Body of a Girl (15 page)

“She was the first thing I saw when I came round from the anaesthetic. After the Krauts had had my arm off,” said Bull. “I can't tell you how much it cheered me up. Have a cigar?”

Mercer took it. It was a good cigar. He also accepted a glass of whisky. Vikki brought in three cups of coffee on a tray, drank hers composedly, and said, “Well, if that's all for now, I'll be going.”

“Must you?”

“I want to wash my hair tonight.”

“O.K.,” said Bull. “See you tomorrow.”

There was a long silence after she had gone.

“I know what you're thinking,” said Bull, “but it isn't so. I wish it was.”

Mercer said, “Bad luck.”

“She's just about the most extraordinary girl I've ever met. To look at her, you'd think she was a cut-out from the middle page of
Playboy
, wouldn't you?”

“Something like that.”

“How wrong can you be? She does her work in the office better than any girl I've ever had before. In fact she does half of Rainey's work for him, when he's too pissed to do it himself. He says she's a natural mathematician, and he ought to know. He was a senior bloody wrangler or something.”

“Useful round the house, too.”

“She cooks my supper for me most nights, and washes it up. I've got a sort of feeling she's sorry for me. And damn it, I don't
want
her to be sorry for me. All I want her to do is to take her clothes off and get into bed.”

“And she won't?”

“No.”

“Have you suggested it?”

“Like a worn gramophone record.”

“You ever try getting rough with her?”

Bull looked at him out of the corner of his eye and said, “Come, Inspector. That's no way to talk. Anyway, I've only got one arm, and she's probably a black belt at judo and a triple dan at karate.”

He hauled himself out of the chair, fetched the whisky bottle, pulled the cork out with one hand, topped up both glasses, and put it down within easy reach.

“And what do you make of Sinferry, Inspector?”

“You've been here longer than me. You tell me what you make of it.”

“It's a bright little, tight little place,” said Bull. “No better and no worse than a lot of others, I expect. It's got its fair share of dirt and more than its fair share of phoneys. Have you met Murray Talbot yet?”

“Our revered Justice of the Peace?”

“Chairman of Magistrates, and Busted Flush. When he's not dispensing justice, he's doing his best to ruin a very sound builder's and contractor's business, which he inherited from his father and his grandfather before him. You've seen him performing on the bench. He looks just like your commanding officer taking Defaulters, doesn't he? Fierce little moustache, eagle eye, voice trained to keep the other ranks in their place. It's all bluff. He's a badly cooked loaf. Hard crust, soggy in the middle.”

“Speaking from personal experience?”

“Certainly. If he wasn't soft he wouldn't accept presents from me, would he?”

“It depends on the presents.”

“Bloody expensive presents. A colour television set, a dozen of Scotch, free service for his car.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“It's always useful to have the law on your side.”

“Have you bought Bob Clark as well?”

Bull blinked. Then he grinned, and said, “That's an odd question from his faithful second-in-command.”

“I'm not his second-in-command,” said Mercer. “That's a mistake a lot of people make. He runs the Uniformed Branch. I run the Plain Clothes Branch. In any station the head of the Uniformed Branch has one rank up on the head of the C.I.D. to give him the impression he's in charge of both. But he isn't.”

“You're all part of the same family.”

“That's right. And like all the best families, we spend most of our time quarrelling. Mind you, we co-operate fast enough if an outsider tries anything on. Tell me, what's your honest opinion of Bob?”

“I wouldn't insult him by classing him with Murray Talbot. Bob's dead honest, personally brave, and a bit stupid. There were a lot of senior officers like him in the army. The only thing they were afraid of was responsibility.” When Mercer said nothing, he added, “Since you asked me.”

Mercer was sprawled in the low comfortable chair, his legs stretched out, his arms hanging down. One hand held his glass, the other was resting on the carpet, wrist bent, fingers outstretched and quiet. He said, “You're an odd man, Jack.”

It was the first time he had used Bull's Christian name.

“Odd! How?”

“So honest in some ways. So crooked in others.”

“I must be a more complex character than I thought.”

“For years you've been overcharging people who rely on their cars for transport but know damn-all about them. I don't suppose you've often gone as far as you did with old Mrs. Tyler. That must have given you a bit of a fright.”

Bull laughed. He sounded genuinely amused. He said, “I dropped a clanger there all right. All the same that's not crookedness. It's business.”

“It's not a criminal offence to overcharge a mug,” agreed Mercer. “But to get away with it you had to get rid of your competitors. People your customers could easily go to if they were a bit worried about your estimates and find out that the job could be done for a third of the price. Or perhaps that it didn't need doing at all.”

“If I had done everything you say,” said Bull, “which I don't admit—”

“Naturally.”

