Gently French Read online

  ‘I don’t think he’s at home,’ Breckles whispered. ‘I’ve been up to have a squint in the garage.’

  He indicated a sagging out-building with a roof of reed thatch, which was beginning to shed.

  ‘Any signs of use?’

  ‘None I’ve seen. But you would expect chummie to play it clever. He may have parked his car on the hard-standing. You would never spot it from the river.’

  I grunted and took in the scene. Once, someone had spent a lot of money on the mill. Fresh windows had been pierced at each of its four stories and a circular, white-painted verandah constructed around the cap. Once, too, there had been a lawn under the willows, trellised roses, a quay-heading. The mill-dyke had been enlarged and piled and had doubtless housed a launch or a motor-cruiser. Once. But not now. Now, the jungle was taking it back. The white paint was flaking, the quay-headings ruinous, and persicaria blooming in the silted-up dyke. And it gave an impression of intense loneliness, of a far-off outpost that had died. If it wasn’t haunted, it ought to be. A place fit only for ghosts.

  ‘Where is the door?’

  ‘It faces the river.’

  ‘Let’s spread out and take a look.’

  Dyke, marsh and undergrowth prevented us from surrounding the mill, but we did our best with what was left. I crossed a shaky bridge and followed a tiled path, of which the pemmons were sinking and choked with grass. It brought me to a shabby door. The door was secured with a massive rusty chain and a rusty padlock. Breckles joined me.

  ‘Is this the only entry?’

  ‘There’s a ground-floor window, sir. But it looks intact.’

  ‘Would you say this door had been unlocked since Christmas?’

  Breckles poked the padlock, and swallowed. ‘No, sir.’

  But we were there, so we went through the motions. Hanson thumped the door and called on Bilney to come out. He disturbed the jay again. It went clamouring through the carrs like a panicky blackbird with roup. Then silence.

  ‘We have tools, sir,’ Breckles ventured. ‘I could get that lock off in two minutes.’

  I looked at Breckles, Breckles looked at his feet.

  We went back to the car.

  Before we set out on our second goose-hunt I rang Dutt from a box in the village. Dutt had seen no more of Bilney than we had and could offer only minor and marginal information. Dainty had rung. The French police at Cap Ferrat had paid a call at Freddy’s villa. It was empty, but they had found signs of a very recent occupation. The caretaker, a retired procuress from Marseilles, had attempted to explain this by admitting to the illicit entertainment of friends there; the French police had pretended to accept the explanation. They were now keeping a close watch on the villa.

  ‘Any word of Bilney from Shepherd’s Bush?’

  ‘No, sir. But they’ve posted a man at his flat.’

  ‘What has the lady been doing?’

  ‘She’s been shopping, sir. She bought two blouses and a George Formby record. Then she went up to her room and played the record, and about half-past twelve she must have rung for a drink. Bavents fetched it, a Dubonnet and lemon, and he was in her room about twenty minutes.’

  ‘Was your ear to the key-hole?’

  ‘Well, actually, yes, sir. But all I could hear was that blooming record. First it was If Women Like Them and then Swimmin With The Women.’

  I clicked my tongue. ‘She’s adding to her repertoire. Has Bavents gone out or made any phone calls?’

  ‘No, sir. He was serving at lunch, and now he’s in the kitchen manicuring vegetables.’

  Which sounded innocent enough, unless one remembered that he would be fixing the veg with his left hand.

  I rejoined the others in the car and we went on our way to Turnpudden Hole. Nobody was saying much. Breckles in particular had a droopy expression on his round-cheeked face. Hanson was silently savaging a cheroot. The D.C., who was driving, stared over his bonnet. I chewed my pipe-stem. We passed through Sallowes and turned once more into the lanes.

  ‘What sort of place is Turnpudden Hole?’

  Breckles made a little gesture with one shoulder. ‘It’s just a small broad, sir. Mostly grown over. The old blokes used to say it was bottomless.’

  ‘But is there a house or something?’

  Hanson gnashed smoke. ‘There’s a shack they put up for Clytie Gifford. She was a weirdo, an eccentric. Liked to live alone with the birds.’

  ‘And it’s been empty for some time?’

