Chapter Eight

“Who was Mrs. Tyler?” said Mercer.

“Never heard of her,” said Tom Rye.

“Mrs. Agatha Mainwaring Tyler of the Thatched Cottage, Stoneferry Common. Where’s Stoneferry Common?”

“South of the river between Chertsey and Laleham. High-class district. The Thatched Cottage is probably a little place with twenty bedrooms standing in its own park.”

“No,” said Mercer. He was turning over the pages of a dusty office docket, one of a dozen he had unearthed from a cupboard and spread over his table. “Judging from the evidence available, Mrs. Tyler may have been a gentlewoman—but she was a depressed gentlewoman. Depressed, and oppressed.”

“Who by?”

“According to her, by Bull’s Garage.”

“What would they do that for?”

“It’s an interesting story. Like all these dockets. All interesting stories. Some with beginnings and some with middles, but very few with endings.”

“The ones in that cabinet were all Dick Rollo’s cases. I don’t think I’ve looked at them since he—”

“Since he went.”

“That’s right,” said Rye. “Since he went.” Mercer had noticed that talking about Sergeant Rollo always made him edgy. “What’s so interesting about Mrs. Tyler?”

“It’s a very human story. Mrs. Tyler was seventy-seven years old. She had long outlasted Mr. Tyler and she lived, in modest but declining widowhood, in the Thatched Cottage which stands—” Mercer consulted the docket—“three miles from the nearest railway station and half a mile from the nearest bus stop.”

“She can’t have got about much.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. The old duck possessed a motor car. And a driving licence.”

“At seventy-seven.”

“Old ladies of seventy-seven cause less trouble on the road than kids of seventeen.”

“True,” said Rye. “So what happened?”

“Her car went in to Bull’s Garage for its three-year road test. Since it had been driven by Mrs. Tyler alone, and maintained with scrupulous care, she had no reason to anticipate trouble and was therefore horrified when she was told that the differential was in such a bad state that it would have to be removed and replaced. At a cost of eighty-five pounds.”

“Lousy workmanship. I’m told one car in ten that comes out of the factory has something radically wrong with it.”

“You may be right. But that’s not the point. The point is, there was nothing wrong with the differential at all.”

Rye stared at him.

“Mrs. Tyler had a grandson, who was a friend of Sergeant Rollo. They’d been at school together. They were both mad about cars. Not just mad about driving them. They loved taking them to pieces to see what made them tick.”

“That’s right,” said Rye. “Dick Rollo was never happier than when he was lying under some piece of machinery up to his elbows in black grease.”

“The two of them spent a whole weekend dismantling granny’s differential. They couldn’t find a blind thing wrong with it, and what’s more, they came to the conclusion that it hadn’t even been looked at. Some of the bolts on the casing were rusted in so tight it was clear they hadn’t been shifted for years.”

“Well?” said Rye. “What happened?”

Mercer was silent. He seemed to have lost the train of his thoughts. Possibly he was seeing Sergeant Rollo, crouched behind his own car wiring a piece of rubber tubing to the exhaust pipe. Finally he said, “Nothing happened. Bull apologised. He said that two reports had got switched. Mrs. Tyler’s car had a clean bill of health.” He had started leafing through the other dockets. He said, “All the same, I don’t think Sergeant Rollo was quite happy about it. He seems to have started an unofficial enquiry, all on his own. Finding out the names of other people—particularly people who lived outside the town, elderly people who depended absolutely on their cars but knew damn-all about them. I think he was looking for a few other cases where the same sort of ‘mistake’ might have been made.”

“He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“If he had said something to you – before he’d collected some other evidence – would you have believed him?”

“Believed that Bull was on the crook? No, I don’t think I should have done. I should have thought he could make all the money he wanted honestly.”

“It depends how much he wants,” said Mercer. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me about him?”

“About Jack Bull?”

“No, no,” said Mercer gently. “About Rollo. I’ll have to know some time.”

“I suppose so,” said Rye. He didn’t sound happy. “We’d been having a run of cases of thefts of portable typewriters and tape-recorders. Wireless sets, television sets, hi-fi gear, that sort of stuff. Not one big bust, but a steady trickle. Rollo was put on to it.”

“Who did Rollo think was doing it?”

