Killer in the Shade (13 page)

‘Red hair, well dressed with very short skirt, well-groomed type, looking like she'd got money to spend.'

‘Hackley?'

Tom Moore shook his head. ‘No, he didn't leave with them. That's what got me worried just before you arrived. Something could have happened to him.'

‘Bill,' snapped Drury, ‘let's take a look. I'll go to the front door. You look round
the back.' He glanced at Moore. ‘You'd better keep with Bill, as Hackley said, in case.'

Three minutes later Drury, standing on the porch and getting no reply to his ringing at the doorbell, heard Bill Hazard calling. He left the porch, hurried to the side gate which led into the garden and round to the back of a double garage. One glance showed him the broken window of the garage, the door of which was open with a key in the lock on the inside. Car exhaust fumes were being sucked outside by a light breeze. Bill Hazard and Tom Moore were in the act of lifting the limp figure of an unconscious man.

As they brought him out into the garden Drury scowled at the face of Rollo Hackley.

If Joe Murphy had been present he might have found reason for revising his opinion about Rollo's luck.

Then, again, he might not. The rescue had certainly been in time to save Rollo's life.

The smell of Drury's pipe was rank enough, for the Yard man wasn't choosey in the matter of the tobacco he smoked. His wife claimed he used his pipe as an incinerator. But the pipe smell was pleasant after the lungful of carbon monoxide Rollo had breathed. He sat on a car cushion under a silver birch bare of leaves and the grass beside him felt damp to his groping fingers.

‘Just take your time, Mr Hackley,' Drury said. ‘Let's have it as it happened and as you remember it, and don't get shy about telling the truth. You shoved your nose where it wasn't welcome and you've got a bump on your head to prove it. Thank heaven you had the sense to get Tom here to cover you.'

Moore didn't feel like taking credit he felt he hadn't earned.

‘No,' he said gruffly, ‘I made the mistake of waiting too long. If you hadn't arrived when you did, Superintendent, he might have run out of luck.'

‘My thanks to all three of you,' Rollo
said with a self-conscious grin. ‘This sort of meeting is becoming a habit.'

‘One you'd better not let develop,' Drury retorted. ‘Now put us in the picture.'

Rollo explained how he had rung up the bank, made an appointment to see Cecil Weddon, went there, and explained who he was and why he had called.

‘At six quid an hour for taking up bank managers' time, you were running the
Gazette
into debt,' Drury muttered sardonically. ‘What was the reason you gave?'

‘I wanted to know if he had told his wife he was in the Croft Avenue house the night a man she had been meeting privately was murdered.' Rollo stared at Drury. ‘All right, Superintendent, now hit me on my nosey nose.'

Drury was staring back at the man lying propped against the silver birch. He was bending down a little after concentrating on Rollo's words.

‘Not before witnesses,' he growled. ‘Just get on with it, Mr Hackley.'

‘Weddon played it cool — damned
cool. He pretended he didn't know what I was talking about. To prove I had made a mistake he offered to take me home to meet his wife, just what I wanted him to do, so I could confront both of them at the same time.'

Bill Hazard lit two cigarettes, one for himself and one for Rollo, and passed the packet to Tom Moore, standing glumly by absorbing the speaker's words as though his skin was blotting-paper. Hazard fitted his offered cigarette into the corner of Rollo's mouth and asked casually, ‘What made you feel you hadn't made a mistake?'

Rollo exhaled smoke. ‘He shouldn't have invited me home. He should have called one of his clerks as a witness and threatened me with a slander suit.'

Drury smiled approvingly. ‘So you knew you were walking into trouble?'

‘Let's say I was glad I'd rung the Temple-Moore agency and made the arrangement I had with Mr Moore.'

Tom Moore choked on a mouthful of smoke. No one looked at him, and Rollo explained how, after he had met Beryl
Weddon and again made his request, he had been told they were not prepared to tell him a story any more than they were prepared to let him tell one. He knew what was meant when he looked round and saw the woman covering him with a gun pointed at his head.

‘But she didn't shoot,' Drury pointed out.

‘The gun was just to make me acquiescent, let's say.' Rollo removed the cigarette from his mouth and grinned in a shamed way. ‘They wanted to find something out before getting rid of me — like how much I knew.'

‘You obligingly told them?' Drury sounded sceptical. But of what Rollo couldn't be sure and decided he'd rather not know, anyway.

‘Not in so many words,' he said defensively. ‘But they began some crosstalk, about they supposed I must know about Vince Pallard, and I'm not a good enough actor to keep from giving myself away.'

‘They sound like a team,' Drury decided. ‘Neat. No rehearsal. Just went
straight into an ad-lib act and got the right reaction. That it?'

‘That's precisely it. It was as though I was an audience, and making expected reactions,' Rollo admitted glumly. ‘Until Weddon asked me something I couldn't answer.'

‘What was that?' Drury inquired readily.

‘After deciding I knew of Pallard, Weddon asked me how I had learned of Pallard's connection with them. I said nothing, because I didn't know what he meant.'

Drury straightened his back without removing his gaze from the young man seated under the tree. He said, ‘I think you've just told me why Vince was murdered. He was playing two ends against the middle. It takes a very clever man to keep that up for long. Vince wasn't all that clever. I think he was running with Clayson and hunting with the man who killed him, which is why Weddon was at that house in Croft Avenue. He had to know what was going on, if only to satisfy his wife. Yes, that could be how it shaped,' Drury nodded,
a man talking more to himself than those listening to him.

