Full Fury Page 8

  Interest flickered in Neville’s weary eyes. ‘How was she?’

  ‘She said you couldn’t have re-loaded the gun.’ Crowshaw watched him, but there was none of the anticipated reaction. ‘Either you took two guns with you—’

  ‘No. No, I’m… sure I didn’t.’

  ‘Or you re-loaded.’

  Gaines turned slowly to look at him. ‘Why should I help you? I’ve admitted it. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Far from it. Dozens of people admit to crimes. We have to prove it.’

  ‘Then go ahead and prove it.’

  The solicitor had been smart after all. He’d seen the significance of the extra shots. Was Gaines sensing a way out?

  ‘We may have to drop the case.’

  Gaines levered himself on to one elbow. ‘Drop it?’

  ‘Tell the Magistrate we don’t want to pursue it. You’d be discharged.’

  ‘You’re being very frank.’

  ‘Because you won’t admit to two guns.’ Then he went on casually: ‘Why did you ask Lovejoy specifically for a thirty-eight automatic?’

  Gaines stared. ‘That’s what they’re called, isn’t it?’

  Oh good Lord, so Freer had been so nearly right.

  ‘And you went round Birmingham hunting for thirty eights?’

  ‘Only one.’ Gaines lifted his head in challenge. ‘One.’

  ‘Then you must have re-loaded that one.’

  But Crowshaw had lost him. Gaines was tired of it.

  ‘Perhaps I did. If you say so.’

  ‘No—you do. You say you killed him. Then you must have re-loaded, or you must have had two.’

  Gaines shrugged, and Crowshaw left him to think about it.

  In the morning he went straight down to see Gaines, and found him about to shave. He threw down on the bunk the thirty-eight that Gaines had bought from Lovejoy, and a handful of rimless cartridges.

  ‘All right, show me. It’s empty. You load it.’

  Gaines slowly wiped lather from his face. He came over to the bunk. ‘It’s a joke?’

  ‘No. You load that thing if you think you can.’ He twisted his mouth. ‘Then you can blast your way out of here.’

  Gaines gave him an uncertain smile. He picked up the gun and turned it over in his hand, and looked up at Crowshaw as though for guidance. He was so confused that Crowshaw was certain he didn’t know which would benefit him most, to succeed or to fail. Then he flicked the safety catch on and off, and jerked back the chamber.

  ‘Lovejoy showed me that,’ he said.

  But he had no idea where the magazine was. He raised his eyebrows at Crowshaw. ‘You win.’

  ‘Or lose—perhaps.’ Crowshaw scooped it all into his pocket and turned to go.

  ‘Oh… while you’re here…’ It was such a meek little smile. ‘Could you perhaps… change the blade in my razor?’

  ‘Oh, you’re good,’ said Crowshaw. ‘Good.’ But all the same he changed the blade.

  When he got up there, the Chief Super’s attitude was unmistakable. ‘What’s holding you?’ he asked bleakly.

  Crowshaw explained stolidly, through all the interruption’s.

  ‘He’s faking,’ said his chief.

  ‘No, sir. There’s too much circumstantial evidence. I’ll swear he didn’t know how to re-load the thing.’

  ‘Then it leaves you with one alternative.’

  ‘I know. A second gun.’ Crowshaw paused. ‘There’s something convinces me he had got two guns. Something he slipped out, sir. He said, about not having two: “I’m sure.” As though he really wasn’t, and it was worrying him.’

  ‘We’ll have to bring him before the Magistrate. Do you want me to ask for an adjournment?’

  ‘It may not be necessary.’ Crowshaw looked at his fingers. ‘A dozen men, sir. Twenty. I’ll find that other gun before Monday. It’s got to be somewhere, in all that mud.’

  He looked up into doubtful eyes. There was a long pause. Then: ‘Twenty men, Crowshaw. And get it by Monday.’

  On Saturday morning it began to rain again. I recall that Crowshaw simply saw it as an extra challenge. He was in a fighting mood. We took twelve men from HQ, and met eight they’d provided from neighbouring local stations. I was one of the twelve. Four went on a general search of the farm area, in case that damned second gun was lying somewhere in the open. The rest of us were on mud detail.

