of the single bed: as a final precaution, he made a running bowline and put this round Faraday’s neck and tied the other end to the metal grilled bed-head. Then he sat down on the chair and waited.

Faraday recovered consciousness and the first thing he did was to try to move his head. The string tightened and started to choke him. He gagged and seemed about to vomit, despite the choking noose, but did not actually do so. Rowan released the pressure on the noose. Faraday tried to move his limbs, only to learn they were secured. He relaxed, as if he had reconciled himself to his predicament, and then he exerted all his considerable strength in an attempt to break free. Inevitably, he began to strangle and was forced to desist. Rowan again loosened the noose. Faraday drew air down into his straining lungs.

“I’ve come for some information,” said Rowan.

Faraday answered with a flood of obscenity.

“I want the name of the boss of the mob, where he’s living, and who’s in the house or flat with him.”

“You’re round the twist,” sneered Faraday.

“You’re going to have to tell me, so…”

“Drop dead, you stupid bastard.”

Rowan looked at his watch. “It’s early. There’s a long time to go for the night.”

“You sound like a B movie.”

Rowan stood up and picked up a pair of pants from the small pile of clothing on a second chair. “Open your mouth.”

Faraday kept his mouth closed. He was hit on the side of the head and as he involuntarily gasped with pain. Rowan jammed the pants into his mouth and then secured these in position with a handkerchief.

Rowan brought out the knife from the bag and pressed the catch so that the five inch blade flicked out with a harsh snap of metal. Faraday looked at the knife and, despite all his courage, he began to sweat.

“I don’t want to hurt you more than necessary,” said Rowan, “so when you’re ready to talk, nod your head.”

Like any other policeman, Rowan hated violence as much because of its fearful and lasting consequences as because of its immediate nature. Yet now he had no compunction in using it. Only violence would make this man talk. But ordinary, crude violence would perhaps not be effective: it had to be a violence that shocked Faraday and terrified him because he had not previously envisaged such enormous, inhuman brutality. Rowan brought the blade down and Faraday tensed and closed his eyes. Rowan slit up the pyjama trousers. “I’m going to castrate you.”

After a moment of stunned incomprehension, Faraday tried to fling himself off the bed. The noose dragged him down into brief unconsciousness and when he painfully struggled back into consciousness he found he had achieved nothing.

“I’ll do it slowly,” said Rowan, “to give you plenty of time to talk. But if you decide to keep silent, you’ll be a soprano by morning. And inside a few months you’ll be fat as well as squeaky and one of the biggest jokes for miles.” He moved into position and began to cut and there was a thin trickle of blood.

Faraday writhed, but the only effect of this was to half strangle himself and to make the knife bite deeper than Rowan had for the moment intended. Faraday jerked from pain, then nodded his head as far as he could.

Rowan put the knife down on the bed and released the gag.

“Harry,” said Faraday, speaking hoarsely, his face rolling with sweat. “Harry Chambers.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Twenty-four, Brunswick Road.”

“Who’s with him?”

“A couple of blokes. And there’s usually a woman. He’s mad keen on women even though he’s getting on.”

“What d’you mean by getting on?”

“He won’t ever see fifty again.”

“Describe him.”

“Six feet tall, big, and with a chunky kind of a face.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Scouseland. He was running a mob up there and things got too hot, so he came down south.”

“What colour are his eyes?”

“Jesus! Why? They’re blue.”

“Has he done time?”

“Some. I don’t know exact.”

“Have you done time?”

“I’ve had one spell.”

“Where?”

“At the palace.”

Rowan sat down on the chair.

Faraday tried to keep silent, knowing it showed a weakness to speak now, but in the end he had to say: “I’ve told the lot. So what d’you want?”

“Just waiting,” replied Rowan, and he began to speak about nothing in particular.

Faraday kept looking quickly and nervously at Rowan, desperately trying to make out why Rowan was talking as he was. Then Rowan stopped and they heard a car draw up to a stop and a door bang. From the look on Faraday’s face, he wildly imagined this was a rescue, but footsteps on the pavement clearly went away from the house.

“What colour are his eyes?” asked Rowan suddenly, using repetition of questions to check the veracity of the answers he’d been given — the standard move of any interrogating detective.

Faraday tried to remember what he’d said. “Blue.”

“How tall is he?”

“Six foot.”

“What kind of face has he got?”

“It’s… it’s…” Perspiration once more slid down Faraday’s face. “Square.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Berwick… Brunswick Road.”

“What number?”

Faraday said fourteen, knowing with hopeless certainty that he’d got the number wrong.

Rowan picked up the gag. “Open your mouth.” Faraday shouted once, before the cosh slammed him into unconsciousness. When he came to, he was gagged and the pain in his head was making it difficult for him to see properly.

He felt the sting of the knife, which turned into a burning pain, and in his imagination he was already half gelded and only seconds were left before he ceased to be a man. Wildly, he nodded his head. The gag was removed.

“It’s Ed Murphy,” he said.

Murphy, thought Rowan. It was a name he’d come across not so long ago. Then he remembered. Ed Murphy was one of the names on a list circulated by the Regional Crime Squad who had been asking for information on the present whereabouts of certain named big operators.

“Where’s he living?”

“Tranmere House, Ashdowne Road.”

“Tell me the set-up.”

Faraday described Ed Murphy, the routine of the house, and the organisation.

Rowan, satisfied he’d at last heard the truth, re-gagged Faraday. He checked nothing incriminating was lying around and left.

Chapter 16

It was ten past six in the morning and the birds were singing as if in some sweeping Wagnerian climax. A very light breeze swayed the leaves of the trees and the sun was sending shadows across the lawns and orderly flower beds.

Murphy, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, turned round and only someone who knew him really well would have noticed the tension that lay behind his mask of calmness.

Goater said, in his beery voice: “That’s the story, Ed. Straight. I woke up and this bloke was there and ’e belted me cruel. When I came round, I was tied like a bleeding parcel and it took hours to get free and get Pete free.”

