“Yeah, yeah, of course. Knew you’d be in. Hoped to get the place up and running properly before you did. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been doing much of anything since he were found.” Derek stood. Tall and thin, with thick dark eyebrows above his brown eyes. His hairline had worked its way backwards so that only a thin ring of almost black clung to the sides of his head. “What did you say your name was?”
“Walsh,” Joseph repeated. “Sergeant.”
“Oh yeah, well we all had ranks once, back before you were walking. I made Second Lieutenant, but then of course, it was all done and dusted before I could go further.” Derek wiped his hands together, attempting to remove the coal dust from them, but only succeeding in creating a small cloud that sank slowly to the floor.
“Very good, sir.” Joseph wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to say to that. He wasn’t even sure what a Second Lieutenant was. “When it’s convenient, we’re going to need a list of who was here last night.”
“A list?” Derek sounded as if he couldn’t even begin to understand why a list would be necessary.
“Yes. We need to interview everyone. Get their stories. Work out what happened,” Joseph said patiently, wondering if he hadn’t explained himself clearly.
“Oh, right.” Derek turned and walked over to a small desk that took up a position near to the corner of the room furthest from the door. He opened a drawer, pulling out a large red hard-covered notebook. “Anyone here should have signed in and out. Of course, we can check their timecards as well. I can’t imagine any of our lot being bright enough to work out that they shouldn’t punch in if they’re going to do a murder.”
He passed the notebook to Joseph who took it and opened it. He flicked through to the last page, scanning quickly over the names. There weren’t many. A skeleton crew for the night shift.
“You’re not interviewing them during work hours.” It should have been a question, but Derek tried to make that a fact.
“Thank you.” Derek’s refusal caught him off guard. He didn’t know what to say. In the end, he opted not to argue. Someone more forceful would make that point in due course. “This is really useful. Where might I find the timecards?”
“Clocking in and out is down in the shed near the gate. I’d have it much nearer the actual warehouses. Get all the time out of them, not have them taking the proverbial, sauntering through the yard on their way in and out,” Derek said as he sat behind his desk.
The heat began to rise in the room as the coal in the burner began to catch. Joseph wished he could stay inside a little longer.
“You don’t sound like you particularly like the people who work for you?” he asked.
“I don’t. But I don’t dislike them enough to kill them.”
“And were you here last night?”
“I was. Didn’t get out of here until ten. We had issues with one of the cranes. Meant we were running behind.”
“Was Gerald Trainer involved with that?”
“The crane? No, not his area. Gerald was a storeman over in the east warehouse. It was his job to know where everything was or wasn’t. Kept his sort away from the cranes.”
“His sort?”
“Some people haven’t got the natural faculties to use that sort of equipment. Not their fault, of course, he just came from a different part of the world. Didn’t grow up with it. Didn’t go off to fight with it. Sat on a beach then came over to be one of us long after we needed them. Not that I blame them. Given the chance, I’d have done the same.”
“Thanks, Mr Nadderley, that will be all for now.”
“You’re welcome.”
*
Joseph let himself out, then found the shed as instructed. The punch clock sat in the middle of the far wall of an open-ended wooden structure, little more than four feet square and tall enough for most men to stand inside without crouching. Rows of cards sat in small pockets on the wall, all of which had been punched where people had entered and exited during their shift. No obvious central record of the data down here. Probably the job of the payroll clerk at the end of the week as he prepared the workers’ pay packets. He took out his notebook and began to take down the times in and out for each worker on the day of the crime. Then, second-guessing himself, he went back to the start, rewriting the times once more, as well as for the days on either side of the murder.
With the list finally complete, he walked back to where Ray stood sentry-like as two orderlies loaded Gerald Trainer’s body onto a stretcher.
“Get anything?” Ray didn’t even look at Joseph as he stood next to him, his gaze fixed on Gerald Trainer’s body. Joseph had seen him do this before, completely transfixing on the deceased. Maybe to motivate himself to find justice for them. Joseph didn’t know. Had never asked.
“Clocking-in-and-out times for the day of the murder as well as the days either side.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“I think the foreman here might have a problem with some of the people who work for him.”
“Which ones?”
“The foreign ones. I think he might have a problem with his Black workers.”
“Huh. Right. I bet he won’t be the only one, though.”
“No, sir,” Joseph sighed.
3.
They started the interviews that morning. Derek had protested but Ray had insisted and once Ray had his mind set on something, someone like Derek Nadderley wasn’t going to have the character to stop him.
“This is official police business,” he’d pointed out firmly. “I only want to walk out of here with one person in cuffs and that’s the fizzer who killed your colleague. But if I have to, I’ll make an exception for anyone who decides to obstruct me from carrying out Her Majesty’s justice.”
Her Majesty’s feelings on the matter were something Ray seemed to know a lot about. At the very least he had an uncanny knack of knowing who would be swayed by the suggestion of the monarch. Derek had clearly struck him as a patriot and royalist. Whether it had been that which had subdued him or the narrowing of Ray’s eyes as he leaned in making his point, Joseph couldn’t be completely sure, but they certainly made for an effective one-two combination.
Ray and Joseph had set themselves up in Derek’s office. In return, Derek had requested to go first, insisting his absence would result in the workers slacking, and that it was better for them to miss the start than have their day cut in two and lose momentum completely. He didn’t hide that he found the whole thing a massive impediment to his number-one priority: the operation of the dockyard.
The fire which Derek had started earlier had by now warmed the room to the point where both Ray and Joseph had removed their coats. Joseph had kept his suit jacket on, but Ray had taken his off, before rolling up his shirtsleeves to show his thick forearms. A pair of braces reached up to his shoulders helping to frame his physique. He didn’t sit. Just paced slowly, prowling around the room. Witness or suspect, it didn’t matter. Ray was an ecumenical abuser. But Joseph had to admit it was effective. It wiped people of their bravado or spurred them on to ensure they didn’t leave a single detail out. People didn’t want to let Ray Cribbs down. Derek shuffled in the seat just slightly towards Joseph’s side of the room as he sat down opposite, no table between them, just three men around a fire, as if ready to recount stories to each other.
Joseph remained seated. His thin arms and narrow shoulders stayed hidden inside his jacket. He pulled out his notebook and began to take notes. A shorthand record of almost every word, written frenetically and in a way that only he could decipher. Not just words either. Actions. Tone. How people sat. Everything that they presented to him, he wanted to write down because then he couldn’t miss anything. You never knew what would be important. What might break the case open. He couldn’t bear the thought of missing anything. And so, he wrote. The notes would be typed up later into a format that anyone could understand. Not that many people ever read them. Ray had taken a passing interest when they first started working together, but that had faded. They were too in-depth, he’d said. He’d tried to get Joseph to rein it in a bit. For his part, Joseph had attempted to do as Ray asked. But that first interview with a witness where he hadn’t taken notes in the same style had been unbearable. What if he forgot something? Ten minutes into it, with a cold sweat trickling down his back, the pad had been taken out and the notes were being taken. Ray had never mentioned it again.