  ‘Yeah. Clytie pegged out soon after the war. Then the estate was sold up. Only a nut could live out there.’

  I left it at that. But what I had been noticing were telephone posts marching beside us. They stayed with us through a plantation of larches before turning right, across a field. In a little distance we also turned right, to find our way barred by a ramshackle field-gate; the D.C. made to get out to open it: I stopped him and climbed out myself. I prowled round the gate. At first, I saw nothing. The gate was secured by a chain and staple; a shag of ivy had grown up the hinge-post and was sending a tendril along the top bar. Then I spotted a scrape, slight but definite, where the gate had brushed the crown of the track; and when I came to unhook the chain there was a glint of silver where it left the staple.

  I got back in the car.

  ‘The gate has been used lately.’

  Hanson sniffed. ‘So what does that tell us?’

  ‘It tells us the gate has been used lately.’

  ‘Oh great. Maybe we’ll pinch ourselves a poacher.’

  We drove through and refastened the gate. Here the track was descending through a belt of elms. At the foot of the descent lay a wash of mud, and in the mud was a clear imprint of tyres.

  ‘Is your poacher mechanized?’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Hanson said. ‘It could be the farmer has business down here.’

  ‘Park the car,’ I told the D.C. ‘Perhaps we need a walk to clear our brains.’

  We left the car. Now the track climbed again, with the elms still tall on either hand; but then it levelled suddenly and made a shallow turn; and there, at the turn, stood a blue Viva.

  ‘Hell!’ Hanson breathed.

  We hastened up to it. It was unlocked, and the keys were missing. It carried a West Essex registration, and the licence had been issued in Harlow. In the glove compartment were maps, pressure-gauge, duster and service records from a Harlow garage. They were made out to K. Stillwell, Orchard Croft, Harlow. The driving seat was pushed back. The boot was locked.

  ‘Pinched,’ Hanson said.

  ‘If it’s Bilney’s.’

  ‘Yeah, but it has to be,’ Hanson snapped. He hoisted the bonnet, popped open the distributor and dropped the rotor arm in his pocket. ‘So now he won’t be travelling far, and all we have to do is grab him.’

  ‘Unless he has pinched another car.’

  ‘Oh sure, they grow on trees out this way.’

  He bustled away up the track: I signalled the others to follow. A hundred yards further on the belt of elms ceased abruptly. Beyond lay a slope of shaggy pasture, running down to reed-beds and a weed-choked pool; but to the right, nestling under the trees, stood a timber chalet and a cluster of sheds. Seeing it, Hanson broke into a run, and there seemed little point in bawling to him to wait. We raced after him. Breckles had the good sense to shepherd the D.C. to the rear of the chalet. Hanson vaulted the rail of a verandah which enclosed the front of the building and launched his shoulder at the door. But the door didn’t give.

  Hanson thumped it. ‘Come out, Bilney. We’ve got your hidey-hole surrounded!’

  No response. Hanson thumped again; then ran to a window and peered in through his hands.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  He backed away from the window, his lantern-jaw sagging. I jumped up beside him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘There’s a bleeding body in there!’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE D.C. FETCHED a tool-roll from the car and Breckles expertly
jemmied the door. The body was in a room to the right of a hall that extended from the front of the chalet to the kitchen. The room was a bedroom; it was sparsely furnished with a Safari camp bed and a folding chair; the body was lying beside the bed on the side that was furthest from the door. It lay on its back. The arms were bent, the fingers hooked, the legs folded sideways. It was terrifyingly dead: wide-eyed and snarling. There was a lot of blood on the board floor.

  Hanson sent air hissing through his teeth. ‘Hell oh hell. The bloody bastard.’

  Breckles and the D.C. were staring pop-eyed; most likely they hadn’t seen a killing before.

  ‘Is this – is he the chummie?’ Breckles ventured.

  Somehow that horror defied identification. The face was now the simple face of humanity, shocked and outraged by a hideous dying. But there was the blunt finger, clawing at air.

  I nodded. ‘He’s Bilney.’

  ‘But who . . . what happened?’

  I hunched a shoulder. ‘Someone stabbed him. Can’t you see?’

