Hardcastle's Frustration (15 page)

‘I took the precaution of drawing these from the nick before we left, sir,' he said breathlessly, as he quickly shackled one of the man's hands to the railed bedhead. ‘Just in case.'

‘Very thoughtful of you, Wood,' said Hardcastle mildly, as he stood up and smoothed his jacket.

‘What on earth's happened?' The woman who had admitted the two detectives now stood in the doorway of Rudd's room.

‘Nothing to worry about, madam,' said Hardcastle. ‘This chap just tried to murder me, that's all. Do you possess a telephone, by any chance?'

‘Yes, we are connected,' said the landlady, and glanced at the ceiling where the bullet had struck, and then at the sizeable piece of plaster on the floor. ‘And who's going to pay for that, might I make so bold as to ask?'

‘I dare say the Commissioner of Police will,' said Hardcastle. ‘In due course,' he added, well aware that such claims often took months to be settled. ‘Wood, borrow this lady's telephone contraption and ask the local station to send a conveyance for our prisoner.'

‘Perhaps you'd show me where the instrument is, madam,' said Wood.

‘Come this way,' said the landlady. ‘And I hope you're going to pay for the call.'

‘Now then,' said Hardcastle, picking up the revolver and removing the remaining rounds from the chamber, ‘I'm a police officer. Are you Eric Donnelly?'

‘I'm Wilfred Rudd.'

‘Is that a fact?' But it was clear to Hardcastle that his question had unnerved Rudd. He sat down on the only chair in the room and fixed his prisoner with a steely gaze. ‘In that case, tell me why a hospital porter needs to keep a loaded firearm under his pillow.'

‘For protection,' said Rudd churlishly. ‘I never knew who you was, coming barging in here without so much as a by-your-leave.'

‘Well, for a kick-off, I'm arresting you for attempted murder, Rudd, or whoever you are. And I rather fancy that that'll only be the start.'

‘I wasn't never going to kill you,' said Rudd lamely. ‘Like I said, I never knew who you was.'

‘You'll have a chance to explain that to a jury at the Old Bailey,' said Hardcastle, as Wood came back into the room. ‘Well?'

‘They're sending a van, sir.'

‘Very kind of ‘em,' muttered Hardcastle. ‘Get this man what calls himself Rudd downstairs.'

D
etective Sergeant Wood and a local constable had accompanied Rudd to Kingston police station. Deeming it not to be his function to accompany prisoners unless absolutely necessary, Hardcastle walked back to Kingston Hill where he hailed a cab to take him.

‘I'm DDI Hardcastle of A,' he announced to the sergeant on station duty when he arrived at the police station in London Road.

‘All correct, sir,' said the station officer.

‘That's as maybe,' muttered Hardcastle. ‘Where's my prisoner? The man who calls himself Rudd.'

‘In the charge room, sir,' said the sergeant, as though that was the logical place for Rudd to be.

Still handcuffed, Rudd was seated on one of the benches in the charge room. He glanced at Hardcastle with a surly expression, but said nothing.

‘I'm told you were in the Dorsetshire Regiment, Rudd.' Hardcastle took a seat on the opposite side of the room.

‘So, what if I was?'

‘And you told the infirmary authorities that you were discharged as unfit for active service on the twenty-ninth of June last year.'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, now, that's a very strange thing.' Hardcastle took out his pipe and began to fill it.

‘What's strange about it, copper?' snarled Rudd.

‘Because according to the military police Private Wilfred Rudd was killed on that day, and his grieving wife was sent a telegram to that effect. We know that because we've seen her.'

Rudd was momentarily taken aback by the DDI's statement, but quickly recovered.

‘They must've got it wrong. There's always a hell of a mix-up after a battle. No one knows who's dead, who's missing, or who's done a runner.'

‘So if we get Mrs Rudd here, she'll recognize you, will she?'

‘I've changed a lot. The war does that to people.' Rudd stared defiantly at the DDI.

‘What's your regimental number, then?' asked Hardcastle suddenly.

‘I can't rightly remember, what with the gassing and that. It affects your memory, you know,' said Rudd, making a vain attempt to hide the fact that he did not know the real Rudd's number.

‘I was always told that soldiers never forget their regimental number,' commented Hardcastle mildly.

