Murder is Suspected (C.I.D. Room Book 10) by Jeffries Roderic

Author:Jeffries, Roderic [Jeffries, Roderic]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Fusil re-read the memorandum which Miss Wagner had placed in the centre of the blotter of his desk. Because of the rising incidence of crime it was no longer going to be possible to investigate all crimes: in future, all minor crimes were to be logged but not investigated unless there were special attendant circumstances.

He swore. The perpetrators of minor crimes were often potentially the villains of tomorrow — and the only practical way of discouraging them from graduating was for the law sharply to teach them that crime did not pay. The law concerning young offenders had become soft beyond belief and now the police would not even be able to bring them to justice to suffer such penalties as still remained. Life would teach them that crime did pay. What the hell kind of future was being built? Few other officers would, he knew, feel as impotently angry as he did over this latest directive. He wished he could be like them and see his job from a far more impersonal view point.

Kerr came into the room. “I’ve been out on the Finch case, sir. The coroner’s officer says the pathologist’s preliminary report will be that Finch died from drowning, almost certainly in salt water. But there was bruising to his right arm and contusions on his fingers and as far as I can make out the pathologist reckons that while the injuries are consistent with his falling over the side and then trying desperately to get back in, they also could have been caused in some form of assault.

“I checked the boat. It’s new and the outboard is a one hundred and twenty h.p. Mercury. I don’t know for sure what an outboard like that costs now, but it must be a hell of a lot. Yet Finch lived in Arlington Road, near the docks, and the place is a bit of a slum. Looking at it, you’d say he couldn’t afford even a dinghy. His wife says he spent nothing on the house or her, but a friend of hers told her she saw him coming out of a restaurant with a tarty blonde. There’s the suggestion he might even have given the blonde a car.”

“What was his job? Roustabout on a North Sea oil rig?”

“Hendlesham Haulage Company. I’ve checked with them and he was one of their drivers. Over the past six months, his wages averaged out at eighty-one quid a week.”

“I wish I could buy an expensive boat and outboard, take a girlfriend out to restaurants and maybe buy her a car, all on eighty-one quid a week.”

“Me too, sir. It made me remember something. Finch had a small crescent-shaped scar on his right cheek.”

Fusil picked up his pipe and fiddled with it. “You’re really beginning to interest me.”

“According to his wife, he couldn’t swim. When he was picked up he wasn’t wearing a lifejacket, but there was one in the boat and one of the sets of tabs was torn away on one side… I got back on to the haulage company.

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