Sky High (23 page)

Costard:
‘And travelling along this coast, I here am come by chance—’

Constable Queen was not a man who thought quickly or easily. He turned things over in his mind. Scraps of what he had learned at police training school jostled with the loyalty of his class to his class; personal friendship, the dislike of interfering; and, in the last resort, that sort of fundamental honesty that you either pick up at your mother’s knee or stay quit of for life.

He thought about it for all of thirty-six hours before he moved.

Wednesday was just another lovely day in that outstandingly fine autumn. Queen, who had been up and busy since five o’clock, came back to his cottage, kissed his wife, and ate his breakfast in silence. After breakfast he put a call through to Bramshott police station and found out that Inspector Luck would be in his office at ten.

Shortly afterwards he jumped on to his bicycle and pedalled off along the Bramshott road. Nobody watching him pass could have guessed that he was about to unlock mysteries which had so long confounded better brains than his.

‘Well, Queen?’ said Luck.

‘I’ve been thinking, sir,’ said Queen, ‘that I ought to have a word with you if I could. It’s not exactly in the line of duty, and yet, in a way, it is. I’ve been very upset about it.’

Luck sighed, but quietly. It was in just such a way that trouble started. Bribery? Women? Queen’s wife? A nice girl, he had always thought, and more sensible than most.

‘—on Friday night,’ went on Queen. ‘You know I was out with Sergeant Gattie most of the night, watching that house in Melliker Lane where they’d had the trouble.’

‘I remember,’ said Luck (got home unexpectedly early? cuckoo in the nest?)

‘Well, we didn’t.’

‘Didn’t what?’ said the Inspector blankly.

‘Didn’t stand watch together. The sergeant went off. I stopped.’

‘Oh,’ said Luck, softly. It hadn’t penetrated yet, though. ‘Where did he go?’

‘He drove off in the car,’ said Luck. ‘Said there was a girl he was courting over at Mallards Cross, and if anyone said anything, I was to say he’d been with me all night.’

Queen stopped, but Luck did not interrupt. There was more to come.

‘A good deal later,’ said Queen, ‘I took a stroll myself. There wasn’t nothing happening and I was getting cold. I went by the path – that one that goes back from the end of Melliker Lane over the hill to the old barn.’

‘Fagg’s barn,’ said Luck.

‘That’s right. It’s tumble-down now. Stands at the end of a bit of lane that takes you back to the road. I thought I’d go down the lane, and make the whole circuit, see. Come back to the house from the other end. When I stepped into the lane I nearly broke my shins on it.’

‘On what?’ said Luck with sharp suspicion.

‘On the car,’ said Queen softly. ‘Our car.’

There was a very long and very uncomfortable silence. Then the Inspector looked at the watch on his wrist and said, ‘Come along, you’d better show me the place.’

Ten minutes later they were both peering down at a patch of oil. It was the same patch that Tim had looked at two days before, still undisturbed. No one seemed to use the lane. The tumble-down barn was quiet.

‘I wonder,’ said Luck. He walked across and circled the barn. Though decrepit, it proved curiously difficult to make an entry. The window spaces were filled with fallen stone and sealed with brambles. The remains of the door lay across the opening at an angle that effectively blocked it, without offering any suggestion that it could be opened. Luck shone his torch through the gap. It aroused a family of bats.

Queen called from the other side of the barn. There was a small, stone outbuilding. It might have served as a fodder store when the barn was in use.

‘Been someone here more than once,’ said Queen. ‘They been careful too, but you can see the marks. There, and there. And the stones at the end, they’ve been unpiled, and piled again.’

‘We’ll have ‘em down,’ said Luck.

Together they lifted the stones which formed the end of the lean-to. They came away cleanly, without any dust or rubble between them.

‘Been moved more’n once,’ said Queen.

Luck said nothing. He was sweating. He shone his torch into the neat space which they had opened.

It was covered by a tarpaulin, but Luck had a sick feeling that he knew what was under it.

‘Open her up carefully,’ he said.

It was a motor-cycle, a newish Wolf-Ashton, fast and well cared for. The most noticeable feature was the double wicker pannier, like a dispatch rider’s satchel. Luck put gloves on to open it. Rolled up in a canvas hold-all at the bottom was as neat a housebreaker’s kit as Luck in his experience had ever seen. Leather loops holding an array of neat and shining implements. One pair of loops was empty. The rear loop was larger than the front one and they lay about six inches apart.

