5

Kellaway

 

“I don’t see any alternative,” said Barstow. “Heaven knows, it isn’t a thing I like doing, going outside the division and the district, but if they leave me short of my proper establishment, and send one of my only two available divisional inspectors to America on exchange – and what he’s going to learn there, you tell me – and the other goes and gets himself kicked on the head, like a rookie–”

“Perhaps I could–” said Haxtell.

“Certainly not. You’re nearly past the post with Corinne Hart. It’d be stupid to put someone else on to that now.” He paused, and glared round as if waiting for contradiction. When none came he said, “How is Gover?”

“I looked in at the hospital this morning,” said Petrella. “He’s still unconscious.”

He himself had a big blue bruise in the middle of his forehead, and the corner of his right eye was held together by a strip of sticking plaster.

“You don’t look more than two parts conscious yourself,” said Barstow amiably. He stared at the blotting paper in front of him. It was a difficult decision.

“I’m going to ask Central to let us have someone to take on the reservoir case, until you’re free,” he said to Haxtell. “It’s turned into a gang matter now. If Howton and his friends are mixed up in it – and it looks as if they are – it’s as much the concern of S and D as it is of this division, so it won’t do any harm having someone from headquarters to co-ordinate it.” But he was arguing with himself, and the others knew it. For the head of one of the London districts to call in a detective superintendent from the Central pool at Scotland Yard is quite rare enough to be remarkable, and remarked upon.

“It shouldn’t be for long,” said Haxtell. “I’m nearly through.”

Barstow turned on Petrella. “Until they send someone else, you’re in charge. Don’t lose your head. There’s plenty of routine stuff to do. We won’t keep you.”

Petrella removed himself. It was true that there was plenty to do, and he stood for a moment turning over in his mind just what it was he ought to do next. The reservoir could wait. If there were any clues there, they would keep for a bit longer. At the moment it was people, not things, that mattered.

He told the duty sergeant where he was going and set out. The cold bright autumn weather was a tonic. It was impossible to stay depressed whilst feet rang on the hard bright pavement and the blood stirred under the lash of the north wind.

Corum Street lies on the Chalk Farm side of Camden Town, in an area which had been slipping downhill for a hundred years with the stealthy inevitability of a glacier.

He climbed the crumbling front steps of No. 39, stepped past a battery of empty milk bottles, and studied the row of cards and bells. He decided that “Flat D. Mrs Jean Fraser. Three rings” was the one he wanted. He rang three times and waited. Nothing happened for a long time.

He pushed on the front door, which opened, revealing a strip of linoleum and a marble reproduction of the Winged Victory of Samothrace covered with a bee veil. The hallway was clean enough, and there was a faint smell of floor polish; but there was a much stronger smell of people; of too many people, living together, in too little space.

Flat D was on the third floor. Petrella rang three more times and knocked three times, and breathed in three times and out three times, but Flat D remained unresponsive. He was on the point of retiring when the door opposite opened and an old man came out. He had white hair, a white moustache, and a look of forgotten campaigns.

“You’re wanting Jean?” he said.

“Yes,” said Petrella. “Mrs Fraser.”

“She’s out all day. At work, you know.”

“It’s rather important,” said Petrella. “I wonder – do you happen to know where she works?”

The old man shook his head. He thought it was something to do with toffee. His mind was clearly on the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

“She’s generally back by half past seven,” he said.

Petrella thanked him and withdrew. He spent the rest of the morning in an endeavour, which he knew to be fruitless when he started on it, but which had to be carried through, to identify certain unidentifiable articles of clothing and footwear.

It was early afternoon when he got back to Crown Road, and the first thing that caught his eye was a deep, fresh scratch on the linoleum in the passage, which seemed to indicate that some heavy furniture had been moved. Then he saw a white card pinned to the door of the interview room and he read, in neat print:

 

D/SUPT. C O KELLAWAY

D/SERGT. ALBERT DODDS

 

The reinforcements had arrived.

“They’re doing us proud,” said Petrella to Gwilliam.

“We’ll be in the headlines all right now,” said Gwilliam.

There are, and there always will be, certain detective officers whom the public takes to its heart. They are usually members of the Investigations Department at Scotland Yard which the newspapers style the Murder Squad, although its work is by no means confined to murders. Their appearance, and reappearance, in the press as they speed to the help of the provincial forces ensures them a steady flow of publicity; a matter which some of them deplore more than others. “Cris” Kellaway, as he was known to a million readers of the Daily and Sunday press, deplored it not at all. A big, handsome, black-haired, strong-chinned man, he would have made an excellent rear admiral of the blue-water school. He was popularly supposed to have, in manuscript form, no less than three volumes of his memoirs already written and only awaiting his departure from the Force to be released for publication.

