Murder Somewhere in This City Read online

  Maurice Procter

  Murder Somewhere in This City

  PART I Martineau

  1

  The black police Jaguar surged powerfully up a steep and narrow moorland road, nosed carefully round a walled corner, and emerged on top of the world. Or so it seemed. The way ahead ran comparatively straight along the edge of a high moor, and on one side the ground sloped away, down, down, down to the lower lands.

  Detective Inspector Martineau was sitting beside the driver of the car. “Where are we now?” he asked, in a tone which suggested that he would be surprised if the other man could tell him.

  Detective Constable Devery was the driver. “I don’t know, sir,” he replied, with astonishment in his voice, as if it were indeed strange that Martineau of all people did not know exactly where he was.

  Martineau gave the young man an amused sidelong glance, then he turned to look at the view. Though the day was dry and clear, there was not much to see: only rough fields stretching away downhill until they faded into the haze from several hundred square miles of smoking chimneys. Down there, ten miles away, was a city of a million people, but the city was the hub of a wheeling spread of suburbs, satellites and close neighbors which made it, in reality, one of the very big cities of the world.

  “I don’t know about London,” he said. “They should have called Granchester the Big Smoke.”

  “The Metropolis of the North,” said Devery. “What Granchester says today, London forgot yesterday.”

  Martineau considered the gibe. Devery was a Liverpool man, and such remarks were to be expected from him. But they were not to go unanswered.

  “I’d sooner be a church gargoyle in Granchester than the Lord Mayor of Liverpool,” he said.

  “Every tomcat likes his own back alley,” Devery retorted, and then he was worried by a sudden fear that he had said too much.

  But Martineau’s face wore the taut grin which was one of its characteristics. “You had to come there to make a living, anyway,” he said. “Life too hard in Liverpool, was it?” Without waiting for a reply, he reached forward and turned on the two-way radio. “Headquarters range is about ten miles, I believe,” he said. “We might be able to hear something up here.”

  “I hope we hear that somebody has collared Starling.”

  “Same here,” Martineau agreed. “It’s been three days now, and we haven’t had the faintest whiff of him. I don’t like it at all.”

  It was business connected with Don Starling which had taken them into the hills. If Starling had been avoiding roads and keeping in the heather, the moorland village was a likely place for him to be seen. It was on a direct line of route between the prison which had failed to hold him and his home town of Granchester.

  Because they knew Starling so well, Martineau and Devery had been sent from the city to help the County in the hunt. They had traveled eagerly to an out station, only to be disappointed. A stranger in a remote hamlet had been arrested, but he had not been Starling, only a vagrant with claustrophobia. There had been nothing for the City men to do but get back into their car and go home. On the return journey along secondary roads, Devery had lost his way.

  When the radio had warmed up, Martineau turned it on to full power. Immediately he caught the last words of a message: “… dark saloon car of American type, rather old and shabby. There are several men in the car with the girl.”

  “Something happening in town,” he said, leaving the set at “receive.”

  “Hit and run, maybe,” Devery guessed. Then he stopped the car. They were at the top of a steep declivity, and the way ahead was revealed. The narrow road curved and twisted away downhill, but not in the direction they wanted to go. It headed back into hill country. It was joined by a stony, rain-gullied track which did indeed descend toward Granchester, but it was much too rough for the precious Jaguar.

  “I think I know where we are,” said Martineau. “The good road takes us out of our way, but it brings us to the main Granchester-Halifax road.”

  Devery set the car in motion and started the long descent, taking the numerous bends only as fast as perfect control would allow. Like most young men, he looked his best when he was absorbed in the efficient handling of a vehicle. He held his broad, big-boned frame erect, and his long, rather handsome face was set calmly and firmly.

  The voice of Headquarters spoke again: “GCPR to all cars. Message two-sixteen. Further to robbery-violence and abduction in Higgitt’s Passage. American car believed to have gone eastward from scene of crime.”

  Martineau looked at the empty winding lane, the deserted moorland, and the high gray clouds, but in his mind’s eye he saw Higgitt’s Passage in the throbbing heart of the city. A narrow thoroughfare among crowded streets, surrounded by buildings thronged with people. Robbery with violence at the busiest time of a fine Saturday morning. A sudden shout, a scream maybe, a rush of feet, a slamming of doors followed by the snarl and squeal of harshly used brakes and tires: momentary overtones in the city’s roar. A slick, quick crime, obviously. A city crime committed by city denizens. Denizens of the underworld. Rats. Like rats they crept out of their holes to attack and steal, and scurry away.

  Out there in the wide spaces of untainted air the city’s fume-laden atmosphere, the city’s crime, and the city’s rats seemed to be distant in time and space. Something had happened in another world; another world ten miles away.

  “So it’s a job,” said Martineau.

  “And what a job. Kidnaping, no less. It’s a long time since we had anything of that sort.”

  “So long I can’t remember. It must be the girl who’s been abducted. I wonder who she is.”

  “And I’m wondering what time it happened. The car is heading in this direction… It might take the Halifax road…”

  “Yes. Go a bit faster if you can.”

