Dance of Death (22 page)

‘I fancied a break in the country, that’s all.’

‘So why are you leaving all of a sudden?’

‘I’m going to stay with friends.’

‘May I have their name and address, please?’

‘No,’ retorted Redmond, ‘you damn well can’t. You’ve no right to chase after me like this. I’m an innocent man in a free country. Now leave me alone.’

‘Unfortunately, I can’t do that,’ said Keedy, levelly. ‘When we identify a suspect in a murder inquiry, we like to make sure that he or she doesn’t vanish into thin air. And that,’ he went on, looking at the suitcase, ‘is what you seem on the verge of doing.’

‘I’m going to friend’s, I tell you.’

‘Do they live in this country or abroad?’

The question stunned Redmond. He needed a moment to regain his composure and adopt the happy-go-lucky air of a gentleman of leisure. Putting the suitcase down, he pretended that he was ready to cooperate.

‘I’ll be staying in Brighton with friends,’ he explained. ‘Their names are Jay and Tiffany White and, if you take out that little notebook of yours, I’ll give you their address. Will that content you, Sergeant?’

Keedy held his ground. ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid that it won’t. What I want is for you to hand over your passport.’

‘I don’t have it on me.’

‘Oh, I think that you do. Hand it over or I’ll have to search you.’

He stepped forward and reached out. Redmond shoved him roughly away.

‘Keep your hands off me, you oaf,’ snarled Redmond, losing his temper, ‘or I’ll knock your block off.’

‘Assaulting a police officer is an offence, sir.’

‘I refuse to be pushed about by anyone.’

‘You’re the one who did the pushing, sir.’

Keedy lunged forward without warning and grabbed him by the shoulders. Redmond immediately began to fight back and a brawl developed. The driver got out of the car to lend assistance but it was not needed. Redmond was strong and fired by rage but he had none of the skills that Keedy had mastered. When they grappled, punched, twisted and turned, the sergeant was always in control. In the course of the struggle, he pulled his opponent’s coat halfway off him and something fell from the pocket. With a final effort, Keedy swung him round, pulled his arms behind him and snapped the handcuffs onto his wrists. Redmond continued to yell in protest.

Keedy bent down to retrieve the object that had fallen to the ground.

‘Well, well,’ he said, holding it under Redmond’s nose, ‘it seems that you
did
have your passport with you, after all.’

Having been driven to Chingford a number of times now, Harvey Marmion decided that the scenery did not improve with the passing of time. He was taken through a bewildering array of London suburbs, some of which bore the indelible marks of Zeppelin air raids. Small children were playing in the rubble or re-enacting the moment when a British pilot brought one of the monstrous aircraft crashing to the ground. Privilege and poverty were on display at varying points. Marmion went through areas where the houses were large, detached and in a good state of repair; and he also drove past slums where ragged toddlers walked about on bare feet, and where gaunt women huddled on street corners to exchange gossip and voice complaints. War had imposed strict rationing on the populace. Food was scarce and some items were now unobtainable. There were fleeting moments in his journey when Marmion wondered if the German blockade would eventually starve the whole country to death. It was already having a visible effect.

The car drew up outside the Wilder house and he got out. He was pleased to find Catherine at home but less thrilled to see that her brother was there as well. Nathan Clissold stood protectively close to his sister.

‘We still await news of an arrest, Inspector,’ he said, meaningfully.

‘You’ll have to be patient a little longer, sir,’ returned Marmion.

‘I ran out of patience days ago.’

‘Then you would make a very poor detective, Mr Clissold. Most of our work consists of waiting and watching. In the fullness of time, we get our reward.’

‘Do you have anything at all to report?’ asked Catherine.

‘Yes, I do, Mrs Wilder. We’ve been busy.’

Marmion gave them a highly selective account of the information so far gathered. Though the name of Gillian Hogg was once again omitted, he did mention his visit to Godfrey Noonan. He paused for a response from Catherine but none came. She maintained the same blank mask throughout.

‘I’m surprised that you didn’t tell me about Mr Noonan,’ he said.

‘What is there to tell, Inspector?’

‘He’s crossed your path and that of your husband.’

‘That was years ago.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘He came to Chingford this morning. I wondered if he’d called on you.’

‘My sister just gave you your answer,’ said Clissold, intervening. ‘Noonan is an excrescence. He ought to be locked up. Once you get a crook like him out of your life, you don’t let him back in again.’

‘Have you ever met him, sir?’

‘Only once – and that was more than enough.’

‘Yet your sister got on well with him at one time. They invested in plays together. I gather that it was a profitable enterprise.’

‘Those days are long gone, Inspector,’ said Catherine, brusquely, ‘and so, thankfully, has God.’

‘That’s a singularly ironic name for him,’ said Clissold with a snort. ‘He’s one of the vilest devils I ever met.’

‘So he didn’t come here today,’ said Marmion. ‘Is that right, Mrs Wilder?’

‘He’d have no reason,’ she replied.