“—I can tell you this. I shouldn't lose five minutes' sleep over it. When I got back to England after the war, with one arm and no prospects, I did a lot of thinking. I realised that so far I'd been on the wrong track. I'd been a good little boy. I'd done what I was told. I'd followed the rules. If there was a form to be filled in, I filled it in and signed my name at the bottom. I went with the tide. And I suddenly realised that there were a million other jelly-fish floating in the tide alongside me.”

“So you decided to swim against it.”

“Not against it. Certainly not. That's a waste of effort. But I thought I might kick out sideways. Get a little off the main track. And it was the right moment to do it. I had my gratuity, you see, and a disablement pension. But mostly, I had friends. A Special Service Battalion was a wonderful mixed bag. Saints and sinners. And the ones you got to know, you got to know properly. You sit on a bench, next to a man, knowing that in ten minutes' time you're both going to drop through a hole in the floor into darkness and a howling gale, and you really get to know what makes him tick. Believe me, a trick cyclist's couch isn't in it.”

Bull refilled their glasses, and said, “I'm talking too much. Tell me something. Why did you really come up tonight? To extract a confession from me about my murky past? You know damn well I'll deny it all tomorrow morning.”

“To tell you the truth,” said Mercer sleepily, “I don't give a damn for your murky past. Most business is dirty, if you analyse it. When you put it down, in black and white, without trimmings, what does any business amount to? ‘I win—you lose.' And all that matters is the money at the end of the day. Sometimes I'm glad I'm just an ordinary, stupid policeman.”

“You're the oddest bloody policeman I've ever met,” said Bull. “You sit there, drinking my whisky. Telling me I've been swindling people for years. Telling me I've driven a couple of honest competitors out of business. And then, in the same breath, you tell me you don't care.”

“Why should I care? It's all past history isn't it? And, as you say, it's none of it provable.”

“If you're not interested in my past, why have you spent such a lot of time looking into it?”

“Because,” said Mercer, and there was suddenly no hint of sleepiness in his voice, “I'm more interested in your present, and your future.”

Eleven thirty. Midnight. Half-past twelve. One o'clock. Detective Massey got up to stretch his aching limbs, then sat down again. At twenty minutes to two he saw the side door of Bull's shop open, and Mercer come out, and stand for a moment, talking to Bull. They were laughing about something. He made a careful note of the time.

Chapter Sixteen

‘Sonchus oleraceus'. The words were emblazoned across two columns of print. Underneath, in one column, there was a photograph of Hedges. He looked like everyone's idea of a jolly old tramp. (You weren't to know that it was the most successful of twelve photographs, in some of which, despite the efforts of a very clever photographer, he had looked like a sex maniac; and in others like a pimp. The camera never lies, but it is possible to be selective among the different statements it makes.)

“Those of our readers,” began the article chattily, “who are not well acquainted with botanical Latin, may not be aware that ‘
Sonchus oleraceus
' is also called sowthistle. It is an old English plant, which grows in ditches and disused pastures and other such humble spots. It is remarkable for one thing. The length and tenacity of its roots. In short, it is very hard to remove. And so the authorities have found, to their cost, in the case of Samuel Hedges of The Barge, Easthaugh Island, Stoneferry, in the County of Middlesex. Some years ago the Rating authorities tried to shift him. Then the Sanitary authorities. Next there was a flank attack from the Child Welfare. His present assailants are the Metropolitan Police. Superintendent Clark, when questioned about this said—”

“Good God,” said Mercer. “Have you been talking to the papers?”

“On the advice of Division,” said Clark stiffly. “I had a question and answer session with them. It was better than letting them make the whole thing up.”

Superintendent Clark had admitted that Hedges had been arrested for assaulting a policeman. What had the policeman been doing? He had been questioning Hedges. What about?

The Superintendent had side-stepped this one. Had it been anything to do with the discovery of a body on Westhaugh Island? The Superintendent had tried to slip this one, too. But had eventually admitted that it might have been not unconnected with it. Was it a fact that the police had now changed their minds and admitted that he had nothing to do with it? It wasn't a question of changing minds. They had never formed any definite conclusion. It had been routine questioning. Did routine questioning usually go on for eight or ten hours and resume on the following morning? And did routine questioning often leave the man being questioned with a cracked rib and bruises all down one side of his body? The Superintendent had called this a malicious lie. Hedges had been examined by a police surgeon that same evening who could, if necessary, testify that Hedges was completely unmarked. Did the police, asked the reporter, always take such curious precautions after a man had been questioned? There was no answer to this. Did it not argue a guilty conscience? No answer.

“You led with your chin to that one,” said Mercer.

