One Fight at a Time (11 page)

“And will that be a lie?” Grover asked.

Harry shuffled back across the bed, leaned against the chalet wall and folded his arms.

“What time did the last house open?” Marsden asked him.

“6.25.” Harry said. “The supporting feature was
Dead
on
Time
.”

“Who was in it?”

“A bunch of two bob an hour actors, whose names I can’t remember.”

“What happens in
The
Blue
Lamp
?”

“Dirk Bogarde shoots Jack Warner - PC Dixon”

There was another pause. Marsden shook his head.

“You won’t get away with that,” he said. “The film’s been running all over the place, for weeks. Even people who haven’t seen it, know how it ends. Have you got a ticket stub?”

“I threw it away.”

Grover interrupted.

“Come on Harry, this is all bullshit.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. In any case, I don’t have to prove I wasn’t at Nick’s flat. The police have to prove I was.”

“That’s okay in theory. In practice, it’s a little less favourable.”

Grover got up out of the armchair.

“I’m going to take a walk on the beach. Think about this for a while Harry. Don’t let him leave Eric.”

It was just after 4 o’clock and there were still families on the beach. No one was actually braving a dip in the sea, but the sand castle builders were busy.

Grover sat on the sand and stared out across the channel to Wales. He had never been to Wales. He had read about Snowdonia. The name was straight out of a kid’s fairy tale. Snowdonia… the place where the bad guy lived in an ice castle, cold, embittered and vengeful. It seemed to be a place he ought to visit. But he had been too busy in other parts of Europe. And now, it was too late. He was not going to get to Snowdonia now.

He raised his arms, locked his fingers together behind his head and dropped back on to the sand. He closed his eyes and let the late afternoon sun warm his face. He hummed a few notes of a half remembered song. The lyric was something about being okay, but being a thousand miles from home. He was that, multiplied four or five times. It ought to bother him, but somehow, it didn’t. Maybe he could stay here. And get to Snowdonia after all.

Maybe...

He had been living on ‘maybes’ for ten years, the biggest being, maybe he’d get to the end of the day. All the other ‘maybes’ in the rest of his life should be a breeze.

Still, he had managed to get this far. And Wales didn’t look to be much further. Not in comparison to the miles he had already travelled. He got to his feet, dusted the sand off the parts of himself he could reach and walked back to the campus.

Harry was waiting outside the chalet, ready to go. He and Grover and Salome were back in Gladstone Street by early evening.

*

Around the same time, Sam Nicholson acquainted the city council Finance Director with Rodney Pride’s offer. At 7.30, the Finance Director announced he had a last minute item to place on the evening’s agenda, and he relayed the offer to the committee. Sam, pretending he had no part in this, was shitting bricks. Fifteen minutes later, the offer was accepted.

Back in his office, Nicholson phoned
Pride’s
Rides
. The call was answered at the other end on the second ring.

“It went through on the nod,” Sam said.

There was a mighty bellow down the line.

“Fan… fucking… tastic.”

Chapter Twelve

At Wednesday morning breakfast, all present admitted to not sleeping well. Nerves were stretched. Conversation was minimal, difficult to sustain.

Grover knew he could do nothing to improve the vibe, so he borrowed a Bristol Street map from Arthur and an AA road guide from Arthur’s next door neighbour, filled up
Salome
and spent the rest of the day on a recce. He worked in ever widening circles using Gladstone Street as the centre point, gradually mapping out the city and its boundaries in his head. He established all the main directions out of the city – east to the coast, north to the A38 and Gloucestershire, west to the A4 and Wiltshire, south on the A37, the A38 and the A39 into Somerset. He had done this sort of exercise more times than he could recall, as the allied advance pushed on through France, the Ardennes, the Rheinland and into eastern Germany. He had learned, wherever he was, to place himself into the centre of the map and set the map to the compass in his head.

After nine hours of driving around, he could stop the Jeep anywhere, get his bearings and point north. He got back to the shop as dusk was seeping into the sky.

The atmosphere was much as he had left it. Harry was in his room. Ray Noble and his Orchestra were on the radio. Ellie went to bed early. Arthur and Grover talked in the kitchen for a while, then agreed they were not really improving the shining hour. Arthur went to join Ellie.

Grover sat in the kitchen, listening to
The
Very
Thought
of
You
, acknowledging the growing awareness that he had no idea what to do next.

*

At Trinity Road, Bob Bridge was attempting to enjoy his Wednesday.

Rovers had lost the derby match 4-3, after giving away two penalties to City in the last fifteen minutes. No joy in that result. The fact he had not managed to get to Ashton Gate and experience the agony first hand, did nothing to alleviate his mood. He was still miserable at breakfast. He was contemplating a walk on the Downs with the next door neighbour and his collie, before getting on with the day, when the world outside grew dark and the rain started pelting down. So he listened to the BBC news summary on the Home Service, finished his scrambled eggs and went into work.

