Guilt Without Proof (C.I.D. Room Book 4) by Jeffries Roderic

Author:Jeffries,Roderic
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

A man was mugged just outside a dockside pub and seventy-three pounds were stolen from him; two prostitutes had a savage fight and one was badly injured about the right eye; a gang of thirteen-year-olds wrecked the inside of a kindergarten school; a house was burgled and the two thieves tried vainly to open up the back of a safe with a shutter-cutter — unknown to them, the safe was unlocked; a woman gassed herself because for four years she had had no friends and knew no one in the whole world who gave a damn whether she lived or died; a father had a sudden, wild surge of anger and battered his year-old son because the constant crying scrambled his mind…

Fusil struggled to cope with the flood of work and cursed when he failed, as he had to. How many of the general public, he thought despairingly, were aware that crime was on the rampage? How many cared or had the intelligence to know that crime was the bitter enemy of society and when there was too much of it society in its present form must sicken and die?

He left his desk and crossed to the window and looked out. Gone was all the hot sunshine. Today, unbroken cloud, all the same dreary, sodden shade of grey, stretched from horizon to horizon. This, he thought cynically, was the return of the typical English summer.

As he turned, Rowan knocked and entered the room. “I’m just back from the Red Duster Club, sir.”

“Any luck?”

“Not really. The doorman’s been there for the past eight years. He was telephoned a couple of years back and told there was twenty quid in it for him if he took a message by telephone and passed it on. Since then, he’s taken four messages, passed ’em on, and collected eighty quid. He doesn’t know who telephoned the messages in or who telephoned to collect ’em.

“How did he get the money?”

“By post. Each time a plain envelope was sent to him at the club with twenty one-pound notes inside it.”

“Didn’t he notice the postmark?”

“He knows it was London, but can’t remember anything more than that.”

Fusil tapped on the desk with his fingers. “Obviously, the man has to have visited the club. Can’t the doorman suggest who it can be?”

“He swears he’s no idea. I reckon he was telling the truth.”

After Rowan had gone, Fusil considered what he’d just been told and inevitably came to the conclusion that it didn’t add up to a row of beans. The letter with the money was postmarked London, but was that because it had been posted from there as a blind? Or, as Kywood would undoubtedly point out, simply because the centre-man lived in London?

He sat down on the edge of the desk. Were they making any progress in solving the murder and in finding out how the stolen whisky was disposed of? Would the murder be solved without discovering the identity of the centre-man first and being able to

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