Alias the vicim a case f.., p.1
Alias the Vicim: A Case for Superintendent Anthony Slade, page 1
Alias the Victim
Leonard Gribble
© 1971 by Leonard Gribble*
*Indicates the year of first publication.
For
GERALDINE LAWS
with affection
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
1
Sidney Fanchon was in that curious state of awareness that allowed him to accept his own ponderous assurance that he was sober enough not to be drunk, but at the same time drunk enough not to be sober. He was, as a matter of fact, in that curiously elated frame of mind when he knew he could drive like a rally winner with only a single cloud on his horizon — the possibility of being stopped by a police car and asked to take a breathalyser test.
It was a frame of mind that created problems with their roots in doubts arising from a basic character deficiency. Sidney Fanchon had been going through a bad time for the past six weeks, from the advent of the new sales manager at Pratmore's. After enduring Basil Thorne's high-pressure tactics for a fortnight he had found solace in a whisky bottle. A week later his wife had found out. For the ensuing three weeks life had become progressively more rugged, with Olive at home completing the piecemeal destruction of mind and confidence begun during the daytime by Basil the Bastard as the new sales manager had been labelled in Sidney's more inflammatory thoughts.
He had taken to arriving home later each night, which was not a happy solution even if merely considered a temporary one, for although it provided a shorter period to be lived through under the same roof with a sharp-tongued Olive, it did nothing to justify the outmoded adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It merely honed Olive's tongue to a keener cutting edge. To avoid the mental blood-letting it produced on his nightly arrival home late and breathing a cloud of alcohol fumes he had taken to sleeping in the spare room.
'Just to give me more work to do, as though I hadn't enough,' Olive had complained.
She had a part-time job sticking labels on canned goods for a supermarket.
As he drove from the Fox and Hounds the unhappy Sidney, whose emotional life was becoming a morass, contemplated the unpromising state of his job and his marriage. He had brought himself to admit that he loathed being a salesman conditioned to talk brightly about the values and virtues of plastic sanitary ware, in which he had very little faith. At the same time he had discovered Olive had a side to her nature that hitherto he had only suspected, but now he knew to be pushing well above surface level. She was contemptuous of him and his singular lack of success as a provider for a life partner.
Her contempt, he had estimated, about equalled that displayed earlier by Basil the Bastard in his newly carpeted office with potted plants in both windows. The pots, it went without saying though not without comment, were of the newest shades in the latest range of Pratmore Plasticals, a particularly bilious shade of faded lime green and a thoroughly unpleasant and murky tinge of dehydrated strawberry, respectively labelled for the trade Verdura and Corallo.
Sidney had been trying desperately but unsuccessfully to flog the damned new shades of lavatory seats and pan covers, toilet roll holders, and bathroom wall cabinets for a month, with a consistently progressive droop in his sales performance matched only by the miserable sum credited to him as his latest commission due.
'You'll have to do vastly better than this, Fanchon,' Basil the Bastard had informed him nastily from the far side of the sales manager's new gleaming desk. 'Pratmore's can no longer enjoy the luxury of carrying dead weight on its staff. These are challenging times. Times for minds that can cope with change and make it profitable.'
Sidney had stood there on the new carpet glaring at the window pots, in two minds whether to fight back by relating the comment of Bill Birkett, chief buyer for Southern and Eastern Builders' Merchants, Wholesale and Retail, when he first saw lavatory lids in the two virulent shades.
'God Almighty, Sid, we don't only sell to customers suffering from gangrene and piles.'
He had left the office of Basil the Bastard tight-lipped and uncommunicative, feeling too deflated even to squirm. It had been a bad day all round, so he had gone the longest way home which took in the Fox and Hounds out beyond Sawley Common, where he had stayed spending money he could no longer spare on liquor that did nothing for him except to make his mental indecision tolerable, slow down his reflexes, and make him fearful of being asked to blow down a breathalyser tube.
If he was unlucky and was stopped and requested to blow into a breathalyser he knew the crystals in the bag would turn pure Verdura.
So he drove with caution. Perhaps he was too cautious, for somehow he managed to miss the road across the common that would have taken him towards the north-east of Gronchester and the shortest way home. Instead, he kept on the common road that carried him towards the north-west and the Rivermead Industrial Estate where Pratmore's had their new factory. When he realized what he had done he cursed and took the first side-road bearing away to the south. It proved to be a winding lane that at times became a tunnel under trees above high banks. The lane snaked in serpentine fashion so that he had to concentrate on his driving. One sharp bend took him by surprise so that he was late swinging the driving wheel, and his tyres dragged into a sandy bank, hub plates hit stones and roots, and down-hanging branches whipped against the car's roof and side.
'Won't do my bloody cellulose any good,' he grunted, pulling away from the bank and swerving too far and having to over-correct his steering, which made him start to sweat.
As he straightened again he swore savagely and trod hard on the brake pedal. The car rocked on its springs and his back was shoved hard against the seat's vinyl. A muzzy sensation churned inside his head and his sight behaved as though tricks were being played on his optic nerves. The glow from the car's headlights swam forward and receded, as though tidal in motion, faded and brightened, and he found himself struggling to see with clear definition.
