The Key to the Case Read online

  Nevertheless, I made a mental note that identification ought to be checked.

  ‘I trust your Major Farrington will be positive in court, Ken?’

  ‘Of course he will.’ Ken was briskly dismissive. ‘Made a good showing at the committal proceedings.’

  ‘But you know as well as I do that the job doesn’t sound like our Ronnie. At the mere sight of a handgun he’d pass out. He’d never have thrown that vase, either. Ronnie’s got a great reverence for anything worth pinching. And...’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Have you thought about this? A retired army officer—did he wear glasses? If so, was he wearing them at the time?’ I knew I ought to have dropped it, as Ken was frowning heavily, but I couldn’t leave it alone.

  He had gone quiet, suspicious. ‘He wore specs, yes. In court, he did.’

  ‘And wasn’t wearing them that night?’

  He was irritated. ‘I’ll have a word with the sergeant.’

  ‘Because, you see Ken, Ronnie was elsewhere that night.’

  ‘Oh sure!’ Ken was disgusted. ‘It isn’t pubs any more. In pubs, he’d got mates who’d swear black was white if it’s a copper asking. But this was a gaming club, which is a bit up-market for our Ronnie. He’d got no particular mates there. You’re on a loser with this one, Richard, if you think you can help him.’

  ‘Yes. I know about that. The Ace Of Clubs.’ And then the coincidence sprang up and slapped me in the face. And I hadn’t seen it before! Of course...Milo and Ronnie. A suicide and an unprovable alibi. Oh Lordy me, I was getting slow.

  ‘Yes,’ I repeated vaguely, my mind still turning it over. ‘The Ace Of Clubs. I know it. And I can tell you the owner would swear Ronnie into an early grave if he could, so there’s no help for him in that direction.’ None for Ronnie, but perhaps something for Ken.

  He leaned forward, palms flat on his blotter, having detected something in my voice. ‘Owner?’ he asked.

  ‘The club’s not in your district, though his home is. Your sergeant handled the break-in job, and the local force would’ve done the alibi check. But it’s just possible the club owner’s name hasn’t come to your attention, Ken.’

  His eyes were a little brighter now. I’d captured his interest. ‘You know something, Richard. Out with it.’

  ‘Does the name Milo Dettinger mean anything to you?’

  ‘By God! It was there...there...’

  ‘So I guessed. You were there, at Milo’s house, on the night Milo’s son committed suicide. The aggravated burglary was on the same night? At a guess?’

  ‘It was a Saturday,’ Ken recalled. ‘Saturday the 16th of November. Both of them—I think.’

  ‘But this is lovely,’ I said, laughing. ‘Just think. If it fits, then there’s a chance that Ronnie’s accused of a burglary he didn’t do, for the first time in his tricky career, and he might well have a genuine alibi for that night. And it’s one he daren’t use, because it’s my guess he was mooching around Milo’s house where a very nasty incident occurred, and he’s scared to admit it. The thing fits, Ken. It fits beautifully. He told me—last night, this was—told me Milo owes him money for a bit of touting he’d done for the club. What’s the betting that the debt goes back quite a long way, and that he went to the house to see if he could help himself to something while Milo was safely at his club. Hence, no alibi from there. What d’you think of that? If they were the same night.’

  Ken pursed his lips. He didn’t find it as amusing as I did. But the dark mood had melted away. ‘I’ll check it.’

  ‘Now?’

  He looked, for a second, annoyed with being pushed, then he reached for his phone and muttered requests for the two files. We sat and stared at each other as we waited.

  ‘Cath all right?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. And Amelia?’

  ‘Oh yes. They’re meeting for a cup of tea and a chat this morning.’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘Rotten weather, though.’

  ‘Lousy.’

  Then a young WPC came in with two files, which she placed on the desk. ‘Thank you, Gwen,’ said Ken absent-mindedly. I stared at them, my fingers itching to get in there, whipping through reports, examining evidence, considering photographs.

  But Ken seemed very jealous and guarded about them. They were upside-down to me, and on the far side of the desk. One was slim, its cover almost pristine. This would be the file relating to the aggravated burglary. The other was fatter, battered and knocked about, and gave the impression of being sub-divided. As Ken fingered it, statements and photographs fell out of the pockets. He stuffed them back in, any old way, so that my civilian eyes might not be soiled by the contents, nor shock penetrate my tender system.