“He’s a great man for bull,” said Petrella. “But he seems to get results.”

“Quite a change from gentle Gover,” agreed Gwilliam. “You’d better go and say hello. He wants to see you.”

When Petrella went in, Kellaway was alone, but his presence filled the tiny room. He got up, squeezed out from behind his desk, shook hands with Petrella, and took a stand in front of the empty fireplace.

“I’m glad to have you working with me,” he said. “I did a job with Luard the other day and he told me about you. He said you were the only man in the CID who could tell the difference between claret and burgundy without looking at the label on the bottle.”

“Luard and I were at recruit school together,” said Petrella. “You’ve got to make allowances for that.”

“I never make allowances,” said Kellaway, “for myself or anyone else. That’s why I’m so damned unpopular.” He grinned, showing teeth as big and as white as Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s. “Now about this case. I’ll tell you what I think – that way we shall all start by thinking the same.”

Petrella could only recall, afterwards, that such was the impact of Kellaway’s personality that at the time this sounded like sense. What Kellaway thought, his subordinates would naturally think too.

“This is a gang killing. Howton and his friends. The Camden Town mob, or whatever fancy name they’re using now. They’re all the same, these mobs. First they throw their weight about with people who are scared of them, and they get away with it. And that makes them feel good. Then they go a bit further, and perhaps they get away with that. Now they’ve used their feet on a police officer, which means they’re asking for trouble. If Charlie Gover dies, they know just what’s coming to them. And I’m here to see they get it, good and hot and strong.”

Petrella was on the point of asking what the connection was between the assault on Gover and the death of Rosa Ritchie, but it occurred to him, in time, that would be taken as impertinence. And he had no desire at all to be impertinent. He found Kellaway as exhilarating as rough wine drunk in the heat of the day.

“I’m going to split this business into two parts,” he went on. “You and Dodds – you know Albert?”

“Yes, I know Dodds.”

“I’m sure you’ll get on well together – you’re to tackle it from the reservoir end. Go through the whole place, take it to pieces. Question everyone in sight. I needn’t tell you. Meanwhile I’m going to work at the other end – I’m going after Howton. If we both do our jobs properly, then sooner or later” – the superintendent laid his strong, white hands on the desk in front of him, index fingers extended – “the ends will meet.” As the tips of the fingers came closer Petrella would not have been in the least surprised to see a spark jump across the gap.

He said, rather breathlessly, “Right, sir. That’s quite clear. I’ll be getting on with it. As a matter of fact, I’d arranged to have a word with the woman Rosa shared rooms with. She’s a Scots woman called Jean Fraser.”

“I won’t stand in your way,” said Kellaway genially. “Watch out, though. I know these Scots girls–”

Petrella found Sergeant Dodds on the bank of the reservoir, a squat, swarthy, cheerful character with a look of the Foreign Legion about him. He knew him as a top-ranking darts player, three times London champion, and on one notable occasion runner-up in the News of the World National Finals, at the Albert Hall, where he was beaten in two straight legs by that legendary Midlander, Joey Carmichael.

“What cheer, Pat,” he said. “Come and tell me where I start.”

Petrella grinned. It was a feeling he had already experienced himself. Where, if at all, in those miles of shrubbery, those acres of placid water, lay any clue to the seven-week-old killing of Rosa Ritchie?

“I suppose we ought to drag the reservoir,” he said.

“Have you ever done it?” said Dodds. “I dragged a canal once, near Woking. It took a week to do the job properly. Now, if you took the total area of that canal and divided it into this reservoir, it’d go about a hundred times, which means that this time next year we’d have just about worked up to the halfway line.”

“I don’t think it’s much good crawling round all those bushes on the bank.”

Dodds shuddered.

“On the other hand,” went on Petrella, “it occurred to me that it might be worth starting by looking for the boat.”

“What boat?”

“The one that belongs in the boathouse, down there, at the bottom of the cottage garden.”

They went down to have a look.

“There could have been a boat there,” agreed Dodds. “Not to say there’s anything fishy about it being missing. The Water Board might have moved it.”

“Let’s have a word with the foreman.”

