The Saint Valentine's Day Murders (24 page)

Pooley was looking very impressed. Pike looked at Milton seriously. ‘I don’t want to get involved emotionally in this case, sir. But it would be a terrible tragedy if Illingworth had done this awful thing through a misunderstanding about his wife. Somehow it wouldn’t seem so bad if it turns out to be Farson or Crump or someone who had a real motive.’

‘I share your feelings,’ said Milton with a sigh. ‘But I’m afraid it’s all too possible. As you pointed out so cogently yourself, he had nothing to live for except his private life. Well, enough of my afternoon. Have you two finished your researches?’

Pike and Pooley looked at each other conspiratorially. Pike generously indicated that Pooley could have the floor. ‘I’m afraid it’s turned out a bit unexpectedly, sir. As we guessed, apart from the Twillerton weekend, neither Illingworth nor Farson has ever stayed away from home during the past six months. We can’t be sure about Crump, since his neighbours wouldn’t have known and his wife is dead. Short spent two weeks walking in Scotland during the autumn while his wife went off on a holiday with some other women, and it’s highly unlikely that he could ever prove he was there all the time. Bill Thomas is the great disappointment.’ Pooley seemed very choked. ‘The woman who lives across the road is prepared to swear that he has never since his mother died been away from home – apart from Twillerton, that is.’

‘How the hell can she do that?’ asked Milton, interested to discover from his reaction that he had had some faith in the theory himself.

‘She says she takes her dog out every evening at half past six. She follows a regular route and always gets back almost dead on seven o’clock. That’s the time he draws the curtains of his front window. It’s a sort of joke between them, being so precise in their habits. She can never remember his missing being there waving at her before he draws them.’

‘No one could be that precise.’

‘Well, it’s part of the joke that if one of them is late, the other gives them the necessary few seconds.’

‘You don’t think she’s just exaggerating?’ asked Milton.

Pike came in at that point. ‘I’m afraid she’s backed up by the next-door neighbour, sir. Apparently she’s a keen gardener like Thomas, and every Saturday and Sunday morning he’s out there with his radio, rain or shine. She’s sure he’s never missed.’

There was a long silence. ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Milton. ‘I might have been prepared to pursue the Thomas possibility, but I can’t easily believe that Henry or Tiny sneaked off to the opium-dens of the continent. You’ll have to take it up with someone else. I’d better tell you about what’s going to happen on Monday.’

‘I’m sorry, Jim,’ said Amiss. It was eleven thirty and he was tired, but his fury at the treatment of his friend had woken him up.

Milton was tired too. ‘I see their point. I’ve got as far as I can go now. I don’t have a single lead left that hasn’t been followed up. Ann’s nearly persuaded me to leave the Met anyway. I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my life contemplating people at their worst.’

‘You can’t leave, Jim. You’re just feeling depressed. You know you couldn’t do anything else.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I could be a social worker.’

The murderer decided to check once again. It was possible that the police were being clever and trying to lull him into a false sense of security. Not that they’d been particularly good at following him. He’d spotted that big fellow in the grey suit days ago. Still, there was no denying that car had gone from up the street. But he’d better make another test so he could be sure. He put on his overcoat and closed his front door behind him noiselessly. He went to the gate slowly, giving even a dim copper plenty of time to spot him. He walked steadily down the street, turned a corner and suddenly dodged into a lane-way. He stood there for several minutes, waiting for the sound of footsteps. None came. He smiled as he began to retrace his steps homewards. Barring an unexpected obstacle, Friday was on after all.

34

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Friday, 4 March

It was four o’clock in the morning and Tiny, dressed in a loud check suit, was doing a roaring trade in the middle of a suburban estate. ‘Roll up, roll up,’ he shouted. ‘You won’t get better prices anywhere. 3-1 against Tight-fisted Tony.’ Amiss came forward and thrust a bundle of notes at him. He was elbowed aside by Pooley, strangely clad in a Chief Superintendent’s uniform topped by a rowing cap. ‘What are you offering on Graham Illingworth?’ he called. ‘Joint favourite, Grotty Graham. 3-1. Price has shortened, but I tell you you won’t find better.’

