The Weight of Evidence Read online

  So much for Clare Moss and her lies. I sat sourly in the Porsche and told George.

  “Sounds like he was out of that shed by one, to get here for two,” he said. He was speaking with relish, his eyes bright. “You know what we’ve got here, Dave?”

  I wasn’t really listening. The young lady’s words had reminded me that Elsa, my own wife, was away from home. For once I couldn’t go back to her when I got fed-up with a case. And this I didn’t like.

  “What’ve we got that isn’t sordid?”

  “It’s a classic locked-room thing,” he claimed. “Dave, I’ve never come across one before.”

  I was sure he hadn’t. You only get them in books, the corpse found in a room locked from inside, with the gun beside him. Looks like suicide, but we know, because it’s only page 33, that it’s a murder. So how was it done? Oh yes, we’d got our locked room, or the next best thing. What we hadn’t got was the corpse.

  “No corpse,” I said.

  “Perhaps if we look far enough, we’ll find one. After all, we’re being paid to find Fred Wallach. We’re paid the same if he turns up dead.”

  “Sometimes, George, you’re very unfeeling.”

  “What I feel about this character, I might even be pleased if he’s dead.”

  “Let’s go and look at that van.”

  “We missed it, didn’t we. Two heads worse than one.”

  I played with the solid silver key tab Elsa had given me. “I think we’re taking this too seriously and too fast.”

  But what a laugh if we found him sleeping peacefully in the back of his van.

  On the return journey we stopped for a bite and a cup of tea. The café was dismal, the egg-patterned plates not appetising. When I lifted it, the cup stuck to the saucer.

  I looked at it without enthusiasm. “George,” I said, “I’m not enjoying this at all.”

  But George is impervious to atmosphere. He was eating mightily, and was even enjoying the case.

  The van turned out to be empty, apart from the expected clutter of tools.

  But on the passenger seat was a duffle coat and a strange type of deerstalker hat, which Cash assured us Fred Wallach had worn when not working. If this was a deliberate disappearance, he had certainly made a good job of it.

  “No luck then?” said Cash.

  “We haven’t found him, if that’s what you mean,” I agreed. “Any news this end?”

  “Shouldn’t we let the police know?” He was dithering and worried. Everybody’s nerves seemed to be on edge. The cigarette nearly got lit.

  I told him that the police wouldn’t be interested until we could show them a crime. Puzzles they’re not keen on.

  “I’ve got a crime for them,” said Cash. “A little one.”

  George, who’d been poking round the van, lifted his head. “What?”

  “There’s a pane of glass gone from my garage.”

  George looked disgusted.

  “No — I mean...” Cash stabbed at him with the cigarette. “It’s the same size as the glass in the shed. Y’ see what I mean?”

  George said he wasn’t having that. “Now wait, George!”

  “It’s not on,” he said, almost savagely. “Not the removal of that metal window frame.”

  “I don’t think we ought to dismiss it...” I grinned at Cash, encouraging him. He was really trying to help. But George turned away and stared at the shed.

  “Something we haven’t spotted,” he grumbled.

  I was very persuasive. “You said yourself that it’d be awkward for him to unscrew the window frame from inside. He’d have to remove at least four of the panes of glass to get at the screws. So maybe it was too awkward, and he dropped one of the panes and broke it. Then, if he really wanted to present everybody with a magical disappearance, he’d have to find another piece of glass, to make it look good.”

  I was walking at his shoulder as George strolled towards the shed. Cash was at his other shoulder, bouncing in eagerness and licking his lower lip as he mouthed my words after me silently, nodding in agreement.

  “Right!” George stopped. He stood by the shed and stared at it. “That assumes he wanted to create a mystery. Then it also assumes he did it on his own. Otherwise, with any suggestion of outside help, the mystery disappears. From outside it’d be a straight forward job to get the whole window out. So Wallach’d be assuming everybody would take it as a personal effort. He knew he was known as a loner, and everything we’ve heard confirms it. But how, Dave, how the hell’d he do it from inside? There was nothing to stand on. He couldn’t even have reached through that top opening pane, not without lifting himself at least three feet. What was it then? levitation?”

  “Levitation,” said Cash.

  It was becoming dark. The street lamps were on, but nobody had troubled to replace the old-fashioned ones with modern, or repair the broken ones when the local talented youngsters managed to get them with a brick. I thought it might rain. Way behind us the crane was still chuntering away, working with a spot, but I suspected that Ginger was deliberately hanging around for the fun. Certainly there wasn’t much left for him to smash. Away in the distance the block of flats was winking into life. I wished I was home, where the cups didn’t stick...

  I said: “George, I know how it was done.”

  “Gerraway.”

  “But it would need outside help. Not touching the window, though.”

  “It’d better be good, if I’m going to accept that.”

  “Well, at least it’s simple. You’ll agree that it’d have been easy enough for him to have walked out if the shed had been lifted and just moved a few feet. And that the only thing stopping it being lifted is the fact that it’s bolted down.”

  “That’s the only thing,” he said heavily.

  “But we’ve been assuming that it would stop it. We’ve jumped to the conclusion that the shed and the concrete slab, bolted together, couldn’t be lifted.”

