One Fight at a Time (15 page)

Arthur opened the first bottle of pale ale.

“And let’s drink to success,” he said.

Chapter Seventeen

Zoe managed to find a parking space in Nelson Street. She locked the Riley and walked around the corner to the Bridewell. She was wearing a neatly tailored black skirt and matching jacket, with a long collar white shirt underneath it. Ready for business. Under the blue police lamp, she stopped and looked at her watch. 8.45. She took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.

Sergeant Albright was doing duty on the desk. In his early 50s and with thirty years in the job, he knew he was going no higher. But he was a solid, reliable copper, who made the downstairs floor run like clockwork and enjoyed his role as the first face of the station.

“Morning Mrs Easton,” he said.

“Sergeant...”

“I believe you have come to talk with young Mr Morrison.”

“Yes indeed.”

There were two phones on the desk. One an outside line, the other an internal pbx phone with two rows of buttons. Albright picked up the receiver and pressed one of them. He waited a moment, then told Constable Martin at the other end that Mrs Easton had arrived.

“Yes. Straight away please,” he said.

He put the receiver back in its cradle.

“Constable Martin is coming to fetch you. Miss Palmer’s already in there. We have the crack team on the case.”

“I hope so.”

Less than a minute later, Zoe was talking with Suzy Palmer in a tiny office. Constable Martin stood outside in the corridor. Next to him was the door to the interrogation room, inside which Harry sat at a table, under the watchful eye of the other copper on the cell roster, Constable Frears.

Suzy Palmer was, as Sergeant Albright had said, one of the smartest solicitors in the city. She was in her early 40s, with long brown hair and green eyes which did not miss a trick. Like Zoe, she was dressed in a suit, this one grey, with a light blue shirt under the jacket.

“Harry says he was at the pictures when the murder took place,” she said. “Watching
The
Blue
Lamp
.”

“Is he telling the truth?”

“Probably not. But he knows the plot scene by scene. If he hasn’t seen it, he’s certainly done his homework.”

“Do you think he murdered his friend?”

“Again, probably not. If he sticks to his story, in spite of his admission that the murder weapon belongs to him and that he was in the flat after the murder took place, you might save him from the hangman. But there is something very wrong at the heart of all this. And if the prosecution dig it out and we’re not prepared, Harry could still get a long custodial sentence.”

“Okay,” Zoe said, “Let’s talk to him together.”

*

At the same moment, at the end of a track up above the Avon Gorge in Leigh Woods, Robbie McAllister, has-been middleweight contender, was sitting in the driving seat of his Triumph Mayflower.

Breathing his last.

The window was wound down and the breeze stirred the hair behind his ears. He had bought the Mayflower new, for five hundred and twenty-five pounds, because it was sold as the small car with the up-market image. He could not afford cash, so he was paying on the never-never and he still had a couple of years to go. That no longer mattered of course, he had only a couple of minutes left.

The results of last night’s hammering were all over his face. He had cuts above both eyes, purple bruises underneath them. His nose had been broken again. His lips were swollen out of shape.

And there was blood on the front of his shirt.

A hundred and fifty yards along the track, Alan and Jane Bignall were walking towards the car. Their Flat Coated Retriever, Bob, was busy up ahead, of them, tacking backwards and forwards across the track, in and out of bushes and hedgerows. Bob suddenly clocked the Triumph, did a double take, decided the car was worth a cursory inspection and loped up to it. Level with the driver’s door he raised himself up on his hind legs, put his front paws on the window ledge and peered in at Mac.

In his seat, Mac exhaled. His throat burbled, blood seeped between his swollen lips and he died.

Bob barked at him.

Back along the track, the Bignalls caught up with what was happening.

“Christ, look what he’s doing now,” Jane said.

Alan set off up the track like a sprinter out of the blocks, bellowing at the dog.

“Get down Bob... Get down!!”

