Chapter Seven

Pattern Of Events

Roger recovered his balance, half way inside the room. By then the silence had lost its menace; if Wilson had been waiting to attack, he would have shown himself. There was nothing to suggest that he had got out of the window; in the light from the landing, it showed up clearly, and the curtains were drawn.

Roger thought: ‘So he’s flown,’ and switched on the bedroom light – and stopped moving.

Wilson hadn’t flown.

He lay on the bed, fully dressed, and the ugly thing was the gash at his throat; as ugly, the blood which must have drenched the bedclothes, and had now dried to a dark brown; there was hardly a touch of red. Wilson’s knees were drawn up, in an oddly uncanny way; as a live man’s. It looked as if he had been killed while lying on his back with his hands behind his neck and his legs drawn up.

Fox-Wilkinson said heavily: “Well, what about that?”

“Now I think we’re beginning to see how big it is,” Roger said slowly. The first effect of the shock was easing off; it wouldn’t take long to go. “Better get Wilberforce over here right away. Your chaps can look after the rest, can’t they?”

“Glad to.”

“Here, what’s going on?” demanded the man with the red nose. He put up a show of bravado, and moved forward. “What’s the game, is—”

“Come with me a minute, will you?” asked Roger, and gripped a bony wrist, making the man go with him into the room. One look at the bed, and the man made a retching sound. “Just tell me this,” said Roger evenly. “Is that Wilson?”

“Y-y-y-yes” gabbled the landlord. “Let me get out of here, let me get out.”

It didn’t take long to get things moving. Divisional men took over the routine, a divisional police surgeon was on the spot within fifteen minutes, Wilberforce with his big assistant soon afterwards.

Roger tackled the man and wife and their daughter. The family name was Evans, and the daughter seemed to be worth three of her parents, an alert, well spoken brunette in her early twenties.

They’d heard Wilson come in, about half past ten, with someone else – they’d known it was a man because of his footsteps. The men had gone straight to Wilson’s room and switched on the radio; he usually got a foreign station, with dance music. They hadn’t heard anyone leave, but they’d been listening to their own radio.

The police could not find the weapon.

The doctor hadn’t much doubt about it being a long knife with a very sharp blade; there had been no hacking, just one sweeping blow.

The only new find of significance was a brown stain on one of Wilson’s shoes – a shoe which might have made that impression in the mud at Goose Lane. Roger took this with him, and drove back to the Yard. The Laboratory night staff lost no time confirming that the brown stain was blood, and Roger soon found that the shoe matched the cast.

But there was still no answer to the vital questions. Had Wilson killed Bryant? Or had Wilson known the killer, and been killed because of what he could tell?

Roger set the Yard and the Divisions to work at high pressure, to trace all of Wilson’s friends, and check and double check his movements. Then he went back to Wilson’s room, arriving as Wilberforce finished his first search.

“Looked for any prints yourself, Handsome?”

“Always leave that to the experts.”

“You’d be a wiser man if you did! Well, take a look at these. And these and these and these.” Wilberforce kept stabbing his finger about the room; at the electric switch, the door handle, the radio, at a cigarette case, at a glass, at a beer bottle. “Wilson’s prints are all over the place, but they weren’t on that hammer shaft.”

That was a disappointment and reminded Roger of his earlier fears: there would be no short cut.

“Pity,” he said.

Wilberforce grinned.

“Don’t be downhearted! The man who handled that hammer’s been here.” Wilberforce showed him a print on a plain tumbler which smelled of whisky. “See? Been wiped, but he left a dab; too much of a hurry, I suppose. Tented arch and the little scar. Bit of luck we got that; the glass had a smear of fat on it—butter, I’d say—and there was the dab, large as life. Wilson was killed by the man who handled that hammer.”

“Well, that’s something,” Roger said.

He left soon afterwards, checked with the Yard, and was home and in bed just after four o’clock.

He didn’t wake until half past ten next morning, and as soon as his eyes flickered open sensed that it was late. There was the broad daylight of winter brightness, sounds in the street which he was seldom at home to hear; and no sound in the house. He got up, opened the door and called: “Anyone home?” Janet didn’t answer.

