Gently French (3 page)

‘A well-turned-out corpse.’

‘Yeah,’ Hanson said. ‘You’d have thought he was worth taking away.’

‘Somebody just wanted him dead.’

‘Somebody like Rampant.’

‘But wasn’t Rampant’s quarrel with him about cash?’

Hanson made noises. ‘So the chummie panicked. Hell, he wasn’t so relaxed when he spoiled that shirt. Perhaps something disturbed him, like a car passing close. There’s a lot of necking goes on out there.’

I grunted. ‘It’ll keep till I’ve viewed the scene. Now tell me something about Mimi Deslauriers.’

Hanson rolled his eyes. ‘It’ll be a pleasure. But if you think she’s chummie, you must be slipping.’

He lit one of his cheroots, long, black, and puffed coarse smoke over my head.

‘Around thirty,’ he said. ‘Blonde. Green eyes. Say thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six. Tallish. Moves like a cat. Husky voice with an accent. Nearly knocks you down when she looks at you. Fancy dresser. Smells like honey.’

‘I’ll recognize her,’ I said. ‘Where was she on Friday evening?’

He leached smoke. ‘In her room. She went up after dinner, after Quarles left.’

‘And stayed there?’

‘That’s what she says. Had a bath and went to bed.’ Hanson’s eyes were dreamy. ‘It’s a hell of a world,’ he said.

‘Any corroboration?’

‘None.’

‘Does the room have a phone?’

‘Not an outside line.’

‘Could she have left unnoticed?’

‘With a lot of luck. You can get down backstairs to the kitchen end.’

‘Does she have alternative transport?’

‘Nothing we know about. But there’d be a rush if she wanted to borrow some. Only it’s crazy, quite crazy. That doll wouldn’t have to murder anyone.’

I threw him an empty look. ‘They did tell you her form?’

He pulled in a contemptuous lungful. ‘Sure, sure. But she got off, didn’t she? That was just her bit of hard luck.’

‘And this would be another bit?’

‘Why not? She’s the sort of dame things happen around. But if she sneaked out and filled-in Quarles, I’ll eat a year’s supply of these things.’

Well . . . he’d met her, and I hadn’t. ‘What was her reaction to the killing?’

‘She was concerned, you could say that. But she wasn’t washing out her hankie.’

‘Scared?’

‘Could have been scared. She was all round me with a lot of questions.’

‘About what you were thinking?’

‘That sort of thing. I didn’t get the impression it was the end of her world.’

‘So Quarles was just another mug.’

Hanson scowled through his smoke. ‘Why should she break her heart over a jerk like that?’

We drank coffee, the canteen kind, then drove out to Mussel Heath. I had seen it before, on a previous case, but just to admire it in passing. The city fingers its suburbs into the edge of the heath, which rises above it in broken lines; from up there the city is mapped below you with its landmarks of churches, tower-blocks, the castle and the cathedral. The heath is a hilly and holey place where you could lose an armoured division. Parts are open, parts scrubby and wooded, with precipitous dells and overgrown hollows. It is criss-crossed by stony tracks, going nowhere in particular, and divided by a road that snakes up to join a ring-road.

We arrived by the dividing road. It rose beside a bare hill-slope, topped by an empty Victorian barracks; passed some pre-war council estates, then wound its way fenceless into high, woody heath. Hanson pulled into an official parking-place; from the far side a track dipped sharply; we bumbled down it, brushing bracken and birch-twigs, and levelled off in one of the dells. Another hundred yards brought us to the hawthorn which I had noticed in the photographs. We climbed out. Hanson pointed to four pegs hammered firmly into the ground.

‘That’s where Quarles parked his heap. A nice, quiet spot for a villains’ conference.’

‘But how would Quarles know about it?’

‘Rampant showed it to him. This is where he gave Freddy the dope. Freddy wasn’t keen on being seen with Rampant, so he picked him up at the parking-place and drove down here.’

‘Does Rampant admit that?’

‘Sure. He’s given us the whole tale as far as the hold-up. Then we know that Rampant called Freddy here for a second meeting. It’s after that when the edges get blurred.’

I poked around. The sides of the dell were fledged with tall-growing birches and sycamores. Where we’d come down was hidden by a turn and the dell came to an end just past the hawthorn. The ground was stony and didn’t take tracks. There were a couple of footpaths leading off. One climbed out at the end of the dell, the other at the side, starting by the hawthorn. I scrambled up the latter. It took me nowhere, just through the trees into open heath. I came down again; and paused for some moments beside the hawthorn, which was in flower.