Bob eased himself backwards, dropped down onto all fours and did his best to look handsome, rather than guilty.

“Get away from there,” Alan said and turned to speak to the man in the car. “I apologise. I’m so sorry.”

Then he saw the blood staining the front of the man’s shirt and followed the line of his arm, away from his body toward the passenger side of the car, where his left hand lay on the leather seat, loosely holding on to a semi-automatic pistol.

“Bloody hell,” he said.

He covered his mouth with his right hand and stepped back from the car. Bob decided he had exhausted the possibilities the Triumph had to offer and charged off up the track. Jane arrived at the car. Her husband pointed towards the front seat. She moved to the door and looked in at Mac.

“Oh my God. He’s dead.” She turned back to Alan. “He is, isn’t he?”

Alan, still with his hand over his mouth and looking like he was about to throw up, nodded at her. Jane looked at him and sighed. He was never any good in situations like these. Emergencies she meant, not exactly what was happening right now. She had only seen one dead body before – her grandfather, laid out in his coffin in the parlour of his tiny terraced house. A man in a car with blood all over the place and a gun in his hand was a new experience, but she was the one to take charge here. There was a public phone box at the end of the lane.

“Get Bob. Then come back here and wait by the car. I’ll go and call the police.”

*

Ed Grover pressed the bell push on the door frame at 5 Blenheim Villas and waited for Rachel to appear. She did not. He pressed the button a second time and got the same response. Still a no show. He pressed the bottom bell and this time he was rewarded by the appearance of Maddie Rawlins. She opened the door to him. He introduced himself.

“You’re an American.”

Once again Grover wished he had a dollar for every time somebody had said that to him during the last ten years.

“At your service Ma’am.”

“Polite too,” Mrs Rawlins said.

“I’ve been here before,” Grover said. “I came to see Nick Hope. I found his body upstairs. A friend of his, Harry Morrison, has been arrested for the murder. I think you’ve seen him.” He pointed over Mrs Rawlins’ shoulder, at the coin box on the wall. “I need to check out your phone number.”

“Really? Why?”

“I am assisting the law team representing Harry. There was a number he called often and we want to know if it was that one there.”

Mrs Rawlins recited the phone number to him. It was that one there.

*

At the Magistrates Court, Harry had to wait until 10 o’clock to be called, but he was dealt with swiftly. The charge was read out. He pleaded not guilty. When asked where he was on the night in question, Harry looked at Zoe. She told the court she had talked with her client for the first time, less than two hours ago. In spite of not having had time to prepare a case, she had every reason to believe that her client would be able to account for his movements throughout the entire evening, in due course. The three Magistrates, two men and one woman, whispered to each other for a minute or so, checked something with the Clerk of the Court and announced that the matter would go before the Assize Court in nine days’ time.

*

The black Wolseley slowed as it approached the entrance to a track on the right, with a ‘Road Closed’ sign in the middle of it and a uniformed constable standing next to that. The constable waved the car to a stop. In the front passenger seat, DS Goole wound down the window. The constable looked into the car. Recognised Bridge on the back seat and addressed him.

“Best to go up the track on foot, Inspector,” he said. “We have a patrol car up there already. More vehicles to come I imagine. There’s no space to turn round. The track ends at a gate on to farmland.”

Goole and Bridge got out of the car and walked the couple of hundred yards. The track was earth, flattened hard by tractor wheels and other farm traffic. There was grass running up the middle. The patrol car, another black Wolseley, sat on the track in front of the Triumph. The windows were down. Bridge took time to look inside the car. There was a man and a woman in the back with a huge brown dog sitting on the seat between them. Bridge said ‘good morning’. The dog barked in response.

A constable stepped up to the car.

“That’s Bob, Sir. With Mr and Mrs Bignall.”

“We’ll talk in a moment if that’s okay,” Bridge said to them. “We’ll try not to keep you long.”

Bob barked again. Jane Bignall tugged at his collar.

