No Comebacks (19 page)

'Oh, I'm so glad, so relieved. But tell me, of the various men against whom this couple had evidence that could substantiate blackmail, they must have tried it on someone.'

'No doubt they have,' said the sergeant, rising to leave. 'And no doubt various police officers, at the request of Scotland Yard, are interviewing the score or more of gentlemen who figure in those photographs. Doubtless these inquiries will elicit the names of all those who had already been approached for money by the time our investigation started.'

'But how would you know who had, and who hadn't?' asked Mr Nutkin. 'After all, a man might have been approached, and have paid, but might be too frightened to let on, even to the police.'

Sergeant Smiley nodded down at the insurance clerk. 'Bank statements, sir. Most men in a small way only have the one or two bank accounts. To raise a large sum, a man would have to go to his bank, or sell something of value. There's always a trace left.'

By now they had reached the front door.

'Well, I must say,' said Mr Nutkin, 'I admire the man who went to the police and exposed these scoundrels. I only hope that if they had approached me for money, as doubtless they would sooner or later, I would have had the courage to do the same. By the way, I won't have to give evidence, will I? I know it's all supposed to be anonymous, but people can find out, you know.'

'You won't have to give evidence, Mr Nutkin.'

'Then I pity the poor man who exposed them, and who will have to,' said Samuel Nutkin.

'Nobody on that list of compromised gentlemen will have to give evidence, sir.'

'But I don't understand. You have exposed them both, with the evidence. Surely you will make an arrest. Your investigations ...'

'Mr Nutkin,' said Sergeant Smiley, framed in the door, 'we are not investigating blackmail either. We are investigating murder.'

Samuel Nutkin's face was a picture. 'Murder?' he squeaked. 'You mean they have killed somebody as well?'

'Who?'

'The blackmailers.'

'No, sir, they haven't killed anybody. Some joker has killed them. The question is: who? But that's the trouble with blackmailers. They may have blackmailed hundreds by now, and eventually one of their victims traced them to their hideout. All their business was probably by telephone from public booths. No records are kept except the incriminating evidence against the present victims. The problem is: where to start?'

'Where indeed?' murmured Samuel Nutkin. 'Were they ... shot?'

'No, sir. Whoever did it simply delivered a parcel to their door. That's why whoever it was must have known their address. The parcel contained a cashbox with a key apparently taped to the lid. When the key was used the lid flicked open from the pressure of what the lab boys have established was a mousetrap spring, a brilliantly clever anti-handling device was activated and the bomb blew them both to bits.'

Mr Nutkin gazed at him as though he had descended from Mount Olympus. 'Incredible,' he breathed, 'but where on earth would a respectable citizen get a bomb?'

Sergeant Smiley shook his head.

'Nowadays, sir, there's far too much of it about, what with the Irish and the Arabs and all them foreigners. And there's books about it. Not like in my day. Nowadays, given the right materials, almost any sixth-form chemistry student could make a bomb. Well, good night, Mr Nutkin. I don't think I shall be troubling you again.'

The following day in the City Mr Nutkin dropped in at Gusset's the frame-makers and collected the photograph that had been in their hands for the past fortnight. He had arranged for them to keep it until he called, and to fit a new frame to replace the old. That evening it was back in its pride of place on the table beside the fire.

It was an old photograph depicting two young men in the uniform of the Royal Army Engineers bomb disposal unit. They were sitting astride the casing of a German 'Big Fritz' five-ton bomb. In front of them on a blanket lay the scores of components that had once made up the six separate anti-handling devices fitted to the bomb. In the background was a village church. One of the young men was lean and lantern-jawed, with a major's crowns on his shoulders. The other was plump and round, with spectacles on the end of his nose. Beneath the photograph was the inscription: 'To the Bomb Wizards, Major Mike Halloran and Corporal Sam Nutkin, with grateful thanks from the villagers of Steeple Norton, July 1943.'

