The Attraction of Crime
by Mike Rogers
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
A pair of boots clattered up, and a voice that was trying to whisper but failing said, “He’s dead, sir.”
“Get Whitaker and Jones and deal with the gentleman on the ground,” said the Superintendent.
“Take good care of his coat,” said Armleigh.
“Aye, Jack,” said Turner, “I’d noticed that he was a bit overdressed.”
There was an ambulance squeal from the bridge. It rose suddenly, then died away like an abandoned set of bagpipes.
“I told them it weren’t exactly urgent,” Taffy muttered into Armleigh’s ear.
“I’ll deal with this,” said Turner to his boys and strode off to impress the paramedics with his skill at glove-slapping. His voice bounced back from the bridge, where he’d caught them coming down the steps.
“There’s one beyond medical help, but you won’t get at him till forensics have been. There’s another with a fractured leg, ankle, whatever, but we’ve got to search him and ask him a couple of questions and maybe arrest him before you can take him away. Why don’t you wait here for a few minutes, and we’ll call you over?”
“Orright,” said the tall one, looking along the towpath and taking in the scene. “If you torture ’im by kickin’ ’is leg we’ll hear, won’t we? Come on, Joe, let’s just sit ’ere and eat our sarnies.”
Meanwhile, the boys had patted down their quarry and emptied his coat pockets. As the superintendent returned, they made their report. “Lots of bags of white powder, sir,” said Whitaker.
“At least he teaches them not to jump to conclusions,” muttered Armleigh to Taffy.
“How many?” asked Superintendent Turner. The slapping of his gloves showed that he didn’t think he should have had to ask that question.
“Fifteen, sir,” said Jones, “seven in the right pocket, eight in the left.” Which earnt him the brief twitch of the lips that passed for a smile where the superintendent’s relations with his subordinates were concerned.
“No sign of any weapon, though,” volunteered the third constable, not wishing to be left out.
“Very good, Parsons. Now, sir, what do you think these bags of powder in your coat might be?”
“No idea. I only just picked up the coat. It were lyin’ on the gangplank and, as I went by, the man on the boat asked me if I’d like a coat that he was getting rid of and, naturally, I said yes—”
“It sounded to me like they were arguing,” said Armleigh, looking at no one in particular.
“Aha,” said Turner, “so you were here much earlier than me.”
“Not early enough to stop whatever happened,” said Armleigh.
“No,” said Turner, “not early enough.”
“Shouting,” said the man, who looked shrunken and shrivelled, now he’d had his coat taken from him. His face seemed pinched with pain.
One of the constables, probably Whitaker, who seemed more sympathetic than clever, had caught sight of an oil drum through the open gate of Taffy’s scrapyard and rolled it out for him to perch on. His left ankle did seem to be at funny angle.
“We were shouting to one another,” said the man, “because he was on the boat, at the back, and didn’t want to move.”
The man was starting to shiver. Whitaker draped the coat back round him, nearly treading on the bags of white powder, which had ended up piled behind the oil drum.
“Do this walk every day, do you, Jack?” asked Turner.
“Same time, every day, regular as clockwork,” said Armleigh.
“Funny, wouldn’t have taken you for a clock-watcher, Jack,” said Turner. “I thought you were just naturally attracted to crime.”
Something came over Armleigh at that remark. The teeth that were about to be gritted in resentment at Turner’s sarcasm parted, and the lips opened in a smile, while the narrowed eyes opened and sparkled. He turned to Taffy and muttered in his ear.
The scrapman darted back into his yard, while everyone watched, curious, certainly, but also startled into motionlessness by the speed with which someone so big could move — a bit like seeing an elephant do ballet.
The next shock was the noise like the starting roar of an enormous motor-mower. After that came the smell of partly-burnt diesel and, finally, the sight of a bizarre mechanical chimera rumbling through the corrugated iron sliding gate.
The front of it was a steam-roller’s bulbous horizontal cylinder, ready to flatten and crush all obstacles. The back of it seemed to belong to a tractor, with a smoking diesel engine, an open seat and a steering wheel, two vast rubber-tyred wheels at the rear and, towering over all, a pair of hydraulic arms to which was attached a hefty metal disc, like a model flying saucer.
“About here should do,” said Armleigh, standing on the bank of the canal, more or less where the mooring bollards were that had tripped the fugitive.
Taffy lined up his contraption and turned his attention to the other knobs and levers that had been bolted on to the control-panel, while the two constables who didn’t feel they were needed to guard the evidently immobile suspect gathered round for a closer look. Slowly, the hydraulic arms lowered the model flying saucer towards the surface of the canal.
“I had to use a steamroller to get the counterweight,” Taffy was explaining to Constable Jones, who was nodding enthusiastically, while Parsons was just enjoying the naked power of the diesel engine.