‘Never mind all that. I tell you, I'm Wilfred Rudd, and I'm no deserter. You can't keep me here.'

‘Can't I? You seem to have overlooked the fact,' said Hardcastle, applying a match to his pipe, ‘that I've arrested you for attempted murder and unlawful possession of a firearm.'

‘I was issued with it,' muttered Rudd, ‘so it ain't unlawful.'

‘I doubt that an infantryman would've been issued with a revolver,' observed Hardcastle. ‘More likely to have been a Lee-Metford rifle or something similar, I'd've thought. So where did you get the revolver? Nick it off a dead officer, did you?'

‘I ain't saying nothing,' said Rudd.

‘Anyway, even if you were issued with it, you're not entitled to keep it once the army has discharged you. It doesn't entitle you to attempt to kill me with it, either.'

‘Well, like I said, I never meant to kill you. You scared the living daylights out me, barging in like what you did.'

‘Really?' said Hardcastle, standing up. ‘Well, just so that we can clear up the question of who you really are, I shall have you transferred to my police station in London and get the provost to come and take a gander at you.' He paused at the door. ‘What's your wife's name, Rudd?'

‘I can't rightly remember. Like I said, the gas does strange things to the brain. There's a lot of things I can't remember.'

‘Well, that don't somehow come as a surprise,' said Hardcastle. Leaving the man who called himself Rudd in the charge room, he found DS Wood in the front office.

‘Wood, get on that telephone thing and ask Sergeant Marriott to arrange an escort to bring Rudd up to Cannon Row.'

‘Very good, sir. Are you charging him with attempted murder?'

‘Not at this stage, Wood,' said Hardcastle thoughtfully. ‘You see, he'd probably go down for about ten years penal servitude for that, but if the military find that Rudd
is
the deserter called Donnelly they'll shoot him at dawn. Much cheaper from the point of view of the public purse, and it would save you and me wasting our time at Surrey Assizes. A much more satisfactory outcome altogether, don't you think?'

‘Yes, sir. But we know he's not Rudd because his missus showed us a photograph of the real Rudd, and it wasn't the bloke in the charge room.'

‘Very true,' said Hardcastle, ‘but he doesn't know that. Make sure you bring that revolver with you, and when we get back to the nick get it across to Inspector Franklin. With any luck, he might find it matches the round taken out of Ronald Parker's head.'

It was two o'clock that afternoon before the escort arrived at Cannon Row police station with Rudd.

Hardcastle and Marriott had lunched on their usual fourpenny cannon and a pint at the Red Lion public house, but Hardcastle decided that there was nothing to be gained by interviewing their prisoner. Instead, he paid another visit to the APM's office at Horse Guards.

‘I've taken the man calling himself Wilfred Rudd into custody on a charge of attempted murder, Colonel,' he announced.

‘Good Lord!' Frobisher looked up in surprise. ‘May I ask who he attempted to murder, Inspector?'

‘Me,' said Hardcastle, ‘with what looks very like a service revolver.'

‘Good Lord!' exclaimed Frobisher again. ‘I hope you weren't hurt, Inspector.'

‘He'd've had to be quicker than he was to catch me out, Colonel. However, he refuses to disclose his real identity, but if he's the Eric Donnelly you suggested he might be there's the problem of getting someone to identify him.'

Colonel Frobisher leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Yes, that could be difficult,' he said. ‘Obviously, it would mean finding someone who knew both Rudd and Donnelly, but the battalion they served with is still in France.'

‘We're satisfied that he's not Rudd, Colonel, both from what you told me, and from having visited Rudd's widow. She showed me a photograph of her late husband and it's definitely not the man I've got in my police station.'

‘Well, that's something,' said Frobisher. ‘How long can you hold this man?'

‘For as long as it takes,' said Hardcastle. ‘I doubt that there's anyone prepared to swear out a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf.'

‘Yes, I understand. Nevertheless, you'll doubtless wish to have this matter cleared up as soon as possible. I'll get on to the depot of the Dorsetshire Regiment in Dorchester and see if there's anyone in this country who knows what Donnelly looks like. I'll be in touch as soon as possible.'

‘I'm much obliged, Colonel.'