Hazard said, ‘You think it would work this way — Vince was selling information about the gang at Thaxstead High Barn to Clayson, who was passing it back to the Weddons?'

‘I'm not sure of ‘would', Bill. But I'll accept ‘could'. It could work that way, but if it did I can't see a reason why they'd want it except blackmail. These power-cut robberies have been putting a lot of money in the wrong pockets.' Drury again gave his attention to Rollo. ‘Didn't they refer to Peel at all?'

‘Not by name. They mentioned H.P. in their cross-talk, but it didn't mean anything and I didn't pay much attention. I was trying to dream up a way of getting the hell out of that place. The way the woman held that gun was adding years to my life in a matter of minutes.'

Rollo rubbed out the end of his cigarette against some dead silver birch leaves.

‘But when Weddon,' he went on, ‘said something about H.P. having joined the
A.A. too late, he suddenly registered. H.P. was Peel and A.A. wasn't the Automobile Association, it was that missing plastic surgeon, Anthony Arbuthnot.'

‘You can't remember how he spoke about H.P.?' Drury pressed.

‘No, that's the devil of it. I hadn't been paying attention. Much of the cross-talk meant nothing to me.'

‘Blackmail,' said Drury, nodding. ‘I think so. It fits. Clayson, the man whose evidence put Peel in jail, was keeping tabs on him now he was out, and doing so through Vince Pallard. What he learned he passed on to the woman, for a price or a favour or both. Peel got to the truth through Pallard and then Vince was out for keeps. After he had eliminated Vic Clayson.' The Yard man's tone became introspective again as he added, ‘I also think you've given us a clue to why you were told you could write up what you knew. That wasn't altogether a bluff, but what you might have put down wasn't intended for the
Gazette
. More likely for the Weddons. You would have been told a story that would have involved
them and got Peel clear of something he couldn't handle — or perhaps he could. Perhaps he just could,' Drury repeated softly. ‘He might have been trying his own blackmail, which is why the National City raid is laid on. Yes, it could be. I thought that was too much for real coincidence.'

He saw Rollo looking at him without a gleam of understanding in a very perplexed gaze.

‘I don't make sense to you?'

‘I don't know, Superintendent,' Rollo said honestly. ‘I don't know enough to be able to make up my mind. But you said I'd given you a clue to why I was told I'd be able to write up what I knew. Well, there might have been another reason than the one you've worked out.'

‘Yes?' Drury frowned, moving his head so that he looked sideways at the man below him.

‘I told them about Pallard being shot and my fingerprints being left on the murder gun.'

‘Why?'

‘I was desperately trying to give them a
reason for not shooting me out of hand, especially as that damned redhead looked as though she'd thoroughly enjoy putting a hole in my head. Maybe I wasn't being clever and detached, but I felt too damned involved, and I grabbed at one straw within reach, as I thought. I thought if I told them about the gun with my fingerprints they might feel they could take a chance on having me arrested for the shooting. But I wasn't thinking clearly. I knew that when the woman said, ‘He's mad', she meant Peel. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps he is mad.'

No one spoke. Rollo grabbed a quick lungful of air he felt he needed.

‘Perhaps she's right,' he repeated. ‘Perhaps — '

Drury was shaking his head.

Tom Moore drove Rollo back to Fleet Street. Dan Simpson had left, but Joe Murphy was banging away at a typewriter. He stopped when he saw Rollo crossing the floor.

‘You look sick, boy,' he said in no tone of sympathy.

‘I feel sick.'

‘You phoned Moore. How did he get you sick?'

‘By taking me into some fresh air and giving me artificial respiration.'

‘If he hadn't?'

‘You might now be beating out a line for the obit. column.'

The Irishman was an old hand at not allowing his interest to be trapped by obvious bait.

‘Sounds as though there just might be a story.' He sat blinking slowly, registering heavy thinking. ‘There'd have been one for sure if Tom Moore hadn't taken you into the fresh air, but left you — where?'

The last word was uttered very softly. Rollo grinned back, and made to walk on.

‘Don't be like that, boy,' said Murphy. ‘Share. I've got something in exchange. Not just words, either. Something you can handle.'

The wheedling voice was mere blarney,
Rollo knew, but Joe Murphy wasn't a liar. He had something and knew that Rollo would be interested.

‘Off the record, Mr Murphy.'

‘Joe. Don't you remember?'

‘Joe, then.'

‘That's better, boy. We're sitting on the same fence, and when we get off it we'll come down on the same side. Know what that makes us? Pals, boy. So give forth, pal.'

‘Still off the record.'

‘Of course.' Murphy grinned like a ferret sniffing a rabbit. ‘Besides, I can't afford to jump before I've got clearance from friend Drury. So you're safe, boy.'

Rollo perched on the corner of the Irishman's scarred desk. The typewriter with its sheet of half-filled paper was pushed aside.

He gave a brief account of what had happened to him since he left the office. Joe Murphy said nothing when he had finished. The Irishman looked extremely sober — for him. He felt in a drawer and drew out a telegram, and as he handed it to Rollo he said, ‘You know
something, boy? For a nice, well-brought-up youngster you keep the worst company of any nice boy I know. How the hell do you manage it?'

But he didn't get an answer.