Murphy went over to the mantelpiece of the sitting room, opened a silver cigarette case, and lit a cigarette. One of the Pakistanis came into the room with a tray on which were three cups of coffee: he carried it round for each man to help himself. Murphy noticed how eagerly Faraday drank. The Pakistani left.

Murphy spoke to Faraday. “This bloke must surely have given you an idea who he was working for?”

“He never let on, Ed,” replied Faraday, speaking with great earnestness, “not even when I tried to find out if he was from a different mob, or what.” He had thought a lot before coming back here. Common sense had suggested he vanish, since one way or another Murphy might learn the truth. But he had become so used to the feel of heavy money, to buying whatever he wanted when he wanted it, to being a big wheel in a big organisation, that he couldn’t and wouldn’t listen to common sense. He persuaded himself that he was clever enough to lie successfully.

“And all he wanted out of you was to know my name?”

“That’s right. And when I told him Harry Chambers and described Harry, he was satisfied.”

Murphy suddenly laughed. “You know, Pete, I like that! Using Harry’s name.”

“I thought you’d appreciate it, Ed.”

They’d buried Harry Chambers some six months before, in a small wood in Hertfordshire.

Murphy said: “It was neat.”

“I wasn’t grassing, whatever.”

“I know that… You’ll have to lie low for a bit, though, until we trace out this joker.”

“Sure. I thought if I took off and lost myself in the Smoke until you’ve planted him.”

“That’s about right.” Murphy finally decided Faraday had betrayed them, under the threat of being castrated. “You stay here until this afternoon and then Nath will drive you up to the Smoke. We’ll keep in touch and as soon as it’s safe, you’ll come on back down.” He turned and spoke to Goater. “Take off out of the house you were in and move in with Bill and Andy.” His voice remained easy, untroubled, but he didn’t like things one little bit because nothing added up. A rival mob wouldn’t have started to move in like this, nor have used only one man if they had. In any case, he’d have had word long before this that someone was trying to muscle in. So why only one man, who had wanted to know the identity of the boss? If, as at the moment seemed likely, it was a one-man band, then the best way of landing that man was to carry on as if nothing had raised any alarm. After all, if Faraday had not been so greedy he’d have had the sense to take off without telling anyone why. Goater would have followed him. So this unknown man might well be fool enough to try to break into Tranmere House and they’d have him, to work on him until he told them what his angle was. Murphy’s voice was crisp: “Pete, you take off upstairs, now, and stay in a bedroom until we get the transport organised. Jim, you move house.”

Goater left, clearly relieved at the way things had gone. Faraday said, even more relieved than Goater: “Ed, that bloke never doubted it was Harry at the top.”

“Sure. You did a good job.”

“I reckoned it was better to tell him something he’d swallow.”

“Yeah. Or lose your most precious possessions? Quit worrying, Pete, you did dead right. I’d have acted the same.”

Reassured, Faraday waited whilst a Pakistani was called to the room by a ring of the bell. Murphy gave a brief order and the Pakistani led Faraday out of the room.

After Faraday had been gone a few moments, Murphy telephoned Jarrold. “Titch, we’ve got trouble. Get ready for a run.”

He replaced the receiver. Tonight, he thought, switching his mind, the house must be apparently totally unguarded, so that it was inconceivable any alarm had been given. Even a window or two left open. Then if the man came, he’d have no hesitation in entering…

*

Detective Chief Inspector Weir was very polite. “You’re quite certain, Mrs. Rowan, you’ve no objection to furnishing us with all these financial details?”

She looked across at him, then at his detective sergeant, a desiccated looking individual. “Have I much option?” she asked bitterly.

“It’s very much in your own interests, you realise?”

“I know it is, since everything we own has been bought with money we’ve earned,” she said fiercely.

He nodded. “I’m sure it is, but unfortunately it’s my duty just to check. I think that by far the easiest solution, again if you agree, is to get your bank or banks to let us look through your bank statements for the past couple of years. If there are any queries, we can ask you just to identify the various sums paid in and then everything will be cleared up in one go.”

“We have one joint account at our bank and I have a separate account. The only other money we have is in a building society. I suppose you want to see the pass book of that?”

“I will need to, yes.”

She went over to the telephone, looked up the number of the bank, and dialled it. He studied the room. The furnishings were luxurious and the T.V. was colour. No ordinary detective constable could afford such things. But she’d said she made quite a bit more than Rowan and Weir was fully prepared to find that everything in the house had been bought with legitimate money. The odds were obviously shortening that the motive for Rowan’s betrayal — assuming he was the traitor — was not monetary.

She finished her telephone call and told him she’d instructed the bank to give him any records he asked for. He courteously thanked her. “And you’ve no idea where your husband is this morning, Mrs. Rowan?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“When he returns, ask him to get in touch with me, will you? I want a chat with him.” He stood up. “By the way, I’m sure we’d like to have a quick word with the people who give you modelling work. Would you draw up a list of their names and addresses and let me have it next time I call?”

“All right,” she answered dully.

He stood up. “Thanks very much for all your help, Mrs. Rowan.”

She suddenly spoke fiercely. “He’s honest. D’you understand, he’s honest.”

She hadn’t denied he’d been the traitor, he thought… Just insisted that he was honest. Confirmation that the motive had not been the usual one of money?

*

Rowan returned home at twelve-thirty and went into the sitting room. Heather told him about Weir’s visit and then asked him where he’d been that morning.

“Just wandering around thinking,” he answered, as he sat down. He recalled the scene he’d seen from his parked car. The expensive house, in a street of expensive houses, set in a large garden that was tended by a gardener who was probably full time. A Rover had been parked in front: a discreet middling expensive car. A coloured man had come out of the house and spoken to the gardener, but apart from them no one else had been around. Apparently, this was just the house of a wealthy and successful businessman and there wasn’t a hint of organised crime. But in the last few years the top villains had learned about the benefits of going legitimate. More than ever, appearances didn’t mean anything.

