The Key to the Case Read online

  ‘Easy, Milo,’ I said. ‘I could have you unconscious in twenty seconds. It’s a trick we learn in the police.’ We also learn to lie when necessary. His neck was too thick for my fingers. ‘I’m going to let you go now. Will you behave? Nod once for yes.’

  I laughed, released him, and stood back. He massaged his throat. ‘You’re a rough bugger, Patton.’

  ‘I need to be. Shall I tell you how I see it?’ He stared at me blankly, so I carried on. ‘When you got home he was alive. You gave him your coded buzz, and he let you in. You strangled him with the rope you used for hanging him. Then you fastened up your front door again, went round by way of the back door, and smashed in the front one just as you’ve described. Then you went through and locked the back door again. Now tell me why it couldn’t have been you.’

  He growled something, fished a whisky bottle from a deep drawer of the desk, splashed some in a glass and threw it down his throat. He didn’t offer me any.

  ‘Do you still insist it was murder?’ I asked. It was the testing question.

  ‘It was murder, damn you,’ he growled. ‘An’ not by me.’

  ‘Then will you please persuade me why somebody might have been let in by Bryan, somebody who would kill him then calmly wait for you to come home? And tell me why they would wait?’

  He turned away, kicked the drawer shut, and threw the glass at the wall. ‘There’s somebody.’

  ‘Is there? Is there indeed?’

  ‘There bloody is. My wife, Francine. He would let his mother in, wouldn’t he?’

  Now it was I who was shocked. Or had it been an empty and defiant gesture? ‘And she would strangle him? His mother?’

  ‘She hated him.’ He glared at me, challenging me to dispute it. ‘Positively hated. At the end.’

  ‘You mean—the end being the rape and murder?’

  ‘Yes.’ He bit it off.

  ‘Hated him enough to return to Aces High with the deliberate intention of killing him?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she would.’

  I groaned, way down inside. ‘And why...heavens, Milo, you must be off your head...why would she not simply have left the house afterwards? Why hang around? It’s preposterous. To kill you? No...no, you couldn’t mean that. What possible reason could she have for waiting, when she’d already faked it as suicide by hanging him in the bathroom?’

  Now he was confident, was suddenly aware, from his deep knowledge of his beloved spouse and her apparently warped personality, exactly why she would wait.

  ‘To watch me suffer. To stand there in the dark and hear me panic. To watch me in tears over that phone. Wait? Of course she would wait! She wouldn’t be able to drag herself away. Not likely, the bitch. There’s a word...yeah...sadist. That’s her. Oh yes, she’d wait till doomsday for the pleasure of seeing what she’d done to me.’

  By that time, he was pounding his desk with his fist. It was an idea that had been building up in the gaseous contents of his mind, waiting for a spark to ignite it. I had provided the spark, and it now exploded forward, flushing his face and neck, flexing the muscles across his shoulders, and completely, for the moment, overwhelming him. Then for a couple of seconds he was silent, head down, until he straightened and ran a finger round his collar. From somewhere he found the parody of a dignity his bulk alone had never inspired, and for some reason the result was pitiful.

  ‘I’ve got to thank you, Mr Patton.’ His voice was thick and he cleared his throat. ‘I oughta have seen it. You’ve done me a favour.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing, Milo.’ Oh yes, I had. I’d chopped the top off a volcano.

  ‘I’ll know what to do now.’ He nodded solemnly at me.

  I stared at him. His eyes were glazed, and I knew he was no longer seeing me. I edged past. He didn’t notice. There seemed no point in wishing him goodnight.

  There was no sign of Ronnie at the bar. The man in the white jacket was chatting amicably with the barman. Everything was normal. I went over and touched Amelia on the shoulder. She looked round, in her eyes the gleam of a punter who is winning. I’d caught her on the verge of addiction.

  ‘Have you finished?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Finished. And I think, if you don’t mind, we’d better get out of here.’

  ‘Of course.’ She gathered herself together and I helped her carry her chips. Quietly, she cashed them in, and we were outside in the dark before she whispered, ‘Richard, I’ve won fifty pounds!’

  ‘Well...fancy that.’