Mr Nutkin gazed at it proudly. Then he snorted.

'Sixth-formers indeed.'

USED IN EVIDENCE

'YOU ARE NOT OBLIGED to say anything, but anything you say mil be taken down and may be used in evidence,'

Part of the wording of the official caution used in the British and Irish police forces by the cautioning officer to the suspect.

The big police car slid to a halt by the kerb some fifty feet from where the cordon spanned the street to keep the bystanders back. The driver kept the engine running, the wipers flicking rhythmically across the screen to push away the insistent drizzle. From the rear seat Chief Superintendent William J. Hanley looked forward through the glass to the groups of watchers outside the cordon and the knots of irresolute officials beyond it.

'Stay here,' he told the driver, and prepared to get out. The driver was pleased; the inside of the car was snug and warm and, he reasoned, this was no morning to be walking up and down a slum street in the drifting rain. He nodded and cut the engine.

The precinct police chief slammed the door after him, hunched himself deeper into his dark blue overcoat, and walked purposefully towards the gap in the crowd barrier where a damp police officer watched over those who entered and left the cordoned area. Seeing Hanley he brought up a salute, stepped aside and let him pass through.

Big Bill Hanley had been twenty-seven years a policeman, starting by pounding the cobbled alleys of the Liberties and rising through the ranks to his present status. He had the build for it, over 6 feet and 1 inch of him and built like a truck. Thirty years before, he was rated the best lock forward that ever came out of Athlone County; in his green Irish jersey he had been part of the best rugby football team the country had ever produced, the team that Karl Mullen led to victory three years running in the Triple Crown and that wiped the floor with the English, the Welsh, the Scots and the French. That had not done his promotion chances any harm either, when he joined the force.

He liked the job; he got satisfaction from it, despite the poor pay and the long hours. But every job has its tasks that no one can enjoy, and this morning had brought one of them. An eviction.

For two years, the Dublin city council had been steadily demolishing the rash of tiny, back-to-back, one room up and one room down houses that formed the area known as the Gloucester Diamond.

Why it had ever been called that was a mystery. It had none of the wealth and privilege of the English royal house of Gloucester, nor any of the expensive brilliance of the diamond. Just an industrial slum lying behind the dockland zone on the north shore of the Liffey. Now most of it was flat, its dwellers rehoused in cubic council apartment blocks whose soul-numbing shapes could be seen half a mile away through the drizzle.

But it lay in the heart of Bill Hanley's precinct, so this morning's business was his responsibility, much as he hated it.

The scene between the twin chains of crowd barriers that cordoned the centre section of what had once been Mayo Eoad was as bleak that morning as the November weather. One side of the street was just a field of rubble, where soon the earth-movers would be at work, gouging out fresh foundations for the new shopping complex. The other side was the centre of attention. Up and down for hundreds of feet not a building stood. The whole area was flat as a pancake, the rain gleaming off the slick black tarmac of the new two-acre car park destined to house the vehicles of those who would one day work in the intended office blocks nearby. The entire two acres was fenced off by a 9-foot-high chain-link fence; that is to say, almost the whole two acres.

Right in the centre, facing onto Mayo Road, was one single remaining house, like an old broken stump of tooth in a nice smooth gum. Either side of it the houses had been torn down, and each side of the remaining home was propped up with thick timber beams. All the houses that had once backed onto the sole survivor had also gone and the tarmac tide lapped round the house on three sides like the sea round a lone sandcastle on the beach. It was this house and the frightened old man who sheltered within it that were to be the centre of the morning's action; the focus of entertainment for the expectant groups from the new apartment blocks, who had come to see the last of their former neighbours being evicted.

