A Late Phoenix (15 page)

At that moment the surgery bell pealed through the house. Not once but again and again like some dreadful tocsin.

Miss Tyrell hurried to the door.

Gilbert Hodge was standing on the step, his hand on the bell.

“Can the doctor come over quickly, miss? To the bomb site.” Hodge was so breathless he could hardly get the words out quickly enough. “There's a man there. I think he's dead.”

Dr. Latimer scooped up his black bag and strode down the steps. Gilbert Hodge scurried along beside him.

“I was only taking a look round,” he said defensively. “After all, I do own the place and there were no police or anybody there today so I thought I'd take a look.”

“Quite.” William stepped onto the rubble for the second time in search of a body. “Whereabouts?”

“The same place as the other one. I was just looking round,” repeated Hodge in whom the need for speech was clearly pressing, “when I saw him. Look. There.”

He looked.

In the space that until lately had been the resting place of the mortal remains of the unknown lady lay the huddled figure of a man. He was of medium build with a close-cropped Army hairstyle. William got down beside him. He had asked Miss Tyrell to send for an ambulance but it was patently too late for any ambulance save for a black one without windows. He had to stoop to confirm that the man was dead—had been dead for some time now. He turned his head until he could see his pupils, noting as he did so a small hedge-tear scar which ran down the corner of his left forehead.

“Anyone know who he is?”

Gilbert Hodge stirred at his side. “I know him, Doctor,” he said thickly. His own color had turned quite green. “I know who that is all right though I haven't seen him in years. He's called Harold Waite.”

Season and reheat

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

While Crosby interviewed the dental receptionists, Sloan made for the local planning department offices. The man he saw there was as helpful as all the dental receptionists had been—but much more positive too.

“Lamb Lane?” The planning officer grinned cheerfully. “One of the biggest files we've got here.”

“Really?”

“Only one factor missing over the years.”

“What was that?”

“The preservationists.” The man rolled his eyes expressively. “Once they get the bit between their teeth I can tell you …”

“There's nothing to preserve in Lamb Lane,” said Sloan. Hitler had seen to that. It was rather the reverse, if anything. An eyesore.

The man gave a short laugh. “You don't suppose they'd let a little thing like that put them off, do you, Inspector?”

“Like that, are they?”

“Some of them. If they had a mind to, I daresay it wouldn't take them long to find a peg to hang something on.” He twisted his lips. “Like saying the area was rich in German associations.”

Sloan thought for a moment, entering into the spirit of the thing. “‘An increasingly rare memento of historic and stirring times.'”

The man grinned. “That's the idea. They haven't tried it on Lamb Lane yet but you never know.” He opened the file. “Whereabouts do you want to begin?”

“The beginning.”

“That would be before the war. There was a bit of talk about slum clearance that way but it didn't come to anything. Then we got the clearance done for us by the bomb in a manner of speaking.”

“So they weren't beautiful, those houses …”

“Calleshire vernacular architecture,” said the planner. “Good of their kind.” He turned a page. “After the bombing the council slapped a specified area notice on it pursuant to Section 7 (2) of the War Damage Act 1941.”

Sloan struggled to write down the far from plain words. “Would that mean anything?”

“I'll say,” responded the planner vigorously. “If you want chapter and verse …” He changed his tone to a chant and recited: “This course would prohibit any person making good war damage (other than temporary works) to hereditaments in the specified area, and would impose on such persons an obligation to inform the War Damage Commission of any proposed works.”

Sloan sat up. “Then why did Gilbert Hodge buy it?”

“Search me,” said the man equably. “Running a high risk of a C.P.O.”

“That wouldn't be a Chief Petty Officer, by any chance, would it?”

“Sorry. Compulsory Purchase Order to the uninitiated. Nasty things, C.P.O.s, Inspector. Don't ever let one of them get you. Brings on apoplexy quicker than anything I know.”

“And did they have one of those in Lamb Lane?”

“Nearly. Very nearly. Earlier this year.” He ruffled through the pages. “Looks as if they had no end of schemes for this and that after the war …”

“Homes fit for heroes anyway,” said Sloan.

“The first application to build was turned down very early on. The council had taken against just in-filling bomb damage.” He put his finger on a line of print and read aloud: “They wanted each bomb site developed to its full potential with regard to the future not the past.”

“I see. What happened next?”

“Someone in the planning department dreamed up a new road complex for the whole area. Before my time here, of course, but that put a stopper on any development for years and years while they fought it out.”

“Then what?”

“All quiet until 1960 when an outline application by Mark Reddley (Developers) Ltd., on behalf of G. Hodge, Esquire, was accepted but turned down on detailed plans being submitted.”

“That's interesting.”

“Things went dormant again after that and then three years ago.…”

“Yes?”

“The council shook the dust off their slum clearance plans from before the war. That stirred things up and Reddley put in another design for this G. Hodge.” He frowned at the paper in front of him. “Seems as if it was a toss-up who developed.”

“The council or Hodge?”

“That's right. The council would have powers if they had wanted to use them.”

“They were thinking of clearing the area?”

“Looks like it. That side of the road anyway. That would have meant compulsory purchase orders, compensation, and so forth.”

“And somebody not the owner doing the developing,” observed Sloan thoughtfully.

“True. In the event, though, it didn't come to that.”

“No …”

“A couple of months ago Reddley submitted another set of detailed plans …”

Somewhere at the back of Sloan's mind was someone else's remark about something else changing a couple of months ago, too. He couldn't pin it down and it teased him for a moment or two before he decided it probably wasn't important.

The planning officer was still talking. “These new plans were more conventional from the look of things. Anyway they must have been all right because they got the go-ahead from the council fairly pronto. It looks as if they went straight ahead quite quickly and started work.”