  ‘Here we are,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, it does check: the 16th of November, both of them. Ronnie Cope said he was round at Milo’s place till after midnight. Perhaps he was telling the truth for once, though it could well have made his throat sore. Perhaps he was at Milo’s place—but his home and not his club. You could well be on to something, Richard. I’ll have it looked into. I’ll go and see him, or have him brought in. You never know...he might just have seen something...’

  ‘Can I suggest,’ I said softly, ‘that I might go and see him myself?’ This was me being diplomatic, as I intended to go, anyway.

  ‘Now Richard...’

  ‘It makes sense. Listen, Ken. Ronnie’s living at Willenhall now. That’s the far side of Wolverhampton. I looked it up. He’s in what sounds like a high-rise flat.’

  ‘Yes. It’s in here.’ He slapped the thinner of the files. ‘He’s been there since August, so it seems. Moved out of this district—and was I glad to get rid of him! A country village like Darnley to Willenhall, now doesn’t that sound strange to you?’

  ‘Strange enough. And you hadn’t got rid of him, had you? He just carried on working his old patch. That would be natural, I suppose. My point is, he’s asked me to help him about his alibi, so it would be more natural for me to have a word with him, and—’

  ‘A crook!’ He burst in. ‘You put him away yourself a couple of times, Richard. Why would you want to do anything for him? I don’t understand you at all. You’ve changed.’

  ‘And you haven’t?’ I asked, not stressing it, even smiling.

  He had the grace to glance down at the spread files. His fingers twitched. ‘Can you get it said, whatever it is? Where’s my hat! Let’s get that pint you mentioned.’

  ‘In a sec,’ I said. I was in no hurry. ‘Let me just put this to you. If you want to make it an official job, pressing Ronnie on where he really was that night, it would be the Wolverhampton people who’d have to see him. Not you, unless you had him brought in. But that would put him on the defensive, and you know Ronnie with his back to the wall. No...he sort of trusts me. I’m supposed to be helping him, heaven preserve me, so he thinks of me as on his side. So I can pressure him in ways I wouldn’t have risked as a serving copper. And if I get anywhere, then you could have him in. And I’m still capable of taking a legal statement, you know. What d’you say?’

  He grunted, and looked down at the two files. ‘It’s tempting. Better the devil you know...’ I assumed he meant me. ‘All right, Richard. You see him. But go easy—huh? Either tie him down, or leave it before he realizes what we’re getting at.’

  That was better. He had spoken of ‘we’. He was gradually unwinding. His hand reached to flap shut the files.

  ‘While we’re about it,’ I murmured, ‘you could help me with an address or two.’

  ‘Could I?’ His head came up, his eyebrows came down. He eyed me with suspicious disapproval. ‘Addresses?’

  ‘Of the three girls who were originally raped—’

  ‘Now hold on!’

  ‘Allegedly by Bryan Dettinger.’

  ‘There’s no allegedly about it. They identified him. He admitted to all three.’ Now he was firm, his mouth a set line. Could he really imagine I was casting doubt on his investigation?

  ‘I’m sur
e,’ I said soothingly, paying some attention to my pipe because I didn’t care to read the expression in his eyes. ‘A cast-iron job, I’ve no doubt. I’m not trying to upset it, Ken, only getting background. Milo expects me to charge in and prove his son didn’t commit suicide—’

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘One minute we’re talking about Ronnie Cope, and now it’s Bryan Dettinger.’

  ‘Milo reckons he was murdered.’

  ‘He couldn’t have been,’ Ken snapped.

  ‘Though I can’t see how that could’ve been done,’ I went on placidly, blowing down the stem of my pipe, peering through it at the window. ‘So I need to build up a background to it. I’d like to be able to show him what a desperate and hopeless position his son was in. Then perhaps he’ll accept it as suicide, and I’ll be able to forget all about it.’

  It was a persuasive argument, I thought, but Ken knew I could be devious, even when not really trying.

  ‘The three girls...’ he muttered.