It wasn’t going to be a difficult house to break into, with so many windows and doors. In any case, when a villain turned legitimate, he often became astonishingly, comically, certain that the law would protect him every bit as effectively as it protected all the honest citizens: the metamorphosis of crime, a police wag had called it. So that Murphy — if he lived there — would more than likely have the same disbelief as any other person who lived in this expensive road that anyone would break into his house.

Any of the downstairs doors or windows would do and if the night was really warm one of them might even be left open. The staff probably consisted of more than just one coloured man, but they should pose no problems. And Murphy? The treatment which had broken Faraday would surely break Murphy, because apparently Murphy really liked women and a randy man in his fifties would do anything rather than be deprived for all time of his powers to enjoy sex…

“Fred!”

He was startled and even worried. “What’s the matter, love? What’s happened?”

Her expression was bitter, yet sadly loving. “Where have you been?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You’ve been sitting there, staring into space for five minutes at least. What are you doing, or thinking of doing, now? You told me you’d blackmailed a woman. So what’s next? I’m terrified by what you may be doing.”

“There’s no need to be,” he replied, trying to sound certain.

“I’m sure you’re lying. There’s every need, and you know it. Fred, whatever you’re doing, stop it. We can battle through. You said the detective chief inspector can’t uncover anything sinister in our bank accounts. If he finds you haven’t been receiving bribes, he’ll have to give up. If anyone then still thinks it was you, it doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to prove anything.”

“You could be right,” he answered. Didn’t she realise that the police wouldn’t be content with investigating just the one possible motive? If they decided money wasn’t the cause, they’d look for what was. They’d investigate everyone on the list she’d drawn up of people who’d given her work. Raymond wouldn’t fox even a C.I.D. aide for more than a few minutes, let alone a tough, experienced, and very clever D.C.I. Then they’d have the motive for the betrayal and after that it would be all over bar the shouting. Tonight could well be the last opportunity to recover the photographs and the parcel. But once those were in his possession everything was altered and Raymond’s story could be denied and the mob couldn’t prove him the traitor.

*

Jagannath Parasad, as always, obeyed his orders exactly. He carried the meal of chicken, roast potatoes, and green peas, together with a carafe of Beaune, on a silver tray up to Faraday’s bedroom.

Faraday, his mind in a turmoil of worry even though everything was going so smoothly, swung round from where he’d been standing at the window. “It’s taken you long enough to remember me.”

Parasad bowed his head, as if accepting the crude admonition. But his dark brown eyes were disturbingly bright as he stared at the Wilton carpet.

“My stomach’s been kissing my backbone for hours. What’s the matter? Don’t you blokes eat at civilised hours?”

Parasad put the tray on the small, glass-topped table, then looked up, his eyes now devoid of expression. “Is there anything more you would like?”

“Yeah. To know when I’m going up to London? Sitting about in this room is as bad as being locked up in the nick.”

“The car is ordered for four.”

“Then make certain it ain’t late.”

“It will not be, I assure you.”

“It’d better not be.”

“What would you like for a sweet? You may have trifle or strawberry shortcake, with whipped cream.”

“You can give me a bloody good dollop of each and don’t hold back on the cream. And don’t wait until tea-time to bring it up.”

Parasad left the room and went down to the kitchen, which was large and very luxuriously equipped. There, he had his own meal, similar to the one Faraday was eating, although he drank only water. When he’d finished, he crossed to the refrigerator and carefully — finding no source of macabre amusement in the care he was taking — put a large helping of the trifle on to one plate, a large helping of shortcake on to a second plate, and covered both sweets with cream. He put the plates on a tray, added two spoons and forks, and a brandy glass. Satisfied the tray was ready, he pulled open one of the drawers below the nearest working surface and from this took some thin cord, about seven feet long.

Nath Verna came into the kitchen through the back doorway. He looked briefly at the cord. “Are you ready?” he asked. Even when they were together, they seldom spoke at any length.

With typical thoroughness, Parasad spliced each end of the cord to prevent its becoming un-laid, although the chances of this happening in the next few minutes were negligible.

They went upstairs together, Parasad carrying the tray. Verna opened the door for him.

Faraday stared belligerently at them. That took you long enough, didn’t it? And why’s it need two of you to carry one tray? Too bloody lazy to bring it up on your own?” He sat in a high-backed chair, in front of the table.

“I have come about the car,” said Verna, as Parasad collected up the used plate, cutlery, glass, and now empty decanter.

Faraday said: “So what about the car? Just see it’s ready on time to get me up to the Smoke.”

“It will be waiting.”

Parasad was now behind Faraday. He put down the tray on the corner of the bed and made certain everything on it rattled slightly, to suggest he was busy.

“To which part of London do you wish to go?” asked Verna.

Parasad took the cord from his pocket, wound the ends round his hands to leave a two foot six length in between. He visually checked that Verna was ready, then whipped the cord over Faraday’s head and jerked it tight around the neck.

Faraday clawed at the rope, desperate to drag air down into lungs which were already pumping. Verna took hold of his feet and lifted them up so that even more strain came on to Faraday’s neck.

When he was dead, they dropped him to the floor. Parasad unwound the cord and rubbed his hands which were banded, whilst Verna went out to get the plastic sheeting which was to be the first covering for the body.

*

The motor cruiser went up the starboard side of The Shallows at twenty knots. She turned, when the coast was fairly indistinct and certainly to any watcher ashore she was no more than a dot, and two men heaved the canvas bundle over the side. Half a hundredweight of pig iron had been tied to the body so it sank quite quickly.

Chapter 17

The M.V. Boswell was not a super tanker, but she was large enough to be economic and to have a draught that under certain tidal conditions necessitated her anchoring outside the River Fort until the tide was making strongly.