‘Did you know that Tom Atterbury was one of his clients?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Why would an intelligent man like Mr Atterbury put his trust in Godfrey Noonan if – as your brother claims – the agent is an unashamed crook?’

‘He’s a crook who can find his clients regular work,’ she said, flatly. ‘That counts for a lot if you happen to be unemployed.’

‘You mean that people overlook his shortcomings, as you once did?’

‘Why are we talking about Noonan?’ said Clissold, fussily.

‘I should have thought you could have worked that out, sir. He once lost a battle in court with Mr Wilder. It was bound to leave him embittered. He’ll be weeping no tears over the turn of events.’

‘You consider him to be a
suspect
?’

‘Given what happened, I’d have expected Mrs Wilder to do the same. Yet she never even thought to tell us about Mr Noonan. Why is that?’

‘I’ve had other things on my mind, Inspector,’ she said.

Though her head was bowed and her voice solemn, Marmion didn’t get the impression that she was in mourning for the death of a murdered husband. From the start, Clissold had expressed no real grief over his brother-in-law’s fate and there was no hint of his doing so now. Both he and his sister seemed curiously disengaged.

‘I put forward the names of two possible suspects,’ Marmion reminded her, ‘and you discounted that of Allan Redmond, saying that a more likely person was Tom Atterbury.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘He’s been insanely jealous of Simon’s success,’ she replied.

‘Would it make him stoop to murder?’

‘It might, Inspector, but I’m not saying that it did. Tom would need someone to egg him on and his wife would be more than capable of doing that. Under her sophistication, Naomi is a wildcat. You wouldn’t believe some of the things she said and did to me when I was dancing in competition against her.’

‘So Mrs Atterbury could be an accomplice?’

‘She’d be more than that. Tom jumps to her command.’

‘Instead of bothering my sister at a sensitive time,’ said Clissold, ‘you ought to be interviewing Atterbury and his wife.’

‘Thank you for your advice,’ said Marmion, drily, ‘but I came here for two specific reasons. One was to ask if Mr Noonan had been here and the other was to request something from Mrs Wilder.’ He turned to her. ‘Having seen examples of your husband’s work, I realise that he was an excellent photographer. I assume that he had a darkroom somewhere in the house.’

‘Yes, he did,’ she admitted. ‘Simon was always pottering about in there.’

‘I wonder if I might see it, please.’

It was well into evening before Keedy returned to Scotland Yard with his prisoner. During the drive from his cottage, Redmond had threatened him with legal action, ridicule in the press and even violence. When he failed to rouse the sergeant, he eventually gave up and brooded in silence. He recovered full voice, however, when he was locked up in a holding cell. Pleased with the arrest, Keedy hoped for a rare compliment from the superintendent. It was not forthcoming.

‘We have insufficient grounds to hold him,’ said Chatfield.

‘He attacked a police officer, sir.’

‘Did he inflict any injuries on you?’

‘Well, no …’

‘So what form exactly did this attack take?’

‘When I tried to search him, Redmond pushed me away.’

‘Did you have any reason to search him?’

‘Yes,’ said Keedy. ‘I was certain that he had his passport on him.’

‘Did you ask for
permission
to search him?’

‘That would have been pointless, sir.’

‘So you tried to manhandle him.’

‘Redmond is a murder suspect, sir, and he was acting in a suspicious manner. He was about to leave the country.’

‘You don’t know that, Sergeant.’

‘Why else would he carry a passport?’

‘Some people like to have it with them as a form of identification. It doesn’t mean that they are about to jump on the next ferry. Besides,’ added Chatfield, ‘where would Redmond go? There’s a war on. He’s hardly likely to cross the Channel to France or Belgium, is he?’

Keedy was nonplussed. ‘I never thought of that, sir.’

‘Look before you leap, Sergeant.’

‘But he was making a run for it, Superintendent.’

‘That’s how it may have looked but you’ve no proof that that was his intention. He might just have wanted to get away from London for a while and I don’t blame him. This is a dangerous place to be with air raids increasing in severity.’

‘We can’t just release him, sir,’ said Keedy, aghast.

‘Yes, we can,’ said Chatfield, peremptorily. ‘We’ll charge him with assault on a police officer and bail him. We need every cell we’ve got for
real
criminals.’

‘Redmond
is
a real criminal. I’m almost certain he killed Mr Wilder.’

‘Where’s your evidence?’

‘He provided that by trying to flee.’

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant Keedy, but you’re working on supposition rather than on incontrovertible fact. Don’t misunderstand me. I admire your enterprise and I congratulate you on tracking him down the way you did. However,’ he went on, ‘you didn’t find the evidence we need to arrest him on a charge of murder.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘And there’s something else that needs to be borne in mind.’

‘Is there?’

‘Like you and the inspector, I wondered why Mr Redmond had managed to avoid conscription so I made a few discreet inquiries about him this afternoon. He has powerful friends, Sergeant. To begin with, his father is a Member of Parliament and there are other members of his family in influential positions.’