  I screwed the stem back in. ‘And the one who was raped and killed.’

  ‘Now look here!’

  ‘Which I’ve no doubt was a cast-iron case as well.’

  ‘Richard,’ he said heavily, ‘I’m not having you picking my cases to bits.’

  ‘Even though,’ I went on, ‘as I understand it, the lad firmly denied that last one.’ I made it no more than a hint of a question.

  ‘He denied it. He could’ve lied his head off, but we’d got a solid case. That time he’d gone too far. You should have been there, Richard, and seen that girl. My God, I’d have tied young Dettinger down so tight he’d never have wriggled out of it.’

  ‘No need to get all worked up, Ken. These days Forensic can be more certain. In my time there weren’t such things as this DNA fingerprinting, of course.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘Which I suppose you did?’

  ‘By God...’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course it was done.’

  ‘There you are, then.’ I laughed. ‘Ken, you always were a pushover. Anybody can get a rise out of you—but heavens, you’re so prickly now. What’s the problem? You had a tight case. Bryan Dettinger killed that woman—girl—however you like to put it, and took his own life. All right: finito. If I can get all the background—and without poaching in your files, Ken, so you don’t have to put your hands on ’em—then I might be able to convince Milo it really was suicide, and he can get that particular bee out of his bonnet. And I can slide out of your life again.’

  He rubbed his hands over his face, ruffled his fingers through his hair and managed a weak smile. ‘You tempt me, Richard. You really do.’

  ‘That’s better. Four addresses, Ken. That’s all I ask.’ I thought about that. ‘And a chat round at the pub,’ I amplified.

  ‘You know I can’t hand over official information, Richard.’

  ‘It’d save me ages with the newspaper files.’

  He tried to stare me out, then he reached for a blank sheet of paper, looked through the files, and wrote down four names and addresses. Then he crumpled it up and tossed it into his wastebasket. He heaved himself to his feet. ‘Where’s my hat and coat?’

  While he was reaching up for them, I was reaching down. The ball of paper was in my pocket when he turned and asked, ‘You ready?’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  He took me to a pub I didn’t know. The police always use the one closest to their station, and the publican had clearly realized, as soon as the new offices opened, that they would constitute the major part of his clientele, there being so many shift patterns that the flow would be continuous. He had therefore renamed his pub the Pig Sty. It would’ve been a gamble, but the police clearly appreciated the joke. Ken was hailed as a friend by the barman.

  ‘We can have sandwiches, if you like, Richard? It’s a bit early for anything cooked. Be my guest.’

  ‘Suits me.’

  When he came across to the corner table, where I was smoothing out the ball of paper, he had a tray piled high with sandwiches and two pint mugs of bitter. Suddenly, such is the power of nostalgia, we were back in the old days, picking over the details of the present case, each of us leading the other into a labyrinth of conjecture. No longer was he Chief Inspector Latchett, jealous of his position and authority and his files, but my friend Ken. His reluctance was not now centred on his official rectitude. It had, I felt, another source. I couldn’t completely understand it, and, as it hid itself deep in his subconscious, I wasn’t sure it would stand up to be recognized, however much I coaxed it.

  ‘Ruby Carter,’ I said, reading the young woman’s name. ‘Presumably a fully grown and well-developed woman. Not so easy to rape and strangle. I gather that Bryan was a bit of a weakling.’ Or had I misinterpreted Milo’s words?

  ‘Not strangled. You’re obsessed with it—Bryan’s own death, I reckon. No, it wasn’t as clean as that. A savage attack, Richard. We guessed she put up a fight—and she was not robust. She was twenty-four, if that matters. Her parents identified the body, Richard, and you know how terrible that is.’

  He put his fingertips together and stared at them, then tightened them into fists. For him, too, it had been terrible.

  ‘Could they tell you anything useful?’ I asked, after a minute of silence.

  He raised his head. ‘They’d barely set eyes on her in the past year or so. She’d been living with a man as his wife. A common-law marriage, they called it. Old-fashioned people, Richard. They had to slip in the word “marriage”. But she’d written them to say she wasn’t seeing him any more. This was back in August, perhaps a bit earlier. They’d hoped it meant she was coming back to live with them. But no. Apparently she’d found another chap. In any event, she’d been seen in the Blue Cow, here in town, by one of their neighbours, and she was laughing and joking with some chap who definitely wasn’t the toughie she’d been living with. A quiet, gentlemanly person, he was described as.’

