Death in the City, page 12
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I am simply making conversation while I decide whether to risk my job by telling you things that I certainly ought not to tell you.’
‘Don’t, then,’ she said. There was still a pleasant Scots lilt to her voice.
‘But I have to take calculated risks sometimes. And I have calculated that you would be on Mr Stavanger’s side through thick and thin. You see, I am not an accountant. I am a policeman.’
Her reaction surprised me. ‘Thank God,’ she said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because we need the police in that office! I owe nothing to Mr Ingard or Mr Lennis. I owe a very great deal to Mr Andrew, and his father. I have said nothing to anyone so far because I have never been quite sure how much it might affect Mr Andrew. Oh, I know that he would never have touched anything in the least underhand, but he is a director of the company, and he might be held responsible for things that were done without his knowledge. They think that I’m just a mousy old woman, and couldn’t possibly know what goes on – they’ve taken away all confidential work from me and Mr Lennis treats me as if I were a half-wit. But you can’t spend a lifetime in a shipping office without learning something about ships. Why have we changed from being liners to being tramps? What are the cargoes we pick up at short notice and deliver to out-of-the-way ports in Africa? What do we bring back to England? You tell me that, Mr Mottram!’
‘I can’t tell you, because I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. What do you think the cargoes are?’
‘I don’t know either,’ she said unhappily, ‘but they must be something illegal because of the bills of lading. This is what they think I don’t understand, but I do. Every ship must have a manifest for each port she calls at. In the old days it was quite simple. We would have a ship making scheduled passages from Rotterdam, say, to London. In Rotterdam she would be loaded with so many cases of Dutch cheese, or Dutch tomatoes, or those round white Dutch cabbages. Mr Andrew knew all the shipping agents, and he tried to ensure that every ship had a profitable cargo before she sailed. On scheduled passages, of course, you can’t always do this, but Mr Andrew and his father before him knew the trade so well that they generally managed it. From London we would carry general merchandise back to Rotterdam. Every ship has a ledger to herself, and the manifest for every voyage has to be entered in it, so that you know precisely what the returns from each voyage are. Or rather, that’s the way we used to do it. I’m not supposed to look after the ledgers now, but I do still keep the position-record for the ships, and sometimes I have to go to a ledger to check a sailing date. And I can’t help seeing the manifests – in any case, I’ve always been interested in them. Mr Mottram, our ships could not possibly be run on their present manifests!
‘Yes, I know that Mr Lennis has altered the system. It’s much sloppier than it used to be, and the ladings are not all priced as we used to price them. But I know roughly what the freight for so many tons, say, of bananas from the Canaries is worth, and we’re not getting enough trade to keep going. But we do keep going – the wages for the crews are paid, the ships go for their refits, and in the Ingard group’s annual report the ships are shown as making quite a lot of money – more than we used to make in the old days. The ships are keeping the group, Mr Mottram. How?’
*
Her quiet, controlled anger was impressive. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to do anything that might attract the least sort of suspicion to yourself, but could you, in the normal course of your work, make out a list of the voyages of your ships over the past year – just name of ship and masters, ports of call, and dates?’
‘Easily,’ she said. ‘I have it all in my Daily Position Report. There’s a file of that, of course, but I make it up from my working diary, and nobody will know if I make some extracts from the diary.’
‘How many ships are there?’
‘Before the war we had eleven, but we lost several in the war. In the rebuilding programme after the war we reduced the fleet to seven, but they were larger ships. Two were sold after the Ingard takeover, and now there are five – Charlotte, Josephine, Cynthia, Agnes and Susan. They all have the family name T – Charlotte T, Josephine T, and so on. Susan T is the oldest and smallest – she was actually called after me. There was a Katherine T after Mr Andrew’s daughter, but she was one of the ones they sold.’
‘Do they all make the same sort of voyages?’
‘Not exactly. Susan is the oldest, and she still has her old master, Captain Lomax. They keep her more or less on her old run, a regular freight service from Holland to London, with occasional trips to the Baltic. Charlotte has her old master, too, and she keeps fairly regularly to Bordeaux for wine, though at different times of the year she may go to Spain for oranges, or to the Canaries for new potatoes or bananas.
‘Agnes, Josephine and Cynthia are the real tramps. They have no regular runs and may go anywhere, often at short notice. They’ve all got masters appointed since the takeover. Agnes has the newest, Captain Lemming. He took over when she left London in June, on her present voyage. She’s not been home since, though she is due back soon. She’s the one you asked me about, the one now in Bilbao.’
‘Would a master know precisely what his ship was carrying?’
‘He’d know what was on the bills of lading. He wouldn’t necessarily know what was actually in all the crates. He couldn’t.’
I changed the subject slightly. ‘I’m also very much concerned with Mr Stavanger,’ I said. ‘Where do you think he is?’
Her quick, alert interest in the ships turned to distress. ‘I know only what I’ve been told – that he is on one of the ships,’ she said unhappily. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s so unlike him. It was unlike him to stay away from the office at all without telling me, though if something unexpected happened, I could understand that. But he wouldn’t have gone abroad without writing. He is the most considerate of men, and he’d know that I would be worried about him.’