Suddenly he saw too clearly.
The figure swaying in his headlights appeared with the startling abruptness of an apparition.
'God, now I'm seeing things,' he groaned, blinking as he fumbled with the gear lever.
The figure did not vanish. It tottered towards the car, and Sidney saw the blood on its clothes and covering its face like a shiny red mask.
'Go away,' he muttered, 'do for God's sake go away. I can't cope and I feel sick.'
The swaying figure stumbled up to the car, stretched out a hand to the bonnet, and Sidney watched with terrible fascination as extended fingers writhed and folded on nothing and the figure went slowly down and continued going until it had collapsed on the rutted surface of the lane in front of the car.
Sidney swore as the truth registered. He had to cope whether he felt like it or not. He opened the door beside him and after pushing out his feet lurched into a more or less upright position. He stood there breathing deeply in an attempt to overcome an invading nausea.
By God, I am drunk, he insisted to himself with silent savageness, as though overcoming a previous opinion that no longer pertained. I'm drunk and I'm . . .
The remainder of the insistent thought was not completed, for he tottered to a clump of bushes screening the bank and pushed his head over them while opening his mouth. The taste of the vomit he spilled between the dusty leaves was sour. His stomach contracted reprovingly and he shivered as with cold. He kept his head down and felt he was spewing his heart up. He did this three times before raising his hand and lifting the handkerchief in his hand to wipe the sour slime from his teeth. He had no recollection of pulling the handkerchief from his pocket.
His eyes were moist. He wiped them. He rubbed dry the corners of his mouth and dabbed foul stickiness from his fingers. He turned, his head clear but the bad taste still in his mouth, and saw the man collapsed in his headlights.
He went to him without tottering and leaned over him without feeling his senses reel.
'My God, man, you're a hospital case. How the hell did you get here and who did it to you?'
It was a relief to speak aloud although he understood the man he was raising from the ground was unconscious and did not hear. Sidney Fanchon surprised himself at his efficiency in a crisis that was all his. His mind worked with amazing clarity. He knew precisely what he was going to do and why and even how. It was as though he functioned outside himself, controlled by a secondary self that demanded his alliance and obedience, and he even felt pleasure and a sense of stimulation at his ready compliance.
He settled the blood-smeared man on his passenger seat, climbed behind the steering wheel and settled down to drive to the Gronchester General Hospital. As soon as he found himself in the streets leading to the outskirts of Sawley Common he picked up speed. It was twenty minutes past eleven by his watch, and he didn't give a damn for Olive's tongue or Basil the Bastard's pink and yellow-green monstrosities. His mind had switched. For the first time in his life he was not only coping, he was involved in adventure that was coloured with violence.
He should have been cringing and afraid, but he wasn't, which was an amazing discovery until he reflected cynically
He turned a look at his passenger, bundled together in what appeared to be a most uncomfortable position, and light from a street-lamp washed over the mask of blood. He wasn't drunk, he reassured himself. The man was real and Sidney Fanchon knew what he was going to do with him. He was going to be helpful and humane without getting involved in a time-wasting inquiry, for which other people got suitably paid but not he. Helpful, but in his own way. He couldn't afford to talk to any police who could produce a breathalyser or to any hospital night staff who could pass him over to the police. This had to be an in-and-out job. He had to be sensible. And there was Olive, he reminded himself. At this last reminder he felt the need for a drink. He was empty and feeling it. Two sausage rolls can't take the place of a hot meal.
He crossed the river bridge that spanned the Reete, which divided Gronchester into East and West, and headed for the area known as Rivermead, where the hospital lay back behind a shallow plantation of ancient elms which successive town councils refused to have cut down or uprooted. There was still a fair amount of traffic in the streets, and he slowed and became more careful and watchful as he approached the hospital gates. Choosing his moment, when assured that he was unobserved, he turned through them and headed up the wide smooth drive until he saw the large white arrow pointing to the Out Patients' Department. He drove past the steps below the glass door and parked in shadow.
He made few sounds when he left the car without closing his door and drew the unconscious stranger from the passenger's seat. Half carrying, half dragging the man to the foot of the steps leading up to the glass door beyond which shone a shaded light, he dumped the inert figure across the three bottom steps, ran up the others, and pressed the doorbell. He held his finger on it long enough to be sure the ringing would be heard by anyone whose job included answering late calls.
Satisfied that he had done all that was required of him, he hurried down the steps and round to his car. To drive back to the road beyond the big old elms he did not have to repass the glass door of the Out Patients' Department. The drive continued in a wide semi-circular sweep to another pair of open gates.
Five minutes later Sidney Fanchon was returning over the River Leete to East Gronchester and heading for the semi-detached villa in Rothmere Avenue that he considered home, a modest abode whose small garden demanded most of his leisure time at weekends, and the rates for which he considered abnormally high. He ran the car on to the narrow apron of cement before the door of the narrow garage. He was feeling for the key of the garage door when the front door of the house opened and his wife's voice said waspishly, 'So you've decided to come home, have you?'