“At long last …”

“Planning's like that,” said the planner apologetically.

As Sloan made his way back to the police station it came to him.

It was the old doctor in the house opposite the bomb site who had died a couple of months ago.

Ten hectic minutes later Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby joined the small crowd which was clustered round Harold Waite's dead body.

The crowd was of an entirely different composition from the crowd of workmen who had clustered—full of awe—round the other body two days before.

These were police technicians and they were not awed. Cameramen, men with measuring tapes, men with notebooks, police this and police that—the full panoply of unnatural death was being extended to Harold Waite of Bean Street, Luston, number two workshop foreman, sometime sergeant in the West Calleshire Regiment, and late of Lamb Lane, Berebury.

It was the last which had been of deadly significance.

Sloan wasn't in any doubt about that.

“He came over to Berebury to see someone,” he said to Detective Constable Crosby.

“We did try to see him first, sir.”

“He thought he could do better than we could …”

“Twice,” said Crosby. “We went back.”

“He should have told me,” said Sloan bleakly. “He'd have been all right then.”

He wasn't all right now.

Sloan waved an arm towards the body. “When did it happen?”

Crosby jerked his shoulder towards Field House. “Dr. Latimer thought something under twelve hours ago but he couldn't swear to it. Said he wasn't an expert on dead bodies.”

“He soon will be at this rate,” commented Sloan bitterly. He moved over towards the cellar. The police photographer was standing surveying the scene. “Morning, Dyson …”

“I must say you don't half have 'em, Inspector,” responded the photographer. “Talk about the old and the new …”

He nodded briefly, his mind still on Harold Waite. He hadn't been spared after all.

“Ancient and Modern, you could call it,” said Dyson, “should you be looking for a caption.” Captions weren't a problem for Dyson. His pictures had simple titles like:
View of Deceased as Seen Through Bushes From Roadside
and
Frontal Aspect of Car Taken Following Collision
.

“I'll remember that,” promised Sloan.

“Otherwise we're finished here.” The photographer slung some of his camera equipment over his shoulder and beckoned to his assistant. “Unless there's anything else you want taking, Inspector? We've got the usual X-marks-the-spot and wish-you-were-here ones.”

“Thank you.” Dyson hadn't known the man, of course; hadn't spoken to him as a living human being only yesterday. Sloan shook himself. It couldn't have been only yesterday that he had sat in Harold Waite's front parlor …

Dyson waved an arm. “And general-view-of-the-resort. We've done some of them, too. Do I send them to you again?”

“Yes, please.”

He nodded to his assistant. “Make a note of that, Williams. All Lamb Lane bodies to the Inspector.”

Perhaps Dyson was right to take refuge in flippancy.

Sloan didn't blame him.

There was nothing pretty about Dyson's job.

Photographing the aftermath of human folly.

He went a little nearer himself and took a long look at Harold Waite's body. There were two lots of human folly involved here.

Harold Waite's own in playing a lone hand and coming here and the folly of whoever had killed him …

Two lots of human folly?

That wasn't right.

There had been three.

Waite's, Waite's killer's, and Sloan's.

Sloan's for being beguiled into thinking that the first murder was an historic affair; not of the present. That there need be no haste about investigating it.

He peered down into the narrow grave space which contained Harold Waite and winced. It was of the present all right. He should have … he nipped his own train of thought in the bud. A guilt complex wasn't going to get anyone anywhere.

He turned his head abruptly as Dr. Dabbe arrived and stumped onto the site. The pathologist nodded all round—he knew all the police team—and clambered down beside the body.

“This place is turning into a veritable Aceldama, Sloan.”

“Beg pardon, Doctor?”

“Don't you know your Bible?” He grunted. “Aceldama. The field of blood, Sloan, to bury strangers in.”

“He's not a stranger,” said Sloan tonelessly. “He used to live here. The site owner—Gilbert Hodge—identified him. He's gone over to the doctor's house to have a bit of a sitdown. Says all this has brought on his ulcer pain.”

“Has it?” Dabbe grunted again. Pain was never material to his evidence and he didn't have a lot to do with living patients. “Well, someone hit this chap on the back of the head. Hard.”

“We're looking for a weapon now, Doctor.”

“And not so long ago as the other one.”

“Would about the middle of last night be all right for timing?” The only thing Sloan had paused to do when he got the news about the dead man had been to grab the report on the attack on Dr. Latimer.

The pathologist stared down at the prone figure. “I can't be definite. Not outside like this—but you could be right. Got a witness?”

“I think we could have someone who nearly saw.”

Dr. Dabbe snorted. “If you ask me that's all any of them ever do. What you want, I suppose, is dumb evidence. That's what you're after now, isn't it?”

“It's better than the other sort,” offered Sloan.

He'd had his fill of spoken evidence in his time.

Eyewitnesses who hadn't actually seen; who had thought they saw; who had jumped (with both eyes closed) to the nearest conclusion; who had unconsciously shut their eyes at the vital moment; who had had their stories rehearsed for them in the nearest public house bar; who saw themselves with a bit part to play and who played it—tripping over themselves to get into the witness box and tripped over as soon as they were in it—be they coached ne'er so well …

“Did you get any further with the first body?” The pathologist started on his own routine.

“We haven't made a great deal of progress yet. The most that Miss Tyrell remembered about the night in question,” said Sloan, “was that the nightingales wouldn't stop singing.”

“Callimachus,” said Dr. Dabbe unexpectedly.

Sloan took another look at Harold Waite.

“Not him,” said the pathologist impatiently. “Callimachus. That's what he said. A Greek.”

“You don't say sir?” Surely they'd had the Greek crack about obols already this week …

“Callimachus noticed them too. ‘The nightingales sing on—death spares them that spares not anything.'”