‘Hundred quid then,’ said Pooley, ‘and here’s a tenner from Sammy.’

‘And fifty from me,’ said Rachel. ‘Come on, Robert. You know it makes sense.’ Amiss was looking cross. He pushed Pooley violently as he passed him and put his bundle on Tony.

Everything stopped for the deafening sound of a jet airliner passing overhead. Ann parachuted out of it. She landed just beside Tiny, opened her attaché case and exposed the tightly packed wads of ten-pound notes.

‘£50,000 on Bachelor Bill,’ she cried. As Tiny picked up the money, Milton tried to intervene, but he could neither move nor speak until after she had climbed the rope ladder into the hovering helicopter. He rushed frantically to Tiny, crying ‘I want a bet, I want a bet!’

‘Who on?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’ve got a prize joker here,’ observed Tiny. ‘Wouldn’t you like a nice 20-1 on Horny Henry?’ Milton dithered, while Amiss took up the offer. A huge crowd had gathered, cheering and booing. Suddenly the Commander forced his way through, grabbed Tiny by his wide lapels and said, ‘I’m putting a thousand quid on you. Any objections?’

‘Business is business,’ said Tiny. ‘50-1.’

‘Exploiters! Pigs! Oppressors! Violators!’ screamed Melissa and her hundreds of Amazons began to belabour the crowd with their placards.

‘You’re all disgusting,’ came the cold voice of Romford, distorted through his loudhailer, as he led his uniformed squad through the mêlée. ‘Betting should be outlawed.’

‘Get him, men,’ he shouted, and half a dozen coppers fell on Amiss, punching and kicking him. As Romford intoned the murder charge, Milton intervened to try to save Amiss. Romford turned on him and said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but get off my patch or I’ll have you arrested for obstruction.’

Milton was glad to wake up, though as he tried to reconstruct the nightmare he found it only marginally worse than the reality. That bit about Robert was only a hangover from the Lorre/Greenstreet past, but the rest wasn’t far wrong. Reluctant to wake Ann deliberately for comfort, he emitted a low groan which he hoped would do the job for him. She stirred. He groaned again and she turned and put her arms around him. ‘Let me tell you about my dream,’ he said plaintively. ‘Of course, darling,’ she responded sleepily.

Before he even got as far as the arrival of her plane, he had bored them both back to unconsciousness.

Amiss was thrilled by the call from Rachel in the middle of the afternoon. ‘It is a bit of good luck, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Though it probably scuppers next weekend instead. The Ambassador is certain he’ll be recovered by then and he’s given orders to try to fix the meeting for tomorrow week.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Things couldn’t be as bad then as they are now. I’ll meet you. When are you arriving?’

‘No idea. I can’t reserve a seat, but they’ve said I’ll get one on stand-by. I’ll ring you when I get to Heathrow, probably between six o’clock and nine. ’Bye, darling.’

He sat for a couple of minutes revelling in his good fortune. The weekend, which had promised only a depressed session with Jim and Ann, now looked full of promise. He wondered if it might be the time to raise the question of marriage. Rushing it a bit? Maybe. That’s what she would say. He could hear her now arguing that decisions shouldn’t be taken at a time of emotional turmoil. Too bloody sensible, that was her trouble. Well, he could raise it cautiously and see what happened. He fell into a fantasy of a candle-lit supper over which she said, ‘Oh, yes, please. Let’s do it as soon as possible.’ It would be the making of him, wouldn’t it? He’d become a man full of purpose, forging his way up the civil service ladder determined to succeed for the sake of his family. Stupid fart, he said to himself. It’s more likely that she’ll be forging her way up the Foreign Office ladder. And I’ll be trailing around as her escort as she gets her appointments to Botswana or Mongolia. Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with a traditional woman – like Val Illingworth? With a start he realized that unless he left the office soon there wouldn’t be any supper at all. He cleared up his desk, put on his overcoat, looked at his briefcase doubtfully. No, he wouldn’t be doing any work this weekend. He shoved it into a cupboard, locked the door, pocketed the key and left the room.

‘I’m going off a bit early,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ve got some urgent shopping to do.’

