LITMIR.BIZ

       5

      Of all his war stories the one that George Whittam liked to retell most frequently was the story of Billy Renfrew, his first big case after the move from London. Billy Renfrew was seventy-two years old and lived alone in a semi-ruined cottage in the South Hams, as picturesque and uneventful a zone as you could wish to find. One morning in late summer the postman – making his first call at Billy’s house for more than a fortnight – rode up to Billy’s door and saw that it was open. He knocked, got no answer, pushed at the door and stepped inside. Then he saw Billy sitting on the floor of the hallway and a lump of Billy’s brain stuck on the wall beside him.

      A labourer all his life, Billy was by nobody’s standards a prosperous man, but like many people of his age he had accumulated a few items worth stealing. There was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece, a silver cup in the kitchen, a pair of mother-of-pearl cufflinks by the bed. But none of these had been taken. On the kitchen table was his wallet, with £20 still in it. All the signs were that Billy’s visitor had whacked him when he opened the door and then run off. There were no prints on the door except Billy’s, no clues except a few yards of indistinct bicycle tyre tracks from the gate to the door, which might or might not have had anything to do with it. Enquiries soon established that Billy had few friends and no known enemies, so George and his colleagues set about interviewing everyone who lived within a mile of the cottage, then everyone within two miles, three miles, till they’d spoken to every adult and juvenile inside a five-mile radius. And from all these interviews not a scrap of illuminating information was garnered. For the best part of half a year after the killing of Billy there was no suspect. So they went back and interviewed almost everyone again, beginning with the village nearest the cottage, working outwards, and in the end, sure enough, the stress fracture occurred.

      This individual was a builder-cum-plumber but business must have been bad because he was at home, fixing his van outside his garage, when George happened to drop by in the middle of the afternoon. ‘How’s it going?’ said George and he reintroduced himself, though straight away it was clear that he’d been remembered. The handyman delved around in the engine for a minute, wiped his hands on a rag, dropped the rag into the toolbox on the kerb. ‘Water pump,’ he explained, and in his eyes there was a hint that he was wondering why he’d been singled out for a repeat visit. They talked for a while about this and that: waterpumps, vans, motors. Within a minute the nervousness, never more than the slightest suggestion of unease, had gone entirely. And then, as the lad picked a spanner out of the toolbox, George looked down at the heap of pliers and drill bits and screwdrivers. The tools were all well used, smeared with oil, pitted with rust. But what attracted his attention was the hammer: the hammer was brand new. Not in itself incriminating, but George felt the dawning of suspicion, the rising of a truth moment, and the dawning grew stronger when he looked into the garage. Partly hidden behind lengths of skirting board and pipes, there was a bicycle. ‘Nice bike,’ George remarked, though it was battered and spattered and very far from nice. He established the make, pretended he was thinking of buying the very same model for his nephew. ‘Mind if I take a look?’ It was a blatant pretext, but what could be said except: ‘Help yourself’? Telling the cop to bugger off wouldn’t have made a good impression, would it? ‘Had it long?’ asked George, giving the bike a slow close scrutiny.

      The interviewee was busying himself under the bonnet, acting unconcerned. ‘Didn’t hear you,’ he shouted, so George asked it again. Our man claimed he’d bought the bike a couple of months ago, second-hand. This turned out to be true, but George didn’t believe him. Half the garages in England have a bike in them, but this one, for some reason, was suddenly emitting an aura of evidence.

      George took his time. He wasn’t looking for anything: he was just letting the man stew for a while, and when he was saying goodbye, a perfectly casual goodbye, he saw a shrinking in his eye and knew that this was the one. Another eight or nine hours of face work it took, but in the end our friend contradicted himself one time too often, and he owned up. From somewhere this numbskull had got hold of the idea that Billy Renfrew was some sort of miser, with thousands of pounds stashed in socks and jam jars all over the house. He’d meant to help himself to a bit of cash, that’s all, but Billy must have heard him gouging away at the lock because suddenly the door opened and there he was, effing and blinding, and there was no option but to dab him on the head with a hammer, was there?

      Be patient. That, in a nutshell, is the lesson to be learned from the case of Billy Renfrew. ‘Be patient. Let nothing be wasted on you,’ George Whittam would say to us. And: ‘Every piece of information adds something to the picture, even if you can’t see it at first.’ It gave George great pleasure to sound wise, and he was good at it. ‘Elimination is progress,’ he would tell us. ‘You’re always getting nearer if you don’t stay still. Nothing is a waste of time.’ This isn’t true. Sometimes, work that feels like a complete waste of time really is a complete waste of time. But it doesn’t matter that it’s not true. From the story of Billy Renfrew one could conclude that when it comes to solving a tricky homicide you can’t beat having a sixth sense. Should a sixth sense not feature in your armoury, you need a damned great stroke of luck. These pronouncements would be truer, but less useful for the maintenance of morale among the juniors.

      It was necessary to stoke morale at regular intervals. At the end of another long morning we had no useful information. We had heard about an incident at which Henry was present, that’s all. Around Christmas three years ago, in Topsham, there had been a

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