  ‘It’s not going to be pleasant,’ Crowshaw told us. ‘That gun could have been trodden down under a foot of mud. Very nasty. But the sooner it’s found, the sooner we can pack it in and get round to the pub for a few drinks.’

  We had it quartered with string on pegs and ran the operation like a military campaign. Freer supervised. Crowshaw waited in the Cambridge.

  I drew the pig sty. Freer wouldn’t let us hurry, and I recall it as a special portion of hell. The job had to be done well. Inch by inch. We searched the byres and the sty and the compost heaps, shoulder deep in stench. The rain never ceased. The day began with sardonic humour, deteriorated to grumbles, and ended in near-revolt. We found three more shell cases, but no gun.

  Crowshaw burned with a slow fury. I drove him back, and could sense him smouldering.

  I didn’t know it then, but he went back alone on the Sunday morning, and tramped morosely about the farm. Drover accompanied him, silently and in mute sympathy.

  ‘You ever meet him?’ Crowshaw asked at one point.

  ‘Gaines? Once or twice. Funny chap.’

  And Crowshaw wondered where a funny chap might have thrown his second gun.

  On Monday morning he went to the Chief Super’s office without any summons. He was so dispirited that he was close to asking to be taken off the case. The Chief Constable was there.

  ‘No luck, I hear.’

  Crowshaw looked at him doubtfully. The CC was a bluff man in his middle sixties. He had no patience with failure. No luck, indeed!

  ‘We didn’t find it.’

  His thin smile indicated the strain on the CC’s composure. ‘We can’t afford failure.’

  ‘It’s there,’ Crowshaw burst out. ‘I know it’s there.’

  ‘But you’ve searched,’ the CC said quietly. He held up his hand. ‘Now look, even assuming he had two guns, he could have taken one right away. Perhaps thrown it into the Severn.’

  ‘No sir. He isn’t the sort for that. He just threw the other one down, so he’d just throw this one down.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ snapped the Chief Supt.

  The CC’s eyes never moved. ‘Well?’

  Crowshaw took a breath. ‘You’d need to see what it’s like up there. You’ve never seen such conditions. There’s every likelihood that we missed it.’

  ‘You believe?’

  ‘I’m sure. I’d stake anything—’

  Again the thin smile. ‘You might well be doing that.’

  Crowshaw saw the invitation dangled before him. Now was the time to withdraw. Let another man sweat, a senior man. But if he failed again… ‘I want to try again, sir.’

  The Chief Super exploded. ‘Why the hell…’ He stopped dead at the CC’s raised hand.

  ‘Let him say it.’

  Crowshaw clasped one palm on each of his spread knees. ‘I’m certain he couldn’t re-load. I’m certain he’d got hold of another gun. There was something in the way Lovejoy spoke, as though Gaines had asked for two thirty-eights. Lovejoy could have passed him on to another supplier, but he wouldn’t dare say. I can’t imagine why he’d want two guns, but there is a little something about that. When I questioned Gaines I asked him about the seven shots in one gun being enough, and he reacted strangely, as though perhaps they weren’t. No sir, I think he bought two guns, and now he’s wise to the fact that if he denies it there could be a way out for him.’ He drew a breath. ‘Let me try again, sir, with a different set of men.’

  ‘You mean you think one of them missed it?’

  ‘One of them,’ said Crowshaw, ‘must have missed it.’

  T
he CC drew patterns on the Chief Super’s blotter, whilst Crowshaw stared woodenly out of the window at the grey sky. At last the heavy head came up. ‘Very well. We’ll try it again.’ He lifted his hand. ‘But Crowshaw… don’t fail again.’

  They got an adjournment at the Magistrate’s court, and Gaines’s solicitor seemed satisfied. But the Chief Constable was a man who knew when the time had come for the buck to be firmly passed. He called a Press Conference. By Tuesday morning the papers were pulsing with it, and Crowshaw realized that he was being set up. Somebody had got to try this important throw of the dice, and if that somebody was going to fail and be pitched into the depths, it was better that it should be Crowshaw rather than his CC.