He was at the Bridewell by half eight. He looked down at the two filing cabinet folders and the padded envelope which sat on his desk. Goole stepped into his office as Bridge sat down. He was carrying a small, brown leather suitcase with plastic reinforced corners, a foot wide and four inches deep.

“Going away for a few days?” Bridge asked him.

“Do you want the cheery news, or the not so cheery news?”

“The latter. As long as it lives up to the billing.”

Goole pointed at the slimmer of the two folders. Bridge opened it and stared at two pages of figures.

“Crime scene hours overtime worked,” Goole explained. “You ordered them done, you have to agree them.”

Bridge looked at the time sheets. Extra hours on Monday night and last night.

“Christ what were they doing? Nine hours overtime.”

“Only seven of them. They counted two hours as time in lieu.”

“Of what for fuck’s sake?”

“Just sign them Boss. And take your bollocking from the ACC later.”

Bridge closed the folder and slid it away from him.

“How cheery is cheery?”

Goole pointed at the second folder. This one, much thicker.

“The crime scene reports,” he said. “Essentially as the Prof said they would read. Blood sprays across the sofa cushions and the carpet. Bloody fingerprints on Nicholas Hope’s shirt. Some of them his, some belonging to a person unknown to us.”

Bridge stared at the folder.

“And there’s a shoe print, or maybe a boot. Just the tip of a sole, but it might help. The crime scene photographs are there, forensics report, fingerprint notes, search findings... All the usual stuff.”

“This is the cheery news is it?”

Goole pointed at the padded envelope.

“No, that is.”

Bridge up-ended the envelope and shook it. A set of door keys dropped on to the desk. And a flick knife, the blade locked inside the handle.

“The murder weapon,” Goole said. “It’s been dusted for finger prints. The traces are smudged. Probably because the last person to use it wore gloves. But there is dried blood inside the handle. Along the groove that houses the blade. The same blood group as Hope.”

Bridge picked up the knife with his left hand.

“Careful with it,” Goole said. “It’s not a stiletto. The blade flicks out to the left.”

Bridge swapped hands. The casing was a little short of seven inches long, made of a light alloy sprayed dark blue. One inch and a bit wide, with the blade slot running the length of the spine. The blade release button was set into the head of the handle. Bridge balanced the knife in his hand, thumb on top of the handle, his fingers in a straight line down the underside. He pressed the button. The blade flicked out in a one hundred and eighty degree arc, in the time it took to blink.

“Jesus,” Bridge said.

He had played with flick knives before, but this one was impressive. The blade was six inches long and an inch deep. With one cutting edge, smooth all the way, until the blade curved to a point, where the steel was sculpted into a sequence of jags.

“Made to cut rather than stab,” Bridge said. “Do we know who owns it?”

“Not at the moment,” Goole said.

“Where was it found?”

“In the garden behind Hope’s flat. 5 Blenheim Villas has a back door. Behind the bottom of the stairwell on the ground floor. There’s a path across the garden to a gate in the shrubbery. And a lane behind the shrubbery, which leads to Albion Dock and the floating harbour.”

“So our theory is what, precisely?” Bridge asked.

“The killer left the building by the back door in something of a hurry and dropped the knife on the way.”

“And for some reason didn’t stop and pick it up?”

“Because, maybe, he didn’t have time,” Goole said. “Because, maybe, he thought someone had seen him. Maybe there was a flap on and he was in a hurry.”

Bridge grunted. “Maybe.”

“Take a look at the back garden photograph in the folder. The bed running along by the path is full of weeds and the lawn needs cutting.”

Bridge looked down at the knife in his hand. He pressed his left palm on the flat side of the blade, pushed the steel back through the same one eighty degrees, let the blade click into place and put the knife back on the desk. Finally, he gestured at the suitcase.

“So what’s that?”

Goole placed it on the desk.

“This was found under Hope’s bed. It’s a pretend suitcase. The kind of thing a kid uses. There are photographs in it. Mostly soldiers from Hope’s national service days. Pictures of boxers, some of them working out in what appears to be Roly Bevan’s gym. And half a dozen, stained with age, of a woman and a young kid. Hope and his mum, perhaps. And there are a couple of kid’s toys in there too. A yoyo and a small, battered, teddy bear. He’s lost a lot of his furry coat.”

“Alright,” Bridge said. “Give me an hour or so to go through all this. Then we’ll have a council of war.”

Goole headed for the office door. Bridge murmured a distracted thanks.

*

I need a fight,” Robbie McAllister said.

