The Weight of Evidence Read online

  “Which,” I said, irritated, “was probably Yankee Dollar.”

  They looked at me.

  “If he was playing with words,” I explained. “Deutsch Marks. Get it?”

  George said: “You’re tired.” He sounded very kind. “And want to go home,” I agreed. “There’s nothing here for us, George. Your eyes went glazed when there was mention of loot. But if we recovered it, that’d be ten percent of nothing — which is what those white things are worth.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “You said it yourself. Why should Coleman shoot himself? And Marks probably took the money from him, you said. By violence, Dave, that has to mean. By shooting him.”

  “But the cellar door, you said yourself, was bolted inside.” I was only pulling his leg a bit, but he took it seriously.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “That’s what I mean by its being interesting.”

  I eventually managed to get him out of there. He seemed prepared to stay all night, drinking Emmett Cash’s whisky and dredging the lonely little man of local gossip. But for one thing, George can’t hold his liquor as well as he believes, and for another, Cash, though eager, knew little more than he’d already told us. But George can be a stubborn man, and he’s so big, and even when I got him out his one thought was to have a word with Ken Duxford.

  “The Porsche’s over by the gate,” I said.

  “Shan’t be a minute.”

  He was considerably longer than that, because now the police were deep in it, the area floodlit and men swarming all over. Duxford was busy, but he was an obliging man. I saw him inclining his head to George — inclining it upwards — and they spoke for about three minutes.

  “What was that about?” I asked when he got back.

  “Just checking. Yes, they’re sure it’s Marty Coleman, and he was shot, Dave, most definitely, and must have died instantly.”

  “I’m thrilled to hear it. I want to phone Elsa.”

  “I just wondered why Ken was expecting something, and why he was nosing around.”

  “He had a reason I’m sure.”

  “The reason’s this Lubin character,” said George with warm satisfaction. “He came out of prison a few weeks ago. Full remission — must’ve been a good boy. And d’you know what, Dave?”

  “What?” I asked dutifully.

  “He’s got himself a flat in that lovely, big block over there — right on the site of his hold-up, the cheeky devil and he’s sitting there and waiting. He might even be watching all this, right now, assuming he’s got a good pair of binoculars.”

  “George — for heaven’s sake! What possible interest could he have in that loot now? He couldn’t use it, even if it’s still around.”

  “That’s what I thought. I had the idea, Dave, that we’d go and ask him.”

  “You must be crazy. We came here... not expecting to stay... you’ll be here all night...”

  “D’you know any hotels around here?”

  “I do not.”

  “The George. Noticed it as we drove through the town, being my name. We’ll book in —”

  “Nothing of the sort. You can see this Lubin character on your own.”

  “You book in then. A double’d suit me. Nothing fancy. I’ll see you there.”

  “I want to phone —”

  “Call her from there, Dave.”

  I said: “Can you walk it, or shall I drive you to the flats?”

  “I’ll walk. You get a better idea of the terrain.”

  Lord, he was planning a siege.

  “I warn you, if she’s home...”

  “Then book me in before you go,” he said amiably. “You’re getting old, Dave. No spirit. Hag-ridden, that’s the trouble.”

  From George, that was good. He’s fifteen years older than me. I stalked off to the Porsche with dignity, then went to see about my key tab. I knew who’d taken it. I just couldn’t understand why.

  Four

  I could have asked Cash where Ginger Dyke was staying while we were there, but I hadn’t wanted to give George any more side-issues to complicate things. So I did a simple tour around the site, up past the fence, and parked in front of Cash’s place. I knocked on the front door, but he opened the side one and shouted for me to go round.

  “Forgot to ask you where Ginger Dyke is staying,” I explained. These crane handlers tour from site to site with their machines, sometimes staying months in digs.

  “How the devil should I know? He don’t work for me.”

  He seemed touchy. Perhaps I’d interrupted something critical, such as the washing up.

  “Thought he could have dropped it out,” I said gently.

  He grunted and jerked down his cap brim. “You gave me a turn. Just nobody uses the front. I did hear him mention the George.” Seeing my surprise he added: “They pick up good money, those chaps.”

  I was going to get two birds in one throw, so I headed there. The centre of the town was quiet. Those little places doze off after the shops shut.

  The hotel was one of those old-fashioned places with a rotating door and a huge chandelier in the foyer. I didn’t trouble to ask for Dyke at the desk. Besides, I was in no hurry to register. I wasn’t yet sure whether it was to be a single or a double.

  The bar was empty apart from Ginger, at a table in a corner. He was sitting with a pint of bitter and my silver ingot beside his glass.

  “Why did you take it? You knew I’d remember sending you for the torch.”

  “I had to talk to you.” He was morose, not looking at me, giving little jerks of his head to keep the chaff from his eyes.

  “I was there. We could have talked.”

  “Talk to you private. Besides, I wanted to know how good a detective you are.”

  “It was too obvious.” As he did not say anything, I added: “You’re in need of a detective, then?”

  “Need somebody. Going to, anyway.”

  I wished he’d stop clipping his sentences. “This has come on suddenly, hasn’t it?”

