Death in the City, page 11
‘If I report informally for you, you will have fulfilled that duty. And, as you say, what happens then is a matter for the bank. If Sir Geoffrey were to ask you to carry on for a bit longer, would you be willing to do so?’
‘Put like that, yes. But – with respect to you – I should need direct instructions from Sir Geoffrey.’
‘I shall ask him to provide them. I don’t want him to telephone here. If he sends a note by hand addressed to you at your own office, would that do?’
‘I’d much rather have written instructions than a telephone call.’
‘Good. I’ll go and talk to Sir Geoffrey now.’
*
The banker saw me straightaway. I wasn’t at all sure that I had any right to make the request that I proposed to make. Ingard shares were still quoted on the Stock Exchange, and we had evidence that they were more or less worthless. Was it fair to anybody to delay action which might hurt innocent investors? I decided that the only thing to do was to put my thoughts frankly to Sir Geoffrey.
‘We’ve made no headway towards finding out whether your suspicions of Mr Andrew Stavanger’s letter are justified. We don’t yet know where Mr Stavanger is, and such evidence as we’ve been able to discover so far is inconclusive,’ I said. ‘On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that some very strange things – possibly criminal – are happening within the Ingard group. We don’t yet know what these are, but for reasons which it wouldn’t be proper for me to go into we believe that we may know more about them in about a week. Mr Henniker is very unhappy. He doesn’t know of the possibly criminal activities which may be going on under the cover of the Ingard group – and I can’t at present discuss such matters with him. He does know from his preliminary investigation of the accounts that the group is virtually insolvent – and I have his permission to convey his findings to you. His own view is that the bank should withdraw all financial facilities to Ingard forthwith, which, of course, would provoke an immediate crisis in the group’s affairs. If this were to happen, our other inquiries would be severely prejudiced. Therefore, if it is at all possible, I should prefer nothing which would upset the group to emerge for another week.’
Sir Geoffrey nodded. ‘I understand the position, and it is clearly a very difficult one,’ he said. ‘I have, of course, contributed to the difficulty by taking my own suspicions to the police – I can’t blame you for wanting to get to the bottom of things. Can you give me any indication of the gravity of the investigation which, in your view, might justify me in deliberately withholding from the board information of direct importance to the bank’s shareholders?’
‘No. I can ask you to accept that I shouldn’t have come to you like this if I did not believe that the matter may turn out to be very grave indeed. I can’t tell you what it is, because we don’t yet know. Should there be an upheaval in the Ingard group now, I fear that we may never know.’
‘Can you say that there is a prima facie case for continued investigation?’
‘Most certainly. The mysterious disappearance of Mr Stavanger alone is something that needs to be cleared up. Looking at things squarely, I should say that most of the £5 million you have advanced to Ingard will have to be written off – and it doesn’t seem to me to make much difference to the bank whether this becomes open knowledge now, or in a week or so. A more serious consideration to my mind is the continued quotation of Ingard shares on the Stock Exchange. By any real assessment they must be largely worthless.’
The banker considered this for a moment. ‘Theoretically, you’re quite right – it is indeed improper to withhold such information from the Stock Exchange. In practice – I doubt if it makes much difference. It’s common knowledge that Ingard – in company with other speculators – is having difficulties, and his shares have been severely written down. There is very little market in them – existing holders can sell only at a heavy loss. It could be argued, I suppose, that by not forcing the issue until your investigations are complete we might actually be helping Ingard shareholders – by clearing up uncertainties which might otherwise damage their interests.’
‘You could argue that. In the circumstances, the argument wouldn’t impress me if I were a stockbroker.’
Sir Geoffrey laughed. ‘Nevertheless, it is an argument that could be used. Anyway, Colonel Blair, I’m going to trust you – never say that banks haven’t got a social conscience towards the whole community! What, exactly, do you want me to do?’
I explained about the note I wanted him to write to Henniker. ‘Don’t give any reasons,’ I said. ‘Just say that you are writing to confirm that you want a detailed report because the matter is of such importance to so many people, and are prepared to wait for it. He’ll understand.’
‘Very well, Colonel, it shall be as you wish. I feel a little as I felt when the only racehorse I’ve ever owned ran at Lincoln.’
‘I hope it did well.’
‘Actually, it won. But that was its first race. It did so badly afterwards that I decided racing was not for me. The first principle of success in any walk of life is to know when to cut your losses.’
I wasn’t at all sure what he meant.
*
Feeling remanded on bail rather than acquitted, I found a call box and rang Seddon. ‘I’ve got everything you want, I think,’ he said. ‘The man in charge of your case was Detective Inspector Ian Redpath, of the City Division. I’ve had a word with him on the phone, and told him to expect a call from you. It seems a very curious case – but Redpath will tell you all about it.’
Being already in the City I wasn’t far from the divisional HQ, and I went along in the hope of finding Redpath there. He was. I had to wait about ten minutes while he was interviewing someone in connection with a current case, and then I was taken to his room.
