The Killing of Katie Steelstock (21 page)

“To me?”

“To you personally. No one else. He said he liked you and had found you a sympathetic character in the past and he was prepared to let you do it. If you wouldn’t, he’d do it all himself.”

Speaking slowly, to get his breath back, Noel said, “It’s quite true that we used to see a good deal of each other at one time. We used to play a lot of squash. He usually won. He’s very quick on his feet and he’s got exceptionally strong wrists. When he hit the ball, he really did smash it—hold up.” He thought Bird was going to pass out.

“It’s all right. No, really. I’m quite all right.”

“Stupid of me to say a thing like that,” said Noel. “I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t. It’s just that I visualised for the first time the sort of thing that happened. Someone positioning himself behind Katie in the dark and smashing—”

“We could both do with another drink,” said Noel firmly.

“Well . . . a very small one. Thank you. You will take this on, won’t you?”

“I’m not by any means an expert in criminal law, but if it’s me or no one, I shall have to do it.”

“If it’s going to be terribly expensive, I could talk to his friends. I’m sure there are a lot of people who would help.”

“I’m sure there are. And equally I can think of one or two people who certainly wouldn’t. However, it may not be necessary. As far as I know, Jonathan hasn’t got any money. We should be able to get him legal aid. When we’ve got that, we’ll be able to brief top council. Cheer up, Dicky. You’ve done a good day’s work.”

The Prince Albert Lock is on the river halfway between Pangbourne and Reading, serviced by a side road from Tilehurst village. The son of Mr. Baxter, the lock keeper, came bursting into the cottage at eight o’clock that morning and was sharply told by his mother to remove his Wellingtons and comb his hair or he wouldn’t get any breakfast.

Ignoring these suggestions as being frivolous or unimportant, he dropped his fishing rod on the floor, said, “Where’s Dad? Oh, there he is,” and pelted out into the garden. Mrs. Baxter shook her head sadly.

“A corpus, is it?” said Mr. Baxter. “Then we’d better have’un out, hadn’t we?”

“Can I help?”

“I don’t think your ma would like that.”

“It’s not fair. I saw him. In the reeds, this side of the weir.”

“Well,” said Mr. Baxter, who was as weak-minded as his wife with their only son. “Mind you scrub up well afterwards.”

The body was lying on its back. Mr. Baxter, who had seen many corpses in his time, looked at it critically. “Not been in more’n a few days,” he said. “But what’s that holding him up in front?”

His son, at the last moment, felt a distaste for the thing. He said, “I think I’ll go and get my breakfast.”

“That’s right,” said his father with a grin. “You do that.”

It took him five minutes to disentangle the body from the weeds and drag it up onto the towpath. He unbuttoned the coat and then after a brief hesitation, the shirt as well. He knew that the police disliked people meddling with a body until their own doctor had seen it, but he was puzzled by the inflated appearance of the chest

The explanation was a stout square rubber wallet almost the size of a small cushion.

“Funny sort of apparatus to carry about under your shirt,” said Mr. Baxter.

He picked it out, dipped it in the river to wash off the dirt and slime that had accumulated on it and examined it again.

At first he thought there was no opening to it. Then he found the tiny head of the zip fastener countersunk in the thick rubber at the corner. It was too small for his clumsy fingers to get hold of. Curiosity had now got the better of discretion.

First he dragged the body by its heels through the back gate and into his garden, where it would be out of sight of passers-by. Then he went back for the wallet and carried it into his tool shed. He threaded a piece of fine wire through the eye of the zip fastener and pulled gently. The top of the wallet came open. The inside was still almost dry and the contents, which seemed to be pictures or photographs of some sort, were wrinkled at the edges but otherwise unharmed by their days of immersion.

Mr. Baxter carried them across to the door to examine them. Then he whistled softly. In the twenty years he had watched over the Prince Albert Lock a variety of flotsam and jetsam had been carried down on the broad bosom of Father Thames and deposited on his doorstep: contents of boats overturned in the upper reaches, furniture lifted from bungalows by the winter floods, on one occasion an upright piano. But, said Mr. Baxter to himself, as he separated the photographs gently and examined them one by one, blow him down if he had ever seen anything quite like this before.

