Body of a Girl (13 page)

“Minding my own business.”

“All right. Hint taken.” He swung round on Mercer, a movement of studied grace, designed to demonstrate the width of his shoulders and the suppleness of his hips. “I hear you came to the house looking for me the other night.”

“That's right. I must just have missed you.”

“Now you've found me.”

“If you want to talk to your friends,” said the fair-haired boy sulkily, “I'll be going.”

“It'll keep,” said Mercer.

He made for the door, held it open for Venetia, and followed her out quickly. When they were in the car he said, “I don't know about your capacity for alcohol, but I thought your brother was pretty well tanked-up already. Does he always get like that so early in the evening?”

“Some evenings.”

“And who was the friend?”

“A boy from the office.”

“I see,” said Mercer. They drove, in silence, back to Brattle's boathouse.

Detective Massey was sitting in the room over an empty shop opposite Bull's Garage. He had been there for two hours, and he was cold, and stiff, but he had no intention of quitting. He was watching Johnno.

The little man operated from a lighted kiosk behind the petrol pumps, where he sat, on a tilted wooden chair, studying the racing pages in two evening papers and occasionally making notes with a stub of pencil. There was a telephone in the kiosk, and there had been three calls, one in and two out. Massey had made a careful note of the times. He had no reason for doing this, except that he had been taught at detective training school that times were important. “At 21.46 hours I was maintaining observation when—” Hullo! Another customer. Johnno popped out, had a word with the driver, took the keys to unlock the filler cap, and started to operate the petrol pump. The driver got out to stretch his legs. He walked round the car to watch Johnno, then strolled into the kiosk, to pay for the petrol. More talk, then he came out and drove off. Only just in time, too. Johnno was shutting up shop. Pumps locked. Lights switched off. Kiosk locked.

By this time Massey was downstairs. He used the back entrance to the shop. His big motor-bicycle was parked in the yard. Johnno, he knew, kept a showy little sports car in one of the sheds behind the garage. It was fast, too. But not as fast as Detective Massey's M.V. Augusta 700. Here he came. Side lights on, but no headlights as yet. This suited Massey very well. He could keep his own lights off and be in no fear of losing Johnno's tail lights.

Half an hour later they were on the outskirts of Slough. So far it had been easy, and Massey was pretty certain that he hadn't been spotted. But now it was going to get tricky. There was enough traffic in the streets to allow two cars and a van to get between him and Johnno. The trouble was the traffic lights. Slough seemed to be full of traffic lights. If they changed at an awkward moment—As he was thinking about it, it happened. The van ahead of him braked. The lights turned from amber to red. Johnno was over, and scooting away down the High Street.

Massey swung his bicycle to the right into a side street, then turned left into a long and nearly empty street parallel to the High Street, and went down it fast. After a couple of hundred yards he reckoned he must be level with Johnno again, or even ahead of him, and he swung left, back into the High Street.

Johnno's car had disappeared. To his left he could see the van and the cars, released by the lights, coming towards him. To the right he had a clear view, under the streetlamps, for four or five blocks.

Massey did some quick thinking.

If Johnno had turned right he would have seen him. Therefore he had turned left. Therefore his destination was somewhere in the confused nest of streets which lay off the left-hand side of the High Street. He started to search.

After half an hour he gave it up, and started home. To relieve his feelings, he let the powerful machine out. Halfway back to Stoneferry he overtook Johnno jogging sedately homewards.

Chapter Fourteen

Mercer's alarm clock called him at four. By half-past four he had picked up Detective Prothero, and his car was heading north. At seven o'clock they stopped for breakfast at a big hotel south of Banbury.

The sun was up now. It was a fine day of early autumn. Mercer said, “Have you got any idea where we're going or what we're going to do when we get there?”

“No idea,” said Prothero. “Never ask questions. Do what I'm told. Simpler in the end.” He belched comfortably and loosened his seat belt a couple of notches.

“I'll fill you in,” said Mercer. “We're making for a town in South Staffordshire, called Heckmonwith. We're going to have a talk with the parents of a girl called Maureen Dyson. And with anyone else who can tell us anything about her.”

Prothero digested this information, with his breakfast, for some miles, and then said, “Was she the one we found on the island?”

“I hope so,” said Mercer.

Porson Street, Heckmonwith, was a row of neat, two-storey, semi-detached houses, and the neatest of the lot was number twenty-three, which had a shingle with the name, ‘The Nest' painted on it in italic script. The front path was freshly reddened, the stones on either side freshly whitened, and every flower in the geometrically-shaped flower beds knew its place, and kept it.

There were two mats in front of the front door. Mercer wiped his feet on both of them, and was conducted into the front parlour by Mr. Dyson, introduced to Mrs. Dyson, and invited to take a chair.

“We were warned by the local police that you were coming,” said Mrs. Dyson. “Would your friend like to come in too? It's a little cold outside.”

“He'll be all right,” said Mercer. He could see no sign of an ashtray, and he knew that an hour without a cigarette would be torment for Prothero. “I'm glad they told you what I wanted to talk to you about. It can't have been pleasant news.”

“It was a shock,” said Mr. Dyson.