Roger yawned, rasped his chin, put on a dressing gown and went downstairs, calling Janet and getting no response. On the kitchen table was a note: Gone to shops, back about eleven. AC said telephone him as soon as you’re awake. So Chatworth was on the ball. Roger put on a kettle and looked through the newspapers as he waited for it to boil. He was featured in several of them. Bryant’s murder made the front pages in every newspaper – it had exactly the right news value, a Christmas story of Murder in the Post Office. Every newspaper took up the line that it might be connected with the Post Office robberies which had spread over many years.

The kettle boiled.

Roger made tea, letting it brew while he telephoned the Yard and asked for Chatworth. He reported, briefly, and Chatworth made no comment that mattered; he was not a man who talked for the sake of talking.

“Put me through to Turnbull’s desk, sir, will you?” Roger asked.

Turnbull was soon on the line.

“Find out any tiling more about that hammer?” asked Roger.

“No, nothing at all,” Turnbull said. “You had all the fun.” Roger let that pass. “Carmichael turned up on the tick of eight, as usual, a stickler for punctuality. Any fresh orders?”

“No,” said Roger. “I’ll be seeing you.”

He had two cups of tea, shaved, washed, dressed, and went downstairs as Janet arrived, fully laden. As she hustled about to get him some breakfast, she complained about the shops and the prices, and there was a sharper edge to her voice than usual. One of those mornings! The boys had been difficult to wake up, apparently; she’d been cross with them, and it was so vexing on the day that Scoopy was so happy about his triumph. Roger said: “Oh, lor’,” and went into the front room. There was his Hi, champ! on top of the writing desk just where he had left it last night. He took it up to the boys’ room and left it on Scoopy’s bed, and when he came down, breakfast was ready. Twenty minutes later, he gave Janet a peck of a kiss and left.

Nothing new had come in at the Yard.

Except for the one on the glass, the only fingerprints at Wilson’s place were those of the unknown murderer, Wilson, and the Evans family – man, wife, and daughter.

Roger put in a written report, for Chatworth, and went along to the River Way Post Office.

As he turned into the big yard, he whistled.

It was crammed with vehicles, mostly Post Office red, but a few privately owned, nearly all dark colours. It swarmed with people, mostly men and mostly young. The heaps of parcels on the unloading and the loading platforms were mountainous. There was a kind of rhythm about the way everything was done, and yet the chutes were choked, and if the inflow of parcels increased, there wouldn’t be room for them. He had never seen anything quite like it – and there, in the middle of the great piles of parcels, looking like a tiny dictator, was Carmichael.

He was directing the work.

Roger watched him for fully five minutes. Some men made a lot of fuss and got little done, some made no fuss and got everything done. That was Carmichael. He might be a slimy piece of work, but he was efficient, and his men jumped to his orders. Wherever the piles of parcels looked largest and the chutes were threatened with overloading, there was Carmichael – not striding, but pointing, speaking in a quiet voice, setting everything on the move.

Roger parked near the entrance, because there was no room further in the yard, and walked towards the loading platform. There were steps at intervals, where he could climb up. He didn’t go to Carmichael, but saw Turnbull just inside the huge sorting room.

“Hallo, Handsome,” he greeted. “What do you think of our overseer?” He was just too familiar, but Roger let it pass.

“He’s doing quite a job.”

“He’s so busy that he hasn’t time to give us much help this morning, and Farnley is saying that if we interfere too much it will choke the whole works,” Turnbull said. “Wants to know whether we can’t postpone questioning Carmichael until the flood’s slackened a bit, or he’s having his lunch. Apparently they’ve had four ships in together at Southampton, all held up by the gales, and this is the result. Chaos, and—”

“Better leave Carmichael for a bit,” Roger said; “if we get their backs up it isn’t going to help. Any news of that hammer?”

Turnbull said: “Yes,” in a way that puzzled Roger.

“Whose?”

“Maintenance engineer. Some weeks ago he lent it to another maintenance engineer, name Bryant. Derek Bryant.”