‘Plenty of room for the loot, too,’ said Queen, looking at the empty panniers.

‘Travelling burglar’s shop,’ agreed Luck shortly. He was re-fastening the straps. Together they pushed the machine back and covered it. Then they built the stones back into position. It was difficult to see that anything had ever been moved.

‘I don’t need to tell you,’ he said, ‘that you keep quiet about this.’

‘Quiet as the grave,’ said Queen.

Luck thought about those two loops, six inches apart, one larger than the other.

‘As the grave,’ he agreed. Another thought was teasing him. ‘Who owns this piece?’ he said. ‘The gate’s kept locked – or meant to be. It isn’t a public right of way. I had an idea—’

‘I could easily find out, sir,’ said Queen. ‘Petch and Porter handle most of the properties round here. I could look at their estate map.’

‘All right,’ said Luck, ‘you do that. And telephone me at the station. If I’m out, go on trying till you get me.’

Queen knew young Mr. Petch well and was shown in without delay.

‘What is it this time,’ said Sam Petch resignedly. ‘Car on the wrong side of the road?’

‘You can help me this time,’ said Queen. He described the position of the barn.

‘Fagg’s Barn,’ said Mr. Petch. ‘It’s still called that, though old Fagg’s been dead more than fifty years. Dad just remembers him. Used to come in here every market day and drink himself unconscious in the “Farmers Glory.” The landlord rolled him under the bar to sleep it off. Wonderful days. Now let me see, I don’t know that I can help. We don’t handle that side of the road now. Masons of Sunningdale took it over before the war. They’d know. Would you like me to telephone Fred Mason?’

Queen thought quickly.

‘I’ll run over and see him myself if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Rather confidential. And could you forget it yourself?’

‘Surely,’ said Mr. Petch.

They walked down through the outer office.

On a table by the door Queen saw a pair of pigskin gloves. They were old-fashioned but good. It occurred to him that he had seen them before.

‘Aren’t those young Mr. Artside’s?’ he said.

‘Nothing escapes our police,’ said Mr. Petch with a chuckle. ‘They are. He was in here this morning making some inquiries.’ When Queen looked at him he added blandly, ‘They were confidential, too, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s inconceivable,’ said Tom Pearce.

Luck thought that it was the first time that he had ever seen his Chief Constable shaken.

‘I’ve got his record here,’ said Luck. Pearce looked angrily at the card, but hardly seemed to see it.

‘Regular soldier,’ said Luck. ‘Then in the Palestine Gendarmerie. Then he came to us under the Special Recruitment Scheme, with his rank of sergeant. Joined us down here in 1947.’

‘Which was when this crop of burglaries began.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Have you checked—’

‘I haven’t had time to do it carefully, sir,’ said Luck. ‘But I don’t think he’s got a shadow of an alibi for any of the other jobs. You remember that one we got tipped-off about and put out a dragnet, but missed him by inches. I’ve checked the duty sheets. Gattie was on leave. And another thing. One of his particular jobs was siting those checkposts.’

‘Yes,’ said Pearce. Like all policemen, the thought of treachery in his own force left him cold and furious.

‘Have you ever had any reason to suspect him before?’ he said. ‘Not this, of course. But anything. Slackness, inattention to duty, petty dishonesty.’

Luck could read his superior’s mind like a book. But he was unable to offer him even this salve to his feelings. ‘I always found him excellent,’ he said. ‘A first class man, able and willing and cheerful. Exceptionally courageous, and strong as a horse.

You remember that job he did over at Ascot when the Glasshouse boys tried to throw their weight about—’

‘He got a citation for that, didn’t he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Blast,’ said Pearce. ‘Blast and curse him. Curse everybody. Curse everything. What the hell are we going to do?’

It wasn’t a question. He didn’t want advice. He wanted a miracle. He wanted the thing never to have happened. Another thought struck him.

‘How old is Gattie?’

Luck looked at the card and said, ‘Born 1920.’

‘Well that disposes of one idea,’ said Pearce. ‘He couldn’t have had any hand in the previous series – unless he was organising them at the age of ten.’

‘Even that won’t do,’ said Luck. ‘He’s shown here as born Trinidad. I believe his father was a sugar foreman. He didn’t come to this country until 1934.’