He caught a quick breath and told himself he didn't have to hate her. It hadn't always been like this. He had to make allowances, and by God so did she.
He still hadn't found the garage key in the tangle of metal on his keyring when he heard her steps drawing close.
'What's the matter?' she asked.
His ear picked out the note of concern in her voice. He decided it was genuine as he turned. She caught his arm and dragged him towards the light streaming from the narrow hall on the moth-eaten front lawn bordering the garage drive.
'You've been sick,' she said. 'And what's this? Blood — yes, it's blood. My God, Sid, what's happened to you?'
'Only the sick's mine,' he said, and even in his own ears the words sounded foolish. 'The blood is the other man's.'
'You've been in a fight? Tell me.'
Her tone was urgent without being critical. He sensed her concern and without knowing why felt grateful as she pushed him into the house, closed the front door, and urged him down the narrow hall to the kitchen at the end. The light was on and he dropped on to the nearest chair, the one that always creaked as though about to collapse when anyone sat on it.
'Tell me,' she said again.
'I think I'm going to get fired from Pratmore's,' he said fearfully, for this was the news he felt would release her anger.
'Best thing that could happen to you,' said this amazing woman who was a bewildering stranger whose strength brought comfort to a weak man. 'I don't mean that. I just left you to come to your senses about that job. If the way you chose was through the neck of a whisky bottle I wasn't giving you an argument. But I don't like spoiling good food because you want to stay out to God knows what hour, and I don't relish being married to a fool, Sid Fanchon.' She ran her shrewd gaze over his crumpled and stained appearance, came closer to him so that she looked down on his sagging shoulders, and said softly, 'I mean about this man who put blood on you.'
'He didn't. I did. You see, Olive, he didn't know anything about it.'
For one trembling moment she felt she could lose her temper and enjoy doing so, but she made the effort to say, 'I'll put the kettle on. While we're waiting for it to boil you tell me what happened.'
He watched her moving about the small kitchen with the fly-specked blue walls and a dripping tap that had been waiting for three months for someone to provide it with a new washer. He tried to see her with fresh eyes because he felt uncertain and afraid of how she might behave when she heard the whole story. He understood now it was no adventure. All he had done was shirk doing as much as he could for someone in trouble, so he forced himself to think about his wife rather than the man he now felt he had deserted.
He followed her movements without appearing to stare. She was ungainly but surprisingly agile and she wore a skirt and jumper that had the nondescript shapeless look that derives from too many visits to a washeteria for garments purchased in a stock-taking sale. She had never been beautiful, but she had a good pair of eyes that had acquired a hardness of expression over the years. In middle age her figure was dumpy and her features puffy and formless so that she only looked pleasant when she stretched a smile to show her well-preserved teeth.
Olive had never smoked a cigarette in her life, he reflected, as he felt for the packet he had bought in the Fox and Hounds. She turned and watched him light one, her lips compressed, and she passed him a saucer to use as an ash-tray.
'I'm listening,' she said with a return of the asperity that had made him cringe internally on other nights of late home-coming.
The cigarette was smoked half down and the kettle was singing by the time he had told her. It seemed little enough as he reconsidered. She said nothing, which he found distinctly discouraging. She reached for a teapot and busied herself at the stove. When she had made the tea she dragged an old-fashioned cosy over the pot. She hated freshly made tea that 'wasn't really hot,' in her phrase. She went out of the kitchen and he heard her opening the squeaky doors of the sideboard in the front lounge. She came back carrying the remains of the half-bottle of whisky that was the only spiritous liquor in the house.
'What's that for?' he asked.
'You and me, both of us,' she said. 'We're having some in our tea, so when the police get here we'll both smell of it. We'll say we needed it, after the shock. I've been thinking. I was with you, and you ran him to the hospital and rang the bell because I told you to.'
'You?' he repeated several times. 'You? You, Olive?' as though the point of her statement refused to register clearly.
'Me,' she told him firmly. 'I said if you took him to the hospital and presented yourself we'd both be detained and the police would say you ran him down — all that blood, I mean to say, and you being sick on top of it. So as I wasn't feeling so good, you left him and brought me home, and then we had a cup of tea and something to buck us up.' She tapped the whisky bottle. 'After that we got to talking and you convinced me the police ought to be told. I didn't like it, and you had a hard time making me see it your way. But you talked me round.'
When she paused he grinned sheepishly, but there was no response on her pudgy face. It remained straight, the mouth uncompromising, with no relenting gleam of teeth, and the hardness did not melt from her bright and perceptive eyes.
As though it were decided and the last word spoken, she put the whisky down and poured two cups of tea. She passed him one and frowned at the stains on his clothes.
'We'll have to leave them. Makes it more convincing.'
She opened the whisky bottle and poured the amber fluid into his cup first, then into her own. She stirred hers first and passed him her teaspoon. She did not sit down but remained standing as she took her first sip and screwed her face into an expression of distaste.