She had been anchored beyond The Shallows for three hours when the pilot said they could now get under way. The engine room were told by telephone the engines would be used in five minutes and the chief officer went for’d to the fo’c’s’le head and there, for two blasphemous minutes, waited for the carpenter.

“Where have you been, Chippy?” shouted the chief officer, when the latter finally arrived, together with a seaman.

“Doin’ something what couldn’t be rushed,” replied the carpenter, a fat, cheerful man who had seen too many chief officers come and go to be worried much by them.

The phone peeped and the chief officer answered the call. He turned. “Weigh anchor,” he ordered.

The carpenter turned the heavy electrical switch and the starboard windlass began slowly to revolve: the thick links of the anchor chain creaked and screeched as they settled under tension into the shaped beds of the drum, to drop from these down into the chain locker below.

After a time, the anchor chain hung straight up and down, showing the anchor was off the bottom. As the seaman continued to hose off the mud, the chief officer signalled to the bridge with his hands and he heard the tinkling of the engine room telegraph replying to the bridge order for slow ahead.

When the anchor rose out of the water, there was a large canvas package tied up in one of the flukes. The ship’s way was already creating a press of water and this caused the rope round the parcel to chafe on the fluke. The rope split, the package fell, and the canvas split open. There was just time for both the chief officer and the seaman, leaning over the rails, to see the body inside the plastic before it sank back to the sea bed.

*

Rowan surreptitiously — or so he thought — checked on the time: just after ten o’clock. One hour to his departure, four hours to breaking into Tranmere House.

“Fred,” said Heather, her voice more worried than ever, “you’ve got to tell me where you’re going.”

“I have told you — asking around, questioning informers I’ve had on the books.”

“Then why are you so jumpy?”

“You’re imagining things.”

She’d asked him the same question a quarter of an hour before and received the same answer: she’d disbelieved it then and she disbelieved it now. He was on edge and some sort of crisis faced him. She longed to hold him back because she knew instinctively he intended to do something really dangerous, yet she also knew that should she succeed in holding him back then disaster was inevitable for both of them.

The front door bell rang. “Who in the hell can that be?” muttered Rowan in annoyance. He stood up, went through to the hall, and opened the front door. Helen and Kerr stood there, arm-in-arm.

“Can we come in for a moment, Fred?” asked Helen. “We were just passing and wanted to say hey-hey. How’s Heather?”

Just passing? he thought. Or coming in to offer unspoken support because both of them, in different ways, were the kind of people who knew loyalty for their friends no matter what the circumstances. But they were threatening to upset his planned timing…

Heather hurried into the hall, having heard Helen’s voice, and welcomed them in with obvious pleasure. They went into the sitting room and Rowan poured out drinks for the four of them, whilst he watched the time and wondered how long they’d stay.

To begin with, conversation was general and without significance. How was Tracy? What a price food had reached and how was everyone to manage? Why couldn’t the politicians get together and really combat inflation instead of using it to play party politics? The latest film at the Central Cinema was virtually pornographic.

“Pretty disgusting,” said Kerr.

“You fraud,” laughed Helen, “you wanted to sit there and see all the hot bits through again.”

Useless Eustace Yarrow had tried to cheek Detective Chief Inspector Weir and he’d received a blasting that had quietened even him down. There was a rumour that the copper’s union was asking for more pay for all ranks below inspector to compensate for the ever-rising cost of living.

“What about the price of meat?” said Helen to Heather, returning to the subject of food.

“We’ve been so busy,” said Kerr to Rowan, “I didn’t even get time for cup of tea all afternoon.”

“Try telling that to someone who doesn’t know you,” replied Rowan, again sneaking a look at the time.

“No. I’m telling you, Fred, that’s straight. Two witness statements from blokes at opposite ends of the manor and one of ’em away from work, sick, according to his employers and as fit as a fiddle and at work according to his wife. A hit-and-run, with five witnesses and five different makes of car identified. A series of frauds on old-age pensioners and not a single lead on the rat of a bastard who’s doing ’em. And then, just as I was all set to return home to relax and recover, some flaming ship had to up anchor and pull up a corpse. The ship had its position charted exactly so we sent out our team of frogmen and they found the body inside half an hour. The bloke had been strangled and then tied up along with some pig iron. Only just been dropped there, apparently.”

“Any idea who he was?” asked Rowan.

“Not yet, but the Old Man reckons he may be mixed up with the new mob.”

“Why?” said Rowan sharply.

“You know him — never tells you what he’s thinking. But there were some interesting things. Over a hundred quid in his wallet and his clothes didn’t come from any multiple tailor, but he’d no letters, credit cards, driving licence, or any means of identification on him. We’ve sent his dabs off, of course, but you know what Dabs are like. No one there’ll die from overwork.”

“What’s he look like?”

“You mean, what did he look like before his face became pop-eyed?” Kerr grinned. As did most other policeman, he found the easiest way to counter the more morbid side of his work was to treat the details with an irreverent facetiousness that an outsider could readily find macabre. “Good looking, regular face, dark hair, tough, six foot tall.”

Rowan tried to speak casually. “Was there anything special about his mouth?”

“Special? Had he got three lips, or something? It was just… Come to remember, he’d a scar on the right-hand side of it.” Kerr stared hard at Rowan. “So how did you know that?”

“It’s just I saw a bloke around who made me think he was sharp and he’d a scar by his mouth — but I’ve no idea who he was.”

“Or why he should get himself strangled?”

“That’s right.”

Kerr’s disbelief was obvious — not unnaturally, since Rowan had been quite unable to hide his perturbation — but for once he was tactful enough not to comment and, indeed, he changed the conversation.

Ten minutes later, Helen said they must go and ten minutes after that she and Kerr prepared to leave. She slipped her hand into his in an unselfconscious gesture of love as they said goodbye in the hall.