Pearce said, ‘If the team idea is right, Gattie must have joined up with his predecessor somewhere about 1947. In other words, as soon as he was posted here. If he was in the regular Army – say he joined in 1938 – then the war came pretty quickly after that – then he was in Palestine. You see what I mean? He’d have been kept too busy to organise anything like this. I think he, personally, must have started from scratch in 1947. He was the hands. The other person, who had the experience and the contacts and the know-how, was the brains.’

‘It could have been someone he met in the Army,’ suggested Luck.

The two men looked at each other thoughtfully.

The telephone rang and Pearce hooked off the receiver.

‘It’s for you,’ he said.

‘Me, sir. Queen,’ said the voice at the other end.

Luck listened, and at the end said, ‘Well, that’s that. It’s nice to know. I’d like you to come back to the station and stand by. We look as if we may be having a busy day.’

He rang off.

‘That was Queen, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s been making some inquiries for me. Gattie’s over at May Heath on an all day job. We could take him off it. I thought on the whole we’d let it run and talk to him when he gets back in the evening. Incidentally he’s carrying a knife. I noticed the retaining loops in that pannier affair – about eight inches long. A commando type, probably. There was one other thing’—he spoke with studied moderation—’Queen’s been looking into the question of ownership of the land where we found the motor-cycle. It’s absolutely possible that Gattie was using the barn without the owner knowing anything about it, but I thought it might have given us some sort of line, you see.’

‘Has it?’ said Pearce.

‘I hope not,’ said Luck soberly. ‘The land all belongs to the Clamboys estate. It was bought about twenty years ago. Most of it’s let to farmers, but that piece with the barn and the lane and the spinney lies between two farms, and doesn’t actually go with either of them.’

The two men looked at each other with a wild surmise.

‘Mr. Cleeve,’ said Inspector Luck.

‘Bob Cleeve,’ said the Chief Constable.

‘Bob,’ said Liz. ‘I want a word with you. It’s all right, Rupert, I promise we won’t miss the bus. You can come back on my carrier and we’ll be in plenty of time.’ She looked at the large gunmetal watch that hung from a safety pin on the front of her tweed coat. ‘It hasn’t even left Barnboro’ yet, so relax. Go and find your sandwiches or your catapult or whatever you’re going to shoot your lunch with. That’s right.’ She added, as the door closed, ‘It’s no real business of mine, but that boy’s not right.’

‘Not right? You mean he’s ill?’

‘I don’t think he’s doctor-ill,’ said Liz. ‘But he’s got something on his mind.’

‘He hasn’t been happy lately,’ said Cleeve. He looked rather desperately round the big, rich, empty room. ‘I thought it might be just general unhappiness, and that we’d cure it when he went to school. The good ones are all terribly full, but I’ve pulled some strings, and got him put down for St. Oswald’s. Ought to be all right. Most of the royal family went there.’

‘I think it’s something more,’ said Liz. ‘It seemed to me to start a week or so ago, and it’s been getting worse. And he’s a very reserved child. That’s what makes it so dangerous.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Cleeve. ‘It’s like a time-bomb. You can hear him ticking. The only question is when he’s going to go off.’

‘But Bob,’ said Liz, ‘if you think that, why not do something about it?’

‘Tried a laxative,’ said Cleeve. ‘Worked too well. Had to give it up. Then tried cold baths. No good, either. What’s next? Take him to a psychiatrist?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Liz. ‘Psychiatrists are for old women. The only thing you’ve got to do is find out what’s on his mind and take it off. You’re the only person he’ll talk to. If he won’t tell you, he certainly won’t tell me. But you’ve got to get down to it. It’s important.’

She paused and both of them were silent for a space. Liz seemed to be calculating very carefully what she was going to say.

‘All this trouble we’ve been having in the last few weeks, we don’t want to let it upset our sense of values. We’re most of us well on in life. I’m not being morbid, but does it really matter what happens to any of us? Any good we’re going to do, we’ve done. A year or two more or less, it’s just a matter of statistics, now—’

‘My dear Liz—’ said Bob.

‘I’m absolutely serious,’ said Liz. ‘Do you know, it’s Bill’s birthday. If he’d lived he’d have been sixty-four today. I was lying in bed this morning, more than half asleep, and I suddenly thought, supposing some God stepped out of the Machine and offered me a choice. Bill back, in exchange for someone with all his life in front of him – I think Rupert was in my mind—’