Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (24 page)

‘I knew it!’ declared Alfie passionately. ‘I knew it, as soon as she,’ he pointed at Jess, ‘as soon as
she
clocked me in Weston St Ambrose this morning, that you lot would try and fit me up for something.’

‘We’re trying to trace a car, Alfie,’ Phil Morton had rejoined them and, the getaway car safely in the skilled hands of forensics, he was now keen to piece together its recent history.

‘Well, I can’t help you, can I?’ howled Darrow. His spindly frame heaved with emotion. ‘I’m going to find myself a solicitor. I reckon I can sue you lot for harassment.’ His manner changed to pathetic. ‘When I think how I always try and help the cops … I helped you before, didn’t I? Over that Balaclava House business? I’m a decent citizen.’

‘Come off it, Alfie,’ said Morton. ‘You are a very small-time drugs pusher. But this time you may have got into something well out of your league. We’re talking armed robbery.’

For a moment Alfie appeared about to faint. ‘Armed robbery?’ he gasped. Then he rallied. ‘I don’t know nothing about it. When was this robbery?’

‘It took place this morning, a little after eleven.’

Alfie pointed at Jess. ‘Ask her. I was in Weston all today, until he—’ Alfie’s finger moved to target Morton. ‘He come and got me to bring me here. I didn’t have to come here, you know. I’ve got rights! Anyway, she saw me about that time, eleven, in Weston, walking along the street, minding my own business. Would I be doing that if I’d been doing an armed robbery earlier? Course I wouldn’t.’

‘Actually, Alfie,’ Jess took over the interview. ‘We are not suggesting at the moment that you are involved in the robbery. But the getaway car, a Renault Clio, certainly was. It’s the car we’re interested in. You heard that a house near Weston St Ambrose, Key House, burned down and a body was found in the ruins?’

‘Yeah, I heard.’ Alfie shifted uneasily. ‘Local news, that. Everyone’s heard about it. Never much happens in Weston. Something like that, they talk nothing else for days. In the pub, most people reckon it was an insurance job.’

‘Is that a fact, Alfie? Why would local people say that?’

‘Those big fires usually are, aren’t they?’ Alfie shrugged. ‘Don’t see how it could catch fire all on its own.’

‘And the body?’

Alfie considered the death of Matthew Pietrangelo. ‘I don’t know nothing about it. He shouldn’t have been there, should he?’ An idea struck him. ‘Here, you’re not going to try and stick me with that, and all, are you?’

‘At the moment, Alfie, we’re interested in the car and we’re hoping you can tell us something about it. You see, the Clio used in the robbery was the car belonging to the man found dead at Key House.’

‘What?’ yelped Alfie. ‘You
are
going to try and pin a murder on me! I never killed anyone. This is a fit-up!’

‘The car, Alfie,’ Morton repeated patiently. ‘We’re asking about the car. If the man who died in the fire drove it to Key House, it should have been parked nearby. But it wasn’t at Key House when the fire brigade arrived that night, or anywhere to be seen in the morning when it got light. It should have been, shouldn’t it? Don’t pretend you weren’t acquainted with Key House before the fire. It had become a hang-out for people just like you.’

Alfie opened his mouth to protest at the slur on his good name, but then thought better of it.

‘Alfie, if you know anything about that vehicle, anything at all, if you saw it anywhere. We need to know what happened to that car after the fire started.’

Alfie’s furrowed brow signalled he was thinking furiously. Eventually he said, ‘Armed robbery, dead bodies, houses burning down … None of that’s my scene, is it?’

‘Not to our knowledge – yet. But you like cars, don’t you? We do know that.’

Alfie drew a deep breath. ‘I want a solicitor,’ he said.

‘I’ve discussed it with the client,’ said the duty solicitor later. ‘He has agreed to make a statement. He is anxious to make it clear he is not admitting to any illegal activity.’

Alfie, listening with his arms folded, nodded. ‘Yes, I don’t want you lot trying to fit me up for nothing heavy, right?’

The duty solicitor, an elderly man, had often wondered why he’d ended up, in his professional career, trying to protect the interests of a host of Alfie Darrows. Now he sighed. ‘All right, Mr Darrow. We agreed, yes? You will make a statement. You don’t have to say anything else.’

‘Not at the present time,’ said Morton.

‘Go ahead, Mr Darrow,’ urged the solicitor.