Would they always find life happy ever after? wondered Rowan. Perhaps they were two people who might, for as long as this was ever possible, because Helen had a tremendous and willing capacity to give and Kerr could make light of anything. Rowan envied them with a sad bitterness.

When they’d gone and he’d shut the front door, he stood in the hall and desperately tried to think constructively. The murdered man was Faraday. He’d no doubts on that score, even if the identification was weak. Faraday had been a fool and instead of scarpering whilst he could, had tried to gloss over his squeal and Murphy hadn’t believed him. That meant Murphy knew he’d been betrayed. Then either he’d have left the house, vanishing to another bolt-hole or, far more likely, he’d have remained and set things up for what he must be certain was to follow. Rowan imagined himself breaking into the house apparently without having caused any alarm, only to discover his mistake when it was too late… The only way he’d ever leave Tranmere House would be feet first, his body battered and bloody because they’d have made him talk before they killed him. So he dare not try to break into Tranmere House.

If he didn’t break into Tranmere House, Weir was going to get hold of Raymond and learn the motive for Rowan’s betrayal. Pretty soon after that, Rowan would be named traitor and Murphy would see that the final incriminating evidence was released. Rowan could name Murphy boss of the organisation, but there was no proof and Murphy had already sewn up the town sufficiently to ride out any such accusation. So he, Rowan, had only one way to escape and that was exactly what it had been before, to break into Tranmere House. Which was no longer possible.

Heather, dirty glasses on a tray, came into the hall.

“It was wonderful of them to call in and show such friendship, wasn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Fred…” She suddenly stopped as she saw his expression. “What’s happened now?”

“I won’t be going out tonight.”

“Thank God! But why? Has something John told you altered your mind? Was it that man being murdered and dumped at sea?” Her lips began to tremble. “Fred, I don’t care how tough life gets just so long as no one has to come to tell me that you’ve been fished out of the water, dead.” She put down the tray, hurried to him, and gripped him tightly. “D’you understand? I don’t care. I’ll put up with anything.”

We both will have to, he thought.

*

He lay in bed. How many nights recently had he been unable to sleep because his mind was too frantically busy trying to solve the insoluble? Was there a limit to the desperation a mind could take?

Should he have risked breaking into Tranmere House? Murphy might, after all, have believed Faraday, yet killed him as an insurance because he was now known and marked. But the boss of the organisation was clever and clever people did not usually overlook the obvious possibilities.

His mind flicked back to one of the first lectures he had attended when taking his detective constable’s course. The art of interrogation. Comfort rather than threaten. Don’t try verbally to pile-drive a suspect into total submission, humour him, sympathise with him, make him confide in you because you’re obviously so decent a chap. Discover his strengths and his weaknesses and play on his weaknesses…

Where was Murphy weak? His organisation? His setup was about near perfect, especially as he must by now have bought, or acquired by blackmail, a considerable degree of political protection. No small-time member of the mob would be able to incriminate him, because they wouldn’t hold the proof. The lieutenants wouldn’t incriminate him except under the extreme vicious physical pressure of the kind the police dare not use. Legally, then, he was about secure. A big, fat, poisonous spider who’d spun his web and could now sit back and live off his prey. Physically, he must be completely secure. From the moment he’d decided to kill Faraday, he would have recognised the need to protect himself and now he’d be beyond anything other than a major frontal assault. Then if he was legally and physically secure… And suddenly, Rowan remembered Faraday, frightened sick, telling him all about Murphy and he realised that Murphy had one weakness — which could perhaps be exploited by someone desperate enough to exploit it and ready even to risk precipitating the disclosure of the very thing that he was trying to keep hidden.

*

Rowan parked outside Causeway Buildings, alongside an enormous Buick. The fitful sun, its warmth largely countered by the rising east wind, came out from behind a black-bellied cloud which for a time had seemed to promise rain.

He entered the building and the octagonal lobby and passed the octagonal bed of indoor plants, looking even dustier and more dormant than when he’d last seen them.

“D’you want someone, then?” asked the porter — whom Rowan had not seen before — from behind the desk.

“Borough C.I.D.,” replied Rowan shortly.

The porter hesitated, wondering whether he should demand proof of that, then settled back in his chair and stared with open curiosity.

Rowan entered the lift and pressed the third floor button and the lift took him up smoothly and silently. He left, crossed the thick carpet, and rang the bell of 3B. Violet Carter opened the door and recognised him immediately and her expression of professional welcome changed and hardened.

He stepped inside and closed the door.

“What d’you want now?” she asked.

“I’ve been wondering how things are with you?”

“All right.”

“The new mob have continued to leave you alone, then?”

Her mouth twisted. “They reckoned killing Vince was enough.”

“You sound like you’re still missing him?”

She cursed because his question suggested he thought a mere prostitute couldn’t know lasting grief when her man was killed.

He began to jingle the coins in his trouser pocket. “I wondered if you’d heard a whisper yet about who’s the boss?”

“D’you think I’d be standing here if I had?” Her face twisted into ugly lines.

“Like I said last time, leave that alone.”

“So what’ll that get me? How far have you lot got? Tell me. How bloody far have you lot got?”

He said slowly, “I reckon to know his name and where he hangs out, but need confirmation.”

She stared at him, a wild expression on her face. “You know?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Then why haven’t you nicked him?”

“I’ve no proof: not the kind of proof the courts demand.”

“Christ! Proof! He killed Vince, didn’t he?”

“We can’t arrest him if we can’t prove the facts in court.”

She spoke even more wildly. “So what’s his name?”

“I said, leave it.”

“You stick to your job and all your bloody proof. Just give me his name.”

“You wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Unless…”

She jumped on that. “Unless what?”

“Unless he thought you were one of the women who’d been sent along to keep him company at night.”

She began to understand the true purpose of his visit.

*

Rowan flicked down the blinker stalk and the darkened interior of the car pulsated to the flashing of the repeater.

“Here?” she asked, breaking a silence that had lasted for over a couple of minutes.

