The Frightened Man (34 page)

‘I’m here as a friend, Sir Francis, not as a copper.’

The long, lawyerly face - similarities to some horses in the nose and upper lip - smiled, and he said, ‘Once a copper, always a copper. You must be careful what you say.’

Munro shrugged again. He hugged himself, poured some now cold tea from the brown earthenware pot that sat on the unpainted table. He sipped and made a face, then rapped on the wood. ‘Guillam had a fit when he heard.’

‘Good.’

‘He’s raving about prosecution, or was when I saw him at the Yard. Georgie wants to make super, I told you.’

The lawyer shifted his long, elegantly trousered legs. ‘Any policeman who prosecutes the man who shot a brute who had just stabbed his own daughter and a workman and was holding an innocent woman at knife-point is likelier to find himself a constable on a beat than a superintendent. There isn’t a jury in England who would convict. And not a judge who’d be patient with the prosecutor who brought such a case.’

Munro frowned. ‘You may know that, Sir Francis, and let’s say for the sake of argument that
I
may know that, but George Guillam has decided that he despises Denton, and he’s a man who can let his rages run away with him.’

‘Happily, then, the decision to lay charges is not your Sergeant Guillam’s. It’s East Ham’s.’

Munro made a sound, doubtful, equivocal. ‘CID’re in it now.’

‘They at least believe in prudence.’

Munro had surprised Denton by turning up an hour before, explaining not too helpfully that he had ‘picked up a ride with the deputy super’ of CID. Only as the hour wore on did Denton gather that Scotland Yard was in a subdued uproar over the coming together of the Mulcahy and Stella Minter cases, resulting in the postponement of the coroner’s inquest on Mulcahy. Denton himself, held now in the death of Harold Satterlee, had been treated like both a criminal and a hero - two hours of questioning, but no jail cell, and an immediate response to his request to send a message off to his publisher. (He’d thought first of Hench-Rose, but had decided he didn’t want that indebtedness.) He’d thought that Lang would send the legal nonentity who advised the publishing firm on contracts, but, to his astonishment, Lang had sent Sir Francis Brudenell, of whom even Denton had heard; he had introduced himself as ‘your solicitor, not the one who’d represent you in court - that’s a barrister - but we’ll never go to court.’ Now here they were, waiting for Denton didn’t know what - news of the girl or Mrs Striker, perhaps, or the evidence that Sir Francis insisted was all that was needed to send him out a free man.

‘Well,’ Denton said, ‘I did shoot a man.’

Sir Francis made a face. ‘Sergeant Munro will forget he heard that, I hope. Mr Denton, you must stop offering information.’

‘But I—’

‘Hush, sir! At once!’

Munro was embarrassed; he jumped up and said, ‘More tea,’ to nobody and everybody and rushed out with the teapot. While he was gone, Sir Francis gave Denton a lecture on saying nothing; in fact, he had already given it, in short form, earlier. When Munro came back with the teapot newly filled and obviously hot - he was carrying it in a not very clean towel - Denton and the lawyer were sitting as they had been, both quiet. Munro tried to bustle, offered tea, poured, produced from a pocket two scones wrapped in baker’s paper, apologized for the lack of a plate, and said, ‘The woman’s going to be all right.’

‘Mrs Striker?’

‘She’ll have a bad scar.’ Munro shook his head. ‘Pretty much all the way down one side of her face, I’m afraid. Terrible for a woman.’

‘Not for that woman,’ Denton said. ‘What about her hand?’

‘They’re trying to save her fingers.’ Munro offered the scones and, refused, took one for himself and perched with one buttock on the table. ‘Local men didn’t want to deal with it, so they took her off to Bart’s. Word just came back.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Pierced the intestine, opened her abdomen, but she’ll survive. Or so they say. Lot of problems when you cut into the gut - sepsis, all that.’ He chewed his scone. ‘The workman got it in the shoulder and arm, won’t be doing any lifting for a couple of months, poor devil. They’re trying to get a statement from the mother, but the medico says she’s catatonic, and anyway she’s still drunk and they want to dry her out. We’ll get something from her eventually, I’d say, but - not right away.’ He rubbed his fingers together and brushed crumbs from his partial lap. ‘Bit tricky, what we’ll get from those two.’

Denton glanced at Sir Francis, then said, ‘You won’t get much from the girl. Not until she admits - what happened to her. And she won’t tell that to a man.’

‘You think he molested her, too.’