Bill Hanley walked forward to where, directly opposite the front gate of the lone house, stood the main group of officials. They were all staring at the hovel as if, now that the-moment had finally come, they did not know how to go about it. There was not much to look at. Fronting the pavement was a low brick wall, separating pavement and what purported to be the front garden: no garden at all, just a few feet of tangled weeds. The front door stood to one side of the house, chipped and dented by the numerous stones that had been flung at it. Hanley knew that behind the door would be a yard-square lobby and straight ahead the narrow stairs that led up. To the right of the lobby would be the door to the single sitting room, whose broken, cardboard-stuffed windows flanked the door. Between the two was the passage running to the small, filthy kitchen and the door leading to the yard and the outside privy. The sitting room would have a tiny fireplace, for the chimney running up the side of the house still jutted to the weeping sky. Behind the house, Hanley had seen from the side view, was a back yard wide as the width of the house and 25 feet long. The yard was fringed by a 6-foot-high timber plank fence. Inside the yard, so Hanley had been told by those who had peered over the fence, the bare earth was slick with the droppings of the four speckled hens the old man kept in a hutch at the foot of the yard, up against the back fence. And that was it.

The city council had done its best for the old man. There had been offers of rehousing in a bright, clean, new council flat; even a small house of his own somewhere else. There had been social workers, and relief workers, and church workers round to see him. They had reasoned and cajoled; given him deadline after deadline. He had refused to move. The street had come down around him and behind him and in front of him. He would not go. The work had gone on; the car park had been levelled and paved and fenced on three sides of him. Still the old man would not shift.

The local press had had quite a field day with the 'Hermit of Mayo Road'. So had the local kids, who had pelted the house with rocks and mud balls, breaking most of the windows while the old man, to their intense delight, shouted obscenities at them through the shattered panes.

Finally, the city council had issued its eviction notice, the magistrate had given permission for forcible removal of the occupant, and the might of the city had ranged itself before the front door on a wet November morning.

The chief housing officer greeted Hanley. 'Unpleasant business,' he said. 'Always is. Hate these evictions.'

'Aye,' said Hanley, and scanned the group. There were the two bailiffs who would do the job, big, burly men looking embarrassed. Two more from the council, two of Hanley's own policemen, someone from Health and Welfare, a local doctor, an assortment of minor officialdom. Barney Kelleher, the veteran photographer from the local newspaper, was there with a beardless young cub reporter in tow. Hanley had good relations with the local press and a friendly if guarded relationship with its older servants. They both had jobs to do; no need to make a guerrilla war out of it. Barney winked; Hanley nodded back. The cub took this as a sign of intimacy.

'Will you be bringing him out by force?' he asked brightly.

Barney Kelleher shot him a look of venom. Hanley swivelled his grey eyes to the sprog and held the gaze until the young man wished he had not spoken.

'We will be as gentle as we can,' he said gravely. The sprog scribbled furiously, more for something to do than because he could not remember such a short sentence.

The magistrate's order specified nine o'clock. It was two minutes past nine. Hanley nodded to the chief housing officer.

'Proceed,' he said.

The council officer approached the door of the house and knocked loudly. There was no answer.

'Are you there, Mr Larkin?' he called. No answer. The official looked back at Hanley. Hanley nodded. Clearing his throat, the official read out the eviction order in a voice loud enough to be heard inside the house. There was no answer. He stepped back to the group in the road.

'Will we give him five minutes?' he asked.

'Very well,' said Hanley. Behind the crush barrier a murmur started among the growing crowd of former dwellers in the Gloucester Diamond. Finally one at the back became bolder.

'Leave him alone,' called the voice. 'Poor old man.'

Hanley strolled leisurely over to the barrier. Without haste he walked down the line of faces, staring into the eyes of each. Most looked away; all fell silent.

'Is it sympathy you'd be giving him?' asked Hanley softly. 'Was it sympathy that broke all his windows last winter and himself freezing in there? Was it sympathy that had him pelted with stones and muck?' There was a long silence. 'Hold your hour,' said Hanley and walked back to the group by the front door. There was silence behind the barrier. Hanley nodded to the two bailiffs who were staring at him.