Alfie drew breath and launched into his prepared account. Both Jess and Phil Morton listened impassively. They doubted they were going to get the whole truth. But if they got something, it might help. Alfie’s request for a solicitor indicated some sort of culpability, but for what?

‘The day of the fire, I mean in the morning when it got light, when the fire brigade were still at Key House …’

‘Yes,’ Morton said wearily.

‘Well, I’d gone out first thing to check my snares.’

‘What snares are these? What were you trying to catch?’

‘Rabbits. I know where there’s a big old warren in the fields back of Long Lane.’

‘Long Lane?’ Jess asked. She hadn’t meant to interrupt so early in Alfie’s tale, but to leave things to Morton. However, the mention of Long Lane was a surprise. ‘The turning just after Key House?’

Alfie stared at her. ‘Yes, if you’re coming from Weston St Ambrose. Well, that’s where the rabbit warren is, in the fields back of there. There’s some woods between the lane and the fields, but a track runs from the lane through the trees and comes out right by the warren. That’s where I set my snares. I have done for years, since I was a kid. And before you try to get me for something, I don’t use any illegal snares. I check them the next day and the farmer knows I’m on his land. You can ask him. It’s old Pearson. I quite often get a big old rabbit. If I do, I take it home and my mum skins it and cooks it.’

Morton made a noise indicating distaste.

‘Nothing wrong with wild rabbit,’ Alfie told him. ‘At least you know what it’s been eating. Only grass, unless it’s got into someone’s garden. There’s no gardens along there, except the one behind the old mad woman’s house. Only that’s not what you might call a proper garden, it’s just brambles.’

‘Are we talking about Mullions, Miss Pickering’s house?’ Jess asked.

‘I don’t know what the place is called or what the old girl’s name is. I only know she’s crazy, bats in the belfry, Loony-Tunes …’ Alfie touched his forehead, ‘and bad tempered with it. I stay away from her. She’s got a funny-looking dog and that’s worth keeping clear of, as well. Do you want me to tell you how I found the car or not?’

They assured him that they did.

‘Well,’ said Alfie, relaxing now that he was in charge of the conversation. ‘The track is a bit further on than her house, about a quarter of a mile, little bit more? Like I said, I intended to go along there but when I saw all the fire engines I got interested and hid up and watched for a while. But then the cops turned up and I thought, I won’t hang around here. Fire crew was too busy to spot me. But the cops were different. They’d go poking about. If they saw me, they’d reckon I’d had something to do with the fire. That’s how you coppers think. You’d think I’d started the fire and gone back to see how it had gone. Well, I didn’t. But it was best for me to stay away so I went home and didn’t check the snares that morning. I would’ve done, like I said, but the presence of the police prevented me,’ Alfie concluded virtuously.

‘My, you have been talking to your solicitor, haven’t you?’ Morton growled.

The duty solicitor shrugged.

Alfie continued. ‘I went back the next morning. Fire brigade and cops had all cleared off. The house was still smouldering a bit. I didn’t turn down Long Lane, I pushed through the hedge, where I’d hidden the day before to watch the fire brigade, and cut across the fields.

‘There were rabbits about, ’cause it was so early. But they went scattering all over the place when they saw me. There was nothing in any of the snares and one of them was missing. I went looking for it. They get knocked off the fence where I set it sometimes, especially if something bigger goes through, like a fox. I climbed over the fence. It’s pretty near fallen down, so I just had to step over it, really. I went looking for the snare in the woods. And there, parked right under the trees, but on the track that leads off Long Lane, was a Renault Clio, not a wreck, one in first-class nick. I couldn’t believe my eyes. First of all I thought someone was about in the woods. I stood really quiet and listened but there was no noise. It’s not easy to move quiet over ground like that, twigs snapping and so on; and the birds go flapping about in the trees making a racket, specially the pigeons. But it was all real quiet.

‘I took another look at the car. The roof was all covered in dew. It had been there all night, I reckoned. So I looked inside and what d’you think?’ Alfie sat back and waited, savouring the dramatic moment.

‘The keys were in it?’ Morton suggested.

Alfie, cheated of his surprise, was disappointed. ‘Yes, how did you know? Anyway, they was, so I thought someone must have pinched it, joy-riders or such, and they’d left it down the track, meaning to come back later for it and have another drive round. It seemed sort of meant. I’m only human. The doors weren’t locked. I got in the driver’s seat and thought, I’ll take it for a bit of a spin.’

Alfie paused and glanced at his brief. ‘I didn’t steal the car. I reckoned it was abandoned.’