Lieutenant Colonel Frobisher was as good as his word. The following morning, Hardcastle received a call from the APM to say that there was a Sergeant Mooney in his office who had at one time been Donnelly's platoon sergeant. But, continued Frobisher, Mooney had been wounded in the same battle that had cost Wilfred Rudd his life, and was now a firearms instructor at the depot battalion.

‘I'll send him straight across to the police station, if that would be convenient, Inspector.'

‘Admirable, Colonel, and I'm much obliged to you.'

Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on Hardcastle's door and the station-duty constable appeared.

‘There's a Sergeant Mooney of the Dorsetshire Regiment downstairs, sir. He says he's been sent here by Colonel Frobisher.'

‘Show him up here, lad,' said Hardcastle. ‘And on your way out ask Sergeant Marriott to come in.'

The soldier who entered the DDI's office was immaculate from head to toe. His uniform was pressed, the creases razor sharp. His cap badge glistened, as did his boots, and his puttees were impeccably wound. Beneath his left arm was a silver-headed swagger cane.

‘Inspector 'Ardcastle, sir?' he asked, snapping to attention and throwing up a quivering salute. ‘Sarn't Mooney, Depot Battalion, the Dorsetshire Regiment, thirty-ninth of foot, sah!'

‘Take a seat, Sergeant,' said Hardcastle. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Marriott,' he added, as Marriott entered the office.

‘Sarn't.' Mooney nodded in Marriott's direction.

‘I'm told that you know Private Donnelly by sight, Sergeant Mooney. Is that correct?'

‘Know him, sir? I'm not likely to forget the leery little bastard. He's got bad blood in him, has that one. When he come out to France, he was in the Bullring for a few weeks, and he struck a canary and got hisself twenty-seven days in the glasshouse. That was after he come out of the sick bay. Apparently he fell down the guardroom steps and done hisself a bit of harm, so I heard,' added Mooney with a chuckle.

‘Bullring? Canary? What on earth are you talking about Sergeant Mooney?' Hardcastle was, yet again, completely mystified by the soldier's excursion into the esoteric argot of the military.

‘Ah, yes.' Mooney tugged at his moustache. ‘The Bullring's what they call the training camp at Étaples in France, sir,' he said, pronouncing it Eat-apples. ‘It's where the infantry does their training when they first come out to the BEF, and the canaries is the sergeant-instructors. They call 'em canaries on account of wearing yellow armbands.'

‘But why was he given twenty-
seven
days?' queried Hardcastle. ‘That seems a strange sentence.'

‘Ah, well, the colonel at the Bullring's a bit of a tartar, sir. He knows that twenty-eight days is the minimum sentence what entitles a defaulter to a few days' remission for good behaviour. But twenty-seven days don't qualify. So the colonel always hits 'em with twenty-seven, and then they do the full whack, so to speak.'

Hardcastle nodded approvingly. ‘That colonel sounds like a man after my own heart, Sergeant Mooney. Now, perhaps, you'd come with Sergeant Marriott and me and have a look at this man I've got locked up in one of our cells.'

‘It'll be a pleasure, sir,' said Mooney. ‘Best place for him.' He seemed to have made up his mind that Rudd was indeed the deserter Donnelly.

‘Open up Rudd's cell, Skipper,' said Hardcastle to the station officer, as the three men arrived in the front office.

‘Very good, sir.' The station officer seized a large bunch of keys and led the way into a dank passageway. He slid open the wicket of number three cell, peered in, and then unlocked the door.

The man calling himself Wilfred Rudd was stretched out with his hands behind his head, on the narrow wooden bench that did service as a bed. But he looked up in alarm at the sight of Sergeant Mooney and scrambled to his feet.

‘Aha, Donnelly, you idle son of a whore's Saturday night coupling on the kitchen table, we meet again,' said Mooney.

‘What's he doing here?' demanded the prisoner, addressing himself to Hardcastle.

‘Sergeant Mooney's come to tell us who you are,' said Hardcastle, and turned to the army sergeant. ‘Perhaps you'd be so good as to identify this man formally, Sergeant Mooney.'

‘That, sir, is Private Eric Donnelly, of the Dorsetshire Regiment, and a bloody disgrace to the old thirty-ninth of foot, so he is.' Mooney took a pace closer to Donnelly. ‘My only regret, laddie, is that I'll not be at the Tower of London one fine morning when they put a few rounds into you for cowardice and desertion in the face of the enemy.'