Death in the City, page 14
‘All right, Peter. And we shan’t really be wasting the taxpayers’ money – or not much of it – because it will be quite a useful exercise for the Navy in any event.’ He turned to Seddon. ‘Paul, can you have a word with the River Police to see if they can provide a launch and, say, half a dozen men for a rendezvous at Winter Marsh for late Tuesday night – early Wednesday morning?’
‘Can do,’ Seddon said simply. ‘I’d like Peter to help with the arrangements, though. Tide tables are more in his line than mine. If I clear things with the Commander of the River Police, perhaps Peter could come along for detailed discussions.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘And there’s another thing, Paul. What happens on Winter Marsh at night?’
‘Nothing – at least as far as Balfour and his men can see from their telephone-hole. His report mentions a light in one of the huts, which may be used as a sort of guard-room, and apparently the guards, or pickets, stay on duty through the night. But there’s no floodlighting, and nothing in particular to be seen.’
‘Good. I’d rather like to spend a night in the telephone-hole, if it can be arranged.’
‘Balfour will be delighted – it will give one of his chaps the chance of a night off. When do you want to go?’
‘What about tomorrow night – Friday? I take it that reliefs go and come in the telephone van – probably the last trip is some time in the afternoon.’
‘Yes, the van’s not there at night – we thought that might look suspicious. It goes away at five o’clock, and comes again at seven thirty in the morning. There’s no reason why another van shouldn’t turn up during the afternoon, as long as it’s before five o’clock. The vans come from Southend. If you can be at Southend police station at four tomorrow afternoon, there’ll be a Post Office van to pick you up.’
‘Fine. And our unfortunate young car-thief will be coming before the magistrates again on Monday. Can you arrange for another remand?’
‘That’s already taken care of. And we’ll make sure that it gets a reasonable amount of publicity.’
*
The Foreign Office man had been a bit out of things so far. But I’d a particular reason for asking Sir Edmund to get him to come to our conference, and I turned to this now. ‘If we let you have a copy of our shipping lists, could you undertake a bit of research?’ I asked. ‘You saw at once that a number of the West African voyages were to some very obscure places. I’m looking for some common factor that might attract ships of the T and T line. One thing has already occurred to me, though I’ve not had time to go into it properly. These T and T vessels are essentially coasters, designed for quick turn-round in the Near Continental trades. They are all fairly small, which means that they can get in and out of places that bigger vessels couldn’t manage. These little West African ports may all have tricky entrances – one of them seems a considerable way up-river. The same kind of ship that could get into Winter Marsh could get into them. But I don’t think this is enough to explain the voyages in a commercial sense – to make them profitable, I mean. Sir Edmund’s suggestion of premium freights for going into high-risk areas is a possibility, but what sort of trade to primary-producing countries, with pretty shattered economies, could bear premium freight rates? The lists are very incomplete. We’re told that the ships collect cocoa, vegetable oils, and the like, but we don’t know what goes the other way. To go out empty simply to pick up odd loads of cocoa or whatever doesn’t make sense. You’d expect high-value exports of machine tools or high-grade scientific instruments. But who could be buying them, and how are they paid for? Could you get some of your diplomatic commercial experts to look into this? Presumably there’s international aid money involved somewhere, and if so there must be a shopping list of the kind of goods it goes on. It would be a great help if we could find out anything about it. Henniker may get something from his audit of the shipping company’s accounts, but my impression is that they’ll be deliberately fogged.’
‘I can try,’ Forrest said, ‘but don’t expect quick results. It may need a lot of digging.’
‘Well, we can but try. There’s another thing. Has the Military Attaché in Brussels reported anything about missing small-arms ammunition of Belgian manufacture?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I can find out, certainly – that’s a good deal easier than the other job.’
‘How on earth does Belgian ammunition come into it?’ asked Sir Edmund.
‘I don’t know – perhaps it doesn’t, and it’s not our case, anyway. But I keep puzzling over the rounds of live ammo found in the pockets of that corpse I thought at one time might be the body of Andrew Stavanger.’
I’d already reported on my futile efforts to link the Southwark Bridge body with the Stavanger case, and now I went into the background in more detail. ‘I’ve got the file with me,’ I said. ‘You will see that the cartridges are all of Belgian manufacture. They shouldn’t have been in the United Kingdom, anyway, and no one seems to have any idea of how they got here.’
Sir Edmund was keenly interested. He took the file from me and studied the police reports about the cartridges. ‘I remember reading about the case, but I’ve seen nothing but newspaper reports. The chief puzzle was that the dead man couldn’t be identified. There was nothing about the pockets being full of live ammunition.’
‘No, because that was never disclosed. The police wanted – still want – to know a lot more about it before saying anything. But the inquiry seems more or less to have petered out. I can’t help feeling that there’s a hell of a lot more in it than a chap’s being hit on the head and dumped in the river.’
‘I daresay you’re right, but it isn’t our case. There was no reason at the time why it should come to us, it seemed a straightforward job for the Metropolitan Police and the River Police between them.’
‘It may have seemed so at the time, but whatever it is, it isn’t a straightforward job. I think we ought to get our teeth into those cartridges – sorry, I’m not really suggesting that we should start biting bullets!’
