Gently French Read online

  Well. But if Rampant had planned a tip-off, he would surely have made a note of the number. Also, he would probably have named all the gang. The message to Met had been less than explicit.

  ‘It might have been a snap decision by Rampant, but more likely it was a grass from some other ill-wisher.’

  ‘But how did they know about the car, sir?’

  ‘Simple. They saw it. Crooks can put on a tail as well as we can.’

  ‘You mean someone was out there keeping tabs on Freddy?’

  ‘Right. And with luck he’ll have left a trail.’

  ‘So like that it could have a connection with the killing?’

  I grinned. ‘Get in the car. We’ll go and find out.’

  Driving fast.

  We picked up the A1 and switched to the A505 at Baldock. The Lotus’s virtues are wasted on dual carriageways and their semi-legal eighty. Jigging by puffing transporters, swooping round coveys of hard-driving reps. Slinking through bends with a steady clock. Here and there brushing the ton. The Lotus is a naughty car which has always a train to catch somewhere. Dutt, the perfect passenger, loves it: sits loose and dreamy, watching the road perpetually opening for us.

  ‘Wonder what that Bugatti’s like to drive, sir.’

  I nod. ‘It’s been crossing my mind, too.’

  Dutt gives me a glance. ‘Perhaps we’ll get a whirl in it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I say, savouring my hypocrisy.

  We slotted in at Norchester police H.Q., which is a wing of the big, pinkish City Hall. The press were waiting outside and I introduced Dutt to them as our leading expert on knife-killings. They took appropriate photographs. Then we were ushered in to the office of C.I.D. Chief Inspector Hanson. This was my fourth time with Hanson, who is not an unmixed admirer of mine. But today he was affable enough; I believe he thought he had the case licked.

  ‘Rampant’s going to crack.’

  ‘That will be nice.’

  Hanson flicked his grey eyes at me. Hack-faced Hanson. He’s not so tough really; there’s a soft centre under the chromium plate.

  ‘He’s admitted he was after his cut. Quarles brushed him off with two hundred nicker. Quarles would never have seen him again unless Rampant was threatening him. Chummie’s got no answer to that one.’

  ‘Where is Rampant now?’

  ‘I’ve got him downstairs.’ Hanson hesitated. ‘Do you want to have a go at him?’

  ‘First, you’d better put me in the picture.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It makes quite a story.’

  We seated ourselves. Also in the office was Hanson’s lieutenant, Sergeant Opie, a short, solid, dark-haired man with an empty face but alert eyes.

  ‘Let’s start at the beginning. Whose money was it?’

  Hanson gave a little snatch with his head. ‘Bryanston Shoes. Big footwear people. They have a factory on the outskirts.’

  ‘Wages?’

  ‘Yep. They draw them on Thursdays to give the clerks time to make them up. Collect them at Lloyd’s branch on The Walk. The car, driver, and one guard.’

  ‘Just one guard?’

  ‘One guard. And don’t think we haven’t talked to them about security. But this is Norchester, not London. Here they don’t believe it till it happens.’

  ‘What about their route?’

  ‘They use two, through the centre and by Unwin Road. The trouble is they just alternate them, one this week, the other the next. So they were sitters for a villain like Quarles. He set it up at the quiet end of Unwin Road.’

  ‘How long had Quarles been in the district?’

  ‘He was out at the Barge-House all week. It’s on the river, you know, a holiday spot. Quarles just acted as though he were on holiday.’

  ‘Where was he when the job was pulled?’

  ‘In a launch on the river, along with his woman and two others they’d invited. When we heard from Met we went out and questioned him, but he just laughed in our bloody faces. Then the next evening, he was dead.’

  ‘Tell me about that.’

  Hanson heaved rough breath. He pulled open a drawer, took out a folder and slid it to me across the desk. The photographs. Not very pretty, but I’ve spent much of my lifetime studying such things. They showed Flash Freddy with a faceful of steering-wheel and a ventilated back and a bloody neck. Also the car, the lovely car. It was standing on a rough track, surrounded by trees. Just where it was parked was a large, jungly hawthorn with bracken growing round its skirts.

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Part of Mussel Heath. It flanks the city to the north.’

