Blood and Judgement (5 page)

The telephone clattered. Gwilliam picked it up. Started to speak. Then slammed it down, and said, “Trouble, now.”

“Where?” said Petrella. They were already moving.

“At a pub in Camden Town. Parrock Street.”

“The King of Nowhere?”

“That’s right,” said Gwilliam.

Detective Constable Cobley had appeared from the charge room.

“We’ll take the car nearest the entrance,” said Gwilliam. “Pile in all of you. I’ll drive.”

“That’s where Gover’s gone, didn’t you know?”

“Keep your hand on the siren,” said Gwilliam. “You all right, Tom?”

“Fine,” said Cobley. His huge body was wedged in the back of the police tender, which was already rocking as Gwilliam steadily gathered speed.

They passed the Old Mother Red Cap, at the corner of Camden High Street, took an optimistic view of the traffic lights, and beat it for fifty yards along the main road, then right, and right again into Parrock Street.

The symptoms of trouble were evident. A few men outside a door and an apprehensive crowd, mostly boys and women, on the pavement opposite.

A desultory free-for-all seemed to be going on inside, and through the steamed-up glass of the front window Petrella thought he could see the blue of a police uniform.

“There’s a back entrance,” he said, “by the canal. The turning at the end of the street. I’ll go round.”

“All right,” said Gwilliam. He put his shoulder to the front door and pushed it open. Petrella had time to see this, then he was running, Cobley with him.

“Down here,” he said.

It was a narrow alley, ending in high gates, with some sign painted on them. Cobley made a back, hoisted Petrella up, and was pulled up in turn. They dropped into a littered yard.

“The canal bank’s through here somewhere,” said Petrella. He wished he had brought his torch.

“Look out you don’t fall in then,” said Cobley. He was less excited than Petrella. They felt their way along the narrow cinder path. “It’s the sixth house along. I counted.”

Suddenly they were aware that figures were moving, in the dark, ahead of them, but away from them.

Things happened then, in no sort of order. Petrella jumped forward, felt an opponent, and grabbed him. As he grabbed, he slipped, and they came down together in a heap. Someone then stepped on both of them. Cobley, by the weight of him.

There was a pounding of footsteps ahead and a muffled roar as action was joined farther up the bank. Then the toe of a boot caught Petrella squarely in the middle of the forehead and the next thing he knew was that he was on his hands and knees, in the darkness, being sick.

As the nausea passed, he felt hands under his arms lifting him up.

“Are you all right, Sergeant?”

“What’s happened?” said Petrella. He found that he could just stand.

“Two of ’em,” said Cobley. “One of ’em knocked you cold. I pitched the other one into the canal. Just to see if he could swim.”

“I’m all right now,” said Petrella. The world around him was steadying, and if he concentrated he could focus. “Did he?” he added.

“Did he what?”

“Swim.”

“I’m afraid so. I heard someone get out the other side. Your man scarpered too.”

“We’d better go in now,” said Petrella. The particular stable door they had come to lock seemed to have been kicked in their faces, but they might as well finish the job.

Cobley found the gate and pushed it open. They were in a dark, stone-paved enclosure, which smelt of beer. Ahead of them was more darkness, lit by a dim internal light. A long way away a loud argument was going on, and Petrella recognized Gwilliam’s voice.

“The back door’s open, Sergeant,” said Cobley softly. He touched it with his foot and it swung wide. They could see the shadowy outlines of a room, lit by a dying coal fire.

“Try the light,” said Petrella.

There came a booming from the middle distance.

“I don’t care whether it’s a private room or not.” It was Gwilliam’s voice. “Will you open that door or do I kick it down?”

“It’s all right, Dai,” shouted Petrella. “Don’t wreck the place. It’s too late. They’ve gone.”

Then two things happened. Cobley, on their side, found the room switch and turned on the light. From the other side, Sergeant Gwilliam put his broad foot to the door and kicked the lock out. The door burst inwards, narrowly missing Petrella.

In the light they saw a shabby parlour, in disorder, furniture overturned and glass broken; and Detective Inspector Gover lying in the middle of the worn carpet, his head at an awkward angle, pillowed on a damp, dark patch of his own still-running blood.

