Maurice Procter - Murder Somewhere in This City

“Does that mean they can hang me?”

“Better ask your lawyer that,” said the inspector, and left him.

After instructing Devery to relieve the man who was sitting with Roach, Martineau found himself with a little time to spare. He looked at the C.I.D. clock. Eight-five. He went out, and strolled into Lacy Street. There was an awning of gray cloud over the city, and it shut out the little daylight that was left. The many brilliantly lighted shop windows made a welcome glow along the pavements. It was a slack time of the evening, and there were not many people about.

Martineau reflected: Monday. Wash day. Women are doing the ironing. Husbands are figuring how much they’ve spent over the week end, and deciding that they’d better stay in tonight.

He entered the Lacy Arms and stood at the end of the bar. The place was quiet. Lucky Lusk was there, behind the bar, but a male customer was engaging her in conversation and she did not immediately see Martineau. Another barmaid served him with a half pint of beer. Then Lucky saw him, and she ended her gossip with a brief remark and a smile, and came to him.

“Hello, darling,” she said, and her smile was intimate.

He said “Hello” and asked her to have a drink. She hesitated and said: “Could I have a gin and tonic?”

“Have what you like,” he said, putting money on the bar.

She sipped her drink and talked with him, occasionally leaving him to serve a customer. He had started his second half pint before she said: “When are you coming to see me again?”

He looked at her hair, almost the color of mahogany, and thought about her. The thoughts were exciting. “I don’t know,” he said. “I won’t know, till this job’s cleared.”

“Come tonight,” she said with a certain urgency. “Any time you like after eleven o’clock.”

He shook his head. “When I leave here I’m going to be awful busy,” he said. “I might be three in the morning before I get away.”

“Then come tomorrow afternoon, half past three.”

“Hold on, Lucky,” was his smiling protest. “What are we starting?”

She raised well-groomed eyebrows. “Don’t you know what we re starting?”

“And if we find we can’t go on with it?”

She shrugged. “Nobody knows what’s going to go on, and what isn’t,” she said. “Are you thinking of your position?”

“No. I’m thinking of yours.”

Her smile was gay. “I’ll take a chance,” she said. “The other woman’s chance. Is it a date?”

A woman who wanted him. A lovely, eager woman. At home there was a reluctant one.

“But I can’t make dates,” he said. “I haven’t the faintest idea what I shall be doing at half past three tomorrow.” Then as her eyes clouded: “I’ll tell you what, Lucky. If I can make it, I’ll phone you, here.”

Her smile returned. “No, don’t do that,” she said, promptly and shrewdly. “Phone me if you can’t come.”

At Headquarters, Martineau found that Lolly Jakes had been surrendered by the County Police. Because the assault which ended in the death of Cicely Wainwright had started in Higgitt’s Passage, it had been decided by higher authority that the murder was a City job.

Jakes was being put to the question by Superintendent Clay, and, apparently, he was beginning to talk. Martineau did not join in that inquisition, but told Devery to bring Clogger Roach to his office.

The waiting treatment had taken Roach through and beyond the period of fearful imagining, and now he was bored and bad-tempered, and hungry for a cigarette. When he saw Martineau he bawled: “What’s the bloody game? Keeping a feller sitting around like this! What’s the charge? If there is one.”

“The charge is murder,” Martineau said. “You’ve been kept waiting because we’ve been busy with your friends.”

“What friends? I’ve got no friends.”

“Maybe friends isn’t the right word. We’ve got two statements already. You want to watch your step.”

“How, watch my step?” Roach demanded. Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Yers,” he said thoughtfully, looking at the floor. “Yers.”

Then he looked up. “Who shopped me?”

“The same man who shopped Peter Purchas. And Purchas has told us a thing or two as well. How he signaled to you from Gus Hawkins’ office. How you paid him off with two hundred pounds.”

Roach was not interested in Purchas. He was thinking about the man who had betrayed him. “Jakes, for a quid,” he said. “The dirty bastard. I coulda got away, and he stopped me. What did he say about me?”

“I can’t tell you what anybody said about you, but-watch your step.”

“If he says I did it he’s a bloody liar!” cried Roach passionately. “I never laid a finger on that girl. Never even touched her! Jakes and that bloke Starling had her in the back seat. They’re the ones who croaked her.”

“And you were in the front seat with Laurie Lovett?”

“Ye-I never said I was there, did I?”

“You were there, all right. There’s no argument about that. They didn’t give you nine hundred pounds for advice.” Roach did not reply.

“We’ve got the lot of you, except Starling,” Martineau went on. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. None of us knows.”

“He must have said something.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where he is. He faded, and I wish I’d done the same.”

“He can’t stay in England. Didn’t he talk of going abroad?”

“Not a word. For God’s sake, gimme a cigarette, Inspector.”

“Here you are. Did he say where he’d been since his escape?”

“No. He only said one thing. ‘Keep moving.’ That was his motto. ‘Keep moving.’ Gimme a light, Inspector.”

“Sure, here. Now, about Saturday morning…”

None of Don Starling’s accomplices could help the police to find him. That was established by persistent questioning.

“He’s the one who matters,” said Martineau with savage regret, “and we can’t get within a mile of him. He’s moving around, and yet nobody ever sees him.”

“He calls on friends, stays a few hours, and moves on,” said Devery. “That way people don’t get too fed up with him, and they don’t get much chance to shop him.”

“He can’t have so many friends who’ll harbor somebody as hot as he is. Still, he stays hidden.”

“He can’t hide forever, sir.”

“No. He’s sticking around until he can lay hands on the plunder from the Underdown job. That’s what I think. I’m fairly sure he’s the only one who knows where it is, because he’s the one who hid it. When he gets that stuff, he’ll clear out. What’s worrying me is-he might have got it, and cleared out already.”

Martineau took that worry home with him after the five prisoners had been charged and locked up. His wife had a good supper ready for him. He had been home to his tea and he had come home to his supper, without, apparently, calling in a pub for a drink. He was a good boy. It appeared that he was about to regain his stripes.

He ate contentedly, with some absence of mind. If Julia wanted to be friendly for a change, he wasn’t going to commit any breach of the peace. Then he found that he had to give her his attention. There was another reason for her benign, almost affectionate mood. She had been to the pictures. She had seen a film which she liked, and she wanted to talk about it.

It had been a musical film, and the male star had been a bull-necked tenor. The romantic story, the music, and the bellowing male had affected her. She had a faraway look: she visualized the picture as she talked about it.