‘Assistant Commissioner Seddon told me to expect you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had to finish with the man I had with me. It was about the theft of registered mail – I think we’ve got it sewn up. The Assistant Commissioner didn’t go into details. He said you were from the Home Office. What can I do for you?’
‘I understand that you were in charge of a case involving a man found dead in the Thames in June.’
‘The Southwark Bridge case! Unhappily, yes. It was a rotten case – we never got anywhere with it. I worked in conjunction with the River Police.’
‘I’d like you to tell me everything you can about it.’
Redpath looked troubled. ‘You’ll excuse me, sir, I know, but I’d like to be sure exactly who I’m talking to. You haven’t got a police rank. I’m an ordinary detective-inspector, and I don’t as a rule have direct dealings with the Home Office. Please understand – it’s not that I’m doubting you in any way. But don’t you think you should see my Superintendent?’
‘I’ll gladly see your Superintendent if you think it necessary,’ I said. ‘But you are all busy people, and I really want to talk to you because you dealt with all the details. I’m not exactly a policeman, but I do belong to the Police Liaison Group under Sir Edmund Pusey, and I’m very much concerned with police work. Assistant Commissioner Seddon is my group’s special representative at New Scotland Yard. Why not ring Seddon now? Tell him that I’m with you, but that you’re not quite sure how much you ought to tell me. If you ring him you can be certain that your call really is to the Yard. When somebody rings you, there’s always a slight element of doubt about precisely who he is.’
‘Really, sir, I don’t think I quite need to do that.’
‘But I want you to! I very much respect your instincts, and I want you to be able to talk freely.’
Somewhat reluctantly he lifted the phone, and asked the operator to get him Assistant Commissioner Seddon at New Scotland Yard. The call was a few minutes in coming through – probably they had to look for Seddon at the other end. While waiting, I asked if he had many riverside cases. ‘Quite a few,’ he said. ‘The river’s part of my manor, but of course it also belongs to the River Police. You could say roughly that I deal with the bank, and they look after the stream.’
‘And this was a case of a man’s being found on the mud?’
‘Yes, it had some problems. But I like the River men. We get on all right.’
Then the phone rang. In a rather embarrassed way he told Seddon that I was in his office, and asked for instructions. When he put down the phone, he said, ‘Really, sir, you make me feel that I’m behaving like a suspect.’
‘Nonsense. What did he say?’
‘He could have given me a ticking off, considering that he’d gone to the trouble of telling me you were coming. But he didn’t. He was very nice. Said you were top brass and that I could talk to you as if you were the Commissioner himself.’
‘That was handsome of him! I’ll have to buy him a drink. Happier now?’
‘Of course, sir. Where do you want to begin?’
‘I’d better begin by telling you just why I’ve come to see you. A very odd case has come to my department – we always seem to get the odd ones – concerning the disappearance of the managing director of a shipping company. He’s a man called Andrew Stavanger, and his office is in Upper Thames Street – the very building, in fact, where the office cleaner who, I understand, discovered the body in your case worked. Now I don’t see that there’s likely to be any connection, but since we’re up against a brick wall in the Stavanger case I’ve come to pick your brains.’
‘Stavanger’s not on the list of any missing persons that’s come to me.’
‘He wouldn’t be, because he’s not officially missing. I told you it was an odd case. He’s disappeared, we don’t know whether voluntarily or not. He seems to have gone missing at about the time your body was discovered.’
‘You say you’re up against a brick wall – well, that’s just where we got to in the Southwark Bridge case. We don’t know who the man was, let alone how he came to be in the river. How much do you already know about it?’
‘Next to nothing, except that the body was found, and that you handled the case. I haven’t seen any papers.’
‘Well, you can have the file. It’s a fat one, and just about absolutely futile. There’s one matter that’s in the file, but which didn’t come out at the inquest. The inquest was only opened, of course – it had to be adjourned because we didn’t know the man’s identity. The coroner took evidence only of the discovery of the body and of the cause of death – apparently a blow on the head. The matter which didn’t come out was that the deceased’s pockets were full of live ammunition – standard army rifle bullets.’
I looked at the file – a painstaking record of hundreds of hours of police work, inquiries, interviews, medical and forensic reports, all getting nowhere. ‘Well, no one can say you haven’t tried,’ I said. ‘I’m particularly impressed by your study of tides, and estimates of where the body may have gone in the river. That seems to me outstanding work.’
He was pleased, and, I felt, thawed a little. I could understand his unease. Here was a case which had taken up an inordinate amount of time for no result, and here was I, some remote big-wig from the Home Office coming to cross-examine him about it. No wonder he was inclined to be defensive. ‘Tell me about the cartridges,’ I went on. ‘I think you were wise to make no public mention of them.’
‘Well, that wasn’t really my decision,’ he said frankly, ‘but the outcome of a CID conference. It could be argued that they might help to identify him, but it was felt that they might relate to another crime and that if we started talking about them it might put whoever was responsible on his guard. I agreed with the decision at the time, though since we haven’t managed to identify him I’m beginning to wonder if it was right. You’ll find a technical description of the cartridges in the file, but they seem to be quite ordinary army ammunition.’
I glanced at the file again. ‘They don’t seem to have come from the British Army.’
