The Best Man To Die Read online

  ‘Wait till the revolution comes,’ said Bardsley nastily,

  ‘Oh, shut up, the pair of you,’ Mrs Hatton said shrilly. She turned to Wexford, her controlled dignity returning. ‘My husband did overtime,’ she said, ‘and he had his side lines.’

  Side lines, Wexford thought. He got a little overtime and he made it go a long way. The man had colour television, false teeth worth two hundred pounds; he gave his friend a record player for a wedding present. Wexford had seen that glass and teak lamp in a Kingsmarkham shop and noted it had been priced at twenty-five pounds, one and a quarter times Hatton’s weekly wage. When he was killed he had had a hundred pounds on him.

  ‘If he’s got things like your class take for granted,’ the girl had said, ‘you say he must have nicked them.’ Curious, really, Wexford reflected, watching her huddled now in the crook of Pertwee’s arm. Of course she was very young, probably got a Communist shop steward for a father, and doubtless went about sneering at people better-educated and better-spoken than herself. It was an aggressive type that had even reached Kingsmarkham, a type that talked pacifism and the rights of man and brotherly love without the energy or courage to do anything that might bring these desirable conditions nearer.

  And yet he said nothing to provoke her outburst. Neither for that matter had Bardsley beyond hinting that Hatton had been prudent. Had she risen to this intangible slight bait because she knew Hatton’s wealth had been dishonestly come by? If she knew it, green and uncouth as she was, Pertwee would know it also. Everyone in this room but Burden and himself might know it. Not for the first time he reflected on the power of grief. It is the perfect unassailable defence. Pertwee had already employed it the previous morning effectively to terminate interrogation. Mrs Hatton, even more expertly, kept it under a piteous control that only a brute would have the brashness to disregard. She was moving about the room now, balancing painfully but stoically on her high heels, taking empty cups and plates from each of her guests with a gentle murmur for every one of them. Wexford took in the looks that passed to her from each of her visitors, her mother’s merely solicitous, Pertwee’s indicative of deep affection, Bardsley’s shifty, while the thwarted bride leaned forward, stuck out her chin and nodded her utter committed partisanship.

  ‘Did your husband have a bank account, Mrs Hatton?’ Burden asked as she passed his chair.

  The sun was full on her face, showing every stroke and grain of make-up, but at the same time driving expression from it. She nodded, ‘At the Midland,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to see his paying-in book.’

  ‘What for?’

  The truculent harsh voice was Pertwee’s. Wexford ignored him and followed the widow to the sideboard from a drawer of which she took a long cream-coloured book. He handed it to Burden and said, apparently inconsequentially:

  ‘When did your husband get his false teeth, Mrs Hatton?’ Pertwee’s muttered ‘Bloody nosey-parker’ made her flinch a little and throw a desperate glance over her shoulder. ‘He’d always had them. Had them since he was twenty’ she said.

  ‘This present set?’

  ‘Oh, no. They were new. He went to Mr Vigo for them about a month back.’

  Nodding, Wexford eyed the paying-in book over Burden’s shoulder and what he saw astonished him far more than any of Hatton’s prodigality. Some three-quarters of all the slips in the book had been torn out and with the exception of three, all the stubs had been torn too.

  On the most recent remaining stub the date was April and on that occasion Hatton had paid into his bank account the modest sum of five and four-pence.

  ‘Fourth dividend on the pools that was,’ Mrs Hatton said with a miserable gulp.

  The other two stubs were filled in each with amounts of two pounds.

  ‘Mrs Hatton,’ he said, beckoning her into a corner. ‘The purpose of these stubs in a paying-in book is for the holder to have a record of the amount of money he had deposited in his bank. Can you suggest to me why Mr Hatton tore them out? They must have been filled in at the bank either by Mr Hatton himself or else by the cashier who was attending to him.’

  ‘It’s a mystery to me. Charlie never talked about money to me. He always said…’ She gulped again and a tear trickled through the make-up. ‘He always said, “Don’t worry your head about that. When we got married I promised I’d give you everything you want and so I will. You name it, you can have it”.’ She bent her head and began to sob. ‘He was one in a million was Charlie. He’d have got me the moon out of the sky if I’d wanted it.’ The girl Marilyn got up and put her arms around her friend. ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie…!’