Sir Edmund laughed. ‘You do get your metaphors a bit mixed, Peter, but I understand what you mean. You think there should be much more inquiry in Belgium than there has been so far?’
‘Yes. I’m not criticising Inspector Redpath, or anyone else. The trouble was that it did seem a straightforward police job. In the circumstances the inquiry was extremely thorough, but in trying to identify the body, and to find out where he was killed, the really extraordinary problem of the cartridges didn’t get enough attention. There were some inquiries in Belgium, but they didn’t get very far. The Ministry of Defence was satisfied that the ammo didn’t come from the British Army, and that was that.’
‘I’m fairly sure that the inquiry never came to the Foreign Office,’ Forrest said.
‘I don’t suppose it did. That’s why I’m hoping that you can have a word with the Military Attaché in Brussels.’
‘It’s not our case, but if we offer assistance I should think the Commissioner would welcome it,’ Sir Edmund said. ‘I’ll talk to him in the morning. As for you, Peter, all I can say is that having taken on the Stavanger case with the greatest reluctance, you now seem to be looking for work.’
‘Maybe it’s just running for cover. I hate the Stavanger case,’ I said.
VIII
WINTER MARSH AGAIN
HENNIKER HAD NOTHING of immediate significance to report when I saw him on Friday morning, though what he did have to say bore out my feeling that what went into the shipping company’s accounts was intended to conceal financial operations rather than to reveal them. ‘I’ve done what I can with the shipping figures,’ he said, ‘but I can’t say that I’ve learned much, because they are considerably mixed up with the group accounts as a whole. There’s a quarterly profit and loss account for the ships, and after meeting running costs the balance – there always is a balance – is handed over to the group. The ships as such would certainly appear to be making money – not enough to render the group solvent, but quite a comfortable amount. Payments, as you’d expect, come in from a variety of sources, freight agencies all over the Continent, and a number of individual firms consigning goods of one sort and another. There’s not much to indicate the merchandise carried, though you can guess some of it from the businesses of the consigners. It would have been easier a couple of years back, when accounts were kept in more detail for each individual ship. But they changed the system to accounting on a fleet basis. Lennis explained that this was to reduce paperwork, and that as the shipping company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ingard Group, with no outside shareholders to satisfy, all that mattered was the total contribution from the shipping side to the group’s funds. He was quite open about it. It’s not a system that I would approve of myself, because in my view it doesn’t give a clear enough picture of trading performance on the marine side – not clear enough for reliable forecasts, anyway. But given that the ships are simply part of the group, one can’t condemn the aim of trying to keep down paperwork. It would be different if the ships were turning in losses – then one would want to know much more about which voyages were profitable, and which were not. But as they seem consistently to make profits the group board is not likely to complain. I should add that there’s nothing in the shipping figures to alter my view that the whole outfit is insolvent, and can’t possibly justify any further support from the bank, nor sustain a quotation of any sort on the Stock Exchange.’
‘Nobody seems to want to buy Ingard shares at the moment, so that last bit is safely theoretical,’ I said. ‘I want you to hold your hand until next Thursday – then you can let the balloon go up as soon as you like.’
‘Well, you seem to have persuaded Sir Geoffrey to support you. In my view you’re simply wasting a bit more of the bank’s money. I hope you’ve got some good reason for the delay.’
‘Obviously there’s a reason, but whether it’s a good one or not, God only knows,’ I said unhappily.
Henniker patted my arm with sudden warmth. ‘You must be going through a hell of a time,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me – I’m not really as stuffy as I sound.’
‘Thank you for that,’ I said, and meant it. Henniker really is a rather splendid sort of person.
*
I telephoned Seddon at lunch time to find out if my date at Southend police station stood, and he replied that it was all fixed up. He also said that he’d had a meeting with the powers-that-be of the River Police, and that they’d promised full cooperation. ‘What, precisely, do we want them to do?’ he asked.
‘Can you fix a meeting with them for Monday? And can you use the international influence of New Scotland Yard to get the Spanish police to let you know when the Agnes T has sailed from Bilbao? If any of our guesses are right, it must be some time on Sunday, or just possibly before Sunday if she’s going to kill time anywhere. Before we put the River Police to a lot of trouble, we ought to know definitely that she’s sailed.’
‘OK, Peter,’ Seddon said. ‘Don’t forget to take plenty of warm clothes for tonight. Balfour says that it gets damned cold in the telephone-hole.’
*
I wasn’t sure of the approved wear for telephone engineers, but I settled for a pair of dark red sailing trousers, and a heavyweight oiled-wool pullover in dark blue. For my feet I decided on ankle-length rubber sailing boots, which had the double advantage of being waterproof and of enabling me to wear heavy fishermen’s socks. I took a duffle bag with a number of oddments, including my night-glasses and a flask of whisky.
Inspector Balfour had two men with him when I got there. They arranged red lamps round their hole in the road, and soon afterwards departed in the van that had brought me.