  ‘It looks more like a wood.’

  ‘There’s plenty of cover there. No doubt why chummie picked it for a meeting.’

  ‘Give me the timetable.’

  ‘Quarles left the hotel around twenty hundred hours Friday evening. It’s a seven-mile drive. E.T.D. between twenty hundred hours and midnight. Reported oh-eight-twenty-five Saturday by Samuel Trivett, labourer. Trivett lives in a road adjacent to the heath, was taking his dog for a stroll.’

  ‘Wasn’t Quarles reported missing by Madame Deslauriers?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you ask her why?’

  ‘You bet I asked her. She said that Quarles had gone out on business, and when that happened she expected him when she saw him.’

  I hesitated. ‘Did she know what business?’

  ‘If she did, she’s not admitting it.’

  ‘Where was she during the rest of that evening?’

  ‘In her room is what she says.’

  ‘But no proof?’

  Hanson swept his bony hand. ‘All right, I thought about that! But I couldn’t believe it. Not with the lab report coming in about Rampant’s jacket, and him with a motive as big as a house. Believe me, I know that bastard – he could do it and not lose any sleep.’

  Perhaps, perhaps. I pointed to the photographs. ‘Nobody’s mentioned the weapon yet.’

  Hanson got red. ‘Because we haven’t found it. I’d say chummie took it with him and threw it in the river.’

  ‘Do we know what it was like?’

  ‘Yes, a short-bladed knife, blade not longer than four inches. A straight back with a curved edge. Could be a small kitchen knife.’

  ‘Commonly of French manufacture.’

  ‘Yeah, well! That’s a point. But you can buy them here in town, so I don’t see where that gets us.’

  I hunched. ‘Had the body been frisked?’

  ‘If it had, the chummie missed five hundred nicker.’

  Hanson lifted a plastic bag from his drawer and decanted its contents on the desk. Out came a fat wallet, keys, change, pens, a platinum cigarette-case, matching lighter, pen-knife, nail-file, comb and a rabbit’s foot. I chivvied them around. The cigarette-case and lighter may have been worth another five hundred. In the wallet, mostly twenty-pound notes, bank-fresh, very handsome. Driving-licence, virgin. Insurance and M.O.T. certificates for 3.3 litre Bugatti (1932). Membership card the Dolly Club, Chelsea, receipt for jacket (£132.13), stamps, three credit cards, two theatre-ticket stubs, two gilt-edged visiting cards.

  ‘Personal jewellery?’

  Hanson opened an initialled envelope. ‘These came back from the mortuary.’

  He shook out a Longines watch with a platinum case and expanding band and a solitaire diamond ring in the same metal.

  ‘Clothes?’

  Hanson signalled to Opie, who fetched another bag, from a metal cabinet. He spread out a grey light-weight suit, silk shirt, socks and underwear and a pair of handmade shoes in natural camel-skin. The shirt and jacket were ripped and stained: very butcher-like exhibits.

  ‘A well-turned-out corpse.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hanson said. ‘You’d have thought he was worth taking away.’

  ‘Somebody just wanted him dead.’

  ‘Somebody like Rampant.’

  ‘But wasn’t Rampant’s quarrel with him about cash?’

  Hanson made noises. ‘So the chummi
e panicked. Hell, he wasn’t so relaxed when he spoiled that shirt. Perhaps something disturbed him, like a car passing close. There’s a lot of necking goes on out there.’

  I grunted. ‘It’ll keep till I’ve viewed the scene. Now tell me something about Mimi Deslauriers.’

  Hanson rolled his eyes. ‘It’ll be a pleasure. But if you think she’s chummie, you must be slipping.’

  He lit one of his cheroots, long, black, and puffed coarse smoke over my head.

  ‘Around thirty,’ he said. ‘Blonde. Green eyes. Say thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six. Tallish. Moves like a cat. Husky voice with an accent. Nearly knocks you down when she looks at you. Fancy dresser. Smells like honey.’

  ‘I’ll recognize her,’ I said. ‘Where was she on Friday evening?’

  He leached smoke. ‘In her room. She went up after dinner, after Quarles left.’

  ‘And stayed there?’

