Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 120, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 733 & 734, September/October 2002

The Passenger by Peter Turnbull

“What makes a good police procedural work — and what makes so many inferior ones fail — is not the procedural details themselves but the way the author constructs the characters. Since procedurals rely heavily on dialogue, the speakers must be compelling, and the things they say must be worth hearing. On both counts, Turnbull succeeds completely,” said a recent Booklist review of the Turnbull novel Fear of Drowning. In this new story we see that too.

Ray Sussock found, again, that there is as much sadness and poignancy surrounding the murder of an elderly person as there is in the murder of a young person. Life taken prematurely, before its time, is always a tragedy. He had noticed this before in his career, and now he noticed it again. In this case the victim, for “victim” was the only word, was a woman who seemed to have been in her sixties when she had breathed her last. She had been found in a stand of shrubs in the grounds of Gartnavel General Infirmary, close to a footpath. She had been found early on a June morning by a man who entered the shrubs to retrieve his dog, who wouldn’t come when he called him. He had slipped the lead gently round his dog’s collar and tugged it away from the corpse, which he couldn’t help but look at, stare at with a horrific fascination, but he tore himself away and walked to the nearest public telephone.

Papa Delta Foxtrot had attended. The man told the crew what he had found and where he had found it. P.C.s Wanless and Piper had walked the pathway, with the tall wall to their left, beyond which lay the disused railway line, and the green sward to their right which led up to the hospital — tall, concrete, glass, very late-twentieth-century by its design. The report confirmed, Wanless and Piper radioed to P Division and requested C.I.D. attendance and Ray Sussock, by then, seven-thirty A.M., was fully awake following his six A.M. start. In his turn he attended, viewed the corpse, which by then was discreetly beneath a sheet of plastic, and the immediate area cordoned off by a blue and white police tape which had been tied to the branches of the shrubs about three feet from the ground. “Dead,” he said to Wanless. “As you say.” He asked Wanless to radio for the attendance of the police surgeon.

“Dead,” said Dr. Chan, after he, in turn, had viewed the corpse. “A formality in this case, Mr. Sussock.”

“I thought you’d say that, sir.” Sussock felt the heat of the rising sun on his face and turned away from the glare. “But procedure has to be followed.”

“Of course.”

“How long dead, would you say?”

“Oh, a long time.” Chan grinned. “We all are, Mr. Sussock, we’re all a long time dead.”

Sussock nodded. “Point to you.”

“But in this case, as you can see for yourself, not long at all. A few hours. It wasn’t cold last night, didn’t rain.... I’d say about... well, less than ten hours. But that’s off the record. As you know, I can only confirm death, and I do so at 08:45, life extinct.”

“08:45, life is extinct. Thank you, sir.”

“I’d like to remain at the locus, show an interest when the pathologist arrives, but I have a sudden death... Partick.”

“Not too far, then.”

“No... and just when I’m in the mood for a long drive. Ah, well.”

Chan smiled and nodded and walked briskly away.

Sussock turned to Wanless and asked him to call P Division to confirm a suspicious death and request the attendance of the pathologist. He then asked who had found the body.

“Gentleman by the wall, sir.” Wanless indicated a pale-looking young man who stood with his spaniel beneath the old wall which divided the grounds of the hospital from the old railway cutting. Sussock approached him. “Morning, sir. You found her?”

“Aye.” The man nodded. He avoided eye contact. Sussock put him in his early twenties, but he had the self-important body language and attitude of one twice his years — so thought the detective sergeant. “Well, the dog did.”

“That’s happened before. Often.”

“I should have made myself scarce. I should have cleared the pitch... gone offski... let someone else report it.”

“But you didn’t, did you? Sorry, your name is...?”

“I told the other officer.”

“Tell me.”

“Bowman.” He spelt his name for Sussock.

“Live close by?”

“Those houses.” Bowman nodded to the neat houses beyond the railway line. Sussock followed his gaze as an orange commuter train entered Hyndland Railway Station with many faces turned towards Sussock, their attention being drawn by the police activity.

“You didn’t see anything or anybody acting suspiciously?”

“A thing acting suspiciously?” Bowman leered at Sussock.

“You know what I mean.”

