Chapter Four

Weakness

Venables appeared to have fainted. His body was heavy against Roger, his arms drooped, his knees were bent. Roger eased him away from the fork on which he was leaning, and half dragged, half carried him towards the house. By the shed was a wooden bench, and Roger sat the man on it. He was coming round, and his eyes were flickering but his colour was still very bad. He muttered something which sounded like “Sorry”. Roger didn’t respond. Already his relationship with this man was more like father-to-son than senior police officer to rookie.

Venables sat more upright.

“I’m—I’m terribly sorry, sir.”

“Does this kind of thing always affect you this way?”

“The—the stench does, yes, sir. The sight of blood doesn’t worry me, it—it’s just the stench.” He looked at Roger with piteous gaze. “It—it needn’t ruin my career, need it?”

Roger answered: “It could, Venables.” He hated saying that but there was no point in lying. “Unless you can control it.”

“I—I try to, sir. Desperately.”

“I’m sure you do. One of the best detectives I’ve ever known, an American from Chicago, couldn’t stand the sight of blood when he first signed on with the police. He’s a senior police officer now.”

Venables gave a ghastly smile.

“Then—there—there’s some hope, sir!”

“Yes. Who knows about this problem?”

“Not—not many people, sir.”

“Anyone on the Force?”

“No,” Venables answered. “My—my mother and my brother, they know. My mother tried to keep me out of the police because of it, she said that it would prove to be my Achilles heel.”

“She might not have wanted you to join the police,” Roger remarked drily.

“Oh, it wasn’t that, sir. I—oh, hell! What’s the use of talking? I’m sure to come across this kind of thing from time to time, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Roger answered. “And if you want to stay in the C.I.D., you’re going to have to overcome it at least as far as showing it is concerned. How are you now?”

“Better, sir, much better.” Then belatedly: “Thank you.”

“Then I want you to take the splinter of glass you cut yourself on, back to the Yard,” Roger said. “Take it direct to the laboratory to see if they can identify the glass in any way—what utensil it was before it was broken, for instance. And when you’re through with the glass, make out a report on what you’ve done and seen today, in as much detail as you can. Can you type?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“Then type it,” Roger ordered. He took the small plastic envelope which contained the splinter of glass from his pocket and handed it to Venables, who placed it with great care into his breast pocket. Then he stood up. His colour was almost normal and his eyes were bright again: eager.

“Thank you very much, sir. I’ll—I’ll fight this weakness if I possibly can, sir. Being in the C.I.D. is a tremendous thing to me. I’ve always been crazy about detection. I read all the thrillers I can lay my hands on, especially the puzzle kind, and I don’t think I’ve missed a police officer’s biography or autobiography, sir, ever. And I know all the authorities, like Gross and Glaister and Svensen and—” He broke off, very abruptly, and straightened up to his full height. “Goodness knows what’s got into me, I can’t stop talking. I’m very sorry.”

Roger knew exactly what had got into him: a kind of shock and emotional upset. He had shown himself in his greatest weakness to a man whom he probably regarded as an idol. And to cover an excess of nervousness, he talked on and on. Now, however, he turned and strode off, those big feet planting themselves down with such softness, his hands almost rigid at his sides. He disappeared, with a glance through the window of the small room.

Roger did not follow; if there had been any great discovery he would have been told. He moved back to the place where the digging had started. There was a faint odour of decay but it certainly wasn’t overpowering. It would be a pity if Venables was really over sensitive to it.

Then, Green arrived, with two more men and two more spades. They began to dig, with speed but also with great care. Before long they uncovered some brown canvas which was already rotting; and when they unrolled this they discovered, inside it, the body of a man.

What followed wasn’t one of the pleasant jobs, but it had to be done. By now a full murder investigation team was on the spot from the West London Division. Roger knew Carr, the man in charge of the team, a Chief Inspector who would do everything which had to be done with speed and efficiency.

“If necessary, take the body out through the next door garden,” Roger said. “The less we trample that house the better.”

“I’ll fix something,” Carr promised. “What’s it about, sir?”

“Bullion,” answered Roger simply.

“Still on that one, are you, sir?” Carr was a man in his middle forties, with short black hair, a dark jowl, and fierce looking, amber coloured eyes. “What happens if the Press turns up?”

“Refer them to me.”

“Right.” Carr spoke as if that would be a pleasure.

He went on to superintend the digging, and to search the garden, while Roger moved inside. Four men, a crowd in that small room, had levered up a dozen or so tiles of the floor where the so far unidentified machine had stood, finding a solid concrete bed underneath. This had obviously been here for some time, and once several pieces of heavy kitchen equipment had been here; labels on the walls showed: Deep Freeze – Refrigerator – Dishwasher – Stove.

