Chapter Four

Tom Rye had the operational part of the telephone balanced on his right shoulder, and held in position by his chin. It was an arrangement which left both hands free. With one of them he was scribbling something on a piece of paper, with the other he was squeezing mustard out of a plastic container onto an open ham sandwich.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s good. The skipper’s just turned up. I’ll tell him. Better hang on. He’ll probably want to come over himself.” He rang off and said, “That was Len. He’s over at the cinema. Old Skeffington bought that compact all right. But he didn’t buy it for one of the usherettes. No sir! He bought it for Sweetie Sowthistle.”

Sergeant Gwilliam, who was typing a report, using one finger of each hand, gave a long low whistle. Mercer looked blank. Tom Rye said what sounded like “Eez-oh-ow-is-orter”. He then swallowed the large chunk of bread and ham which was obstructing him, apologised, and said, “What I said was, she’s old Sowthistle’s daughter. He’s quite a local character. He lives in a barge on Easthaugh Island. That’s about a quarter of a mile downstream from where they found the body.”

“Then we’d better have a word with his daughter quick.”

“There’s an objection to that. She disappeared. When was it Taffy?”

“More than two years ago,” said Sergeant Gwilliam.

Mercer said, “Oh, I see. More than two years ago.” His heavy face was thoughtful. “Well it looks as though we might be able to short-circuit this one, doesn’t it.”

“The only thing is,” said Rye, “that if you’re thinking that the next step will be to rope in Sweetie’s boyfriend of two years ago and put him through the pulper, you’re going to have your work cut out. She wasn’t much more than seventeen when she disappeared, but she’d been laid by half the males in Stoneferry.”

“Quite a girl,” said Mercer.

“She was a trollop,” said Sergeant Gwilliam. His upbringing had been Chapel, and strict.

Mr. Skeffington turned out to be a smallish man with thick-lensed glasses and a mop of untidy hair. He greeted Mercer with a cheerful smile, and seemed unembarrassed by the circumstances which had brought him to the attention of the police.

“That’s quite right,” he said. “I knew Sweetie. She applied for a job here once. I’d have liked to give it her, but I couldn’t see my way to doing it.”

“Why not?”

“I couldn’t have trusted her, Inspector. You know what a cinema’s like in the afternoon. Pitch dark. Practically no one there. You’d be surprised what we pick up in the back row of the stalls after the performance is over.”

“You knew her yourself quite well?”

“What makes you think that?”

“You gave her this compact.”

“I’m always giving things to girls. I’ve got a generous nature.”

“Weren’t you overdoing it a bit, sir? I mean, if your acquaintance with her was confined to one occasion, when she asked for a job and you weren’t able to offer her one—”

“That wasn’t the only time. I’d met her several times before that.”

“Socially?”

“You might call it socially I suppose,” said Mr. Skeffington blandly. “She was a very popular girl. Everyone liked Sweetie. Sad to think she should have ended like that.”

“Ended like what, Mr. Skeffington?”

“Murdered, Inspector. Murdered and buried on Westhaugh Island. At least, I think it must have been her, or you wouldn’t be asking me all these questions.”

“We have reason to think that it might be,” said Mercer stiffly. He found Mr. Skeffington disconcerting. “When did you give her this compact?”

“Your sergeant was asking me that. I was able to tell him almost exactly.” Mr. Skeffington consulted a desk diary. “It was in the third week of September, three years ago. One of the usherettes, a Miss Williams that was, had given in her notice to go and get married. I really bought the compact as a present for her. Then I found the other girls were collecting money for a fitted handbag and a compact and since there didn’t seem to be much point in giving her two compacts, I added my contribution to that, and kept the compact. Then Sweetie turned up asking for the job, and seeing that I had to disappoint her, I gave it to her.”

“Do you give presents to all applicants for jobs that you have to refuse?”

“Not to all girls, but Sweetie was an exception.”

“Why?”

“Because I was sorry for her.”

“Why particularly?”

“It’s clear, Inspector,” said Mr. Skeffington, “that you’re new here. You’ve never met her father.”

“He’s a filthy old sod,” said Rye. “Real name is Hedges. It was the boys who called him Sowthistle. It used to be a ‘dare’ among them to slip across to his island, crawl through the undergrowth, and peep in at one of the portholes to see what he was up to. You can imagine what sort of a kick they got out of doing that.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Nobody knows. He landed up here after the war, and took possession of that derelict barge. He fitted it up, after a fashion, and started to live there with a woman who was charitably referred to as his wife. She walked out on him when Sweetie was about ten. I don’t blame her. He used to beat her when he was drunk and he was drunk pretty often.”

“Why didn’t the authorities take the girl away from him?”

“They tried to. Sowthistle kicked up a fuss. The great heart of the British public was stirred. A fund was got up. Counsel was briefed. It was in all the papers. Poor lonely old man, deserted by his wife! Now they try to rob him of his daughter!! His sole prop and stay!!! Yards of sentiment. Buckets of tears. Two years later she applied to us for protection. He’d tried to rape her.”