“No... no, I didn’t.” He turned away from Sussock, who thought him a man who clearly didn’t care for the police. “I went into the bushes to see why the dog wouldn’t come when I called... I phoned the three nines... I was told to wait at the locus. I don’t know what a locus is, so I waited by the phone box.”

“The locus is the crime scene.”

“I see. So I told the cop where to find the body and he told me to wait. I can’t tell you anything else.”

“All right. Thank you, Mr. Bowman. We know where to contact you if we need to.”

“For this I waited?”

“Yes. Again, thanks.”

That morning Dr. Reynolds had arrived at his offices at 8:30 A.M., settled down, coffee in hand, and began to read over reports that Noreen had typed for him the day previous. As he had come to expect of Noreen, frail and sickly, there were a number of typos, largely, he thought, due to the large quantities of colourless liquid she poured down her neck, usually commencing at lunchtime. She declined his advice that if she must drink, she should perhaps try red wine because of the aversion therapy the amount of impurities would cause; she stuck to Smirnoff, got drunk, and suffered no ill effects because of the purity of the drink. He had completed the reading of the second report when the phone on his desk warbled softly. He picked it up. “Reynolds,” he said, one eye still on the report. He listened and then said, “On my way.” Just fifteen minutes later he turned his silver Volvo off Great Western Road and parked it under the shade of the trees outside Carriages restaurant. The police officers and the blue and white tape, which he could clearly see some few hundred yards distant, told him where the locus was. He walked there. “Mr. Sussock,” he said warmly when within appropriate distance.

“Morning, sir.” Sussock nodded and smiled at the tall, silver-haired pathologist. “Business for you over here, sir.”

“As I see,” Reynolds said, falling in with Sussock as the two men walked side by side towards the police tape.

“Elderly female.” Sussock held up the tape as he and Reynolds bent down and slid beneath it. “About sixty.”

“That’s not elderly.” Reynolds grinned. “That’s not elderly at all.”

“You don’t know how happy I am that you said that, sir.” He liked Dr. Reynolds, he found him to be a good-humoured, professional man, but not at all aloof, quite ready to pass the time of day with humble detective sergeants, for instance. The two men knelt beside the black plastic sheet as Sussock peeled it back to reveal the head and shoulders.

“She would have been quite a head-turner in her youth,” Reynolds said, noting the high cheekbones, the smooth, well-balanced face. Now, at the time of her death, she had distinguished silver hair, silver like Reynolds’s. But definitely silver, not grey. “But dead, as you say, as Dr. Chan pronounced. As a doornail, in fact. I’ll take ground and air temperature and a rectal temperature. Can you rig up a screen, please? Rolling over a deceased lady and divesting her of her lower garments is best done behind a screen.”

Sussock stood. “PC Wanless! Screen, please.”

“Thanks,” said Reynolds, placing a thermometer in the soil. “I’ll fix time of death as close as I can, but I can tell you she was killed only a few hours ago... yesterday evening, perhaps... probably by a blow to the skull, see the blood in the hair, just a little.” Reynolds placed his fingers in the scalp, close to the blood. “Distinct bruising to the skull, most blood would have gone inside... subdural hemorrhage will be my finding... the price of a pint on it.”

“Banged over the head?”

“In a few words, yes. And she wasn’t killed here.”

“No?”

“No. The body’s been laid out, you see. It’s too neat... she wasn’t banged over the head and left here. She was murdered somewhere else and her body was dumped here, but neatly so. And I would also say that the murder site is close at hand. She’s been left neatly but it’s still panic dumping. Had the murderer kept his head or her head...”

“Or their heads.”

“Indeed... and taken the body out to a remote place in the Highlands, it probably would never have been discovered.”

“Makes sense, sir,” Sussock conceded. Privately he felt it made very good sense, very good sense indeed. He glanced about him, the small houses of Hyndland near the station, larger houses beyond... and in the other direction, the mansions of Great Western Road, built by the Victorian shipping magnates and tobacco lords. “Makes sense,” he repeated, glancing up at the sun in a cloudless sky. It was, he thought, a very fine morning for the West of Scotland, often a place of low cloud and drizzle. There they were: he and the pathologist and two uniformed officers, and a deceased person of the female sex. It was not, though, a fine morning for her.