‘Give me your version of what happened.’

‘Huh?’ Hanson stared scowlingly. ‘There’s only one version I know about. Rampant got Quarles to meet him here, didn’t he?’

‘But then?’

‘Then he’d get in the jalopy beside him, start trying to pressure him to cough up.’

‘Go on.’

‘So Quarles wouldn’t play, so there was a barney and Rampant pulled a knife. If he was planning to put the black on Quarles, he’d have been a mug to come bare-handed.’

‘And all this took place in the cockpit of a Bugatti?’

Hanson held back, glowering. ‘You reckon it couldn’t have?’

‘I reckon there wasn’t much room to draw a knife, and none to use it in the way it was used. Is Rampant some sort of Samson?’

‘Not so as you’d notice.’

‘Then he wasn’t in the car when he stabbed Quarles. He couldn’t have put the knife in once, not reaching round Quarles while sitting beside him.’

Hanson looked savage. ‘So how did he do it?’

‘I think Quarles’ attacker came round this bush. He jammed Quarles’ face into the wheel with one hand while he stabbed his back with the other.’

‘Oh fine,’ Hanson said. ‘Very clever.’

‘Which suggests something vital about the attacker. He is probably left-handed. Is Rampant left-handed?’

Hanson glared awhile. Then he got in the car.

S
O FAR SO
good: I felt now I had earned a look at the Bugatti. We drove back to H.Q. in silence, then I put my request to Hanson.

We found the Bugatti sitting in a corner of the H.Q. garage, reverentially draped in a plastic dust-sheet. Lab had finished with it. Most of Quarles’ bleeding had been soaked up by his clothing. A few smears on the wheel and the white leather bucket-seat had been photographed then cleaned off, while the recognizable latents were either Quarles’ or off-record, probably innocent.

Hanson called over a mech. The mech started it for us and drove it out into the yard. It stood there growling in a chesty way, like a leopard meditating its spring. A marvellous blue shape. Beginning at the rad, an ellipse perhaps borrowed from Leonardo da Vinci; carried on through the delicate humping of the louvred bonnet, completed in the powerful signature of the fish-tail. Ettore had reached for one of Plato’s patterns, and it had come to his hand like a pint pot.

‘What’s the price of a heap like this?’ Hanson asked.

I didn’t hear him; I was walking round it. Whatever Flash Freddy’s sins had been, I felt I owed him gratitude for the Bugatti. The French racing-blue enamel was stove-hard everywhere, no hint of rust or tarnish. The cockpit appointments were immaculately original, so too were the strap-spoked aluminium wheels. The seats were new, but gave immediate conviction that they had been scrupulously copied from the originals. And the note of the engine, a precise, clear grumble, needed no connoisseur to confirm its tune.

The mech gently revved it, bringing in the supercharger. Faces appeared at a few nearby windows. Other mechs, who had been working in the garage, came out to stare at Ettore’s car.

Rampant wasn’t left-handed.

I had ordered coffee before they fetched him to the office. When I offered him a cup, he shifted it to his left hand and then stirred it with his right.

A frightened little villain. Aged about thirty, five-foot-seven, slim build; a blotchy ferret-face, long, lank fair hair and a soupy, unwashed appearance. Dress, a scruffy sweater, poncy jacket, dirty jeans and cheap suede sneakers.

A petty villain; mostly a nuisance; sometimes useful to the villainocracy.

‘You knew Frederick Quarles, Rampant?’

‘Well yes, I had to, didn’t I?’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘Well, I didn’t sort of know him, just met a bloke who was working for him.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, in the nick, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘Yeah, in the nick.’

‘What was his name?’

‘It was Wickey, wasn’t it? Him what was in there for knocking-off cars.’

‘Are you referring to Alfred Wicken?’

‘Bleeding Wickey is all I know. Wish I’d never listened to the frigger. Wouldn’t’ve been here now, would I?’

He lapped up coffee, hands a-tremble. Very scared was Stanley Rampant.

‘What did he want?’

Rampant clattered the cup and saucer. ‘Said I could be a nose for a big boy, didn’t he? Wasn’t no risk, it was money for jam. Just give him a tinkle when I was on to something.’

‘And you tipped him off about the Bryanston wages collection.’

‘Well yes, I did, didn’t I?’

‘Then you actually met Quarles.’

‘Yeah, all right, I met him. I ain’t trying to hide nothing, I’m being straight.’