  “It’d never be strong enough,” said George scornfully, but there was a lift to his tone.

  “Eight or ten tons of concrete,” panted Cash. “Never do it.”

  “But what if we tried? Eh... what about giving it a try?”

  I looked round for the crane. It was silent, its lights out. Hell! Just when we needed him, Ginger had to disappear.

  “And if it works?” asked George.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought past it. We need the crane, though, and...”

  “I’ll get it,” cut in Cash eagerly.

  “Can you handle it?”

  “I can try. Always wanted to.”

  And Cash stumbled away, his feet scrambling over the loose rubble now that there was very little light left to guide him.

  “Two people,” said George. “If you’re right, he’d got a helper. But who the hell would that be?”

  I didn’t want to pursue it. Perhaps it wouldn’t work. I had seen a large shadow moving along the fence. I thought Segt. Duxford might be prowling again in the street, but the shadow was on our side, and it suddenly headed towards us.

  I couldn’t see his face. There was an impression of a long jaw and a long nose and a kind of easy balance to his movements. I realised that George was suddenly tense. Then he relaxed, because the approach was slow and easy.

  “Philip Ingle,” George told me. “How are you, Phil? This is my partner, David Mallin.”

  He treated my hand with respect, but I could feel the suppressed power in his fingers. He towered over me by three inches or so and his shoulders blocked out the remaining light.

  “Heard he’s disappeared,” said Fingal, his voice light and musical.

  “We hope to find him,” I said.

  “So do I.”

  “We thought maybe he’d heard that, and done a diplomatic bunk.”

  Fingal threw back his head. He had a lot of hair. “That wouldn’t do him any good. I’d find him.”

  His attitude didn’t quite fit what his sister expected from him. Fred fa
r away she seemed to want, not Fingal finding him.

  “That wouldn’t be helping Vera.”

  “Helping me, though.” He bent and picked up half a housebrick and casually crumbled it in his fingers. “You heard how they got me? A police car was waiting when I came out of the window. Not nice, that sort of thing. Fred took it too far. All I was doing was giving Vera the odd bit of advice, and giving Fred the odd nudge in the right direction. But he had to go and be naughty. Running to the coppers. Can’t have that, can we? So I’ll have to find him and tell him nicely. Oh yes, nicely.”

  He dusted his palms together, brushing away the dust. I shuddered, and across the patch the crawler’s diesel burst into life. The headlights slowly swung round until they centred on us, and I was able to see that Fingal was smiling. He nodded to me.

  “Hope this is a good idea,” he said.

  “You heard?”

  “It’s a quiet night. It better be good.” He nodded again.

  We could see nothing of the crane behind the head lights, but even unseen there is something awesome about the approach of one of these huge, tracked cranes. The sound of it was of a monster crunching at the rubble. The diesel beat at the air with its exhaust, and I prayed that Cash, having got the thing going in the right direction, knew how to stop it. If he didn’t we could at least dash aside, because it moved slowly. But his own house was very much in danger.

  At the last moment the engine coughed and died. Cash jumped down, flapping his arms. “Wheeh!” he said, sticking out his teeth. “Thought it’d never stop. Had to cut the engine.”

  “Do you think you can work the crane part?” I asked.

  “It’ll come to me.”

  I looked at him doubtfully. He was an enthusiastic little blighter, but if that shed was going to come up it was going to need delicacy. I couldn’t see Cash doing it. Fortunately, though, it was a quiet night, as Fingal had remarked, and that diesel’s engine was noisy. Ginger had heard it, and came running back, angry and aggressive again. He didn’t seem to need much excuse.

  “Who the devil’s been playing with my crane?” he demanded.

  “Now Dyke,” said Cash persuasively, the first time I’d heard his surname, “we really did need it.”

  I quickly explained what I had in mind, distracting him. Ginger Dyke said: “Well — you should’ve asked me.”

  “I’m asking you now. You said you felt the load come on, when you tried to lift it this morning. Did you get the impression the whole thing would lift?”

  “Too heavy. It’d tear the shed apart.”

  “It’d been strengthened,” I reminded him, and suddenly I wondered whether Fred Wallach had braced it on purpose, expecting it to have to lift the base as well. The idea was startling, but after all he’d braced the bottom edges of the shed, which would’ve been no help if the shed alone was to be lifted. “So what say we have a go.”

  Easier said than done. The chains to the four hooks at the corners of the shed were still hanging over its roof, but of course so was the ring, which somehow had to be looped onto the crane’s hook.

  I asked Ginger. “When you left it last night, did you uncouple the hook from the ring?”

  “No — just left it... everything loose.”

  “And it was like it this morning?”

  “Yes. Ain’t you going to get on with it?”

  Which left it to me, to get up onto that roof somehow and reach from the ring. It was easy, though, with Fingal around. He whipped me up as simple as kiss your hand, and I waved Ginger to take the load.