“He didn’t seem to get very far with that job. I didn’t bother him. It was just one of a lot of jobs. If a lead turned up, he’d follow it. You know how it is. The next thing was we got a note.”

“Anonymous, naturally.”

“Naturally. Written in block capitals on a piece of lavatory paper. It just said that Rollo had taken one of the stolen colour T.V. sets as a pay-off. We’d find it at his house. If the note had come to me, I’d have put it where it belonged and pulled the plug.”

“Who did get it?”

“The old man. I don’t think he liked it much, but orders are orders. Any complaint, however trivial—you know the form. As a first step we got a man from the next division to drop in on Mrs. Rollo. The set was there. In the lounge, as large as life. When she was out of the room, he got a sight of the serial number. It was one of the stolen sets. No question.”

“Out in the open? In the middle of the room?”

“That’s right. When Rollo was asked about it later he told us how he got it. Apparently a man had called at the house one morning about three weeks before, when Mrs. Rollo was alone, produced his card, and said he was area representative of the Starlight Supermarket Chain, and wasn’t Mrs. Rollo a lucky girl! She was the millionth customer to make a purchase at one of their shops since the chain had started operating, and she was going to be presented with a handsome new television set. There’d be a proper presentation later, with the Press in attendance, and all that jazz. But they didn’t see why she shouldn’t use it meanwhile.”

“Did she tell anyone about this at the time?”

“No. The man said to keep quiet about it until the presentation or it’d spoil the surprise.”

“Clever,” said Mercer. “Plausible, too. What happened next?”

“The old man asked Rollo about the set as soon as he came off duty. He told us what I’ve just told you. And we believed him. It was an obvious fix. We told him we didn’t intend to take any further step in the matter. Only the man who’d been put on the job was a stickler. We didn’t know it, but for the next few evenings he kept up a watch on Rollo’s house, from a car parked over the way. On the third evening he saw Rollo come out, quite late, and drive off. He followed him. Rollo drove out of town, up-river, towards Westhaugh Island, stopped on a lonely stretch, got something out of the boot – it was pretty heavy by the way he handled it – heaved it into the bushes and drove off.”

“Let me guess,” said Mercer. “It was an unopened sale carton with a brand new record-player in it.”

“A typewriter actually.”

“And what did he say about that one? That he’d won it in a raffle.”

“He said he’d found it in the boot of his car when he got home that evening. He wanted to tell us. His wife talked him out of it. She said no one would believe it. She said just go and dump it. So he did.”

“He must have been worried stupid,” said Mercer. “I don’t mean pulling a silly stunt like that, I mean doing it so bloody inefficiently. He was a trained detective, and he allowed himself to be followed, at night, on a little used road, and didn’t spot the tail.”

“He was worried all right,” said Rye. “He took it very hard. After what had happened we had to go on with the investigation. This time they sent two senior men down from Central. They started asking a lot of questions. Then Rollo took the short way out.”

“Which everyone assumed to be an admission of guilt.”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you?”

Rye took time out to answer this. Then he said, “It’s hard to say. His wife didn’t help. She was a bit of a bitch and apt to get hysterical. All the same, taken by itself, it didn’t seem to me to be enough. All he had to do was to say that the whole thing was a plant, and stick to it. Agreed he behaved stupidly. Agreed it would have left a black mark. He might have got booted out. If he’d been near the end of the line, with his pension gone and nothing much to live for—but hell! He was twenty-four.”

Mercer said, “Before I went to Southwark, when I was attached to West End Central, I learned a lot about framing. The villains round those parts made quite a speciality of it, and the police had studied it too. One thing I found was they very rarely tried to frame an absolutely straight man. There had to be a crack in the fabric first. Just wide enough to get the point of a knife into. And the person most likely to be framed was one who’d done them a few favours in the past, and then had stopped. Maybe he saw the light, or maybe he didn’t think the game was worth the candle. Those were the ones they’d really put the hook on.”

“I’m not sure that I follow you,” said Rye stiffly. “Are you suggesting that Rollo was guilty?”

“Not of the things he was charged with. But I think it’s possible that once or twice, in the past, he may have done a few small favours. It mayn’t have seemed important at the time. It was probably for someone he liked. Someone who’d done favours for him. But when the crunch came, it was this little bit of rottenness inside that broke him up.”