  I didn’t know how it had been done, and I didn’t want to know, but it had been a sweetener, my fee for helping Milo with his problem. I hoped the decision he’d come to was worth it to him. Call it a fee, if you like, but to me it was a bribe. To do what? To keep my mouth shut, and look the other way when his wife was found dead? But that presupposed he’d had that idea all along, and he’d needed me, not to produce it from thin air, but to eliminate all the other possibilities.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Let’s get home, shall we?’

  I couldn’t wait to get away from there, but my hand on the car door seemed to produce, magically, a further problem.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Mr Patton,’ said Ronnie Cope from the shadows.

  ‘That surprises me, Ronnie.’

  He edged round, obstructing the door.

  ‘That alibi...’

  ‘Where did you claim you were, at the time of this aggravated burglary of yours?’

  ‘It wasn’t mine!’

  ‘Whoever’s it was, then. Where were you?’

  ‘Here. Milo’s. I kind of work for him.’

  I glanced at Amelia. Her face was a sickly hue in the green neon lighting, but I could see her lips were puckered, and that she seemed amused.

  ‘I’ve heard about this work, Ronnie, and it doesn’t sound like good alibi material to me. In and out all the while...“What,” they’d say, “our Ronnie? Heaven knows—he’s in and out all the time.” That sort of thing. All you seem to do is flit backwards and forwards, leading in the sheep.’

  ‘Y’ don’t have to be funny!’ he grumbled, but giving me my head because he had to.

  ‘I agree. It’s not funny at all. Not for you, anyway. Believe me.’

  ‘You’re no bloody help...’

  ‘Ronnie.’ I put a hand on his shoulder in commiseration. ‘Ronnie, if you’d spent all evening sitting on Milo’s knee, he’d swear on a pile of roulette chips that he hadn’t seen you.’

  ‘He what!’

  ‘A man in a white jacket, Ronnie. Five ten-pound notes. We picked you up on his video. Close-up.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘Got your car here?’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘Then get moving, man, and fast.’ I tightened my grip on his shoulder and eased him free of the door.

  ‘He owes me money,’ Ronnie tried.

  I shook my head, rejecting that as a valid argument. ‘You’d be safer behind bars, you know. Listen...I’m seeing the Chief Inspector tomorrow. The subject won’t please him, but I’ll ease it in.’

  ‘Leggo! I’ve gotta move.’

  ‘Where will I find you? Still at the cottage at Darnley? Still use the White Hart, do you?’

  ‘I’ve moved.’

  ‘All right. Where are you now? In case I get any good news for you. Or bad. Where do I contact you?’

  He was now worried and impatient, his eyes darting past me to the entrance doors. ‘Aw hell! It’s Manson Towers, G7. Lemme go, will you? It’s Willenhall way.’

  I released his arm. He faded into darkness like a prowling fox.

  We got in the car, allowed Ronnie’s small Citroën to get clear, then quietly I followed.

  Amelia was silent for a whole mile. Then: ‘You were very severe with him, Richard.’

  ‘So I was.’

  ‘But you’d really like to help him, wouldn’t you?’

  I thought about that. Perhaps I would. Compared with potentially violent
villains such as Milo, Ronnie wasn’t really bad. Now he was linked to this unsavoury mess in some way—at least, he was associated with Milo. That couldn’t be good for anybody.

  ‘I suppose I would,’ I said.

  She touched my arm. Amelia has great sympathy with waifs and strays. She seemed to accept Ronnie as such, a waif who’d strayed from the straight and narrow. A silence built up until it was uncomfortable.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything in this to interest you, my love,’ I said at last, having made up my mind. ‘This Milo Dettinger affair is becoming very unpleasant. Even dangerous. I don’t think you ought to get yourself involved.’

  ‘Do I get a choice?’ she asked meekly. This was an ominous sign.

  ‘Unpleasant,’ I expanded, hoping to arrive at a satisfactory agreement with her, ‘in its meaning: revolting, obnoxious.’ I paused, unable to find any more synonyms.

  ‘Richard!’ she protested. Then, more quietly, ‘You can tell me, you know.’