“That house beyond the ornamental gates.” He began to turn.

“It’s big,” she said.

The car’s headlights picked out the porch and the clematis which grew over it.

“You know something?” She paused. She stubbed out the cigarette she’d only recently lit. “You’ve never explained your particular angle.”

“That’s right. I haven’t.” He braked the car to a stop immediately in front of the porch. “Remember. Smash a window and shriek.”

“I’ll shriek, mister, like I was thirteen again and a bloke was flashing his marbles at me.” She opened the door and climbed out. She stared at him, then she slammed the door shut. He watched her walk across to the porch and ring the bell. He drove quickly away.

There was a public call box one road away and he drew up alongside this and checked to make certain it was still in working order. That done, he returned to the car and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Who’d opened the door to her? Had he been at all surprised? The most obvious dangers were that another woman had previously been sent along that night or that someone in the house recognised Violet. But there was danger to any gamble. Just don’t think about it too closely. Rely on her. She was a professional, presumably superb at her job. She’d sworn that if nothing went wrong early on, she’d give Murphy the most exciting time he’d ever known. Rowan believed her. Hatred was as good a spur, maybe better, than love. She’d lift him to the heights because then the descent to the depths would be that little more violent. God knows, she’d sounded slightly mad when she’d said what she was going to do to Murphy.

It was time. He went into the call box, lifted the receiver, and dialled 999. He asked for the police and reported the noise of a fight and violent screaming which came from Tranmere House in Ashdowne Road. He returned to the car and drove back to the gateway and the wrought iron gates and there stopped the engine. He visualised the duty inspector in the operations room at county H.Q. ordering the nearest patrol car to Ashdowne Road, and the duty sergeant telephoning borough H.Q. so that the nearest Panda car and beat constable could be directed to the same address.

Seconds lasted minutes as nothing happened and the possibility of failure grew. A bird briefly fluttered in a tree somewhere very close, there was a more distant and thrice repeated hoot of an owl. An un-laden lorry, bouncing noisily over a rough patch, went by. The moon became obscured by cloud.

Then, as he finally became convinced he was faced by a failure and therefore total disaster, he heard the sounds of breaking glass. There was a scream, so piercingly high, so wild, he believed it genuine. And immediately afterwards, as he was climbing out of the Mini, a white patrol car drove up Ashdowne Road at speed and came to a tyre squealing stop.

“Come on,” ordered Rowan, as he began to run up the drive.

Responding automatically, naturally accepting Rowan was from the borough force, the driver left the car and followed. The observer paused only to sign off over the radio, then he too pounded up the drive.

Rowan hammered on the front door. When it was not immediately opened, he crossed to the nearest window and smashed that with a stake plucked from the flower bed underneath. He reached in, undid the window catch, and raised the lower sash window.

As he clambered over the sill, the lights in the room were switched on. Parasad, in some form of night clothing which resembled a dhoti, rushed in, a six inch bladed knife in his right hand. When he saw the uniform constable behind Rowan, he dropped his hand to his side and stood there, uncertain.

Rowan shouted to the constable: “Hold this bloke down here and find out what in the hell’s going on — I’ll check up top. Tell your mate to stand by to call H.Q.”

The stairs were wide and he ran up them, three at a time. The landing was oblong, fifteen feet on its longest side, and hung with eight richly coloured porcelain plates. A corridor led off the landing and Verna was along this, standing by a door, left hand raised as if he’d been pounding on the door. He held something in his right hand.

“Police,” shouted Rowan.

Verna dropped into his pocket whatever had been in his hand and stepped back.

“Who else is in the house?” demanded Rowan.

Verna hesitated. “Just the two of us and… and him.” He pointed at the door. “And the woman,” he added.

“Get downstairs, report to one of the constables, and wait.”

“But if something is very wrong…” He pointed at the door again.

“We’ll cope. Are there any back stairs?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At the other end of this corridor.”

“O.K. Now get below.”

Slowly, with a reluctance he made no effort to hide, Verna did as ordered.

As Verna disappeared from sight. Rowan hammered on the door. “Open up. It’s the police.”

The door was unlocked and he went in. Murphy was dead and the place looked like a slaughter-house. By the side of his nude body was a pearl-handled knife with three inch blade. Violet Carter, wearing a kinky leather outfit, with gloves — Murphy wouldn’t have realised until the last agonising second the real reason why she’d worn gloves — was breathing heavily and there was a blank remote look on her face. She was stained with blood.

“Did you find where the safe is?” he demanded urgently. When she made no answer, he took hold of her arm above the long-sleeved glove and shook her fiercely. He repeated the question.

“It’s behind the painting on the wall, here,” she finally answered.

“What kind of safe is it? Where’s the key?”

She shook her head.

It can’t fail now, he thought wildly: not after so appalling a climax. “Get dressed.” He raced over to the three Renoir reproductions which hung on the near wall and found the wall safe was behind the middle one. He swore with relief when he saw the lock was not a combination one. But the key? He whirled round. She had just pulled on her dress, hiding the leather garments except for the high lace-up, high-heeled boots. “What clothes was he wearing?” he asked.

“A grey suit,” she muttered.

“For God’s sake, pull yourself alive,” he demanded, as he ran to the built-in clothes cupboard and slid back the end door. There were three grey suits, of different shades and different conservative patterns. “Which one?”

She at last regained a measure of composure and said: “That end one.”

He searched the pockets of coat and trousers, but found no keys. Yet they must be close at hand, where no one else could easily and casually get at them… In one corner of the room, to the right of the open door beyond which was a tiled bathroom, was a small, beautifully inlaid, period desk with two full width drawers beneath a fold flat flap. There was a nest of drawers on either side of the three compartments, for writing-paper, etc., in the middle. The top right-hand drawer was the only one that was locked. Possibly the key for that was hidden in one of the unlocked drawers, but he’d no time left for a prolonged search. He smashed the drawer open with the polished brass poker from the fireplace, conscious even at such a moment of tension that this was an act of unforgivable vandalism. Two keys, one of intricate design, were in the drawer.