  ‘That’s what she says. Had a bath and went to bed.’ Hanson’s eyes were dreamy. ‘It’s a hell of a world,’ he said.

  ‘Any corroboration?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Does the room have a phone?’

  ‘Not an outside line.’

  ‘Could she have left unnoticed?’

  ‘With a lot of luck. You can get down backstairs to the kitchen end.’

  ‘Does she have alternative transport?’

  ‘Nothing we know about. But there’d be a rush if she wanted to borrow some. Only it’s crazy, quite crazy. That doll wouldn’t have to murder anyone.’

  I threw him an empty look. ‘They did tell you her form?’

  He pulled in a contemptuous lungful. ‘Sure, sure. But she got off, didn’t she? That was just her bit of hard luck.’

  ‘And this would be another bit?’

  ‘Why not? She’s the sort of dame things happen around. But if she sneaked out and filled-in Quarles, I’ll eat a year’s supply of these things.’

  Well . . . he’d met her, and I hadn’t. ‘What was her reaction to the killing?’

  ‘She was concerned, you could say that. But she wasn’t washing out her hankie.’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘Could have been scared. She was all round me with a lot of questions.’

  ‘About what you were thinking?’

  ‘That sort of thing. I didn’t get the impression it was the end of her world.’

  ‘So Quarles was just another mug.’

  Hanson scowled through his smoke. ‘Why should she break her heart over a jerk like that?’

  We drank coffee, the canteen kind, then drove out to Mussel Heath. I had seen it before, on a previous case, but just to admire it in passing. The city fingers its suburbs into the edge of the heath, which rises above it in broken lines; from up there the city is mapped below you with its landmarks of churches, tower-blocks, the castle and the cathedral. The heath is a hilly and holey place where you could lose an armoured division. Parts are open, parts scrubby and wooded, with precipitous dells and overgrown hollows. It is criss-crossed by stony tracks, going nowhere in particular, and divided by a road that snakes up to join a ring-road.

  We arrived by the dividing road. It rose beside a bare hill-slope, topped by an empty Victorian barracks; passed some pre-war council estates, then wound its way fenceless into high, woody heath. Hanson pulled into an official parking-place; from the far side a track dipped sharply; we bumbled down it, brushing bracken and birch-twigs, and levelled off in one of the dells. Another hundred yards brought us to the hawthorn which I had noticed in the photographs. We climbed out. Hanson pointed to four pegs hammered firmly into the ground.

  ‘That’s where Quarles parked his heap. A nice, quiet spot for a villains’ conference.’

  ‘But how would Quarles know about it?’

  ‘Rampant showed it to him. This is where he gave Freddy the dope. Freddy wasn’t keen on being seen with Rampant, so he picked him up at the parking-place and drove down here.’

  ‘Does Rampant admit that?’

  ‘Sure. He’s given us the whole tale as far as the hold-up. Then we know that Rampant called Freddy here for a second meeting. It’s after that when the edges get blurred.’

  I poked around. The sides of the dell were fledged with tall-growing birches and sycamores. Where we’d come down was hidden by a turn and the dell came to an end just past the hawthorn. The ground was stony and didn’t take tracks. There were a couple of footpaths leading off. One climbed out at the end of the dell, the other at the side, starting by the hawthorn. I scrambled up the latter. It took me nowhere, just through the trees into open heath. I came down again; and paused for some moments beside the hawthorn, which was in flower.

  ‘Give me your version of what happened.’

  ‘Huh?’ Hanson stared scowlingly. ‘There’s only one version I know about. Rampant got Quarles to meet him here, didn’t he?’

  ‘But then?’

  ‘Then he’d get in the jalopy beside him, start trying to pressure him to cough up.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So Quarles wouldn’t play, so there was a barney and Rampant pulled a knife. If he was planning to put the black on Quarles, he’d have been a mug to come bare-handed.’

  ‘And all this took place in the cockpit of a Bugatti?’

  Hanson held back, glowering. ‘You reckon it couldn’t have?’

  ‘I reckon there wasn’t much room to draw a knife, and none to use it in the way it was used. Is Rampant some sort of Samson?’

  ‘Not so as you’d notice.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t in the car when he stabbed Quarles. He couldn’t have put the knife in once, not reaching round Quarles while sitting beside him.’