  Devery began to show that with a Jaguar he could go quite a lot faster. Presently, a mile away, the main road came into view. It climbed straight up to the higher moors. There was traffic on the road: tiny crawling beetles on a gray ribbon.

  Martineau kept his glance on the distant moving vehicles. Was there a prewar American car among them? A Chrysler or a Dodge or a Studebaker? Carrying some city rats away from their holes for a while? The man who had first used the term “underworld” in connection with criminals had known what he was talking about. Rat runs. Sewers. Well, there were cats to deal with the rats. Patient and painstaking cats. In that respect Martineau did not mind being referred to as a tomcat who liked his own back alley.

  There were a few houses and a pub at the road junction. When they reached it Devery drew in at the near side, close to a low stone wall. Looking over the wall they could see traffic approaching at speed from the Granchester direction, taking a run at the long hill and rightly ignoring the junction with the minor road.

  Martineau glanced at the pub with a certain longing. At times, in suitable company, he liked to drink in pubs. After an uninteresting drive and an anticlimax, this could have been one of those times. He thought of a cool bar and a pint of foaming ale. He began to whistle softly as he watched the road.

  “If the job happened half an hour ago, the Yankee car could be away, past us,” he said. “Anyway, we’ll give it fifteen minutes.”

  “We’re out of our jurisdiction here,” Devery reminded him.

  The inspector nodded, and continued to watch the road. Devery considered him, wondering what action he would take under certain circumstances. He studied the blunt-featured, not unattractive face. The eyes were noticeably gray, and the blond hair was gray at the temples. An unobtrusive gray suit completed that color scheme, and the suit covered the body of a heavyweight athlete. Devery comfor
tably reflected that if there were any trouble with “several men” in an American car, the hardest hitter in the Granchester police would be on his side.

  Martineau drew his attention to the leisurely approach of a County policeman in uniform. They watched the man saunter toward a blue-painted police pillar.

  “Going to make his contact,” Devery guessed.

  When the P.C. was a few yards from the pillar, the red light on top of it began to flash in and out. The man did not quicken his pace. He strolled to the pillar, turned off the light, opened the door and took out the telephone.

  “Here’s where he gets further news about robbery-violence in Granchester,” said Martineau.

  But the constable’s attitude changed too abruptly. His back was turned to the men in the Jaguar, but his interested, almost tense attitude was unmistakable. What he was hearing was more immediately and personally important than any crime in Granchester. As he listened he looked around at a red-and-white bus which was approaching at speed. It was a North Western Lines single-decker, bound for Bradford via Halifax.

  As the bus drew near the policeman’s attitude became strained. He scarcely had time to hear all the message. He gabbled something into the phone, slammed it into its box, and ran out signaling to the driver of the bus. The bus rushed past him and stopped twenty yards beyond him. He sprinted after it and boarded it. The bus went on its way up the hill.

  “What do you make of that?” Martineau asked.

  “Accident up the road,” Devery surmised. “Fatal accident, happen.”

  “When you were in uniform, did you run so hard to a fatal accident?”

  “Well no, I don’t suppose I did.”

  “There’s lots of work, lots of responsibility, and little glory attached to a fatal accident,” said Martineau. “I’m thinking he’d have listened longer and let the bus go, to give the motor patrol a chance to beat him to it. He’d reckon it was their job, anyway.”

  “Yes sir. But it’s certainly none of ours.”

  Martineau thought about that. “I think we’ll go after that bus, Devery,” he said.

  They followed the bus up to the dark rolling moors. In a few minutes they were close behind it. The County policeman was still standing on the step of the bus, looking ahead.

  “Overtake,” said Martineau. “We might be wasting time.”

  In the long black car they fairly zoomed past the bus, but it was still in sight behind them when they saw a car standing beside a lonely farmhouse. Near the car there was the small figure of a man in the road, looking their way. This, then, was the source of the Comity policeman’s message.

  The man looked at them expectantly as they approached. He was a small, neatly dressed man, and they guessed that he was a commercial traveler. Devery drew up the car beside him.

  “Police?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” said Martineau.

  “It’s about three hundred yards further up, in the dip there,” the man began.

  “Get in the car,” said Martineau, reaching to open the rear door.

  The man got in, and they went on in silence. He seemed to think that they knew all about the matter in hand.

  Devery said quietly, from the side of his mouth: “The County people aren’t going to like this, you know.”

  Martineau looked at him, and he said no more.

  They were driving up to the skyline. There was a crest, then the gradient eased. There was a short level stretch of road before the climb began again. This was the “dip” which the traveler had mentioned. From it, all that could be seen was four hundred yards of gray road, a slope of dark moorland, and the limitless gray sky.

  “Just here,” the traveler said.

  When the car stopped he was out before them, hurrying into the waste of dark grass and heather.

  “Hold it!” Martineau called. “Don’t go jumping about there.” He knew what it was. He felt that he had known for some time, ever since he had seen the P.C. board the bus.

  The traveler waited, and allowed the detectives to lead the way. They stepped carefully over the rough ground, looking about them as they walked. Ten yards from the road there was a small hillock. Behind the hillock, on bare black peat hag, lay the body of a girl.