Four pairs of eyes looked at him with neither resentment nor curiosity. He suppressed a slight feeling of guilt that he was entitled to take such a decision without consulting anyone, whereas the conventions required them to negotiate with him. ‘It’s been a rough week, hasn’t it? If there’s someone to cover the phones up to five o’clock, I don’t see why three of you shouldn’t piss off now as well.’

No one showed any enthusiasm. ‘I don’t mind staying, if the others want to go,’ said Henry.

‘Neither do I,’ chimed in Tony and Bill.

‘Well, I’ll go in that case,’ said Graham.

Amiss wished them all a good weekend and departed. He found it poignant that, since St Valentine’s Day, no one ever said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

35

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It was just six o’clock when Rachel’s plane landed. Having with her only hand-luggage, she was through customs and into the arrivals area within fifteen minutes. She peered around in search of a telephone, cursing yet again the inadequacy of the spare glasses she had been stuck with since Tiny had managed to knock her good pair on to the pub floor and trample them the previous weekend.

She could see no free booth, so she decided to go up to the departure floor to make her call. She’d be able to buy a newspaper or book there for the long tube journey. As she came off the escalator at the edge of the concourse, she stood for a moment or two trying to get her bearings. She couldn’t read any of the signs and couldn’t bring herself to ask anyone for directions. I must be more vain than I imagined, she thought. Castigating herself in a half-hearted way for her unreasonable inhibitions, she walked twenty or thirty yards to the left, stood in the centre of the check-in area and looked around her. She removed her glasses, rubbed them with a tissue and put them on again. On her second uncertain sweep of the environs, she had her reward and walked off at speed towards the clump of telephone booths she had sighted on her right.

The murderer, who had been checking in for his 6:55 flight to Hamburg, had been horrified to see her approaching from the escalator in his direction. He averted his head while the formalities were being concluded, and hoped she would have passed him by before he had to move away to make room for the next person in the queue. The airline clerk handed him his ticket and boarding pass, smiled professionally and said, ‘Have a pleasant flight, Mr Jones.’ He turned around and saw Rachel only twenty yards away, staring right at him. Terrified, he stood quite still for a moment, and then saw her suddenly stride off towards the public telephones.

He followed her quite mechanically. His heart was thudding and he felt ill. She must have seen him. Why hadn’t she acknowledged that she recognized him, bad as that would have been? It could only be that she realized the significance of his being at a check-in desk. But would she? Of course she would. She’d have known from that conversation they’d had that there was something odd about his being here at all. She’d call Robert and he’d tip off the police. They’d guess the significance all right. Ahead of him she stopped and waited in a four-man queue for a telephone. The murderer stood out of sight and tried to think what to do. One way or the other, he’d be done for. If he took the flight they’d be waiting for him when he got back and they’d look at his passport. If he went straight home now, they’d check the flight lists and find that Andrew Jones had checked in and then disappeared. They weren’t stupid. It wouldn’t take them long to track down his passport application form. Then they’d know the truth. They mightn’t be able to prove much at the start – except that he was a liar – but they’d get there in the end. Could he go to Hamburg and just disappear? Impossible. He didn’t have enough money and the German police would pick him up eventually. Nor could he trust his contacts. They’d shop him if the pressure was put on. He had almost decided to go home, prepare for the police and steel himself to brazen it out, when he saw Rachel move back into his line of vision. She walked over to the bookstall. He leaned forward and checked the queue she’d been in. No, she hadn’t made her call yet. She must be getting something to read while she waited around. There came to the murderer the sudden inspiration that he might – he just might – now have the chance to stop her telling anyone. He’d need a lot of luck but it was worth the try. He took from his pocket the Swiss army knife he always carried and, covertly, selected the vicious little marlinspike. The handle of the knife lay crosswise on his palm, the blade extending a couple of inches from between his fingers when he clenched his fist. A hard, punching stab at the vertebrae was the thing to go for. As he began to move towards the bookstall, he felt a momentary regret. Robert was a nice bloke, and he’d be very distressed by this. But that was just too bad. It wasn’t his fault that she was at Heathrow. She wasn’t supposed to be. A man had to save himself, didn’t he? And after all, if he managed to kill her, it would be two birds with one stone.