“You don't seem to appreciate,” said Clark, in tones of cold anger, “that what I'm doing, to the best of my ability, is to cover up for you. You were entrusted with the investigation of a murder. You have made what it is charitable to call a complete mess of it. Not only are we no further on than when we started, but you have managed to bring the whole of my force into disrepute in the process.”

“I don't think that's strictly true,” said Mercer. It was an added offence to Clark that when Mercer argued he argued without heat, as though the matter was theoretical, and hardly concerned him personally.

“For God's sake, of course it's true. Look at that article.”

“I didn't mean that. It's not our fault if the Press want to turn Sowthistle into a folk hero. They'll drop him as quickly as they've taken him up. I meant about not being any further on. After all, I now know who the murdered girl was. I know how she was murdered, and why. And I know what steps the murderer took to hide his tracks afterwards.”

Clark stared at him.

“The real trouble,” Mercer went on, “is that three different deaths have got sort of mixed up. One murder, one suicide, and one that might be suicide or accident. In a way, it's the murder that's the clearest of the three. The girl concerned was a Miss Maureen Dyson. She used to work for Weatherman, as a litigation clerk. She tried to blackmail one of his clients. And it wasn't the first time she'd tried it, in her short but evil career. Only this time she picked the wrong man. He drove her out in his car one evening, no doubt under the pretext of paying her hush money, took her to a quiet spot near Westhaugh Island, and strangled her. Then he stripped her, and laid her in a grave which I should imagine he had already dug and concealed with branches. It was mid-November and the summer love-birds would long ago have deserted the island. He had only to shovel back the earth with a spade, and pack it down. A good deal later, in the early hours of the following morning, I imagine, when there was no one about, he let himself quietly into Miss Dyson's flat, with her key, drew
all
the curtains, turned on the lights and packed up all her stuff into a couple of suitcases and took them out to his car which was parked in the by-road which leads to the back end of the recreation ground. I think he had to make more than one trip. He was cool enough to do the job thoroughly. He forgot a few tins in the larder, and it was bad luck that he didn't know that she had a good suit away at the cleaner's. When he'd finished he turned all the lights out, and let himself out, locking the door behind him. He forgot to open the curtains in the bedroom, but he didn't forget much else. I imagine he weighted the suitcases with rocks and sunk them in the river later on.”

Clark considered this in silence. He was not stupid when it came to assessing evidence.

He said, “Go on. What about Sweetie?”

“Father Walcot gave me his version of that. It's largely guesswork, but it's psychologically sound, and it fits in with what we know of her movements. It goes like this—”

At the end of it Clark said, “Then the handbag wasn't put on the island as a plant to mislead us about identity?”

“I thought so at one time. It's still possible. But it's not very likely. Sweetie disappeared in March. Maureen Dyson was murdered in November. A careful man wouldn't hang onto an incriminating object for eight months on the off-chance of being able to use it for a murder he hadn't even thought about. And this man was very careful.”

“You're jumping the gun. How do you know it was the same man involved in both cases?”

“Assume for a moment that the man who was with Sweetie that night didn't push her. Assume he just saw her fall in. He wasn't to know that she'd been pulled down by the undertow. She might have been floating down the river. What would you have done?”

“Run down the bank. Shouted. Tried to get help.”

“You wouldn't have driven quietly home and said nothing to anyone about it, ever.”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, that's what he did. And in my book it makes him a pretty ruthless sort of bastard. There's no doubt that the man who killed Maureen Dyson was a ruthless sort of bastard, too.”

“It's pretty thin.”

“Thin, but I fancy it's true,” said Mercer. “I'm not greatly worried about it, because I don't think we shall ever prove either of them.”

“Then why the hell are you bothering about them?”

There was such a long silence after this that Clark shifted uneasily in his chair and said, “Well?” He saw that the scar on Mercer's face had turned livid. He had noticed this before, as the only outward sign of excitement or tension that Mercer's impassive face would give; a tiny unconscious warning signal that you were trespassing on dangerous ground.

Mercer said, choosing his words with evident care, “Why am I bothered about them, sir? I'm bothered on account of their connection with the third death I mentioned. The only one that's really important, because it's the only one that's unforgivable. I mean the death of Sergeant Rollo!”

“That was suicide.”

“Yes, it was suicide.”

“Then the only person who needs forgiveness is Sergeant Rollo.”

“I wish that was true.”

Clark was getting angry again. He said, “For God's sake stop talking riddles. There's no mystery about his death.”

“There's no mystery about his death. The mystery is why he agreed to say that he saw Maureen Dyson, with her suitcases packed, on the platform of Stoneferry Station, when he must have known it was a lie.”

Silence.