Reynolds stood after taking the rectal temperature. “There’s little more that I can do here.” He noted the temperature reading on a notepad. “If you’ll arrange to have the deceased conveyed to the G.K.I., I’ll commence the postmortem immediately. You’ll get the mortuary van down here without difficulty. The ground’s baked hard, as hard as concrete, which is probably how the perpetrator brought the body here from Great Western Road.”

“Probably is. So as well as living locally, he or she, or they, have access to a motor vehicle.”

“Oh, I think so.” Reynolds pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose you have come across anything as useful as a handbag, for identification purposes, I mean?”

“’Fraid not, sir. We could do with knowing who she is as well.”

“Imagine you could. Probably more than I could. Will you be representing the police at the P.M.?”

Sussock said that yes, for his sins, he would be.

The next time Sussock saw the woman she was lying on a stainless-steel table, naked save for a starched white towel which had been draped over her coyly termed, Sussock thought, “private parts.” Yet she looked different, oh so different, for now, in place of a pleasant, well-balanced face, the skin that covered the front of her skull had been pulled down and lay in folds about her eyes. Her cheeks seemed fuller and bruised, her lips swollen. Only her chin remained as Sussock had first seen it. The top of the skull had been exposed and Reynolds, looking pleased with himself, said, “Just as I thought.”

“A fractured skull?” Sussock said.

“Indeed.”

“A single blow?” Sussock glanced at the mortuary assistant, a man of slight build and slicked-back hair, and noted as he had on previous occasions an unpleasant gleam in the man’s eyes. Sussock thought that he looked at the deceased woman like a hungry man might look at a meal.

“Just one blow,” Reynolds confirmed, “but it was quite sufficient to send her into the hereafter. She was struck from behind... The implement had, has, a linear quality to it... slender and unyielding.”

“A poker?”

“That sort of thing. Now of the deceased herself. She appears to be about sixty to sixty-five years of age, well nourished... She wears a wedding ring... She’s used to a gentle life, soft hands, clean nails. She has a distinct birthmark on the inside of her left thigh... about two inches across.”

“Looks like Australia,” Sussock said.

“Yes... on its side,” Reynolds replied. “I see what you mean. In life she would have been five feet eight inches tall, tall for a woman, especially a woman from the West of Scotland. You know someone, somewhere, will be wondering where on earth she is.”

“I see, sir. Just let me get the ‘mis per’ pad. Take a few details. Right... your name, please, sir.”

“Tamm, Lionel Tamm.”

“Address.”

“Sixty-three, Gosport Crescent.”

“That’s here in Southampton?”

“Yes.”

“When did you last see your wife, sir?”

“Three days ago... no... four days ago.”

“You didn’t report her missing earlier?”

“She hasn’t been missing earlier.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Four days ago she travelled to Edinburgh to look up her brother. She agreed to phone me at ten each evening... It’s been the nature of our marriage that we always keep each other informed of our whereabouts. She didn’t phone last night. I phoned her hotel this morning, and they have confirmed that she didn’t return yesterday. Her bed hasn’t been slept in, yet her belongings are still in the room. I know my wife... after thirty-five years of marriage I ought to. The only reason she hasn’t phoned is because she’s in some form of difficulty.”

“Very good, sir. We’ll notify the Scottish Office. What’s your wife’s name?”

“Paula Tamm.”

“She is how old?”

“Sixty-two.”

“Does she have any distinguishing marks... any tattoos?”

“Tattoos!”

“Or a birthmark?”

“She has a birthmark on the inside of her left thigh, about two or three inches across.”

“How tall is your wife?”

“Five feet eight inches, slim build... silver hair.”

“She went to Edinburgh, you say?”

“Yes, to look up her brother, Mr. Pudeski. They’ve been estranged for twenty years now and Paula said to me that the whole business is a nonsense... they have to start speaking to each other while they still can. She went to his last known address, Twenty-six Hillfoot Terrace, New Town, Edinburgh. I fully supported her. They are brother and sister, only the two of them, both in their sixties, and for a full third of their lives they haven’t spoken to each other. Nonsense, as she says. She didn’t notify him that she was coming, intended to just arrive at his door. She wasn’t going to give him a chance to avoid her. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I have a recent photograph... just here in my wallet.”