“A terrible shock,” said Mrs. Dyson.

You're either bloody good actors, or you didn't give a brass button for her, thought Mercer. He said, “Tell me about her—”

“Well,” said Mr. Dyson, and looked at his wife. She said, “Maureen was a very nice girl. Naturally, you'd expect us to say that, Inspector. Being her parents. But it's true. She was always top of her class in school. And she got a lot of prizes, for good conduct, and leadership and things like that. And when she left school, she wasn't like
some
girls we know, she went straight into a job and earned good money at it.”

“A job?”

“With a firm of lawyers in the town. Batchelor, Symonds and Quirk. She was with them for nearly five years. Then she had to go. She couldn't see eye to eye with Mr. Batchelor.”

“About anything in particular?”

“Just generally. He was an untidy, unmethodical sort of man, Inspector, and our Maureen was just the opposite. She was neat, and conscientious too. She never minded going early, or staying late if there was a job to finish. I think she sort of, well—sort of showed him up. That's why he got rid of her.”

“That would have been four or five years ago. What did she do next?”

“She joined another lawyers' office. In Stoke. I forget the name, but I could find out if you liked. She was there three years. Then she moved south. We didn't see a lot of her. She came home for Christmas sometimes. Things like that.”

“I suppose,” said Mr. Dyson, exhibiting the first, very faint, sign of sentiment, “that there's no doubt—I mean—about it being her.”

“It's not certain, by any means. But what you told the Inspector up here, about her shoes, well, it does make it very likely.”

“It's true,” said Mrs. Dyson. “And she was sensitive about it. After I'd spoken to the Inspector I had a look round up in her room. She left a lot of things there. I found this pair of shoes. The right hand one's quite different. You can see. It's wider.”

“That's really most helpful,” said Mercer. “I wonder if I could borrow them.”

“I'll give them a clean first.”

“Don't bother.” He put them into his brief case. “I don't imagine I'll have to trouble you any more. There's just one thing. Could you give me the name of her dentist?”

When Mercer came out, he took a deep breath. Porson Street was not an inspiring place, but it had more fresh air in it than the house he had just left.

“How did they take it?” said Prothero.

“They didn't take it at all. They scarcely noticed it. They wrote her off years ago. See if you can find this address. It's a left turn off the main square, behind the town hall.”

“It looked a neat little place,” said Prothero.

Mercer repressed a shudder. He said, “They put little socks on the legs of the chairs. Tell me, Len, what do you suppose a girl would do who was brought up in a house like that?”

“Get out as quick as she could,” said Prothero.

“I expect you're right. What I really meant was, what sort of person would she turn out to be?”

“Could turn out either way. I remember a boy at school. Parson's son. He'd been brought up very strict. By the time he was seventeen you couldn't trust a girl within an arm's length of him on either side. This the place?”

“Maurice Fairbrother. Dental Surgeon. That looks like it.”

Mr. Fairbrother was helpful. He said, “I remember Miss Dyson well. She used to come to me as regular as clockwork. She looked after her teeth as carefully—well, as carefully as she looked after everything else.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It does seem a funny thing to say, doesn't it? But she left quite an impression on me. She was a hard sort of girl, even when she was young. Self-possessed, you know. Gave nothing away. We dentists see people's character in undress, as you might say.”

“But she had good teeth?”

“Absolutely perfect. And was determined to keep them that way.” He was examining a record card. “She had an occasional scrape and clean. And I see that I put a brace on her front teeth when she was ten. She insisted on having it off. Too soon, I thought, but she said it spoiled her appearance.”

“
Was
she attractive?”

“She didn't attract me,” said Mr. Fairbrother. “But then I don't like my eggs hardboiled.”

Batchelor, Symonds and Quirk occupied premises in the High Street which looked more like a betting shop than the offices of a firm of solicitors. A cheerful girl, in the outer office, who seemed to be going down for the third time in a sea of papers, told them that Mr. Batchelor was out, but should be back shortly.

Mercer and Prothero took time off for coffee.

“Doesn't seem to be much doubt we're on to the right girl now, does it, Skipper?”

“No real doubt. There can't be a lot of people reach twenty-five without a stopping in their head. If those shoes measure up, I think we can call it a certainty.”

“What I can't make out,” said Prothero, pouring his coffee into his saucer to cool it, and then blowing on it, “if it
is
her, why did she come back? She packs up all her traps and pushes off up to London—”

“According to Sergeant Rollo.”

Prothero poured his coffee back from the saucer into the cup and drank a good deal of it. Then he said, “Ah! According to Dick Rollo. Yes. I see,” and said no more.

Mr. Batchelor was still out when they got back to the office. Mercer sat down to wait. Twenty minutes later he arrived in the shape of a small, disorganising cyclone. Enquired of the girl whether a Mrs. Winlaw had rung. Was told she hadn't. Took Mercer's card, but didn't read it. Asked the girl if she was quite sure Mrs. Winlaw hadn't rung. She was quite sure. Picked up a pile of unopened letters. Tried to look at Mercer's card with the letters in his hand. Dropped the card. Mercer picked it up. Dropped most of the letters. The girl picked them up. Succeeded in reading the card, and said, “Good God. Police. Is one of my clients in trouble? Come inside, Inspector.”