Rye said, “I’ve never listened to such utter balls in my life,” and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

Mercer returned to the pile of dockets on the table. He was grinning, but there was not a lot of mirth in it. Rye’s way out took him past the Superintendent’s office. The door was open and Clark beckoned him in.

He said, “Shut the door, Tom, and sit down. I’ve been wanting the chance of a word with you. You look worried. Something wrong?”

“I’ve just insulted my superior officer.”

“This isn’t the army. You won’t be court-martialled. As a matter of fact, it was your superior officer I wanted to talk to you about. What do you make of him? It’s all right. You’re not giving evidence in court. This is completely unofficial and off the record.”

“I’m damned if I know what to make of him,” said Rye. “Usually, I can sum a man up quickly. I’ve been working with Mercer for nearly two weeks now, and I know less about him than when he arrived. He talks a lot, but he doesn’t tell you anything. And he never seems to be thinking of less than three things at once. You’d think handling a murder investigation would be enough to occupy a man’s mind. But when you think he’s thinking about Sweetie and old Hedges, he’s off on Prior.”

“Prior?”

“Chap who owned the Stoneferry Garage that went bust three or four years ago.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Now he’s started looking through all Sergeant Rollo’s old cases.”

“What on earth for?”

“I think he’s got a bee in his bonnet about Jack Bull.”

“And yet,” said Clark, “he seems to be very friendly with him. Exceptionally friendly.” He picked up a typewritten slip from his desk. “That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Medmenham showed me this.”

It was a report from the Station Incidents Book, contributed by P.C. Harper. It said that he had seen two men come out of the side door of The Angler’s Rest public house at twenty minutes after midnight. They were walking a little unsteadily, but were not drunk and had stopped under the railway arch to talk. There had been complaints about breaches of licensing regulations at The Angler’s Rest and P.C. Harper had been curious to see who those late customers were. One was easily recognisable as Mr. Bull. As soon as he saw that the other man was Detective Chief Inspector Mercer he had broken off observation.

“I like ‘broken off observation’,” said Rye. “What he means is, he pissed off bloody quick.”

In the C.I.D. room the telephone rang. Mercer put down the docket he was examining and said, “Mercer here. Oh, hullo Mrs. Prior. What can we do for you?” Then, “Where are you speaking from? A call box? Where?” And, “All right. I’ll meet you there.” He grabbed up his hat and went out.

The Dolly Varden Cafe was a quiet place opposite the end of Fore Street. Mrs. Prior was at a table at the back of the nearly empty room. She had ordered two cups of coffee, and was making a pretence of drinking one. Mercer sat down beside her.

“I thought it better not to come to the police station,” she said. “You know what small towns are like for gossip. It would have got back to Henry, and he’d never have forgiven me.”

“Why not?”

“He categorically forbade me to speak to you.”

Like a breeze coming in at an open window, a tiny prickle of apprehension touched the back of Mercer’s neck. He said, “That was high-handed of him. Funny, because he didn’t strike me as a high-handed sort of person.”

“He’s not high-handed,” said Mrs. Prior. “He was scared. Scared out of his wits. It took me a whole day to get it out of him. Even now I can hardly believe it. When I was out that afternoon two men called. They just said to Henry, ‘We hear you’ve been talking to the police. You mustn’t do it.’ Henry blustered a bit, and said, ‘You’ve got no right to come in here and say things like that to me.’ And then—” Mrs. Prior’s voice broke for a moment—“they frog-marched him into the kitchen, filled the sink with water, twisted his arms behind his back and held him face down in it. They held him there for about a minute. Then they let him go and said, ‘If you talk to the police again, we’ll hold you down for five minutes.’ Then they went.”

“Could he describe the men?”

“He can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Does it matter which?”

“I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end,” said Mercer. “Tell me, did you happen to notice a lush looking character in a Panama hat, smoking a big cigar, coming up your stretch of the river?”

Mrs. Prior said, slowly, “Yes. I think so. The day you came. I didn’t notice the man particularly, but I noticed the boat. A twenty-footer with a diesel engine.”

“That sounds like the one. Where would anyone hire a boat like that?”

“It’s not a local boat. Up-river at Staines or Windsor. Or down at Teddington or Richmond. Or even further. It could have come up from London, or down from Henley.”

