Murder for Treasure Read online

  ‘What are you doing here?’ The cheerful uniformed figure encountered earlier was advancing from the booking hall. Here at least was someone aware that this particular passenger had not intended to alight at Whitland.

  The breathless Treasure slowed his pace but kept moving firmly towards the likely site of telephones and departing miscreants. Having no option, the official fell in beside him.

  ‘Attempted murder on the train. Need a doctor and the police. See anyone with a long parcel?’

  ‘Murder, is it? Duw, Duw.’ The official was impresssed. ‘Make way,’ he called ahead to the knot of people at the ticket-barrier. ‘Bert, see anyone with a long parcel?’

  The ticket-collector looked up from filling out an excess journey ticket. ‘Yes, him . . . them, and they haven’t got tickets either . . .’

  Treasure inwardly froze. The two young men indicated by the ticket-collector’s nod were standing brazenly just inside the glazed booking hall waiting—incredibly—to pay their excess fare. One was holding a leather case that Treasure instantly recognized as belonging to the clergyman. The other was clutching the Judge’s unmistakable parcel.

  The two gave every appearance of being social dropouts, at least against the standards applied by merchant bankers. Both were dresssed over-all in blue denim. It was not debatably fashionable worn and tom denim but repulsively genuine worn, torn and very dirty denim. Both had hair that was long, unkempt and matted, as well as wispy beards that promised to be the same given time to develop. They wore large and rimless dark glasses in the manner of those who do so perversely not to keep out sunlight but to stay in night light. They were sockless and sandalled. They looked undernourished, determinably underprivileged and surprisingly unconcerned.

  ‘Call the police.’ Treasure hoped this loud injunction would be heard and acted upon by someone in the ticket-office. ‘That luggage doesn’t belong to you,’ he continued in a quieter but firm tone, ‘and that’s not all you need to explain.’

  ‘Attempted murder, is it?’ Treasure had not intended to enlarge on his statement. The shocked station official did so for him with no regard for the laws of libel nor the likely effect of such a pronouncement upon innocent onlookers, who promptly dispersed in all directions, leaving the banker, the official and the ticket-collector to act out any heroics necessary.

  It was at this point that the guard from the train arrived as unintended reinforcement for the powers of goodness, and carrying Treasure’s suitcase. ‘He’s stopped the bloody train . . .’ he began, outraged, levelling an accusing arm at the banker.

  ‘Cool it, Dad.’ The flaxen-haired youth with the parcel stared contemptuously at Treasure. ‘Just everybody stay loose, and no one gets hurt.’ Casually he withdrew a Service-type revolver from inside his shirt. The guard’s mouth dropped open. ‘Now, we got a car outside. We’re gonna get in it, an’ we’re gonna drive away peaceful . . .’

  Mr Ifor Beynon—the powerfully built ex-Sergeant Beynon, DCM, long since retired from the Welsh Guards—had entered the booking hall earlier from the station yard to collect a consignment of homing pigeons timed for release at two o’clock. In the interim he had found the wicker basket containing his temporary charges, where the goods clerk usually placed them in a privileged position just inside the entrance. He had also witnessed the whole exchange at the ticket-barrier.

  The commendation that had accompanied Sergeant Beynon’s Distinguished Conduct Medal stated that he had demonstrated initiative as well as bravery under fire. That had been forty years ago: his spirit and instinct had not dimmed with time. With his right foot he slammed shut the heavy glass door behind him. Simultaneously he slipped the fastening on the wicker basket and threw back the lid.

  Though normally mild enough creatures, racing pigeons offered freedom after hours of confinement and a crowded train journey are far from docile. The twenty-five birds released by Mr Beynon had one object in common—to return to Uxbridge by the quickest possible route. Freedom beckoned only from the other side of the ticket-barrier.