In his own office, once he understood what Mercer wanted, Mr. Batchelor became a little more composed. He said, “Yes, of course I remember Miss Dyson. She started here as my secretary. Then when old Mr. Quirk retired she took on a number of jobs herself. I suppose you'd have called her a managing clerk by that time. She worked under my general supervision of course.”

“She must have been very useful.”

“Oh, very,” said Mr. Batchelor. He said it without much enthusiasm.

“Then why did she leave?”

“You're a policeman,” said Mr. Batchelor, “and the police don't come into things until they've gone bad. Has Maureen—I mean, is she in trouble?”

“She's dead.”

Mr. Batchelor said, “Good God,” jumped up, knocked a pile of deeds onto the floor and picked them up again. The exercise seemed to calm him. He said, “You mean she's been murdered.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. But why should you suppose I meant that?”

“I don't know. I suppose I assumed that someone—you're not having me on are you?”

“I'll give you the whole strength of it,” said Mercer. He spoke for ten minutes. Mr. Batchelor listened with remarkable patience, only jumping up twice. The first time, he scuttled across to the door and put up the ‘engaged' sign. The second time, as Mercer was drawing to a close, he went over to a filing cabinet, unlocked a drawer marked ‘Personal', and took out a cardboard folder, which he brought back and placed on his desk.

Then he said, quite simply, “I got rid of Miss Dyson because she was blackmailing my clients.”

“Ah,” said Mercer softly. “So that's it.”

It was as though a window had been opened, as though curtains had been drawn back, throwing a strong shaft of light and understanding into a dark corner.

He sat very still, watching Mr. Batchelor's hands as he untied the tapes of the folder and took out a document. The little solicitor said, “I trust I shan't have to go into any details about this, because it affects other people, and I hoped that it was all dead and buried.”

“We'll keep names out of it if we can,” said Mercer.

“I'll tell you about the last case. The one I found out about, and that was the reason I got rid of her. She handled a lot of litigation. You know what is meant by a discretion statement, Inspector?”

“Roughly.”

“Say a wife is divorcing her husband on the grounds that he has committed adultery. She has clear proof of it. Probably he hasn't troubled to deny it. But she may have gone off the rails herself. It often happens, you know. A woman sees her husband fooling around with another woman. She thinks, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, if you follow my meaning.”

“I follow you exactly,” said Mercer. Only half of his mind was attending. The other half was working out the implications of what he had heard.

“That's where a discretion statement comes in. A plaintiff who comes into court asking for divorce must come with clean hands herself. So the wife writes it all down. It's handed to the judge. He's the only person who sees it. After the case is over, it's destroyed.”

“And Miss Dyson got hold of it. And blackmailed the wife?”

“Not the wife. The man she'd been involved with. He was happily married. It was a simple indiscretion. He paid the best part of five hundred pounds to keep it quiet.”

“And you say that was one of a number of cases.”

“It was the only one I knew about when I sacked her, naturally. The facts about the others trickled in later.”

“How did she get her hands on this – what did you call it – discretion statement?”

“She stayed working late. She was keen, you see. She'd have the run of the office. She could look at any paper she wanted. Or listen to phone calls. All the rooms are on one line. You've only got to lift the receiver.”

“What beats me,” said Mercer, “is how she ever got another job in a lawyer's office.”

“Not difficult when it's a woman. She says that up to then she's been living at home looking after her parents. Every job she takes is her first job. The family and the school will give her a reference.”

Mercer said, “I suppose that's right,” but he said it absent-mindedly. He was thinking about Mr. Weatherman.
That
office would be a good deal better organised and more strictly controlled than the cheerful shambles of Batchelor, Symonds and Quirk. But all the same, an unscrupulous girl, with her wits about her, would have plenty of opportunities.

“The fact is,” said Mr. Batchelor, “that solicitors do learn a lot of secrets. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it's all right, but if you get a bad'un—”

They had an unsatisfactory lunch in a pub outside Heckmonwith and took the road for the south. It was nearly five o'clock by the time they reached Maidenhead. As they stopped for a cup of tea, Mercer spotted the placard, and bought an evening paper.

The headline said wage clerk dies and the sub-heading, ‘Massive Murder Hunt'.

Charles Watson, the wage clerk of Messrs. Arkinwrights the Stepney engineering firm, died early this morning in Guy's Hospital. He and his fellow employee George Radici were the two men who put up such a gallant fight against the six men who attacked them when they were carrying the week's wages to a car. Both men received gun-shot wounds, Watson in the head and Radici in both legs. It is feared that he may lose one of them. The Arkinwright factory employs over a thousand men and the weekly wage roll is believed to be between twenty and twenty-five thousand pounds. The Board of Arkinwrights had already announced a reward of £1,000 for information leading to the conviction of the men concerned. When they learned that Watson had died, they immediately raised this to £5,000. Watson leaves a wife and two children. Last night a massive force of police and detectives started to comb out cafés, clubs and garages in the South London area. Chief Superintendent Morrissey, head of the C.I.D. in No. 1 District is in charge of the operation.