“What did the great British public think of that?”

“They didn’t want to hear about that bit. We put her into a local authority home at Slough and she stayed there until she was fourteen. Then she elected to go back and look after Dad. Maybe she thought she was old enough to manage him. Maybe she thought it was a good base of operations. She was quite a good-looking girl in a healthy, animal sort of way.”

Mercer cocked an eye at him, and Rye had the grace to blush. “I wouldn’t have said no,” he agreed. “But I wasn’t her cup of tea. The men she went for were middle-aged men with money. When she disappeared we made a full list of ’em—just in case.”

Rye extracted a paper from the file, and pushed it across. Mercer saw that there had originally been about twenty names on it, but a lot of them had been crossed through.

“Died, or left the district,” said Rye. “Or we couldn’t prove they’d had anything to do with Sweetie at all. They were names other people had suggested, but they didn’t come to anything. You know how people talk.”

“I know how people talk,” agreed Mercer. “Who are the ones that are left? Skeffington I know.”

“Camberley, he’s a commercial gent. He was one of her regulars. Barrington’s a retired naval P.O. Got a houseboat downriver. Henniker’s a turf accountant. Jeejeeboy’s a Pakistani. He runs the restaurant next to the old bridge.”

“No colour bar?”

“Certainly not. One of her regular ex-boyfriends was a Chinaman.”

“And what about this one?” said Mercer.

It was the last name on the list.

“Rainey. He works for Jack Bull. Keeps his books for him.”

“I’ve met him,” said Mercer. “He’s a dipso.”

“I’ve heard he was a bit of a drinker.”

“He’s not just a heavy drinker. He’s an alcoholic. When you’ve met one or two of them you can’t miss it.” Mercer was standing with the list in his hand. Rye had noticed that he had a habit of talking about one thing and thinking about something quite different. Now he said, “What was the official reaction when she disappeared?”

“We didn’t treat it as a murder case, if that’s what you mean.”

“What did you do?”

“Had a word with her known boyfriends. They all said much the same thing. They all admitted they’d paid her money for favours received. But they all said they’d had nothing to do with her for at least a month.”

“What did they make of that?”

“The same as we did. That she’d picked up with a professional. Someone who saw she was worth more than smalltown money. And he’d taken her off and set her up in London. That was our first idea, anyway.”

“The first?”

“And the last, officially. All the same there were some odd points about it. For instance, she had a lot of quite nice clothes. She didn’t keep them at home. Her father would have flogged them. Mr. Jeejeeboy let her keep them in a locker, in a room behind his restaurant. She had some jewellery, too. Not worth more than a few pounds, but the sort of thing a girl gets attached to. She left it all behind.”

“It’s the sort of thing a girl might do,” said Mercer slowly, “if she was starting a new life. Or thought she was. She wouldn’t want the old stuff to remind her of what she was leaving behind. It was trash. It was devalued. It stank.”

“Maybe,” said Rye. “But there’s one thing she left behind which would have been worth the same in London as in Stoneferry. We found this among the clothes.”

Mercer took it. It was a Post Office Savings Book. The last figure in it showed a credit balance of £27.15.0.

“What did our revered Superintendent say when you told him about this? Did he still rule out foul play?”

“He said she must have forgotten about it.”

“When did she disappear?”

Rye referred again to his file.

“She was last seen in Stoneferry late afternoon, on a Wednesday in March. Father Wolcot spoke to her.”

Mercer was examining the book. He said, “The last entry is five pounds drawn out on March 7th. She must have had a very short memory.”

“I don’t think the old man wanted it to be murder. He likes to keep his statistics healthy. If it was a disappearance, it wasn’t a crime. Not even a suspected one.”

“That’s one way of keeping your sheet clean,” said Mercer. “We’d better get after these six and put ’em through it again. Who’ve we got?”

“This is one of those moments,” said Rye, “when we’d like a real detective force. Half a dozen clean-limbed youngsters sitting round, straining like greyhounds on the leash, waiting for the word ‘go’.”

“Who have we got?”

“You and me. And Massey. Sergeant Gwilliam’s starting his leave and Prothero’s up in London, where he’ll be for the best part of three days.”

“What the hell’s he doing there?”

“Waiting to produce some photographs and give five minutes’ evidence about nothing at all. You know, Skipper, I’ve often wondered why they bother to try people. Why don’t they just say, ‘The police have arrested them, they must be guilty, send ’em to prison’?”

“You do Camberley and Barrington. Massey can take the bookie and the Pakistani.”

“That leaves Rainey for you.”

“Yes,” said Mercer. “And by the way. That chap Prior. Did he leave the district?”

“Prior?”

“Owner of the Stoneferry Central Garage.”

“Oh him. No. I don’t think so. I’ve got an idea he lives in one of those bungalows above Westhaugh Lock. Why?”

“Weatherman said, after Prior went bust he left the district. I’m going to have a word with Rainey now. Be back in half an hour.”

“Extraordinary chap,” said Rye to himself. “Doesn’t seem able to keep his mind on one thing at a time.”

