Full Fury by Roger Ormerod

untried Chief Inspector, both hanging on the discovery or otherwise of an automatic pistol.
    On the Thursday Crowshaw tried again. The farm was swarming with newsmen and cameramen. Crowshaw cursed them, and kept them at a distance. He worked to the same pattern as before, each man assigned a specific area, but with forty men this time and a clear sky above them. This time they worked slower. Crowshaw sat in the back of the Austin Cambridge, and waited. I sat in the front and waited, because I’d had my go.
    At two-thirty on that first day there was a shout. The sergeant came running. ‘In the cow byre,’ he panted. ‘By God, you were right.’
    Crowshaw looked at the slimy gun in Freer’s hand.
    ‘ I was right.’
    We drove away at once, leaving Freer to clear up. They had heard at HQ, and they swarmed round the car, slapping his shoulders as he climbed out. ‘By heaven, you must feel good.’
    Thirteen years later he admitted that in fact he felt terrible.
    We had long since finished the sandwiches and the tea.
    ‘If the second gun had been found as soon as the first,’ said Crowshaw, ‘Gaines might have stood a chance.’
    It was honest of him to say so. I nodded.
    ‘ I hadn’t wanted all the publicity,’ he explained. ‘But when somebody takes a set of facts and from them deduces an expected result, and that result crops up in a blaze of publicity, then it’s apt to weigh heavily.’
    ‘ But it’s hardly something I can take to his widow,’ I said. ‘You’re saying he may have got away with something less? Justification… that sort of thing.’
    We were tossing it around, two ex-policemen reminiscing, and me hoping he’d take the tray back so that I could turn that magazine over. But he didn’t. He got to his feet.
    ‘ I’m sorry it’s been such a waste of your time.’
    ‘ Not at all.’ I turned at the door. ‘One thing…’
    ‘ Yes?’
    ‘ Why didn’t you trace back the second gun?’
    He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hardly necessary, was it?’ He smiled. The pupils of his eyes had narrowed to pin-points, but he wasn’t looking into the sun.
    I left him. He didn’t come round the house with me, so I got a look at the dark shape in the barn. It was an oldish Jaguar, dark blue, so battered he might have been using it as a tractor.
    While I was at it, I took a look in the cow byre, where they’d found the second gun. Not much had been done to clear the floor of stale mud and straw and manure, and it was still sloppy from a leak in the roof. It was dark in there.
    I got back in the Porsche and in a couple of miles I was feeling a bit more relaxed. But there was still an uneasy prickling in the back of my neck. Crowshaw had calmly and deliberately told me more than he needed to have done.
    It was ten to four when I reached Elsa’s.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    She’d got tea laid on, with tomato sandwiches and toasted teacake. I didn’t mention I’d already had tomato sandwiches. I was feeling a bit edgy. But Elsa bubbled and fluttered. She was excited, though why she should get all worked up about marrying Dave Mallin I couldn’t understand. Looking at her, I could see that Dave Mallin had every reason to be excited. But I wasn’t. As I say, I was edgy.
    Then afterwards we played some records, and things got round to the point where I’d either have to stay the night or leave there and then.
    ‘ We’re getting married on Friday,’ she said. ‘Da… vid!’
    Did I say I wasn’t excited?
    I got back to my place about eleven, and don’t remember climbing the stairs, and at ten the next morning I was in Wolverhampton, looking for somewhere to park. I found a car park by the market and walked up from there to the square, and found Fiston & Greene in a little cul-de-sac by the church. Mr Greene would see me if I’d wait a minute. He saw me in ten.
    He had a bright, shining, modern office, when I’d expected something fusty. Greene was himself fusty, but he was trying to do something about it.