Killer in the Shade (8 page)

Rollo sensed the challenge underlying the words, and felt that he could best help himself by accepting it and increasing the other's uncertainty.

‘I believe I know the secret of a jewel thief who has been using the nightly power cuts for getting away in an unlit car, and why a certain fingerprint was left recently in Croft Avenue.'

‘Let's check. Go on, Hackley. I admit I'm very interested.'

Rollo decided he had detected a note of anxiety in the softly spoken words, and
swift elation gripped him, but he strove not to look pleased at the emotional surge. Perhaps he could get this man who had tied him up to make an unwary admission. One from which there would be no retreat.

‘All right, let me put it this way,' he said, like a man striving to arrange his thoughts in order. ‘Peel is believed dead. But his fingerprints appear, which is a puzzle the police can't solve. At least, they can't make out a case against a dead man. All they can do is try to catch a man who isn't dead. A man who gets no publicity because his fingerprints belong to a dead man. How's that?'

There was no reply. He could hear no breathing, and wondered if the other had sneaked away silently in the darkness. When the words came they took him by surprise.

‘Hackley, you'll have to die.'

They were spilled like drops of oil on a pool. They remained floating in the darkness, almost tangible. Rollo wondered if he was the captive of a madman. He was about to ask again
about Carol while he had the opportunity when another voice called from beyond the darkness.

‘Where the hell are you?'

Chair legs scraped in the dark, feet padded across the floor with a slithering sound. A key scraped in a lock and a door opened a little to let chinks of light spread like bright rain across the floor. They faded before they reached Rollo's tied feet.

‘Look, the latest radio news says Drury's made a breakthrough, whatever the hell that means, but it can only be bad, and — '

‘Shut up,' said the voice that had been talking to Rollo.

‘Damn it, we've got to find the girl!'

The door slammed, cutting off further speech. Beyond it a man shouted angrily, then there was silence save for the slithering steps. The torch blazed again, stinging Rollo's eyes. Darkness once more, and he was seized, a blindfold slipped over his eyes, and he was carried across stone flooring to a door and out to a car. He thought there were three
men in it. How long the drive took he didn't know, but the men got out and later returned with a newcomer, who was complaining.

‘I don't like it. I don't like it.'

‘You don't have to, Vince. Get in.'

The last two words were a command. The car drove on again, to stop a second time with another command. ‘Out, Vince.' There were words of protest, but finally the command was obeyed — after the sound of a blow and a grunt of pain that was quickly stifled.

‘Let her have it,' said the voice from the darkness.

The man behind the wheel trod on the accelerator. The engine roared. Over the sound came the staccato sound of several shots from a gun.

‘That's enough.'

The engine's note dropped to a purr. Rollo felt his right hand seized and his fingers were forced around something that he knew was the butt of an automatic. His palm was also pressed against the gun butt although he tried to resist.

His hand was released, the gun butt
removed from contact with his flesh.

‘Leave the gun by the body,' said the voice that now sounded to the blindfolded man like the voice of a personal doom. ‘The fuzz will climb through their own skulls when they find the prints of another dead man on it.'

The soft laughter that followed the words made Rollo feel sick. Not for himself. For Carol.

He had failed her.

Bill Hazard shared an uneasy glance between the two visitors sitting in Frank Drury's office at Scotland Yard. Drury was in the canteen, imbibing tea and working on some notes. He had left his assistant to make the running, though at the moment Hazard was more inclined to crawl.

He had listened through Tom Moore's story of how he had been knocked down in the warehouse in Little Venice, but had come to and managed to escape by dropping from a window into the canal. He had swum to a houseboat, where he had been helped aboard, allowed to dry out, and given hot tea and toast by a woman who more than half suspected him of being drunk.

He had phoned Dick Temple, who had got on to Mellie Smallwood. The meeting at the Yard had been set up in a hurry and Hazard had done his job of
monitoring the news for his chief.

‘You've stuck your neck out, Tom,' he said gloomily.

‘Just don't let Drury chop through it, Bill. That's all I ask. We weren't meddling. We were trying to find a client who hasn't officially been reported missing. Okay?'