He tried the intricate key in the lock of the wall safe and it worked the tumblers. He pulled open the heavy door. Inside were a large number of bank notes, carefully sorted into bundles of similar denominations, a battered leather jewel case, a large, unsealed brown envelope, and a brown paper package on which was Heather’s writing. He opened the envelope, saw inside a number of negatives and prints, and slipped it into his inside pocket.

From outside the house there came the sound of a vehicle’s stopping and this was followed by the slamming of doors. There was little time left. Not rushing his movements — how many villains made their mistakes when under the pressure of too much haste — he took from the safe three bundles of the highest denomination notes, stuffed these into his coat pockets, closed the safe door, relocked it, swung the picture back against the wall, and carried the key, which he wiped clear of his prints and then impressed with the dead man’s prints, over to the grey suit in the cupboard. He picked up the package with Heather’s writing. Violet Carter watched his every movement, yet it was impossible to judge from her expression whether she understood the logic of what he was doing.

“Come on,” he said. Obediently, she followed him.

He opened the bedroom door. Voices came from below and abruptly they began to increase in strength: the speakers were climbing the stairs. He took hold of her right hand and pulled her along the thickly carpeted corridor.

At first he could see no back stairs and he thought the Pakistani had lied and delivered them into a trap but then, as the voices clearly neared the head of the stairs, he tried the end door and it proved to give access to what was the servants’ quarters and the stairs. They passed through just in time.

He left her at the head of the stairs and descended. All was quiet below. He called her down. The stairs had been lit, but the ground floor was in darkness and so with his free hand he took a small pencil torch from his breast pocket and switched this on. They passed the kitchen and a store room to reach the back door, which was bolted and locked. “Open the door,” he said, “as quietly as you can.” He watched her pull back the bolts and slide the chain free and noted that in places the metal was smudged with blood from her glove.

The back garden, screened by trees, was only softly illuminated by the street lighting. No one was visible and all the noise of investigation lay back in the house or round at the front. Together, they skirted the gravel path and crossed a lawn to the back gates. He handed her the money. “Use this to get yourself settled somewhere. Have you got the car keys?” She took them from a pocket of her dress, but said nothing. He pushed her and she opened the gate, which squealed gently, and went out.

As soon as he heard the car, carefully parked there earlier, drive off, he hid the parcel in the centre of one of the many bushes, then ran back to the house along the gravel path, shouting for assistance as he did so.

*

Heather, in bed, watched him enter the room. Her eyes were filled with desperate worry. “Fred…” she whispered.

He dropped the parcel on to the bed. “It’s all over, love, and you can stop worrying.”

She stared at the parcel as if not trusting her sight, unable to appreciate immediately the full relief of knowing that he had succeeded. He took the brown envelope from the inside coat pocket and handed it to her.

She opened it, hesitated, looked up at him, then used forefinger and middle finger to pull out one of the prints. As she looked at the print, her lips trembled. “Fred, did… did you look at them?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t like this, I swear it wasn’t. I didn’t know the bloke was there. Raymond just said to…”

“Forget it,” he said harshly. He kissed her, said with sudden softness: “D’you think I’d’ve risked everything if I hadn’t believed in you completely?”

She dropped the print into the envelope, crumpled up the envelope, then flung back the bedclothes. “I’m going to take this down now and burn it,” she said.

Chapter 18

Fusil sat immediately behind his desk, Detective Chief Inspector Weir to the right of it. Rowan was left to stand.

Weir, his expression severe, spoke slowly, choosing his words with very great care. “Don’t you understand? I’ve personally interviewed a number of people, including Mabel Harkness, the woman your wife exchanged foundation garments with aboard the Southern Planet. We know what happened.”

“My wife has never been aboard that ship,” said Rowan.

Weir sighed. “Longman was arrested in Palma and the organisation didn’t know whether that meant the line had been broken. But they had to know, so they sought a policeman they could blackmail into finding out the facts. You were that policeman. They had compromising photos taken of your wife and used these to pressure her into smuggling heroin into the country. From that moment on, they’d got you.

“You were ordered to discover why Longman had been arrested and you put the enquiry through Interpol. When you told the organisation that Longman’s arrest had nothing to do with drug smuggling, they were able to reopen the line.

“You’d successfully done what they’d ordered, but the hooks were still in and when you learned about the tip-off concerning the consignment of heroin coming in on the twentieth, you warned them…”

“The whole thing’s a load of old cobblers,” said Rowan.

“Why deny the obvious? I have Raymond’s statement concerning the photos he took of your wife…”

“And my wife flatly denies that anything of the sort happened. So what proof have you? Where’s the evidence of the man who’s supposed to have been in the photos? Where are the photos?”

Weir continued to speak calmly, ignoring the questions. “I’ve interviewed Mabel Harkness at great length.”

“Who’s she?”

“A stewardess on the Southern Planet. Her orders were to exchange foundation garments in one of the lavatories with a woman who’d board the ship in Fortrow.”

“Did this stewardess see the other woman?”

“No.”

“Then she cannot identify her.”

“That is correct.”

“Does she admit she was smuggling heroin?”

Weir answered reluctantly. “She admits to nothing beyond exchanging foundation garments.”

“Then as far as she knows, or anyone else knows, she was not smuggling heroin.”

“There’s room for nothing else in such garments.”

“Have you seen these particular ones to be quite sure of that? In any case, my wife has never been aboard the Southern Planet.”

“A seaman identifies her as having boarded the vessel on the day in question.”

“How identified her? From photographs?”

“Yes.”

“What use is that sort of identification? My wife appears in scores of photos in scores of magazines, modelling: of course he thought he recognised her face when one of your blokes showed him half a dozen photos of different women. But she’s never been aboard that ship.”