‘No. That’s what makes me think that the man may have been a foreigner – perhaps even killed on the other side of the Channel.’
‘Possibly – though if the medical evidence about the time of death is right it’s hard to see how he could have got to where he was in the time. Where is the body now?’
‘When it was clear that identifying him was going to be a long job – if, indeed, he could ever be identified – the coroner issued a burial certificate. We have, of course, a very full description, and photographs. And we took a plaster cast of the teeth.’
‘That was an excellent idea. Has it been shown to any dentists?’
‘The cast itself, no. The people in the forensic medical laboratory got out a technical description of the dental work on his teeth, and this was circulated. It didn’t produce anything. It was hardly practical to take the cast to every dentist in the country.’
‘Of course not. It’s more likely to be valuable as a check on identity, if we ever find anyone whose teeth they might have been. If I can find out who is Stavanger’s dentist, perhaps he could be shown the cast.’
‘I’d take it myself – I’d be thankful to make any sort of progress in the case. Do you seriously think there is a chance that the body might be your Mr Stavanger’s?’
‘I just don’t know. Age and general description seem about right – but they could apply to tens of thousands of men in their late fifties or early sixties. I haven’t got a photograph of Stavanger yet – as I explained, he’s not officially missing. It’s a delicate business.’
‘Are you at liberty to tell me anything about your case, sir?’
‘Certainly. You will understand that because of the big financial interests involved it’s important that rumours shouldn’t start flying about, but I’d be grateful for your views.’ I gave him a slightly edited account of the banker’s concern about Andrew Stavanger’s sudden transfer of his large personal deposit, and of his mysterious non-attendance at his office for over four months. I did not mention my own strange adventure on Winter Marsh, but I did describe Seddon’s and my experience at the flat in Yardarm Square. Redpath listened closely to every word. Then he said, ‘The Boxing and Coxing on the ships would only be possible for someone who controlled a shipping line. If he’s doing it himself there seems no reasonable explanation for it – unless the hints that he is slightly batty are true. If he’s dead, then someone is playing a dangerous game, and one that can’t go on for ever. But there isn’t any evidence that he’s dead, so one can only say “if”. Using that as a working theory, I’d say there was some sort of time limit involved – I mean, a time during which it is imperative for people not to know that he’s dead, but a time that comes to an end, after which it doesn’t matter so much.’
‘That’s a very good point. And it’s possible that the curious telephone conversation in the flat, with its reference to postponing something for a week, related to your time limit. The trouble is that we don’t know what that something is. And we’re back where we started in not knowing whether the man is dead or alive.’
‘If you can find out his dentist, at least we could settle whether he was the man in the Thames.’
‘I think I can do that. But probably not until this evening. Can you let me have a home phone number where I could get you this evening?’
He gave me his number, and said that he’d be in from eight o’clock onwards. I thanked him and left, taking with me copies of the statements in the Southwark Bridge case file.
*
Miss Macdonald, I thought, would probably know about Andrew Stavanger’s dentist – she might well have made appointments for him in the past. But I didn’t want to be seen talking to her in the office, so I should have to wait until she got home. I filled in the rest of that day by pretending to be busy with the audit. I didn’t have to pretend much – going through some of the accounts with Henniker, and listening to his shrewd comments, was remarkably interesting. He had got Sir Geoffrey’s note when he’d looked into his own office at lunchtime. He didn’t refer to it directly, but he did observe mildly, ‘You seem to be a power in the City. I hope you’re right.’
*
I thought of telephoning Miss Macdonald, but decided instead to call on her. The staff left Ingard House at five thirty, and I reckoned she would be home soon after six. Allowing for the inevitable delays of London traffic I rang the bell of her flat at six thirty.
She lived in one of those streets running from the Old Brompton Road more or less parallel with the edge of Brompton Cemetery, a territory that seems more or less taken over by typists’ collectives, where groups of girls band together to share flats whose rents none of them could afford individually. Somehow I didn’t see Miss Macdonald as Fourth Girl in a collective flat, and my instinct was right. Her own flat was a little three-roomed affair on the top floor of an old West London house, in what had once been servants’ bedrooms. She had made it an attractive place, beautifully decorated with light paint, and furnished with old pieces picked up at auctions with taste and considerable knowledge of antiques. She was surprised to see me, but also, I thought, rather excited. ‘Have you got news at last?’ she asked eagerly.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Macdonald, but I’m afraid I haven’t,’ I said. ‘But I want, if I may, to take you into my confidence. If we are to find Mr Stavanger we shall need your help.’
‘I would do anything in the world to help Mr Andrew. But what can I do?’ she said. She was obviously puzzled, but she invited me to sit down, and offered me a glass of sherry. I accepted the sherry and said, ‘You have a remarkably nice flat, and I admire your taste in furniture.’
‘I couldn’t possibly afford the flat if I were renting it now, but I got it on a long lease just after the war, when rents were much less than they are today,’ she said. ‘The furniture – well, it has been my hobby for many years. Again, I could not afford much of it if I were buying it now. But what has this to do with Mr Andrew?’