  ‘Toughie?’ I murmured. ‘Was she the type to hang around with characters like that?’

  Ken shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’

  I wasn’t sure I understood what he meant, but I didn’t take it up. He was becoming uneasy. Something in the back of his mind was disturbing him, and he couldn’t bring it into focus.

  ‘A savage attack, you said.’ I was trying to approach it another way.

  ‘She seemed to have put up a bit of a fight. Beaten unconscious, the ME said.’

  ‘This was where?’

  ‘That small park behind St Leonard’s Church, here in town.’

  ‘It’d be fairly quiet in October,’ I suggested, trying for a mental image.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Arranged to meet somebody, perhaps?’ I felt I was having to drag him along now. ‘The new boyfriend—the old one? Even another newer one?’

  ‘That’s possible.’ He didn’t seem to have a high opinion of Ruby Carter. ‘I got the impression she wasn’t very choosy. Or perhaps it was a chance encounter, which is what we decided. I mean, Bryan Dettinger didn’t fit the role of anything permanent when it came to female company. He was never let out on his own in the town.’

  ‘Let out!’

  He stared with distaste at his sandwich. It wasn’t that he disliked cheese and pickle.

  ‘I’m exaggerating, but it was pretty well as good as that. His father tried to keep him in the house, but he had to leave to look after his club in the evenings—you probably know this—and the lad could then do what he damned well liked. But not, I’d have thought, take on a permanent or even slightly regular relationship with a woman. But Ruby met somebody. There was sex and there was violence. He finished it off by smashing in her head with a chunk of rock. Making sure. Handy, they were. The council were reconstructing the paddling pool—so, rocks all over the place. Vicious, Richard, vicious!’ He was now clipping his words.

  ‘And of course,’ I murmured, ‘if it was young Dettinger, he would have had to finish it off with a murder, because she would ha
ve identified him, and he’d have been in a panic, realizing you’d head straight for him. And if he’d slipped out of the house quietly he’d have had no trace of an alibi.’

  I said this quietly, as a gentle justification for Ken, but it did seem they had jumped to too many conclusions. Anger leads to blindness, and the police are subject to it, try as they may to remain uninvolved. Ken recognized my ploy, and smiled dimly.

  ‘But he beat you to it?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘By taking his own life first.’

  But in that case, Bryan had been in no hurry. The suicide had been more than a month after the rape/murder. Ken must have had some reservation, that he’d hesitated so long to make a charge.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said shortly. ‘That’s how it was.’ He put aside part of his sandwich and devoted himself to his beer. Even that didn’t soothe him.

  ‘You’re sure Bryan’s death was suicide?’ I asked casually, but he didn’t reply at once. ‘Aren’t you?’ I insisted, very, very gently.

  He picked up his sandwich, stared at it, and banged it down again. ‘It was suicide,’ he said savagely.

  ‘But are you certain, Ken?’ Now I was deliberately niggling at him.

  His face was set as he glared at me. I’d never before faced that expression. He said nothing.

  ‘It’s not me you’re savage with, is it, Ken? It’s yourself. Why? Doubts?’

  ‘No doubts,’ he said stubbornly. ‘There’d been threats. If I’d brought in all the people who’d said publicly that they’d murder the young swine, as they put it, there’d have been no room in the station for coppers. Oh yes, plenty of abuse and threats. And he must have felt it in the air, the concentrated hatred. And in the end he beat ’em to it. Scared to death, that’s what he was. And it could not have been murder, with that damned house locked up like a prison.’

  ‘Of course not. And yet?’ I cocked my head at him. ‘There was doubt in your voice, Ken.’

  ‘As you said about your friend Ronnie Cope, it just wasn’t Bryan’s style, that’s my doubt. Three rapes before, with no physical harm involved, except the rape itself, of course. Then...rape and a savage murder! It didn’t seem to fit. If it was fear of identification, he could’ve covered his face—couldn’t he? No need to kill the poor girl.’