Fusil took over the questioning. “Why were you outside Murphy’s house at the time when he was murdered?”

“I’d been given a tip-off he was the head of the organisation. I was trying to check out the information.”

“But you’d been suspended from duty.”

“I was still a policeman.”

“As a suspended policeman, your duty was to pass on the tip-off to me and leave me to investigate it out.”

“I was more interested in proving my suspension was totally unjustified than in worrying about what I ought to do according to the book.”

“Who gave you this tip-off?”

“A source of information. I’m not saying more than that.”

“Was Faraday the source?”

“Who?”

“Spare us the hypocrisy. You know as well as me who Faraday was?”

“The name does seem vaguely familiar…”

Fusil’s expression darkened, but he continued to speak evenly. “A post-mortem on his body disclosed that he’d received cuts on his scrotum a short time before his death. The only logical explanation of the cuts is that he was tortured into naming Murphy. You tortured Faraday into giving you Murphy’s name.”

“Nonsense.”

Fusil spoke with heavy irony. “Tell me, will you go so far as admit to knowing Violet Carter?”

“Of course. I met her in the course of investigations into the death of Wraight.”

“And you visited her flat the day before Murphy’s murder.”

“Did I?”

“One of the porters testifies to that. Why did you go to see her?”

“To check if she had heard anything more that might confirm that Murphy was the head of the organisation.”

“And you gave her his name, knowing that she was so mentally disturbed over the murder of her pimp that given the opportunity she’d murder Murphy in revenge.”

“It makes for a plausible theory, I suppose, if you don’t know it’s ridiculous.”

“She was the woman you found in Murphy’s bedroom.”

“There was a woman there, yes, but she wasn’t Violet Carter. I’ve never seen that woman before and can’t begin to identify her. She certainly wasn’t local.”

“Why did you let her escape?”

“I made a bad mistake. She appeared so shocked that I thought she wouldn’t try to run for it, so I went over to check whether Murphy was still alive.”

“The forensic evidence is that he died almost instantly. It would have been obvious to you he was dead.”

“Our training manual says death must never be assumed to be fact, no matter how obvious it appears. Only a doctor can certify death.”

Weir spoke. “With injuries like those, what could you have hoped to do even had he, by a miracle, been alive?”

“I’m afraid I hadn’t worked it all out like that. I was just acting on humanitarian principles.”

Fusil swore.

“Who broke open the drawer in the desk in the bedroom?” asked Weir.

“I’ve no idea.”

“Your prints were on the poker that had been used to break it open.”

“The poker was lying very close to the dead man. I moved it out of the way.”

“Contrary to all the rules of scene-of-the-crime investigations.”

“The state of the injured person takes priority over everything else.”

“What was in the drawer? The key of the safe?”

“I’ve no idea. Didn’t you find that key somewhere else?”

“Yes. Where you’d put it.”

“With the dead man’s prints on it?”

“Which you’d imprinted.”

Rowan shrugged his shoulders. “I saw no key.”

“When the woman ran, why didn’t you shout for help right away?”

“Look, sir, I did my best, but it just wasn’t good enough. I thought I’d catch her easily and there wasn’t any need for help. But I fell over and damn near broke a leg and she got away.”

“With your connivance.”

“I connived at nothing.”

“That woman was Violet Carter.”

“You keep saying that, but who has identified her beyond question? The Pakistanis? I gathered they’d refused to talk at all and there’s no hard evidence to get them for anything, even knowledge of what Murphy was up to.”

“Rowan, you’re as guilty of Murphy’s murder as Violet Carter.”

“I had nothing to do with his death… But if I had, d’you think I’d lose any sleep over that fact? He was wrecking this town. How many people in Fortrow are hooked on heroin now because of him? How many lives have been blasted? And the law couldn’t do a thing about it but sit back and wait and hope he’d eventually make a mistake. He hadn’t even been identified as the boss before his murder.”

“Your job as a policeman,” said Weir flatly, “whether suspended or not, was to uphold the law of the land. It was, and is, no concern of yours if the law fails in certain cases to operate rapidly enough to prevent crimes.”

“So Mr. Big can pimp, bribe, blackmail, poison, and murder, wreck a whole town, but I’m not supposed to concern myself?”

Weir tapped the desk with his long, bony fingers. He stared straight at Rowan. “You’ve betrayed the force and committed half the crimes in the book.”

“Prove any of your accusations.”

Weir stood up. “When there is evidence sufficient for a court of law, you’ll be charged with the crimes you’ve committed.”

“But in the meantime you can’t do anything because of the laws of evidence which you daren’t break.”

“Your career…”

“I’m resigning,” cut in Rowan, “in protest against the holding of an investigation which has failed to come up with proof of even one of the allegations levelled against me.”

“Let me have your resignation in writing.” Weir, very abruptly, left the room.

Fusil spoke cruelly. “We’ll get you. You may laugh at us now because we need proof of what we know, but we’ll find it in the end and nail you traitor.”

“I deny…”

“Save your breath. There’s just you and me in this room. So I’ll tell you what you are. A split who grassed to try and save his own rotten skin…”

Rowan, emotion shattering his previous disciplined calm, said: “For you, it’s just been one more case, another set of facts to be investigated. In your logical mind I grassed so I’m lower than a snake’s belly. You haven’t the imagination to see how things were. Grass or see my family broken, burgle a house, torture a man, set up the knifing of another, to keep my wife and daughter. Hasn’t it ever once occurred to you that there are times when rules, honesty, decency, don’t count? Suppose it had been your wife and your son? Would you have seen them knocked flat just so as you could always console yourself with the thought you’d never broken the law?”

Fusil picked up his pipe and slowly filled it with tobacco from his battered pouch. If Josephine and Timothy were ever threatened, he’d fight back, with whatever weapons he could grab. In the final event, family was all important. But even while he acknowledged that fact, he hated Rowan for having been a traitor.

Rowan waited, then left the room, head held high.

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