“Not many of these old houses are fitted with a 30 amp current to feed a single phase motor so that you could drive a lathe,” one of the detectives remarked.

“Sure there was a lathe?” asked Roger.

“Something of that kind was stuck down, sir. None of the kitchen stuff was, though, but you can see marks where it stood. The lathe was a later date—you can see where it was stuck over the places where the other stuff had been.”

Roger bent down and studied the marks, little more than shadows, which only a remarkably thorough man would have noticed.

“Nice work,” he said warmly.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Have we anything else?” asked Roger.

One man was sieving the small pieces and the dust which had gone through the first mesh. It might be an hour, even two or three, before they had the rest of the tiles up.

On a trestle table in the big room which had been empty when he had first seen Venables, were a dozen little plastic bags. Most contained dust. Others contained pins, pieces of broken nails and tacks, the metal tip of a bootlace. Each envelope was marked: front room, kitchen, middle room, downstairs cloakroom, bedroom i, bedroom 2, and so on. On that table, in envelopes little larger than those used in ordinary correspondence, were all the oddments found after a thorough search of 17, Lyon Avenue.

“A professional job,” Venables had said.

It was the most thorough job of cleaning Roger had ever come across, and he had no doubt at all that it had been done to remove all the clues which might have been left behind.

The time had come to talk to Angela Margerison.

The car in which he had been brought here, with Green, was now parked a little farther up the road. A few people stood about in idle curiosity but no one had yet arrived from the newspapers. The constable on duty sprang to attention as Roger appeared.

“Do you know Sergeant Green?” Roger asked.

“Yes, sir—by sight, that is.”

“Tell him I’ve taken the car, he’ll need to get a lift back to the Yard,” Roger said.

“I’ll see to it, sir.” The policeman opened the door of the driving seat side, and Roger drove off almost at once; even a delay of a few seconds might have him caught by newspapermen and he did not want to answer questions.

It was half past one. Time hadn’t gone so quickly as it might with so much happening. He felt peckish, but food could wait: in fact he was more thirsty than hungry. Early afternoon traffic was quite heavy, and he found little inclination for coping with the heavy trucks and the impatient drivers. Why was it that the smaller the car the more its driver seemed to demand of it? A scarlet Mini passed within inches of his nearside wing, a tow headed youth at the wheel. A girl on the pavement darted back to safety; she reminded Roger of Angela Margerison. A policeman on the far side of the road stared after the scarlet Mini, presumably memorising the number, for that really had been a case of dangerous driving. Roger thought censoriously that it was a miracle that there weren’t far more road casualties.

He cut through the back streets behind Harrods until he reached the one way system of roads about Victoria, which, having spent his childhood in this area, always confused him a little. When he reached Broadway, just off Victoria Street, and saw the tall modern building of glass and concrete, the same impression of strangeness remained. The difference between this and the “old” New Scotland Yard was so great that at times he resented it, despite the greater light and the square spaciousness of the rooms and the aids to efficiency. The Information Room and the new Records Department really were something!

A detective sergeant of the Criminal Investigation Department was just coming out of the Victoria Street entrance as Roger drew up.

“On an urgent job?” asked Roger.

“Not desperately, sir.” The freckled face had a pleasant expression.

“Then put this car away for me, will you?” Roger got out and before the car had moved from the kerb was inside the wide passage. There was no one at all in sight. He went up alone in a large, self operated lift to the fourth floor, and along to his own office, which overlooked Victoria Street rooftops and, in the distance, the dome of the Tate Gallery.

There were two messages on his desk.

Coppell, the Commander C.I.D., wanted to see him as soon as he got in. And Dr. Appleby, the pathologist, had telephoned. Appleby couldn’t have finished the autopsy yet; there was hardly time for him to have started. There was a telephone number: not Appleby’s home or office. He pulled one of three telephones on his desk closer and dialled the number. It rang for a long time, and Roger was about to replace the receiver when the ringing sound broke. A man with a rather light, questioning voice answered.

“Who is that?”

It was Appleby himself, one of the youngest and perhaps the ablest of the Home Office team of pathologists. The years had made him and Roger good friends; had they been able to see more of each other they would have been much closer.

“Roger West,” Roger answered.

“Oh. H-H-Handsome. Glad you c-caught me, I was on my w-wway out. H-had a bit of d-d-domestic trouble, had to leave the cadaver on the b-b-bench. It will be three or four hours before I c-c-can g-g-get back to the job. S-s-sorry.”