  The newspapers had found a double-ended personal-interest story ready made. On the one side, the guilt of Neville Gaines, on the other the career of an untried Chief Inspector, both hanging on the discovery or otherwise of an automatic pistol.

  On the Thursday Crowshaw tried again. The farm was swarming with newsmen and cameramen. Crowshaw cursed them, and kept them at a distance. He worked to the same pattern as before, each man assigned a specific area, but with forty men this time and a clear sky above them. This time they worked slower. Crowshaw sat in the back of the Austin Cambridge, and waited. I sat in the front and waited, because I’d had my go.

  At two-thirty on that first day there was a shout. The sergeant came running. ‘In the cow byre,’ he panted. ‘By God, you were right.’

  Crowshaw looked at the slimy gun in Freer’s hand.

  ‘I was right.’

  We drove away at once, leaving Freer to clear up. They had heard at HQ, and they swarmed round the car, slapping his shoulders as he climbed out. ‘By heaven, you must feel good.’

  Thirteen years later he admitted that in fact he felt terrible.

  We had long since finished the sandwiches and the tea.

  ‘If the second gun had been found as soon as the first,’ said Crowshaw, ‘Gaines might have stood a chance.’

  It was honest of him to say so. I nodded.

  ‘I hadn’t wanted all the publicity,’ he explained. ‘But when somebody takes a set of facts and from them deduces an expected result, and that result crops up in a blaze of publicity, then it’s apt to weigh heavily.’

  ‘But it’s hardly something I can take to his widow,’ I said. ‘You’re saying he may have got away with something less? Justification… that sort of thing.’

  We were tossing it around, two ex-policemen reminiscing, and me hoping he’d take the tray back so that I could turn that magazine over. But he didn’t. He got to his feet.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s been such a waste of your time.’

  ‘Not at all.’ I turned at the door. ‘One thing…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why didn’t you trace back the second gun?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hardly necessary, was it?’ He smiled. The pupils of his eyes had narrowed to pin-points, but he wasn’t looking into the sun.

  I left him. He didn’t come round the house with me, so I got a look at the dark shape in the barn. It was an oldish Jaguar, dark blue, so battered he might have been using it as a tractor.

  While I was at it, I took a look in the cow byre, where they’d found the second gun. Not much had been done to clear the floor of stale mud and straw and manure, and it was still sloppy from a leak in the roof. It was dark in there.

  I got back in the Porsche and in a couple of miles I was feeling a bit more relaxed. But there was still an uneasy prickling in the back of my neck. Crowshaw had calmly and deliberately told me more than he needed to have done.

  It was ten to four when I reached Elsa’s.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She’d got tea laid on, with tomato sandwiches and toasted teacake. I didn’t mention I’d already had tomato sandwiches. I was feeling a bit edgy. But Elsa bubbled and fluttered. She was excited, though why she should get all worked up about marrying Dave Mallin I couldn’t understand. Looking at her, I could see that Dave Mallin had every reason to be excited. But I wasn’t. As I say, I was edgy.

  Then afterwards we played some records, and things got round to the point where I’d either have to stay the night or leave there and then.

  ‘We’re getting married on Friday,’ she said. ‘Da… vid!’

  Did I say I wasn’t excited?

  I got back to my place about eleven, and don’t remember climbing the stairs, and at ten the next morning I was in Wolverhampton, looking for somewhere to park. I found a car park by the market and walked up from there to the square, and found Fiston & Greene in a little cul-de-sac by the church. Mr Greene would see me if I’d wait a minute. He saw me in ten.

  He had a bright, shining, modern office, when I’d expected something fusty. Greene was himself fusty, but he was trying to do something about it. The chair he sat me in was moulded from one sheet of ply, and designed to speed the unwelcome client.

  Mr Greene said: ‘Mr… er… er?’

  I told him I was investigating the death of a young man called Paul Hutchinson. A little distress grew in those tired old eyes. He reached up and ruffled the hair over his ears.

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘A car accident.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  I explained. I was an enquiry agent, I told him, and my enquiries had led me to believe Paul had been his client.

  ‘Mr Mallin, if there’s any reason to query the death of my client, I might be prepared to discuss it with the police.’

  ‘He was my client, too, and I’m discussing it with you.’