  Hanson looked savage. ‘So how did he do it?’

  ‘I think Quarles’ attacker came round this bush. He jammed Quarles’ face into the wheel with one hand while he stabbed his back with the other.’

  ‘Oh fine,’ Hanson said. ‘Very clever.’

  ‘Which suggests something vital about the attacker. He is probably left-handed. Is Rampant left-handed?’

  Hanson glared awhile. Then he got in the car.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SO FAR SO good: I felt now I had earned a look at the Bugatti. We drove back to H.Q. in silence, then I put my request to Hanson.

  We found the Bugatti sitting in a corner of the H.Q. garage, reverentially draped in a plastic dust-sheet. Lab had finished with it. Most of Quarles’ bleeding had been soaked up by his clothing. A few smears on the wheel and the white leather bucket-seat had been photographed then cleaned off, while the recognizable latents were either Quarles’ or off-record, probably innocent.

  Hanson called over a mech. The mech started it for us and drove it out into the yard. It stood there growling in a chesty way, like a leopard meditating its spring. A marvellous blue shape. Beginning at the rad, an ellipse perhaps borrowed from Leonardo da Vinci; carried on through the delicate humping of the louvred bonnet, completed in the powerful signature of the fish-tail. Ettore had reached for one of Plato’s patterns, and it had come to his hand like a pint pot.

  ‘What’s the price of a heap like this?’ Hanson asked.

  I didn’t hear him; I was walking round it. Whatever Flash Freddy’s sins had been, I felt I owed him gratitude for the Bugatti. The French racing-blue enamel was stove-hard everywhere, no hint of rust or tarnish. The cockpit appointments were immaculately original, so too were the strap-spoked aluminium wheels. The seats were new, but gave immediate conviction that they had been scrupulously copied from the originals. And the note of the engine, a precise, clear grumble, needed no connoisseur to confirm its tune.

  The mech gently revved it, bringing in the supercharger. Faces appeared at a few nearby windows. Other mechs, who had been working in the garage, came out to stare at Ettore’s car.

  Rampant wasn’t left-handed.

  I had ordered coffee before they fetched him to the office. When I offered him a cup, he shifted it to his left hand and then stirred it
with his right.

  A frightened little villain. Aged about thirty, five-foot-seven, slim build; a blotchy ferret-face, long, lank fair hair and a soupy, unwashed appearance. Dress, a scruffy sweater, poncy jacket, dirty jeans and cheap suede sneakers.

  A petty villain; mostly a nuisance; sometimes useful to the villainocracy.

  ‘You knew Frederick Quarles, Rampant?’

  ‘Well yes, I had to, didn’t I?’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t sort of know him, just met a bloke who was working for him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, in the nick, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  ‘Yeah, in the nick.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘It was Wickey, wasn’t it? Him what was in there for knocking-off cars.’

  ‘Are you referring to Alfred Wicken?’

  ‘Bleeding Wickey is all I know. Wish I’d never listened to the frigger. Wouldn’t’ve been here now, would I?’

  He lapped up coffee, hands a-tremble. Very scared was Stanley Rampant.

  ‘What did he want?’

  Rampant clattered the cup and saucer. ‘Said I could be a nose for a big boy, didn’t he? Wasn’t no risk, it was money for jam. Just give him a tinkle when I was on to something.’

  ‘And you tipped him off about the Bryanston wages collection.’

  ‘Well yes, I did, didn’t I?’

  ‘Then you actually met Quarles.’

  ‘Yeah, all right, I met him. I ain’t trying to hide nothing, I’m being straight.’

  Straight as a meat-hook.

  ‘What happened at that meeting?’

  Rampant clutched cup and saucer together. ‘Bleeding business, that’s what it was. You can’t make nothing else of it.’

  ‘Quarles gave you money?’

  ‘Yeah, for the car—’

  ‘Just for the car?’

  ‘Ain’t I bleeding telling you! He gave me the price of a ’65 Jag and a bundle for me, isn’t that right?’

  ‘How much for you?’

  ‘He give me a bundle.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred nicker!’

  I clicked my tongue. ‘That wasn’t much, Stanley. I would have reckoned your cut at about fifteen hundred.’