“Well, it can’t be helped,” Roger said, trying not to sound as disappointed as he felt.

“W-won’t be a m-m-minute longer than I m-m-must,” promised Appleby, and then added with a kind of sting in the tail characteristic of him: “Chap didn’t die by drowning, that’s a fact.”

Roger’s heart leapt.

“Can I take that as positive?”

“Ab-ab-absolutely,” Appleby assured him. “’Bye.”

The telephone at the other end went dead. Roger replaced his more slowly. If Margerison hadn’t died by drowning then the possibility of suicide became even more remote; how like Appleby to get the essentials first. Roger made a note on a sheet of paper on which he had already jotted down the time of the call from Thames Division, the finding of the body and who he had sent to the house in Lyon Avenue, then picked up the middle of the three telephones. It was white, and used for internal use. The one on which he had called Appleby was black; the third, connected to the Yard’s switchboard, was grey. He dialled the Commander’s number, and immediately a woman’s voice, rich and plummy, answered.

“Mr. Coppell’s office.”

“This is West,” Roger said. This particular woman nearly always managed to irritate him, for she guarded her boss too well and threw her own weight about too much. But this morning she was prompt and pleasant.

“Oh, yes, Mr. West, one moment please.” The moment grew into several but then Coppell with his deep, gruff voice came on. Coppell had been thrust into the job of Assistant Commissioner several years ago, and no one had expected him to keep the job for long. A mixture of circumstances and his own dogged courage had combined to keep him in it; he was far from being a good A.C. but now the Yard was used to him.

“How did you get on at Chiswick?” Coppell demanded without preamble.

“Another body,” Roger answered mildly.

“My God!” Coppell choked, and then he added sharply: “Any gold?”

“Hardly a speck of dust,” Roger answered. “I’ve never seen a place cleaned up so well—it even had a wax polish. Whoever was there meant to be as sure as possible that we couldn’t find a clue.”

“Did you?” Coppell almost barked.

“The only one I’m sure about is a splinter of glass,” Roger replied, and then drew a deep breath. Coppell was breathing heavily into the telephone, but momentarily silent. He was extremely sensitive about the bullion robbery and the complete getaway, and he would react badly to news of a mistake. “One other thing is both good and bad,” he went on.

“Oh. What?”

“We caught Margerison’s wife—she was obviously coming to the house.”

There was a long pause, and the heavy breathing stopped, as if Coppell was holding his breath. Then: “So if we’d kept her under surveillance she might have led us there while the place was still occupied.”

“Yes,” Roger agreed, and drew in a deep breath. “I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake.”

“Too bloody right you couldn’t.” Coppell growled. He was silent again, and then went on: “This will have to go in my weekly Bullion case report to the Commissioner. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“They’ll want my neck as well as yours,” Coppell complained, and then added with a snort of sound: “So you’ve two necks to save, Handsome. Where’s this woman—Angela Margerison, isn’t she?”

“That’s right. She’s being held in the waiting room. I’m going down to see her now.”

“Before you let her go, consult me, won’t you?” said Coppell with heavy sarcasm. He rang off, saving Roger from the need to reply, and for the second time Roger put his receiver down slowly and deliberately. Coppell’s reaction could have been a lot worse, but it was bad enough; and it was news to Roger that he still had to put in a weekly report on the Bullion Case. He got up, frowning, and was at the door when a telephone bell rang – the shrill one from the internal telephone which could be connected to police cars through Information. He strode back and picked it up.

“West.”

“It’s Detective Sergeant Green here, sir,” Green said, with excitement tautening his voice. “We’ve got the body up, sir. Haven’t identified it yet. Naked, with one or two superficial wounds. Mr. Carr would like to know, do you want it sent to Dr. Appleby?”

“Yes,” Roger answered, sure that this wasn’t what affected the usually stolid sergeant’s voice. “Anything else, Green?”

“Yes, sir,” Green declared. “We’ve found two gold shavings behind the skirting of the wall where that machine used to stand. Absolutely no doubt about it, they’re gold, could easily have been off a gold bar, sir. Shall I bring them right over?”

“Yes. Don’t lose a minute,” Roger urged with tremendous relief. “Take them to the laboratory, and wait until I come, will you?” He rang off on Green’s cheerful “Yes, sir!” and moved slowly towards the door. The deep satisfaction at the discovery of the gold was offset by the fact that only a week ago, a police raid might have caught all of the gang who lived there – and the gold as well.

And all because he had allowed himself to be fooled by the girl wife – now a girl-widow – whom he was going to see.

Well, she wouldn’t fool him again.