Fabian Donoghue strolled down the C.I.D. corridor, pulling contentedly on his pipe, leaving a soft blue haze of sweet-smelling smoke behind him. He entered the D.C.s’ room and as he did so, he glimpsed Montgomerie rapidly removing his feet from the top of his desk. “Don’t want to disturb you, Montgomerie, but I want you and Richard King... Where is he?”

“Boys’ room, sir.”

“I see. I want you to have a look at this, it’s a mis per faxed to all forces from the Scottish Office, it fits to a T the code four one that Ray Sussock attended this A.M.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Take a trip to Edinburgh, will you? Go to the brother’s address. See what you see, find what you find, if you pick up a trail, follow it.”

King and Montgomerie drove to Edinburgh, one hour on the M8, eastbound. A gentle drive, a time for a chat about this and that, mostly about personalities in P Division. They went to the New Town, a graceful curve of Georgian terraces and formal gardens, baking in the sun. They located Hillfoot Terrace, number Twenty-six, and climbed the wide common stair. Four storeys, four flats, none had “Pudeski” on the nameplate. King glanced at Montgomerie, who said, “Go for it.” King pressed the doorbell at the top-storey flat, which had “Sinclair” on the nameplate. It was a simple nameplate, black letters on a pearl-grey background. One bell rang a simple ding-dong ring. Not for the New Town of Edinburgh are nameplates of gold letters on fancy tartan backgrounds, and doorbells which, when pressed, play “The Flower of Scotland.” Such trinkets, the cops had found, belong to the housing schemes.

The door was opened slowly but positively, clearly on the terms of the occupier, who revealed herself to be a tall, stately-looking woman.

“Yes?” she said.

“Police.” King flashed his ID.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, madam, but we were given this stair number as the address of Mr. Pudeski.”

“Flat below. He moved out a year or two ago.” And the door was shut.

The flat below had “Devlin” on the simple nameplate and a bell with a simple buzzerlike ring. Again the door was opened clearly on the terms of the occupier who, on this occasion, was a short, slightly overweight man, bald, spectacles, a ready smile... not at all as haughty as his upstairs neighbour.

“Sorry to bother you, sir.” King flashed his ID. “But we’re making enquiries into a Mr. Pudeski. We believe that he used to live here?”

“He did. I bought the flat from him two and a half years ago, a bit more, in fact... nearer three now.”

“You don’t have a forwarding address, by any chance?”

“I don’t. He was a private person. Very little mail came for him. I used to drop it in at the estate agents’ and they forwarded it to his solicitor. Just as I told the lady who called the other day.”

“A lady?”

“In her sixties... said that she was his sister, which I found surprising. She was a tall lady, had an honesty about her, a warmth. I met Mr. Pudeski just the once when I viewed the flat before offering for it. I remember him being a small man, about five feet nothing, slight, avoided eye contact, shifty sort of guy. All that he’d tell me was that he’d taken retirement and was leaving Edinburgh to live out his life in new pastures. He said that, but he didn’t seem to be of the manner of a professional man, more like a street cleaner than an accountant or whatever profession. But the flat was sound and the price very reasonable and that’s all I was interested in.”

“That I can understand. Which estate agents did you use, sir?”

“White and Fraser. The branch on Princess Street.”

“Thanks.”

“You could also try the Polish Club. When I moved in I received a few phone calls from people who claimed to be his friends from the Polish Club and who seemed surprised that he’d left town... seemed surprised that he had disappeared so completely. The club is on the edge of the New Town, Craignuek Road... right at the bottom of the stair and just keep going.”

The woman had a pleasing view from her office window, Princess Gardens, the Castle. “We just forwarded his mail to Batesons.”

“The famous Batesons?” King smiled. “Scotland’s largest firm of solicitors?”

“One in every town.”

“More than one office in many cases.”

“We dealt with the office in Rose Street in respect of Mr. Pudeski’s sale. If memory serves, the interested solicitor was a Mr. Golightly.”