Then Taffy turned to another lever. The note of the engine changed, and a high-powered humming began. “Generator,” explained Taffy, having to shout a little. Finally, after listening for a few seconds and nodding in satisfaction at what he heard, he flipped a switch on what looked for all the world like an electric cooker junction box, which was in fact what it was, and the miracle occurred.
There’s a painting by Stanley Spencer in Southampton City Art Gallery called The Resurrection with the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter, and the left-hand panel of the triptych, as you look at it, shows the risen dead climbing out of graves under paving stones in an ordinary street, to be welcomed by friends and relations as they come back to Life Everlasting.
That was more or less the effect on the canal of Taffy’s little intervention. First, there was a kind of bubbling of the surface, a stirring of mud beneath it, and then all the dead iron objects that had ever found their way into it by chance or design, rust to rust, were raised, anything but incorrodable.
They leapt from the water, jumbled together, clogged with the slime of the lightless depths, dripping with liquid dirt that they sprayed liberally over all the bystanders, flinging themselves with unquenchable enthusiasm at the model flying saucer, which was, of course, a large electromagnet.
There were at least three cycle-frames — no modern drop-handle ones, because those are made from aluminium. These were old-fashioned, sit-up-and-beg bikes. Enamel washing-up bowls with holes in the bottom, colanders, pails that had sprung a leak, assorted cutlery, bed springs, things with no name that their own makers wouldn’t have recognised anymore; they clung to their rescuer with inseparable tenacity.
Taffy let in the clutch and gently backed his vehicle away from the canal bank, at the same time raising the hydraulic arms, so he didn’t have to go back so far that he would reverse into his own fence. Then he flipped the switch and turned off the electromagnet.
The clatter reminded Armleigh of moments in Berg’s Wozzeck, the end, perhaps, with the knife in the water, or maybe Schoenberg’s Moses und Aaron possibly, now he came to think of it, the anvils of Nibelheim in The Ring, or even the gypsy tinkers in Il Trovatore. Whichever he chose to compare it to, it was a tremendous finale.
Because, in accordance with the old rule, Last in, first out, surmounting the tangled heap was a stick that he recognised.
“I believe you were looking for a murder weapon, Superintendent Turner,” he said, trampling on the springs and bike-frames and spoons and forks. “I think you’ll find this fits the bill.” And he pointed to the object that he was already calling in his mind Exhibit 1. “I understand that fingerprints are not affected by water and, since the blade was returned to its sheath straight after the killing, there should be plenty of traces of blood for forensics to find.”
“Bugger me!” said Taffy, who had jumped down off his metal steed and was approaching the heap from the other side. “That’s old Charlie’s Rummage Stick!”
“What’s one of those, when it’s at home?” asked the Superintendent, who had finished wiping his splashed face with a beautifully ironed handkerchief and was also approaching the centre of interest.
“It’s a sword-stick that Customs Officers used,” said Taffy, “for self-defence on occasion, no doubt, but mostly for poking into things, to see what was inside ’em. And that one, unless I’m much mistaken, and it isn’t Charlie’s, was made by Mole, right here in Brum!”
It was a pity that the lovely little tableau had to be disturbed by the arrival of forensics, with their aluminium cases and protective clothing and the little tents in boxes they always go round with. Even the paramedics had been so enthralled by the drama, that they had come close to watch the dénouement, which meant that Turner could tell them to take the suspect, whom he had now formally cautioned, charged and arrested, off to A&E, to have his fracture of whatever it was dealt with.
The Superintendent detailed the less sympathetic Parsons to go with him and made a mental note to shift Whitaker into community policing and liaison before a villain managed to put one over on him.
“I’m sure you’ll have no further need of me at the present moment, Superintendent,” said Armleigh, “and you know where you can find me when you do. And thank you for giving me the tip that enabled me to crack the case.”
“What yow on about?” asked Turner, jerked back into an earlier stage of his existence by this bit of cheek from a clever-sod CID-man who’d overslept a pinch that could have made his career and, incidentally, had made Turner’s, because, by chance, he’d stopped the robbers for speeding on his way to the alert.
“You talked about ‘attraction,’ and that told me how to get the stick out of the cut. At first, I’d thought he was only being clumsy when I saw it go in, but then—”
“You clever bugger,” snorted Turner. “Sod off then and go and listen to your bloody operas, whatever you think you’ll learn from them, I don’t know!”
“That feller,” said Armleigh, gesturing towards the bridge, where the murderous drug-dealer was being helped up the steps, “should definitely have watched operas, because then he’d have strangled old Charlie and hidden him under a cloak, and I’d never’ve seen or heard anything!”
He nodded twice, to reaffirm his wisdom and set off back the way he’d come. Something to tell ’em in the pub, he thought, and wondered whether he should go back and explain what he’d meant by his last statement. But then he thought: No. It isn’t Chance, and it isn’t Time that controls the way things turn out, even though they’re important and can be vital. It’s Knowledge and, if you’ve got it, you don’t always need to share it.
Copyright © 2026 by Mike Rogers