The hole was more commodious than I’d expected. It was also deeper, going down a good six feet. You climbed into it by a vertical aluminium ladder, which hooked over the rim. The ladder also provided a step for keeping observation through a slit in the canvas manhole-cover, which effectually concealed everything that went on underground. There was room to sit on a couple of wooden stools, and Inspector Balfour had thoughtfully provided cushions for them. A metal toolbox contained our rations for the night. One problem that I hadn’t thought about was that although it was not yet dark outside, it was deep night at the bottom of the hole. The only light allowed was one of the red roadside lanterns, which suffused everything with a dim and rather sinister red glow. ‘It’s a nuisance about the light,’ Inspector Balfour said, ‘but I reckoned that we ought not to risk anything to suggest that the hole was occupied at night. The red light doesn’t penetrate the canvas cover, and even if there is a chink somewhere any light there is would be taken as coming from one of the red warning lamps in the road.’
‘You’ve done very well,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have given you such a rotten job.’
‘Well, it’s all in the day’s, or rather the night’s, work,’ he replied philosophically. ‘Just what do you want to do, sir, now that you’re here?’
‘I want to see if I can find some empties,’ I said.
‘Some what, sir?’
‘Sorry – it’s a phrase going back to my army days. I mean empty cartridge cases.’
*
I couldn’t get the Southwark Bridge cartridges out of my head, and while there was nothing at all to link whatever activities went on at Winter Marsh with the body found in the Thames, my thinking about the cartridges found in the pockets led me to think of the two rounds that had been fired at me. If I could recover one of the empty cases it might help to trace the origin of the ammunition that had undoubtedly been used against me. I’d thought backwards and forwards about it to try to decide if there was a reasonable chance of finding anything after a week, and I’d come to the conclusion that the effort was just worth making. Of course I could have asked Inspector Balfour and his men to search for me, but two things inhibited this. First, whoever had fired at me had been quite prepared to kill, and I didn’t want to risk policemen’s lives; and secondly, I knew much better than anyone else just where to look. I’d had my back to the guard when he fired at me because I was walking away from him, but I had a sharp picture in my mind of our relative positions before I’d begun to walk away. The man with the pick-handle had been standing a few yards to one side. I’d been facing the man with the rifle – I standing on the road, he just on the coarse marsh grass of the verge. I reckoned that he let me go about fifty yards before he fired. He might have moved a few yards towards me, but although I had my back to him I was keenly sensitive to his presence, and he was certainly not close behind me.
And he’d fired twice. The empty case from the first round must have been ejected before he could fire again. Had he picked it up? Here I had nothing to go on but what I had sensed of his personality in our brief encounter. The impression I had of him was of casual brutality – ready to shoot without caring whether he hit me or not, slack and rather slouching in his manner. After his second shot, when I’d gone into the ditch, he’d come up and made a distinctly casual search. It was easy to accept that I must have gone under the water in the ditch, and he’d accepted it easily – he’d made no attempt to search the ditch. Then he and his mate had gone off to look for my car. Had he come back to recover an empty cartridge case? They had not come back while I remained hiding in the ditch, and after that it was dark. On the whole I thought it unlikely that anyone had bothered to look for the empty case, and that in all probability it was still lying where it had fallen. Whether I had any hope of finding it in the dark was another matter. I should have to hunt in the dark, without being able to use even a masked torch, but I thought it worth trying. I calculated that I could narrow the area of search to an area of between thirty and forty square yards – a big area of rough grass to scrabble in but, I thought, not impossibly large for a systematic search, crawling across it on tracks that overlapped. Anyway, I made up my mind to have a go.
I explained all this to Inspector Balfour, with some difficulty, for he was halfway up the stepladder keeping watch, and although there was nobody to be seen we talked in whispers.
When he understood what I wanted to do, he didn’t like it. ‘I shan’t be able to see you from here,’ he said. ‘If anything happens to you I shan’t even know.’
‘You’d hear a shot all right. If you do hear a shot, you’ve got a direct link with police headquarters on your phone. If there’s any shooting, or anything else that strikes you as an emergency, call for an armed police party straightaway and search the place. It’ll be hard on you, just waiting, but there’s nothing else we can do. We don’t want to disturb them yet if we can possibly avoid it.’
‘Well, sir, I understand that you’re in charge. I don’t like it, but I’ve been trained to obey orders.’
That off his chest, we discussed planning. Balfour had been instructed that a twenty-four-hour watch was to be kept on the old camp, and nothing was to be allowed to interfere with that. Not knowing what this odd bit of top brass – me – wanted to come to Winter Marsh for, he’d been fully prepared to take the whole night’s watch himself. I told him this was ridiculous. The moon was in the first quarter and not likely to worry us, and it was an overcast night, anyway. I decided to make my expedition between midnight and 2 a.m., promising that I should not be away for more than two hours: if I couldn’t finish my search by then, I’d report back to let him know that I was all right, and go off again. He could keep watch until eight o’clock, and then I’d take over until midnight, so that he could get whatever rest was possible on a wooden stool, even with a cushion. At midnight, he would go on watch again while I went off on my expedition. ‘We can arrange the morning watch when I get back,’ I said. ‘Now let’s see what they’ve offered us for supper.’