  Twenty-five excited, healthy, competitive pigeons took to the air behaving like oversized bats in an undersized belfry. Their wings beat against the walls and ceiling of the tiny booking hall. They collided with each other and all else that obstructed. They swooped, they glided, they circled and they squawked. But mostly they harassed the two terrified youths whom they had taken so unexpectedly from the rear and who were filling most of the available space at the only point of exit.

  The villains were instantly transformed into victims. They ducked and weaved and thrashed with their arms. The one with the gun beat the air around his head as half-a-dozen winged persecutors scratched and clawed at his scalp and neck. He turned about, shielding his eyes with his forearm, only to have another predator fly into his open shirtfront and make heavy going of getting out again.

  The second youth had lost his glasses and his nerve. ‘Shoot the bastards!’ he screamed. The gun went off—a noise not unfamiliar to the pigeons whose trained desire to head for home was now intensified by a quickening of the instinct to do with self-preservation; their panic quickened too.

  The beleaguered youth fired the gun again, and again, and again . . .

  The ticket-collector had disappeared from view behind the protecting counter-front of his booth. The guard had taken refuge in a doorway, still clutching the suitcase. The station official and Treasure pressed themselves flat against the wall on the platform. And Treasure was counting. His knowledge of firearms was limited but he believed most revolvers held six rounds. One shot had done for the clergyman. Five more had just exploded inside the booking hall. Unless the youth had reloaded . . . Immediately after the fifth shot rang out, there was the unmistakable click of a firing pin working against an empty chamber.

  Mr Beynon was no layman when it came to firearms. He had been waiting for a sixth shot, but acted on the altogether recognizable, audible evidence that the gun was empty. He picked up the wicker basket and bellowing ‘Now!’ charged with it across the booking hall.

  A flailing, confused mass of birds, men and possessions disgorged on to the platform followed by a triumphant Mr Beynon, now struggling with the basket at the door. ‘Get the blond one, sir,’ he shouted at Treasure.

  Already the two youths were on their feet. ‘Over the line, Ken,’ screamed Treasure’s designated quarry, who still had the parcel in his grasp—and an empty revolver in one hand. He blundered backwards towards the platform edge, less bothered by birds but with his earlier sang-froid totally shattered. His companion, adopting a crouched position, also began retreating. He wielded the suitcase in front of him to keep the advancing station official at bay—and succeeded in clouting that plucky assailant painfully across both knees with the improvised weapon.

  Mr Beynon’s charge had been halted when the basket stuck firmly in the doorway. He now struggled with it on to the platform, and, despite his seventy years, hurled this bulky missile at the second youth, launching himself after it intending to flatten his quarry. But the enemy was too quick: he fended back the basket in time for Mr Beynon to trip over it and to come down heavily, well short of target.

  Treasure meantime rashly attempted a high rugby tackle, hoping to floor his encumbered opponent before he could quit the platform. This was a mistake. Although the skinny youth had the pallid look of one permanently excused all games from an early age, he was just as evidently the sort who didn’t play—or fight—according to anybody’s rules. He met Treasure’s approach with a swift, accurate and powerful kick to the groin.

  ‘You won’t get away,’ shouted the station official without much conviction. ‘Oh, my sainted knee,’ he added from the sitting position.

  The two fugitives scrambled down to the railway line, leaving the attack force in temporary disarray—except for the guard who now came fresh to the fight from the shelter of the doorway. From his towering vantage point on the platform edge he swung Treasure’s suitcase at the man called Ken, in time for it to catc
h him with powerful force behind the left ear, sending him sprawling across the rails. The victim gave a cry of pain, clasping both hands to his head and releasing the case in his charge. His companion, although already started across the track, turned back in what seemed at first to be a comradely act of succour until it became obvious he was seeking to retrieve the suitcase.

  Mr Beynon, with a twisted ankle, was by this time hopping manfully to the platform edge on one leg. The station official was still down, and the guard—a man not over-endowed with a sense of the courageous—was standing irresolute, proud that his single contribution to the fight might have decisive effect, but with both assailants out of reach, not anxious to mix with them at rail level.