  At last he looked at me. “As soon as I saw Fred was down there, and dead, oh I knew. You bet.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “Because it’s me they’ll come to straight as an arrow. As soon as they find out a few things.”

  “If you think that, then it’s a solicitor you’ll need.”

  “Solicitors! They just tell you not to say anything and plead insanity.”

  “I still think —”

  “Christ!” he burst out. “A lot of good you are.”

  “Very well. Suppose you tell me why the police would head straight for you.” I was being very cool about it.

  “Because I hated his guts, and everybody knows it.”

  “And everybody else seems to have hated him too. What makes you so special?”

  His eyes were angry. “My woman does. That’s what. Fred Wallach was after her. He was getting her. And I couldn’t do a blasted thing about it. You can’t keep dashin’ off there, not when you ain’t got a car. And he’d got his van. The bastard, he knew I was onto him, and he wouldn’t leave it alone. All them hints, them bleedin’ winks. What the hell’d she see in him!”

  “But you worked with him,” I pointed out. “Day after day. Are you telling me you didn’t do a thing?”

  “You gotta catch ‘em at it,” he said in disgust. “Then I’d have done something.”

  It wasn’t that Ginger had been afraid of Wallach. There was something else, more a fear of making a fool of himself if he committed himself to an open fight with the man. I was beginning to understand the almost superstitious awe in which Wallach had been held. To a man he would have seemed unattractive, almost repulsive. And yet he’d held some spell over women. It’s often like that — perhaps the horrible ones try harder. From this background, it was easy to see how Wallach’s hobby could have been in baiting the men. There’d be a kind of hatred in it. By sly inference he would make the implication, but there would be nothin
g to grasp and twist, nothing from which you could squeeze the truth.

  “But you must have seen her, from time to time. Surely you asked her about it.”

  He turned on me wildly, almost knocking over his empty glass. “What, her! She’s the one. Got eyes for everything in trousers. Oh I know, she’d lead him on. I know how it is. You can see her eyes, in the street, walking along, and the come-on to everybody who looks interesting. Even when she’s with me!” he cried passionately. “Of course she denies it. I’d try to have it out with her but she’d go all uppity and walk away. So I’d catch her up and she’d say nothin’, and I’d say OK I was sorry, and by God in a couple of minutes it’d be them big wide eyes of hers all over the street again...”

  I cut in quickly. “So you had trouble with her. I get the point. So there could have been others.”

  “You bet your life. When I’m not around. Does.”

  “Some people might say she had a right.”

  “She might say that.” He gave a snort of sour laughter. “Clare’s not slow to use her tongue.”

  “Clare?” I asked gently.

  “Clare...” He hesitated. “Moss, she is now.”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “And I bet she give you the treatment,” he flared at me.

  “She threw a vase at me.”

  “You see. Violent with it.”

  It was he who was violent, even wild. Twice that day I’d come across the backlash of Fred Wallach’s sex life, and each time Clare Moss had been the partner. But Vera had handled it differently from Ginger. She was too proud to admit how deeply she was hurt, holding it down, not letting Fred catch a glimpse of it in case he used her own agony against her. Ginger Dyke wasn’t proud. He came right out and told everybody about it. In fact he, like Fred, threw it at his woman, but it was only his own pain he was considering. I wondered if he realised what his overpowering possessiveness could have meant to Clare Moss. The stupid young fool, it might even have driven her to other men, those who could simply give her what she wanted, which would be what a cat: demanded play, comfort and attention, with the basic independence in the background.

  “Violent,” I asked, “with what? Are you even suspecting me of climbing into her bed?”

  “You mean she invited...”

  “If you don’t cool down I’m walking out of here.”

  He swept a hand through his hair. “Well...”

  “Has she ever said —”

  “There must have been dozens.”

  “Has she told you that?”

  “Course not. Always denied it.”

  “Empty suspicions, then.”

  “If I could’ve watched the flat...”

  “Your suspicions of Wallach could have been empty, too,” I pointed out, not wishing to mention the blue van at the flat at two in the morning.

  “Not with what he’d been saying.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that he could have known about this jealousy of yours and...”

  “I’m not jealous!”

  “And was playing it up, watching you squirm?”

  “It’d be like him. But it was for real. Then yesterday... dinner time... he came back with what he called his overnight case. Chucked it in the van, and I was there so he said guess where he was spending the night. That did it. I could’ve killed him there and then. Oh, you can be certain, they all knew what he meant. They all knew I was going to get him, somehow.”

  “And this is what you’re afraid the police will find out?”

  “First thing.” He looked at me seriously. “He was standing there on that concrete slab, looking up at the shed, and I could’ve swung it just a bit sideways, knocked up the release lever, and it would’ve killed him. I’m telling you, I thought of it. Then I saw it was backwards, and suddenly it was a laugh. The great lover, trapped, and the way we all felt about him he could stay there all night. Then she’d be disappointed.”

  He paused, frowning. “And there’s the crane,” he added thoughtfully.

  “Ah yes. The crane. To get him down that cellar, it had to be a crane job, and you’re the operator.”

  “Y’see. You’re thinking like them.”