  The drawer was open, Hatton’s cheque book exposed. Wexford leafed through it and saw that Hatton had paid twenty-five pounds for the lamp on May 22nd. Thirty pounds had been paid to Lucrece Ltd., High Street, Kingsmarkham (his wife’s wedding outfit?), and another thirty in the same week, the last week of May, to Excelsior Electrics, Stowerton (Pertwee’s record player?).

  Then came three blank stubs, lastly one filled for fifty pounds cash. There was no stub for Vigo, the dentist. Hatton must have paid for his teeth in cash.

  He put the books back in the drawer and stood waiting for Mrs Hatton to recover. Her mother and brother had departed to the kitchen from where Wexford could hear their muted whisperings and the funereally careful clink of cups.

  The widow’s eye make-up had transferred itself to Marilyn Thompson’s handkerchief. ‘I keep breaking down,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to stop myself.’

  ‘Yeah, but just reckon what you’ve been through, love.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you two.’

  Pertwee said nothing but his baleful pugnacious look was absurd in its intensity and Wexford was almost embarrassed. He said lightly, ‘Does the name McCloy mean anything to you, Mr Pertwee?’

  That it meant nothing, less than nothing, to Mrs Hatton he was sure at once. Of Pertwee and the girl he was less certain. The latter’s lower lip stuck out and her eyes flickered. For an instant she was a primitive creature looking for a hole to hide in. Pertwee had reddened, possibly only with anger at Wexford’s persistence.

  ‘Sounds Irish,’ was all he said.

  ‘Doesn’t it also sound familiar?’

  ‘Not to me, I don’t know any McCloy. Never heard of him.’

  ‘Strange then that you should have discussed this Mr McCloy with your friends in the Dragon on Friday. Is he a local man?’

  ‘I told you I’d never heard of him.’ Pertwee bit his lip and looked down at his knees. Wexford watched him feel for the girl’s hand, but she was occupied with Mrs Hatton, dabbing at her face and smoothing her hair. Forsaken, deserted, the hand came up to Pertwee’s brow and pushed into the greasy black waves. ‘Can’t you leave us alone now?’ he pleaded and Wexford felt impotently that once again the man was enclosing himself within the unimpregnable defence of grief.

  ‘I never knew what went on on the lorries,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t Charlie’s only friend. He had hundreds of friends. Ask Jim Bardsley, ask Cullam.’ Pertwee’s eyes were glazed and dull. ‘Let someone else do dirt on his memory.’

  Jim Bardsley had an apron tired round his waist. He moved gingerly about the kitchen, putting away crockery, as if he were afraid his touch might damage or contaminate the pristine glory of its equipment. The Hatton flat and the Cullam house had one thing in common, an automatic washing machine. Mrs Hatton had plenty besides mixers, electric tin openers, a steam iron as well as the huge scarlet refrigerator and the cooker with eye-level grill.

  ‘You transport this kind of stuff, don’t you, Mr Bardsley?’ Burden asked. ‘I suppose Mr Hatton got it wholesale.’

  ‘I daresay,’ Bardsley said cagily.

  'Irons, electric fires and so on, was that the load you lost when Mr Hatton’s lorries were hi-jacked?’ Bardsley nodded unhappily. ‘Doubtless you were insured?’

  ‘Not the second time, not in March when they knocked it off at Stamford. I had to stand the
loss myself.’ Bardsley untied his apron and hung up the tea cloth that appropriately enough in this flat, was a large linen facsimile of a pound note. ‘Set me back, I can tell you. I reckon poor old Charlie was glad I hadn’t taken him into partnership. Mind you, they found the lorry both times. It wasn’t damaged, just the stuff gone, that’s all. That second time Charlie’d pulled into a lay-by and gone to sleep at the wheel. The villains didn’t harm him, thank God. Just tied him up and put a gag in his mouth.’

  ‘But he was injured on the previous occasion?’

  ‘Had a bit of concussion,’ Bardsley said. ‘There wasn’t any mark to show, bar a bit of a bruise.’

  ‘Ever heard of the name McCloy,’ Mr Bardsley?’