‘Of course he did.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Denton looked at him, hard-eyed. ‘You only had to see her move. To listen to her.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘She’s only a kid. She knows he did something terrible to her, but she also knows she gets a lot of butter with it. She’s the queen of the household. Woman of the house. She may even think she loves him and loves - it.’

‘But you can’t
know
that.’

Denton looked at him between his fingers. He said nothing. Munro sat at the table again, rapped, shifted position. ‘You’re in a foul mood, I must say,’ he muttered to Denton.

Denton looked up at him again. ‘Ever kill anybody?’ Munro grunted. Denton put his face in his hands. Munro was embarrassed and made desultory talk with the solicitor. Denton, taking a turn around the room, stopped in front of Munro and said, ‘When can I see Mrs Striker?’

‘You can’t go anywhere.’

Sir Francis said something about patience. Denton had a cup of tea, fidgeted, waited. After a few more minutes, a constable put his head in and said to Munro, ‘You’re wanted, please.’ Munro gave Denton a half-comical look and went out. Sir Francis said, ‘The plot thickens.’

However, it was another half an hour before things were thick enough to produce a result. The door opened and a constable held it for Munro and the East Ham detective who had questioned Denton, and then for a burly man, whom Sir Francis seemed to know. The burly man was introduced as the deputy superintendent of CID, and he said, ‘No touching.’ He indicated a wooden box, which the East Ham man had put down on the table. ‘We want an untainted evidence trail. Everyone clear on that?’

Sir Francis said that he must take them for fools; both he and the deputy superintendent chuckled. The deputy super said, ‘Munro, this is your party, I think. Your stroke of genius, isn’t it?’

‘I happened to get there first.’ Munro looked at the others. ‘This is stuff from the remains of a fire out behind Satterlee’s. Ashes were still warm.’ He took the top off the box, which was far too big for the things inside. Using a pencil as a pointer, Munro indicated one of them - a blackened, at first shapeless mass the size of a doll’s head. ‘Know what that is?’ he said to Denton.

Denton bent down, studied it, saw bulges that seemed to suggest pattern but couldn’t make it out. He looked up at Munro.

‘Decorative knot from the end of a rope. A red rope.’ He grinned at Denton. ‘You were right; we hadn’t done our best when we went into Mulcahy’s. You seemed so sure of torture when I talked to you that night, I thought, “Maybe he’s got something; maybe I missed it and he got it.” So I went back next day. It took me two hours to catch on to the missing red rope, but once I got that, I looked at the chair. I did see the fibres without a hint, thanks very much. Now we’ll see if our experts can match them to what’s left in that burned mess.’

‘He told me about somebody’s maybe torturing Mulcahy yesterday,’ the deputy superintendent said. ‘Strictly sub rosa, as they say. A good copper isn’t supposed to go outside the lines of command, but a really good copper does, now and then.’ He winked at Sir Francis Brudenell. ‘If we can match the fibres, we can put Satterlee at Mulcahy’s, and the thing’s as good as done.’

Munro pointed his pencil at several bent wires, what appeared to be a blackened metal plate. ‘Remains of a photographic camera. The lens is cracked but it’s still there, and we think there’re letters around the rim. If we can identify it as definitely one of Mulcahy’s, with his “Inventorium” on it - I’ve got a man up there now, looking at his other cameras - then we’ll go to court with your theory, Denton, that Mulcahy left a camera behind in that closet where he had the peephole, and Satterlee found it.’

He pointed at a blackened key. ‘Might be the key to Mulcahy’s closet. Mr Denton believed that Mulcahy carried it off with him that night - maybe Satterlee found it in Mulcahy’s clothes. Would have taken it to keep anybody from connecting him with the peephole and the girl.’

‘Another nail in the coffin,’ the solicitor said.

Munro indicated a shallow brick of burned paper and scorched cardboard. ‘What’s left of a book. Denton told Sergeant Cobb here -’ he indicated the East Ham detective - ‘that the real Stella Minter may have had a book that the Satterlee girl took - borrowed or stole, doesn’t matter. This is certainly a kid’s book - the other side has some titles you can read, all for kids - and we’re hoping the Minters can identify this one. If we’re fantastically lucky, there’ll be a legible name written in it. We haven’t opened it - that’s for the experts.’

Denton said, ‘Satterlee didn’t do a very good job of burning.’