  In the worst possible conditions, I therefore told her. So much for putting it off! I told her, when I was in no position to walk about and gesticulate, when I couldn’t watch her reactions and expressions, when I couldn’t modulate my voice because the general surround was of road and engine noise. When I couldn’t, should occasion arise, whip her into my arms and stifle any outcry, I told her—and therefore in a flat and toneless voice.

  ‘This thing I’m involved with starts with a suicide. Milo’s son. It goes on to include rape. The son had been in prison for three rapes, and came out again on remission. Then there was another...another rape, but this time it included murder. Rape and a killing. And the son was found hanged in the bathroom. The verdict was suicide. They reckoned he was frightened to death, because everybody in the district—’

  ‘Richard!’

  The protest came just as I’d drawn to a halt at a road junction. I had time to glance sideways. Her eyes, catching the headlights of a car crossing in front, were wide and horrified above the fingers of both hands.

  I turned into the traffic stream. ‘You can see...I didn’t want you to...it’s not the sort of thing...’

  Silence. I didn’t dare look.

  ‘I hate it,’ I said. ‘I hate Milo Dettinger and I’d probably have despised the son. I’d love an excuse to drop it, right now. Tell me I must, love. It’s all you’ve got to do. It’d keep you out of it, and I can’t bear...oh hell, just say it.’

  Bridgnorth was coming up. I signalled to turn left over the new bridge. When we were rolling ahead steadily again I found time to cast her another glance. You can’t trust these orange lights; she seemed grey, drained.

  ‘What,’ she whispered, ‘are you expected to do?’

  ‘Milo wants it proved to be murder,’ I babbled, trying to get this out without interruption, ‘and I can’t do that unless I can produce a murderer, and I know how much you would hate that, and the only two people who could’ve done it are the boy’s father or his mother, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.’

  Amelia never ceases to amaze me. ‘Poor lad,’ she said quietly. Then, leaning against my shoulder and hugging my arm, so that I couldn’t have changed gear if I’d wanted to, she said, ‘Poor Richard. Of course you’ll have to go on with it.’

  ‘Then you’d better, in that event, keep out of it,’ I said, relieved that I’d been able to bring about this situation. It hadn’t been as bad as I’d expected.

  ‘Of course I can’t keep out of it, you idiot. How can you manage on your own?’

  It wasn’t really a question, so I said nothing. She sat back and was silent. The next time I looked at her she was sitting with a stiff and drawn grey face. But now the streetlights were white.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I allowed for the fact that Ken would have received prior notice. Cath would surely have mentioned that she was meeting Amelia, and he would know I’d not be far away, and that I’d ask myself: why not visit the station? Consequently, he had left a message at the desk in case I did.

  This was the new police building, which hadn’t been completed when I’d worked the district. We had all grumbled about the old, tired and cramped building, but quite frankly I would have found it difficult to operate in this clinical and impersonal warren. But I supposed you could get used to it. Concentrate on the job and you don’t become affected by your surroundings. Affected by the job itself, yes. It’s part of being a policeman, to take it all and shrug it off, not allowing it to creep into your soul; to be hard enough to exclude it. And yet, to retain the elements of humanity without which you might as well not have joined.

  The desk sergeant sent me up. ‘Mr Latchett’s expecting you, Mr Patton.’ It was on the fourth floor. They actually had a lift. Luxuries abounded, doors that remained latched after you’d closed them, radiators that obeyed your instructions, and carpet along the corridors, which deadened your footsteps. Because of this, I seemed to catch Ken unprepared, before he’d decorated his true feelings with social smiles and a bland mask.

  He had been my sergeant in the old days. I had never climbed higher than inspector. I suspect I was too blind to procedure, too independent.

  I had the door open, a grin on my face, before Ken raised his head.

  ‘Can’t you knock...Richard! Hello there. Come along in. Sorry, I’m a bit snowed under.’

  He came round his desk, his hand thrust out, his other fist poised to pound my shoulder, and it was all false. False as hell. I had caught one glimpse of his face before my arrival registered. He had been tired and drawn, yes. One might have expected that. But there’d been a taut line to his jaw and a cold, hard look in his eyes that I’d never encountered before.

