Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

‘His brokerage business qualifies him for the council. He’s been an alderman six years and was sheriff two years ago. Now, as I expect you know, he is to be the next mayor.’

‘Quite a busy career, in fact!’

‘Whatever you think of him, he’s public-spirited.’

‘And after twenty years he wouldn’t want the good work blemished… especially by a trio of Stepney spivs.’

‘But can you be certain, Gently!’ the super moaned. ‘It’s such a fantastic idea — and if you happened to be wrong…!’

‘I’ll check off the points for you.’

Gently extended his clumsy fingers.

‘All in all, I think you’ll find they add up to a case.

‘First, Pershore attended the meeting at Newmarket. Second, he was the source of the money. Third, he inspected the mill on the Thursday morning and knew about the flour-hopper. Fourth, he would have a set of keys to the mill. Fifth, he has no checkable alibi for the Thursday night. Sixth, his story about the money being stolen is unsupported by fact. Seventh, he manufactured evidence in an attempt to support it.

‘Tomorrow, I hope, the bank will be able to tell us that he withdrew the first five thousand pounds a few days after the Newmarket meeting. As far as we’re concerned, that will just about clinch it.’

‘But it’s all circumstantial — a defence would make hay of it.’

Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘There’s Roscoe to come! Also we’ve got an eyewitness tucked away in the cellar. I think Blacker will talk if you put it to him nicely.’

The super got to his feet and began pacing the room again. His distress was genuine and Gently felt sorry for him. Griffin, toying with his coffee-spoon, seemed caught between two contrary currents. He wanted to be loyal to the super, but nevertheless, as a policeman…

‘Get Blacker up here!’

The super had made his decision.

‘One way or another we’ve got to settle this matter.’

He glanced defiantly at Gently, but Gently was busy going through his pockets. Surely, in some neglected corner, there ought to be a peppermint cream?

Later on, the super had resigned himself to the calamity which had fallen jointly on himself and Lynton. After Blacker went he sat a long time brooding darkly over his two-tone desk.

Not that Blacker, though he had talked, had proved entirely satisfactory. His evidence was of the type which a defence counsel such as Pershore could brief would tear into fine shreds.

‘There was a car standing in Cosford Road which looked like a Bentley… no, it wasn’t stood under a light, nor I couldn’t see the colour…

‘Of course I saw him go down the yard… looked familiar, I thought

… the little bloke, too… I didn’t hear any struggle.

‘Then I tumbled to it, when I heard whose the money was. That was Pershore all right, and I don’t mind swearing to it.

‘If I put it to them straight, are you going to get me off the other…?’

Blacker had done some brooding of his own, sitting three hours in a cell with the smell of new cement in his nostrils.

But it was testimony that convinced the super, however vulnerable it might be to forensic corrosives. Gently’s reconstruction was being corroborated every time the foreman opened his mouth. And behind it all loomed Roscoe, the man no counsel could shrug aside.

‘Are you suggesting we make the arrest?’

He was trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone. The fish-and-chip saloon had departed for pastures new, and a clean, bright spring moon was climbing over the Georgian roofs and chimneys. Once or twice, from high overhead, they had distinctly heard the piping calls of migrant birds coming in from the sea.

‘No… not yet. The case isn’t foolproof.’

‘You want to dig up his past?’

‘Most of all I want Roscoe.’

‘Aren’t we doing all we can about him?’

‘We’ll have to take a risk.’

The super flashed a look at Gently, not quite understanding him. The man from the Central Office wore a stubborn expression which Dutt could have interpreted. His pipe, unlighted, stuck out of his mouth at an angle.

‘Tomorrow I’d like Blacker remanded on that charge, but I don’t want the money referred to. Have a word with the magistrate — it shouldn’t be difficult. Substitute “stolen property” or something like that.

‘And naturally, you’ll fob off the coroner about Ames.’

‘The press will be awkward.’

‘Try and clamp down on them! They’ll usually cooperate if it’s in a good cause. Then I’d like Inspector Griffin to keep investigating that robbery — any sort of play-acting to keep Pershore happy.

‘If he can get his prints we’ll send them up to Records, and perhaps you’ve got a man who can do some quiet digging. That Upcher deal will bear looking into — it should hardly fit Pershore’s story as neatly as he pretends it does.’

‘And meanwhile, you think that Roscoe…?’

‘He’ll get in touch with Pershore somehow.’

‘We could check his mail and tap the phone.’

Gently shook his head.

‘Look at it from Roscoe’s angle — and he was the brains of the bunch. If he talks he’s admitting blackmail. If he doesn’t we have to prove it. And besides admitting blackmail, he’ll be kissing goodbye to a gold mine.

‘Unless we can catch the pair of them red-handed, we shan’t have the benefit of Roscoe’s evidence.’

‘But Pershore will try to kill Roscoe!’

‘That’s our trump card — and we’ve got to play it.’

The super looked grave.

‘It’s a terrible risk, Gently…’

‘Of course, I shall be prepared to take full responsibility.’

He got to his feet, the cold pipe still lolling from the corner of his mouth. How could he tell them that he could see the whole pattern of it, as surely as though even now it was written up in a report?

‘You don’t have to worry… just keep Pershore from being suspicious. You’ll find it’ll work out. It isn’t the first time…’

‘If he succeeds in killing Roscoe-’

‘We could probably establish method! Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be turning in.’

The super did mind, but he could think of nothing to advance against it. He watched Gently go in helpless silence. When the door closed behind the bulky back his eyes met those of Griffin’s. Suddenly, as though both men were thinking the same thought, each of them shrugged his shoulders.

The car Gently had was the super’s Humber, and it was warranted to do better than a hundred m.p.h. Since Prideaux Manor lay at the end of a cul-de-sac, it was a simple matter to cover it by concealing the Humber in a side-turn at a safe distance.

Twice, during the morning, he and Dutt had seen Griffin go by in a police Wolseley. Agreeable to instructions, the Lynton inspector was doing his best to make a show of proceeding with his investigation. As he returned from his second journey he slowed and pulled into the side-turning.

‘It could be this afternoon — he says he’s got some business to see to.’

‘Business that would take him out?’

‘He didn’t say, and I thought I’d better not ask him. This morning at a quarter past eleven he had a telephone conversation, but he ordered me out of the study, so I don’t know who it was with.’

‘You’re doing a good job.’

Griffin coloured and let in his clutch.

It was an almost perfect day following the miserable one which preceded it. Gently had been prevailed on to remove his jacket, and sat smoking in his shirtsleeves with the door of the Humber ajar. The sky, at first washed clear, was now chequered with small, fleecy clouds. In the plantation which flanked the lane a blackbird was singing; larks rose continuously from the field of young wheat beyond the hedge opposite.