  “So I’ll continue to do so. And I’ll know, because the police know everything, that Wallach was shot. Now... I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to buy a gun in this country, but I can assure you it’s difficult. There’s only choice members of the community own them. And you’re not in that happy band. You don’t look like a man who’d own a gun.”

  He was staring at me blankly. “Course I don’t.”

  “There you are then. The police will realise that, and they’ll leave you alone. Now, if somebody had knocked his head off with a steel ball, you’d be in trouble. But he was shot. That information’s free and gratis, because you don’t need a detective.”

  “You mean that?”

  “I don’t want to work for you.”

  “You could keep an eye on Clare for me.”

  “No thank you. Before I knew it she’d have me in bed...”

  “So she did give you the come on!”

  “It was a joke, friend. A joke.”

  “It didn’t damn well sound like it,” he grumbled. “But I still want you on my side.”

  “We’ve got a client.”

  “Not now you haven’t. Your job’s done.”

  “All the same —”

  “I’d feel better. You on my side.”

  I’d done nothing to inspire his confidence, but he was looking at me forlornly, a poor lost soul in a world he could not handle. He couldn’t even handle his own emotions. I was angry with him.

  “All right,” I said gently. “A watching brief.”

  I was regretting it when I went out to the desk to book a double room. But I’m a weakling when faced with the embarrassment with which he’d offered me the ingot.

  What I hadn’t told George, because he didn’t need any encouragement, was that I always keep a small bag packed and tucked away in the car for emergencies. I fetched it from the car park in the rear and went up to the room they had given us, tossed it on one of the twin beds, and reached for the phone.

  Elsa had not returned home. A simple visit, a presentation ceremony, and a drive home, that was what had been on the agenda. But Doris, our housekeeper, said she hadn’t heard from her. So I hung up with a mixture of emotions; a certain amount of worry for her, and just a hint of relief that she had not been home, because if she had I’d have been regretting my promise to Ginger even more than I was doing already.

  Perhaps it was because I had no sympathy with his possessive attitude. Pity, perhaps, but that’s an empty, passing emotion. Sympathy is deeper. It implies more than an understanding. Sympathy means you’re going along because you feel for the person — it could be you. There was no sympathy. It could not have been me.

  So there I was, pity tempered with contempt for my new client — our new client, I suppose — when it’d not really begun.

  In my overnight case, along with the crumpled shirts smelling of shaving soap, there’s always a book. Something light. This one wasn’t light enough and did not hold my attention. Besides, I was hungry and the hotel was due to serve dinner, and I was reluctant to go down without George. And he had been a long while. Too long. I decided to go and get him.

  There’s one thing about a devastated area, you can see your objective from miles away, especially when it’s a fourteen storey block of flats. Luxury flats, I discovered when I reached them, when I’d been imagining a council block and Lubin on the state. He had been a small-time crook, had made a hash of his first bank job, and yet he came out to this. He didn’t even have the benefit of the haul. But some people do better in prison than out of it. If he had the right kind of forceful personality and enjoyed inflicting terror, and could gather around him a group who would worship even his low intellect, he could make a fortune for when he came out.

  Lubin was residing in a pink and black tower of elegance. It
sat in its own patch of landscaping with a piece of sculpture on the forecourt depicting a bank manager bowing and scraping, had a doorman who merely bowed, and two lifts so that you can miss the person you’re meeting if he’s on his way down. Lubin was on the twelfth floor. Not quite penthouse class, but the Axminster looms must have taken a new lease of life, and the front doors of the flats were a comforting distance apart.

  I was looking for 127 when its door opened and George came out. I said ‘came out’ instinctively, because George is never ejected. Since he broke his leg he’s been slower, but in practice that’s only meant he’s slower to leave. But not this time. George was being ejected from 127.

  The hall carpet was very deep, so he made no noise about it. He landed on his behind, which is itself well-cushioned. So I knew he wasn’t hurt. I offered him a hand.

  “I can manage,” he snarled.

  I looked round in time to see a square, ugly face peer out of the door, then disappear.

  “George,” I said, “you’ve been annoying people again.”

  He dusted himself off, puffing a bit. “It was all friendly,” he claimed indignantly. “Chummy... you know. What’d I say?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Only that he’s a liar,” said George, raising his eyebrows. “And he must be used to that.”

  Five

  Over dinner he told me how things had gone.

  “He’s got this minder. Name of Greenbaum, Arnold Greenbaum. He used to be a wrestler. Fought under the name of The Lazy Lascar. You can guess. Lazy!” He poked a fork at me. “It meant he hung around in the ring, letting himself get hurt, till he was supposed to lose his temper. Then he’d throw people at the first three rows. Referee, opponent, handlers. Didn’t matter who. Trouble is, it got to be a routine. Four rounds, and the time came to throw somebody out. Me and Lubin, we’d just got to the fourth round.”

  “So Lubin wasn’t offended?”

  “Not him. Apple pie,” he said, peering at the menu. “You fancy apple pie?”

  I’d barely finished the soup. George looked round for the waitress. “Laughed at me. He’s a funny man, that Lubin.”

  “Humorous?”