Roger echoed: “Derek Bryant?” unbelievingly.

“That’s it,” said Turnbull. “And young Bryant’s been in this morning—he didn’t take the morning off.”

“Where is he now?” asked Roger, sharply.

“Out on a job—there’s been a bit of trouble at one of the sub Post Offices. Pipe burst or something. I didn’t find out about the hammer until he’d left I’ve got the number of his motorcycle, and we can put a call out for him—”

“Not yet,” Roger said.

When you had been in the force as long as he had, you didn’t rule out any possibility, but this—

Well, they could soon tackle Derek Bryant.

He heard a shout outside, so clear above the general hubbub that he turned quickly away from Turnbull, and went to the loading platform. He saw Carmichael standing in a little oasis of platform space and surrounded by the parcels, and a big, burly man in a postman’s uniform.

“I tell you I didn’t leave the van for ten seconds,” this man roared, “never mind ten minutes!”

Everyone nearby had stopped working; for a moment, the parcels hardly seemed to matter. The postman was a head taller than the Chief Sorter, and was clenching his fists; but Carmichael looked him up and down without any sign of nervousness, and said in an incisive voice: “You must have left your van, Simm.”

“I tell you I didn’t!”

“Then perhaps you can explain why three sealed, registered bags are missing,” Carmichael said, coldly. “They were there, you’ve reported that yourself, and it’s in your record book, and they’re not there now.”

“They must be.”

“Very well,” said Carmichael, “go and look for yourself.” He put a hand to the postman’s arm and led him a few yards along the platform; there was a small red van, open at the back, with two men guarding it. Now everyone in the yard had stopped working, and the silence was startling.

Turnbull was just behind Roger.

“Now we’ll see fun,” he said. “Now we’ll see if Mr Ruddy Carmichael can find time for us.”

“Hold it,” Roger said.

“Simm,” said Carmichael in the same incisive way, “you had better lock the door of your van, and—”

Roger was on the move.

“Mind if I have a look at the van first?” he said, and didn’t wait for an answer. Carmichael gave the impression that he would have refused if he could. Instead, he nodded and then called out to the absorbed, watching men: “What’s the matter, have you forgotten that Christmas is coming?” He got them busy again, and the chutes soon filled up.

Roger went with Simm to the van.

“I tell you I didn’t leave the van for a minute,” the postman insisted. “I’ve been on this job for twenty years; think I don’t know a thing or two? I wouldn’t leave my van unlocked whether I had registers in or not, and you can take it from me—but who the hell are you?”

Roger said: “From the Yard, here on the Bryant job.”

“Perishin’ copper,” Simm said, as if the news had done him good. “Take it from me if they set the dogs on me, I’ll have them for defamation of character. I’ve done my job.” He pointed to the back of the van, where two men stood as if on guard. It was stacked to the top with sacks of parcels, and the only gap was just at one side. “That’s where they were, all flipping three of them. Sealed, too, And I didn’t leave the van—”

“For a flipping minute. I heard you.”

Simm grinned.

“Okay, okay, we understand each other! Well, look for yourself. See if that lock’s been tampered with.”

Roger said dryly: “Thanks.”

The double doors at the back of the van were made of heavy steel. The lock was a modern Landon, and would take a lot of forcing; there was no sign at all that it had been forced. A few scratches on the outside had almost certainly been made with the keys.

“Well?” asked Simm, aggressively.

“Who has the key to this?”

“Strike a flipping light, what a question! I have.” Simm took a bunch of keys from beneath his coat, and shook them. “That’s it.” He singled one key out, and pushed it in front of Roger’s nose.

“Anyone else?”

“There’s a duplicate key in the office, and the master key which Mr Fli—”

“Skip the description.”

Simm grinned again. He had good white teeth, and knew it.

“Okay, Mr Carmichael has a master key.”

“Who has access to it?”

“Mr Carmichael, or the Postmaster. It’s like asking to look at the Crown Jewels to get permission to use that key.”

“Hm.” Roger turned to Turnbull. “Call the Yard, have someone out here from Fingerprints to check that van all over.”