Dodds said, “Yes, let’s.” It was quite clear that any activity was welcome which postponed the moment when he might have to start crawling through a quarter of a mile of wet, tangled, and steeply sloping shrubbery.

The foreman agreed that it was a funny thing about the boat. He had thought so before, but it hadn’t been his place to speak, the boat not being in his charge. And anyway, when Ricketts’ successor came along the matter would probably be cleared up.

“Ricketts?”

“Intake attendant,” said Petrella. “Lived in that cottage until quite recently. Got fed up and walked out on them.”

“He couldn’t take the boat with him, hardly,” said the foreman. “If it was there before, it’ll be about somewhere.”

“How often,” said Dodds, “do you have occasion to search through this little lot?” He indicated the shrubbery.

“Nothing to do with me,” said the foreman. “My job’s to keep the cut clear. I believe they have it thinned out about once every two years.”

“And that’s the sort of service we pay our water rates for,” said Dodds. “Come on, Patrick. You go one way and I’ll go the other, and we’ll meet at the far end – if we’re still alive.”

It was Petrella who found the boat. He had reached a point on the west bank, towards the northern tip of the reservoir, immediately under a path which led up to a high, stockaded fence. Behind the fence, he guessed, must lie the railway workshops; and beyond them again, the main line.

What he actually saw was a short piece of rusty chain, wound twice round a stake, at the water’s edge. The other end seemed, at first sight, to be made fast under water, but when he bent his back and pulled there was a faint stirring of free movement.

He shouted to Dodds and between them they hauled from the water, and halfway up on to the concrete apron, the remains of an old pram dinghy.

“Stove in,” said Dodds. “Stove in and left to rot.” There were two big holes in the bottom. “Probably did it with the butt of an oar. I don’t suppose those are far away either.”

The prospect of something concrete to look for seemed to have revived his spirits. In ten minutes they had retrieved from the bushes behind the path two oars, three duckboards, a footrest, and two cork fenders.

“Signs of thought here,” said Dodds. He surveyed the salvage. “Someone takes this boat from the boat shed. Rows across to the north end of the reservoir and sinks the boat. But first he takes out anything that might float and give him away. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then he goes up this path – turns right at the top, because it’s the only way he perishing well can turn – and what next?”

“He climbs the fence. One foot on that tree stump, another on that bolt head, like so. A bit of a pull – and he’s up.”

Petrella straddled the fence, puffing slightly.

“Tarzan of the North London Water Board,” said Dodds, approving. “What’s on the other side?”

“It’s a yard,” said Petrella. “And a lot of workshops, and a light railway line and – yes – a gate out to the road.”

“That’s it, then. That’s the way he went.”

“Quite a few people about.”

“Not at night.”

“Not so easy at night. Unless he’d worked it all out beforehand.”

“Of course he’d worked it out beforehand,” said Dodds. “This is a murderer we’re talking about. A careful chap.”

Petrella returned to earth, and dusted himself down. “The only thing I don’t see,” he said, “is why he should do it at all. Why didn’t he go out of the main gate. At that time of night, it’d be safe enough. A lot safer than all this caper.”

“Don’t run before you can walk,” said Dodds. “Everything will be clear as daylight before we’ve finished. Talking of which, we can’t do much more this evening. I spotted a nice little pub on the way in. Got a dartboard too. Let’s go and earn ourselves a pint.”

“Not more than one, then,” said Petrella weakly. “I’ve got a date with a girl.”

When he got to Corum Street, he found that life had ebbed back into its derelict creeks and backwaters. Most of the windows had lights in them, and there were two empty prams in the hall.

When he knocked on the door of Flat D, a voice said, “Come along in, whoever you are.”

Petrella pushed the door open and looked inside. There was no front hall. Flat D proved to be two intercommunicating rooms. The nearest of them was a living-room, with one of those contraptions which becomes a bed at the whisk of your hostess’ hand: the farther one, as far as he could see through the open door, was a bedroom, which, no doubt, could equally easily become a sitting-room.

Standing in the communicating doorway was a fluffy-haired, brown-eyed, comfortable-looking woman of thirty – thirty-five – forty? Petrella’s bachelor mind boggled at the problem.

“Do I know you,” she said, “or have you come to the wrong flat?” It was a Lowland voice, but it had an inner core of toughness, an acquired metropolitan hardness.

“Mrs Fraser?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Detective Sergeant Petrella.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I expect you’re surprised.”