He thought he had better let the police know straightaway.

Constable Leary from Reading, who respected Mr. Baxter’s expertise in such matters, said, “Where do you think he went in?”

“Well,” said Mr. Baxter, “it’s not all that easy to say. Normally – that’s to say usually – you can tell how long someone’s been in by looking at his face. Being the softest exposed part, that’s what the eels get at first. In this case that contraption he had under his shirt kept him floating on his back with his face clear of the water, so it’s hardly been touched. You see what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Constable Leary with a slight shudder. He was not as used to bodies as Mr. Baxter was.

“Another thing, see this?” Mr. Baxter disentangled a long branch of thorn from the belt at the back of the dead man’s coat. “I’d say he’d been hitched up one time or another in the bushes at the edge of the bank. That makes it more difficult to judge. However, taking one thing with another, I’d say he hadn’t been in above three or four days and that means he went in somewheres between Streatley and Hannington.”

“Three or four days ago,” said Superintendent Farr when this was reported to him. “And there was a cheap day-return ticket to Hannington in his wallet.”

“That’s right,” said Constable Leary. “The date was washed away. But it was Hannington all right.”

“The railway could probably give us the date if you gave them the serial number. Put an inquiry through to Paddington. And let Knott have a copy of your report. I don’t suppose there’s any connection with his business, but you never can tell.”

He was looking at the photographs as he spoke. They were enlargements, fourteen inches by twelve. The wallet had evidently been custom made to keep them safe, and it had done its job well.

“Hot stuff,” said Constable Leary. “That one of the two boys. I don’t know as I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

“It’s what they call hard pornography.”

Constable Leary was about to make a joke based on the word hard, but discretion prevailed.

“There’s a special squad in the Met,” said Farr. “They deal with this sort of thing. We’d better let them know. He came from London, didn’t he?”

“Seems so. There was that return ticket from Paddington in his pocket.”

“Nothing with his name on it?”

Leary shook his head.

“He’ll be a runner for one of the outfits who peddle this sort of muck. You say the face is O.K. Get a photograph taken and send it up to Central with a report. Copy to Knott at Hannington.”

Constable Leary departed reluctantly. There were one or two of the photographs he would like to have looked at again. Now they would be locked away in the Superintendent’s safe and he wouldn’t have another chance.

Mr. Beaumorris had reached an age when he did nothing impulsively. Every action had to be judged in the light of its reactions on himself, his comfort and his convenience. Naturally there were other considerations. He liked to help his friends. He liked, even more, to discomfort his enemies. Among them he ranked George Mariner, a self-made parvenu who behaved like a snob without any real grounds for being snobbish. He disliked Superintendent Knott, too, the brute who had driven his old friend Bill Connington to take his own life.

Recently a piece of information had come into his possession. If he passed it on to the authorities it might embarrass Mariner. On the other hand it might help Superintendent Knott. A difficult problem.

He spent most of the morning thinking about it and then decided, as a compromise, to telephone the friendly Sergeant McCourt.

Ian listened without comment to what Mr. Beaumorris had to say. He had a feeling that he was being presented with an important piece of information, but it was difficult for the moment to see how it was going to fit into the plan which had started to form in his slow Scots mind as he was standing in the upper room in the boathouse staring at a spyhole in the wall.

He said, “I suppose you got all this from your girl Myra?”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Beaumorris placidly. “I get most of my news from her.”

“Then let me see if I’ve got it right. While the Mariners were out at the dance on Friday night, someone telephoned their house. Polly took the call. She says it was a man. She didn’t recognise the voice, but she thought it was a Londoner.”

“Correct. She also thought he’d been drinking. Not that he was drunk, you understand. But the voice was slightly slurred.”

“And she’s quite certain she didn’t recognise it.”

“Absolutely certain. It was no one she’d ever heard before in her life.”

“This was about half past ten?”

“Just after.”

“Did he say what his name was?”

“Yes. He said he was Mr. Lewisham.”

“And he asked for Mariner by name?”