Mercer said, “Thanks for coming to see me, Mrs. Prior. And will you give your husband a message. I shan’t trouble either of you again. You’ve told me all you could tell me, and I guess these men knew it.”

“Then why did they do it?”

“It was an exercise in fancy brutality. It’s their speciality. It was meant as a warning.”

“I still don’t understand. If there’s nothing more he can tell you, and they knew that, what was the point of warning him?”

“It wasn’t him they were warning,” said Mercer. “It was me.”

He stopped at the pay-desk on the way out and asked the manageress if he could use her telephone. She said, “You’re our new policeman, aren’t you? I thought so. The phone’s in my office. Help yourself.”

Mercer dialled the number of the Carcroft factory at Staines and asked for the manager. The manager said, “I’m afraid you can’t speak to Beardoe. He’s in hospital.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Not too bad. He broke his wrist.”

“How come?”

“He fell downstairs. Concussed himself. Messed his face up a bit too. If you want him badly, he should be able to see you in a day or two.”

“Well, thanks,” said Mercer. He made a note of the name of the hospital, paid for the call, and walked out into the High Street. On his way back to the station he found himself doing things which had been second nature in Southwark, but had been left behind him when he came to Stoneferry. Like walking in the middle of the pavement, and taking an occasional look in a shop window to see whether anyone was crowding him.

The C.I.D. room was empty. There was a message, in Rye’s vile handwriting, on a piece of paper pinned to the front of his table by a paper knife. It said, ‘The boss wants you. Panic stations.’

Mercer looked at the message for a long minute, his eyes abstracted, his thick body rocking gently, from heel to toe and back again. Then he drifted out, along the passage, and into Bob Clark’s room. The Superintendent said, “There you are. I’ve been looking for you. We’re in a mess.”

Mercer said, “Oh?”

“We’ve got the adjourned inquest on that girl coming up on Monday and we’ve lost our main witness.”

“Lost?”

“Dr. Champion. He died this morning. He collapsed at home. Just after breakfast. He was dead before they could get him to hospital.”

“Do they know what it was?”

“An acute coronary, they think. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. He’d got high blood pressure, and he’d been overworking for years. He was due to retire next month, actually.”

Mercer said, “Poor old sod. Anyway, it was quick.”

“Yes,” said Clark. “And it’s left us in a devil of a mess.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mercer. “But I don’t see it. Naturally we can ask for a further adjournment now.”

“Certainly. But what are we going to do with Hedges meanwhile?”

“Ah,” said Mercer. “I take your point.”

“If the inquest had gone as planned we’d have got a positive identification. That would have been enough to justify holding him. But if we’re going to charge him with murder, we’ve got to do it next time he comes up. Otherwise we can’t possibly oppose bail. There’s a lot of feeling about that already. And once he’s out, God knows if we shall ever see him again.”

“I don’t think we should see him again.”

Clark looked at Mercer. He said, “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“I’ve never believed that Hedges murdered Sweetie, but I think he knows something about it. Either he had a hand in it, or he saw her being killed. Or being buried. Or thought he did. As long as he was taking the rap, as long as he was locked up here, he was safe. Let him out and I wouldn’t give you sixpence for his chances.”

“I think you’re exaggerating,” said Clark. But he didn’t sound happy.

“Could we run him in for assault and put him inside for a month?”

“I might have a word with Murray Talbot. He’d help us if he could. The trouble is, Hedges is something of a public character. The local paper has taken up his case. Did you see the article yesterday? Raking up all the old history.”

“I saw it.”

“There’s talk of briefing counsel to defend him. If they put up a real fight, I wouldn’t guarantee we could put him away. Throwing a punch at a policeman. It isn’t as serious as all that.”

And the last thing you want is a Press crusade against you on the eve of your retirement, thought Mercer. Aloud, he said, “I’ve got a better idea. If you got a positive identification at the inquest, you think we could justify a charge?”

“Coupled with the sale of the girl’s ring and what we’ve got by way of a confession. Yes.”

“All right. We’ll ask Dr. Summerson to come down from Guy’s. He’s seen all the evidence. I sent him duplicates of everything, in case there was a laboratory angle to it. He’s seen all the photographs, and Dr. Champion’s notes.”

“Summerson,” said Clark. “Summerson. Yes. That should do the trick. Do you know, Mercer, I think that’s rather a good idea.”