  The girl had been young, smart, and pretty. She lay where she had been dropped, and she was graceful even without life in her. Her head was thrown back, and there were bruises on her tender throat. Her right wrist was linked to a ripped leather bag by a bright steel chain. Besides the marks on her neck, part of a great dark bruise was visible on her chest above the neckline of her dress. Her eyes were wide open, and Martineau reflected sadly that the last thing they had seen had been the face of her murderer. Her eyes had photographed him, and his image had been filed away in a remote cell of her brain. Now the brain could never recall that picture. It was unobtainable.

  There was no sign that the girl had been “interfered with.” Her skirts were around her legs, her stockings intact. The inspector thought bitterly: “A nice, clean, bloody inhuman murder.”

  “It’s the girl from Gus Hawkins’ office, and she’s dead,” he said over his shoulder to Devery. “See if you can reach Headquarters from here. If you can’t, go down to the farmhouse and phone.”

  As Devery got into the police car the North Western bus drew up, with passengers staring through the windows like goldfish in a tank. The County policeman dropped from the step and came bounding toward the hillock.

  “Steady,” said Martineau. “Watch where you’re stepping.”

  The authority in his voice halted the constable, because he was used to authority. But: “Who’re you?” he demanded.

  “Inspector Martineau. C.I.D., Granchester City. Has anybody boarded that bus since you did?”

  “No,” said the P.C.

  “Then send it on its way. Otherwise the passengers will be getting out and messing up the whole place.”

  The uniformed man did not like the order, but he could see the sense of it. He turned and waved to the bus driver. The driver nodded, put the bus in gear, and drove off.

  “Now, what’s all this?” the P.C. demanded.

  “Let’s get back to the road.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” said the man, still obeying. “This is some sort of a fast move. I saw your car pass the bus. You’re off your manor.”

  “I’m aware of it,” said Martineau. “But I think it’s a City job. Did you get a message about a robbery-violence in Granchester, and a girl being snatched?”

  “Sure I did. And I guess this is the girl.” The man’s voice was angry. Probably this was the first time he had ever been closely associated with a murder, and but for the City men he would have been the first policeman on the spot. No doubt he would feel that he had been robbed of an opportunity to attract favorable notice.

  Martineau seemed about to reply, then he lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Anyone who knew him could have told the frowning constable that he and his annoyance were not only ignored, they were completely forgotten. Martineau was thinking of the job: the murdered girl, and the murderers. How he was thinking of them! It was a City job, all right. Like gray vermin the men had emerged from the smoke. Soon, no doubt, they would be returning to it.

  The girl was employed by Gus Hawkins, and the ripped cash bag with the steel chain told her story. Gus Hawkins was a bookmaker, and everybody knew that the bookies had had a good day yesterday. Not one favorite had won. Probably Gus had been shouting the odds at Doncaster, and he had come home loaded. This morning he had sent the girl to the bank with a bagful of money. She had been waylaid. The chain had been too strong, and the thieves had taken both girl and bag. Maybe she had recognized one of them. Anyway, one or more of them had been the death of her. Strangled, by the look of her. Strangled for a few hundred pounds of punters’ money.

  For a long time Martineau had been expecting something of the sort to happen. In England, the safe country, where policemen went unarmed and the criminal world had a cl
imate less violent than most other lands, employers and businessmen not only disregarded the possibility of robbery in the street, they asked for it. Near any bank, in any town, on any weekday morning, possible victims could be seen from the elderly commissionaire and small shortsighted clerk transporting the payroll of a big factory, to the office boy or shopgirl going casually to and fro with a handful of fivers. They asked for it. And when they sent out a young girl with money chained to her wrist, they asked for murder.

  Gus Hawkins had done that, and Gus Hawkins was a nice fellow. An extremely nice fellow. Gus Hawkins, who went to the races with a retired heavyweight wrestler as big as Carnera to protect his money, would be very sorry about the morning’s happenings. Perhaps, in future, he would send his man to the bank with the takings. A wrestler wouldn’t strangle quite so easily as this girl here.

  Martineau’s bitter thoughts were interrupted by the return of Devery, who was followed up by a County police patrol car, with two uniformed officers. After a brief conference with their disgruntled colleague they glanced curiously at the City men, then sped away in the direction presumably taken by the fugitive American car.

  The inspector turned to the commercial traveler. The man’s name was Hartley, and he lived at Harrogate, and, after acting boldly in the public interest, he was beginning to be nervous and careful. He was involved in a murder. It was possible that the police would not believe what he told them. Persons who discovered bodies were often suspected of being the killers.

  Martineau observed his uneasiness. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We already know what’s behind this. Tell me what you saw.”

  “I was just coming over the brow up there, on my way to Granchester,” said Hartley with restored confidence. “As this bit of road came into sight I saw a car stopped here, facing toward me. A man was just walking away from the car, carrying something in both arms. It looked like a body. He dropped it there, where it is now, and ran back to the car. I put on speed, to try to get past the car before it got going again. I didn’t quite succeed. It started to move, and the driver waved me down. It crossed my mind that the last thing he’d want was a smashed-up car, if he was on some crooked game. So I sounded my horn for him to keep out of my way, and kept going.”