Blood and Judgement (16 page)

“Then we’ve got five days to do it in. You can do a lot in five days if you give your mind to it.”

“One thing,” said Petrella, “that I am prepared to bet my bottom dollar on. If we’re right about the sort of man Ricketts is, the very last thing he’s likely to do is answer our advertisement.”

The telephone rang. Haxtell picked it up, listened for a moment, and said, “What? Yes, he’s with me. He can take the call from here.” And to Petrella, “It’s your lawyer pal.”

Petrella picked up the telephone, and Haxtell unashamedly picked up the extension receiver.

“Harrowing here,” said the voice thinly. “I thought I’d ring you, in case you missed it. We managed to get that advertisement in both papers this morning. Did you see it? They can’t usually do it without twenty-four hours’ notice. But I told them it was urgent.”

“That’s good work,” said Petrella. “I hadn’t seen them.
The Times
and
The
Telegraph.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ll get in touch with us if you hear anything.”

Mr Harrowing sounded faintly surprised. “That’s why I’m ringing you,” he said. “I
have
heard something. A Mr Bancroft telephoned me just now. He’s fairly certain from the details in the advertisement that he must be the man it refers to. He certainly managed to convince me. He wanted to know what it was all about. That put me in a bit of a difficulty.”

“You say he telephoned you. Did he – did he give an address?”

“Oh, yes. An address in Hammersmith. I checked it. It’s in the telephone directory. We might have thought of that, perhaps.”

Petrella scribbled down the address and telephone number and said to Mr Harrowing, “Don’t you worry. You’ve done very well. We’ll look after this now.”

“Can I–?”

“If anything useful comes of it – useful to your client, I mean, you shall have it at once.”

When the solicitor had rung off, they sat for a moment staring at each other.

“Let it be a warning to you,” said Haxtell at last, “never to bet on certainties.”

Riverside Fields, Hammersmith, which looks out across a strip of muddy foreshore at the ever-moving Thames, is a Hogarthian tumble of houses, some of them very big, some quite tiny, and all of them somehow lopsided and disreputable and flung down in a manner which would enchant a painter but distract the tidy heart of a town planner.

No. 50 was one of the tiny ones, no more than a four-room cottage. It was beautifully kept, its brass gleaming, its paint-work fresh, and Petrella felt no doubt at all that the woman who opened the door to him was Mrs Bancroft herself.

Equally, he felt little doubt that the small, wiry person who greeted him from a chair by the fire was Mr Bancroft. There was not an ounce of deception about either of them. No place in their lives, you would have said, was hidden from the light of day.

“It’s about the advertisement,” he explained.

“Quick work,” said Mr Bancroft approvingly. “I only phoned after breakfast. What price the law’s delays?”

“They can move when they have to,” said Petrella. He added, “I’d better introduce myself. I’m a detective sergeant. I’ll show you my papers, if you want to see them.”

“Don’t bother,” said Mr Bancroft. The forenoon light was full on his face. He had shown no symptoms of alarm, only a vague interest. “I’d have come up to Lincoln’s Inn myself, but my legs aren’t so good, not when the weather’s cold.”

“Where do the police come into this?” said Mrs Bancroft.

“I’m not sure that we do,” said Petrella. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Mrs Bancroft looked as if she might mind, but her husband said, “Ask anything you like. Why not? It’s a free country. You get us a cup of tea, Minnie.”

Mrs Bancroft recognized that she was being dismissed and went reluctantly.

“Women talk too much,” said Mr Bancroft. “Not but that she’ll have it all out of me as soon as you’ve gone. Now then, what’s it all about?”

“First of all,” said Petrella. “Are you – or were you – Lance Corporal Robert Lowry Bancroft of the 9th Royal South London Regiment, who fought in France during most of 1918 and was mentioned in dispatches?”

“That’s me,” said Bancroft.

Petrella took carefully from his pocket a postcard-sized photograph of Howton. He handled it carefully, because the back of the photograph had been specially treated with a substance which, whilst impossible to detect by feel, was particularly receptive of fingerprints. He held it out to Bancroft, who grasped it trustingly.

“What am I supposed to do?” said Bancroft. “Say ‘snap’?”

“I was wondering if you happened to recognize the man.”

“Can’t say I do. Ugly looking customer, ent he? Reminds me a little of the regimental sergeant major in the old South Londons. But o’ course
he
’d be dead a long time now.” Here he transferred the photograph thoughtfully to his other hand, to get a better light on it.

“Well, it was just a chance,” said Petrella. He took the photograph gently back, put it into an envelope and dropped the envelope into his pocket. “Here’s another question for you. I don’t want to rake up the past more than I must, but did you get into a spot of trouble during your war service? Assault, or something of that sort.”

“Trouble?” said Mr Bancroft. “CMPs – that sort of thing?”