  Treasure was upright, but in extreme pain. The blond youth was now just below him trying to dislodge the clergyman’s suitcase which had become stuck between platform base and rail. The banker made a grab at the only hand-hold on offer—the comer of the long parcel. The enemy resisted being thus dispossessed with one arm while wrenching the suitcase free with the other.

  The second youth was now unsteadily on his feet. ‘Take this and run!’ shouted the blond, heaving the case into the centre of the track before applying his full strength and attention to the bizarre tug of war with Treasure and the parcel. Already the outer wrappings of the thing were beginning to disintegrate, uncovering a cardboard box beneath. Treasure was pulling at the lower edges. His opponent had hold of the top which, in response to a violent tug, suddenly slid off in his hands. At the same moment, Treasure gave his end of the box a twist—with unnerving effect.

  Out popped a hideous, shrunken, hairy head with a painted face fixed in a ghoulish grin.

  Treasure released the box with a shudder and so abruptly that he fell backwards on to Mr Beynon. The blond youth gave a whoop of triumph.

  ‘Get off the line! For God’s sake, get off the line!’ It was the station official who shouted the warning.

  The 13.04 up-train to London, running over fifteen minutes late, was pounding in to Whitland, its driver intent on making up time. The train was still travelling at twenty miles an hour when it passed the western end of the station. There was distance enough for the driver to halt the twelve carriages at the prescribed point but not allowing for the survival of persons unlawfully disporting themselves on the line in front of the booking hall.

  ‘Look out!’ Treasure shouted involuntarily at the two men with whom, moments before, he had been engaging in mortal combat.

  Each man dropped what he was carrying and leapt for the opposite track—as it seemed to the brief glimpse allowed those on the platform—directly under the rear wheels of the Fishguard train which, unseen by the combatants, had been quietly backing in to the station.

  It went through Treasure’s mind that no matter how slowly the reversing train was moving, it could not be remotely inhibited by human beings in its path.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘Miraculous escape. That’s what the papers will say. And there’s another one.’ Detective-Inspector Glyn Iffley stamped on the brake pedal of the decrepit-looking Mini Estate. The car halted a few inches short of an aged Whitland resident exercising his undoubted right to risk his life with minimum notice at the last pedestrian crossing on the edge of town. ‘You comfy?’ The pedestrian was proceeding without haste and any expression of appreciation.

  If there was comfort in the knowledge that the final lap of an unwarrantably adventurous, painful and protracted journey had actually begun, then Treasure could answer in the affirmative. Even so, the vehicle in which he was travelling, though mechanically sound, seemed not to have been fashioned—or re-fashioned—to ensure that passengers rode in it at their ease: no matter, he was on his way again: it was three-thirty.

  More than two hours before, Treasure and his faithful retainer, the station official, had been among the first to arrive on the down platform of Whitland Station to search for the run-over remains of their erstwhile adversaries. It was not until a passenger positively witnessed that two men had made off through the coal yard bordering the platform that the unrelished quest had been abandoned.

  Meantime, help had arrived in the rough but ready balance of one police car, three fire-engines, six ambulances and an ice-cream van. Large numbers of townspeople had followed in the wake of this little armada, joining a crush of de-training and mostly disgruntled passengers in and around the station.

  For a while, stretchers and wheelchairs had been much in evidence until it became apparent that no one needed them—saving only Mr Beynon, who after protest had consented to be wheeled from the scene after establishing there had been no fatalities among the pigeons.

  The first policemen to appear—a sergeant and a constable-had needed to organize the pursuit of the long-departed villains as well as to establish order in general. Treasure had been patient, but after the arrival of a larger police contingent he had insisted that the sergeant accompany him to the-front of the train where he had already despatched two ambulance men to tend the wounded cleric.

  It had been irritating and embarrassing next to discover that there was no wounded cleric. The sergeant and the ambulance men had accepted Treasure’s word for it that a clergyman had existed. The guard who had re-attached himself to Treasure’s entourage at this point of non-discovery had been darkly and purposefully sceptical.