The woman had stainless-steel spectacles and wore a pinstriped suit in her cramped office. There was a knock on the door and a young secretary entered and handed her a file. “Thank you, Mary,” said the woman. Then to King and Montgomerie she said, “This is the file in respect of Mr. Pudeski’s conveyancing. It was handled by a Mr. Golightly, who left to head up our new office in Hawick. But he wouldn’t be able to tell you anything that isn’t in the file.”

“Would Mr. Pudeski ever have come to the office?”

“Once. To sign forms. So it says here. After that, all contact was by phone or post.”

“Where did he move to?”

“He went to... One twenty-three Fintry Place, Hyndland.”

“Hyndland? Glasgow?”

“Yes... why? Is that significant?”

“It could very well be. The dead woman you may have read about or heard about already, found this morning.”

“Yes?”

“We believe she was Mr. Pudeski’s sister,” said King.

“Her body was found in Hyndland,” added Montgomerie.

“Well... he traded down. The house in Hyndland was purchased for less than half the value of his flat in Edinburgh, but that’s not at all unusual. Often retiring people buy a smaller house and release some money for themselves.”

At the Polish Club, the steward told King and Montgomerie that the best person to ask about Mr. Pudeski was Franz Bockner, whose address was back in the New Town, very close to Pudeski’s old address.

“Joseph just stopped calling on me,” Franz Bockner wheezed from his wheelchair. His house smelled like a hospital. “Joseph always called on me, twice a week, ever since I had my accident, twice a week he called... then he stopped coming. People at the club said he’d stopped attending... they said he’s sold his house and moved to Glasgow. Joseph wouldn’t do that... he hated Glasgow... loved Edinburgh... hated Glasgow. Would you reach into that drawer?”

“This one?” King pointed to a drawer in a dark-stained cupboard.

“Yes... there’s a photograph.”

King extracted a framed photograph of a group of people on a lawn. He handed it to Bockner.

“Happier times,” Bockner sighed. “It was the wedding of the steward’s daughter. This is Joseph Pudeski.” He pointed to a tall, distinguished-looking man in the centre of the group.

“That’s Mr. Pudeski!” King showed Montgomerie.

Montgomerie scanned the people in the photograph. His eye lighted upon a small man with piercing eyes. “Who’s that?”

“Oh,” Bockner groaned, “one of life’s passengers. Fellow by the name of Klein, Franz Klein. Always borrowing money, calling on people at mealtimes... even running errands, childlike, for a pound’s reward, provided you didn’t count the change too closely. He latched onto Joseph Pudeski. Joseph was just too kind to reject him. You’ll know Klein... he’s got a police record.”

“Really?”

“Petty theft. We didn’t like him belonging to the club... he didn’t give Poland or the Poles a good name.”

King and Montgomerie returned to P Division Police Station, Charing Cross, Glasgow, situated where Sauchiehall Street crosses the M8, just across the motorway’s canyon from the graceful redbrick curve of Charing Cross Mansions. They signed in and checked their pigeonholes and then went upstairs to the C.I.D. corridor, side by side, two steps at a time. In the D.C.s’ room, Montgomerie peeled off his jacket and sat in his chair with his feet on his desk and hid behind the morning’s copy of the Glasgow Herald. King walked along the corridor to Donoghue’s room and finding an “In Conference” sign on the door, returned to the detective constables’ room, slid into his chair, picked up the phone, and punched a four-figure internal number. “Collator? Name of Klein... Franz Klein.... No numbers, but middle-aged... last address would be in Edinburgh... Thanks.” He replaced the phone and looked across the floor to Montgomerie’s feet protruding from beneath the broadsheet. “Would you care for a cup of coffee, Malcolm?”

“Lovely.” Montgomerie grinned from behind the newspaper.

“Only I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself, have to take time off with injuries sustained at work.”

“Too kind of you, my man, too kind.”

King, smiling, made coffee for both himself and Montgomerie. When the coffee was still hot but just drinkable, the collator tapped on the D.C.s’ room door and stepped inside. He was young, fresh-faced, enthusiastic. “Mr. King?”

“Yes?”

“File on Franz Klein, sir.”