  ‘They’ve been heaving you up the ladder, Ken. Well deserved, I must say.’

  He shrugged, circling the desk to return to his seat. ‘A bit of luck here and there, shortages in the right grade at the right times. I just happened to fit.’

  And there had been a lot of complex and slogging work, I thought, with responsibilities he hadn’t previously encountered.

  ‘Lousy furniture they’ve given you.’

  ‘This metal stuff?’ He banged a side panel of his desk, achieving a mournful boom. ‘It’s to encourage you to get out on the job.’

  ‘Seems to me you don’t have time to get out anywhere.’ I gestured to his in-tray, not a tray but a metal container, hard, inflexible, not permitting any odd item to drift away into the wastebasket. I’d had my in-tray better trained. ‘Got time to come out for a pint?’

  He groaned. ‘Richard...please!’

  ‘Please don’t tempt you?’ I laughed at him. It attracted no more than a weak smile.

  He had always managed to remain cheerful, whatever the circumstances. Not now. Cath had perhaps a good reason for being concerned. Something had got to him, burrowing under his skin. Now he leaned back and slapped his pen down with a finality which, previously, might have contained an element of resigned humour, but was now impatient, even angrily so.

  ‘All right, Richard...’ His voice was tight. ‘What is it? When you visit me here it means you’re mixed up in something and you want to pump me for information.’

  ‘I did suggest the pub,’ I reminded him mildly.

  ‘All the same—think back. When you were behind this desk—’

  ‘A different desk, a different rank.’

  ‘What does it matter? The principle’s the same. What would you have said if a member of the public came asking—’

  ‘Is that what I am, Ken,’ I cut in, ‘just a member of the public?’

  ‘Oh hell!’ He ran both hands over his hair, seeming to drag his face into an even more gaunt configuration. He was going thin on top. ‘Sorry. Shall we start again?’ He sighed. ‘In whose troubles have you involved yourself now?’

  I wanted to say: in yours, Ken. But I said, ‘Ronnie Cope’s.’

  ‘Oh...him.’ He eased himself in his chair. There was evidence of relief. ‘We’ve got him tied down and wrigg
ling this time, Richard. Aggravated burglary.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the Ronnie I recall and love.’

  ‘No. But it was. His MO, you know, the quiet and gentle entry. A hole drilled in a window frame...’ He shrugged.

  ‘I know how he used to go about it.’

  ‘And leaving doors and windows open for a quick getaway. But this time he made one mistake. It was the home of a retired army officer, Major Farrington, who sneaked up behind him and waved an empty army pistol.’ He tried out his smile, which was still stiff. ‘Risky, that, as it turned out. Ronnie turned. He’d got a walloping great vase in his hands, and he threw it at the Major. Broke his jaw, broke the vase, knocked him out. Then he ran for it, and stepped on the Major’s hand on the way. Clumsy. But it was aggravated burglary, Richard. We didn’t oppose bail, and he’s been committed for trial.’

  ‘Questioned him yourself, did you?’

  ‘It was Sergeant Rawston’s case. I was busy on...’ He looked down at his desk surface. ‘On something else.’

  ‘Two incidents on the same night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Identification?’

  ‘I haven’t been able...oh, you mean of Ronnie. Yes. Positive.’

  ‘By this army officer, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t interrogate me, Richard, please.’

  ‘Sorry. Ronnie says it wasn’t him. When it came to looking at pictures, the Major, with a busted jaw, said no and it sounded like yes...perhaps?’

  ‘No need to stretch it, Richard.’

  ‘Or when he pointed out his attacker he did it with his broken hand, in which case—’

  ‘Oh...for Chrissake!’

  I stared at him. His response had been bitter and dismissive. In the old days he’d have joined in, building fantasy on top of fantasy, reducing it to the absurd. All the same, facetiousness apart, identity would have been questionable. I had a mental picture of a shadow turning, a vase, which Ken had described as a walloping great one, held in the thieving hands—held up in front of his face! I decided not to pursue this possibility. These were matters to be explored by Ronnie’s defending lawyer.