“I don’t see any alternative,” said Barstow. “Heaven knows, it isn’t a thing I like doing, going outside the division and the district, but if they leave me short of my proper establishment, and send one of my only two available divisional inspectors to America on exchange – and what he’s going to learn there, you tell me – and the other goes and gets himself kicked on the head, like a rookie–”

“Perhaps I could–” said Haxtell.

“Certainly not. You’re nearly past the post with Corinne Hart. It’d be stupid to put someone else on to that now.” He paused, and glared round as if waiting for contradiction. When none came he said, “How is Gover?”

“I looked in at the hospital this morning,” said Petrella. “He’s still unconscious.”

He himself had a big blue bruise in the middle of his forehead, and the corner of his right eye was held together by a strip of sticking plaster.

“You don’t look more than two parts conscious yourself,” said Barstow amiably. He stared at the blotting paper in front of him. It was a difficult decision.

“I’m going to ask Central to let us have someone to take on the reservoir case, until you’re free,” he said to Haxtell. “It’s turned into a gang matter now. If Howton and his friends are mixed up in it – and it looks as if they are – it’s as much the concern of S and D as it is of this division, so it won’t do any harm having someone from headquarters to co-ordinate it.” But he was arguing with himself, and the others knew it. For the head of one of the London districts to call in a detective superintendent from the Central pool at Scotland Yard is quite rare enough to be remarkable, and remarked upon.

“It shouldn’t be for long,” said Haxtell. “I’m nearly through.”

Barstow turned on Petrella. “Until they send someone else, you’re in charge. Don’t lose your head. There’s plenty of routine stuff to do. We won’t keep you.”

Petrella removed himself. It was true that there was plenty to do, and he stood for a moment turning over in his mind just what it was he ought to do next. The reservoir could wait. If there were any clues there, they would keep for a bit longer. At the moment it was people, not things, that mattered.

He told the duty sergeant where he was going and set out. The cold bright autumn weather was a tonic. It was impossible to stay depressed whilst feet rang on the hard bright pavement and the blood stirred under the lash of the north wind.

Corum Street lies on the Chalk Farm side of Camden Town, in an area which had been slipping downhill for a hundred years with the stealthy inevitability of a glacier.

He climbed the crumbling front steps of No. 39, stepped past a battery of empty milk bottles, and studied the row of cards and bells. He decided that “Flat D. Mrs Jean Fraser. Three rings” was the one he wanted. He rang three times and waited. Nothing happened for a long time.

He pushed on the front door, which opened, revealing a strip of linoleum and a marble reproduction of the Winged Victory of Samothrace covered with a bee veil. The hallway was clean enough, and there was a faint smell of floor polish; but there was a much stronger smell of people; of too many people, living together, in too little space.

Flat D was on the third floor. Petrella rang three more times and knocked three times, and breathed in three times and out three times, but Flat D remained unresponsive. He was on the point of retiring when the door opposite opened and an old man came out. He had white hair, a white moustache, and a look of forgotten campaigns.

“You’re wanting Jean?” he said.

“Yes,” said Petrella. “Mrs Fraser.”

“She’s out all day. At work, you know.”

“It’s rather important,” said Petrella. “I wonder – do you happen to know where she works?”

The old man shook his head. He thought it was something to do with toffee. His mind was clearly on the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

“She’s generally back by half past seven,” he said.

Petrella thanked him and withdrew. He spent the rest of the morning in an endeavour, which he knew to be fruitless when he started on it, but which had to be carried through, to identify certain unidentifiable articles of clothing and footwear.

It was early afternoon when he got back to Crown Road, and the first thing that caught his eye was a deep, fresh scratch on the linoleum in the passage, which seemed to indicate that some heavy furniture had been moved. Then he saw a white card pinned to the door of the interview room and he read, in neat print:

D/SUPT. C O KELLAWAY

D/SERGT. ALBERT DODDS

The reinforcements had arrived.

“They’re doing us proud,” said Petrella to Gwilliam.