  Perhaps Breckles couldn’t see. Bilney’s shirt-front looked just a chewed-up, bloody mess. I kicked the bed aside and approached the body, taking care to keep my shoes from the blood. There were multiple stab-wounds in thorax and abdomen, defensive cuts on each hand. Bilney had fought, but it hadn’t helped him. The attack had been too strong, too fierce. It had ended in a frenzy of superfluous stabbing as Bilney lay dying beside the bed. When? I stooped to manipulate a leg; rigor mortis was complete. The blood-puddle was largely congealed, though still liquid towards the centre. Sometime yesterday: perhaps mid-afternoon, when Bilney had returned from his rendezvous with Deslauriers. The killer had been waiting for him: he may have suspected it, have left his car down the track while he reconnoitred.

  But now . . . what?

  One killer, or two?

  This time there was no clue of sinistrality. Just a knife going in with mortal hatred: someone who couldn’t kill Bilney enough.

  I fished for his wallet, a smart lizard-skin number. Like Freddy’s wallet, it hadn’t been robbed. Forty-seven pounds in fives and ones, a twice-endorsed driving licence, stamps, receipts. A revenge killing? One for one? But somebody had known where to look for Bilney. Had tracked him to this obscure place: maybe with a little help from his friends.

  I stood back from the body and looked round the room, but the room was emptier than a punishment cell. The chair, the camp-bed, the naked floor: boards of which creaked under my foot. I stooped to finger one. It pulled up easily, the securing nails rusted through. Underneath, an empty air-space and the puggy smell of dry-rot. A futile gesture. I dropped the board back. All that room really contained was the body.

  ‘Come on. There has to be a phone here somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t make bloody sense!’ Hanson yapped.

  ‘It made sense to someone,’ I said. ‘And he was no playboy. This chummie we need behind bars.’

  ‘But who’d want to do it?’

  I stamped down the board. ‘Perhaps who wanted it done is a better question. Only standing here won’t get any answers, so let’s call in the people who may have some.’

  Nobody was sorry to get out of the bedroom. We found the phone, as I knew we would. This was clearly where Bilney had spent his time during his absences from the Reed-Cutters. No doubt he had jibbed at staying at a place that was so remote and uncomfortably furnished; but here was his point of contact, and here each day he would have to come. In fact, we found the evidence by the phone: a chair and a tin-lid of cigarette-ends. Sitting there, he would have been told of Freddy’s appointment with Rampant, would have received his summons to meet Deslauriers .. .

  I left Hanson to do the phoning and joined the others in a search of the premises. What the theory of a killer waiting in ambush needed was evidence of a break-in, and that we found in a forced window. But not very much else. In the bleak little kitchen was a cache of empty cans and soiled picnic plates; half a sliced loaf, a lump of cheese, tea, sugar and tinned milk. In the Elsan closet we found a local paper with Freddy’s demise in the stop-press, and outside a few spots of oil showing where Bilney had parked the Viva.

  When we returned to the parlour we found Hanson seated by the phone with an inspired light in his grey eye. He had a cheroot going; he waved it at us, adding ash of his to ash of Bilney’s.

  ‘Sit down. I’ve got the whole picture.’

  There was only one other chair: I took it.

  ‘Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said. It’s not who did it, but who wanted it done.’

  ‘I said that might be the angle.’

  ‘But yeah. It fits all down the line. From somebody shopping Freddy’s mob to us finding chummie behind the what-not.’

  I shrugged, guessing pretty well what was coming. That notion had jumped into my mind, too. But there were snags. It wasn’t nearly as simple as Hanson was now proposing to make it seem.

  ‘Let’s have it, then.’

  ‘It’s like this. We’ve got it all happening round Deslauriers. Nothing goes on but she has a link with it. Unless she’s in the middle, it doesn’t work.’

  I nodded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Take it back to the beginning. Freddy coming up here to do a job. It goes like clockwork, but surprise, surprise – someone blows the gaff to Met.’

  ‘You can take it back further,’ I said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Someone influenced Freddy to do that job. It wasn’t in his class. Below a hundred grand, Freddy wouldn’t have wasted a week in the country.’

  Hanson paused. ‘You’re saying she persuaded him?’