  ‘It doesn’t ring a bell,’ said Bardsley and Burden believed him. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘I’ve seen my own stuff flogged off in the market here. Known it was mine but couldn’t prove it. You know what them stallholders are, up to all the tricks.’ He scratched his head. ‘I was a bit too nosy that time and I haven’t seen the stall here since.’

  ‘If you do, Mr Bardsley, come straight to us. Don’t argue about it, come straight to us.’

  ‘O.K.’ said Bardsley, but without hope. Burden left him contemplating the printed tea cloth as if, were it possible to transmute it to paper, reduce its size and multiply it manifold, he would be a happy man.

  ‘First of all,’ said Wexford, ‘I’d like to know exactly how much there is in the account.’

  The bank manager became pedantic and precise, ‘Exactly six hundred and nine pounds, four and seven-pence.’

  ‘I take it that’s a current account? He didn’t have anything on deposit, did he?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. When Mr Hatton began paying large sums in I did attempt to persuade him to open one, the rate of interest being so desirable, you understand. Five per cent, as you doubtless know. But Mr Hatton wouldn’t. “I’m one for the ready, Mr Five Per Cent”, he said to me in his amusing way.’ The manager sighed. ‘A very likable, amusing man, poor Mr Hatton. One of the best.’

  That’s a matter of opinion, Wexford thought. ‘What were these large sums?’

  ‘Really, it seems most unorthodox, but if you insist.’ A large ledger was opened and horn-rimmed glasses set on the manager’s nose. ‘Mr Hatton opened this account in November of last year,’ he began, ‘with the sum of one hundred pounds.’ Payment for the first lorry hi-jacking, Wexford thought, a nice little bit of compensation for his concussion. ‘Nothing was added to it until January when two separate payments of fifty pounds were made.’ Two more hi-jackings, set up by Hatton, who had kept the drivers occupied at pontoon in a car-men’s café? Wexford felt rather pleased. All the pieces in his puzzle were falling neatly into place. ‘Then in March, March 15th, a further hundred was paid in, but no more after that until May 22nd.’

  The manager paused and Wexford made a mental note to find out whether any lorries had been hi-jacked on Hatton’s A.1 route during the penultimate week of May. Evidently Hatton got a hundred when he was personally involved, fifty when it was someone else to be knocked on the head and left in a ditch. Such a likable, amusing man!

  ‘How much?’ he said coldly.

  The manager readjusted his glasses.

  ‘Er… let me see… Good heavens. No, it isn’t an error. Really, I wasn’t aware… As a matter of fact, Mr Hatton paid five hundred pounds into his current account on May 22nd.’

  And what in God’s name, Wexford thought flabbergasted, did Hatton have in his power to do that was worth five hundred pounds? What could a lorry be carrying that its load was so valuable to a thief as to make Hatton’s a feasible reward? There would have to be several men involved in the racket, McCloy himself, two or three men to commandeer the lorry and incapacitate the driver as well as Hatton. McCloy would want the lion’s share of whatever the load realized and if Hatton, a mere decoy, got five hundred, the three henchmen would be worth at least five hundred apiece. Four times five and what for McCloy? A thousand, two thousand? That meant a cargo to the value of four or five thousand pounds. At least. For McCloy wouldn’t get any thing like the cargo’s true value in his underworld market.

  Well, it should be easy enough to find out. A hi-jacking of that magnitude wouldn’t be likely to be quickly forgotten by the police in whose district it had occurred. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t recall it himself. It must have made front-page news. The last week but one in May, he repeated to himself. Presumably they’d never done anyone for the job. They certainly hadn’t done Hatton.

  ‘And after that?’ he said calmly.

  ‘Regular payments of fifty pounds a week over the past six weeks.’

  Wexford checked an explosion of astonishment. ‘But no more large sums?’

  ‘No more large sums,’ said the bank manager.

  It was obvious what had happened. Hatton had done his jobs for McCloy and the last one had been something spectacular. So spectacular – perhaps involving great injury or death. Why the hell couldn’t he remember it? That Hatton, finding some weak spot in McCloy’s armour, had commenced to blackmail him. A lump sum down on May 22nd and then fifty pounds a week.