As Mercer was passing the Superintendent’s office, the door opened and Clark came out. He said, “Oh, Mercer. I understand you’re making a bit of headway with the case of that girl.”

“That’s right, sir.”

The Superintendent was blocking the passage. Short of pushing, he couldn’t get past him.

“I’d like to be kept in the picture about it. Fully in the picture.”

“I’ll see you’re kept in the picture.”

“Do I understand you’ve identified her?”

“We’ve got a tentative identification. Nothing definite yet.”

“I see. Well, keep me posted.” He made a half move, and Mercer slid past him. “You realise that if we clear this up without any help from Central this will be a feather in our caps.”

“A feather in your cap, you crafty old bastard,” said Mercer as he went out into the street.

“Wojjer say?” said Station Sergeant Rix.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

“Daft,” said Station Sergeant Rix to Station Officer Tovey who happened to come in at that moment.

“Who’s daft?”

“The new C.I.D. man. Talking to himself.”

“Those plain-clothes characters are all cracked,” said Tovey.

Bull’s Garage and Motor Mart occupied what had been two shops in the High Street, and the yard behind both of them. The site had not been designed as a garage, and as a result the pull-in in front was not as deep as it should have been and the four petrol pumps were squashed against the office frontage. All the same, it looked a pretty prosperous sort of outfit.

Johnno found time to grin at Mercer between finishing filling the tank of an old Bentley with high-octane petrol and starting to sell a quart tin of oil to a youngster in a Mini-Cooper. Mercer wandered through into the office where he found Vikki who was frowning over a pile of indents. The tip of her pink tongue was sticking out of the side of her mouth. When she saw Mercer she cheered up, and said, “Hullo, Sunshine. What can we do for you?”

“Where’s the boss?”

“In the yard. What do you want?”

“That,” said Mercer, “is absolutely nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, I’m just the dogsbody,” agreed Vikki with a grin. She looked as happy as a kitten that has found a warm spot to curl up in.

Mercer walked through the office and out into the yard.

This was more spacious than the frontage had suggested. There was a row of four lock-up garages down each side, and an open-fronted workshop at the end with two inspection pits and some quite elaborate overhead gadgetry. Jack Bull was working with one of the mechanics underneath a van which had been hoisted on hydraulic stilts. Seeing him stripped confirmed Mercer’s first impression. He was a man of formidable physique which was only just beginning to run to seed. He had the barrel chest and rounded shoulders of an old-style wrestler, and his one good arm was thick with muscle.

Seeing Mercer, he climbed out of the pit, wiped his right hand on the side of his denims, and said, “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve come to buy a car.”

“Five out of ten,” said Mercer. “That’s one thing I’ve come for.”

“I’ve got just the job. An M.G. Not quite three years old. Done only fifteen thousand. New tyres all round. Yours for two hundred and fifty pounds.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I like to see the force properly equipped. She’s in the end garage. Come and have a look at her.”

Mercer didn’t need to look twice. Unless there was something seriously wrong with it the car was worth four hundred pounds of anyone’s money. “You realise,” he said, “that if a back wheel falls off or the gear-box seizes up first time I use it, you’re going to have to put it right.”

“The motto of Bull’s Garage is service after sales. And until you find somewhere better, you can keep it here. All you’ll need is a key to the yard gate, then you can get it out any time you like.”

“That sounds fine,” said Mercer. “The only thing is, they might want me to keep it at the station.”

“You can’t. They’ve only got two lock-ups there. Bob Clark’s got one and Bill Medmenham’s got the other. Of course, you could keep your car in the open yard at the back of the station. That’d be all right as long as the weather keeps fine.”

“No need to twist my arm,” said Mercer. “I accept your offer, till further notice. It’s very kind of you.”

“You won’t be the first copper I’ve helped,” said Bull. “Tom Rye used to keep his jalopy here, until they found him a house with a garage. And so did Sergeant Rollo. That’s fixed then. What’s your other bit of business?”

“I want to have a word with Rainey.”

“And if I ask you what it’s all about, I suppose you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I can’t see why not, seeing that he’ll tell you all about it as soon as I’ve gone. I want to ask him about a girl called Mavis Hedges, otherwise Sweetie Sowthistle.”

Bull made a noise in his throat. It might have been the ‘Oh’ of incredulity or the ‘Ah’ of enlightenment, or it might have been a mixture of both.

“So that’s who you dug up, was it?” he said.

“It’s a possibility.”

“And was Rainey one of hers?”

“A suggestion has been made to that effect.”

“You’d better have a word with him then. He operates in a room round behind the workshop.”

Mercer said thanks, and moved off. As he turned the corner he looked back. Jack Bull was standing watching him. When other pictures had faded, Mercer was to remember that particular one. The man, massive and unmoving, dressed only in a singlet and denim trousers. The army surgeon had taken the left arm off neatly at the elbow. The end of the stump was puckered and seamed.

Most men hide their wounds, thought Mercer. But not Jack Bull.