“It might have started with the Military Police, but it ended up with a charge in a police court. It sounds like the sort of thing that might easily have happened while you were home on leave.”

Mr Bancroft shook his head.

“It’s a long time ago, I know,” said Petrella.

“I wouldn’t forget a thing like that,” said Mr Bancroft. “All us boys had trouble with the Military Police, from time to time. But nothing that wasn’t settled in the orderly room the next morning – and forgotten about a week later. I didn’t have no trouble with the police. You look at my record, sometime. Honorable discharge. Character exemplary.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Petrella, getting up. “There’s been a muddle somewhere. And I’m only sorry you should have been troubled.”

“No trouble. That bit about ‘something to my advantage’. That was just put in to get an answer.”

“Yes, it was, really. I’m terribly sorry–”

Mr Bancroft burst out laughing.

“I’m not the sort that has long-lost uncles turn up from Australia,” he said. “I only had one uncle, come to that, and he was a lighterman and fell into the Thames at Chiswick and got drowned. I suppose you couldn’t tell me what it’s all about?”

Petrella felt tempted. Mr Bancroft, who might well have turned nasty, had been so unexpectedly nice that he felt that some sort of reward was due. Discretion prevailed.

“I can tell you this,” he said. “It’s a nasty case of murder. Double murder. We thought you might be able to help us – I’m quite clear now that it was a mistake – but if you had been the person we thought you were, it might have been very useful. And I’ll come down here myself and tell you all about it as soon as we’ve got hold of the man who did it.”

Mr Bancroft said unexpectedly, “You mean, that if I’d been able to tell you – something about that thing you were talking about – the case of assault – it might have been useful?”

“Very useful,” said Petrella.

“Then why don’t you?” said Mrs Bancroft, from the kitchen doorway.

They both stared at her.

“It’s forty years buried, now. It can’t harm you. If it can help, why not tell it?”

Outside, a child screamed shrilly. Mr Bancroft looked at his wife, opened his mouth, and shut it again.

“It’s not a very creditable story,” he said, and silence fell again.

Petrella sat down again, very gently, so as not to disturb Mr Bancroft’s thoughts.

“It was in 1918. I had my birthday in January. I was just eighteen. I was due for the call-up sometime that spring, but I didn’t wait for it. I went along. The first place I went to was an Intake Centre, at the old Crystal Palace. Then we moved down to Sussex. It was fun at first, waiting to go across. Then it wasn’t so much fun. It was the wounded that unsettled us. The men who had been wounded before, going back again. One of those blew his foot off, in camp, the night before he was due for draft. That sort of thing isn’t good for a young boy. It makes him edgy.”

Outside, in the sunlight, the child screamed again. A long “Ya-ha-ha-ha”. She was having fun, being a jet bomber.

“There was another young chap, enlisted the same day as I did. Name of Ricketts.”

“Yes,” said Petrella softly. “Yes. Go on, please.”

“He was about the same age and height and shape as me. Same red cheeks and dark hair. I don’t mean we were twins, but people who didn’t know us sometimes mistook us. He was full of spirits. The whole thing was an adventure to him. Then a day or two before we moved to our embarkation camp, we had a final check – and they found he’d got something wrong with his ticker. No active service for Ricketts. No fighting, no fun. Clerical duties at the base. It broke him up. Can you guess the rest?”

“You did a swop.”

“That’s right. Names, clothes, kit, everything. Only one thing we kept. On the form we had to fill in before we sailed, we each put our own next of kin. Just in case anything happened.”

“So he put down his – sister, wasn’t it? And you put down your–?”

“My aunt. What happened next was funny. Ricketts got sent straight out to the South Londons – a front-line crowd. That was in early March. I got my base job all right. Then we had the March push, when the Jerries nearly got to Amiens. By the time it was held, they were pretty hard up for men. So they had a recheck of all the medical categories.”

“And found nothing wrong with you, and assumed the doctor at home had made a mistake.”

“That’s right, and buzzed me straight up to the front, to the old 9th. And the funny thing was,” concluded Mr Bancroft, “that I believe I made a better soldier than Syd Ricketts after all. He got a ‘mention’ for me.
I
got an MM for him.”

The story seemed to be at an end.

“What happened then?” said Petrella.

“Oh. When we were demobbed, we swopped back. We couldn’t either of us say anything about it. We were both in the wrong, you see.”

“The thing I don’t like,” said Mrs Bancroft judicially, “was him having your medal. It wasn’t right. Particularly now it seems he left you a police record into the bargain. We didn’t know about
that.”

“But–” said Petrella. Then the absurdity of the whole situation struck him and he dissolved in laughter. Mr and Mrs Bancroft laughed with him.

“Do you mean,” he said, “that no one ever knew? What about your families – I suppose you had to write a few letters?”