  It must have been nice while it lasted, Wexford reflected amorally. What was more exhilarating to a poor man than a sudden influx of unearned cash, springing from a seemingly limitless fertile source? How could such a one as Hatton restrain himself from making a splash? It came into Wexford’s mind that money metaphors often have to do with water, gushing, springing, and that business men talk of liquidity and cash flow.

  He came to the Kingsbrook bridge and paused for a moment on the parapet, listening to the soft suck and chatter of the stream. Everlastingly the Kingsbrook rattled over its stones, hindered here and there by tree roots or a growth of weed, but ultimately unimpeded, always moving, glittering in the sun as if gold pieces gleamed beneath its ripples.

  By the water’s edge Hatton had met his death. Because a source less abundant and less generous than this river had dried up?

  Chapter 8

  ‘There are only three McCloys in this district,’ Burden said on the following morning. ‘I’ve seen them all and they struck me as perfectly ordinary honest citizens. A couple in Pomfret are brothers. One’s a teacher at the comprehensive school and the other’s lab assistant. James McCloy, who lives here in town, runs a very small unsuccessful sort of decorating business.’

  ‘Small fry?’ said Wexford, still thinking of his fish and water metaphors.

  ‘Very small. No sign of any more money than is needed to keep the wolf from the door. Still, I’ve been through the trade directory and come up with something a bit more hopeful. There’s a firm in London, in Deptford, calling them selves McCloy & Son Ltd., and what d’you think their line of business is?’

  ‘Etonne-moi,’ said Wexford after the manner of Diaghilev to Cocteau. Burden looked at him suspiciously, so he said with amused impatience, ‘I don’t know, Mike, and I’m not in the mood for this suspense stuff.’

  ‘They spray the laminated surfaces on to small electrical equipment.’

  ‘Do they, indeed?’

  ‘I’ve put through a call to London and I’m waiting for them to ring me up. If there’s anything at all promising I’m off to Deptford.’

  ‘While you’re waiting,’ said Wexford, ‘you might get on to Stamford police, Stamford in Lincolnshire. I’d like to know just what did happen when Hatton’s lorry was hi-jacked on the 15th of March and if they’ve got any McCloys in their district.’

  ‘Stamford, sir? Isn’t there a bridge there where poor old Harold won a victory before coming a cropper at Hastings?’

  ‘Wrong one,’ said Wexford. ‘This is a charming little ancient town of grey stone which the A.1 now fortunately by-passes. Shakespeare mentions it. “How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?” You might also ask them if they had a big hi-jacking at the end of May. It might not have been near them, of course, but it was so big they’ll likely have heard of it.’
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  The pretty toy of a lift had borne his weight serenely on four occasions by this time and he no longer felt much trepidation on entering it. As it sank obediently to the ground floor, he thought again about McCloy’s mysterious feat of modern highwaymanship. He had checked the file of that period and found nothing. Now he too was waiting for a phone call, promised for the afternoon. Scotland Yard would enlighten him when they had consulted their records. But how could it have escaped his knowledge and the news papers?

  Sergeants Camb and Martin were gossiping in the foyer when he emerged from the lift. He gave a low cough.

  ‘Just discussing this Fanshawe inquest, sir,’ said Camb respectfully.

  ‘I thought it had been adjourned.’

  ‘The coroner wants to resume now, but I’ve told him we’ve nothing to go on. I’m all for waiting till Mrs Fanshawe perks up a bit.’

  ‘In a bad way, is she?’ said Martin. Like an old woman in a supermarket queue, Wexford thought derisively.

  ‘That accident’s turned her brain, I reckon. She’s no more fit to appear in court than she was six weeks ago. God knows, I can sympathize. Her husband’s dead and her only child. It’s not funny, I can tell you, trying to tell a sick woman her daughter’s dead when she keeps insisting she’s alive and in Germany.’

  ‘Maybe she is alive,’ said Wexford, more from a mischievous desire to throw a spanner in the works than from conviction. He was sick and tired of the name Fanshawe. He didn’t burden the uniformed branch with his problems and didn’t see why he should have to listen to Camb’s maunderings. ‘Maybe it was someone else in the car.’