‘His daughter doesn’t seem particularly worried.’
‘Oh, her! Mr Andrew has always been devoted to Kate, Mr Mottram, but I couldn’t say the same about her. It’s not my place to talk about her, anyway, but she is wrapped up in her own life, and her husband’s politics – she met him when she belonged to some very radical student group at Oxford. Yes, she had all the chances, but she didn’t even take a degree – threw herself into left-wing politics, and then got married. I can’t bring myself to say she doesn’t care about her father, but she doesn’t act as if she cared for him very much.’
‘But what can have happened to Mr Stavanger?’
‘I wonder, sometimes, if perhaps he’s dead.’ The handkerchief that she’d been twisting and untwisting at our first interview came out again, this time to go to her eyes. I could offer little comfort.
‘Mr Stavanger – Captain Stavanger, I should really say – had been in the Royal Navy. If – we must only think “if” – he met some accident while trying to investigate something he didn’t like on one of the ships, he will have died while doing what he felt to be his duty,’ I said.
‘Mr Andrew is a master mariner, of course,’ she said. ‘So was his father. But when they took over the firm they were always called “Mister” – to distinguish them from the other captains, perhaps. I don’t know. It was just part of our tradition.’ She paused. ‘I must face the possibility that Mr Andrew may be dead, but I can’t think of him as being dead.’
‘You are a brave woman. There’s one small piece of information you may be able to give. Do you know who was Mr Stavanger’s dentist?’
‘Does that mean you have found a body and are trying to identify it?’ Miss Macdonald had a sharp, quick mind.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but unidentified bodies are sometimes found. Teeth are an almost certain identification if any dental work has been done, and if the dentist concerned can be found. If I know the name of Mr Stavanger’s dentist the police can check quickly whether he has been the victim of any unexplained death.’
‘I understand – though I don’t like the implications of what you say. Yes, in the old days I always made his appointments for him.’ She gave me the name of a dentist in Wimpole Street, and I wrote it down.
*
I got up to go. ‘You have not asked me questions, and I appreciate your trust very much,’ I said. ‘It would be wrong for me to pretend that these problems can be solved quickly – if they can be solved at all. But, thanks to you, I feel that we are a good deal nearer solving them than we were yesterday. Justice is not always swift, but in ways we often cannot see in advance it is generally sure. I can promise you that the police will do everything they can to find Mr Stavanger, and to clear up the other matters we have been discussing.’
‘I can get that list of voyages you asked for tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘How shall I get it to you?’
‘Do you go out for lunch?’
‘Not always. It is very expensive, and I often take sandwiches to the office. But I can go out to lunch, of course.’
‘Could you go to the Upper Thames Street branch of the London Metropolitan Bank without its seeming unusual?’
‘Yes – I have my own personal account there, and I go there when I want to cash a cheque.’
‘Could you put the list in an envelope, address it to Mr Peter Mottram, c/o The Manager, and give it to the manager? I can arrange for him to see you at once when you ask for him.’
‘It shall be there by twelve thirty tomorrow.’
VII
A MATTER OF TEETH
I RANG INSPECTOR Redpath at his home, and gave him the name and address of Stavanger’s dentist. He promised to take the cast to him in the morning, and I arranged to call at his office at noon to learn what he had discovered from the dentist. Then I rang Pusey: it was time, I felt, that we had a conference, and I asked him to get hold of Seddon and, if possible, someone from his old acquaintances at the Foreign Office who would know about current politics in North and West Africa. Pusey suggested that we should meet at his flat at six o’clock and that suited me well, for with luck I should know the outcome of Redpath’s interview with the dentist, and have Miss Macdonald’s list.
*
Waiting is the most wearisome of all activities – if, indeed, it can be called an activity. I had one job to do first thing in the morning – to ring Sir Geoffrey Gillington and ask him to arrange for the manager of the Upper Thames Street branch of the bank to receive Miss Macdonald when she called, and to keep her letter for me. I would try to collect it, I said, about two o’clock in the afternoon. Then I had nothing to do until my call on Inspector Redpath at noon. I put in an appearance at Ingard House to show that I was still busy about the audit, and had a word with Henniker. He was gloomier than ever, and inclined to be angry with me as well. ‘However you look at it, the whole thing is no better than a bucket shop,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying that it started off to be one, but in my view it became fraudulent pretty soon. When the property market was rising every day a slick operator could buy and sell again without much risk. But Ingard didn’t do that – he bought and sold to himself, setting up company after company in the group to buy properties from one another. The result was enormous paper profits for the parent company – Ingard Holdings – which he used to attract investors, and to impress the bank. He paid dividends, of course – when he paid any – out of fresh investment. There was never any real cover for dividends, and the property values now don’t cover one-fifth of his borrowings – from a couple of pension funds and various other institutions as well as from the bank. The shares are worthless, and it goes against the grain to see them still quoted, written down as they are.’
‘What about the oyster enterprise?’ I asked.
‘What about it? There’s a worthless piece of paper saying that there is supposed to be an oyster enterprise, but there’s no evidence that anyone has ever caught a single oyster.’