“Field Service postcards. And all you had to say was you’d hurt your hand and got a pal to write for you. There wasn’t anything in any of them except ‘I’m in the pink and I hope this finds you the same.’ Anyway, my old aunt, who was the only relative I had, she died in April. Shock, they said, on account of a Zeppelin. She ought to have seen the old Blitz, eh?”

“Did Ricketts’ sister ever write back to you?”

“Once or twice. A lot of home gossip and stuff, I can remember that. Only she was always pestering me for matchboxes.”

“Matchboxes?”

“She collected ’em. Matchbox tops. I used to send her French ones, when I could get hold of them.”

“And you’ve never seen Ricketts since.”

“That’s right. And I don’t suppose I’d recognize him if I did. Nor him me. I used to be a bit nervous at first someone would turn the whole story up and I’d get into trouble. But the years went by and it got buried, and I don’t suppose anyone would worry a lot about it now if they did know, would they?”

“I’m certain they wouldn’t,” said Petrella.

“Has it been any help to you?” said Mrs Bancroft.

“Well,” said Petrella. “It’s told us where not to look, and that’s always a help.”

“So all the time we were checking up on Rickett’s army record it was really Bancroft?” said Haxtell.

“That’s right, sir.”

“And everything we found out about Bancroft belonged to Ricketts.”

“Except the next of kin. They were genuine.”

“And Bancroft – I mean Ricketts – no, I don’t, I mean Bancroft got the MM that Ricketts wore in the Second World War.”

“Yes. After all, it was a very safe fraud, from Ricketts’ point of view.”

“I think that makes it worse,” said Haxtell. “What the hell are we going to do now?”

“Our best chance is the sister. If she’s still alive.”

“You think she might know where he is?”

“It’s an odd sort of character who’s emerging,” said Petrella. He added apologetically, “I’ve been thinking about him a good deal, lately.”

“Let’s have it.”

“This last little bit sort of sets the pattern, don’t you think? He tried on this change of identities with Bancroft – and it worked. It didn’t do him much good, but it came off. No one found out about it. Well, I think he’s been doing things like that ever since. Living a piece of his life in one place, then cutting completely adrift and moving off somewhere else.”

“Living on women?”

“Oh, yes. I should think so. And if that’s right, he’d need a firm base to manoeuvre from.”

“And that might be his sister.”

“Yes. He would be her brother who ‘lived abroad’ and came home on long visits every now and then. It would be perfectly natural for him to turn up at any time, with a suitcase, and reoccupy the spare room that was always kept for him.”

“And all we know about his sister is that she was called Mrs Harman in 1918. She may have changed her name six times since then. There’s no law against it.”

“We know she collected matchboxes,” said Petrella.

That was Saturday evening.

On Sunday Petrella got a message from Sister Macillroth and went round to the hospital. At ten o’clock the night before Gover had sneezed twice and opened his eyes. He had passed as good a night as could be expected and was now fully conscious. Something in the sister’s tone of voice made Petrella ask, “Will he be all right now?”

“That’s impossible to say,” said the sister. “That’s what we want you for. Come along.”

Gover was propped among pillows. His head, which had been shaved clean when he was operated on, had grown a stubble of hair during his long unconsciousness. There was a little more colour in his face, but not much. He looked like someone who has come back from the other side of the moon.

“Nice to see you awake, sir,” said Petrella.

Gover looked at him for a long moment. Then his mouth cracked into a smile and he said, “Hullo, Patrick. How are things with you?”

“Fine,” said Petrella, and found himself being ruthlessly hustled out again.

“Do you mean to say,” he said indignantly, “that that’s all you wanted me for?”

“We had to see if his memory was working. He wouldn’t know any of us.”

After this good start, the rest of the day dragged. That night Petrella hardly slept at all.

When he got to the station on Monday morning, Cobley said, “You’ve got a visitor. We put her in the interview room.”

“What’s it about?”

“No idea, Sergeant. It’s a woman. She said it was to do with the Reservoir Case. The superintendent isn’t here yet, so I told her you’d see her when you came in.”

“Ricketts’ sister?” said Petrella.

“Come again,” said Cobley.

“Every time in this case,” said Petrella, “that we’ve talked about someone and said, ‘we shall never see
them,’
they’ve turned up almost at once.”

A small woman rose from the chair in the interview room to greet him. Petrella thought she might be in her early thirties. She had a pretty face, spoiled only by a hardness of the mouth and the two vertical lines between the eyes which can be engraved by worry or pain. Her blue eyes were shrewd.

“Can we help you?” said Petrella.

“I don’t know if I can help you, or you can help me,” said the woman. “I’m Mrs Ricketts.”

“Mrs Ricketts?”

“That’s right. Sydney Ricketts’ wife.”

“When–?”

“In 1946. In the Marylebone Registry Office.”

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know what to say. She saved him the trouble.