“We’ll be in the headlines all right now,” said Gwilliam.

There are, and there always will be, certain detective officers whom the public takes to its heart. They are usually members of the Investigations Department at Scotland Yard which the newspapers style the Murder Squad, although its work is by no means confined to murders. Their appearance, and reappearance, in the press as they speed to the help of the provincial forces ensures them a steady flow of publicity; a matter which some of them deplore more than others. “Cris” Kellaway, as he was known to a million readers of the Daily and Sunday press, deplored it not at all. A big, handsome, black-haired, strong-chinned man, he would have made an excellent rear admiral of the blue-water school. He was popularly supposed to have, in manuscript form, no less than three volumes of his memoirs already written and only awaiting his departure from the Force to be released for publication.

“He’s a great man for bull,” said Petrella. “But he seems to get results.”

“Quite a change from gentle Gover,” agreed Gwilliam. “You’d better go and say hello. He wants to see you.”

When Petrella went in, Kellaway was alone, but his presence filled the tiny room. He got up, squeezed out from behind his desk, shook hands with Petrella, and took a stand in front of the empty fireplace.

“I’m glad to have you working with me,” he said. “I did a job with Luard the other day and he told me about you. He said you were the only man in the CID who could tell the difference between claret and burgundy without looking at the label on the bottle.”

“Luard and I were at recruit school together,” said Petrella. “You’ve got to make allowances for that.”

“I never make allowances,” said Kellaway, “for myself or anyone else. That’s why I’m so damned unpopular.” He grinned, showing teeth as big and as white as Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s. “Now about this case. I’ll tell you what I think – that way we shall all start by thinking the same.”

Petrella could only recall, afterwards, that such was the impact of Kellaway’s personality that at the time this sounded like sense. What Kellaway thought, his subordinates would
naturally
think too.

“This is a gang killing. Howton and his friends. The Camden Town mob, or whatever fancy name they’re using now. They’re all the same, these mobs. First they throw their weight about with people who are scared of them, and they get away with it. And that makes them feel good. Then they go a bit further, and perhaps they get away with that. Now they’ve used their feet on a police officer, which means they’re asking for trouble. If Charlie Gover dies, they know just what’s coming to them. And I’m here to see they get it, good and hot and strong.”

Petrella was on the point of asking what the connection was between the assault on Gover and the death of Rosa Ritchie, but it occurred to him, in time, that would be taken as impertinence. And he had no desire at all to be impertinent. He found Kellaway as exhilarating as rough wine drunk in the heat of the day.

“I’m going to split this business into two parts,” he went on. “You and Dodds – you know Albert?”

“Yes, I know Dodds.”

“I’m sure you’ll get on well together – you’re to tackle it from the reservoir end. Go through the whole place, take it to pieces. Question everyone in sight. I needn’t tell you. Meanwhile I’m going to work at the other end – I’m going after Howton. If we both do our jobs properly, then sooner or later” – the superintendent laid his strong, white hands on the desk in front of him, index fingers extended – “the ends will meet.” As the tips of the fingers came closer Petrella would not have been in the least surprised to see a spark jump across the gap.

He said, rather breathlessly, “Right, sir. That’s quite clear. I’ll be getting on with it. As a matter of fact, I’d arranged to have a word with the woman Rosa shared rooms with. She’s a Scots woman called Jean Fraser.”

“I won’t stand in your way,” said Kellaway genially. “Watch out, though. I know these Scots girls–”

Petrella found Sergeant Dodds on the bank of the reservoir, a squat, swarthy, cheerful character with a look of the Foreign Legion about him. He knew him as a top-ranking darts player, three times London champion, and on one notable occasion runner-up in the
News
of the World
National Finals, at the Albert Hall, where he was beaten in two straight legs by that legendary Midlander, Joey Carmichael.

“What cheer, Pat,” he said. “Come and tell me where I start.”

Petrella grinned. It was a feeling he had already experienced himself. Where, if at all, in those miles of shrubbery, those acres of placid water, lay any clue to the seven-week-old killing of Rosa Ritchie?

“I suppose we ought to drag the reservoir,” he said.