  We stood and watched. Ginger had got a whole bank of lights mounted on his monster, and the shed was ablaze. The engine grumbled, and throbbed down as the load went on. There was a groan from the wood. “Steady now!” I shouted, but Ginger would never hear. I’ll swear the thing stretched, and then slowly the concrete parted from the ground, one corner slightly low, then that too pulled clear and it hung, two feet from the ground, swinging gently.

  I went and stood in the full glare and waved Ginger sideways, bellowing against the din. “Put it down to one side!”

  “But why?” said George, at my elbow. The point had been proved.

  “Somebody did exactly this, George, in the night. It was how Fred Wallach got out, if it was dropped a foot or two from the fence. But I’ve been wondering whether that was the intention of it — to let him out. You’ve insisted he was a loner. I’m just wondering if there was some other point to it... and I saw something when the shed lifted.”

  Ginger had lowered the shed and its slab to one side, the door now three feet clear of the back fence, but of course still facing it. All the same, Wallach could simply have walked out. The engine stopped and the silence was oppressive. Cash was breathing heavily at my shoulder.

  “All this noise,” I said softly, “in the night. And you heard nothing?”

  “I wouldn’t, would I! I’m on Luminal. Out like a light.”

  A barbiturate — for his nerves, no doubt. What had been revealed wasn’t going to help them.

  The concrete had been laid, with only a perfunctory plank surround, on the brick dust and rubble that the demolishing of the house had left behind. It was possible that a trapdoor would not have been noticed, with all that dust, and the dust had since been absorbed by the wet concrete. But it was revealed now, and certainly it was not as it had been the day before. It was open.

  The two foot by one foot six trapdoor was lying beside the hole it had filled. The hole was very black in the slanted, intense glare of Ginger’s lights. We approached it.

  “A torch,” said George softly, on one knee beside it.

  Ginger said: “That wasn’t there yesterday.” He meant the hole.

  I turned to him. “There’s a torch in the glove compartment of the Porsche. It’s by the gate.”

  “I saw it.” He turned and ran off.

  I crouched down beside George. The smell was appalling. To receive that putrid stink and to stare into blackness was a terrible thing. I could hardly bear to remain there, but George made no move, so I stuck it out.

  “You were right,” he said gently. “I don’t think anybody intended to let Fred out. Probably they didn’t even know he was in the shed. What they wanted was to get at this cellar.”

  “And he’d see that!”

  “Probably. They’d come prepared.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “A tyre lever or a jemmy. They had to lever up the trapdoor.”

  I pointed to it. “There’s a bolt.” It was on the top of the trapdoor, as it lay.

  “It was on the inside.”

  “Come on George. Who ever heard of a trapdoor to a cellar being bolted inside!”

  “This one was,” he said with quiet persistence. “I’ll show you...”

  But it was only talk, empty stuff to cover our feelings. We were staring down at some horror we could only smell, not see. There had to be words to prove the fact of life, living words, nonsense maybe.

  “Here it is,” said Ginger, panting.

  I took it reluctantly. I stabbed the beam downwards, making it an abrupt action. All in one sudden look.

  There was a flight of wooden stairs, crumbling but still usable. It led down into an empty cellar; we could see all four corners. Empty, that is, of anything useful.

  Fred Wallach was lying just to one side of the foot of the stairs. It was going to be Wallach anyway, but there were the overalls, the unmistakable unlovely face, and the protruding ears. It seemed unlikely that he was alive.

  Against the back wall there was lying something else. It explained the smell of putrefaction. I tried to hold the torch steady.

  I spoke without looking round, suggesting that somebody ought to send for the police. We’d got a crime for them now. Ginger was sobbing something in my ear. Cash cried: “I’ll go, I’ll go,” almost hysterically. There was no comment from Fingal.

  George was so still that I thought he might topple in.

  “Let’s get aw
ay from here, George.”

  “By God,” he said. “What’s this then but a locked room? Two locked rooms, one under the other. A shed bolted down from inside, and under it a cellar bolted from inside.”

  “Leave it, George.”

  I stood up. My knees ached.

  “Heh!” said George. “Don’t go away with that light.”

  He’s got a stomach like a rock. I haven’t. I went back a bit, where the air was more pure.

  Three

  “I’ve got to get down there, Dave.”

  “They wouldn’t like it.”

  “Then they can lump it. Let’s have the torch.”

  We had been standing a little way back from the hole, looking at it. Ginger seemed to have disappeared, but he’d considerately left the crane lights on for us. Fingal, too, had gone.

  From where we were standing the rectangle where the concrete base had been was a clear impression in the dust, its shorter side towards us. The cellar opening was not exactly in the centre of the space, but a little to one side. In fact I’d say that the long edge that had held the hinges was in line with the centre of the space. This meant that the cellar door, thrown up and over, was lying to one side of the centre, and the hole was to the other side. The bolt of the trapdoor was visible on its upper surface, the outer edge as it lay there. The hinge line to the trapdoor, although the hinges were now broken away with rust and the violence with which it had been opened, matched up with the splintered wood where the screws had gripped. The trapdoor was, in other words, exactly as it would have been if lifted up and thrown over. There was a clear indication where the bolt had torn through the rotten wood of the frame.

  “If you’re not coming...” said George.

  “I’m coming. I didn’t like the look of that staircase.”