“No. What you need to do,” Rodney Pride suggested, “is to pay me what you owe me.”

McAllister went on as if he had not heard.

“Licensed or unlicensed. Doesn’t matter.”

Pride raised his empty beer glass. “Get another round in.”

McAllister grimaced, got up from his seat and moved to the bar. Pride looked around him. At the heavy brown furniture, wooden benches and stools and the nicotine stained ceiling.
The
Vaults
had been his local once. Before the fucking war had interrupted things. Now, it was no place to spend lunchtime. Or any time come to think of it. Still, he needed to put one over on Roly Bevan and Robbie Mac was the bloke who could help. And no one, drunk or sober, would think of looking for him and McAllister in here.

McAllister came back with the beers. He put the glasses on the table and sat down again.

“Well?...”

Pride stared into his beer. Enjoying McAllister’s growing irritation.

“There’s three unlicensed bouts on a card tonight at the old Temperance Hall in Kingswood,” Pride said. “Supposed to be four. One of the fighters has pulled out. The foolish twat fell down the stairs at home and broke his wrist. I guess you could take his place. The purse will be thirty-five quid.”

McAllister stared at him. “Is that all?”

Pride made him wait again. He picked up his glass, took a sip of beer, put the glass down again and swivelled it round on his beer mat.

“I could get that up as far as fifty...”

McAllister cheered up a bit.

“But I’ll expect something in return.”

There was another beat’s pause.

“What?” McAllister asked.

Pride took another drink. McAllister sighed and waited.

“In time,” Pride said. “How are you getting on with Roly?”

“I’m not. That’s why I’m here.”

Pride grinned at him. “Okay...”

*

Bridge swallowed the last piece of pork pie on his plate and stared across the office. Means, motive and opportunity. The undisputed tenets of all crime investigation. Opportunity was clear – Hope’s flat. Means hardly open to conjecture either – the knife. Motive? – that was the problem. Two out of three wasn’t enough.

He stared at the photograph of Nicholas Hope. Whey faced and all bled out, on a sofa in a crappy bed-sit. His life taken away from him at how old? Twenty-one, twenty-two? He searched through the folder for a biography of some sort. There was not much information, beyond his name and address. No police record. No links to anyone else. No father. Mother killed in a road accident in December 1938. Until five years ago, a resident of St Christopher’s Children’s Home in Cotham. Might get something from there. No known associates. Except for his landlord, Roly Bevan, who was listed as a person of potential interest to the investigation.

He opened the suitcase. Photos of squaddies training and marching and drinking, and boxers working out. And a woman, in her mid-20s at a guess, smiling at the camera, in a garden and on a beach. And one picture of her with a toddler on the pier at Weston Super Mare, the child clutching a teddy bear and smiling up at her.

Bridge picked up the bear and looked again at the photograph. The bear in his left hand was the same shape and had the same kind of ears. There was a magnifying glass somewhere. He searched the drawers in his desk, found the glass and picked up the photograph again. The bear in the picture was the bear in the suitcase. Presumably, the child was Hope himself. On a day trip to Weston, safe and happy and unaware of the perils that lay ahead.

Bridge put the bear and the photograph back in the suitcase, feeling like an intruder. He closed the case and stared across the office.

Somebody knew a lot about this. Somebody had to be made to talk. If Roly Bevan was not in the mood to help, then Harry Morrison had to be found and given the opportunity to do so. He got out of his chair, moved to the office door and called across the squad room.

“Tom...”

He turned back into the office and lifted his hat and coat from the bentwood coat stand by the door. Goole stepped into the open doorway.

“Two things. Put out an all car alert for Harry Morrison and – ”

The telephone on his desk rang. Coat over his left arm, left hand holding his hat, Bridge picked up the receiver.

“Bridge...”

Goole waited.

“Oh yes,” said Bridge.

Goole leaned to his right and let the door post take his weight.

“Has he?” Bridge went on.

Goole rubbed the end of his nose.

“Oh does he?”

Bridge dropped his hat onto his desk and draped his coat over the back of the desk chair. Goole turned to leave the office. Bridge raised his left arm and waved at Goole to stay.

“Put him on,” he said.

Bridge pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Goole stepped forwards and sat down in it. Bridge perched on the edge of his desk.

“Mr Morrison...” he said into the phone receiver. “How are you today?... You do? Well that’s excellent... So I hear... No please, don’t put yourself out, we’ll come to you...” Bridge twisted his left wrist and looked at his watch. “In a couple of hours... Thank you.”

He put the receiver back in its cradle. He looked at Goole, who waited for the revelation.

“Harry Morrison has been away for a few days. Has only just heard that we would like to talk with him. Consequently, he is more than pleased to make himself available.”

He stood up again, picked up his hat and coat.