‘You don’t catch oysters,’ I said, ‘you dredge them.’
‘Well, dredge if you like, but there isn’t any dredging. How long are you going to go on with the farce of keeping this bloody lot in business?’
‘I don’t know. I can understand your feelings, and I’m wholly with you. But there are national interests which may override even City interests, for a time, at any rate. You’ve been very good, and I wish I could explain things, but I must ask you to accept that I can’t. Have you been able to study the shipping company in any detail?’
‘It’s a funny thing, but as far as I can see the shipping company is the only reputable part of the whole business. The ships are worth something, and they’re about the only hope of securing creditors about 5p in the pound. Conceivably, the shipping company could be sold off as a going concern – that might bring it up to about 10p in the pound.’
‘I said “in detail”. What I meant was, have you seen any detailed accounts of the revenue from the ships – how it arises, and how it’s paid?’
‘No. But that isn’t really my job – not at the moment, anyway. I have to report on whether the group as a whole has any prospect of paying its debts. The ships come into it because they produce profits for the group – the only subsidiary company which does. I have documentary evidence of regular payments from the shipping company to the group, but I haven’t had time to go into how the money is made. Nor do I think that it is necessary at this stage. Presumably the ships earn money by carrying cargoes, doing the ordinary business of shipping.’
‘Could you dig into the shipping accounts a bit more deeply? It might be very important.’
‘What, exactly, do you want to know?’
‘I have some evidence – it doesn’t strictly concern the audit, because, as you say, we’re here officially to find out if the group has any money, not precisely how it’s made – to suggest that the ships can’t be making a profit by legitimate trade. Yet they do appear to be making money. I was wondering whether you could find out where it’s coming from.’
‘Well, I’m not a detective, but I am on the side of the law. As I understand my terms of reference, I can call for such accounts as I wish. I don’t know that I can learn much other than the general profit-and-loss position – it would be an enormous job to go through bills of lading and check each individual consignment.’
‘It may come to that, but you’d need time, and probably wider terms of reference – I can see that. But, without trying to flatter you, you’re one of the ablest accountants in the City. And an accountant is a sort of detective. What I’m asking is that you should look at the accounts with your detective instincts on the alert and see if there’s anything that strikes you as odd about them.’
Henniker smiled. ‘You should have joined the diplomatic service! You’ve certainly got me interested, and the shipping accounts may take my mind off being cross with you. I’ll have a go – but I can’t promise much in the way of results.’
‘You’re a good chap, Henniker. How you must hate this whole business! It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I do, too. One day I hope you’ll let me buy you a slap-up dinner – that is, if I don’t get sacked as a result of all this hellishness first. There’s one more thing, though it’s scarcely necessary to mention it. No one in the shipping office must be given the slightest idea that we suspect anything out of the ordinary at all.’
‘Next to diplomats, perhaps, accountants are the most reserved people in the world. They have even been known to depart from the stricter paths of truth sometimes – in a good cause, of course.’
*
It was just on opening time, and I stood myself a drink in a City pub that didn’t really want me – a woman was still vacuum-cleaning the bar. I can’t say that alcohol did anything to lift my spirits, but at least it filled in the time before my date with Detective Inspector Redpath. I was thankful when the time came to go to the City Division HQ.
Redpath gave me his news at once. ‘No good, Colonel,’ he said, ‘the Southwark Bridge body couldn’t possibly be your man. The dentist was very decent, looked up his records although he didn’t need to, because he’d treated Mr Stavanger for years and knew him quite well. The cast couldn’t have come from Stavanger’s teeth: he was wounded in the mouth by a piece of shrapnel during the war, and lost a good many teeth, with the result that he wore a plate with artificial teeth in both upper and lower jaws. The cast had one or two teeth missing from extractions and some fillings, but on the whole the teeth were in good condition.’
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. If the body had turned out to be Stavanger’s it would have been progress in the case, though we’d have been no nearer knowing where he had been killed, or who had killed him. Redpath had acted at once on the very slenderest of chances – apart from the date, and the fact that Stavanger was missing, there wasn’t a scrap of evidence to link him with the body found on the Thames foreshore at low tide. I felt like apologising to Redpath for putting him to a lot of trouble for scant reason.
‘You’ve done very well to get the thing cleared up so quickly,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have given you so much bother for nothing.’
‘Well, not quite for nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m as anxious to get my man identified as you are to find yours. Negative information is not very satisfying, but it’s information all the same. At least we know one man who can’t be the Southwark Bridge body. And the dentist told me something else. He can’t say for sure, but he thinks that one of the fillings looks like Continental work, using a technique that’s not widely practised in Britain. Again, that doesn’t get us anywhere at the moment, but it does slightly bear out the possibility that the man was a foreigner – which would explain our total failure so far to get him identified.’
‘It’s nice of you to be philosophical about it.’
‘I’m not a philosopher, I’m a policeman. When you have an unidentified body and a missing man it’s straightforward police work to put them together and see if they fit. In this case they don’t, but that’s neither here nor there. It was my job to go into it, and I simply did my job. If you have any more ideas, Colonel, I’ll go into them, too.’