“If you think you’re going to take my dabs—” Simm began.

Roger said casually, “Oh, we won’t do that until you’re under arrest,” and moved away. Simm gaped after him. Turnbull grinned, jumped down, and hurried to the car, to radio the Yard. Two policemen had come up from the sorting office itself, and Roger left them to watch the van. Simm followed him.

Ten minutes had worked a kind of miracle with the parcels, and Carmichael stood calm and detached in the middle of the few that were left. No man ever looked less like a mouse.

“Now if you can spare a few minutes,” Roger said, “we’d better report this to the Postmaster.”

“That has been done,” retorted Carmichael, “I had a message sent to him. Simm, I want you to go over your movements this morning very carefully; you will find that you did leave the van for a few minutes at some place or other. And—”

Simm raised two big, clenched fists.

“Listen,” he roared in a foghorn voice, “you might be the Chief Sorter, you might be the Shah of Persia, but you don’t get away with calling me a liar. I didn’t leave my van for ten seconds without locking it. Gawd! With the pillar boxes crammed full you take five minutes to empty one.”

“Let us see the Postmaster,” said Carmichael, coldly. He motioned Simm to go ahead, and then spoke quietly to Roger, more human than he had yet shown himself. “It is much more difficult to trace the source of trouble at Christmas time. This can be extraordinarily difficult. It could be disastrous to the smooth running of Her Majesty’s mails.”

He said that as if robberies as robberies didn’t matter; only the job was important.

Roger said: “We needn’t start jumping our fences,” and walked on towards the lift.

The Postmaster was as harassed as Carmichael, and a glimpse of the seeming chaos in the Sorting Room and the fantastic stacks of mail made it easy to understand. There was little that Roger could do here now, but he waited until Wilberforce’s men arrived, and went over Simm’s van.

There were dozens of prints of the same man; Simm’s.

On the lock, there was a fragment of a print – identical with that found on the hammer and on the glass in Wilson’s room.

‘We’ll see how far this gets us,” Roger said. “It won’t be long before we have to take the dabs of everyone working at River Way.”

He meant it; but he knew it would run him into trouble and conflict. The permanent staff was over a thousand, and there were as many temporary workers. That was bad enough. Carmichael’s and Farnley’s screams of protest would make it worse. They’d pull every string they had to stop it.

The police found nothing else to help on the van.

Simm stuck to his story.

Turnbull had finished all the routine work at the Post Office, and reported that Derek Bryant hadn’t yet returned.

“I think it’s time we questioned him about that hammer,” he said.

Roger was crisp.

“Yes, get hold of him and do that, but keep it to yourself until you’ve seen me again.”

“Okay,” said Turnbull.

Roger went back to the Yard. He soon telephoned Chatworth and told him he wanted to take the fingerprints of all the River Way employees, and he guessed from the AC’s cool reaction that Chatworth also anticipated trouble.

“Any other time I’d say go ahead,” he said, “but I’d better talk to the Postmaster-General first. Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“I suppose it can,” Roger said. “But today would be better.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” promised Chatworth.

Roger busied himself with reports and snippets of news about this and a dozen other jobs, and was sorting them out when the telephone rang. He had a sneaking hope that Chatworth had fixed the PMG already, but this was a sergeant who was working with Turnbull.

“Handsome, here’s a do,” the sergeant greeted him, and something in his tone stopped the ‘Handsome’ from being familiar. “Derek Bryant’s skipped. He left the job he was out on but hasn’t come back.”

Derek Bryant wasn’t found, that day, in spite of the widespread search.

Mrs Bryant seemed too numbed to feel any more, but May Harrison’s self control almost snapped under the new strain.

Young Micky was wild eyed, but outwardly calm.

By noon next day, there was still no fresh news. Roger checked and double checked, wearied himself with a mass of reports, and found it difficult to concentrate on any but the Post Office murder. He was through the morning’s reports, just after twelve o’clock, when the telephone bell rang.

“West,” he said briskly.

“Better get over to Clapp Street, quick,” said Turnbull harshly. “There’s more trouble at Bryant’s place.”