‘I'll see.' Hazard looked at the girl, who stared back at him as though he was transparent. He wanted to tell her she shouldn't wear mauve bell-bottom slacks because they did the wrong thing for hips hidden by a purple jersey coat. And he wasn't much taken by the chrome chain she wore, which joined a piece of twisted wrought-iron gate ornament, or so it seemed, just where the purple joined the mauve. ‘But no promises,' he added, rising.

As he entered the canteen Frank Drury looked up from the foolscap sheet of writing in front of him.

‘Well?' he asked.

‘You'd better take over.'

‘Tell me why, Bill, and make it short.'

Hazard sat down without bothering to
collect a cup of tea and told Drury what he had learned.

‘All right, now I know, Bill,' Drury said. ‘But not why I should talk to Moore — or the girl.'

‘Here's the reason. While Moore was on the house-boat he saw that old warehouse start to smoke. Then the flames rose from it. When he pulled out the fire brigade wasn't winning a tough contest.'

‘So?'

‘So he thinks Hackley's remains could be under that hot pile of crumbling brick.'

Frank Drury filled his lungs with stale air flavoured with long dead cigarette smoke, rose, and picked up his foolscap sheet of writing.

‘I'll see him, Bill, but I'm getting choked with the damned complications opened up by bloody busybodies. If I'm not satisfied I'm warning Dick Temple to lay off. Does he know that?'

‘He knows. It's why he's here and why he brought the girl.'

‘That could be a clever way to make
it look good. Don't forget he knows the ropes, so he'll use them to keep from falling flat on his face. Come on, then.' As Bill Hazard rose to follow him Drury waved him back. ‘Stay and have a cup of char. We can compare notes later. Besides, I don't want you letting Tom off the hook. This is no time for the old pals' act.'

Seven minutes later, minus his foolscap sheet, Drury walked into his own office and sat down facing the pair expecting him.

‘Bill's put me in the picture. Now, first. You're sure it was Peel you followed?'

‘It looked like him.'

‘The world's full of people who look like other folk.' Drury wasn't giving an inch.

‘All right, so we followed someone who looked like Peel, the uncle of a client. If you want to start checking,' Moore said, ‘you know where Vince Pallard can be found.'

‘That's the trouble, I don't. Pallard was picked up in mid-afternoon by — ' Drury broke off, pulled the phone on his desk
towards him and dialled an extension number. ‘What was the number of that blue Escort?' he asked.

While he waited Tom Moore took out a notebook, flipped over some pages, and pushed the book on to the desk, finger pointing.

‘Thanks,' Drury said and hung up. He glanced at the number on the page of the notebook and nodded. He waited until Moore had returned the book to his pocket before saying, ‘So the car comes back from that warehouse or what the hell it was, picks up Pallard — '

‘You mean Peel picks him up.' The interruption came from Mellie Smallwood.

Drury looked at her as though he found in her face something he had to study closely.

‘Humphrey Peel is dead,' he said uncompromisingly.

She still came on. ‘All right, this man in dark glasses. Suppose before that warehouse was set on fire Rollo was questioned, and his answers made Peel or whoever it is decide to get away, and he brought Pallard to start the fire. I've
heard enough to know the two men are working together.'

Drury continued his close study of her. ‘What's your real interest, Miss Smallwood?' He nodded. ‘I know you're a friend of Carol Wilson. But why're you pushing?'

She flushed. ‘I feel responsible for Rollo going after Carol.'

‘It was his choice. His and Moore's.' Drury brought a hard gaze to bear on the man, whose grey eyes were now masking troublous thoughts. ‘Not your responsibility.'

‘You think Rollo had any real choice after I'd brought him that letter and the agency report?'

Drury started to look annoyed. He wasn't used to having callers talk back at him. But suddenly he smiled. The smile became ironic, like his voice, when he said, ‘I bet you've even decided since Humphrey Peel died in a fire and this warehouse was set on fire we're dealing with a fire-raiser.'