‘I don’t care if he’s the son of the prime minister,’ asserted Keedy, ‘Nobody is above the law, sir.’

‘That’s an admirable tenet but it’s not entirely true.’

‘Are you going to let Redmond get away with killing someone?’

‘No, I’m not. If that’s what he did – and we can prove it in court – then he’ll feel the full rigour of the law. At present, however, all we can do is to give him a strict warning, charge him with a much lesser offence and send him on his way.’ Keedy was struggling to hold his temper. ‘Go on, Sergeant – say it.’

‘I’ve nothing to say,’ grunted the other.

‘Let it be a lesson to you. Don’t be too hasty to accuse someone of something unless you have unshakable evidence that they’re about to do it.’

‘There’s a second lesson to take away as well, sir.’

‘Is there?’

‘Yes,’ said Keedy, quivering with vexation, ‘and it’s this. Even if you do your duty and make what you believe to be an important arrest, you may get no support at all from a senior officer.’

‘Are you daring to
criticise
me?’ yelled Chatfield.

‘I’m sure that you’re only doing what you think best, sir, but I am shocked that you’re frightened by the fact that Redmond has political contacts able to exert a lot of pressure on his behalf. I always believed that you’d take on anybody.’

Before the superintendent could master his rage and offer a stinging reply, Keedy walked out of the door in disgust and stormed down the corridor.

Colette always knew when her brother was going to see his girlfriend. Dennis Orme shaved for the second time in the day, combed his hair, put on his best suit and radiated pleasure. If he was going for a drink with old army friends, it was not the same at all. He made no effort to be at his best for them. When she heard him coming slowly down the stairs, she went out to see him off.

‘Where are you taking her to this evening?’

‘I’ll let Harry decide that.’

‘Her name is Harriet,’ she scolded, ‘and I’m fed up with reminding you.’

‘She likes me calling her Harry,’ he said, cheerfully.

‘Well, I don’t. It’s a man’s name.’

‘So?’

He reached for his hat and put it on at the rakish angle he favoured. Colette watched him with a fondness tinged with anxiety. They were close as siblings and his injuries had brought them even closer. As a result, she didn’t like to keep secrets from him.

‘I went to see Mrs Pattinson,’ she confessed.

‘How is the old duck?’

‘Dennis! Don’t call her that.’

‘Well, that’s what she is, isn’t she? I like the woman. She’s kind and caring, unlike that misery of a husband. How can she put up with him?’

‘Listen to me,’ she said, seriously. ‘I went to see her because of you.’

‘Me? What are you talking about?’ The sad look she gave him was answer enough. ‘You had no right to tell her about
me
, Colette. It’s nothing to do with her.’

‘I wanted advice.’

‘Well, I can give you that,’ he said, angering.

‘You drink too much, Dennis, and it worries me.’

‘Why? You don’t have to pay for my beer.’

‘It will damage your health.’

‘It’s the only thing that improves it – that and seeing Harry. It helps me forget the pain, Colette. After a pint or two of beer, I feel that I can do
anything
. It’s better than any medicine.’

‘I don’t want you to stop having fun with your friends,’ she explained. ‘I’d just like you to drink less, that’s all. When I tried talking to Daddy about it, he just laughed and told me not to bother. But Mrs Pattinson said I was right to be worried. How do you think Harriet would feel if she discovered that you were more or less carried home after a night at the pub?’

‘Keep her out of this,’ he insisted. ‘Harry must never know.’

‘You can’t hide it from her for ever, Dennis.’

‘That’s my business.’

When he limped gingerly towards the door, she grabbed his walking stick from the umbrella stand and offered it to him.

‘You’re forgetting this.’

‘I’m going to try to manage without it.’

‘But you
need
it, Dennis.’

‘It’s only a short walk and I can support myself on the wall as I go. It’s all part of a ruse, you see. When I’ve got the walking stick, I look like a cripple and, in any case, it gets in the way. If I go without it, Harry will have to let me take her arm.’ He chuckled merrily. ‘That’s my ruse. I want
her
to be my stick from now on.’

Climbing into the rear seat of the car, Keedy barked an order then lapsed into a sullen silence. As they headed back to Chingford, the driver didn’t dare to speak to him. Behind him, throbbing with fury, his passenger was reflecting that it had been the worst day in his career as a policeman. He’d been put in an embarrassing position by Odele Thompson, tried to revive his spirits by speaking to Alice and managed instead to have a fierce row that was exacerbated by the news that her brother had told her not to marry him. Acting on initiative, he’d cornered a murder suspect before the man could disappear and overpowered him before making an arrest. Back in London, he’d been ordered to release the prisoner on bail because he had family members in a position to rap the knuckles of Claude Chatfield. After a bitter argument with the superintendent, Keedy had to endure the mockery of Allan Redmond as the latter was set free. Taken as a whole, the day had been nothing short of a catastrophe.