  The criminal intentions of the two fugitives had been well enough established by their conduct on Whitland Station. That they had earlier assaulted a passenger causing Treasure to stop the train was a matter for conjecture so far as the guard was concerned. He had already been mentally composing his forthcoming written report on irregularities as heinous as the incidence of locked corridor doors and his literally unguarded abandonment of a stationary but re-mobilized train. Others, no doubt, would report he had contributed little to arresting an affray on railway property, beyond providing porterage for the luggage of a public-spirited passenger.

  What had happened at Whitland Station would not have involved the Fishguard train at all if it had not been stopped by Treasure in the first place. The guard believed the absence of a battered clergyman put him well on the way to confusing the deliberations of any enquiring body out to blame him for anything.

  It had been Detective-Inspector Iffley who, with the uniformed sergeant, had examined the corridor toilet. The washbasin had been liberally anointed with splashings of what looked like blood, charcoal and mixings of both. A copious length of roller towel unhitched from its cabinet had been stained with the same substances. The inspector had ordered samples to be taken for analysis. He had offered that there seemed no doubt that Treasure’s cleric had used the place to clean up before disappearing.

  Iffley had thus endeared himself to the banker almost from the time of his arrival. A natural respect for a senior police officer might have been instantly manifest had it not been for the fellow’s unconventional appearance and laconic disposition.

  Iffley was a large, genial man, thirty or so, a bit overweight, with curly, light brown hair, a freckled, innocent face and a pleasing baritone voice. He was dressed in faded red linen trousers, worn blue canvas shoes, and a whitish T-shirt emblazoned with the message ‘Get it together with Tia-Maria’. It had been the unpolicemanlike garb that initially gave Treasure pause—as it had the uniformed officers present when the Inspector had first appeared. Even so, having diffidently established his seniority, the man had quietly but firmly taken charge.

  The Mini was now moving westwards again with an alacrity and smoothness that belied its appearance. It occurred to Treasure that this description fitted both car and owner. ‘Shall you remain in charge of the hunt and . . . er, the enquiry, Inspector?’

  ‘No, sir, thank the Lord. I’ve handed over to the chap who arrived from Carmarthen.’ The policeman chuckled. ‘Didn’t look very pleased with life, did he. He was expecting to be off duty for the long weekend after lunch today. No rest for the wicked in this job.’

  ‘But what about you . .
. ?’

  ‘Oh, I just happened to be the nearest ranking copper and got flagged down by this thing.’ Iffley pointed to the radio. ‘It’s two-way.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The equipment had a discarded look. Treasure now noticed it included a microphone. ‘So this is a police car. I mean, it’s not your own . . .’

  ‘Banger? No, sir. And it goes like the clappers, too. It’s just that I have to cultivate an uncared-for look in my business.’ The speaker paused, and then ahead of Treasure’s question, continued. ‘I’m with a Regional Crime Squad in another area, seconded here on special assignment.’

  ‘Sounds very cloak and dagger.’

  ‘In a way, sir. There was a big drug haul here . . .’

  ‘I remember,’ Treasure cut in. ‘Headline stuff at the time. But I thought you’d nabbed everybody involved?’

  ‘We did, or rather the coppers on the job did. I wasn’t one of them. New face. Got put in later to look for stragglers. Been living around the hippy communes in them there hills.’ Iffley nodded in the direction of the undulating grasslands to the north of the road.

  ‘This is commune country?’

  ‘Mm, California without the sun . . . or the smog, I suppose. People shiftless, shifty, and shifting, someone said. Right, too. They’re all imports, of course. Bloody English drop-outs and junkies, most of ’em.’ The policeman glanced sideways to judge Treasure’s reaction. Both men smiled. ‘Welsh myself, though not so’s you’d notice any more, I suppose.’

  ‘So am I mostly. Wales is a good place to be from, though.’ Treasure had less claim to evident Welsh affiliations than his companion whose accent was fairly pronounced. ‘Have you done any good here?’