“He asked if Mr. Mariner was at home. Polly said no. He asked when he was coming back. By this time Polly was getting a bit bored with him. She simply said she hadn’t any idea when he was coming back. The man said, “Then I’ll ring later.’ She said, ‘O.K., you do that.’ And the man rang off.”

“Did he say where he was telephoning from?”

“No, but Polly says it was a telephone box.”

“And he didn’t try again later?”

“Not while she was there. When the Mariners came back she told them about it. Before she could say much, George said, ‘Wait a moment. I must get my wife to bed. She’s very tired.’ And he hustled her upstairs into her bedroom. Then he came down and said, ‘All right. What was it?’ Polly told him and he said, ‘I don’t know any Mr. Lewisham. It must have been a wrong number.’ ‘Can’t have been,’ said Polly. ‘He asked for you by name.’ To which George said, rather huffily, ‘That doesn’t prove anything. He probably got my name out of the phone book.’”

“But—”

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Beaumorris. “It was a stupid thing to say. But Polly says he was quite clearly pretty shaken by the whole thing. However, it wasn’t her business. So she pushed off.”

Ian thanked Mr. Beaumorris. He said that it probably had nothing to do with the matter they were investigating, but he’d certainly ask Mr. Mariner about it. He declined a glass of sherry and went straight back to the police station. The operations room was empty, but the records of the case, now occupying two bulging folders, were on the Superintendent’s desk.

He got out the transcript of Mariner’s statement. The passage he wanted came toward the end.
Knott: But she took off as soon as you got back? Mariner: As soon as she heard our car in the drive.

He sat staring at it for a long time. He was still sitting there when the door opened and Knott came in quietly. It was something Ian had noticed about him before. He never made much noise.

“That’s right,” he said. “Keep studying the record. Read it right through every day. Every word. Nothing like it for concentrating the mind.” He seemed to be pleased about something.

Ian said, “I’ve got another report to add to it. It’s on tape but I haven’t had time to transcribe it yet.”

“Important?”

“It could be.” He told him about it.

Knott said, “The trouble is, son, you never know which bits belong and which bits don’t. I remember once when I was investigating a case of arson, we kept getting reports about a man who thought he’d been brought up by a wolf pack. Used to call his father ‘Baloo’ and his mother ‘Baghera’ and went howling round the fields at night. Fascinating stuff. Nothing to do with the case, though.” He opened an envelope on his desk, read the flimsy that was in it and said, “Here’s another,” and threw it across.

The body of a man, as yet unidentified, was recovered from the Thames at the Prince Albert Lock this morning. He appeared to have been in the river not less than three and not more than six days. Height five foot eight. Heavy build. Weight stripped fifteen stone. He was carrying a number of obscene photographs, clearly high-class professional work featuring girls, young men and boys. These were in a wallet specially constructed to hold and conceal them. It seems probable that he was a runner or traveller for one of the studios in London who produce or retail this type of work. A photograph, face only, accompanies this report. Details of fingerprints and dental work will follow. Information about this man required by Berkshire Police, Reading. Detective Superintendent Farr.

“It’s an advance copy from Farr at Reading,” said Knott. “He thought I might be interested.” Ian looked puzzled.

“The lock keeper who pulled the body out – he’s by way of being a bit of an expert on Father Thames and his ways. He said the man probably went in somewhere around here at the weekend.”

Ian said, “Yes, but—”

“I know. Just another wolf man. All the same, we’ll add it in. You never can tell. Get a third folder from Eddie. We don’t want to burst the seams of that one.”

“You agreed to do
what?”
said Vernon Vigors, shaken out of his usual calm.

“To represent Jonathan,” said Noel. “Why not?”

“Do you feel you are equipped to do so?”

“If you mean do I know anything about defending a man charged with murder, the answer’s no, I don’t. And I’ve had precisely two cases in the Crown Court.”

“Then don’t you think it would be more sensible to entrust the case to a London firm? One who have got some experience in that particular line. It’s very specialised, I believe.”

“There are two answers to that,” said Noel. “The first is that the case will be masterminded by the council we choose, not by me. The second is that Jonathan adamantly refused to consider any solicitor except myself.”