The deputy super shook himself, said, ‘Books are hard to burn, actually. He managed to destroy the camera and most of the rope well enough. But this type of man may like souvenirs. May have been reluctant to get rid of them.’ He looked at Sir Francis. ‘Seen it twice before.’

‘Plus he’s reckless,’ Denton said. ‘Very reckless.’

Sir Francis put his long nose down towards the box as if to smell it. After some seconds, he said, ‘So you believe that you have evidence that links the man Satterlee to the man Mulcahy and to the murdered girl, is that right?’

‘We think so, yes.’

Sir Francis put a hand through the deputy superintendent’s arm. ‘May we talk?’ he said, and they went out. A moment later, the East Ham man had closed the box and taken it to the door, cradled in his arms like a baby. Munro said, ‘Mind that doesn’t leave your sight! We’ll want an affidavit—!’

The detective turned in the doorway, the door hooked into his right foot so he could pull it closed. He gave Munro a look that meant
What do you take me for?
With the slow delivery that mocks patience and suggests the speaker is talking to a fool, he said, ‘It’s going back with you and the super in the CID van.’

‘We’ll still want your affidavit!’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah—’ He went out and pulled the door to with his toe.

Munro smiled at Denton. ‘Hurry up and wait some more, eh?’

‘I want to see Mrs Striker.’

‘She, uh—Is she a, umm, your—?’

Denton was grim. ‘She risked her life so that bastard wouldn’t get away.’

Munro nodded his head. ‘Right. Right.’

Five minutes later, Sir Francis came back in. He put his hand on Denton’s shoulder. ‘No charges will be laid. You’re free to go on my recognizance until they’re certain of the evidence.’ He gave Munro a small smile, turned back to Denton. ‘I have my motor car; may I give you a ride to town?’

‘I’m going to Bart’s.’

‘I can drop you, then.’ He nodded at Munro. ‘I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again, Sergeant.’ He turned back to Denton. ‘I’ll just have a word with my chauffeur.’

When he was gone, Denton said, ‘“Seeing you again”?’

Munro looked sheepish. ‘They want to talk about me going back to CID.’ He leaned back against the table. ‘Metropolitan Police were about to do something that would have been wrong and stupid - close the Mulcahy case. They were doing it because it was easy and because, let’s face it, people had persuaded themselves they were right. Powers that be were, so they say, beside themselves when this broke this morning. Even though I was in too little and too late, they think I fell down the privy seat and came up with a diamond, so maybe I can go back to CID despite the leg.’ He grinned. ‘I owe you one.’

‘Not at all.’ He put out his hand. ‘All’s well that ends well.’

‘I do have a question, though.’

Denton waited.

‘What would you have done if your shot had hit the woman instead of Satterlee?’

He had Denton’s hand; Denton returned his pressure, withdrew his hand. His voice was gruff. ‘I’d have got him with the second shot.’

Denton had to wait in the upstairs corridor until the solicitor’s motor car came. He was told to stay away from the windows ‘because of the vultures from the press’. He peered out with his face against a window frame and was astonished to see more than twenty men clustered where he supposed the station’s entrance was. He saw mostly the tops of bowler hats, the occasional soft hat on somebody more daring; voices reached him, words unclear but the tone sometimes sharp, sometimes mocking.

‘They’re all there for you,’ a voice said behind him.

‘Harris!’ It was as if the man had materialized out of the stale air in the corridor. ‘What the hell?’

Frank Harris, less red-eyed than usual, smiling his shark’s smile, rubbed a thumb and three fingertips together. ‘Lucre changed hands, copper showed me up the back stairs. Corruption in the bastion of law.’ He grinned. ‘Always think the worst of your fellow man - you’ll get farther.’

‘What are you
doing
here?’

‘Little bird told me a notorious murderer had been shot by a well-known author. I bustled. Rather early in the day for me to bustle - I do my best work in the dark - but I made an exception, and here I am with an offer that’s going to make your heart twitter with delight! You may want to kiss me, in fact.’

‘What’ve you done?’

Harris craned to peek out the window. ‘Not a word to that crowd of poltroons. We’re dedicated to one rag and one rag only, the
News of the World
, because they’re paying us a hundred pounds for your story!’ He grinned again, preened. ‘
How I Tracked and Shot the East Ham Monster with my Colt .45!
’ He waited. Clearly, he expected more than Denton was giving. ‘Well?
Well?
’

‘It wasn’t a .45; it was a .36. And what’s this “we”?’