“Nobody except him and me. To my amazement, he swayed a little and started to sink down, as if his knees had given way. It was like watching a lift go down. He disappeared from view. The last thing I saw was the hand pressed against the glass. I expect there are fingerprints if you look.”
“And then?”
“I looked at the clock. It was twenty past nine. Sitting on my stool here I had the same view I always do, of those notices about ParcelForce and the postage rates. The man had disappeared from sight. To tell you the truth, I half believed I’d imagined it all. It’s a fear you live with when you run a post office, having to deal with an armed robber. I was tempted to unlock my door and have a look, but what if he was bluffing? So I stayed here and called 999.”
“Good move.”
The local pathologist, Dr Leggatt, arrived and didn’t take long with the stethoscope. “Calling the ambulance was optimistic,” he told us.
“Wasn’t me,” said Johnny Horgan. “I knew he’d croaked as soon as I saw him.”
“You can’t tell by looking.”
I said, “I checked for a pulse.”
“We all agree, then,” said the pathologist with just a hint of sarcasm. “This is a dead man.”
“But what of?” said Johnny Horgan.
Dr Leggatt answered curtly, “I’m a pathologist, inspector, not a psychic.”
“Heart?”
“Weren’t you listening?”
“He’s not a young man.”
“Do you know him, then?”
Fat chance. Johnny didn’t know anyone in the county. He was fresh from Sussex, or Suffolk, or somewhere. He turned to me. I’m the local guy. But I was trying not to look at the body. Green in more senses than one, I was.
I saw my boss wink at the pathologist as he said, “His first one.” His eyes returned to the corpse. “Fancy dropping dead in the middle of a hold-up.”
“It could happen to anyone.” Like most people in his line of work, Dr Leggatt had a fatalistic streak.
“Anyone stupid enough to hold up a post office.”
“Anyone under stress,” said Leggatt – and then asked Johnny with a deadpan look, “Do you sleep well?”
The DI didn’t respond.
The doctor must have felt he had the high ground now, because he put some sharp questions to us about the conduct of the case. “Have the scene of crime lads finished?”
“All done,” said Johnny.
“Pockets?”
“He wasn’t carrying his calling card, if that’s what you mean.”
“What’s the gun?”
“Gun? That’s no gun,” said Johnny, glad of the chance to get one back. “It’s a toy. A plastic replica.” He turned to the postmistress, who up to now had preferred to remain on her side of the counter. “Did you know the man, Miss Marshall?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“But you told us-”
“Without the mask, I mean.”
“You’d better come round here and look.”
Miss Marshall unlocked, emerged from the serving area and took a long squint at the body. She was less troubled by the sight of death than me. “He’s a stranger to me. And I didn’t know it was a toy gun, either.”
“You were very brave,” Johnny told her, and muttered in an aside to Dr Leggatt and me, “Silly old cow.”
He went on to say more loudly that he’d like her to come to the police station and make a statement.
“What did you call her?” Leggatt asked, after she had been escorted to the police car.
“I meant it,” said Johnny. “She might have had her stupid head blown away for the sake of Post Office Counters Limited.”
Leggatt gave Johnny a look that was not too admiring. “What happened to good citizenship, then? Some of you coppers are born cynics. You’ve no idea what it takes for a woman to stand up to a gunman.”
“Have you?” Johnny chanced it.
“As it happens, yes. My sister stood up to one – and didn’t get much thanks from you people. You don’t know how often Miss Marshall will wake up screaming, reliving what happened this morning.”
“Hold on, doc,” said Johnny. “I said she was brave.”
The pathologist didn’t prolong it. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get this body to the mortuary.”
“Yes, and we’ve got to find his next of kin,” said Johnny.
When he said “we”, he meant me. He’d already decided there wasn’t anything in it for him.
I may be squeamish with dead bodies, but I’m fearless with the living, especially blondes. It was the day after the hold-up and I’d come to a flat in Salisbury, the home of a recently released prisoner. Jack Soames had served four years in Portland for armed robbery of a building society. Check your form runners first.
The chick at the door said he wasn’t in.
“Any idea where he is?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday morning. What’s up?”
Bra-less and quivering under a thin T-shirt, she looked far too tasty to be shacking up with a middle-aged robber. But I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Are you a close friend of his, miss?”
She made a little sound of impatience. “What do you think?”
“What’s your name?”
“Zara.”
“And you spent last night alone, Zara?”
“That’s my business.”
“Jack wasn’t here?”
She nodded.
“When he went out yesterday morning, did he say where he was going?”
“I’m his crumpet, not his ma.”
I smiled at that. “He could still treat you like a human being.”
“Jack’s all right,” said Zara. “I’ve got no complaints.”
Don’t count on it, I thought, sleeping with an ex-con.
Zara said anxiously, “He hasn’t had an accident, has he?”
“Does he carry a gun?”
“What?”