King read the file. Franz Klein, sixty-three years of age, lived in the tough Edinburgh scheme of Wester Hailes and as Mr. Bockner had indicated, he had a string of convictions for petty theft. King glanced out of the window at Charing Cross Mansions, at that moment glowing red in the late afternoon sun. He pondered Wester Hailes, and he pondered the New Town — both in Edinburgh but one was chalk, the other cheese; one was black, the other white. Klein fitted the description of the outgoing owner of a prestigious flat in the New Town, yet his last known address was in Wester Hailes: needle city. “Time for a home visit, Malcolm.”

“Thought you’d say that.” Montgomerie folded the newspaper. He glanced up at the clock on the wall: 18:30. “You know, with luck, we’ll have this one cracked this shift.”

“What’s this ‘we’?”

At the uniform bar Montgomerie and King looked up the voter’s roll for Hyndland. 123 Fintry Place was occupied by one Joseph Pudeski.

“It’s not, you know,” said King. “It’s occupied by one Franz Klein.”

“And he’ll fold when we confront him.”

“You reckon?”

“Yeah, I reckon. Poles are Catholics. The guilt thing cuts deep.”

“That’s your observation, is it?”

“That’s my observation,” said Montgomerie.

The house which was 123 Fintry Place, Hyndland, revealed itself to be a recently built, neat, semi-detached house, surrounded by a well-tended garden, with a small car in the driveway. King pressed the bell. Klein answered the door, for it was Klein by the photograph Bockner had shown them, but King said, “Mr. Pudeski?”

“Yes?”

“Or should we say Klein?” asked Montgomerie.

The man’s face fell off. Both cops had heard the expression, but they were young men, both in their twenties, and this was the first time that they had seen the phenomenon. It was a combination of many things, a relaxing of the muscle tone, an opening of the mouth, a sagging forward of the head on the shoulders, all of which made up the movement which could only be described as the man’s face falling off Klein turned and walked into his house; King and Montgomerie followed. Klein entered the living room of his house and sank into an armchair. King and Montgomerie stood before him.

“This has been the only place I’ve ever felt happy” he said. “My nice little house, just me.”

“What happened?” King asked softly, sensing that Montgomerie had been correct about Klein “folding” when confronted.

“She ruined it... I never knew he had a sister. I thought he was by himself, like me... two old Poles... I didn’t plan it, the opportunity happened.”

“The opportunity?”

“To take over his life. I’ve never had anything, you see. We went walking one day... midweek... up in the Pentland Hills above Edinburgh. I was ahead of him and I looked round and he was lying on the ground. I went back and he was dead... must have been a heart attack... There was no one about... no one for miles. The thought came to me: He didn’t need his life anymore, why shouldn’t I have it? His pension was paid into his bank account, all I had to do was take over his life. The only problem was his neighbours, but he didn’t have a lot to do with them... you know, New Town folk... It was just a question of giving the impression that the flat was occupied... burn the lights, play the radio... The credit card was a problem, so I phoned the bank, telling them that I was Joseph Pudeski, that I’d lost the card, could they cancel it and send a new one... which they did with a note of the PIN number. Then I went to the solicitors, I chose a big firm so I wouldn’t be known personally, just went the once and asked them to act for me to sell Joseph’s flat, signed the form in Joseph’s name.”

“And then you were Joseph Pudeski?”

“Yes. Sold the flat cheaply for a quick sale, moved here... I’ve been Joseph Pudeski for nearly three years... living off Joseph’s pension. Why not? I’ve had a hard life... no chances at all.”

“Where’s his body?”

“Hidden under some rubble in the Pentlands. He fell close to a hollow in the ground. Rolled him in it after I’d taken his wallet and car keys, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Did everything right, notified the driving-licence people in Swansea of my change of address... everything. Then there was the happy time.... A nice house to live in, and money in the bank and a pension every month. Then she knocked on my door. I never knew he had a sister. How did she find me?”

“Same way we did, I expect. It wasn’t difficult.”

“She realised what had happened. Started to scream. She turned to leave... I keep a golf club in case of burglars. At night I pushed her body into the car... dumped her near here.... If I’d kept my head, took her out to the hills... or maybe here in the garden...”

“But you didn’t. Get your jacket, Mr. Klein.”