“That’s enough Bob.” She looked at Bridge and said, “Thank you.”

He joined Goole at the Triumph and stared into the driving seat at Robbie McAllister.

*

In the kitchen in Gladstone Road, Zoe was making everything clear.

“Now that Harry is on remand and out of the jurisdiction of the Magistrates, we can apply to a Judge for bail.”

Arthur Morrison nodded. Ellie leaned against him for support

“Suzy will set that in motion,” Zoe said. “I’ll leave her to explain how all this is going to work. I need to go back to chambers, clear my diary and introduce Ed to the team. I will talk to you again tomorrow.”

*

The chambers of Fincher Reade and Holborne were situated in All Saints Yard, a small cobbled square off Clare Street, behind the Guildhall. A couple of minutes’ walk from the Assize Courts. The yard was ringed by regency buildings the Luftwaffe had failed to hit.

Grover had Neil Adkin’s suit over his left arm and he was holding the shoes in his right hand. He stood on the cobblestones and marvelled at the solidness of his surroundings. People walked in and out of the buildings dressed in dark suits, carrying briefcases and envelope files and boxes of envelope files. There was a palpable aura of importance about All Saints Court. The processes of law were going on in these buildings. He located a door with Fincher Reade and Holborne’s brass plate on it. He stretched out the be-suited arm and rang the bell. Ten seconds or so later, the door was opened by a slim redhead with green eyes and a smile that would match Daniel Zampa any day. She stared at the man in front of her, standing at the door like a gentleman’s gentleman about to suggest a change of clothes to his employer. Grover introduced himself. The redhead took the shoes from him and shook the freed hand.

“We were expecting you,” she said. “I’m Melanie Davis. Please come in.”

He followed Melanie upstairs to the first floor, admiring her backside in the calf-length tight skirt. She was wearing nylons with seams. She opened a door at the head of the stairs and ushered him into a room dominated by a heavy mahogany table, surrounded by matching armchairs.

“I’ll take the suit from you,” Melanie said. “I’ll be back in a moment. Sit wherever you like, we don’t stand on ceremony here. Would you like a drink?”

Grover ordered coffee and Melanie left the room.

He wandered round behind the chairs, estimating the room to be twenty-five feet, or thereabouts, by fifteen. The senior partners of Fincher Reade and Holborne, going back to 1836, looked down from the walls in substantially carved, gilded frames. There was history here. Clients and adversaries alike could not fail to appreciate it. He surveyed the table. He figured that the most important people sat in the two large armchairs at the head and the foot. So he picked one of the smaller armchairs midway along its length.

As he sat down, Melanie returned carrying a silver tray. On it a note pad and biro, a silver coffee pot, a silver milk jug, cubes of sugar in a sliver bowl, two cups and saucers and a plate of bourbon biscuits. She walked around the table, nudged the chair opposite Grover backwards with her right leg, put the tray down in the space between them, pulled the chair back into position and sat in it. She smiled again and raised the milk jug. Grover said ‘please’. Melanie dispensed milk and coffee, pushed the tray to her left, took the plate of bourbons from it and placed them in front of Grover.

“I’m the outdoor clerk,” she said.

Grover was pleased to know this and he smiled at her to prove it. He tasted his coffee. It was good. Freshly brewed. Probably from freshly ground beans too.

“Zoe is on her way,” Melanie said. “She’ll be five minutes at most.”

*

The Crime Scene Team was the same outfit which had done the work at 5 Blenheim Villas. With a Firearms Officer added. Baldwin, his name was. He held the gun up in a cellophane envelope for Bridge and Goole to see. Black, short barrelled, with a textured handgrip. He produced the ejected magazine, sealed in another bag.

“It’s a semi-automatic MAS-35. French. Manufactured in thousands from the mid-thirties. Has an eight round single stacked magazine, using 7.6mm cartridges.” He held the two packets side by side. “It unclips from the base of the grip. One shot has been fired.”