  The barest hint of a smile. ‘Hardly the same, is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure I like my clients dying on me,’ I told him.

  ‘Your fee? Perhaps the estate—’

  ‘Will cover yours, yes. I’m not asking it to cover mine.’ I’d ruffled him. He touched his desk calendar with one finger and hummed a bit.

  ‘If you’d state your business, then.’

  ‘You wrote to him a couple of months ago. You said you enclosed his father’s letter. That letter may be important, but it’s missing. So I’m wondering if you’ve got a copy of it.’

  ‘Hardly likely.’

  ‘Or if you could tell me what it was about. Roughly.’

  He looked all disapproving at his pen set. ‘As to the circumstances,’ he said, ‘I can only tell you that Paul’s father committed suicide a matter of six months ago. An overdose of sleeping pills, if I remember correctly. He left a letter for his son. I kept no copy, but I can advise you, Mr Mallin…’ There was a cheeky twinkle in his eyes. ‘…without fee, that the coroner’s office will no doubt have kept a copy of it.’

  I wasn’t going to get any more out of him. I thanked him, advised him—without fee—to buy a more friendly chair, and left.

  I found the coroner’s office on foot, and they turned out to be rather more helpful. They hadn’t simply kept a copy, they let me see the photostat.

  I copied it down on a sheet of paper they gave me, with a pen they’d lent me because I’d come without one. A fine detective I was!

  Dear Paul,

  I know you’re going to blame me but I don’t want you to so I’m writing you this, and I hope when you’ve read it you’ll understand, because things are not all black and white and whatever they tell you, you don’t want to take too much notice of. When you read this you’ll understand you can’t put a finger on it and say this is it or that is it, and that’s the answer. I’m not putting this right. Before I started writing it was all clear in my head, what I wanted to say, but somehow all I can see is that sloppy bewildered look of yours, and all I want is for you not to be bewildered. But you know how it’s been with me, and all I’ve had to hold on to is how you’re doing so well in that job, but that’s not enough because a man’s got his pride. You’ve always got to remember that Paul that a man’s got his pride, and it’s the facing of it over and over that gets you down. Just the people looking at you and seeing in their
eyes that they know, and it’s no good you coming along with your how can they possibly know, because they do, and that’s that. So with this last job only lasting a fortnight and all, I knew there wasn’t any good carrying on. And that’s the truth of it.

  I want you to know the truth of it. Whatever they say, son, I searched that place. Really searched. Nobody could have done any better. Didn’t I find those three shell cases for them? So I must have looked well and proper. That’s all I want to say.

  I’ve just read this over, and it doesn’t half say what I want to say. But it’s just so you’ll understand, son. Don’t hold it against me.

  Your loving,

  Dad.

  You could read in parts of the letter that he’d certainly had an obsession. I was reminded of Karen’s feeling that everybody saw her as the daughter of Neville Gaines, murderer.

  I thanked them and went away. ‘Them’ was a creamy blonde who’d got the deepest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, and I’d have her name for you only I was getting married on Friday.

  I had landed on a market day, so the traffic was bad. I edged my way round the block a few times, and eventually found my way on to the island and out to the road for Shrewsbury. Then I made good time, driving fast as though something was chasing me. Something was. I didn’t like to think how that letter might have affected Paul.

  I made it in forty minutes. They’d improved the Police HQ buildings since I’d been there. You couldn’t expect them to stand still, simply because I’d chosen to transfer. I asked for Freer. Yes, he was still with them, a Det. Chief Inspector now. But he was out on a case. Would I care to wait? What else could I do? I filled in by doing a wander round to see if any of my old mates were still there. One or two were, just where they’d been twelve years before, so their ribbing about my present job left me quite unmoved.

  Freer came in at last. He was snappily dressed and carried a zipped document case under his arm. He still walked with vigorous dignity, not looking to right or left. He was thinner and more supercilious, his cynicism having soured. He wouldn’t have been a popular man to work for.

  Eventually I got in to see him. They’d had a hi-jacking on the A5 the night before, and Freer was up to his neck in it. He said he’d give me ten minutes. To him I was a minor constable from an unimportant corner of his past, and he just wasn’t interested.