Her flush deepened. It was no colour to wear over that deep purple and the mauve
slacks. She fingered the iron ornament on the end of the chain. Her mouth compressed. Drury was satisfied that she wouldn't talk readily for the next few minutes. He turned to Moore.

‘You've been digging at Humphrey Peel, according to Bill Hazard. You'll recall the name Clayson. Victor Clayson.'

‘Man whose evidence sent Peel down for a five stretch,' Moore said unhurriedly.

‘He's the dead man Dr Cadman found in Croft Avenue.'

The ex-Yard man pushed himself erect. His mind was already functioning like a computer that had received a request and was coming up with an answer.

‘My God! Then that fingerprint you found could mean' — he hesitated and asked — ‘revenge?'

Drury shrugged non-committally. ‘Clayson had his hands deep in some piece of fraud. We're sure of that, but we don't know what — yet. We do know he was very friendly with the wife of a bank manager named Weddon. Mean anything to you?'

He looked at each of his visitors
inquiringly. Both shook their heads.

‘Beryl Weddon is a redhead who likes to dress as though she was fifteen years younger. That may be her trouble — scared of losing sight of her youth. Well, she made a bad mistake in picking Vic Clayson to find it for her. You won't get this in a Yard Press Bureau handout, but both of you had better remember the facts and tell me if you learn anything that enlarges what I'm telling you. We found the heels of a woman's shoes imprinted in the ground between the shrubs in the garden of Holly Lawn, the Croft Avenue house. We also know cheques signed by Weddon have gone through Clayson's account. There's something else. We know a car without lights was seen in that area prior to Dr Cadman finding the body. It could have been this thief who has been lifting well-insured jewellery.'

‘Who saw the car?' Moore asked.

‘A constable who phoned in. A squad car crew later thought they saw the car but lost it in the unlit streets. Later
another constable reported a car without lights driving well within the speed limit. He was too far away to get the number, but he thought it was a blue Ford.'

‘Clayson was stabbed,' Moore pointed out, hoping Drury would add something.

He wasn't disappointed.

‘With one of his own collection of knives. At least, they belonged to a man named Paul Henrickson, which was Clayson under another name. He had a brother who drove fast cars and had the collection of cutlery. When the brother wrapped his car around some tree on the Continent the knives came to Clayson, who had become Henrickson. That's all that did come to him except some debts, which apparently the family good name didn't compel him to settle. Or maybe that's why he changed it. Oh, we found something else in Croft Avenue, actually inside the house.' Drury had sounded like a man interrupting himself when he recalled something that had slipped his mind. ‘I've got it here.'

The act was a little too pat for Tom Moore, and had been used too often.
He could remember when he had used it to help convict a crook with an obsession for breaking into houses while wearing a clown's mask. The ex-Yard man managed, however, to keep his face a blank when Drury shot him a fast glance as the Superintendent removed a piece of cotton wool from a drawer of the desk. He unfolded the soft covering and revealed a brooch shaped like a sprig of leaves. It wasn't a high-priced piece of jewellery, but it wasn't junk.

He pushed the cotton wool forward.

Mellie Smallwood choked.

‘Yes, Miss Smallwood?' Drury said.

‘That's Carol's,' she said, having trouble with her breathing, as though the room lacked air. ‘I gave it to her for her birthday.'

‘Make sure, but don't handle it,' Drury told her.

She stood over the brooch and her hands clenched.

‘I'm not mistaken, Mr Drury.'

‘Any idea how it came to be in Croft Avenue?'

‘I can't begin to think of one.'

‘What sort of heels did she usually have on her shoes?'

The unhappy girl's hands clenched again. ‘Cuban.' She forced the word between teeth that were not easy to prise apart.

‘Size?'

‘Four and a half.'

‘Height about five foot six, you'd say?'

‘About that, yes.'

‘Beryl Weddon takes a full size larger — five and a half, sometimes a six. She's five foot eight.'

Mellie looked at him miserably, saying nothing. She turned to the man who had brought her. Tom Moore was looking the other way, with an expression on his grey face that could have been caused by toothache, but wasn't. Moore had dentures.