Straight as a meat-hook.

‘What happened at that meeting?’

Rampant clutched cup and saucer together. ‘Bleeding business, that’s what it was. You can’t make nothing else of it.’

‘Quarles gave you money?’

‘Yeah, for the car—’

‘Just for the car?’

‘Ain’t I bleeding telling you! He gave me the price of a ’65 Jag and a bundle for me, isn’t that right?’

‘How much for you?’

‘He give me a bundle.’

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred nicker!’

I clicked my tongue. ‘That wasn’t much, Stanley. I would have reckoned your cut at about fifteen hundred.’

‘Yeah, but that was on account—!’

‘On account of what?’

Rampant juggled with the cup, got coffee on his jeans.

‘It was on account of what you’d get from the share-out,’ I said. ‘Only there wasn’t any share-out. The two hundred was all.’

Dutt divested him of the cup and saucer. Rampant’s blotches were mottling unhealthily. Too many bellyfuls of crisps and beer and morning lie-ins with the tarts. I let him sweat while I skimmed through his statement, a tiresome document in policese. Then I lit my pipe. He was watching me hungrily; there were yellow stains on his shaking fingers.

‘Want a fag, Rampant?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I want one.’

I nodded. ‘Tell me what happened Friday evening.’

His eyes glazed. ‘You got it down there.’

‘Not what I want to hear from you, Rampant.’

‘It’s the truth, isn’t it?’

‘Not all the truth. Quarles didn’t just meet you for a social chat. I want to know what it was that fetched him there. What you had to say to each other.’

‘But we didn’t say nothing—!’

‘What fetched him there?’

‘I don’t bleeding know! He was dead, wasn’t he?’

‘Then why did you want to meet him?’

‘I frigging didn’t. It was his idea.’

‘He rang you to arrange it?’

‘That’s right!’

Hanson said: ‘You’re not on the phone, you stupid bastard.’

‘So like it was a message, then – yeah, a note—’

‘And you’re a pig’s arse,’ Hanson said.

Rampant breathed fast. I mouthed a smoke-ring.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You’re in a hole, Rampant. Your part in the wage-snatch was worth a twicer. But unless you help us to come up with a better answer, that blood on your sleeve could make it life. Is that what you want?’

‘I never killed Freddy.’

‘There’s nobody else under suspicion.’

‘But I frigging didn’t!’

‘Who’s going to believe you?’

‘They got to believe me!’

‘Shit,’ Hanson said.

Rampant whimpered, screwing himself away from us. Suddenly he looked about fifteen. He’d got thick, ugly hands and bony wrists. Just a nasty little kid with a too-old face.

He moaned. ‘I wanted my pay-off.’

‘Now he tells us,’ Hanson sneered.

‘He was dead. He was frigging dead. It’s true. He was all over blood when I got there.’

‘Just you and him.’

‘I wanted my cut. It wasn’t my fault the job went wrong.’

‘So you put the black on him.’

‘It was what he owed me.’

‘Oh Christ,’ Hanson said. ‘They come thicker and thicker.’

I signalled to Dutt; he gave Rampant a fag. Rampant’s mouth quivered as he dragged on it. Hanson stuffed a cheroot into his own mouth and sat gazing hood-eyed at Rampant.

So now Rampant was giving.

I took him through his statement detail by detail, trying to squeeze out some small fact that would give us a hint, a direction. But Rampant didn’t know much. His contact with the gang had stopped short at Wicken and Quarles; the Bryanston job was his first tip-off: he had stepped up a league to come an immediate cropper. Still, I kept leaning on him. We worked through the wage-snatch and came to his phone-call to Quarles on the Friday. Rampant was sweating. This was the part he’d got to get us to believe somehow.

‘What happened on Friday?’

‘Well, on Friday I saw the papers, didn’t I?’

‘You saw the papers and phoned Quarles.’

‘Yeah, I wanted to know what was going on.’

‘And Quarles was happy about you phoning him?’

‘No, he bleeding wasn’t! He chewed me up, told me I’d got to forget I’d ever heard of him.’

‘Then you threatened to grass.’

‘Well, he asked for it, didn’t he? It wasn’t like he hadn’t got the loot. One of his blokes dodged off with it. I’d read all that in the papers.’

‘Who suggested the meeting?’

‘Like I did.’

‘And Quarles agreed?’

‘Bleeding had to, hadn’t he? I’d got my monkey up. All he wanted was to get me off the frigging phone.’

‘He didn’t shout back at you?’