  I trailed my hand. ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, why not? He was loopy over her. If she said jump, he’d fall off a cliff.’ He fizzed smoke. ‘So take it all the way: she had this caper planned from the start. A job out of London with a hideaway handy, where the killer can wait till she turns him on. And that’s how it worked out. The mob pulled the robbery, Deslauriers arranged for Met to be waiting. Because why? Because the mob might make her trouble if they got the idea she’d bumped-off Freddy. Are you happy with that?’

  ‘Who phoned in the tip-off?’

  ‘What’s wrong with chummie next door?’

  ‘He’d be in London.’

  ‘Who says she didn’t phone him?’

  I nodded reluctantly: it was possible.

  ‘Fine,’ Hanson said. ‘That was the mob fixed. Now she could whistle up her killer. He picked himself a nice car and arrived in Haughton Thursday evening. But the lady didn’t like him staying in the open so she sent him on here. Only this place is damp or it has draughts, so chummie took a room at a cosy pub.’

  ‘Hold it,’ I said. ‘I don’t like that part.’

  ‘Huh?’ Hanson’s thick brows registered surprise.

  ‘If Deslauriers had planned this, Bilney wouldn’t have gone to Haughton and taken the risk of meeting her at the Barge-House.’

  Hanson dragged on the cheroot. ‘But that’s what happened.’

  ‘That’s what happened, and it doesn’t fit. Bilney should have been briefed to come straight out here, and not to have shown in Haughton at all.’

  ‘Perhaps he lost his way, sir,’ Breckles suggested. ‘A stranger wouldn’t find Turnpudden Hole in a hurry.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hanson said. ‘Yeah, that has to be it. He lost his way and had to get instructions.’ He gave me a leer. ‘Okay?’

  ‘He didn’t need to book a room to get instructions.’

  ‘So he was fed up with horsing around. And that makes sense to me, anyway.’

  He stared around, daring comment. I let it go. Hanson dragged smoke.

  ‘Now we have him sitting by this phone. Rampant made his play for Freddy. Deslauriers saw it as an opportunity, got on the blower and alerted Bilney. Deslauriers knew where the meeting would take place because Freddy described it to her from last time. Bilney was waiting when Freddy turned up and he came in behind and let h
im have it. So that was part two over. The mob was inside, Freddy was cooling on the heath. What should have happened next was Bilney going home and leaving the coppers to chase their arses. Only Bilney doesn’t do that. And why not? Because he’s caught the sweet smell of money. If Deslauriers wanted Freddy dead the odds are she stands to collect his dough. So Bilney stays and acts tough, and Deslauriers has to get him off her back.’ He drew breath. ‘What’s your guess at the E.T.D.?’

  ‘Near enough to the time you’re after.’

  ‘Three or four p.m.?’

  ‘About that. I’m not a professional, but I’ve watched them at work.’

  ‘And that would be the time you met Deslauriers yesterday? When she was moored at this end of the Broad?’

  I nodded. ‘All that part fits. Deslauriers could have been setting him up.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ Hanson said. ‘What we’re looking at in there is part three. Bilney tried too hard, and the lady countered with another rough boy from the Smoke. And this time I’ll bet it was a quick, smart job, with chummie taking off for home straight afterwards. Which is where we’ll find him, if we find him. This end the case has gone cold.’

  He shot me a fierce look, backed with smoke.

  ‘It does seem to make sense, sir,’ Breckles ventured.

  ‘Of course it does,’ Hanson snorted. ‘Deslauriers has to be the one behind it.’

  I wriggled a shoulder. ‘I give you that. Deslauriers is in it up to her neck. But there is one thing that goes on bothering me about this phenomenal eruption of pro killers.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘The level of ferocity.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘We’ve just been looking at another example. And it’s like the first: too many blows struck. In fact, too like the first for comfort.’

  Hanson, about to jump in, checked himself. ‘Are you trying to tell me it’s the one man?’

  I nodded. ‘I think it has to be. And that one man is no pro. He’s an amateur, probably a psychopath, paranoid, his temper on a hair-trigger. A hate-killer. A man with grudges against both Bilney and Freddy.’