Then Clark said, but without much conviction, “He may have made a mistake about the date.”

“He didn't. He reported it on November 14th. The day we know Maureen disappeared.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure,” said Mercer patiently. “And so are you. You saw it in the ‘O' book. I found it on your desk.”

Silence again. Then Clark said, “Yes, I remember now. Perhaps you're all wrong about what happened to her. There's no direct evidence, after all.”

“No.”

“Perhaps she did pack up her things herself, and go up to London. And came back later and got herself killed.”

“Why should she do that?”

“I've no idea. But I'd rather believe that than believe that Dick Rollo was accessory to a murder.”

“I don't think it appeared to him like that at all. I think all he was asked to do was to tell an innocent-sounding lie. By someone he had every reason to oblige. I could make up half a dozen stories that would sound convincing—convincing enough to someone who wanted to be convinced. Let's say Maureen Dyson had gone off with a married man. An old friend of mine. If the hue and cry could be held off – if people could be brought to believe, just for a few days, that she'd gone up to London – it would give me time to sort the tangle out. That's all I want. Right? But, as the days went by, and became weeks, and months, I picture Rollo getting anxious. He couldn't go back on his written report. But I'll tell you something he
did
do. He made two trips up to Missing Persons, personally, to institute enquiries.”

“He didn't tell anyone here about that.”

“No. He didn't tell anyone. The suspicion was inside him, growing every day. Every police instinct he had told him he'd been conned into something serious. That's why he gave way so easily when the crunch came. Do you think he'd have behaved like that if he hadn't had a guilty conscience? An obvious frame-up! He'd have come storming in here and shouted the house down. But he couldn't do it. He was half rotten already.”

“Your imagination does you credit,” said Clark bitterly. “There's just one tiny detail you've omitted. Who is this man who watched Sweetie Hedges drown? Who murdered Maureen Dyson and drove Rollo to suicide?”

“I've been accused once,” said Mercer, with the half-smile which Clark found maddening, “of shooting my mouth off. This time, I'd rather be absolutely certain before I start naming names.”

“But when you
are
certain, you will tell me?”

The silence before Mercer said, “Yes. Of course,” was so long that it would have been almost less rude if he had said, “No.”

There was a knock on the door. Massey put his head in. When he saw Mercer he started to back out. Clark said, very loudly, “Come in, Massey. Mercer and I have quite finished.”

“It's your decision of course,” said Murray Talbot. “But I think you'll have to investigate. You can't afford to let a situation like that get out of hand.”

“No,” said Superintendent Clark. “But I wish we had something a little more definite to hang it on.”

“Let's sum up. First, he's becoming very friendly with Jack Bull. Nothing wrong with that—in itself. Jack's a good chap. But one wants to keep men like that at a proper distance. Not to spend the whole night boozing with them.”

“Agreed.”

“Then, when Massey looks like being on to that petrol pump attendant, Johnno, Mercer calls him off, at a rather critical moment.”

“I'd say it's pretty clear what Johnno was up to. He was off to flog the stuff he'd been stealing. Probably to his regular fence. It was bad luck that he lost him. Next time we'd probably have located him
and
we should have had our hands on the receiver.”

“That's going to take some explaining away. Let me top your glass up. I'm looking after the house tonight. Maggie's out at her French class. Right. Next, you've had this anonymous letter. Nothing to show where it came from?”

“Nothing at all. Block capitals, written on cheap notepaper. ‘If you want to know where Mercer keeps his wad, ask Mr. Moxon at the shop in Cranbourne Street.' “

“Have you done anything about that?”

“We only got the tip-off this evening. We know Moxon's. It's a newspaper and tobacco shop. We've nothing against Moxon. Massey's going over tomorrow to spy out the land.”

“Do you think Mercer's taking money on the side?”

“He seems to have enough of it. Whenever he opens his notecase, I'm told, it's bulging with fivers.”

“Could be bluff,” said Talbot. “I remember a young officer in my regiment who was like that. It turned out that there was one fiver on top and a lot of lavatory paper underneath.”

Clark laughed, and then said, “The money side would be the only real proof. He banks with the London and Home Counties. If we could get a sight of his pass-sheet it would probably clinch it.”

“You'd need a judge's order to make the bank open its books.”

“And we shouldn't get it.”

“No. All the same, there might be another way. I've known Derek Robbins, the chief cashier, for twenty years. Derek and I play golf most Saturdays. If I told him the whole story, in confidence, he might be prepared to cut a corner for us. He couldn't do it officially, of course. But he might let me have the information.”

“Verbally—”

“Of course. He couldn't do it officially. The manager would be bound to be sticky.”

“And you could pass it on to me, if it seemed to indicate—”