‘Mr Darrow is somewhat confused about the law,’ said the solicitor wearily.

‘That’s right. I thought, it’s abandoned. It’s OK for me to take it. So I took it and drove it round a bit.’

‘And then?’ asked Morton.

‘I ran out of petrol, didn’t I? There wasn’t much in the tank to start with. But it ran out quicker than I thought it would, so I had to abandon it again. Well, I hadn’t abandoned it the first time, whoever took it from the house did that. I mean, it got abandoned for a second time when I left it.’

‘Just where did you leave it, Alfie?’

‘By the side of the Cheltenham road, near The Fox pub,’ said Alfie. ‘I had a really long walk home from there.’

‘And the car keys? What about those?’

‘Left ’em in the car. They wasn’t no good to me, was they?’ He sat back. ‘I can’t tell you any more, because there isn’t any more.’

‘So, how much of that do we believe?’ asked Carter.

‘Funnily enough,’ Jess said slowly, ‘I believe most of it, at least up to the point when he found the car.’

‘But he didn’t drive it round until he ran out of fuel and was stranded,’ Morton put in. ‘We know Alfie’s not very bright, but he’s not that stupid. He’d keep an eye on the fuel gauge. What’s more, he wouldn’t drive it on a busy road because a stolen car would be more likely to be spotted. He’d stick to the back lanes. So we can forget about his leaving it at the side of the Cheltenham road. Crafty little sod mentioned The Fox pub because he hopes we’ll think someone came out of the pub and nicked it, and whatever happened with that car afterwards, it’s down to whoever drove it away from The Fox. That car was never near the Cheltenham road or The Fox, not while Alfie was driving it!

‘Look, it was a nice little car, undamaged, clean, in good order. It was worth money, serious money as far as Alfie’s concerned. So I reckon he drove it into the town to some backstreet garage and sold it to a dodgy dealer. Whoever that was passed it on to the gang. But we won’t get Alfie admitting that. For a start, he probably didn’t know what the dealer would do with it, and didn’t care. But he cares now that he’s found out it was used in an armed robbery. That doesn’t mean he’s going to tell us the name of the dealer. He’s not going to tell us anything that will lead us to whoever was involved in the bank raid. Guys who charge into banks waving shotguns don’t like grasses. Alfie will be far more scared of them than he is of us. He doesn’t want his head blown off his shoulders.’

‘On the other hand,’ Jess pointed out, ‘he knows we’re examining the car and we’ll find his prints if he was ever in it. So he admits he was in it, and gives us a plausible explanation. It could well be a true one.’

Carter heaved a sigh. ‘And we don’t even get him for trespass or using an illegal snare.’

Morton said gloomily. ‘I hate it when a little lowlife like Alfie Darrow gives us all the runaround.’

When Morton had taken himself off amid encircling gloom, Jess said hesitantly, ‘We were talking about Crown’s will earlier, supposing he’s made a will.’

‘Yes?’ Carter looked at her, curiosity in the hazel eyes that now made her think of Millie. She wondered what Millie and Monica were up to today; then ordered herself to keep her mind on matters in hand – and that meant Gervase.

‘He is very wealthy,’ she continued. ‘You were suggesting he might have left a tidy sum to his cousin Serena Foscott. I’m just wondering if he might not have left a considerable sum to Petra Stapleton.’

Carter let out a low whistle. ‘Blood money,’ he said.

‘Something along those lines. She did win substantial compensation in the courts at the time of the accident. But if his conscience is troubling him …’

‘I understood, from what you told me of your conversation with her, that Katherine – Kit – Stapleton believes he doesn’t have a conscience.’

‘If she believes that, I think she’s wrong,’ said Jess. ‘But does she? You know, and if this sounds strange I’m sorry, but I do sometimes feel, when I’m around the people involved in this business, that I’m being invited to watch a piece of theatre.’

‘I’ll say this,’ Kit Stapleton told her sister, ‘you’ve managed to make the mutt almost attractive.’ They were in the studio, examining several preliminary sketches of Hamlet made by Petra in preparation for his portrait.

‘I’m hoping Muriel will like one of them well enough to decide she wants me to work it up into a proper portrait. I’m not trying to make Hamlet look a beauty, because he’s not, poor old thing. But I have tried to bring out his personality, to look beyond physical features.’

‘You must have X-ray vision because if Hamlet has a beautiful spirit, it’s lost on me. All I see is his squashed mug. But I’m not an artist.’