“Not a bit. Is this going to take long enough for me to ask you to sit down?”

“I – well – I don’t know.”

“Sit down, then,” said the lady, relenting a little.

“You said you weren’t surprised,” said Petrella, settling cautiously into a wicker chair. “Why was that? Most people are surprised when–”

“The colonel – he lives opposite – told me you’d been asking for me this morning. He said ‘from his face you’d call him a schoolboy, but from his boots he’s a policeman.’”

“And I thought his mind was miles away.”

“Don’t let him fool you. That’s how he makes his living. You didn’t come to talk about him?”

“No,” said Petrella. “I came to talk about Mrs Ritchie. You shared these rooms, didn’t you?”

‘They’re my rooms. She had the use of one of them for a while.”

“Could you tell me about that? When she left, and so on.”

Jean looked at him speculatively, and Petrella got the impression that she was quite used to dealing with policemen; but policemen, perhaps, of a different sort. Not ones who said “Could you” and “Would you”.

“If you like,” she said. “Though it’s all ancient history now. She came here in – when would it be – January or February of this year. Some time about then. She left toward the end of September.”

“Do you remember which day?”

“How should I remember that?”

“Were you surprised when she left?”

“No more surprised than when she came. If you’re a policeman you’ll know that her husband was a criminal.”

“Yes. I knew that.”

“Well, I can read, Mr–”

“Petrella.”

“That sounds foreign.”

“It’s Spanish, actually.”

“Uh, huh. I was saying, I can read. When I saw in the papers that Monk Ritchie was out of prison – and later that he was believed to have escaped abroad – I formed my own conclusions.”

“Yes,” said Petrella. “I thought that was the way of it. What time of day did she go?”

“I couldn’t be certain. I left her here when I went to work in the morning. She was gone when I came back.”

“Without taking any of her things with her?”

“That’s true. But she hadn’t a lot, poor soul.”

“Are her things still in the room?”

“Am I a millionairess? It’s been let twice since then. There’s a Polish lady has it now. Would you like to see it? Madame Jablonski is out. She works in a café. She won’t object, I dare say.”

“How many times would you say the room has been cleaned since Mrs Ritchie left it?”

“Every day. And repainted and papered last month. Madame did it herself. She’s very artistic.”

“Then I don’t think,” said Petrella, “that there’s a great deal of point in my looking at it. What became of Rosa’s things?”

“I packed them in a bag and put them in the storeroom downstairs. Do you want to see them?”

“I’m not sure,” said Petrella. “I may do. First, could you tell me–” He was unwrapping the parcel he had brought with him. Mrs Fraser seemed to sense something either from his tone of voice or from his movements, and she was suddenly still.

“Do you recognize this dress? Or any of these clothes? Or the shoes?”

In the silence he heard a door open on the top landing and the voices of people speaking on the stairs.

“Where did you get them?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment,” said Petrella. “First, if you don’t mind – are they Mrs Ritchie’s?”

“Yes.” She had scarcely looked at them. “They’re hers. In fact, two of them – that and that – are mine. I lent them to her. Where did you find them?”

“We found a woman,” said Petrella, “on the bank of one of the reservoirs. You might have seen it in the papers – but it didn’t make much of a splash.”

“And that was Rosa?”

“From what you tell me, there seems no doubt about it at all.”

“And how – what had happened? Can you tell me that?”

“She had been shot. That’s in the papers now.”

“By her husband?”

“We don’t know that.”

“It would be her husband. Who else?”

“We may have to ask you to identify the body formally. Unless we can find a relative. Would you do that?”

“She’d no relatives down here that I know of. She came from Ayrshire. It’s where I’m from myself, that’s how we came to be friends. Yes, I’ll identify her, if I have to–”

“We may be able to do it some other way.”

“I’ll give you the name of the place I’m working.” She scribbled on a piece of paper. “It’s a place that makes sweets. Don’t come after me there. I’ve a reputation to lose.”

Petrella promised. Out in the street, it had started to rain again. He turned up the collar of his coat against it and stumped off. He was thinking about Mrs Fraser, and how nice she was, and how poor. And that she had become neither hysterical nor self-important about the violent death of her friend. He was thinking too deeply to have an eye out for his surroundings, and he missed a quick movement. Behind him, a man had detached himself from the shadows and moved cautiously out. Slowly though he moved, the dip and roll of his progress was unmistakable. Boot Howton looked first to right and left, then climbed the steps of No. 39 and disappeared into the hall.