“Have you ever done it?” said Dodds. “I dragged a canal once, near Woking. It took a week to do the job properly. Now, if you took the total area of that canal and divided it into this reservoir, it’d go about a hundred times, which means that this time next year we’d have just about worked up to the halfway line.”

“I don’t think it’s much good crawling round all those bushes on the bank.”

Dodds shuddered.

“On the other hand,” went on Petrella, “it occurred to me that it might be worth starting by looking for the boat.”

“What boat?”

“The one that belongs in the boathouse, down there, at the bottom of the cottage garden.”

They went down to have a look.

“There could have been a boat there,” agreed Dodds. “Not to say there’s anything fishy about it being missing. The Water Board might have moved it.”

“Let’s have a word with the foreman.”

Dodds said, “Yes, let’s.” It was quite clear that any activity was welcome which postponed the moment when he might have to start crawling through a quarter of a mile of wet, tangled, and steeply sloping shrubbery.

The foreman agreed that it was a funny thing about the boat. He had thought so before, but it hadn’t been his place to speak, the boat not being in his charge. And anyway, when Ricketts’ successor came along the matter would probably be cleared up.

“Ricketts?”

“Intake attendant,” said Petrella. “Lived in that cottage until quite recently. Got fed up and walked out on them.”

“He couldn’t take the boat with him, hardly,” said the foreman. “If it was there before, it’ll be about somewhere.”

“How often,” said Dodds, “do you have occasion to search through this little lot?” He indicated the shrubbery.

“Nothing to do with me,” said the foreman. “My job’s to keep the cut clear. I believe they have it thinned out about once every two years.”

“And that’s the sort of service we pay our water rates for,” said Dodds. “Come on, Patrick. You go one way and I’ll go the other, and we’ll meet at the far end – if we’re still alive.”

It was Petrella who found the boat. He had reached a point on the west bank, towards the northern tip of the reservoir, immediately under a path which led up to a high, stockaded fence. Behind the fence, he guessed, must lie the railway workshops; and beyond them again, the main line.

What he actually saw was a short piece of rusty chain, wound twice round a stake, at the water’s edge. The other end seemed, at first sight, to be made fast under water, but when he bent his back and pulled there was a faint stirring of free movement.

He shouted to Dodds and between them they hauled from the water, and halfway up on to the concrete apron, the remains of an old pram dinghy.

“Stove in,” said Dodds. “Stove in and left to rot.” There were two big holes in the bottom. “Probably did it with the butt of an oar. I don’t suppose those are far away either.”

The prospect of something concrete to look for seemed to have revived his spirits. In ten minutes they had retrieved from the bushes behind the path two oars, three duckboards, a footrest, and two cork fenders.

“Signs of thought here,” said Dodds. He surveyed the salvage. “Someone takes this boat from the boat shed. Rows across to the north end of the reservoir and sinks the boat. But first he takes out anything that might float and give him away. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then he goes up this path – turns right at the top, because it’s the only way he perishing well can turn – and what next?”

“He climbs the fence. One foot on that tree stump, another on that bolt head, like so. A bit of a pull – and he’s up.”

Petrella straddled the fence, puffing slightly.

“Tarzan of the North London Water Board,” said Dodds, approving. “What’s on the other side?”

“It’s a yard,” said Petrella. “And a lot of workshops, and a light railway line and – yes – a gate out to the road.”

“That’s it, then. That’s the way he went.”

“Quite a few people about.”

“Not at night.”

“Not so easy at night. Unless he’d worked it all out beforehand.”

“Of course he’d worked it out beforehand,” said Dodds. “This is a murderer we’re talking about. A careful chap.”

Petrella returned to earth, and dusted himself down. “The only thing I don’t see,” he said, “is why he should do it at all. Why didn’t he go out of the main gate. At that time of night, it’d be safe enough. A lot safer than all this caper.”

“Don’t run before you can walk,” said Dodds. “Everything will be clear as daylight before we’ve finished. Talking of which, we can’t do much more this evening. I spotted a nice little pub on the way in. Got a dartboard too. Let’s go and earn ourselves a pint.”